“I love you, father, and Nell, and Becky.”
“But I shall die soon, and Nell will marry, and Becky loves her lover. It is time you should find somebody else to love.”
“The time is past, father. I began to love Clara once, just before she died; and while I was forgetting my sorrow for her, I learned by what I saw, never to love anybody else.”
“Why, Willy?”
“Because a black must be first a slave and then a man. A white woman has nobody to rule her but her husband, and nobody can hurt her without his leave: but a slave’s wife must obey her master before her husband; and he cannot save her from being flogged. I saw my friend Hector throw himself on the ground when his wife was put in the stocks; and then I swore that I would never have a wife.”
“But think of Hector’s children, Willy. O, you do not know the pleasure of hearing one’s little children laugh in the shade, when the sun makes one faint at noon! It is like a wind from the north. And to let them sleep under the same mat, and to see them play like the whites,—and then their master pats their heads sometimes when they follow him.”
“Like dogs,” said Willy, “that as often get a kick as a kind word. When I see little children as clever and as merry as whites, I take them up in my arms and love them; but when they are carried away where their father shall never see them again, or when their mothers look sad to find them growing as stupid as we are, I am glad that I am not their father.”
“Becky!” said her father, “are these the reasons that your lover will not marry you?”
Becky made no answer; for the fact was she knew nothing more than that he thought there was no occasion.
“Willy!” said the old man again, “if you will not love nor marry here, you will try to go somewhere where you can be a man and a husband without being a slave. You work in our ground. Is it that you may be free when I am dead?”