“Dat whut uh yaim t’do Cap’n. Uh knows hits pow’ful resky t’marry uh widder, coz dey allus knows toomuch, but uh needs uh ’ooman to clean up en’ do about d’house, en’ look after d’children, en’ de widder Pendarvis is uh right peart creeter, en’ she ain’t got uh lazy bone een her, so uh reck’n uh’ll resk it. Den, she’s got a son, John Henry, ’bout d’age uh my William. John Henry he ain’t much account, but uh needs anuther han’ en’ uh reck’n uh kin make out wid John Henry, so uh yaims to tek d’widder.”
The old adventurer was fitted out with a white shirt and a handkerchief, a pocketful of Christmas candies and a couple of stiff snifters, and so, fortified, he started toward the widow, stepping high, gun on shoulder. “Uh allus totes m’gun. Y’never knows whut y’gwine t’see.”
So the widow Pendarvis was duly acquired and proved a faithful and useful spouse, but old Harrison soon reached the conclusion that he had been gold-bricked in John Henry. “He ain’t no manner uv account. Ain’t wuth d’powder’n shot it ud’take t’kill’im! W’en uh married d’widder, uh didn’ aim t’git much uv uh bargin in John Henry, he was jus’ kinder throw’d een fuh good measure like, but now uh wisht he mout uh bin throw’d out.”
A year or two later William Harrison was walking the woods one day, and from a shallow grave at the edge of a negro’s field, his dogs dug up the hide and head of a stolen cow which the thief had buried to hide the ear-marks and the brand. The negro was sent to jail to await trial and William was subpœnæd as the chief witness. Old Harrison protested. “’Taint uh bit uh use t’sen’ William t’Walterboro fuh fifty cents uh day, w’en ’e’s makin’ seventy-five cents uh day now. W’y don’t yuh take my stepson John Henry Pendarvis fer uh witness? He ain’t a workin’ en’ he’ll be glad t’git d’fifty cents uh day.” It was explained to the old hunter that as John Henry had not found the telltale hide and head, and knew nothing about the case, he could not be accepted as proxy. “Don’t make uh bit uh diff’unce. William kin tell John Henry whut he found en’ John Henry kin go t’Walterboro en’ swear to it. John Henry he’s a noble liar, en’ he kin lie en’ stick to’t. Them Walterboro lawyers can’t shake him.”
After awhile, bad health came upon the former widow, and in taking palliatives to relieve her pain, she became addicted to opium and spent all she could scrape for the drug at the village store. At last the neighborhood doctor warned her husband, “Harrison, if you don’t look out, some day your wife will take an overdose of laudanum and go up the spout.”
“Well, Doctor, ’tain’t fuh me to go ag’in her! She’s bin’uh noble ’ooman in ’er time. She’s never had uh lazy bone een ’er body. She’s bin uh pow’ful hand to do about, en’ she’s bin as peart uh ’ooman as ever was wropped up in that much hide, but she’s gitt’n kinder poorly now, she ain’t whut she used to be, she ain’t much account now, she can’t scrub no mo’, she’s got de rheumatism in de jints, so, Doctor, if she aims to go, uh reck’n d’best thing to do is to let her take a pow’ful dost en’ let ’er go!” So—poor, tired soul—she went.
A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE
Twenty-five years ago, old Jane was the very efficient cook at the Pawley’s Island hotel. A widow woman of fifty-odd, her black countenance, with its aquiline nose and sharp chin, was shrewd and witchlike.
“Old maids” are seldom met with among the low-country negroes, most of the women achieving matrimony, or having matrimony thrust upon them, at an early age in communities where marrying and unmarrying are but the merest incidents in their social and economic lives—and they are largely socio-economic relations,—“Uh haffuh hab wife fuh cook fuh me en’ wash me clo’es, enty?” “Uh haffuh hab man fuh wu’k fuh me en’ min’ me, enty?”—“and so they were married.”
Often, however, in early life, less frequently in middle age, women are, for the moment, unmarried, or, as one might more correctly say, unaffiliated, and if one of these “unaffiliations” should last long enough to constitute more than a very brief intermission in the matrimonial program, one, if of the fiercer sex, incurs the odium supposedly attaching to “oldmaidenhood.”