“With the utmost pleasure, Alfred. I shall always pay particular attention, I am sure, to objects that interest you. But would you like to purchase her? I am sorry that I cannot offer, in the present state of my affairs, to give her to you; but the demand shall be moderate if you are disposed to purchase her.”
Alfred was also sorry that the state of his own and his father’s affairs was not such as could justify his purchasing slaves. He would fain have made this child free; but as he could not, he consoled himself with the hope that he had secured better treatment for her till he might be able to render her a higher benefit still. Mr. Mitchelson passed his word of honour that she should that day be removed to the dwelling of a gentle-tempered woman, who had lately lost a daughter of about Hester’s age.
“Have you nothing to say to me, Cassius?” asked Mr. Mitchelson, as Cassius was turning his back for ever upon his master’s mansion. “Have you no farewell for me, so long as we have lived together?”
No, not any. Cassius cared little for good manners just at this moment, and was only in haste to be gone.
“Lived together!” said Alfred to himself, as he quitted Paradise. “These slaveholders never dream that they may not use the language of the employers of a free and reasonable service. An English gentleman may speak to his household servants of the time they have ‘lived together;’ but it is too absurd from the slaveholder who despises his slave to the degraded being who hates his owner.”
Mitchelson meanwhile was wondering as much at Alfred, thinking, as he watched them from the steps of his mansion,—
“That young man is a perfect Quixote, or he could never see anything to care about in such a sullen brute as Cassius. I am glad I was never persuaded to send any of my children to England. No man is fit to be a West Indian planter who has had what is called a good education in England.”
As Alfred was crossing his father’s estate on his way home, he met the overseer looking angry, and with his anger was mingled some grief. He was very ready to tell what was the matter. He had just heard of the “unfortunate accident,” by which Willy had been torn to pieces by bloodhounds. When Alfred had made two strange discoveries, he saw that nothing was to be made of the overseer, and rode on. One discovery was, that the man’s anger was against Willy himself for the attempt at escape; the other, that he had just blurted out the whole story to Mark in Becky’s absence. Of course Alfred lost no time in seeing if he could comfort the old man.
Mark was still alone when they went in, rocking himself in his chair, and apparently aware of what had happened, for he was singing, in a faint wailing voice, a funeral song in his own tongue.
He stopped when Alfred entered the hut, Cassius remaining outside, and before he could be prevented, rose from his seat, saying,