“Aunt Nesbit,” she said suddenly, as if the words hurt her, “I think I spoke improperly, and I’m very sorry for it. I beg your pardon.”
“Oh, it’s no matter, child; I didn’t care about it. I’m pretty well used to your temper.”
Bang went the door, and in a moment Nina stood in the entry, shaking her fist at it with impotent wrath.
“You stony, stiff, disagreeable old creature! how came you ever to be my mother’s sister?” And with the word mother, she burst into a tempest of tears, and rushed violently to her own chamber. The first object that she saw was Milly, arranging some clothes in her drawer; and to her astonishment, Nina rushed up to her, and throwing her arms round her neck, sobbed and wept in such tumultuous excitement that the good creature was alarmed.
“Laws bless my soul, my dear little lamb! what’s the matter? Why, don’t! Don’t, honey! Why, bless the dear little soul! bless the dear precious lamb! who’s been a-hurting of it?” And at each word of endearment, Nina’s distress broke out afresh, and she sobbed so bitterly that the faithful creature really began to be frightened.
“Laws, Miss Nina, I hope there ain’t nothing happened to you now!”
“No, no, nothing, Milly, only I am lonesome, and I want my mother! I haven’t got any mother! Dear me!” she said, with a fresh burst.
“Ah, the poor thing!” said Milly compassionately, sitting down, and fondling Nina in her arms, as if she had been a babe. “Poor chile! Laws, yes; I ‘member your ma was a beautiful woman!”
“Yes,” said Nina, speaking between her sobs, “the girls at school had mothers. And there was Mary Brooks, she used to read to me her mother’s letters, and I used to feel so, all the while, to think nobody wrote such letters to me! And there’s Aunt Nesbit — I don’t care what they say about her being religious, she is the most selfish, hateful creature I ever did see! I do believe, if I was lying dead and laid out in the next room to her, she would be thinking what she’d get next for dinner!”
“Oh, don’t, my poor lamb, don’t!” said Milly compassionately.
“Yes, I will, too! She’s always taking it for granted that I’m the greatest sinner on the face of the earth! She don’t scold me — she don’t care enough about me to scold! She only takes it for granted, in her hateful, quiet way, that I’m going to destruction, and that she can’t help it, and don’t care! Supposing I’m not good! — what’s to make me good? Is it going to make me good for people to sit up so stiff, and tell me they always knew I was a fool, and a flirt, and all that? Milly, I’ve had dreadful turns of wanting to be good, and I’ve laid awake nights and cried because I wasn’t good. And what makes it worse, is that I think if mamma was alive she could help me. She wasn’t like Aunt Nesbit, was she, Milly?”
“No, honey, she wasn’t. I’ll tell you about your ma some time, honey.”
“The worst of it is,” said Nina, “when Aunt Nesbit speaks to me in her hateful way, I get angry; then I speak in a way that isn’t proper, I know. Oh, if she only would get angry with me back again! or if she’d do anything in the world but stand still, in her still way, telling me she is astonished at me! That’s a lie, too; for she never was astonished at anything in her life! She hasn’t life enough to be!”
“Ah, Miss Nina, we mustn’t spect more of folks than there is in them.”
“Expect? I don’t expect!”
“Well, bless you, honey, when you knows what folks is, don’t let’s worry. Ye can’t fill a quart cup out of a thimble, honey, no way you can fix it. There’s just whar ’tis. I knowed your ma, and I’s knowed Miss Loo, ever since she was a girl. ‘Pears like they wa’n’t no more alike than snow is like sugar. Miss Loo, when she was a girl, she was that pretty that everybody was wondering after her; but to de love, dat ar went after your ma. Couldn’t tell why it was, honey. ‘Peared like Miss Loo wa’n’t techy, nor she wa’n’t one of your bursting-out sort, scolding round. ‘Peared like she’d never hurt nobody; and yet our people, they couldn’t none of dem bar her. ‘Peared like nobody did nothing for her with a will.”
“Well, good reason!” said Nina; “she never did anything for anybody else with a will! She never cared for anybody! Now, I’m selfish; I always knew it, I do a great many selfish things; but it’s a different kind from hers. Do you know, Milly, she don’t seem to know she is selfish? There she sits, rocking in her old chair, so sure she’s going straight to heaven, and don’t care whether anybody else gets there or not!”
“Oh laws, now, Miss Nina, you’s too hard on her. Why, look how patient she sits with Tomtit, teaching him his hymns and varses.”
“And you think that’s because she cares anything about him? Do you know, she thinks he isn’t fit to go to heaven, and that if he dies he’ll go to the bad place. And yet, if he was to die to-morrow, she’d talk to you about clear-starching her caps! No wonder the child don’t love her! She talks to him just as she does to me; tells him she don’t expect anything of him — she knows he’ll never come to any good; and the little wretch has got it by heart, now. Do you know that, though I get in a passion with Tom, sometimes, and though I’m sure I should perish sitting boring with him over those old books, yet I really believe I care more for him than she does? And he knows it, too. He sees through her as plain as I do. You’ll never make me believe that Aunt Nesbit has got religion. I know there is such a thing as religion; but she hasn’t got it. It isn’t all being sober, and crackling old stiff religious newspapers, and boring with texts and hymns, that makes people religious. She is just as worldly minded as I am, only it’s in another way. There, now, I wanted her to advise me about something, to-day. Why, Milly, all girls want somebody to talk with; and if she’d only showed the least interest in what I said, she might scold me and lecture me as much as she’d a mind to. But to have her not even hear me! And when she must have seen that I was troubled and perplexed, and wanted somebody to advise me, she turned round so cool, and began to talk about the onions and the stuffing! Got me so angry! I suppose she is in her room, now, rocking, and thinking what a sinner I am!”
“Well, now, Miss Nina, ‘pears though you’ve talked enough about dat ar; ‘pears like it won’t make you feel no better.”
“Yes it does make me feel better! I had to speak to somebody, Milly, or else I should have burst; and now I wonder where Harry is. He always could find a way for me out of anything.”
“He is gone over to see his wife, I think, Miss Nina.”
“Oh, too bad! Do send Tomtit after him, right away. Tell him that I want him to come right home, this very minute — something very particular. And, Milly, you just go and tell Old Hundred to get out the carriage and horses, and I’ll go over and drop a note in the post-office, myself. I won’t trust it to Tomtit; for I know he’ll lose it.”
“Miss Nina,” said Milly, looking hesitatingly, “I spect you don’t know how things go about round here; but the fact is, Old Hundred has got so kind of cur’ous, lately, there can’t nobody do nothing with him, except Harry. Don’t ‘tend to do nothing Miss Loo tells him to. I’s ‘feard he’ll make up some story or other about the horses; but he won’t get ’em out — now, mind, I tell you, chile!”
“He won’t! I should like to know if he won’t, when I tell him to! A pretty story that would be! I’ll soon teach him that he has a live mistress — somebody quite different from Aunt Loo!”
“Well, well, chile, perhaps you’d better go. He wouldn’t mind me, I know. Maybe he’ll do it for you.”
“Oh yes; I’ll just run down to his house, and hurry him up.” And Nina, quite restored to her usual good humor, tripped gayly across to the cabin of Old Hundred, that stood the other side of the house.
Old Hundred’s true name was, in fact, John. But he had derived the appellation, by which he was always known, from the extreme moderation of all his movements. Old Hundred had a double share of that profound sense of the dignity of his office which is an attribute of the tribe of coachmen in general. He seemed to consider the horses an
d carriage as a sort of family ark, of which he was the high priest, and which it was his business to save from desecration. According to his own showing, all the people on the plantation, and indeed the whole world in general, were in a state of habitual conspiracy against the family carriage and horses, and he was standing for them, singlehanded, at the risk of his life. It was as much part of his duty, in virtue of his office, to show cause, on every occasion, why the carriage should not be used, as it is for state attorneys to undertake prosecutions. And it was also a part of the accomplishment of his situation to conduct his refusal in the most decorous manner; always showing that it was only the utter impossibility of the case which prevented. The available grounds of refusal Old Hundred had made a life-study, and had always a store of them cut and dried for use, all ready at a moment’s notice. In the first place, there were always a number of impossibilities with regard to the carriage. Either “it was muddy, and he was laying out to wash it;” or else “he had washed it, and couldn’t have it splashed;” or “he had taken out the back curtain, and had laid out to put a stitch in it, one of dese yer days;” or there was something the matter with the irons. “He reckoned they was a little bit sprung.”
“He ‘lowed he’d ask the blacksmith about it, some of dese yer times.” And then as to the horses the possibilities were rich and abundant. What with strains, and loose shoes, and stones getting in at the hoofs, dangers of all sorts of complaints, for which he had his own vocabulary of names, it was next to an impossibility, according to any ordinary rule of computing chances, that the two should be in complete order together.
Utterly ignorant, however, of the magnitude of the undertaking which she was attempting, and buoyant with the consciousness of authority, Nina tripped singing along, and found Old Hundred tranquilly reclining in his tent-door, watching through his half-shut eyes, while the afternoon sunbeam irradiated the smoke which rose from the old pipe between his teeth. A large, black, one-eyed crow sat perching, with a quizzical air, upon his knee, and when he heard Nina’s footsteps approaching, cocked his remaining eye towards her, with a smart, observing attitude, as if he had been deputed to look out for applications while his master dozed. Between this crow, who had received the sobriquet of Uncle Jeff, and his master there existed a most particular bond of friendship and amity. This was further strengthened by the fact that they were both equally disliked by all the inhabitants of the place. Like many people who are called to stand in responsible positions, Old Hundred had rather failed in the humble virtues, and become dogmatical and dictatorial to that degree that nobody but his own wife could do anything with him. And as to Jeff, if the principle of thievery could be incarnate, he might have won a temple among the Lacedemonians. In various skirmishes and battles consequent on his misdeeds, Jeff had lost an eye, and had a considerable portion of the feathers scalded off on one side of his head; while the remaining ones, discomposed by the incident, ever after stood up in a protesting attitude, imparting something still more sinister to his goblin appearance. In another rencounter he had received a permanent twist in the neck, which gave him always the appearance of looking over his shoulder, and added not a little to the oddity of the general effect. Uncle Jeff thieved with an assiduity and skill which were worthy of a better cause, and when not upon any serious enterprise of this kind, employed his time in pulling up corn, scratching up newly planted flower seeds, tangling yarn, pulling out knitting-needles, pecking the eyes of sleeping people, scratching and biting children, and any other little miscellaneous mischief which occurred to him. He was invaluable to Old Hundred, because he was a standing apology for any and all discoveries made on his premises of things which ought not to have been there. No matter what was brought to light, —— whether spoons from the great house, or a pair of sleeve-buttons, or a handkerchief, or a pipe from a neighboring cabin, — Jeff was always called up to answer. Old Hundred regularly scolded, on these occasions, and declared he was enough to “spile the character of any man’s house.” And Jeff would look at him comically over the shoulder, and wink his remaining eye, as much as to say that the scolding was a settled thing between them, and that he wasn’t going to take it at all in ill part.
“Uncle John,” said Nina, “I want you to get the carriage out for me, right away. I want to take a ride over the cross run.”
“Laws bless you sweet face, honey, chile, I’s dreadful sorry; but you can’t do it dis yer day.”
“Can’t do it! Why not?”
“Why, bless you, chile, it ain’t possible, noway. Can’t have the carriage and hosses dis yer arternoon.”
“But I must go over to cross run to the post-office. I must go this minute!”
“Law, chile, you can’t do it! fur you can’t walk, and it’s sartain you can’t ride, because dese yer hosses, nor dis yer carriage, can’t stir out dis yer arternoon, no way you can fix it. Mout go, perhaps, to-morrow, or next week.”
“Oh, Uncle John, I don’t believe a word of it! I want them this afternoon, and I say I must have them!”
“No, you can’t, chile,” said Old Hundred, in a tender, condescending tone, as if he was speaking to a baby. “I tell yon dat ar is impossible. Why, bless your soul, Miss Nina, de curtains is all off de carriage!”
“Well, put them on again, then!”
“Ah, Miss Nina, dat ar ain’t all. Pete was desperate sick, last night; took with de thumps, powerful bad. Why, Miss Nina, he was dat sick I had to be up with him most all night!” And while Old Hundred thus adroitly issued this little work of fiction, the raven nodded waggishly at Nina, as much as to say, “You hear that fellow, now!”
Nina stood quite perplexed, biting her lips, and Old Hundred seemed to go into a profound slumber.
“I don’t believe but what the horses can go to-day! I mean to go and look.”
“Laws, honey, chile, ye can’t, now; de do’s is all locked, and I’ve got de key in my pocket. Every one of dem critturs would have been killed forty times over ‘fore now. I think everybody in dis yer world is arter dem dar critturs. Miss Loo, she’s wanting ’em to go one way, and Harry’s allers usin’ de critturs. Got one out, dis yer arternoon, riding over to see his wife. Don’t see no use in his riding round so grand, noway! Laws, Miss Nina, your pa used to say to me, says he, ‘Uncle John, you knows more about dem critturs dan I do; and now I tell you what it is, Uncle John — you take care of dem critturs; don’t you let nobody kill ’em for nothing.’ Now, Miss Nina, I’s always a-walking in the steps of the colonel’s ‘rections. Now, good, clar, bright weather, over good roads, I likes to trot the critturs out. Dat ar is reasonable. But den, what roads is over the cross run, I want to know? Dem dere roads is de most mis’ablest things you ever did see. Mud! Hi! Ought for to see de mud down dar by de creek! Why, de bridge all tared off! Man drowned in dat dar creek once! Was so! It ain’t no sort of road for young ladies to go over. Tell you, Miss Nina; why don’ you let Harry carry your letter over? If he must be ridin’ round de country, don’t see why he couldn’t do some good wid his ridin’. Why, de carriage wouldn’t get over before ten o’clock, dis yer night! Now, mine, I tell you. Besides, it’s gwine fur to rain. I’s been feeling dat ar in my corns, all dis yer morning; and Jeff, he’s been acting like the berry debil hisself — de way he always does ‘fore it rains. Never knowed dat ar sign to fail.”
“The short of the matter is, Uncle John, you are determined not to go,” said Nina. “But I tell you you shall go! — there, now! Now, do you get up immediately, and get out those horses!”
Old Hundred still sat quiet, smoking; and Nina, after reiterating her orders till she got thoroughly angry, began, at last, to ask herself the question, how she was going to carry them into execution. Old Hundred appeared to have descended into himself in a profound reverie, and betrayed not the smallest sign of hearing anything she said.
“I wish Harry would come back quick,” she said to herself as she pensively retraced her steps through the garden; but Tomtit had taken the commission to go for him
in his usual leisurely way, spending the greater part of the afternoon on the road.
“Now, ain’t you ashamed of yourself, you mean old nigger!” said Aunt Rose, the wife of Old Hundred, who had been listening to the conversation; “talking ‘bout de creek, and de mud, and de critturs, and Lor knows what all, when we all knows it’s nothing but your laziness!”
“Well,” said Old Hundred, “and what would come o’ the critturs if I wasn’t lazy, I want to know? Laziness! it’s the berry best thing for the critturs can be. Where’d dem horses ‘a’ been now, if I had been one of your highfa-lutin’ sort, always driving round? Where’d dey ‘a’ been, and what would dey V been, hey? Who wants to see hosses all skin and bone? Lord! if I had been like some o’ de coachmen, de buzzards would have had the picking of dem critturs, long ago!”
“I rally believe that you’ve told dem dar lies till you begin to believe them yourself! “ said Rose. “Telling our dear, sweet young lady about your being up with Pete all night, when de Lord knows you laid here snoring fit to tar de roof off!”
“Well, must say something! Folks must be ‘spectful to de ladies. Course I couldn’t tell her I wouldn’t take de critturs out; so I just trots out scuse. Ah! lots of dem scuses I keeps! I tell you, now, scuses is excellent things. Why, scuses is like dis yer grease that keeps de wheels from screaking. Lord bless you, de whole world turns round on scuses. Whar de world be if everybody was such fools to tell the raal reason for everything they are gwine fur to do, or ain’t gwine fur to!”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 70
