As he spoke these words Semmes looked narrowly at Ratcliff, who blenched as if at an unexpected thrust. Following up his advantage, Semmes continued: “And, by the way, there is one awkward circumstance which, if known, might make trouble. I see by examining the notary’s books, that, in the record of your proprietorship, you speak of the child as a quadroon. Now plainly she has no sign of African blood in her veins.”
Ratcliff gnawed his lips a moment, and then remarked: “The fact that the record speaks of the child as a quadroon does not amount to much. She may have been born of a quadroon mother, and may have been tanned while an infant so as to appear herself like a quadroon; and subsequently her skin may have turned fair. All that will be of little account. Half of the white slaves in the city would not be suspected of having African blood in their veins, but for the record. Who would think of disputing my claim to a slave,—one, too, that had been held by me for some fifteen years?”
Well might Ratcliff ask the question. It is true that the laws of Louisiana had some ameliorated features that seemed to throw a sort of protection round the slave; and one of these was the law preventing the separation of young children from their mothers under the hammer; and making ownership in slaves transferable, not by a mere bill of sale, like a bale of goods, but by deed formally recorded by a notary. But it is none the less true that such are the necessities of slavery that the law was often a dead letter. There was always large room for evasion and injustice; and the man who should look too curiously into transactions, involving simply the rights of the slave, would be pretty sure to have his usefulness cut short by being denounced as an Abolitionist.
The ignominious expulsion of Mr. Hoar who went to South Carolina, not to look after the rights of slaves, but of colored freemen, was a standing warning against any philanthropy that had in view the enforcement or testing of laws friendly to the blacks.
“I should not be surprised,” remarked Semmes, “if this young woman either has, or believes she has, some proofs invalidating your claim to hold her as a chattel.”
“Bah! I’ve no fear of that. Who, in the name of all the fairies, does the little woman imagine she is?”
“She cherishes the notion that she is the daughter of that same Henry Berwick who was lost in the Pontiac. Should that be so, the house you live in is hers. That would be odd, wouldn’t it? You seem surprised. Is there any probability in the tale?”
“None whatever!” exclaimed Ratcliff, affecting to laugh, but evidently preoccupied in mind, and intent on following out some vague reminiscence.
He remembered that the infant he had bought as a slave and taken into his barouche wore a chemise on which were initial letters marked in silk. He was struck at the time by the fineness of the work and of the fabric. He now tried to recall those initial letters. By their mnemonic association with a certain word, he had fixed them in his mind. He strove to recall that word. Suddenly he started up. The word had come back to him. It was cab. The initials were C. A. B. Semmes detected his emotion, and drew his own inferences accordingly.
“By the way,” said he, “having a little leisure last night, I looked back through an old file of the Bee newspaper, and there hit upon a letter from the pen of a passenger, written a few days after the explosion of the Pontiac.”