“No, I am tired of nothing, except my own vile degradation. I am tired of my want of spirit, that I can not cast my load. I am tired of my lack of reason, which should always guide a man. What is the use of mind or intellect, reasoning power, or whatever it is called, if the whole of them can not enable a man to hold out against a stupid heart?”
“I think you should be proud,” I said, while trembling to approach the subject which never had been touched between us, “at having a nature so sensitive. Your evil chance might have been any body's, and must of course have been somebody's. But nobody else would have taken it so—so delightfully as you have done!”
“Delightfully! Is that the word you use? May I ask who gets any delight from it?”
“Why, all who hate the Southern cause,” I replied, with a sudden turn of thought, though I never had meant to use the word. “Surely that needs no explanation.”
“They are delighted, are they? Yes, I can very well believe it. Narrow-minded bigots! Yes, they are sure to be delighted. They call it a just visitation, of course, a righteous retribution. And they hope I may never get over it.”
“I pray you to take it more gently,” I said; “they are very good men, and wish you no harm. But they must have their own opinions; and naturally they think them just.”
“Then all their opinions are just wrong. They hope to see me go down, to my grave. They shall not have that pleasure. I will outlive every old John Brown of them. I did not care two cents to live just now. Henceforth I will make a point of it. If I cannot fight for true freedom any more, having ruined it perhaps already, the least I can do is to give no more triumph to its bitter enemies. I will eat and drink, and begin this very night. I suppose you are one of them, as you put their arguments so neatly. I suppose you consider me a vile slave-driver?”
“You are very ill,” I said, with my heart so full of pity that anger could not enter; “you are very ill, and very weak. How could you drive the very best slave now—even such a marvel as Uncle Tom?”
Firm Gundry smiled; on his lean dry face there shone a little flicker, which made me think of the time when he bought a jest-book, published at Cincinnati, to make himself agreeable to my mind. And little as I meant it, I smiled also, thinking of the way he used to come out with his hard-fought jokes, and expect it.
“I wish you were at all as you used to be,” he said, looking at me softly through the courage of his smile, “instead of being such a grand lady.”