The Bondwoman's Narrative

by Hannah Crafts

  At last they came, at last after the sun had set, and the twilight faded, after eyes had been dimmed with looking and ears wearied by listening for them. Through the sharp chill night they came with their bridal company. Yet the twinkling lamps of their traveling chariots gave warning even at a distance of their approach. Then there was great bustle and confusion. Lanterns were lighted and rooms illuminated; doors flung open and chambers hastily surveyed. The stately mansion is no longer a darkening mass of front, but looks most imposing to the brilliant circle as they descend from their carriages and move on towards it. Mrs Bry, however, was mentally grieved at one thing, and so were the servants. She had planned that the entire troop of slaves, all arrayed in the finery of flaming Madras handkerchiefs and calico blazing with crimson and scarlet flowers, should be ranged on either side of the graveled walk leading to the mansion, with due regard to their age and character, and thus pay homage to their master and new-found mistress. But the night to their great disappointment forbade this display, and the ceremonial of reception was confined to the housekeeper. And well she discharged it. The deferential grace of her manner being only equaled by the condescending politeness of the master and mistress, the latter of whom immediately asked to be shown to her rooms. Excusing herself Mrs Bry deputed me to bear the light, and the bride escorted by the bridegroom moves on along the passage, ascends the oaken staircase, and pauses at length before a door carved and paneled in the quaint old style.

  These rooms “This door opens to your rooms, my dear, I hope you will like them” he said. “Hannah attend your mistress.”

  Her favorite waiting maid had been detained by sudden sickness. I opened the door, and we entered, but my master, saying that he would call and lead her down to supper in an hour immediately retired to his apartment. My mistress required little assistance and I had full leisure to examine and inspect her appearance. Slaves are proverbially curious, and while she surveyed with haughty eyes the furniture and dimensions of the rooms or opened and shut bureau-drawers, or plunged into caskets and jewel-cases, I was studying her, and making out a mental inventory of her foibles, and weaknesses, and caprices, and whether or not she was likely to prove an indulgent mistress. I did not see, but I felt that there was mystery, something indefinable about her. She was a small brown woman, with a profusion of wavy curly hair, large bright eyes, and delicate features with the exception of her lips which were too large, full, and red. She dressed in very good taste and her manner seemed perfect but for an uncomfortable habit she had of seeming to watch everybody as though she feared them or thought them enemies. I noticed this, and how startled she seemed at the echo of my master’s footsteps when when he came to lead her down stairs. I am superstitious, I confess it; people of my race and color usually are, and I fancied then that she was haunted by a shadow or phantom apparent only to herself, and perhaps even the more dreadful for that.

  As one of the waiters I saw the company at supper. There were jeweled ladies and gallant gentlemen. There were youthful faces and faces of two score that strove to cheat time, and refuse to be old. There was a glare and glitter deceitful smiles and hollow hearts.

  I have said that I always had a quiet way of observing things, and this habit grew upon me, sharpened perhaps by the absence of all elemental knowledge. Instead of books I studied faces and characters, and arrived at conclusions by a sort of sagacity that closely approximated to the unerring certainty of animal instinct. But in all that brilliant I had only eyes and ears for one man company I had eyes and ears for only one man, and that man the least attractive of any in the throng. He was a rusty seedy old-fashioned gentleman with thin grey locks combed so as partly to conceal the baldness of his forehead, and great black eyes so keen and piercing that you shrank involuntarily from their gaze.

  Yet it was not his singular features, or the peculiar expression of his imperturbable countenance that puzzled and interested me, but his manner towards my mistress so deferential and defiant, and her equally remarkable bearing in his presence. They never conversed except to exchange a few customary courtesies, never seemed to note or regard each other, but somehow and quite intuitively I arrived at the conclusion that each one watched and suspected the other, that each one was conscious of some great and important secret on the part of the other, and that my mistress in particular would give worlds to know just what that old man knew.

  The bridegroom was probably too happy, and the company too gay to note all this. They saw not how carefully and studiously she avoided him, or how rarely he looked at her, how without seeming to intend it he was ever near her, and with an outward manifestation of indifference was really the most interested of all.

  At length the supper was concluded, and the guests arose. Should there be singing or playing, or dancing? My master had ordered a splendid piano for his bride. It stood in the drawing room—who would give them music? No one. They could, however, take a promenade to survey the rooms, especially that especially the one that the family portraits adorned. “And we will have music and dancing there” said the host. “Twill be such a novelty” and thither he conducted the glittering train across the hall, and along the passages, and through the rooms, and up the staircase to the illustrious presence of ancestral greatness. I saw my mistress sweep gracefully along in her bridal robes, and following close behind like her shadow was the old gentleman in black. She passed on to examine beneath a broad chandelier the portrait of Sir Clifford. The image regards her with its dull leaden stare. She turns away and covers her eyes.

  Meanwhile the weather has changed. The moon shined only through a murky cloud, and the rising wind moaned fitfully amid the linden branches. Then the rain began to patter on the roof, with the dull horrible creaking that forboded misfortune to the house. The cheek of my master paled. I saw that; saw, too, that his gayety was affected, and that when he called for music, and prepared to dance he was striving to obliterate some haunting recollection, or shut from his mental vision the rising shadows of coming events.

  Though not permitted to mingle with the grand company we, the servants, blockaded the halls and passages. We cared not, why should we? if the fires went out, the chambers were neglected and the remnants of the feast remained on the table. It was our priveledge to look and listen. We loved the music, we loved the show and splendor, we loved to watch the twinkling feet and the graceful motions of the dancers, but beyond them and over them, and through the mingled sounds of joyous music and rain and wind I saw the haughty countenance of Sir Clifford’s frowning pictured semblance, and heard the ominous creaking of the linden tree. At length there was a pause in the music; a recess in the dance.

  “Whence is that frightful noise?” inquired one of the guests.

  “It is made by the decayed branches of an old tree at the end of the house” replied my master. “I will order it cut down to[-]morrow.”

  The words were followed by a crash. Loosened from its fastenings in the wall the portrait of Sir Clifford had fallen to the floor. Who done it? The invisible hand of Time had been there and silently and stealthily spread corrupting canker over the polished surface of the metal that supported it, and crumbled the wall against which it hung. But the stately knight in his armor, who placed it there had taken no consideration of such an event, and while breathing his anathema against the projector of its removal dreamed not of the great leveler who treats the master and slave with the same unceremonious rudeness, and who touches the lowly hut or the lordly palace with the like decay.

  CHAPTER 3

  Progress In Discovery

  Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain.

  DAVID

  Coming events cast their shadows before.

  CAMBELL

  The days flew past in a succession of rejoicings and festivities in which all belonging to the place alike participated. Sounds of music and mirth came from every hut while the great house assumed a conviviality of appearance and manner that seemed almost unbecoming in a mans
ion so ancient and respectable. From morning to night and night to morning it was thronged with guests. Carriages came and went incessantly up and down the long avenue of oaks. Gentlemen on horseback crossed and recrossed the lawn. The window shutters were all thrown back, for not a room was was tenantless, not a mirror blank. We the servants liked it We liked the fun and frolic, the show the novelties and the servants of the glorious feasts We like the days of hilarity and the nights of revelry though ever and when the mirth was we would hear the doleful creakings of the Linden tree

  Amid the stylish and splendid groups of ladies and gentlemen Amid the servants, loungers, dependants, and cousins of my master for the twentieth time removed came and went the old gentleman in black. They called him Mr Trappe, and it was easy to percieve that he was there for some purpose of an uncommon nature. He seemed to stand alone. He never mingled with the dancers, laughed with the gay, or conversed with the talkative, yet all treated him with deferential consideration, as he was understood to be a lawyer of wealth and consideration position.

  I said he came and went, that is he was only visible at times, and then you would see him leaning speechless against a pillar or sitting silently in a corner perhaps leaning speechless against a pillar, or sitting silently in a corner. And sometimes you would encounter him in some lonesome passage, or near the door of the drawing room when my mistress was within. Of course in this society she reigned supreme. She was beautiful, intelligent, accomplished and all seemed to know it, but it became a marvel to me that her manner should so instantly change when that old man was near. Usually kind and amiable she wrapped an air of insolent grace about her as if it were a mantle when he approached. In his presence, too, she smiled the sweetest and looked the prettiest. Were these smiles and looks put on for the occasion or not?

  At length the feastings and festivities ceased, the guests departed, and things resumed their usual course. Mr Trappe, however, was domiciled in the family. He claimed to have been the guardian of my mistress previous to her marriage, and as such was probably invited to prolong his visit. My master evidently regarded him as eccentric, and deficient in certain conventionalities usual in good society, yet perfectly genteel and respectable. He appointed servants to attend him, though Mr Trappe rarely if ever required their services, and a vacant place was reserved for him at the table which he seldom occupied to which he seldom came. And then the meals were ordered to his room, a plainly furnished chamber on the second story, old-fashioned like himself and having a quiet irresponsive air impassive air.

  As the waiting maid of my mistress I was always near to attend her, and soon ascertained that she was not happy. She gave no outward manifestation or sign of grief. She never wept and seldom sighed, but there was an air of restlessness and unquiet about her the very reverse of that placidity which always accompanies a state of mental repose. She seemed to be always looking for somebody and expecting something that never came. Though she never said so I knew that she feared the approach of a stranger, and that the receipt of a letter was to her a cause of alarm. Then how little she slept of nights, and I felt that the burden of her sorrow must indeed be great, and that she was nearly overwhelmed by it, when it led for up and down, up and down in light or shadow I could hear her pacing the chamber floor for hours.

  After the arrival of her first maid we were both attached to her person, and Lizzy, as she was called, being very communicative I learned from her many particulars about my mistress, her former life and situation, and her mysterious connection with the old man of the name of Trappe, though of this last circumstance Lizzy knew no more than I did myself. That is, she could never fathom the secret, or arrive at the bottom of the affair, but she told of many inexpliccable and current events relating to it, which sharpened our conjectures as to what the end might be.

  Lizzy was much better educated than I was, and had been to many places that I had never even heard tell of. She had also a great memory for dates and names which I invariably forgot. She was a Quadroon, almost white, with delicate hands and feet, and a person that any lady in the land might have been proud of. She came, she said of a good family and frequently mentioned great names in connection with her own, and when I smiled and said it mattered little she would assume an air of consequential dignity, and assert that on the contrary it was a very great thing and very important even to a slave to be well connected—that good blood was an inheritance to them—and that when they heard the name of some honorable gentleman mentioned with applause, or saw some great lady flaunt by in jewels and satins the priveledge of thinking he or she is a near relative of mine was a very great privelage indeed. And then I said “Of course” which mollified her rumpled vanity.

  But Lizzy, notwithstanding her good family, education and great beauty, had been several times under the hammer of the auctioneer, had passed through many hands, and experienced all the vicissitudes attendant on the life of a slave. She had been the pet of a rich family and the degraded drudge of another, had known alternately cruelty and kindness, and suffered the extremes of a master’s fondness, a mistress’s jealousy and their daughter’s hate. She could tell tales that of slavery that made the blood run cold to hear. She had been, she said, with our present mistress for a period of ten years, and was very thankful after all her woes and wanderings to find so good a place. She remembered our mistress’s father and his mournful death-bed in the presence of Mr Trappe, who sate [sat] looking on, cold, silent, and impassive as ever. Then he became the executor of the dead man’s will and had access to his papers, in which Lizzy verily believed that he discovered some important secret, as from that time his manner towards her mistress changed, and her manner changed to him, and each appeared to be watching the other, though wherefore or why was past finding out. “I know” continued Lizzy “that he is the shadow darkening her life, and I can well believe that she married Master purposely to escape his persecutions.”

  “Perhaps he wished to marry her himself” I suggested.

  “Impossible” she answered. “It is much more probable that he wished to sell her.”

  “Sell her—what do you mean?”

  “What I say, neither more nor less.”

  “But Mistress is not a slave.[”]

  “I suppose not” and then she stopped short, and refused to give any explanation, assuring me that she knew nothing; and only remarked as she did in a jesting joking way. But I knew better there was too When our mistress descended to the breakfast room one morning at an early hour, and we in her train much earnestness in her voice and manner.

  I need hardly say that our mistress in her great goodness and kindness of heart treated us rather as companions than servants. She seldom went out, or received company, but remained nearly all the time in her own apartments. Yet she could not bear the companionship of her thoughts, and would request us to sit with her, and divert her mind by conversation. Sometimes she asks to hear the legend connected with Sir Clifford’s portrait, which has been restored to its usual place on the drawing-room’s wall, or speaks gloomily of the linden and its dreary creak.

  But she shuns Mrs Bry, and that good lady is not over fond of her. Perhaps she fears that Mr Trappe has taken her into his confidence, or perhaps it is something else. Who can tell?

  It was now spring, and Mr Trappe had been living in the family all winter. Generally in his room, but sometimes descending to the library, and making himself at home among the books and papers. It is seldom that he speaks, or is spoken to; all feel his un-communicative irresponsive air.

  Our master was an easy good sort of man, fond of his wife, but not given to habits of observation. It never occurred to him that the burden of a great misfortune was on her mind, or that other causes than ill health occasioned her lowness of spirits, her avoidance of society, and long detention in her rooms. He never suspected—how could he? that the figure of that old man, with his dark clothes, and darker eyes was incessantly haunting and pursuing—that a voice was forever crying in her ears “I’m in the secret,
I know all about it, more perhaps than you do. I could tell if I chose, and shall tell when it suits me, which will be whenever I can turn it to profit and advantage.” He never dreamed of the dread, the doubt, the uncertainty that clouded her whole existence. He knew that she occupied a brilliant position, but he did not know that she had no assurance of holding it for another day.

  One day the postman brought a bundle of letters. There was nothing singular in that. I received them on a silver salver and presented them to her. They bore the superscription of master, of herself, and of Mr Trappe. At the last she looked narrowly as if examining the hand writing, looked eagerly, and then remarked impulsively “Well, I would give half my fortune to know the contents of that letter.”

  “I presume Mr Trappe would gratify your curiousity for much less” answered Lizzy.

  Mistress shook her head, and turned her eyes to the floor with a cold vacant stare.

  “Or perhaps your letters may throw some light on the subject, you have scarcely looked at them” continued Lizzy.

  Thus reminded she took the missives, broke the seals, and soon seemed lost in their perusal.

  “Take that letter to Mr Trappe” she directed on ceasing to read, “and much good may it do him.”

  Yet the calmness of her voice was strange and unnatural, and her countenance wore an expression of indefinable dread as if she knew that the worst was coming, and was not prepared to meet it.

  My mistress was very kind, and unknown to Master she indulged me in reading whenever I desired. The next morning I descended to the parlor, and seated myself with a book behind the heavy damask curtains that shaded the window. In this situation I was entirely concealed. In a few moments the echo of a light footsteps [sic] was heard on the stair; then the door opened, and mistress entered. She looked thin, and weak, and ill. A night of utter irretrievable misery had wrought the effect of years on her frame, and in her appearance. She was bent as if with age, her eyes were sunken and heavy with midnight watchings, and the pallor of her countenance was like that of death.