Tales of the Chesapeake Part 16

The cla.s.s-meeting lasted an hour. It was very fervent and demonstrative; and when it was over the kind old lady who had given Paul the gingerbread asked the preacher home to dinner. She said that roasted turkey, wild duck, and pumpkin-pie were waiting for them; and Mr. Bates thought fondly what a treat it would be for Paul on his birthday. He was to preach again that afternoon, seven miles away, and so moved briskly toward the sulky.

"The poor fellow is asleep," said the preacher, seeing that the curling head was not thrust up at his approach. "I wonder of what he dreams?" He drew near as he spoke. Old Bob was munching his corn sedately; the sulky had a saucy air; the robe nestled in the front, with the tiny stool peeping from a corner; but Paul was not there. The preacher called aloud; the horses raised their ears in reply, and the wheels crackled in the frozen crust. He called again; some sleigh-bells jingled merrily, and then the pines moaned. He looked into the other vehicles; he watched for the little foot-tracks in the snow; he ran back to the old church, and searched beneath every pew.

"Brethren--sisters," he cried, "I cannot find my boy!" and his voice was tremulous. They gathered round him and some said that Paul had ridden away with the worldly lads; others, that he was hiding mischievously.

But one silent bystander looked into the drifts, and traced four great boot-marks close to the sulky. He followed them across the road into the pines, and out into the road again, where they were lost in the mult.i.tude of impressions. "Brother," he faltered, "G.o.d give you strength! your boy has been stolen--kidnapped!"

The old man staggered, but the kind old lady caught him, and as he leaned upon her shoulder his face grew hard and blanched; then he removed his hat, and his gray hair streamed over his gaunt features.

"Let us pray!" he said.

The preacher plodded to his next appointment as if he had still a child, and his sermon was as full and straightforward. He announced his bereavement from the pulpit when he had done, and the whole country was alarmed and excited. He bore the tidings to his desolate home, and his stricken wife heard it with a stern resignation.

Thenceforward he preached more of the burning pit, and less of the golden city; his eyes were full of fierce light, and his visage grew long and ghastly. He denied himself all joys and comforts; his prayers rang in the midnight through the gloomy parsonage; and he toiled in the ministry as if reckless of life, and anxious to lose it in his Master's service. The end came at last; the world closed over the grim couple, and they hoped through the grave's portal to find their child.

When Paul awoke from his nap in the sulky, he found himself far in the forest, and moving swiftly forward. A huge negro, with bloodshot eyes, was transferring him to an evil-looking white man, and he struggled in the latter's arms, crying for his papa.

The negro drew a long knife from his breast and flourished it before Paul's face. "Hold um jaw, or I kill um dead!" he muttered. "Got um grave dug out yer."

"O yer young yerlin!" said the other man, boxing Paul's ears, "yer don't know yer own father, don't yer? I'm yer parpa!"

"You are not," cried Paul. "Where are you taking me? Where is the church, and the sulky, and old Bob?"

The negro drove his knife so close to Paul's throat that the boy flinched and shrieked.

"You dare to say fader to anybody," yelled the negro, "and I cut yo'

heart out! You dare to tell yer name, or yer fader's name, or wha yo come from, and I cut yo' eyes out! I cut yo' heart and eyes out--do yo' yar?"

The lad was cowed into cold, tearless terror; he shrank from the glittering edge, and trembled at the giant's murderous expression. He thought they had brought him to this lonely spot to slay him, and he embraced silence as the only chance for his young life. He wondered if this were not one of his wild imaginings, or if it had not something to do with the punishment p.r.o.nounced in the morning's fierce sermon.

The two men came to a ruined cabin after awhile; it was buried in deep shade; the logs were worm-eaten, and the clay chimney had fallen down.

They climbed by a creaking ladder into the loft and laid Paul upon a ragged bed. A young negro woman and her child were there, and the boy saw that her foot was shackled to the floor, for the chain rattled as she moved. They gave him a piece of beef and a corn-cake, and stripping him of his tidy clothes, dressed him in the coa.r.s.e blue drilling worn by slaves. The two men drank frequently from the same bottle, talking in low tones, and after a time both of them lay down and slept. The woman dandled her child to and fro, for it moaned painfully, and the pines without made a deep dirge. No birds trilled or screamed in this desert place, but a roaring as of loud waters was borne now and then on the twilight; it was the bay close below them, making thunder upon the beach.

When Paul woke from his second sleep he was on the deck of a vessel.

The sh.o.r.e lay beneath him, and the waves heaved behind. It was night; the snow-flakes still filtered through the profound darkness, and the wind whistled in the rigging. A red lantern moved along the beach; some voices were heard speaking together, and one of them said: "Don't be afraid of the boy; I have sold lots paler than him. Lick him smartly if he gammons, and he'll tell no tales."

Then they lifted the anchor aboard; the tide floated off the sloop; they were soon scudding before the wind under a freezing starlight.

Two weary days pa.s.sed over Paul, of travel by land and water. They came to the city of Richmond at last, and marched him with five other unfortunates to the common slave-pen. It was situated in a squalid suburb, surrounded by a high spiked wall, and entered by an office from which a watchman could observe the interior through two grated doors. The pen consisted of a paved area open to the sky, except on one side, where it was protected by a shelving roof, and of a jail or den. The latter was walled up in a corner, but its inmates could look out upon the area through a window in the door, and their savage features revealed at the bars so terrified Paul that he retreated to the opposite corner, afraid to look towards them. Now and then they howled and blasphemed; for two were delirious from drunkenness and one was desperate from rage, and as they moved like tigers to and fro, their irons clanked behind them, dragging on the stone floor. A number of women were huddled together beneath the roof, some as fair as Paul, others as black as ebony. Some had babes at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, others had no regard for their offspring, but sat stolidly apart while their children cried for nourishment. In the open place a bevy of the coa.r.s.er inmates were holding a rude dance, a large gray-haired man patted time or "juber" with his feet and hands, calling the figures huskily aloud; while the women, with bright turbans tied around their heads, grinned and screamed with glee as they followed the measure with their large, heavy shoes.

Their efforts were directed not so much to grace as to strength, for some kept up the dance for a whole hour, divesting themselves of parcels of clothing as they proceeded, and breathing hard as if weary to exhaustion. The men applauded vociferously, coupling the names of the performers with wild e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, but subsiding when the keeper appeared at the door occasionally to command less noise. Remote from the baccha.n.a.ls crouched a serious group of negroes, who sang religious melodies, quite oblivious of their wild a.s.sociates; and in still another quarter a humorous fellow was enlivening his const.i.tuents with odd sayings and stories. Paul's heart sank within him as he looked upon these scenes. A sense of his degradation rushed over his young mind, and he threw himself upon the stones with his head in his hands, and wept hot tears of bitterness. Henceforth he should be a creature, a thing, a slave! He must know no ambition but indolence, no bliss but ignorance, no rest but sleep, no hope but death! Long leagues must interpose between himself and his home; he should never kiss his mother again, or kneel with his father in the holiness of prayer. The recollections of his childhood would be crushed out by agonizing experiences of bondage; he would forget his name and the face of his friends, and at last preserve only the horrible consciousness that he was the chattel of his master!

The uproar continued far into the night; one poor creature was delivered of a child in the hazy light of the morning. Paul was too young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him; but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had to look back upon--cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one distinct and dreadful idea of gain--to be filched from that dusky bosom when its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble lips might lisp the accents of servility. Days and weeks pa.s.sed over Paul, but he found no opportunity to tell his story. They kept him purposely that he might forget it, or feel the hopelessness of relating it. Other wretches came and went, till there remained none of the original inmates of his prison, and he learned to mingle with his coa.r.s.e companions, joining sometimes in their gayety, and the high walls stood forever between his dreams and the sky till the sombre shadows were printed upon his heart.

The boy's turn came at length. He climbed the auction block before the gaping mult.i.tude, and leaped to show his suppleness. They were pleased with his still serious manner, the paleness of his skin, his thoughtful eyes, and the s.h.i.+ning ringlets of his hair. Bids were bandied briskly upon him, and the auctioneer rattled glibly of the rare lot to be sold.

"Who owns the boy?" cried a bystander.

"Colonel James Purnell, of the Eastern sh.o.r.e," answered the auctioneer. "His mother is a likely piece that will be in the market presently."

Tears came to Paul's eyes, but he held down the great sob that started to his throat, and called l.u.s.tily: "It is a wicked story! My father is white, and my mother is white! I am not a slave, and they have stolen me!"

A loud, long laugh broke from the crowd, and the trader cracked a merry joke, which helped the pleasantry.

"We may call that a 'white lie,'" he said; "but it is a peart lad, and the air with which he told it is worth a cool hundred! Going at four hundred dollars--four hundred," etc.

The bidding recommenced. The article rose in esteem, and Paul was pushed from the block into the arms of a tall, angular person, who led him into the city. That afternoon he was placed in a railway carriage, and on the third night he was quartered in Mobile, at the dwelling of his purchaser. The tall person proved to be the agent of a rich old lady--a childless widow--who required a handsome, active lad, to wait upon her person, and make a good appearance in the drawing-room.

She had many servants; but Paul was not compelled to a.s.sociate with them, and his duties were light, though menial. When his mistress went out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms. He must stand behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peac.o.c.k's feathers. He must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy her wants. She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one. On the contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her marvellously. If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a child's strong yearning for something to love, he hid his grief from those about him, and sought that consolation which the world cannot take away in the simple prayers he had conned from his mother. He was a slave, but not a negro. His pleasures were not theirs, for he had quick intelligence, and he shrank from their loud, lewd glee. Their blood had thickened through generations of bondage, and trained in the harness of beasts, they had become creatures of draught. His had rippled bright and brisk through generations of freedom, and a year could not drag him to their level. He had learned to read and write, and it was his habit to stand at the window in his leisure moments, adding to his information from some pleasant book; but his mistress supposed that he was looking at the pictures merely, till one day, entering the dining-room softly, she heard him reading aloud. He had a sweet, boy's voice, which somewhat pacified the anger she felt at such presumption in a slave; and though at first rebuking him, she reconsidered the matter during the evening, and bade him read to her from a new novel. Henceforward Paul gained favor, and his mistress found it convenient to employ him as an amanuensis. She released him from menial duties, and gave him neat attire, and it was wonderful how well these accessories became him. He was una.s.suming, as before, submitting with patience to his lot; and at length he became indispensable to Mrs. Everett. Her attachment to books of fiction amounted to dissipation, and the part that he bore in their perusal filled his warm imagination till his fancies were brighter than romance--they became poetry. The one great grief of his life touched his whole face with a pensive melancholy, but he forebore to tell them his true history again, preferring to wait for some golden moment when he might be believed and emanc.i.p.ated.

From the beginning Mrs. Everett's agent disliked him. Wait was a Northern adventurer, cool, courageous, and ambitious, who had settled in the South with the resolution of becoming rich, and he had pursued his purpose with steady inflexibility. He was not a bad man, but a bitter one, and Paul had in some sort divided Mrs. Everett's esteem from him. Previously he had been her sole and undisputed adviser, and as she was readily influenced, he hoped, in course of time, to be acceptable as her second husband. He was young and manly, and she was giddy and middle-aged. Her relatives held him in contempt, but he had proved his courage, and they did not care to cross him. But with the coming of Paul he had lost somewhat of her regard, and he had laid it to the boy's charge. Paul read his calm purpose in his keen eyes, and he shuddered at the thought of some day falling into his relentless hands. He labored to conciliate his enemy, but with little effect, until one afternoon, Wait told him to obtain permission from Mrs.

Everett and come to the office. He dictated some ambiguous letters to Paul, and gave him many papers to burn, meanwhile inspecting a pair of long pistols which he took from a portmanteau. It was late in the afternoon when he had done, and then he bade Paul take the case of pistols, slip quietly into the street, and walk straight on till he was overtaken. He obeyed, not without suspicion, and when he reached the city limits found the agent, to his great surprise, seated in a carriage. Two other persons attended him, and one, who was bald and wore gla.s.ses, had a case of surgical instruments lying at his feet.

Paul climbed to the driver's box, and they dashed along by the water-side, meeting a second carriage on their way. The last rays of sunset were streaming over the low landscape when both carriages stopped, their occupants dismounted, and Wait came to the front and reached up his hand to Paul.

"Good-by, boy," he said in a tone of unwonted tenderness; "remain here a moment and you will see me again!"

They filed along a d.y.k.e separating two swamps, and turning down to the beach, were hidden behind a line of cypress trees. For a few moments Paul only heard the roar of the surf, the noise of the distant town, and the short breathing of the sedate negro beside him. Then there were shouts, as of a person counting rapidly, and two reports so close that one seemed the echo of the other. A few minutes afterward the agent appeared, leaning upon the arms of his attendants. He was divested of coat and vest, and as he came nearer, bareheaded, Paul saw that his face was colorless and working as from deadly pain. His s.h.i.+rt was perforated close to the collar, and the blood flowing beneath had stained it to his waist, and dripped in a runnel from his boots. He fainted when he had taken his seat; and as the carriage rolled away, Paul looked back toward the duelling-ground, and beheld two men bearing upon their shoulders a stiff, straight burden, wrapped in a cloak.

The second carriage pa.s.sed him, driven swiftly, and it seemed to emit a chill draught upon Paul like the damp wind from a tomb; it was the presence of death, at whose very mention we grow cold.

Wait had vindicated his courage, but at the expense of his life. He lingered on in agony many days; and Paul so pitied him that he stole into his darkened chamber and begged to do him kindnesses. The grim man lay implacable, waiting for death; but one night as he writhed with the dew upon his forehead, Paul heard him mutter, "My G.o.d! my mother!"

The boy remembered a quaint text of Scripture: "Save me, O G.o.d! for the waters have come in unto my soul;" and he repeated it in the strong man's ear. "Go on," cried Wait, rising upon his elbow; "I have heard that before: tell me the rest."

"I have the good book here," replied Paul. "I am sure it will be pleasant to you, sir, if you will let me read."

"Do so, boy; I used to know it well. An old friend taught those strange words to me, but I have forgotten them now."

Paul read some soothing and beautiful Psalms, which took his companion's mind back to his native mountains, and the white spire of the village church where he had wors.h.i.+pped with his mother. The hard lines melted in his face as he listened, but Paul fell upon a bitter verse, and the agent's conscience began to trouble him. He could not look into the boy's eyes, for they seemed to rebuke him, and at last he commanded Paul to stop.

It was midnight. They heard the great clock in the hall strike twelve, and all the household slumbered.

"Go to your mistress's room," said Wait; "tell her that I must see her _now_--she must come at once. The morning may never come to me. Go; G.o.d bless you!"

He called Paul back when he had got to the door, and added falteringly:

"My boy, do you say your prayers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you mind thinking of me when you say them to-night?"

"I do so every night, sir."

"Good-night!"

Paul heard the agent sobbing as he stole away; but when he knocked at Mrs. Everett's door she answered petulantly, and at first she refused to rise. She had little self-denial; it would pain her to enter a dying chamber; and she would have left Wait to perish, had not some strange pa.s.sage from the romance entered her head of dead folk, with secrets on their minds, haunting the living. It would be very terrible to be haunted, and the old woman was frightened into obedience. When she returned her mind was disquieted, and she made Paul stay in her room to compose her with cheerful talk. Finally she fell asleep, and he hastened to the agent's chamber. It was very dark within, and he waited a moment that the other might recognize him. Wait seemed to be in deep slumber, though Paul could not hear him breathe; but as the lad ventured to place his head upon the quilt, it encountered a hand so cold and hard that it seemed to be marble. Paul knew that he need no longer remember his enemy in his prayers.

What transpired between his mistress and her agent at this dying interview Paul could not surmise, but he believed that it concerned himself. He perceived that Mrs. Everett treated him more considerately afterward; and many times, as he looked up from a long silence, he found her regarding him inquisitively. She asked him strange questions once, bearing upon his early life, and he was almost encouraged to reveal the secret of his birth; but she seemed to divine his purpose, and changed the theme. Something troubled her, he knew; and when he applied himself to conciliate and cheer her, at those moments she suffered most. Had she loved the stern, ambitious man whose closed chamber still chilled her mansion? Was it because she was childless, and travelling graveward? Or did she cherish a mother's feeling for Paul, and wish that he was of her race, and worthy to be her son?

Toward each of these theories he inclined, favoring the last, and finally he concluded that she did not love, but feared him. He had grown tall and manly. An individual beauty, rather of mind than of face, developed in him, and his mistress had been prodigal of favors, so that his dress and ornaments corresponded with his person. He might have ruled, rather than served in her dwelling; but content with the recognition of his equality, he maintained the same modest guise, and his mistress felt an uneasy pride in his promotion. One day he found her weeping, and when he spoke she answered bitterly:

"Paul, you have ceased to love me; you are ungrateful; you wish to be free--you would leave me!"