“Plantation slaves will not, I grant you; but what has reduced them to this hopeless and inert condition?”
“I do not know why you should call their condition hopeless—I think, upon the whole, they are at least as hopeful and as happy as poor white people, or free blacks. And I never heard of a bad master, who was not also a bad son, brother, husband, father, neighbour—in short, who was not a bad Christian. And if you feel a call to reform the world, Mark Sutherland, why not begin at the right end, and Christianize it—and all other reform will follow early, and as a matter of course. Why not do that?”
“Because, my dear India, unluckily the world thinks itself already Christian. ‘And if the light that is in it be darkness, how great is that darkness?’ Neither, my dear girl, am I the missionary to dispel it. I am quite unworthy of, and unpretending to, the name of Christian, and have no presumption to begin reforming the world, either at the right end or the wrong end. I only wish to do what I consider a simple act of justice, in a matter between me and my own conscience.”
“I do not understand why your ‘conscience’ should meddle in the matter. The system appears to me to be perfectly right—every thing that we can wish. There is a beautiful adaptation in the mutual relations existing between the Anglo-Saxon master and the Ethiopian slave; for, observe, the Anglo-Saxon is highly intellectual, strong, proud, firm, self-willed, impelled to govern, gifted with great mental independence; the Ethiopian, on the contrary, is very unintellectual, weak, lowly in mind, imitative, affectionate, docile, easily controlled—and these traits of character so harmonize in this connection, that it seems to need only the spirit of Christianity to make it a beautiful and happy correspondence.”
“I think, my dearest girl, that even in that case the ‘beautiful and happy correspondence’ would be like Irish reciprocity—all on one side. Selfishness so blinds us, India”——
I have no space to dilate on what was said on either side. Both grew very serious, earnest, and emphatic. India became heated, fevered; she brought forward every plea she had ever heard pressed in favour of her own side of the controversy; but she was not his equal in logic. Baffled and disappointed in her failure, and unnerved by the strangeness of anxiety and contention, she suddenly burst into tears, and passionately exclaimed—
“You do not love me! You never loved me! You prefer the fancied welfare of these miserable negroes to my comfort and happiness!”
Mark Sutherland saw and felt only her tears and sorrow, and addressed himself to soothe her with all a lover’s solicitude. She took advantage of his tenderness—perhaps she even misunderstood it. She had failed to convince his judgment by her arguments, failed to change his purpose by opposition and reproaches, and now she resolved to try the power of love—of persuasion. She let him draw her to his bosom; she dropped her head upon his shoulder, with her blushing, tearful face and soft hair against his cheek, her arm upon his neck, and half-caressing, suffered herself to be caressed, and let him feel how sweet her love was, by the unutterable sweetness of her shy caress; and when his heart was weak unto death, she pleaded with him, yieldingly, submissively, tearfully, as with one who had the right and the power of ordering her destiny—that he would not doom her to a lot so cruel, so terrible; that she was so unprepared for it; that he must know she was; that it would kill her in a year.
All this was pleaded with her head upon his shoulder, with her face against his cheek, with her hand pressed around his neck. This seductive gentleness was very hard to resist, indeed. He answered—
“My dearest India, you are sole mistress of your own destiny, and, to a great extent, of mine. I did hope that you would have borne me company in my pilgrimage, and, even from the first, have shared my lot, hard as it is sure to be. We have both read and heard how women, even the most tenderly reared and delicate, have, for affection, for constancy, for truth, and the great idea of duty, borne poverty, toil, hardships and privations, even with a better grace and with more fortitude and patience than the strongest men. But I begin to think that history and tradition must exaggerate. How, indeed, could my own fragile lady-love endure what my strong frame must encounter and overcome? No, dear India, ardently as I once desired that you should be, from this time forward, the partner of my lot, I see and feel that the wish was thoughtless, unreasonable, selfish. It was exacting far too much. No, dearest, painful as it must be to tear myself from you, I must go forth alone to do battle with an adverse fate. Yet why should I call it adverse? I go forth with youth, and health, and strength; with a liberal education, and some talent; and when I have attained fame and fortune, then, like a true knight, I will come and lay them at my lady’s feet, and claim—no, not claim—but sue for my blessed reward.”