Braxton, the overseer, had been frightened into a concern for his soul. He had a heart-complaint which the doctor told him might carry him off any day in a flash. A travelling preacher completed the work of terror by satisfying him he was in a fair way of being damned. The prospect did not seem cheerful to Braxton. He had found exhilaration and comfort in whipping intractable niggers. The amusement now began to pall. Besides, the doctor had told him to shun excitement.
In this state of things, enter Mr. Peculiar Institution. That gentleman soon learnt what was the matter; and he contrived that the overseer, seemingly by accident, should overhear him at prayers. Braxton had heard praying, but never any that had the unction of Peek’s. From that time forth Peek had him completely under his control.
Peek did not abuse his authority. He ruled wisely, though despotically. At last the accidental encounter with his dying mother introduced a new world of thoughts and emotions. Short as was his opportunity for acquaintance with her, such a wealth of tenderness and love as she lavished upon him developed a hitherto inactive and undreamed-of force in his soul. The affectional part of his nature was touched. She told him of the delight his father used to take in playing with him, an infant; and when he thought of that father’s fate, shot down for resisting the lash, he felt as if he could tear the first upholder of slavery he might meet limb from limb, in his rage.
The mother died, and then all seemed worthless and insipid to Peek. Having seen how little heed was paid to the feelings of slaves in separating those of opposite sex who had become attached to each other, he early in life resolved to shun all sexual intimacies, till he should be free. He saw that in slavery the distinction between licit and illicit connections was a playful mockery. The thought of being the father of a slave was horrible to him; and neither threats of the lash nor coaxings from masters and overseers could induce him to enter into those temporary alliances which Mr. Herbert used pleasantly to call “the holy bonds of matrimony.” His resolution grew to be a passion stronger even than desire.
Thus the affections were undeveloped in him till he encountered his mother. He knew of no relative on earth, after her, to love,—no one to be loved by. Life stretched before him flat, dull, and unprofitable; and death,—what was that but the plunge into nothingness?
True, Mr. Herbert and the clergyman who drank claret with Mr. Herbert after the latter had shot down Big Sam talked of a life beyond the grave; but could such humbugs as they were be believed? Could the stories be trustworthy, which were based mainly on the truth of a book which all the preachers (so he supposed) declared was the all-sufficient authority for slavery? Well might Peek distrust the promise that was said to rest only on writings that were made to supply the apology of injustice and bloody wrong!
While in this state of mind, he heard of Corinna, the quadroon girl. Unattractive in person, slow of apprehension, and rarely uttering a word, she had hitherto excited only his pity. But now she fell into trances during which she seemed to be a new and entirely different being. At his first interview with her when she fell into one of these inexplicable states, she seized his hand, and imitating the look, actions, and very tone of his dying mother, poured forth such a flood of exhortations, comfortings, warnings, and encouragements, that he was bewildered and confounded.
What could it all mean? The power that spoke through Corinna claimed to be his mother, and seemed to identify itself, as far as revelations to the understanding could go. It recalled the little incidents that had passed between them in the presence of no other witness. It pierced to his inmost secrets,—secrets which he well knew he had communicated to no human being.
And yet Peek saw upon reflection that, though a preternatural faculty was plainly at work,—a faculty that took possession of his mind as a photographer does of all the stones, flaws, and stains in the wall of a building,—there was no sufficient identification of that faculty with the individual he knew as his mother. Little that might not already have been in his own mind, long hidden, perhaps, and forgotten, was revealed to him.
He also concluded that the intelligence, whatever it might be, was a fallible one, and that it would be folly to give up to its guidance his own free judgment.