By this time both were talking at once, at the highest pitch of their voices, and gesticulating with corresponding violence. The poor girl stood between them, her hands meekly clasped together, awaiting the result of the quarrel. The overseer looked on with a contemptuous smile, “he’d seen such rows among niggers all his life;” and three or four women—with the curiosity said to be occasionally evinced by some of their sex—had slipped in the room to watch the contest.
The proprietor quietly waited for one or other of the parties to get out of breath. Each had a decided disposition to “get into the wool,” of the other, but the presence of white folks prevented. At last Aunt Susan’s tones could be made out amid the din:
“You went off wid Flora Aitch, you good-for-nothin’ nigger! I was dar, dough you didn’t know it! I seed you! Den w’en you cum back to your wife, w’y didn’t you make much ob her, an’ try to make up? But, no! you goes to wuck an’ beats her!”
“Ob co’se I beats her, kase she need it; I allus will! Who’d hab a wife ef he didn’t beat her w’en she didn’t behave herself? But I allus treats M’ria well, an’ you knows it, an’ so does my mammy.”
“I don’ care nuffin ’bout your beatin’ her w’en she deserve it, but w’en you go off after oder women, you no business to come back an’ beat her.”
And on that rock they split. Jasper maintained the indefeasible right of a husband to flog his wife, and the mother, while admitting the general principle, insisted that there ought to be exceptions.
“Well, I’ll settle this very soon,” said the proprietor at last. “Aunt Susan, take Maria down with you. I hold you responsible for making her work as much as Jasper did.”
“T’ank you berry much, sah!” And out they went, divorced by this summary process, and apparently all the better friends for it.
But in the quarters there was soon fresh uproar. They had gone to Jasper’s cabin to get Maria’s clothes, and had here encountered Jasper’s “mammy.” The two old women began storming at once, and the full vocabulary of negro billingsgate rang through the entire quarters. A crowd collected about the door, and in a moment Flora Aitch appeared, rampant in her demands for pay for her torn dresses, “afore dat sneakin’ gal carries her rags ’way from heah!” “Or I’ll strip you,” she yelled at the open door, “’fore God! I’s strip you naked’s soon’s you set your dirty foot outside. I’s pound you! I’s cut you up! I’s eat you blood-raw! I’s mad, I is, an’ I’s do anyt’ing, if you don’ pay me for dem tore dresses!”
The calmer negresses approved the justice of Flora’s complaint. “She ought to be made to pay for dem.” “It ought to be tuck out ob her wages.” “If ’twas my dresses she done tore, she wouldn’ git off so easy.” Nobody seemed to think anything of Flora’s alleged criminality with Jasper. Maria’s provocation to the offense was as nothing. It was a mere matter-of-course; “but dem tore dresses was a burnin’ shame.”