At last, one Thursday evening toward the end of the month, Jane bashfully appeared before her mistress, holding a corner of her apron against a corner of her mouth, which widened almost from ear to ear.
“Missis, uh come fuh tell you, ma’am, uh gwine marri’d Esau. Da’ nigguh duh heng roun’ de kitchen ’tell ’e git een me way. Uh cyan’ tu’n roun’ bidout step ’puntop’um, so uh gwine tek’um fuh husbun’.”
The announcement caused quite a flutter among the ladies at the hotel, and, as Jane had fixed the following Saturday evening for the wedding, they hastened to overhaul their wardrobes for suitable material with which to deck out the bride. An old dotted-swiss muslin, found hidden away, was contributed by its owner as something sweet and virginal with which to rig out the craft that had sailed the seven seas of matrimony. Another guest of the hotel contributed a pair of white stockings, and, as Jane desired a veil, a breadth of old mosquito-netting, stiffly starched and skilfully laundered, was added to the outfit. On Saturday night, an hour after supper time, Jane, under the convoy of Esau and accompanied by the “locus pastuh” (the local preacher of her church) appeared before the hotel company assembled on the piazza, and announced her readiness to wed. The mosquito-net veil had been artistically looped about her by some of the ladies, and the dotted-swiss enveloped her with its starched stiffness. The knot was soon tied, and Jane, carrying the bride cake in her arms and followed by her new husband, floated away like a smutty coal-carrying brig, under a new suit of sails.
On the following morning, Jane appeared in the kitchen earlier than usual. The lady of the house asked what she had done with her new husband. “Uh run’um off, missis. Uh yent want’um. Wuh me fuh do wid man! Enty uh hab proputty! Uh marri’d Esau fuh git husbun’, uh yent marry’um fuh git man! Nigguh’ wuh grow up sence freedum, dem ent wut! Uh marry’um, den uh t’row’um ’way!”
“Why did you marry him, then, if you didn’t want him?”
“Ki! Missis! Uh marry’um fuh shet dem todduh ’ooman’ mout’! You t’ink me wan’ dem gal’ fuh call me ole maid?”
THE PLAT-EYE
All low-country negroes believe more or less in “sperrits,” “haants” and other mysterious appearances, but the “plat-eye,” peculiar to the Georgetown coast, is the weirdest and most fearsome that vexes the roaming negroes at night. Plat-eyes appear to old and young of both sexes, sometimes in the form of a small dog or other animal, while at other times they may float like wraiths along the marshes or unfrequented paths, or stoop like low-hung clouds and envelop the victim. Most frequently, however, the plat-eye appears in the form of some familiar animal which, glaring at the beholder with eyes of fire, springs upon him, frightening him into rigidity, and, just as he expects his vitals to be torn out, the apparition vanishes, and the trembling negro hurries on his way. The belief has been expressed that, in some instances, the negroes to whom plat-eyes appear have fallen asleep as they walked, and, dreaming of these terrors, awakened to find them gone. In whatsoever form they come, however, the negroes dread the visitations as Werewolves were feared in Europe not so long ago.
Now, old Jane, the cook at the Pawley’s Island summer hotel, the many-times widowed woman who, having saved the life of Esau, the fisherman, by drenching him with horse liniment after he had partaken too freely of the spoils of his lines, had wedded that same Esau to save herself the reproach of oldmaidenhood, and had chased him away the morning after her Marriage de Convenance, was a fervent and fearful believer in plat-eyes. Whenever and wherever she went her ways at night, she was on the lookout for them, and the expectation of their momentary appearance kept her nerves in a pleasant state of jumpiness. A stray calf at the edge of the clearing, a raccoon ambling along a woodland path, a sudden rabbit bouncing up before her, the horned owl that lifted her wayward fowls from their runaway roost on the ridgepole of her cabin, even the ghostly sandcrabs that drifted along the beaches at night as lightly as wind-blown foam, were all potential plat-eyes!
Two weeks had passed since Jane, the self-made celibate, had ejected the transitory husband of her bosom from the “bed and board” to which, under colored custom, if not under State law, he was supposed to be entitled. Esau wandered about, following his usual vagrant occupations, but vaguely conscious of his rather indefinite status as a husband—responsibilities there were none. Jane, to whom the marriage had brought wifehood—in the abstract, and very real things in the dotted-swiss and the white stockings of her bridal outfit—being withal as free and untrammeled in her property and her person as she had been before the episode, felt herself the gainer, and, to do her justice, regarded Esau rather as a slaughtered innocent. In respect of one small matter, however, Esau, too, had gained something. During his tentative courtship, or rather while, without his knowledge, Jane had had him under consideration, he chopped wood and did other chores for her without specific contract for compensation, for Jane was then an unrelated and unconnected female of the species, and he willingly performed these gallantries for her; but once married, even though she had so speedily and unceremoniously divorced, or put him away, she was yet his woman—in thought at least, his chattel—and, harking back to his African ancestry, he bethought him that women were but hewers of wood and drawers of water, the domestic slaves of the lordly males, and, before laying hand to axe or stooping to pick up chips or driftwood, he never failed to bargain and chaffer with the cook for what she should pay him—at the expense of the lady of the house.