第 十八 章 · Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions

. Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions

Our friend Tom, in his own simple musings, often compared his more

fortunate lot, in the bondage into which he was cast, with that of

Joseph in Egypt; and, in fact, as time went on, and he developed more

and more under the eye of his master, the strength of the parallel

increased.

St. Clare was indolent and careless of money. Hitherto the providing

and marketing had been principally done by Adolph, who was, to the

full, as careless and extravagant as his master; and, between them

both, they had carried on the dispersing process with great alacrity.

Accustomed, for many years, to regard his master’s property as his own

care, Tom saw, with an uneasiness he could scarcely repress, the

wasteful expenditure of the establishment; and, in the quiet, indirect

way which his class often acquire, would sometimes make his own

suggestions.

St. Clare at first employed him occasionally; but, struck with his

soundness of mind and good business capacity, he confided in him more

and more, till gradually all the marketing and providing for the family

were intrusted to him.

“No, no, Adolph,” he said, one day, as Adolph was deprecating the

passing of power out of his hands; “let Tom alone. You only understand

what you want; Tom understands cost and come to; and there may be some

end to money, bye and bye if we don’t let somebody do that.”

Trusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who handed him a

bill without looking at it, and pocketed the change without counting

it, Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty; and nothing

but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian

faith, could have kept him from it. But, to that nature, the very

unbounded trust reposed in him was bond and seal for the most

scrupulous accuracy.

With Adolph the case had been different. Thoughtless and

self-indulgent, and unrestrained by a master who found it easier to

indulge than to regulate, he had fallen into an absolute confusion as

to _meum tuum_ with regard to himself and his master, which sometimes

troubled even St. Clare. His own good sense taught him that such a

training of his servants was unjust and dangerous. A sort of chronic

remorse went with him everywhere, although not strong enough to make

any decided change in his course; and this very remorse reacted again

into indulgence. He passed lightly over the most serious faults,

because he told himself that, if he had done his part, his dependents

had not fallen into them.

Tom regarded his gay, airy, handsome young master with an odd mixture

of fealty, reverence, and fatherly solicitude. That he never read the

Bible; never went to church; that he jested and made free with any and

every thing that came in the way of his wit; that he spent his Sunday

evenings at the opera or theatre; that he went to wine parties, and

clubs, and suppers, oftener than was at all expedient,—were all things

that Tom could see as plainly as anybody, and on which he based a

conviction that “Mas’r wasn’t a Christian;”—a conviction, however,

which he would have been very slow to express to any one else, but on

which he founded many prayers, in his own simple fashion, when he was

by himself in his little dormitory. Not that Tom had not his own way of

speaking his mind occasionally, with something of the tact often

observable in his class; as, for example, the very day after the

Sabbath we have described, St. Clare was invited out to a convivial

party of choice spirits, and was helped home, between one and two

o’clock at night, in a condition when the physical had decidedly

attained the upper hand of the intellectual. Tom and Adolph assisted to

get him composed for the night, the latter in high spirits, evidently

regarding the matter as a good joke, and laughing heartily at the

rusticity of Tom’s horror, who really was simple enough to lie awake

most of the rest of the night, praying for his young master.

“Well, Tom, what are you waiting for?” said St. Clare, the next day, as

he sat in his library, in dressing-gown and slippers. St. Clare had

just been entrusting Tom with some money, and various commissions.

“Isn’t all right there, Tom?” he added, as Tom still stood waiting.

“I’m ’fraid not, Mas’r,” said Tom, with a grave face.

St. Clare laid down his paper, and set down his coffee-cup, and looked

at Tom.

“Why Tom, what’s the case? You look as solemn as a coffin.”

“I feel very bad, Mas’r. I allays have thought that Mas’r would be good

to everybody.”

“Well, Tom, haven’t I been? Come, now, what do you want? There’s

something you haven’t got, I suppose, and this is the preface.”

“Mas’r allays been good to me. I haven’t nothing to complain of on that

head. But there is one that Mas’r isn’t good to.”

“Why, Tom, what’s got into you? Speak out; what do you mean?”

“Last night, between one and two, I thought so. I studied upon the

matter then. Mas’r isn’t good to _himself_.”

Tom said this with his back to his master, and his hand on the

door-knob. St. Clare felt his face flush crimson, but he laughed.

“O, that’s all, is it?” he said, gayly.

“All!” said Tom, turning suddenly round and falling on his knees. “O,

my dear young Mas’r; I’m ’fraid it will be _loss of all—all_—body and

soul. The good Book says, ‘it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like

an adder!’ my dear Mas’r!”

Tom’s voice choked, and the tears ran down his cheeks.

“You poor, silly fool!” said St. Clare, with tears in his own eyes.

“Get up, Tom. I’m not worth crying over.”

But Tom wouldn’t rise, and looked imploring.

“Well, I won’t go to any more of their cursed nonsense, Tom,” said St.

Clare; “on my honor, I won’t. I don’t know why I haven’t stopped long

ago. I’ve always despised _it_, and myself for it,—so now, Tom, wipe up

your eyes, and go about your errands. Come, come,” he added, “no

blessings. I’m not so wonderfully good, now,” he said, as he gently

pushed Tom to the door. “There, I’ll pledge my honor to you, Tom, you

don’t see me so again,” he said; and Tom went off, wiping his eyes,

with great satisfaction.

“I’ll keep my faith with him, too,” said St. Clare, as he closed the

door.

And St. Clare did so,—for gross sensualism, in any form, was not the

peculiar temptation of his nature.

But, all this time, who shall detail the tribulations manifold of our

friend Miss Ophelia, who had begun the labors of a Southern

housekeeper?

There is all the difference in the world in the servants of Southern

establishments, according to the character and capacity of the

mistresses who have brought them up.

South as well as north, there are women who have an extraordinary

talent for command, and tact in educating. Such are enabled, with

apparent ease, and without severity, to subject to their will, and

bring into harmonious and systematic order, the various members of

their small estate,—to regulate their peculiarities, and so balance and

compensate the deficiencies of one by the excess of another, as to

produce a harmonious and orderly system.

Such a housekeeper was Mrs. Shelby, whom we have already described; and

such our readers may remember to have met with. If they are not common

at the South, it is because they are not common in the world. They are

to be found there as often as anywhere; and, when existing, find in

that peculiar state of society a brilliant opportunity to exhibit their

domestic talent.

Such a housekeeper Marie St. Clare was not, nor her mother before her.

Indolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be

expected that servants trained under her care should not be so

likewise; and she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state

of confusion she would find in the family, though she had not ascribed

it to the proper cause.

The first morning of her regency, Miss Ophelia was up at four o’clock;

and having attended to all the adjustments of her own chamber, as she

had done ever since she came there, to the great amazement of the

chambermaid, she prepared for a vigorous onslaught on the cupboards and

closets of the establishment of which she had the keys.

The store-room, the linen-presses, the china-closet, the kitchen and

cellar, that day, all went under an awful review. Hidden things of

darkness were brought to light to an extent that alarmed all the

principalities and powers of kitchen and chamber, and caused many

wonderings and murmurings about “dese yer northern ladies” from the

domestic cabinet.

Old Dinah, the head cook, and principal of all rule and authority in

the kitchen department, was filled with wrath at what she considered an

invasion of privilege. No feudal baron in _Magna Charta_ times could

have more thoroughly resented some incursion of the crown.

Dinah was a character in her own way, and it would be injustice to her

memory not to give the reader a little idea of her. She was a native

and essential cook, as much as Aunt Chloe,—cooking being an indigenous

talent of the African race; but Chloe was a trained and methodical one,

who moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a self-taught

genius, and, like geniuses in general, was positive, opinionated and

erratic, to the last degree.

Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned

logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive

certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount

of talent, or authority, or explanation, could ever make her believe

that any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had

pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had

been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie’s mother; and “Miss

Marie,” as Dinah always called her young mistress, even after her

marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had

ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of

that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with

the utmost inflexibility as to measure.

Dinah was mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in

all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do

no wrong; and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and

shoulders on which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain

her own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure,

there were fifty indisputably good reasons for it; and it was the fault

undeniably of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing

zeal.

But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah’s last

results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering

and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and

place,—though her kitchen generally looked as if it had been arranged

by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about as many places for

each cooking utensil as there were days in the year,—yet, if one would

have patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in

perfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure

could find no fault.

It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who

required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of

ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking

a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she

always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of

an inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah’s mode of invoking the

domestic Muses.

Seated around her were various members of that rising race with which a

Southern household abounds, engaged in shelling peas, peeling potatoes,

picking pin-feathers out of fowls, and other preparatory

arrangements,—Dinah every once in a while interrupting her meditations

to give a poke, or a rap on the head, to some of the young operators,

with the pudding-stick that lay by her side. In fact, Dinah ruled over

the woolly heads of the younger members with a rod of iron, and seemed

to consider them born for no earthly purpose but to “save her steps,”

as she phrased it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had

grown up, and she carried it out to its full extent.

Miss Ophelia, after passing on her reformatory tour through all the

other parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. Dinah had

heard, from various sources, what was going on, and resolved to stand

on defensive and conservative ground,—mentally determined to oppose and

ignore every new measure, without any actual observable contest.

The kitchen was a large brick-floored apartment, with a great

old-fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of it,—an arrangement

which St. Clare had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for the

convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No Puseyite,[1] or

conservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to

time-honored inconveniences than Dinah.

[1] Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), champion of the orthodoxy of

revealed religion, defender of the Oxford movement, and Regius

professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.

When St. Clare had first returned from the north, impressed with the

system and order of his uncle’s kitchen arrangements, he had largely

provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various

apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion

that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her

arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a

magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes

could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old

shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of

_vertu_, wherein her soul delighted.

When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen Dinah did not rise, but smoked on

in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the

corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around

her.

Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.

“What is this drawer for, Dinah?” she said.

“It’s handy for most anything, Missis,” said Dinah. So it appeared to

be. From the variety it contained, Miss Ophelia pulled out first a fine

damask table-cloth stained with blood, having evidently been used to

envelop some raw meat.

“What’s this, Dinah? You don’t wrap up meat in your mistress’ best

table-cloths?”

“O Lor, Missis, no; the towels was all a missin’—so I jest did it. I

laid out to wash that a,—that’s why I put it thar.”

“Shif’less!” said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over

the drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a

Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn

and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one

or two gilded china-saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin

old shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small

white onions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels,

some twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which

sundry sweet herbs were sifting into the drawer.

“Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?” said Miss Ophelia, with the

air of one who prayed for patience.

“Most anywhar, Missis; there’s some in that cracked tea-cup, up there,

and there’s some over in that ar cupboard.”

“Here are some in the grater,” said Miss Ophelia, holding them up.

“Laws, yes, I put ’em there this morning,—I likes to keep my things

handy,” said Dinah. “You, Jake! what are you stopping for! You’ll cotch

it! Be still, thar!” she added, with a dive of her stick at the

criminal.

“What’s this?” said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of pomade.

“Laws, it’s my har _grease_;—I put it thar to have it handy.”

“Do you use your mistress’ best saucers for that?”

“Law! it was cause I was driv, and in sich a hurry;—I was gwine to

change it this very day.”

“Here are two damask table-napkins.”

“Them table-napkins I put thar, to get ’em washed out, some day.”

“Don’t you have some place here on purpose for things to be washed?”

“Well, Mas’r St. Clare got dat ar chest, he said, for dat; but I likes

to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then it an’t

handy a liftin’ up the lid.”

“Why don’t you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there?”

“Law, Missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing and another,

der an’t no room, noway—”

“But you should _wash_ your dishes, and clear them away.”

“Wash my dishes!” said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath began to rise

over her habitual respect of manner; “what does ladies know ’bout work,

I want to know? When ’d Mas’r ever get his dinner, if I was to spend

all my time a washin’ and a puttin’ up dishes? Miss Marie never telled

me so, nohow.”

“Well, here are these onions.”

“Laws, yes!” said Dinah; “thar _is_ whar I put ’em, now. I couldn’t

’member. Them ’s particular onions I was a savin’ for dis yer very

stew. I’d forgot they was in dat ar old flannel.”

Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs.

“I wish Missis wouldn’t touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things where I

knows whar to go to ’em,” said Dinah, rather decidedly.

“But you don’t want these holes in the papers.”

“Them ’s handy for siftin’ on ’t out,” said Dinah.

“But you see it spills all over the drawer.”

“Laws, yes! if Missis will go a tumblin’ things all up so, it will.

Missis has spilt lots dat ar way,” said Dinah, coming uneasily to the

drawers. “If Missis only will go up stars till my clarin’ up time

comes, I’ll have everything right; but I can’t do nothin’ when ladies

is round, a henderin’. You, Sam, don’t you gib the baby dat ar

sugar-bowl! I’ll crack ye over, if ye don’t mind!”

“I’m going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in order,

_once_, Dinah; and then I’ll expect you to _keep_ it so.”

“Lor, now! Miss Phelia; dat ar an’t no way for ladies to do. I never

did see ladies doin’ no sich; my old Missis nor Miss Marie never did,

and I don’t see no kinder need on ’t;” and Dinah stalked indignantly

about, while Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of

scattering bowls of sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins,

table-cloths, and towels, for washing; washing, wiping, and arranging

with her own hands, and with a speed and alacrity which perfectly

amazed Dinah.

“Lor now! if dat ar de way dem northern ladies do, dey an’t ladies,

nohow,” she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe hearing

distance. “I has things as straight as anybody, when my clarin’ up

times comes; but I don’t want ladies round, a henderin’, and getting my

things all where I can’t find ’em.”

To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of

reformation and arrangement, which she called “clarin’ up times,” when

she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong

side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary

confusion seven-fold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe,

and leisurely go over her arrangements, looking things over, and

discoursing upon them; making all the young fry scour most vigorously

on the tin things, and keeping up for several hours a most energetic

state of confusion, which she would explain to the satisfaction of all

inquirers, by the remark that she was a “clarin’ up.” “She couldn’t hev

things a gwine on so as they had been, and she was gwine to make these

yer young ones keep better order;” for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged

the illusion that she, herself, was the soul of order, and it was only

the _young uns_, and the everybody else in the house, that were the

cause of anything that fell short of perfection in this respect. When

all the tins were scoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and

everything that could offend tucked out of sight in holes and corners,

Dinah would dress herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high,

brilliant Madras turban, and tell all marauding “young uns” to keep out

of the kitchen, for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed,

these periodic seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole

household; for Dinah would contract such an immoderate attachment to

her scoured tin, as to insist upon it that it shouldn’t be used again

for any possible purpose,—at least, till the ardor of the “clarin’ up”

period abated.

Miss Ophelia, in a few days, thoroughly reformed every department of

the house to a systematic pattern; but her labors in all departments

that depended on the cooperation of servants were like those of

Sisyphus or the Danaides. In despair, she one day appealed to St.

Clare.

“There is no such thing as getting anything like a system in this

family!”

“To be sure, there isn’t,” said St. Clare.

“Such shiftless management, such waste, such confusion, I never saw!”

“I dare say you didn’t.”

“You would not take it so coolly, if you were housekeeper.”

“My dear cousin, you may as well understand, once for all, that we

masters are divided into two classes, oppressors and oppressed. We who

are good-natured and hate severity make up our minds to a good deal of

inconvenience. If we _will keep_ a shambling, loose, untaught set in

the community, for our convenience, why, we must take the consequence.

Some rare cases I have seen, of persons, who, by a peculiar tact, can

produce order and system without severity; but I’m not one of them,—and

so I made up my mind, long ago, to let things go just as they do. I

will not have the poor devils thrashed and cut to pieces, and they know

it,—and, of course, they know the staff is in their own hands.”

“But to have no time, no place, no order,—all going on in this

shiftless way!”

“My dear Vermont, you natives up by the North Pole set an extravagant

value on time! What on earth is the use of time to a fellow who has

twice as much of it as he knows what to do with? As to order and

system, where there is nothing to be done but to lounge on the sofa and

read, an hour sooner or later in breakfast or dinner isn’t of much

account. Now, there’s Dinah gets you a capital dinner,—soup, ragout,

roast fowl, dessert, ice-creams and all,—and she creates it all out of

chaos and old night down there, in that kitchen. I think it really

sublime, the way she manages. But, Heaven bless us! if we are to go

down there, and view all the smoking and squatting about, and

hurryscurryation of the preparatory process, we should never eat more!

My good cousin, absolve yourself from that! It’s more than a Catholic

penance, and does no more good. You’ll only lose your own temper, and

utterly confound Dinah. Let her go her own way.”

“But, Augustine, you don’t know how I found things.”

“Don’t I? Don’t I know that the rolling-pin is under her bed, and the

nutmeg-grater in her pocket with her tobacco,—that there are sixty-five

different sugar-bowls, one in every hole in the house,—that she washes

dishes with a dinner-napkin one day, and with a fragment of an old

petticoat the next? But the upshot is, she gets up glorious dinners,

makes superb coffee; and you must judge her as warriors and statesmen

are judged, _by her success_.”

“But the waste,—the expense!”

“O, well! Lock everything you can, and keep the key. Give out by

driblets, and never inquire for odds and ends,—it isn’t best.”

“That troubles me, Augustine. I can’t help feeling as if these servants

were not _strictly honest_. Are you sure they can be relied on?”

Augustine laughed immoderately at the grave and anxious face with which

Miss Ophelia propounded the question.

“O, cousin, that’s too good,—_honest!_—as if that’s a thing to be

expected! Honest!—why, of course, they arn’t. Why should they be? What

upon earth is to make them so?”

“Why don’t you instruct?”

“Instruct! O, fiddlestick! What instructing do you think I should do? I

look like it! As to Marie, she has spirit enough, to be sure, to kill

off a whole plantation, if I’d let her manage; but she wouldn’t get the

cheatery out of them.”

“Are there no honest ones?”

“Well, now and then one, whom Nature makes so impracticably simple,

truthful and faithful, that the worst possible influence can’t destroy

it. But, you see, from the mother’s breast the colored child feels and

sees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get

along no other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and

missie play-fellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable

habits. It isn’t fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to

be punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is kept in that dependent,

semi-childish state, that there is no making him realize the rights of

property, or feel that his master’s goods are not his own, if he can

get them. For my part, I don’t see how they _can_ be honest. Such a

fellow as Tom, here, is,—is a moral miracle!”

“And what becomes of their souls?” said Miss Ophelia.

“That isn’t my affair, as I know of,” said St. Clare; “I am only

dealing in facts of the present life. The fact is, that the whole race

are pretty generally understood to be turned over to the devil, for our

benefit, in this world, however it may turn out in another!”

“This is perfectly horrible!” said Miss Ophelia; “you ought to be

ashamed of yourselves!”

“I don’t know as I am. We are in pretty good company, for all that,”

said St. Clare, “as people in the broad road generally are. Look at the

high and the low, all the world over, and it’s the same story,—the

lower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper.

It is so in England; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom

stands aghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do the thing in a

little different shape from what they do it.”

“It isn’t so in Vermont.”

“Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you have the better

of us, I grant. But there’s the bell; so, Cousin, let us for a while

lay aside our sectional prejudices, and come out to dinner.”

As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of the afternoon,

some of the sable children called out, “La, sakes! thar’s Prue a

coming, grunting along like she allers does.”

A tall, bony colored woman now entered the kitchen, bearing on her head

a basket of rusks and hot rolls.

“Ho, Prue! you’ve come,” said Dinah.

Prue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen,

grumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted herself down, and

resting her elbows on her knees said,

“O Lord! I wish’t I ’s dead!”

“Why do you wish you were dead?” said Miss Ophelia.

“I’d be out o’ my misery,” said the woman, gruffly, without taking her

eyes from the floor.

“What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?” said a

spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral

ear-drops.

The woman looked at her with a sour surly glance.

“Maybe you’ll come to it, one of these yer days. I’d be glad to see

you, I would; then you’ll be glad of a drop, like me, to forget your

misery.”

“Come, Prue,” said Dinah, “let’s look at your rusks. Here’s Missis will

pay for them.”

Miss Ophelia took out a couple of dozen.

“Thar’s some tickets in that ar old cracked jug on the top shelf,” said

Dinah. “You, Jake, climb up and get it down.”

“Tickets,—what are they for?” said Miss Ophelia.

“We buy tickets of her Mas’r, and she gives us bread for ’em.”

“And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets home, to see if I ’s

got the change; and if I han’t, they half kills me.”

“And serves you right,” said Jane, the pert chambermaid, “if you will

take their money to get drunk on. That’s what she does, Missis.”

“And that’s what I _will_ do,—I can’t live no other ways,—drink and

forget my misery.”

“You are very wicked and very foolish,” said Miss Ophelia, “to steal

your master’s money to make yourself a brute with.”

“It’s mighty likely, Missis; but I will do it,—yes, I will. O Lord! I

wish I ’s dead, I do,—I wish I ’s dead, and out of my misery!” and

slowly and stiffly the old creature rose, and got her basket on her

head again; but before she went out, she looked at the quadroon girl,

who still stood playing with her ear-drops.

“Ye think ye’re mighty fine with them ar, a frolickin’ and a tossin’

your head, and a lookin’ down on everybody. Well, never mind,—you may

live to be a poor, old, cut-up crittur, like me. Hope to the Lord ye

will, I do; then see if ye won’t drink,—drink,—drink,—yerself into

torment; and sarve ye right, too—ugh!” and, with a malignant howl, the

woman left the room.

“Disgusting old beast!” said Adolph, who was getting his master’s

shaving-water. “If I was her master, I’d cut her up worse than she is.”

“Ye couldn’t do that ar, no ways,” said Dinah. “Her back’s a far sight

now,—she can’t never get a dress together over it.”

“I think such low creatures ought not to be allowed to go round to

genteel families,” said Miss Jane. “What do you think, Mr. St. Clare?”

she said, coquettishly tossing her head at Adolph.

It must be observed that, among other appropriations from his master’s

stock, Adolph was in the habit of adopting his name and address; and

that the style under which he moved, among the colored circles of New

Orleans, was that of _Mr. St. Clare_.

“I’m certainly of your opinion, Miss Benoir,” said Adolph.

Benoir was the name of Marie St. Clare’s family, and Jane was one of

her servants.

“Pray, Miss Benoir, may I be allowed to ask if those drops are for the

ball, tomorrow night? They are certainly bewitching!”

“I wonder, now, Mr. St. Clare, what the impudence of you men will come

to!” said Jane, tossing her pretty head ’til the ear-drops twinkled

again. “I shan’t dance with you for a whole evening, if you go to

asking me any more questions.”

“O, you couldn’t be so cruel, now! I was just dying to know whether you

would appear in your pink tarletane,” said Adolph.

“What is it?” said Rosa, a bright, piquant little quadroon who came

skipping down stairs at this moment.

“Why, Mr. St. Clare’s so impudent!”

“On my honor,” said Adolph, “I’ll leave it to Miss Rosa now.”

“I know he’s always a saucy creature,” said Rosa, poising herself on

one of her little feet, and looking maliciously at Adolph. “He’s always

getting me so angry with him.”

“O! ladies, ladies, you will certainly break my heart, between you,”

said Adolph. “I shall be found dead in my bed, some morning, and you’ll

have it to answer for.”

“Do hear the horrid creature talk!” said both ladies, laughing

immoderately.

“Come,—clar out, you! I can’t have you cluttering up the kitchen,” said

Dinah; “in my way, foolin’ round here.”

“Aunt Dinah’s glum, because she can’t go to the ball,” said Rosa.

“Don’t want none o’ your light-colored balls,” said Dinah; “cuttin’

round, makin’ b’lieve you’s white folks. Arter all, you’s niggers, much

as I am.”

“Aunt Dinah greases her wool stiff, every day, to make it lie

straight,” said Jane.

“And it will be wool, after all,” said Rosa, maliciously shaking down

her long, silky curls.

“Well, in the Lord’s sight, an’t wool as good as har, any time?” said

Dinah. “I’d like to have Missis say which is worth the most,—a couple

such as you, or one like me. Get out wid ye, ye trumpery,—I won’t have

ye round!”

Here the conversation was interrupted in a two-fold manner. St. Clare’s

voice was heard at the head of the stairs, asking Adolph if he meant to

stay all night with his shaving-water; and Miss Ophelia, coming out of

the dining-room, said,

“Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here? Go in and

attend to your muslins.”

Our friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the conversation

with the old rusk-woman, had followed her out into the street. He saw

her go on, giving every once in a while a suppressed groan. At last she

set her basket down on a doorstep, and began arranging the old, faded

shawl which covered her shoulders.

“I’ll carry your basket a piece,” said Tom, compassionately.

“Why should ye?” said the woman. “I don’t want no help.”

“You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin’,” said Tom.

“I an’t sick,” said the woman, shortly.

“I wish,” said Tom, looking at her earnestly,—“I wish I could persuade

you to leave off drinking. Don’t you know it will be the ruin of ye,

body and soul?”

“I knows I’m gwine to torment,” said the woman, sullenly. “Ye don’t

need to tell me that ar. I ’s ugly, I ’s wicked,—I ’s gwine straight to

torment. O, Lord! I wish I ’s thar!”

Tom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a sullen,

impassioned earnestness.

“O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han’t ye never heard of Jesus

Christ?”

“Jesus Christ,—who’s he?”

“Why, he’s _the Lord_,” said Tom.

“I think I’ve hearn tell o’ the Lord, and the judgment and torment.

I’ve heard o’ that.”

“But didn’t anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus, that loved us poor

sinners, and died for us?”

“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” said the woman; “nobody han’t never

loved me, since my old man died.”

“Where was you raised?” said Tom.

“Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil’en for market, and sold ’em

as fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a

speculator, and my Mas’r got me o’ him.”

“What set you into this bad way of drinkin’?”

“To get shet o’ my misery. I had one child after I come here; and I

thought then I’d have one to raise, cause Mas’r wasn’t a speculator. It

was de peartest little thing! and Missis she seemed to think a heap on

’t, at first; it never cried,—it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck

sick, and I tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me,

and the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis wouldn’t buy milk

for it. She wouldn’t hear to me, when I telled her I hadn’t milk. She

said she knowed I could feed it on what other folks eat; and the child

kinder pined, and cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got

all gone to skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it and she said ’t

wan’t nothin’ but crossness. She wished it was dead, she said; and she

wouldn’t let me have it o’ nights, cause, she said, it kept me awake,

and made me good for nothing. She made me sleep in her room; and I had

to put it away off in a little kind o’ garret, and thar it cried itself

to death, one night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin’, to keep its crying

out of my ears! I did,—and I will drink! I will, if I do go to torment

for it! Mas’r says I shall go to torment, and I tell him I’ve got thar

now!”

“O, ye poor crittur!” said Tom, “han’t nobody never telled ye how the

Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han’t they telled ye that he’ll

help ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?”

“I looks like gwine to heaven,” said the woman; “an’t thar where white

folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar? I’d rather go to torment,

and get away from Mas’r and Missis. I had _so_,” she said, as with her

usual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.

Tom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house. In the court he

met little Eva,—a crown of tuberoses on her head, and her eyes radiant

with delight.

“O, Tom! here you are. I’m glad I’ve found you. Papa says you may get

out the ponies, and take me in my little new carriage,” she said,

catching his hand. “But what’s the matter Tom?—you look sober.”

“I feel bad, Miss Eva,” said Tom, sorrowfully. “But I’ll get the horses

for you.”

“But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you talking to cross

old Prue.”

Tom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman’s history. She did

not exclaim or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew

pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both

hands on her bosom, and sighed heavily.

VOLUME II