“No, no! — not cease! Only wait, Master Edward, and I will tell you why. The master’s confidential clerk—”
Poor Phebe’s breath seemed to fail her as she named him.
“What, the man called Whitlaw? The same whose approach has so frequently interrupted us? Does it appear that he knows of our visits?” inquired Edward.
“That same man — it is of him, Master Edward, that we must beware. I saw him hiding behind the palmetoes after you went to-night, and — and he entered mother’s house, and threatened to come again, and again; — but if he finds nobody, nor nothing that be expects, why then he will give over coming, and I will tell you, and all will be safe again.”
Edward meditated upon her words for some minutes before he answered her. At length he said, “Perhaps, Phebe, this caution may be altogether unnecessary; and, at any rate, I cannot think it needful that I should abstain from visiting every part of Colonel Dart’s plantation because his clerk has entered your mother’s house. However, as you have hitherto shown no want either of zeal or courage in this matter, I will comply with your wishes to a certain extent: we will not approach the slave villages for two days. This is Wednesday morning; to-day and to-morrow we will not come: but if before Friday evening, after the working-hours are over and the people gone to bed, I do not see you here, Phebe, you must expect that I shall venture to visit you.”
With this promise, as it was all she could obtain, the poor girl retreated, and, almost exhausted by agitation and fatigue, returned so slowly through the forest that the first gleam of morning lighted her steps as she approached her mother’s hut. Nevertheless she stretched herself on her pallet as she entered it, rather to prepare herself for the torture she anticipated, than with any hope of refreshing her exhausted strength by sleep.
Ere Edward and Lucy Bligh again separated after Phebe left them to finish their night’s repose, some few words were exchanged between them indicative of the different feelings to which her visit bad given birth.
“I fear, Lucy,” said the young apostle, “that this poor girl wearies of the task assigned her. It is much more evident to me that she earnestly wishes to prevent our visits to the plantation, than that she has any good reason for doing so.”
“You judge her wrongly, brother!” replied Lucy with some warmth: “I feel so sure that she has cause, and good cause too, for giving us this caution, that I rather suspect her of diffidence in not making her remonstrance more authoritative, than of a falling off in zeal for having made it at all.”
“Well, Lucy; we shall see. But at least remember that it is our bounden duty to take nothing upon trust that can check our progress. I must inquire, and judge for myself.”
“But at least promise me that in doing so you will keep in mind the many proofs our poor Phebe has given of devoted zeal and faithful attachment — remember this, Edward, and for my sake do nothing rashly — Goodnight!”
“Good night, dear sister! — I must not shrink from my duty — but whatever caution is consistent with that, shall be used. — Good-night, dear Lucy!”
CHAPTER XII.
DESPITE the terrible forebodings which harassed her spirits, irresistible fatigue closed the eyes of poor Phebe before she had stretched her limbs upon her bed for five minutes; and though her last waking thought was that in a short hour perhaps the lash of the overseer would be suspended over her, she slept soundly.
She slept soundly, but not long. Hardly was the broad sun fairly visible above the horizon, when her mother, who was already risen to pursue her labour, was startled by the sound of approaching footsteps, and stepped out into the drying-ground before the hut to discover who it was that thus early could have business with her. The sight she beheld caused her to turn back shuddering, and the exact truth immediately flashed upon her mind. Two men were striding rapidly towards her dwelling. The one in advance was Whitlaw; but though he was not walking exactly side by side with his companion, he nevertheless was conversing with him, and a loud ribald laugh showed them to be on terms of easy freedom. The man who hung a step behind, was a fellow named Johnson, perhaps the most detested overseer on the estate; and to render his appearance there more unequivocally terrible, he bore aloft in his hand, flourishing it with all the gaiety of a spruce postboy, that dreadful emblem of shame and anguish called a cow-hide cat.
The helpless mother could not for a moment doubt who was to be the victim, or what the act of disobedience to be punished. Hastily going to the straw bed on which her two younger children lay sleeping, she dragged them away, one in each hand, and retreating by the back-door into the forest, hurried onward among the bushes in the hope of placing herself and the little ones beyond reach of hearing the groans which she knew would soon be wrung from the innocent being she left.
Let not the tender European mother turn with disgust from the apparent selfishness of this retreat. Those only who have seen with their own eyes how slavery acts upon the heart, can fairly judge the conduct of slaves. They are, in truth, where the yoke is laid on heavily, hardly to be considered as responsible for any act, or for any feeling. The dogged quiescence of silent endurance which often gives to the negro an aspect of brutal insensibility, may originate from a temper whose firmness might have made a hero had the will been free; and poor Peggy, when she hurried from the scene of her child’s suffering, might have carried with her an anguish the bitterness of which no mother blessed with the power of protecting her offspring can conceive.
When Whitlaw and his official entered, Phebe was still asleep: the fatigue and exhaustion of the preceding day pressed heavily upon her senses, and it was not till the hand of the brutal young man had rudely dragged away the rug which covered the bed, that she opened her eyes and beheld the hateful countenance that hung over her.
Heavy as her sleep had been, this sight chased it in an instant. She attempted to spring from the bed, but Whitlaw’s arm seized and threw her back upon it.
“Soh! you are ready for us, my dainty one, are you? All your clothes on, because you expected company — hey?”
And again the fiendish pair laughed loud.
“But that’s no go, Johnson,” continued the ferocious Whitlaw. “We shall be stumped outright if we attempt to lash her while she’s wrapped up this fashion — she won’t mind your cat a copper if we let her keep her clothes on.”
“Then I expect, my young squire, that we must be after jest giving the nigger the trouble to take ’em off. Be brisk, my beauty,” continued the fellow, hitting her arms and legs with the handle of the instrument he held; “I’ll smash you outright if you keep me waiting; I tell you that to begin, for I’ve a deal of business to get through before sundown.”
Phebe by a sudden movement sprang from the bed and stood on her feet before them.
“Do not strip me!” she said, clasping her hands together with trembling eagerness, “Do not strip me! Let me go to the rice-grounds instead!”
“Maybe we may pay you that compliment into the bargain, my lily; — you have only got to be uproarious and obstinate enough, and I’ll do you all the favours in that line that your fancy can hit upon,” said Whitlaw. “But, jest to begin, you’ll be so genteel as to oblige us by stripping your top skin, that we may deal as we like with the milk-white that we shall find under it.”
Even on Colonel Dart’s plantation Phebe had not yet been accustomed to the lash; her quick intelligence and patient industry together had enabled her so to fulfil her allotted tasks as almost entirely to escape it; and never before had she been exposed to the degrading ceremony to which she was now so peremptorily commanded to submit. She trembled violently, and felt so sick and giddy that she tottered towards the door in the hope of saving herself from fainting.
“Do you mean to try a run for it?” cried Johnson, looking at her without moving, as a dog may be seen to watch a wounded hare, certain, let it struggle as it may, that escape is impossible.
“I should like to see her at it,” said Whitlaw. “She’s a neat little craft
for a nigger; and she’d skip handsome over them stumps yonder, I’ll engage for her. Go it, my beauty!” he continued, clapping his hands: “off with ye! You shall have three minutes’ law — upon my soul you shall.”
Phebe did not run — she had no power to do so; but she hastened with what speed she could to the spring, and from the hollow of her hands drank enough of its cold stream to chase the coming faintness: she then sprinkled her head and face copiously; and thus refreshed and strengthened, she turned back towards the hut, at the door of which Whitlaw and Johnson stood lounging, and each with a cigar in his mouth.
“You are coming back, are you?” cried the former, stepping forward to meet her. “Then I’ll be d — d if she hasn’t been thinking better of it. So away with you, friend Johnson, and I’ll settle this matter myself. However, you may as well leave me the cat, in case she should turn about again.”
Johnson threw down the instrument without speaking, and prepared to depart.
“Please, master, let me be flogged;’ said the poor girl beseechingly, “please let me be flogged, and sent to the rice-grounds afterwards.”
“Stay where you are, Johnson!” roared the brutal Whitlaw; “she shall have it now if I never flog nigger more. Strip, black toad — strip, or you shall be soaked in oil and then singed. Strip her, Johnson, d’ ye hear? — and if you can’t, by the living Jingo I’ll help you.”
The struggling but helpless victim was seized by the two men at the same moment, and the abhorrent threat would have been quickly executed, had not a discordant laugh from the outside of the hut startled and caused them to desist from their occupation while they turned to ascertain whence the strange interruption proceeded.
The figure which now presented itself at the door might have appalled anyone who beheld it for the first time. A negress, seeming to have been originally of almost dwarfish stature, and now bent nearly double with age, whose head was covered with wool as white as snow, and whose eyes rolled about with a restless movement that appeared to indicate insanity, stood on the threshold of the door, one hand resting on a stout bamboo, and the other raised with its finger pointed as if in mockery of the group within; and again a croaking laugh burst from her.
The person of the intruder was known to them all, and moreover she was but a time-worn paralytic slave; yet there was that about her which neither the callous indifference of the driver, nor the bold audacity of the confidential clerk, could look upon unmoved.
This wretched relic of a life of labour and woe had been on the plantation longer than its owner or any of his numerous dependants could remember — her age was indeed asserted by many among them to exceed greatly the length of days usually allotted to even the happiest and idlest of the human race, and yet it was recorded of her that she had borne more children and performed more extraordinary tasks than any other slave was ever before believed to have done. Either in consequence of this species of renown, or for some other reasons connected with her former history, she was considered by her master and all his myrmidons as a sort of privileged personage, neither expected to perform any sort of labour — of which indeed she appeared perfectly incapable, — nor to answer at any of the musters, nor to be challenged for any of her wanderings or wild freaks whatever.
The feeling concerning her wavered, according to the character and temperament of different individuals, between reverence for a being in some sort supernatural, and the mixed pity and fear inspired by the presence of a maniac. The slaves, with the sole exception perhaps of poor Phebe, firmly believed her to be immortal, and in close communion with some spirit of the air, who at her bidding would bring weal or woe upon the white man or the negro according as they pleased or offended her; and she was accordingly treated with invariable kindness and respect by them all. How much of this superstition was shared by the whites, it might be difficult to say; but the unwonted licence and indulgence accorded her seemed to indicate, considering at whose hands she received it, some sentiment by no means commonly shown by the white race to the black.
“Rose, Rose, coal-black Rose!
I wish I may be scotched if I don’t love Rose!” were the first words the beldam articulated after she had ceased her shout of unnatural laughter. “Oh, massa clerk!” she added, “dat be your way making lub!” and again the cabin seemed to ring with her discordant laughter.
Whitlaw had quitted his grasp of Phebe the instant she appeared, and now stood pale with rage, or fear, or both, and apparently undecided as to what he should do or say next.
In order fully to comprehend the conduct of my hero on this and some future occasions, it will be necessary to remember that his education for the first eleven years of his life was of the very lowest kind, and precisely such as to substitute superstition for religion in his mind: nor were the subsequent years, during which he acquired the knowledge of reading and writing at Natchez, at all less likely to inculcate error, instead of truth, respecting the immaterial world, than were those which preceded them.
Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw is no solitary instance of a sharp, active, bold sort of intellect, which at the very moment that it boasts its scepticism in religion, secretly owns and trembles before the influence of superstition.
The moment previous to that at which the palsied and decrepit hag entered, Whitlaw stood fearless and undaunted before Heaven, ready to commit the most hideous crimes in defiance of its laws; but now he stood doubting and unnerved before her, as if awaiting her fiat either to prosecute or abandon his purpose.
“I say, massa clerk,” said the old negress, again suspending her mirth, “I say, massa, you come wid me under dem black trees, and I teach you summat; — but step softly, massa — don’t scare de green birds — they are Juno’s spirits.”
As she spoke, she walked across the hut to the back door, which opened upon the forest. Her pace was a singular mixture of activity and decrepitude, every step being something between a jump and a hobble. When she reached the door, she turned to see if he whom she had summoned were following her; and on perceiving that he still stood beside the girl as if undecided, she twisted her uncouth features into a most portentous frown, and raising her bamboo, seemed to be drawing figures with it in the air.
The young man hesitated no longer, but, as if under the influence of her wand, stepped hastily after her. She laid the bamboo lightly on his shoulder as he approached, and peering up into his face, fixed for a moment her restless eyes upon his; then removing her staff, and pointing it towards Johnson, she uttered in a sort of chant, but totally free from all negro peculiarity of pronunciation, “Solemn words must secret be!
No ear must hear, no eye must see, What shall pass ‘twixt thee and me.”
Whitlaw immediately made his attendant a sign to depart, which was promptly and silently obeyed. The old woman then proceeded towards the trees; and Whitlaw followed her, leaving Phebe standing in the middle of the floor trembling between hope and fear, but thanking Heaven with tearful gratitude for this most unexpected reprieve.
CHAPTER XIII.
HALF-AN-HOUR before midnight on the following Friday, Edward and Lucy Bligh, who had passed the interval in anxious but vain expectation of seeing Phebe, set out together to reconnoitre her dwelling, and to discover, with as much caution as possible, the cause of her delay. The crescent moon, which on the night of Phebe’s visit to them had set at too early an hour to befriend her, now made the first part of their expedition delightful; and as they walked hand-in-hand through the primeval forest, any who had listened to their conversation, and marked their young faces in the fine clear obscure of that faint light, might have fancied that they were the spirits of some purer and holier race, permitted to revisit the land their kindred had lost. Lucy was a good walker, but the distance which Phebe had traversed in fifty minutes took her an hour and a quarter, and the moon had set and heavy darkness hung upon the landscape when at last they reached the solitary hut of Peggy. So cloudy and dark indeed was the night become, that it was more by the rippling sound of
the little stream that trickled from the spring behind the washerwoman’s dwelling, than from any object their eyes could distinguish, that they perceived at length that they were at the termination of their walk.
They now approached the door of the hut, and cautiously listened for a sound either within or near it; but all was profoundly still. Lucy, who fancied she should be exposed to less danger if discovered than her brother, prevailed on him to remain at some short distance from the door while she attempted to open it. The latch yielded to her touch, and she entered; but the darkness was such that she could discern nothing.
“Phebe!” she said in a low soft voice hardly above a whisper.
“Phebe! — who is it calls on Phebe?” exclaimed the voice of Peggy; “who is it calls for my poor, poor lost child?”
“It is I — it is Lucy Bligh,” was the reply. “Why do you call her lost? — Tell me, Peggy, where she is gone, and who you have with you in the hut?”
“Oh, mistress! mistress!” sobbed out the wretched mother, “then she is not run away to you? — Oh me! Oh me! — that was my only hope!”
“She was with me late on Tuesday night, Peggy,” replied Lucy, gently approaching the bed; “but I have never seen her since. When did she quit the hut?”
“Let me get up — let me come out with you into the air! — I feel choking, mistress!” replied the poor negress, who was in truth at that moment totally unfit for any explanation.
“Do so, my poor Peggy,” replied her former mistress kindly. “My brother is near at hand — I will go and bring him into the porch while you get your clothes on; and I trust that we may be able amongst us to find out where my poor Phebe is gone.”
Lucy then groped her way out of the hut, and in a few minutes returned with her brother to the open porch which connected the two chambers of the hut, and having cautiously advanced through buckets and rinsing tubs, at last discovered a bench, on which they seated themselves in total darkness to await the coming of Peggy.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 12
