Collected Works of Frances Trollope, page 44
Yet, with all these happy thoughts, the actual feelings of both were far from gay. The white and the black girl had each a sorrow at her heart. Lucy feared for her brother, she hardly knew what danger or what suffering; but she could not think of him as he had appeared the night before — so pale, so woe-begone — so tenderly anxious for her, so mournfully indifferent for himself, without feeling most sadly sure that his heart was not at peace within him, and that he nourished some hidden sorrow of even darker dye than those they had hitherto so equally shared together.
While surrounded by the happy Steinmarks, all of them seeming to forget their own separate causes of joy, in order to make common cause with her in the general delight of sailing forth upon the bright summer ocean, with sorrow behind and hope before them — while still in the midst of such a circle Lucy had no leisure to be sad. But now, with the faithful and sympathising Phebe by her side, the thoughts that she had felt it her duty to check in the happy circle at Reichland seemed to come back upon her with redoubled force, as if to avenge themselves, like Coriolanus, for having been banished.
Phebe, as she walked silently half a step behind her former mistress, felt her bosom heave and her eyes overflow as she remembered that she was going to see her mother and her little sisters for the last time. This natural sorrow, too, had not much to combat it as long as Phebe was within the influence of Cæsar and of Reichland; but the forest had not fully closed them round and hid them from the reproachful glances of kind eyes for many minutes before Lucy heard the deep sob of uncontrollable emotion from her companion.
She turned round, and affectionately taking her hand, said, in that voice of genuine feeling which heals sorrow more than the most reasonable consolation that was ever uttered, “My poor Phebe, I know why you are weeping — and weep you must, poor girl, and your good mother too, for the pang of separation must be terrible.”
“Miss Lucy,” said Phebe, trying to check her tears that she might speak intelligibly, “will you ask Master Edward for me whether it is a sin to go? — I sometimes think it must be. — How shall I bear to be so very happy and free too, and my husband free; and to know all the time that my poor mother is ever and always to be a slave, and flogged too, if that wicked Whitlaw, or any other of the white masters, choose to say it? And think, Miss Lucy, of the poor little girls too! — Sally is such a smart little thing! — suppose she should take the fancy of one of those sinful men, and I safe and free, and yet unable to help them!”
“It is a cruel thought, my poor Phebe,” replied her pitying friend; “but you must remember, and Edward, I am sure, will tell you so, that were you to sacrifice your happy hopes and remain in slavery yourself for ever, you could not benefit them by it.”
“But they would not have to think day by day of the shocking difference, Miss Lucy. And they would see me too, and that would comfort them.”
“It would comfort them more, Phebe, to know that you were happy. And who knows but the time may come that you may help them? You and your husband will have wages — you have kind friends to help you, and who knows, Phebe, but that you may be one day able to purchase their freedom? Such things have been done, I know; and if ever I should earn money of my own, or Edward either, be sure we would help you in it.”
“Oh, what words you speak now, Miss Lucy!” cried Phebe in an ecstasy. “Are such things ever done — and by poor blacks who have once been slaves themselves, Miss Lucy?”
“I have heard so, Phebe.”
“Then there must be hope that we may do it: for had ever girl a husband that would do more for her? — or masters so kind and generous? — or a mother and two little sisters who had less black wickedness in them to be ashamed of? — And may I tell mother, Miss Lucy, that such a thing is possible?”
“You may tell her that I think so, Phebe; but that it must be the work of years and patience.”
In talk such as this a mile or two was easily beguiled; and some time before Fox’s clearing was in sight, Lucy saw her brother walking at a little distance under the trees beside the path.
“There is Edward!” she exclaimed joyfully: “how lucky that we did not miss him! Now, Phebe, you had better hasten on to your poor mother. Tell her that if possible I will see her before I go; but I cannot promise it, for we must not be seen with the slaves: and tell her too that I shall never forget her long and faithful service — and that if such power should be ever mine, I will redeem her and her little girls from bondage.”
With such cheering words as these to carry with her, Phebe no longer feared to meet her mother, and with restored spirits continued her walk towards the laundry hut; while Lucy left the path to join her brother, who had not yet perceived her.
In a few minutes, however, the noise she made in approaching roused him from his deep reverie, and he raised his head and saw her. It was with a smile of affectionate pleasure that he hastened forward to meet her; and Lucy was so cheered by it, that she almost forgot her gloomy forebodings, and spoke to him of their immediate departure with joy and gladness.
The sound seemed uncongenial to his spirits, for he turned away his head and sighed heavily; but in the next moment, making an effort to conquer his ill-timed gloom, he himself resumed the subject, saying, “Do you think, Lucy, they will be able to go before Sunday?”
“Oh yes, I think so! Almost everything will be ready by Friday evening, and on Saturday Mr. Steinmark’s light waggon will set off at four o’clock in the morning to take us all. We shall get to Natchez, they say, about eight; and at nine or ten a steam-boat is expected to be at the wharf for New Orleans. Does it not seem like a dream, dearest Edward, that after all our misery — yes, and at the very moment when it was worse than ever — WE, you and I, dear Edward, who have so often talked of Europe till our hearts were sick with longing for it, should thus set off to visit it? — Is not this like a dream — a most delicious dream?”
“A dream indeed! — And the waking, Lucy? Are you not afraid? — do you not feel it possible that disappointment may await you?”
“That I may not find everything so fine as I suppose it, Edward? — do you mean that? It is very possible, certainly. My thoughts do gallop, I know, when hope and fancy drive them. But, at least, Edward, we shall see no slavery; we shall hear no hymns of freedom, that ‘keep promise to the ear, and break it to the sense;’ nor shall we ever again, I trust, be where the Word of God is doled out to men of one complexion, but declared contraband and illegal to those of another.”
“These are goodly and godly hopes, my Lucy,” answered Edward with a smile, “and may you find them all realized. But, my poor girl, you must long remain, I fear, under a heavy load of debt to our kind friends: I have never neglected our school, Lucy, but I have not one quarter enough, I fear, to pay your passage to Europe.”
“Why do you talk of my debt and my passage, Edward? Why do you not say our, as you used to do of all that concerned us?”
“My dear, dear sister!” began Edward with ominous solemnity, “how shall I answer you? That every day you live you become dearer to me is most simply true; and yet I am obliged to act almost as if I loved you not. Lucy, my duty is here.”
“Then so is mine too, Edward!” cried Lucy, interrupting him. “Where you dwell, there will I dwell also!”
Edward Bligh wept like a woman, and for a minute neither of them spoke; but he restrained himself, and assuming a tone of composure very foreign to his feelings, said, “Did you know, my beloved Lucy, how grievously you torture me — could you guess how greatly you increase the load of sorrow which it has pleased Heaven that I should bear, you would not say so.”
“What would you have me say?” replied the suffering girl. “Would you have me tell you, that if you will not go with me, I will go without you? Would you have me say, that such is my love for friends of yesterday, that I am ready for their sakes to leave you, Edward — leave you for ever! — Oh, do not ask it of me!”
“I value as I ought the love that makes you speak thus, Lucy. I know your holy and most pure sincerity; but I must pay a dreadful price for it, if it must make me struggle against my conscience, my wishes, and my will, to prove myself not ungrateful.”
“Do not speak so harshly — oh, do not, Edward! It cannot be from your heart, I know it is not; and you only take this cruel tone to drive me to what you think will make my happiness. Now let us make a compromise. I will not again ask you to try new scenes for which you have no relish, and you must not ask me to leave you. — Agreed!” she added, holding out her hand with a smile; “is it not agreed, Edward? — And now let us never talk of seeing Europe more.”
The voice that uttered this had not a trace of affectation in it, nor had the heart that conceived it. Pure and holy, as her unhappy brother said, was the sincerity of Lucy Bligh; but her words were only the more painful to Edward from his knowing their truth so well: for, alas! her love could not heal the sorrow — the hopeless melancholy that weighed him to the dust. It was not his wild, fervent, unrequited love for Lotte Steinmark which had made him thus; nor was it the loss of fortune, of station, and of friends; nor yet the remembrance, though it was ever vividly before him, of his noble-minded liberal father dying in abject poverty; nor the blighted prospects of his innocent, lovely, and loving sister; nor the visible worthlessness of his own abortive efforts to aid the wretched people for whose benefit he would willingly have sacrificed his life: but it was all these together, pressing upon a nature too sensitive to bear the slightest item of the list without sinking under it, and too disinterested in its exalted affections to permit itself the consolation of expressing its misery, or asking from the few who loved him the sympathy it would have been almost oppressive to him to find.
There was no healthfulness in this state of mind; nor was it in the power of any human being to heal it. It was perhaps the consciousness of this which made the true devotion of poor Lucy seem of so little value. Take from him his hopeless love, which had seemed to seize upon his senses as if to fulfil the destiny which doomed him to taste of every mortal pang, and her history was as full of woe as his own. But though she had bent before it at times almost as despairingly as he himself had done, there was an elastic spirit within her which rose at the first touch of hope, and a trusting tenderness of heart which made the balm of affection sink into her soul, without the alloy of any fear lest it might harm the giver.
A silence of some minutes followed Lucy’s offer of compromise, and then her brother answered it by warmly expressing the gratitude he felt for her affection. “There must he a compromise between us, Lucy,” he added, “but not quite of the important nature that you propose: it shall not involve the going or not going to Europe, but only the day of departure from hence. As it concerns myself, I must stay here till after Sunday, Lucy; but do not, if I agree to follow you to New Orleans afterwards — do not put me in the embarrassing position of making our kind friends alter the day of their departure. They cannot, you know, expect to find a vessel ready to sail the moment they arrive there, and I shall have quite time enough to join them.”
“Very well, Edward, — I agree to this willingly; and if you make this short delay the only condition you annex to going with us, think you that I will not do so joyfully? The Steinmark family then shall set off Saturday morning, as they propose. He has sold the place and everything belonging to it, you see, to Colonel Dart; and having already received payment, he is anxious to lessen the obligation of remaining in it as much as possible. You and I can follow on Monday, by one of the same vehicles as that which conveyed me the first time to Natchez.”
“No, Lucy, that is not part of our agreement. You must go on Saturday with them, and I will follow alone.”
Lucy Bligh would have found it very difficult to explain the effect these words produced on her; for she would hardly have ventured to say, that, simple as they were, they rung on her ear like the hoarse warning of evil. What indeed could she fear? The principles of Edward were far too sincere and too deeply religious to justify the idea that any thought of self destruction had taken possession of him; yet why should he wish for this unmeaning and solitary delay? She had not courage to ask him, but recovering from the sort of shudder which ran over her limbs as he spoke, she answered cheerfully, “Very well, Edward; I dare say the family will arrange all that very easily — they are too kind to make unnecessary difficulties. And now, shall we not return to Reichland together?”
“I am not fit for society to-day, Lucy: — perhaps I shall see you to morrow.”
“May I not stay with you, Edward? I fear you are, unwell, — and indeed I do not like to leave you.”
“Well then, my love, you shall stay with me,” said Edward, embracing her; “and for the two days which will intervene before your departure, I own I should prefer your staying here. I know it is a sacrifice; but I will not scruple to accept it from you, Lucy.”
“That is my own dear Edward again!” cried the affectionate girl, really and truly delighted at the arrangement, which nevertheless took her from a very happy scene. Phebe, with traces of many “natural tears” upon her heavy eyelids, called at Fox’s clearing on her way back, and took Lucy’s message, which was to say, that her brother not being quite well, she had settled to remain with him till Friday, when, if he were better, she would walk over to Reichland and settle about the manner of their going.
In delivering this message, Phebe had not failed to mention that Master Edward looked very sad, and seemed almost to wish that Miss Lucy would leave him quite alone again
CHAPTER XI.
THE first touch of the nearest Choctaw’s finger upon his rifle had sent Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw back into the forest with a rapidity that might almost rival that of the ball which he more than half expected to hear whistling after him.
As he drew near Natchez on his return from his unprofitable expedition, he descried Hogstown and Smith, who had already met and joined their lamentations on the escape of Lucy. He hailed them, and communicated the disagreeable intelligence that he had seen the runaway, but in a situation that precluded the possibility of taking her; and a chorus of maledictions was uttered by the trio upon the infamous license granted to the savages which permitted them to carry arms.
It was now clear that the young preacher of whom they were so anxious to make prey would receive such timely warning from his sister, as would naturally prevent his assembling his black congregation on the following Sunday.
“You may say that,” said Smith to Whitlaw, in answer to this observation: “he’ll be too cunning to show his nose out on that night, at any rate.”
“I dubiate a bit about that,” observed Hogstown; “I don’t say that it isn’t likely neither; but I haven’t forgotten my talk with the chap in the marketplace here. He’s as quiet as you will, and could stand still a spell, and hear, but say nothing; but he’d that in his eye that says ‘try me; and if that slip of a lad has made up his mind to pray on the Sabbath night with the niggers, on the Sabbath night with the niggers he’ll pray.”
“What, when he knows that we shall be down upon him with Lynch-law, and State-law, and all the laws in the land?” responded Smith incredulously.
“Why, you jest see,” said Hogstown, “what a near heat it will be ‘twixt his wit and our wit. We think he won’t be there, ‘cause he’ll expect we’ll nab him; and he’ll think, may be, that we won’t be there, ‘cause we know that he’ll expect us. So ’tis jest the turn of a hair which way’s most likeliest to be right.”
“That’s what ’tis to be Yankee,” retorted Smith, laughing. “We Southerners should take a long spell to think, before we came over it so fine as that. However, Hogstown, ’twouldn’t do, my man, to rouse up Lynch-law for nothing. Your guess may be right, or your guess may be wrong; and if we was to rouse our Natchez-under-hill men to do their duty upon the canter, and lead them out at dead of night into the forest, when they’d rather be amusing themselves elsewhere, and then let ’em find nothing but you and I and the trees, t’would never answer. They’d get no reward from none of the planters that always behave handsome when work’s been done; and, maybe, we should find it d — n difficult to bring ’em together again; and if they’re cold on the job, we’re stumpt outright.”
“Mr. Smith, sir, you’re a gentleman as deserves to be listened to, if you spoke from July to eternity. What you say is worth a dollar a word, and cheap too. But I expect, sir, we might take a middle course — neither altogether neglecting our duty and giving the varment a chance of herding together, the black beetles, without being cotched, and yet not weakening our effective for nothing, as the general would say, by bringing ’em out, when we are not that sure there’ll be any work to do. I guess, gentlemen, that we ought so to conduct, as to avoid both the one damage and the t’other.”
“You’re first-rate, Hogstown, by G — d! And how is it to be done, eh?”
“Why it’s not that difficult neither, I should say, Mr. Smith, begging your pardon if I differ. My judgment would be for one, two, three, or more of us as have got the business at heart, and would be ready to watch for a spell without hope of fee or reward, but for the alone love of the cause; — I say, some few such as that ought by rights to rest themselves, with a cigar in their mouth for comfort, jest at that spot, Mr. Smith, that you heard the black fellow map out to his miss. ’Tis easy enough hiding in such a place and such an, hour; and so we might see and hear all, and bear witness of something, if something there is; and if not, why we can but go back as we came, and no harm done.”
“He’s right, Smith,” said Whitlaw; “that’s the way to fix ’em. And there’s another reason still, I can tell ye, why it wouldn’t do to come down upon ’em at the meeting with the Lynchers; and I’ll tell you what it is in no time. Them Steinmarks won’t be there, as we ought to make an example of — and the niggers will, whose lives must be looked after for lucre, if not for love. So let us mark down our preacher, and then follow him, the day after maybe, to the German’s, where I expect they’re all likely enough to be found flocking together like birds of a feather as they are; and then would be the time to let fly at ’em. My old colonel intends to higgle a little, I guess, with the Dutch fellow about his estate; and a capital bit it is, and we’ll get a bargain after all, depend upon it. But ’tis plain to me that if we don’t look sharp, Mr. Smith, we shall lose our example, for they’re all taking fright, you see, and will be off together in no time. I haven’t been able to see my colonel for a minute at a time these two days; but I shall charge him to have nothing to do with the house, and then our folks may have license to burn, rob, slay, or what they will; and my father will take care that we shall know when they’re to start.”
