“I have tried, but something frustrates every effort of that kind. Robert objects to sale—it is unusual on this plantation. We once offered her her freedom if she would go away; but she only looked as if she scorned the freedom we could give, and laughed in a way that chilled my blood.”
“She seems very insolent.”
“Insolent—that is a weak word! I sometimes think she is birth-marked with impudence as she is with straight hair.”
“That hair, then, is a birth-mark? I thought it must be a wig.”
“She was born with it and with an insane craving to be white. When a child, she used to scream and shriek over her blackness for hours at a time. Mother Glen whipped that out of her.”
“It is a pity she did not whip out some of her other peculiarities.”
“Mother Glen was much to blame for some of them. You knew Paul Glen, and what a strange, silent being he was—always absorbed in some mysterious pursuits, roving from one lost region to another, coming home, now and then, for a day and leaving, as if for a short time, to be heard of after months of inquiry in Hyderabad, or Jerusalem, or the heart of Guinea. Well, after he came home the last time he made Asenath the subject of numerous psychological experiments. He could mesmerize any one—what other gifts he had is not known; but he called mesmerism child’s play. Mother Glen did not object to his making this use of the girl, because she did not wish to cross Paul and have him go away again. It is my belief that Asenath discovered, through some of his experiments, the existence of an occult power in herself. Before long, she had Paul completely under her control. I had not yet come here; but Mother Glen told me about it, and that any effort to break the spell made Paul perfectly furious. He taught her to read, and to sing, and obeyed her in everything—think of it! After a while he fell sick, but it was thought not dangerously. Asenath nursed him, and he would not eat or drink unless she bade him.”
“That, though, may have been a mere whim, such as the sick often take.”
She shook her head. “You have not heard all: Two of the servants—Mammy Clara and Belinda—declare that they overheard Asenath forbid Paul ever to touch food again, and tell him that she would pretend to bid him eat, but he must not do so. And it is certainly true that he at last refused all sustenance and died of starvation.”
“What a horrible idea!”