NORTHERN GEORGIA SKETCHES
By Will N. Harben
Chicago
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1900
[Original]
[Original]
DEDICATION
TO JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE KINDLY ENCOURAGEMENT
WHICH MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE.
THE AUTHOR
I am indebted to the publishers of The Century Magazine, Lippincott’s Magazine, The Ladies Home Journal, Book News, The Black Cat, and to the Bachelier Syndicate for the courteous permission to reprint the sketches contained in this volume.
WILL N. HARBEN.
Dalton, Ga.
CONTENTS
[ THE WHIPPING OF UNCLE HENRY ]
[ THE HERESY OF ABNER CALIHAN ]
A HUMBLE ABOLITIONIST
Andrew Duncan and his wife trudged along the unshaded road in the beating sunshine, and paused to rest under the gnarled white-trunked sycamore trees. She wore a drooping gown of checked homespun, a sun-bonnet of the same material, the hood of which was stiffened with invisible strips of cardboard, and a pair of coarse shoes just from the shop. Her husband was barefooted, his shirt was soiled, and he wore no coat to hide the fact. His trousers were worn to shreds about the ankles, but their knees were patched with new cloth.
“I never was as thirsty in all my born days,” he panted, as he looked down into the bluish depths of a road-side spring. “Gee-whilikins! ain’t it hot?”
“An’ some fool or other’s run off with the drinkin’-gourd,” chimed in his wife. “Now ain’t that jest our luck?”
“We ’ll have to lap it up dog-fashion, I reckon,” Andrew replied, ruefully, “an’ this is the hardest spring to git down to I ever seed. Hold on, Ann; I ’ll fix you.”
As he spoke he knelt on the moss by the spring, turned his broad-brimmed felt hat outside in, and tightly folded it in the shape of a big dipper. He filled it with water, and still kneeling, held it up to his wife. When their thirst was satisfied, they turned off from the road into a path leading up a gradual slope, on the top of which stood a three-roomed log cabin.
“They are waitin’ fer us,” remarked Duncan. “I see ’em out in the passage. My Lord, I wonder what under the sun they ’ll do with Big Joe. Ever’ time I think of the whole business I mighty nigh bu’st with laughin’.” Mrs. Duncan smiled under her bonnet.
“I think it’s powerful funny myself,” she said, as she followed after him, her new shoes creaking and crunching on the gravel. To this observation Duncan made no response, for they were now in front of the cabin.
An old man and an old woman sat in the passage, fanning their faces with turkey-wing fans. They were Peter Gill and his wife, Lucretia.
The latter rose from her chair, which had been tilted back against the wall, and with clattering heels, shambled into the room on the right.
“I reckon you’d ruther set out heer whar you kin ketch a breath o’ air from what little’s afloat,” she said, cordially, as she emerged, a chair in either hand. Placing the chairs against the wall opposite her husband, she took a pair of turkey-wings from a nail on the wall and handed them to her guests, and with a grunt of relief resumed her seat. For a moment no one spoke, but Duncan presently broke the silence.
“Well, I went an’ seed Colonel Whitney fer you,” he began, his blue eyes twinkling with inward amusement. “An’, Pete Gill, I’m powerfully afeerd you are in fer it. As much as you’ve spoke agin slave-holdin’ as a practice, you’ve got to make a start at it. The Colonel said that you held a mortgage on Big Joe, an’ ef you don’t take ’im right off you won’t get a red cent fer yore debt.”
“I’m prepared fer it,” burst from Mrs. Gill. “I tried my level best to keep Mr. Gill from lendin’ the money, but nothin’ I could say would have the least influence on ‘im. The Lord only knows what we ’ll do. We are purty-lookin’ folks to own a high-priced, stuck-up quality nigger.”
The two visitors exchanged covert glances of amusement.
“How did you manage to git caught?” Andrew asked, crushing a subtle smile out of his face with his broad red hand.
Peter Gill had grown quite red in the face and down his wrinkled, muscular neck. As he took off his brogans to cool his feet, and began to scratch his toes through his woolen socks, it was evident to his questioner that he was not only embarrassed but angry.
“The thousand dollars was all the money we was ever able to save up,” he said. “I was laying off to buy the fust piece o’ good land that was on the market, so me ’n the ol’ ’oman would have a support in old age. But I didn’t see no suitable farm just then, an’ as my money was lyin’ idle in the bank, Lawyer Martin advised me to put it out at intrust, an’ I kinder tuck to the notion. Then Colonel Whitney got wind o’ the matter an’ rid over an’ said, to accommodate me, he’d take the loan. He fust give me a mortgage on some swampy land over in Murray, that Martin said was wuth ten thousand, an’ it run on that way fur two yeer. The fust hint I had of the plight I was in was when the Colonel couldn’t pay the intrust. Then I went to another lawyer, fer it looked like Martin an’ the Colonel was kinder in cahoot, an’ my man diskivered that the lan’ had been sold long before it was mortgaged to me for taxes. My lawyer wasn’t no fool, so he got Whitney in fer a game o’ open-an’-shut swindle. He up an’ notified ’im that ef my claim wasn’t put in good shape in double-quick time, he was goin’ to put the clamps on somebody. Well, the final upshot was that I tuck Big Joe as security, an’ now that the Colonel’s entire estate has gone to flinders, I’ve got the nigger an’ my money’s gone.”
Duncan waited for the speaker to resume, but the aspect of the case was so disheartening that Gill declined to say more about it. He simply hitched one of his heels up on the last rung of his chair and began to fan himself vigorously.
“I did as you wanted me to,” said Duncan, wiping his brow and combing his long, damp hair with his fingers. “I went round an’ axed the opinion o’ several good citizens, an’ it is the general belief ef you don’t take the nigger you won’t never git back a cent o’ yore loan. But the funniest part o’ the business is the way Big Joe acts about it.” Dun can met his wife’s glance and laughed out impulsively. “You see, Gill, in the Whitney break-up, all the other niggers has been sold to rich families, an’ the truth is, Big Joe feels his dignity tuck down a good many pegs by bein’ put off on you-uns, that never owned a slave to yore name. The other darkies has been a-teasin’ of ’im all day, an’ he’s sick an’ tired of it. The Whitneys has spiled ’im bad. They l’arnt ’im to read an’ always let ’im stan’ dressed up in his long coat in the big front hall to invite quality folks in the house. They say he had his eye on a yaller gal, an’ that he’s been obliged to give her up, fer she’s gone with one of the Staffords in Fannin’ County.”
Gill’s knee, which was thrust out in front of him by the sharp bend of his leg, was quivering.
“Big Joe might do a sight wuss ’n to belong to me,” he said, warmly. “I don’t know as we-uns ’ll have any big hall for ’im to cavort about in, nur anybody any wuss ’n yore sort to come to see us, but we pay our debts an’ have a plenty t’eat.”
Mrs. Gill was listening to this ebullition, her red nose slightly elevated, and she made no effort to suppress a chuckle of satisfaction over her husband’s subtle allusion to the status of their guests.
“I want you two jest to come heer one minute,” she burst out suddenly, and with a dignity that seemed to cool the air about her, she rose and moved toward the little shed room at the end of the cabin. Duncan and his wife followed, an expression of half-fearful curiosity in their tawny visages. Reaching the door of the room, Mrs. Gill pushed it open and coolly signaled them to enter, and when they had done so, and stood mutely looking about them, she followed.
“When I made up my mind we’d be obliged to take Big Joe,” she explained, “I fixed up fer ’im a little. Look at that bedstead!” (Her hand was extended toward it as steadily as the limb of an oak.) “Ann Duncan, you are at liberty to try to find a better one in this neighborhood. You ‘n Andrew sleep on one made out ’n poles with the bark on ‘em. Then jest feel o’ them thar feathers in this new tick an’ pillows, an’ them’s bran-new store-bought sheets.”
This second open allusion to her own poverty had a subduing effect on Mrs. Duncan’s risibilities. The ever-present twinkle of amusement went out of her eyes, and she had an attitude of vast consideration for the words of her hostess as she put her perspiring hand on the mattress and pressed it tentatively.
“It’s saft a plenty fer a king,” she observed, conciliation enough for any one in her tone; “he ’ll never complain, I bound you!”
“Big Joe won’t have to tech his bare feet to the floor while he’s puttin’ on his clothes, nuther,” reminded Mrs. Gill. She raised her eyebrows as an admiral might after seeing a well-directed shot from one of his guns blow up a ship, and pointed at a piece of rag carpet laid at the side of the bed. “An’ you see I’ve fixed ’im a washstand with a new pan thar in the corner, an’ a roller towel, an’ bein’ as they say he’s so fixy, I’m a-goin’ to fetch in the lookin’-glass, an’ I’ve cut some pictur’s out ‘n newspapers that I intend to paste up on the walls, so as—”
Mrs. Gill paused. Experienced as she was in the tricks of Ann Duncan’s facial expression, she at once divined that her words were meeting with amused opposition.
“Why, Mis’ Gill,” was Ann’s rebuff, “shorely you ain’t a-goin’ to let ‘im sleep in the same house with you-uns!”
“Of course I am, Ann Duncan; what in the name o’ common sense do you mean?”
“Oh, nuthin’.” Mrs. Duncan glanced at her husband and wiped a cowardly smile from her broad mouth with her hand. “You see, Mis’ Gill, I’m afeerd you are goin’ to overdo it. You’ve heerd me say I have good stock in me, ef I am poor. I’ve got own second cousins that don’t know the’r own slaves when they meet ’em in the big road. I’ve heerd how they treat their niggers, an’ I’m afeerd all this extra fixin’ up will make folks poke fun at you. To-day in town the niggers started the laugh on Big Joe theirselves, an’ the white folks all j’ined in. It looked like they thought it was a good joke for the Gill lay-out to own a quality slave. Me ’n Andrew don’t mean no harm, but now it is funny; you know it is!”
“I don’t see a thing that’s the least bit funny in it.” Mrs. Gill bristled and turned almost white in helpless fury. “We never set ourselves up as wantin’ to own slaves, but when this one is saddled on us through no fault o’ our ‘n, I see no harm in our holdin’ onto ’im till we kin see our way out without loss. As to ’im not sleepin’ in the same cabin we do, whar in the Lord’s creation would we put ‘im? The corn-crib is the only thing with a roof on it, an’ it’s full to the door.”
“Oh, I reckon you are doin’ the best you kin,” granted Mrs. Duncan, as she passed out of the door and went back to where Peter Gill sat fanning himself. He had overheard part of the conversation.
“I told Lucretia she oughtn’t to fix up so almighty much,” he observed. “A nigger ain’t like no other livin’ cre’ture. A pore man jest cayn’t please ‘em.”
Ann Duncan was driven to the very verge of laughter again.
“What you goin’ to call ‘im?” she snickered, her strong effort at keeping a serious face bringing tears into her eyes. “Are you goin’ to make ‘im say Marse Gill, an’ Mis’ Lucretia?”
“I don’t care a picayune what he calls us,” answered Gill, testily. “I reckon we won’t start a new language on his account.”
Through this colloquy Mrs. Duncan had been holding her sun-bonnet in a tight roll in her hands. She now unfurled it like the flag of a switchman and whisked it on her head.
“Well, I wish you luck with yore slave,” she was heard to say, crisply, “but I hope you ’ll not think me meddlin’ ef I say that you ’ll have trouble. Folks like you-uns, an’ we-uns fer that matter, don’t know no more about managin’ slaves raised by high-falutin’ white folks than doodle-bugs does.” And having risen to that climax, Ann Duncan, followed by her splay-footed, admiring husband, departed.
The next morning, accompanied by Big Joe and the man who had been overseer on his plantation, Colonel Whitney drove over in a spring wagon.
“I decided to bring Joe over myself, so as to have no misunderstanding,” he announced. “The other negroes have been picking at him a good deal, and he is a little out of sorts, but he ’ll get all right.”
The Gills were standing in the passage, a look of stupid embarrassment on their honest faces. Despite their rugged strength of character, they were not a little awed by the presence of such a prominent member of the aristocracy, notwithstanding the fact that their dealings with the Colonel had not, in a financial way, been just to their fancy.
“I’m much obliged to you, sir,” Peter found himself able to enunciate.
The Colonel lighted a cigar and began to smoke. A sad, careworn expression lay in his big blue eyes. He had the appearance of a man who had not slept for a week. His tired glance swept from the Gills to the negro in the wagon, and he said, huskily:
“Bounce out, Joe, and do the very best you can. I hate to part with you, but you know my condition—we’ve talked that over enough.”
Slowly the tall black man crawled out at the end of the wagon and stood alone on the ground. The expression of his face was at once so full of despair and fiendishness that Mrs. Gill shuddered and looked away from him.
“Well, Gill,” said the planter, “I reckon me and you are even at last. I’m going down to Savannah, where I hope to get a fresh start and amount to more in the world. Goodbye to you—good-bye, Joe.”
He had only nodded to the pair in the passage, but he reached over the wagon-wheel for the hand of the negro, and as he took it a tender expression of regret stamped itself on his strong features.
“Be a good boy, Joe,” he half-whispered. “As God is my heavenly judge, I hate this more than anything else in the world. If I could possibly raise the money I’d take you with me—or free you.”
The thick, stubborn lip of the slave relaxed and fell to quivering.
“Good-bye, Marse Whit’,” he said, simply.
The Colonel took a firmer grasp of the black hand.
“No ill-will, Joe?” he questioned, anxiously.
“No, suh, Marse Whit’, I hain’t got no hard feelin’s ’gin you.”
“Well, then good-bye, Joe. If I ever get my head above water, I ’ll keep my promise about you and Liza. She looked on you as her favorite, but don’t raise your hopes too high. I’m an old man now, and it may be uphill work down there.”
The negro lowered his head and the overseer drove on. As the wagon rumbled down the rocky slope a wisp of blue smoke from the Colonel’s cigar followed it like a banner unfurled to the breeze. For several minutes after the wagon had disappeared Big Joe stood where he had alighted, his eyes upon the ground.
“What’s the matter?” asked Gill, stepping down to him.
“Nothin’, Marse—” Big Joe seemed to bite into the word as it rose to his tongue, then he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously and looked down again.
The Gills exchanged ominous glaces, and there was a pause.
“Have you had anything to eat this morning?” Gill bethought himself to ask.
The black man shook his head.
“I ain’t teched a bite sence dey sol’ me; dey offered it to me, but I didn’t want it.”
Once more the glances of the husband and wife traveled slowly back and forth, centering finally on the face of the negro.
“I reckon it’s ‘cause yore sick at heart,” observed Gill, at first sympathetically, and then with growing firmness as he continued. “I know how you feel; most o’ yore sort has a way o’ thinkin’ yorese’ves a sight better ’n pore white folks, an’ right now the truth is you can’t bear the idee o’ belongin’ to me ’n my wife. Now, me ’n you an’ her ought to come to some sort of agreement that we kin all live under. You won’t find nuther one of us the overbearin’ sort. We was forced to take you to secure ourse’ves agin the loss of our little all, an’ we want to do what’s fair in every respect. I’m told you are a fust-rate shoemaker. Now, ef you want to, you kin set up a shop in yore room thar, an’ have the last cent you kin make. You ’ll git plenty o’ work, too, fer this neighborhood is badly in need of a shoemaker. Now, my wife will fry you some fresh eggs an’ bacon an’ make you a good cup o’ coffee.”
But all that Peter Gill had managed to say with satisfaction to himself seemed to have gone into one of the negro’s ears and to have met with not the slightest obstruction on its way out at the other. To the hospitable invitation which closed Peter’s speech, the negro simply said:
“I don’t feel like eatin’ a bite.”
“Oh, you don’t,” said Gill, at the end of his resources; “maybe you’d feel different about it ef you was to smell the bacon a-fryin’.”
“I don’t wan’t to eat,” reiterated the slave. “Well, you needn’t unless you want to,” went on Gill, still pacifically. “That thar room on the right is fer you; jest go in it whenever you feel like it an’ try to make yorese’f at home; you won’t find us hard to git along with.”
The Gills left their human property seated on a big rock in front of the cabin and withdrew to the rear. There they sat till near noon. Now and then Gill would peer around the corner to satisfy himself that his slave was still seated on the rock. Gill chewed nearly a week’s allowance of tobacco that morning; it seemed to have a sedative effect on his nerves. Finally, Ann Duncan loomed up in the distance and strode toward the cabin. She wore a gown of less brilliant tints than the one she had worn the day before. It had the dun color of clay washed into rather than out of its texture, and it hung from her narrow hips as if it were damp.
“Well, he did come,” she remarked, introductively.
Mrs. Gill nodded. “Yes; the Colonel fetched ’im over this mornin’.”
“So I heerd, an’ I jest ‘lowed I’d step over an’ see how you made out.” Mrs. Duncan’s rippling laugh recalled the whole of her allusions of the day previous. “Thar’s more talk goin’ round than you could shake a stick at, an’ considerable spite an’ envy. Some ‘lows that the havin’ o’ this slave is agoin’ to make you stuck up, an’ that you ’ll move yore membership to Big Bethel meetin’-house; but law me! I can see that you are bothered. How did he take to his room?”
“He ain’t so much as looked in yit,” replied Mrs. Gill, with a frown.
Thereupon Ann Duncan ventured up into the passage and peered cautiously round the corner at Big Joe.
“He’sa-wipin’ of his eyes,” she announced, as she came back. “It looks like he’s a-cryin’ about some ‘n’.”
At this juncture, a motley cluster of men, women, and children, led by Andrew Duncan, came out of the woods which fringed the red, freshly plowed field below, and began to steer itself, like a school of fish, toward the cabin. About fifty yards away they halted, as animals do when they scent danger. Heads up and open-mouthed, they stood gazing, first at the Gills, and then at their slave. Peter Gill grew angry. He stood up and strode as far in their direction as the ash-hopper under the apple-tree, and raised both his hands, as if he were frightening away a flock of crows.
“Be off, the last one of you!” he shouted; “and don’t you dare show yorese’ves round heer unless you’ve got business. This ain’t no side-show—I want you to understand that!”
They might have defied their old neighbor Gill, but the owner of a slave so big and well dressed as the human monument on the rock was too important a personage to displease with impunity; so, followed by the apologetic Mrs. Duncan, who blamed herself for having set a bad example to her curious neighbors, they slowly dispersed.
At noon Mrs. Gill went into the cabin and began to prepare dinner. She came back to her husband in a moment, and in a low voice, and one that held much significance, she said:
“I need some firewood.” As she spoke she allowed her glance to rest on Big Joe. Gill looked at the sullen negro for half a minute, and then he shrugged his shoulders as if indecision were a burden to be shaken off, and mumbling something inaudible he went out to the woodpile and brought in an armful of fuel.
“A pore beginning,” his wife said, as he put it down on the hearth.
“I know it,” retorted Gill, angrily. “You needn’t begin that sort o’ talk, fer I won’t stand it. I’m a-doin’ all I can.” And Gill went back to his chair.
The good housewife fried some slices of dark red ham. She boiled a pot of sweet potatoes, peeled off their jackets, and made a pulp of them in a pan; into the mass she stirred sweet milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and grated nutmeg. Then she rolled out a sheet of dough and cut out some open-top pies.
“I never knowed a nigger that could keep his teeth out of ‘em,” she chuckled.
Half an hour later she called out to Gill to come in. He paused in the doorway, staring in astonishment.
“Well, I never!” he ejaculated.
She had laid the best white cloth, got out her new knives and forks with the bone handles, and some dishes that were never used except on rare occasions. She had placed Gill’s plate at the head of the table, hers at the foot, and was wiping a third—the company plate with the blue decorations.
“Whar’s he goin’ to set an’ eat?” she asked.
“Blast me ef I know any more ’n a rat,” Gill told her, with alarmed frankness. “I hain’t thought about it a bit, but it never will do fer ‘im to set down with me an’ you. Folks might see it, an’ it would give ‘em more room for fun.”
Mrs. Gill laid the plate down and sighed.
“I declare, I’m afeered this nigger is a-goin’ to stick us up, whether or no. I won’t feel much Christian humility with him at one table an’ us at another, but of course I know it ain’t common fer folks to eat with their slaves.”
Gill’s glance was sweeping the table and its tempting dishes with an indescribable air of disapproval.
“You are a-fixin’up powerful,” was his slow comment; “a body would think, to look at all this, that it was the fourth Sunday an’ you was expectin’ the preacher. You’d better begin right; we cayn’t keep this up an’ make a crop.”
Her eyes flashed angrily.
“You had no business to bring Big Joe heer, then,” she fumed. “You know well enough he’s used to fine doin’s, an’ I’m not a-goin’ to have ’im make light of us, ef we are pore. I was jest a-thinkin’; the Whitneys always tied napkins ‘round the’r necks to ketch the gravy they drap, an’ Big Joe’s bound to notice that we ain’t used to sech.”
It was finally agreed that for that day at least the slave was to have his dinner served to him where he sat; so Mrs. Gill arranged it temptingly on a piece of plank, over which a piece of cloth had been spread, and took it out to him. She found him almost asleep, but he opened his eyes as she drew near.
Drowsily he surveyed the contents of the cups and dishes, his eyes kindling at the sight of the two whole custards. But his pride—it was evidently that—enabled him to manifest a sneer of irreconcilability.
“I ain’t a-goin’ t’eat a bite,” was the way he put it, stubbornly.
For a moment Mrs. Gill was nonplussed; but she believed in getting at the core of things.
“Are you a-complainin’?” she questioned.
The big negro’s sneer grew more pronounced, but that was all the answer he gave.
“Don’t you think you could stomach a bit o’ this heer custard pie?”
Big Joe’s eyes gleamed against his will, but he shook his head.
“I tol’ um all ef dey sol’ me to you, I wouldn’t eat a bite. I’m gwine ter starve ter death.”
“Oh, that’s yore intention!” Mrs. Gill caught her breath. A sort of superstitious terror seized upon her as she slowly hitched back to the cabin.
“He won’t tech a bite,” she informed Gill’s expectant visage; “an’ what’s a sight more, he says he’s vowed he won’t eat our victuals, an’ that he’s laid out to starve. Peter Gill, I’m afeerd this has been sent on us!”
“Sent on us!” echoed Gill, who also had his quota of superstition.
“Yes, it’s a visitation of the Almighty fer our hoardin’ up that money when so many of our neighbors is in need. I wish now we never had seed it. Ef Big Joe dies on our hands, I ’ll always feel like we have committed the unpardonable sin. We’ve talked ag’in’ slave-holdin’ all our lives tell we had the bag to hold, an’ now we’ve set up reg’lar in the business.”
Gill ate his dinner on the new cloth in morose silence. A heavy air of general discontent had settled on him.
“Well,” he commented, as he went to the water-shelf in the passage to take his afterdinner drink from the old cedar pail, “ef he refused ‘tater custards like them thar he certainly is in a bad plight. If he persists, I ’ll have to send fer a doctor.”
The afternoon passed slowly. The later conduct of the slave was uneventful, beyond the fact that he rose to his full height once, stretched and yawned, without looking toward the cabin, and then reclined at full length on the grass. Another batch of curious neighbors came as near the cabin as the spring. Those who had been ordered away in the forenoon had set afloat a report that Gill had said that, now he was a slave-holder, he would not submit to familiar visits from the poor white trash of the community. And Sid Ruford, the ringleader of the group at the spring, had the boldness to shout out some hints about the one-nigger, log-cabin aristocracy which drove the hot blood to Gill’s tanned face. He sprang up and took down his long-barreled “squirrel gun” from its hooks on the wall.
“I ’ll jest step down thar,” he said, “an’ see ef that gab is meant fer me.”
“I wouldn’t pay no ‘tention to him,” replied Mrs. Gill, who was held back from the brink of an explosion only by the sight of the weapon and a knowledge of Gill’s marksmanship. However, Gill had scarcely taken half a dozen steps down the path when he wheeled and came back laughing.
“They run like a passle o’ skeerd sheep,” he chuckled, as he restored his gun to its place.
This incident seemed to break the barrier of reserve between him and his human property, for he stood over the prostrate form of the negro and eyed him with a dissatisfied look.
“See heer,” he began, sullenly, “enough of a thing is a plenty. I’m gettin’ sick an’ tired o’ this, an’ I ’ll be dadblasted ef I’m a-goin’ to let a black, poutin’ scamp make me lose my nat’ral sleep an’ peace o’ mind. Now, you git right up off ’n that damp ground an’ go in yore room an’ lie down, if you feel that-a-way. Folks is a-passin’ along an’ lookin’ at you like you was a stuffed monkey.”
It may have been the sight of the gun, or it may have been a masterful quality in the Anglo-Saxon voice, that inspired the negro with a respect he had not hitherto entertained for his new owner, for he rose at once and went into his room.
At dusk Mrs. Gill waddled to the closed door of his apartment and rapped respectfully. She heard the bed creaking as if Big Joe were rising, and then he cautiously opened the door and with downcast eyes waited for her to make her wishes known.
“Supper is ready,” she announced, in a voice which, despite her strength of character, quivered a little, “an’ before settin’ down to it, I thought thar would be no harm in askin’ if thar’s anything that would strike yore fancy. When it gits a little darker I could blind a chicken on the roost an’ fry it, or I could make you some thick flour soup with sliced dumplin’s.”
She saw him wince as he tore himself from the temptation she had laid before him, but he spoke quite firmly.
“I ain’t a-goin’ t’eat any more in this worl’,” he said.
“Well, I reckon you won’t gorge yorese’f in the next,” said Mrs. Gill, “but I want to say that what you are contemplatin’ is a sin.” She turned back into the cabin and sat at the table and poured her husband’s coffee in disturbed silence.
“I believe on my soul he’s goin’ to make a die of it,” she said, after a while, as she sat munching a piece of dry bread, having no appetite at all. And Gill, deeply troubled, could make no reply.
It was their habit to go to bed as soon as supper was over, so when they rose from the table Mrs. Gill turned down the covers of the high-posted bed and beat the pillows. Before barring the cabin door, she scrutinized the closed shutter directly opposite, but all was still as death in the room of the slave.
For the first night in many years the old pair found they could not sleep, their brains being still active with the first great problem of their lives. The little clock struck ten. The silence of the night was disturbed by the shrilling of tree-frogs and the occasional cry of the whip-poor-will.
Suddenly Gill sprang up with a little grunt of alarm. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It sounded powerful like somebody a-groanin’,” whispered Mrs. Gill. “Oh, Lordy, Peter, I have a awful feelin’!”
“I ’ll git up an’ see what’s ailin’ ‘im,” said Gill, a little more calmly. “Mebby the idiot has done without food till he’s took cramps.”
Dressing himself hastily, he went outside. A pencil of yellow light was streaming through a crack beneath Big Joe’s door. Gill had not put on his shoes, and his feet fell softly on the grass. Putting his ear to the door of the negro’s room, he overheard low groans and words which sounded like a prayer, repeated over and over in a sing-song fashion. Later he heard something like the sobbing of a bigchested man.
“Open up!” cried Gill, shaking the door; “open up, I say!”
The vocal demonstration within ceased, and there was a clatter in the vicinity of the bed, as if Big Joe were rising to his feet, The farmer repeated his firm command, and the shutter slowly opened. The negro looked like a giant in the dim light of the tallow-dip on a table behind him.
“Was that you a-makin’ all that noise?” asked Gill.
“I wus prayin’, suh,” answered Big Joe, his face in the shadow.
“Oh, that was it; I didn’t know!” Gill was trying to master a most irritating awkwardness on his part; in questions of religious ceremony he always allowed for individual taste. Passing the negro, he went into the cabin and lifted the tallow-dip above his head and looked about the room suspiciously. “You was jest a-prayin’, eh?”
“Yes, suh; I was a-prayin’ to de Gre’t Marster ter tek me off on a bed o’ ease, sence I hatter go anyway. Er death er starvation ain’t no easy job.”
Gill sat down on the negro’s bed. He crossed his legs and swung a bare foot to and fro in a nervous, jerky manner.
“Looky’ heer,” he said finally to the black profile in the doorway, “you are a plagued mystery to me. What in the name o’ all possessed do you hanker after a box in the cold ground fer?”
The slave seemed slightly taken aback by the blunt directness of this query; he left the door and sat down heavily in a chair at the fireplace. “Huh!” he grunted, “is you been all dis time en not fin’ out what my trouble is?”
“Ef I did know I wouldn’t be settin’ heer at this time o’ night, losin’ my nat’ral sleep to ask about it,” was the tart reply.
The negro grunted again. “Do you know Marse Whit’s Liza?” he asked, almost eagerly.
“I believe I’ve seed ’er once or twice,” Gill told him. “A fine-lookin’ wench—about the color of a sorghum ginger-cake. Is she the one you mean?”
The big man nodded. “Me ’n her was gwine ter git married, but Marse Whit’ hatter go ’n trade ’er off ter Marse Stafford, en Marse Stafford is done give ’er ’er freedom yistiddy.”
“Ah, he set ’er free, did he?” Gill stared, and by habit awkwardly stroked that part of his face where a beard used to grow.
“Yes, suh; Marse Gill, he done set ’er free, en now a free nigger is flyin’ roun’ her. She won’t marry no slave now, suh!”
Gill drew a full breath and stood up. “Then it wasn’t becase you thought yorese’f so much better ’n me ’n my wife that you wanted to dump yorese’f into eternity?”
“No, suh; dat wasn’t in my min’, suh.”
“Well, I’m powerful glad o’ that, Joe,” responded Gill, “becase neither me nor my wife ever harmed a kink in yore head. Now, the gospel truth is, I was drawed into this whole business ag’in’ my wishes, an’ me an’ Lucretia would give a lots to be well out of it. Now, I don’t want to be the cause o’ that free nigger walkin’ off with yore intrusts, so heer’s what I ‘ll do. Ef you ’ll ride in town with me in the mornin’ I ’ll git a lawyer to draw up as clean a set o’ freedom papers as you ever laid your peepers on. What do you say?”
Big Joe’s eyes expanded until they seemed all white, with dark holes in the center. For a minute he sat like a statue, as silent as the wall behind him; then he said, with a deep breath: “Marse Gill, is you in earnest—my Gawd! is you?”
“As the Almighty is my judge, in whose presence I set at this minute.”
The negro covered his face with a pair of big, quivering hands.
“Den I don’t know what ter say, Marse Gill. I never expected to be a free man, en I had give up hope er ever seein’ Liza ag’in. Oh, Marse Gill, you sho’ is one er His chosen flock!”
Gill was so deeply moved that when he ventured on a reply he found difficulty in steadying his speech. His voice had a quality that was new to it. He spoke as gently as if he were promising recovery to a suffering child.
“Now, Joe, you crawl back in bed an’ sleep,” he said, “an’ in the mornin’ you ’ll be free, as shore as the sun rises on us both.”
Then he went back to bed and told his wife what he had done.
“I’m powerful glad we can git out of it so easy,” she commented. “It’s funny I never thought o’ settin’ ’im free. It looked to me like he was a-goin’ to be a burden that we never could git rid of, an’ now it’s a-goin’ to end all right in the Lord’s sight.”
They were just dozing off in peaceable slumber when they heard a gentle rap on the door.
“It’s me, Marse Gill,” came from the outside. “I’m mighty sorry to wake you ag’in, but I’m so hungry I don’t think I kin wait till mornin’.”
“Well, I reckon you do feel kinder empty,” laughed the farmer as he sprang out of bed. He lighted a candle, and following the specter-like signals of his wife, who sat up in bed, he soon found the meal she had arranged for the slave at noon. “Thar,” he said, as he handed it through the doorway; “I had clean forgot yore fast was over.”
The next morning the farmer and Big Joe drove to town, two miles distant. Gill was gone all day and did not return till dusk. His wife went out to meet him at the wagon-shed.
“How did you make out?” she asked.
“Tip-top,” he said, with a laugh. “As we went to town, nothin’ would do the black scamp but we must go by after the gal. She happened to be dressed up, an’ went to town with us. I set in front an’ driv’, while they done their courtin’ on the back seat. I soon got the papers in shape, an’ Squire Ridley spliced ’em right on the sidewalk in front o’ his office. A big crowd was thar, an’ you never heerd the like o’ yellin’. Some o’ the boys, jest fer pure devilment, picked me up an’ carried me on their shoulders to the tavern an’ made me set down to a hearty dinner. Joe borrowed a apron from the cook an’ insisted on waitin’ on me, La me, I wisht you’d ‘a’ been thar. I felt like a blamed fool.”
“I reckon you did have a lots o’ fun,” said Mrs. Gill. “Well, I’m glad he ain’t on our hands. I wouldn’t pass another day like yis-tiddy fer all the slaves in Georgia.”
THE WHIPPING OF UNCLE HENRY
I do believe,” said Mrs. Pelham, stooping to look through the oblong window of the milk-and-butter cellar toward the great barn across the farmyard, “I do believe Cobb an’ Uncle Henry are fussin’ ag’in.”
“Shorely not,” answered her old-maid sister, Miss Molly Meyers. She left her butter bowl and paddles, and bent her angular figure beside Mrs. Pelham, to see the white man and the black man who were gesticulating in each other’s faces under the low wagon-shed that leaned against the barn.
The old women strained their ears to overhear what was said, but the stiff breeze from across the white-and-brown fields of cotton stretching toward the west bore the angry words away. Mrs. Pelham turned and drew the white cloths over her milkpans.
“Cobb will never manage them niggers in the world,” she sighed. “Henry has had Old Nick in ’im as big as a house ever since Mr. Pelham went off an’ left Cobb in charge. Uncle Henry hain’t minded one word Cobb has said, nur he won’t. The whole crop is goin’ to rack an’ ruin. Thar’s jest one thing to be done. Mr. Pelham has jest got to come home an’ whip Henry. Nobody else could do it, an’ he never will behave till it’s done. Cobb tried to whip ’im t’other day when you was over the mountain, but Henry laid hold of a ax helve an’ jest dared Cobb to tech ‘im. That ended it. Cobb was afeard of ‘im. Moreover, he’s afeard Uncle Henry will put p’ison in his victuals, or do ’im or his family some bodily damage on the sly.”
“It would be a powerful pity,” returned Miss Molly, “fer Mr. Pelham to have to lay down his business in North Carolina, whar he’s got so awful much to do, an’ ride all that three hundred miles jest fer to whip one nigger. It looks like some other way mought be thought of. Couldn’t you use your influence—”
“I’ve talked till I’m tired out,” Mrs. Pelham interrupted. “Uncle Henry promises an’ forms good resolutions, it seems like, but the very minute Cobb wants ’im to do some ’n a little different from Mr. Pelham’s way, Henry won’t stir a peg. He jest hates the ground Cobb walks on. Well, I reckon Cobb ain’t much of a man. He never would work a lick, an’ if he couldn’t git a job overseein’ somebody’s niggers he’d let his family starve to death. Nobody kin hate a lazy, good-for-nothin’ white man like a nigger kin. Thar Cobb comes now, to complain to me, I reckon,” added Mrs. Pelham, going back to the window. “An’ bless your soul, Henry has took his seat out in the sun on the wagon-tongue, as big as life. I reckon the whole crop will go to rack an’ ruin.”
The next moment a tall, thin-visaged man with gray hair and beard stood in the cellar door.
“I’m jest about to the end o’ my tether, Sister Pelham.” (He always called her “Sister,” because they were members of the same church.) “I can’t get that black rascal to stir a step. I ordered Alf an’ Jake to hold ‘im, so I could give ’im a sound lashin’, but they was afeard to tech ‘im.”
Mrs. Pelham looked at him over her glasses as she wiped her damp hands on her apron.
“You don’t know how to manage niggers, Brother Cobb; I didn’t much ‘low you did the day Mr. Pelham left you in charge. The fust mornin’, you went to the field with that hosswhip in your hand, an’ you’ve toted it about ever since. You mought know that would give offense. Mr. Pelham never toted one, an’ yore doin’ of it looks like you ‘lowed you’d have a use fer it.”
“I acknowledge I don’t know what to do,” said Cobb, frowning down her reference to his whip. “I’ve been paid fer three months’ work in advance, in the white mare an’ colt Mr. Pelham give me, an’ I’ve done sold ’em an’ used the money. I’m free to confess that Brother Pelham’s intrusts are bein’ badly protected as things are goin’; but I’ve done my best.”
“I reckon you have,” answered Mrs. Pelham, with some scorn in her tone. “I reckon you have, accordin’ to your ability an’ judgment, an’ we can’t afford to lose your services after you’ve been paid. Thar is jest one thing left to do, an’ that is fer Mr. Pelham to come home an’ whip Henry. He’s sowin’ discord an’ rebellion, an’ needs a good, sound lashin’. The sooner it’s done the better. Nobody can do it but Mr. Pelham, an’ I’m goin’ in now an’ write the letter an’ send it off. In the mean time, you’d better go on to work with the others, an’ leave Henry alone till his master comes.”
“Brother Pelham is the only man alive that could whip ‘im,” replied Cobb; “but it looks like a great pity an’ expense for Brother Pel—” But the planter’s wife had passed him and gone up the steps into the sitting-room. Cobb walked across the barnyard without looking at the stalwart negro sitting on the wagon-tongue. He threw his whip down at the barn, and he and half a dozen negroes went to the hayfields over the knoll toward the creek.
In half an hour Mrs. Pelham, wearing her gingham bonnet, came out to where Uncle Henry still sat sulking in the sun. As she approached him, she pushed back her bonnet till her gray hair and glasses showed beneath it.
“Henry,” she said, sternly, “I’ve jest done a thing that I hated mightily to do.”
“What’s that, Mis’ Liza?” He looked up as he asked the question, and then hung his head shamefacedly. He was about forty-five years of age. For one of his race he had a strong, intelligent face. Indeed, he possessed far more intelligence than the average negro. He was considered the most influential slave on any of the half-dozen plantations lying along that side of the river. He had learned to read, and by listening to the conversation of white people had (if he had acquired the colloquial speech of the middle-class whites) dropped almost every trace of the dialect current among his people. And on this he prided himself no little. He often led in prayer at the colored meeting-house on an adjoining plantation, and some of his prayers were more widely quoted and discussed than many of the sermons preached in the same church.
“I have wrote to yore master, Henry,” answered Mrs. Pelham, “an’ I’ve tol’ ’im all yore doin’s, an’ tol’ him to come home an’ whip you fer disobeyin’ Brother Cobb. I hated to do it, as I’ve jest said; but I couldn’t see no other way out of the difficulty. Don’t you think you deserve a whippin’, Uncle Henry?”
“I don’t know, Mis’ Liza.” He did not look up from the grass over which he swung his rag-covered leg and gaping brogan. “I don’t know myself, Mis’ Liza. I want to help Marse Jasper out all I can while he is off, but it seems like I jest can’t work fer that man. Huh, overseer! I say overseer! Why, Mis’ Liza, he ain’t as good as a nigger! Thar ain’t no pore white trash in all this valley country as low down as all his lay-out. He ain’t fittin’ fer a overseer of nothin’. He don’t do anything like master did, nohow. He’s too lazy to git in out of a rain. He—”
“That will do, Henry. Mr. Pelham put him over you, an’ you’ve disobeyed. He ’ll be home in a few days, an’ you an’ him can settle it between you. He will surely give you a good whippin’ when he gits here. Are you goin’ to sit thar without layin’ yore hand to a thing till he comes?”
“Now, you know me better ’n that, Mis’ Liza. I’ve done said I won’t mind that man, an’ I reckon I won’t; but the meadow-piece has obliged to be broke an’ sowed in wheat. I’m goin’ to do that jest as soon as the blacksmith fetches my bull-tongue plow.”
Mrs. Pelham turned away silently. She had heard some talk of the government buying the negroes from their owners and setting them free. She ardently hoped this would be done, for she was sure they could then be hired cheaper than they could be owned and provided for. She disliked to see a negro whipped; but occasionally she could see no other way to make them do their duty.
From the dairy window, a few minutes later, she saw Uncle Henry put the gear on a mule, and, with a heavy plow-stock on his shoulder, start for the wheat-field beyond the meadow.
“He ’ll do two men’s work over thar, jest to show what he kin do when he’s let alone,” she said to Miss Molly. “I hate to see ’im whipped. He’s too old an’ sensible in most things, an’ it would jest break Lucinda’s heart. Mr. Pelham had ruther cut off his right arm, too; but he ’ll do it, an’ do it good, after havin’ to come so far.”
Mr. Pelham was a week in reaching the plantation. He wrote that it would take several days to arrange his affairs so that he could leave. He admitted that there was nothing left to do except to whip Uncle Henry soundly, and that they were right in thinking that Henry would not let any one do it but himself. After the whipping he was sure that the negro would obey Cobb, and that matters would then move along smoothly.
When Mr. Pelham arrived, he left the stage at the cross-roads, half a mile from his house, and carpet-bag in hand, walked home through his own fields. He was a short, thick-set man of about sixty, round-faced, blue-eyed, and gray-haired. He wore a sack-coat, top-boots, and baggy trousers. He had a good-natured, kindly face, and walked with the quick step and general air of a busy man.
He had traveled three hundred miles, slept on the hard seat of a jolting train, eaten railroad pies and peanuts, and was covered with the grime of a dusty journey, all to whip one disobedient negro. Still, he was not out of humor, and after the whipping and lecture to his old servant he would travel back over the tiresome route and resume his business where he had left it.
His wife and sister-in-law were in the kitchen when they heard his step in the long hall. They went into the sitting-room, where he had put down his carpet-bag, and in the center of the floor stood swinging his hat and mopping his brow with his red handkerchief. He shook hands with the two women, and then sat down in his old seat in the chimney-corner.
“You want a bite to eat, an’ a cup of coffee, I reckon,” said Mrs. Pelham, solicitously.
“No, I kin wait till dinner. Whar’s Cobb?”
“I seed ’im at the wagon-shed a minute ago,” spoke up Miss Molly; “he was expectin’ you, an’ didn’t go to the field with the balance.”
“Tell ’im I want to see ‘im.”
Both of the women went out, and the overseer came in.
“Bad state of affairs, Brother Cobb,” said the planter, as he shook hands. They both sat down with their knees to the embers.
“That it is, Brother Pelham, an’ I take it you didn’t count on it any more ’n I did.”
“Never dreamt of it. Has he been doin’ any better since he heerd I was comin’ to—whip ‘im?”
“Not fer me, Brother Pelham. He hain’t done a lick fer me; but all of his own accord, in the last week, he has broke and sowed all that meadow-piece in wheat, an’ is now harrowin’ it down to hide it from the birds. To do ’im jestice, I hain’t seed so much work done in six days by any human bein’ alive. He ’ll work for hisse’f, but he won’t budge fer me.”
Mr. Pelham broke into a soft, impulsive laugh, as if at the memory of something.
“They all had a big joke on me out in North Carolina,” he said. “I tol’ ’em I was comin’ home to whip a nigger, an’ they wouldn’t believe a word of it. I reckon it is the fust time a body ever went so fur on sech business. They ‘lowed I was jest homesick an’ wanted a’ excuse to come back.”
“They don’t know what a difficult subject we got to handle,” Cobb replied. “You are, without doubt, the only man in seven states that could whip ‘im, Brother Pelham. I believe on my soul he’d kill anybody else that’d tech ‘im. He’s got the strangest notions about the rights of niggers I ever heerd from one of his kind. He’s jest simply dangerous.”
“You ‘re afeard of ‘im, Brother Cobb, an’ he’s sharp enough to see it; that’s all.”
The overseer winced. “I don’t reckon I’m any more so than any other white man would be under the same circumstances. Henry mought not strike back lick fer lick on the spot—I say he mought not; an’ then ag’in he mought—but he’d git even by some hook or crook, or I’m no judge o’ niggers.”
Mr. Pelham rose. “Whar is he?”
“Over in the wheat-field.”
“Well, you go over thar n’ tell ’im I’m here, an’ to come right away down in the woods by the gum spring. I ’ll go down an’ cut some hickory withes an’ wait fer ‘im. The quicker it’s done an’ over, the deeper the impression will be made on ‘im. You see, I want ’im to realize that all this trip is jest solely on his account. I ’ll start back early in the mornin’. That will have its weight on his future conduct. An’, Brother Cobb, I can’t—I jest can’t afford to be bothered ag’in. My business out thar at the lumber-camp won’t admit of it. This whippin’ has got to do fer the rest of the year. I think he ’ll mind you when I git through with ‘im. I like ’im better ’n any slave I ever owned, an’ I’d a thousand times ruther take the whippin’ myself; but it’s got to be done.”
Cobb took himself to Henry in the wheat-field, and the planter went down into the edge of the woods near the spring. With his pocket-knife he cut two slender hickory switches about five feet in length. He trimmed off the out-shooting twigs and knots, and rounded the butts smoothly.
From where he sat on a fallen log, he could see, across the boggy swamp of bulrushes, the slight rise on which Henry was at work. He could hear Henry’s mellow, resonant “Haw” and “Gee,” as he drove his mule and harrow from end to end of the field, and saw Cobb slowly making his way toward him.
Mr. Pelham laid the switches down beside him, put his knife in his pocket, and stroked his chin thoughtfully. Suddenly he felt a tight sensation in his throat. The solitary figure of the negro as he trudged along by the harrow seemed vaguely pathetic. Henry had always been such a noble fellow, so reliable and trustworthy. They had really been, in one way, more like brothers than master and slave. He had told Henry secrets that he had confided to no other human being, and they had laughed and cried together over certain adventures and sorrows. About ten years before, Mr. Pelham’s horse had run away and thrown him against a tree and broken his leg. Henry had heard his cries and run to him. They were two miles from the farmhouse, and it was a bitterly cold day, but the stalwart negro had taken him in his arms and carried him home and laid him down on his bed. There had been a great deal of excitement about the house, and it was not until after the doctor had come and dressed the broken limb that it was learned that Henry had fallen in a swoon in his cabin and lain there unconscious for an hour, his wife and children being away. Indeed, he had been almost as long recovering as had been his master.
Henry had stopped his mule. Cobb had called to him, and was approaching. Then Mr. Pelham knew that the overseer was delivering his message, for the negro had turned his head and was looking toward the woods which hid his master from view. Mr. Pelham felt himself flush all over. Could he be going to whip Henry—really to lash his bare back with those switches? How strange it seemed all at once! And that this should be their first meeting after a two months’ separation!
In his home-comings before, Uncle Henry had always been the first to meet him with outstretched hand. But the negro had to be whipped. Mr. Pelham had said it in North Carolina; he had said it to Cobb, and he had written it to his wife. Yes, it must be done; and if done at all, of course it must be done right.
He saw Henry hitch his mule to a chestnut-tree in the field and Cobb turn to make his way back to the farm-house. Then he watched Henry approaching till the bushes which skirted the field hid him from view. There was no sound for several minutes except the rustling of the fallen leaves in the woods behind him, and then Uncle Henry’s head and shoulders appeared above the broom-sedge near by.
“Howdy do, Marse Jasper?” he cried; and the next instant he broke through the yellow sedge and stood before his master.
“Purty well, Henry.” Mr. Pelham could not refuse the black hand which was extended, and which caught his with a hearty grasp. “I hope you are as well as common, Henry?”
“Never better in my life, Marse Jasper.”
The planter had risen, but he now sat down beside his switches. For a moment nothing was said. Uncle Henry awkwardly bent his body and his neck to see if his mule were standing where he had left him, and his master looked steadfastly at the ground.
“Sit down, Henry,” he said, presently; and the negro took a seat on the extreme end of the log and folded his black, seamed hands over his knee. “I want to talk to you first of all. Something of a very unpleasant, unavoidable nature has got to take place betwixt us, an’ I want to give you a sound talkin’ to beforehan’.”
“All right, Marse Jasper; I’m a-listenin’.” Henry looked again toward his mule. “I did want to harrow that wheat down ‘fore them birds eat it up; but I got time, I reckon.”
The planter coughed and cleared his throat. He tried to cross his short, fat legs by sliding the right one up to the knee of the left, but owing to the lowness of the log, he was unable to do this, so he left his legs to themselves, and with a hand on either side of him, leaned back.
“Do you remember, Uncle Henry, twenty years ago, when you belonged to old Heaton Pelzer an’ got to hankerin’ after that yellow girl of mine jest after I bought her in South Carolina?”
“Mighty plain, Master Jasper, mighty plain.” Henry’s face showed a tendency to smile at the absurdity of the question.
“Lucinda was jest as much set after you, it seemed,” went on the planter. “Old Pelzer was workin’ you purty nigh to death on his pore, wore-out land, an’ pointedly refused to buy Lucinda so you could marry her, nur he wouldn’t consent to you marryin’ a slave of mine. Ain’t that so?”
“Yes, Marse Jasper, that’s so, sir.”
“I had jest as many niggers as I could afford to keep, an’ a sight more. I was already up to my neck in debt, an’ to buy you I knowed I’d have to borrow money an’ mortgage the last thing I had. But you come to me night after night, when you could sneak off, an’ begged an’ begged to be bought, so that I jest didn’t have the heart to refuse. So, jest to accommodate you, I got up the money an’ bought you, payin’ fully a third more fer you than men of yore age was goin’ at. You are married now, an’ got three as likely children as ever come into the world, an’ a big buxom wife that loves you, an’ if I haven’t treated you an’ them right I never heerd of it.”
“Never was a better master on earth, Marse Jasper. If thar is, I hain’t never seed ‘im.” Henry’s face was full of emotion. He picked up his slouch hat from the grass and folded it awkwardly on the log beside him.
“From that day till this,” the planter went on, “I’ve been over my head in debt, an’ I can really trace it to that transaction. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the feller said. Well, now, Henry, six months ago, when I saw that openin’ to deal in lumber in North Carolina, it seemed to me to be my chance to work out of debt, if I could jest find somebody to look after my farm. I found a man, Henry—a good, clever, honest man, as everybody Said, an’ a member of Big Bethel Church. For a certain consideration he agreed to take charge. That consideration I’ve paid in advance, an’ it’s gone; I couldn’t git it back.
“Now, how has it turned out? I had hardly got started out thar before one of my niggers—the very one I relied on the most—has played smash with all my plans. You begun by turnin’ up yore nose at Brother Cobb, an’ then by openly disobeyin’ ‘im. Then he tried to punish you—the right that the law gives a overseer—an’ you up an’ dared him to tech you, an’—”
“Marse Jasper—”
“Hold yore tongue till I’m through.”
“All right, Marse Jasper, but—”
“You openly defied ‘im, that’s enough; you broke up the order of the whole thing, an’ yore mistress was so upset that she had to send fer me. Now, Henry, I hain’t never laid the lash on you in my life, an’ I’d ruther take it myself than to have to do it, but I hain’t come three hundred miles jest to talk to you. I’m goin’ to whip you, Henry, an’ I’m goin’ to do it right, if thar’s enough strength in my arm. You needn’t shake yore head an’ sulk. No matter what you refused to let Cobb an’ the rest of ’em do, you are a-goin’ to take what I’m goin’ to give you without a word, because you know it’s just an’ right.”
Henry’s face was downcast, and his master could not see his eyes, but a strange, rebellious fire had suddenly kindled in them, and he was stubbornly silent. Mr. Pelham could not have dreamed of what was passing in his mind.
“Henry, you an’ me are both religious men,” said the planter, after he had waited for a moment. “Let’s kneel right down here by this log an’ commune with the Lord on this matter.”
Without a word the negro rose and knelt, his face in his hands, his elbows on the log. There never had been a moment when Uncle Henry was not ready to pray or listen to a prayer. He prided himself on his own powers in that line, and had unbounded respect even for the less skillful efforts of others. Mr. Pelham knelt very deliberately and began to pray:
“Our heavenly Father, it is with extreme sadness an’ sorrow that we come to Thee this bright, sunny day. Our sins have been many, an’ we hardly know when our deeds are acceptable in Thy sight; but bless all our efforts, we pray Thee, for the sake of Him that died for us, an’ let us not walk into error in our zeal to do Thy holy will.
“Lord, Thou knowest the hearts of Thy humble supplicant an’ this man beside him. Thou, through the existin’ laws of this land, hast put him into my care an’ keepin’ an’ made me responsible to a human law for his good or bad behavior. Lord, on this occasion it seems my duty to punish him for disobedience, an’ we pray Thee to sanction what is about to take place with Thy grace. Let no anger or malice rest in our hearts during the performance of this disagreeable task, an’ let the whole redound to Thy glory, for ever an’ ever, through the mercy of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Mr. Pelham rose to his feet stiffly, for he had touches of rheumatism, and the ground was cold. He brushed his trousers, and laid hold of his switches. But to his surprise, Henry had not risen. If it had not been for the stiffness of his elbows, and the upright position of his long feet, which stood on their toes erect as gate-posts, Mr. Pelham might have thought that he had dropped asleep.
For a moment the planter stood silent, glancing first at the mass of ill-clothed humanity at his feet, and then sweeping his eyes over the quiet, rolling land which lay between him and the farmhouse. How awfully still everything was! He saw Henry’s cabin near the farmhouse. Lucinda was out in the yard picking up chips, and one of Uncle Henry’s children was clinging to her skirts. The planter was very fond of Lucinda, and he wondered what she would do if she knew he was about to whip her husband. But why did the fellow not get up? Surely that was an unusual way to act. In some doubt as to what he ought to do, Mr. Pelham sat down again. It should not be said of him that he had ever interrupted any man’s prayers to whip him. As he sat down, the log rolled slightly, the elbows of the negro slid off the bark, and Henry’s head almost came in contact with the log. But he took little notice of the accident, and glancing at his master from the corner of his eye, he deliberately replaced his elbows, pressed his hands together, and began to pray aloud:
“Our heavenly Father.” These words were spoken in a deep, sonorous tone, and as Uncle Henry paused for an instant the echoes groaned and murmured and died against the hill behind him. Mr. Pelham bowed his head to his hand. He had heard Henry pray before, and now he dreaded hearing him, he hardly knew why. He felt a strange creeping sensation in his spine.
“Our heavenly Father,” the slave repeated, in his mellow sing-song tone, “Thou knowest that I am Thy humble servant. Thou knowest that I have brought to Thee all my troubles since my change of heart—that I have left nothing hidden from Thee, who art my Maker, my Redeemer, an’ my Lord. Thou knowest that I have for a long time harbored the belief that the black man has some rights that he don’t git under existin’ laws, but which, Thy will be done, will come in due time, like the harvest follows the plantin’. Thou know-est, an’ I know, that Henry Pelham is nigher to Thee than a dumb brute, an’ that it ain’t no way to lift a nigger up to beat ’im like a horse or a ox. I have said this to Thee in secret prayer, time an’ ag’in, an’ Thou knowest how I stand on it, if my master don’t. Thou knowest that before Thee I have vowed that I would die before any man, white or black, kin beat the blood out ’n my back. I may have brought trouble an’ vexation to Marse Jasper, I don’t dispute that, but he had no business puttin’ me under that low-down, white-trash overseer an’ goin’ off so far. Heavenly Father, thou knowest I love Marse Jasper, an’ I would work fer ’im till I die; but he is ready to put the lash to me an’ disgrace me before my wife an’ children. Give my arms strength, Lord, to defend myself even against him—against him who has, up to now, won my respect an’ love by forbearance an’ kindness. He has said it, Lord—he has said that he will whip me; but I’ve said, also, that no man shall do it. Give me strength to battle fer the right, an’ if he is hurt—bad hurt—may the Lord have mercy on him! This I ask through the mercy an’ the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Henry rose awkwardly to his feet and looked down at his master, who sat silent on the log. Mr. Pelham’s face was pale. There was a look of indecision under the pallor. He held one of the switches by the butt in his hand, and with its tapering end tapped the brown leaves between his legs. He looked at the imperturbable countenance of the negro for fully a minute before he spoke.
“Do you mean to say, Henry,” he asked, “that you are a-goin’ to resist me by force?”
“I reckon I am, Marse Jasper, if nothin’ else won’t do you. That’s what I have promised the Lord time an’ ag’in since Cobb come to boss me. I wasn’t thinkin’ about you then, Marse Jasper, because I didn’t ’low you ever would try such a thing; but I said any white man, an’ I can’t take it back.”
The planter looked up at the stalwart man towering over him. Henry could toss him about like a ball. In his imagination he had pictured the faithful fellow bowed before him, patiently submitting to his blows, but the present contingency had never entered his mind. He tried to be angry, but the goodnatured face of the slave he loved made it impossible.
“Sit down thar, Henry,” he said; and when the negro had obeyed, he continued, almost appealingly: “I have told the folks in North Carolina that I was comin’ home to whip you, you see. I have told yore mistress, an’ I have told Cobb. I ’ll look like a purty fool if I don’t do it.”
A regretful softness came into the face of the negro, and he hung his head, and for a moment picked at the bark of the log with his long thumbnail.
“I’m mighty sorry, Marse Jasper,” he answered, after remaining silent for a while. “But you see I’ve done promised the Lord; you wouldn’t have me—what do all them folks amount to beside the Lord? No; a body ought to be careful about what he’s promised the Almighty.”
Mr. Pelham had no reply forthcoming. He realized that he was simply not going to whip Uncle Henry, and he did not want to appear ridiculous in the eyes of his friends. The negro saw by his master’s silence that he was going to escape punishment, and that made him more humble and sympathetic than ever. He was genuinely sorry for his master.
“You have done told ’em all you was goin’ to whip me, I know, Marse Jasper; but why don’t you jest let ’em think you done it? I don’t keer, jest so I kin keep my word. Lucinda ain’t a-goin’ to believe I’d take it, nohow.”
At this loophole of escape the face of the planter brightened. For a moment he felt like grasping Henry’s hand: then a cloud came over his face.
“But,” he demurred, “what about yore future conduct? Will you mind what Cobb tells you?”
“I jest can’t do that, Marse Jasper. Me ’n him jest can’t git along together. He ain’t no man at all.”
“Well, what on earth am I to do? I’ve got to have an overseer, an’ I’ve got to go back to North Carolina.”
“You don’t have to have no overseer fer me, Marse Jasper. Have I ever failed to keep a promise to you, Marse Jasper?”
“No; but I can’t be here.”
“I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do, Marse Jasper. Would you be satisfied with my part of the work if I tend all the twenty-acre piece beyond my cabin, an’ make a good crop on it, an’ look after all the cattle an’ stock, an’ clear the woodland on the hill an’ cord up the firewood?”
“You couldn’t do it, Henry.”
“I ’ll come mighty nigh it, Marse Jasper, if you ’ll let me be my own boss an’ be responsible to you when you git back. Mr. Cobb kin boss the rest of ‘em. They don’t keer how much he swings his whip an’ struts around.”
“Henry, I ’ll do it. I can trust you a sight better than I can Cobb. I know you will keep yore word. But you will not say anything about—”
“Not a word, Marse Jasper. They all may ’low I’m half dead, if they want to.” Then the two men laughed together heartily and parted.
The overseer and the two white women were waiting for Mr. Pelham in the backyard as he emerged from the woods and came toward the house. Mrs. Pelham opened the gate for him, scanning his face anxiously.
“I was afeard you an’ Henry had had some difficulty,” she said, in a tone of relief; “he has been that hard to manage lately.”
Mr. Pelham grunted and laughed in disdain.
“I ’ll bet he was the hardest you ever tackled,” ventured Cobb.
“Anybody can manage him,” the planter replied—“anybody that has got enough determination. You see Henry knows me.”
“But do you think he ’ll obey my orders after you go back?” Cobb had followed Mr. Pelham into the sitting-room, and he anxiously waited for the reply to his question.
The planter stooped to spit into a corner of the chimney, and then slowly and thoughtfully stroked his chin with his hand. “That’s the only trouble, Brother Cobb,” he said, thrusting his fat hands into the pockets of his trousers and turning his back to the fire-place; “that’s the only drawback. To be plain with you, Brother Cobb, I’m afeard you don’t inspire respect; men that don’t own niggers seldom do. I believe on my soul that nigger would die fightin’ before he’d obey yore orders. To tell the truth, I had to arrange a plan, an’ that is one reason—one reason—why I was down thar so long. After what happened today” (Mr. Pelham spoke significantly and stroked his chin again) “he ’ll mind me jest as well at a distance as if I was here on the spot. He’d have a mortal dread of havin’ me come so fur ag’in.”