"If I could do it without sacrificing my honour, without exposing myself to the vengeance of the law. We are great sticklers for constitutional law, while we care little for constitutional justice. There is Clotilda; you see her, but you don't know her history: if it were told it would resound through the broad expanse of our land. Yes, it would disclose a wrong, perpetrated under the smiles of liberty, against which the vengeance of high Heaven would be invoked. I know the secret, and yet I dare not disclose it; the curse handed down from her forefathers has been perpetuated by me. She seems happy, and yet she is unhappy; the secret recesses of her soul are poisoned. And what more natural? for, by some unlucky incident, she has got an inkling of the foul means by which she was made a slave. To him who knows the right, the wrong is most painful; but I bought her of him whose trade it was to sell such flesh and blood! And yet that does not relieve me from the curse: there's the stain; it hangs upon me, it involves my inclinations, it gloats over my downfall-"
"You bought her!" again interrupts Maxwell.
"True," rejoins the other, quickly, "'tis a trade well protected by our democracy. Once bought, we cannot relieve ourselves by giving them rights in conflict with the claims of creditors. Our will may be good, but the will without the means falls hopeless. My heart breaks under the knowledge that those children are mine. It is a sad revelation to make,—sad in the eyes of heaven and earth. My participation in wrong has proved sorrow to them: how can I look to the pains and struggles they must endure in life, when stung with the knowledge that I am the cause of it? I shall wither under the torture of my own conscience. And there is even an interest about them that makes my feelings bound joyfully when I recur them. Can it be aught but the fruit of natural affection? I think not; and yet I am compelled to disown them, and even to smother with falsehood the rancour that might find a place in Franconia's bosom. Clotilda loves Annette with a mother's fondness; but with all her fondness for her child she dare not love me, nor I the child."
Maxwell suggests that his not having bought the child would certainly give him the right to control his own flesh and blood: but he knows little of slave law, and less of its customs. He, however, was anxious to draw from Marston full particulars of the secret that would disclose Clotilda's history, over which the partial exposition had thrown the charm of mystery. Several times he was on the eve of proffering his services to relieve the burden working upon Marston's mind; but his sympathies were enlisted toward the two unfortunate women, for whom he was ready to render good service, to relieve them and their children. Again, he remembered how singularly sensitive Southerners were on matters concerning the peculiar institution, especially when approached by persons from abroad. Perhaps it was a plot laid by Marston to ascertain his feelings on the subject, or, under that peculiar jealousy of Southerners who live in this manner, he might have discovered his interview with Clotilda, and, in forming a plan to thwart his project, adopted this singular course for disarming apprehensions.
At this stage of the proceedings a whispering noise was heard, as if coming from another part of the room. They stopped at the moment, looked round with surprise, but not seeing anything, resumed the conversation.
"Of whom did you purchase?" inquired Maxwell, anxiously.
"One Silenus; a trader who trades in this quality of property only, and has become rich by the traffic. He is associated with Anthony Romescos, once a desperado on the Texan frontier. These two coveys would sell their mossmates without a scruple, and think it no harm so long as they turned a dime. They know every justice of the peace from Texas to Fort M'Henry. Romescos is turned the desperado again, shoots, kills, and otherwise commits fell deeds upon his neighbour's negroes; he even threatens them with death when they approach him for reparation. He snaps his fingers at law, lawyers, and judges: slave law is moonshine to those who have no rights in common law-"
"And he escapes? Then you institute laws, and substitute custom to make them null. It is a poor apology for a namesake. But do you assert that in the freest and happiest country-a country that boasts the observance of its statute laws-a man is privileged to shoot, maim, and torture a fellow-being, and that public opinion fails to bring him to justice?" ejaculated Maxwell.
"Yes," returns Marston, seriously; "it is no less shameful than true. Three of my negroes has he killed very good-naturedly, and yet I have no proof to convict him. Even were I to seek redress, it would be against that prejudice which makes the rights of the enslaved unpopular."
The trouble exists in making the man merchandise, reducing him to an abject being, without the protection of common law. Presently the tears began to flow down Marston's cheeks, as he unbuttoned his shirt-collar with an air of restlessness, approached a desk that stood in one corner of the room, and drew from it a somewhat defaced bill of sale. There was something connected with that bit of paper, which, apart from anything else, seemed to harass him most. "But a minute before you entered I looked upon that paper," he spoke, throwing it upon the table, "and thought how much trouble it had brought me, how through it I had left a curse upon innocent life. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for the souls and bodies of those two women, creatures of sense, delicacy, and tenderness. But I am not a bad man, after all. No, there are worse men than me in the world."