The engagement I made with Harry that Monday afternoon had Dr. Borrow's concurrence. He even expressed a willingness to assist at our readings. The order of our day was this:—In the early morning we had our walk,—Harry and I. Coming back, we always went round by Keith's Pine. We were sure to find the Doctor seated on the bench, which had been left there since the last Sunday, microscope in hand and flower-press beside him. Then all to the house, where we arrived with an exactitude which caused the Doctor, whose first glance on entering was at the clock, to seat himself at the table in a glow of self-approval sufficient to warm all present into a little innocent elation.After breakfast we separated,—Harry walking off to take my place with Karl and Fritz, the Doctor going to his flowers, and I to my writing. We all met again at an appointed time and place for an excursion together. We carried our dinner with us; or, if we were not going very far, had it left at some pleasant spot, where we found it on our way home. After dinner I read, and then we had an hour or so of discussion and criticism.
I have given you the readings of two days. I shall try to copy the rest for you in the course of the week. Copying is work; I cannot do any this morning; and then I have still other things remaining to me from those days which I have not yet shared with you.
On Tuesday, the ninth, the first day of the new arrangement, Harry went away as soon as breakfast was over. The Doctor rose, as if going to his room, hesitated, and sat down again. I saw that he had something to say to me, and waited. My thoughts went back to the conversation of the afternoon before. Had I really displeased him? He spoke seriously, but very kindly.
"Harry has no need of incitement in the direction of"——
He stopped, as if for a word which should be true at once to his pride and his disapprobation. He did not find it, and began over again:—
"It is the office of friendship to restrain even from generous error. It is possible to err on the side of too great disinterestedness. A man such as Harry will be, while living for himself,—living nobly and wisely as he must live,—is living for others; he has no need to become a crusader."
"Harry will be what he was meant to be; you would not have him force himself to become anything else?"
"No, I would not," the Doctor answered confidently, yet with a little sadness in his voice. "It almost seems," he added, a moment after, "that the qualities which fit a man for a higher sphere are incompatible with his success in this."
"Not, perhaps, with what Harry would call success."
"I am ambitious for him; I own it. And so are you, though you do not own it. You want to see him recognized for what he is."
Certainly it is natural to wish that others should love what we love, should admire what we admire. Our desire of sympathy, our regard for justice, both ask it. But we must have trust.
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,Nor in the glistering foilSet off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies;But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyesAnd perfect witness of all-judging Jove."
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,Nor in the glistering foilSet off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies;But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyesAnd perfect witness of all-judging Jove."
I could not answer the Doctor immediately."Whatever course Harry may take," I said at last, "his power will make itself felt. He will disappoint neither of us."
"He has never given me a disappointment yet; though I prepare myself for one, whenever he begins anything new. We have no right to expect everything of one; but, whatever he is doing, it seems as if that was what he was most meant to do."
"It is in part his simple-mindedness, his freedom from the disturbing influence of self-love, which gives him this security of success in what he undertakes. You have said that Harry was one to take his own path. I will trust him to find it and hold to it."
"I must come to that," answered the Doctor, whose anxiety had gradually dissipated itself. "I don't know why I should hope to guide him now, if I could not when he was seven years old. On the infantile scale his characteristics were then just what they are now, and one of them certainly always was to have a way of his own.
"'The hero's blood is not to be controlled;In childhood even 'tis manly masterful.'
"'The hero's blood is not to be controlled;In childhood even 'tis manly masterful.'
"And yet he was always so tender of others' feelings, so ready to give up his pleasure for theirs, you might almost have thought him of too yielding a nature, unless you had seen him tried on some point where he found it worth while to be resolved."
The Doctor sat silent a little while, held by pleasant thoughts, and then began again:—
"There comes back to me now an earlier recollection of him than any I have given you. I witnessed once a contest of will between him and a person who was put over the nursery for a time in the absence of its regular head, and who was not thoroughly versed in the laws and customs of the realm she was to administer. Harry could not have been much more than two, I think, for he had hardly yet English enough for his little needs. He was inflexible on his side; the poor woman at first positive and then plaintive. She had recourse to the usually unfailing appeal,—'But, Harry, do you not want me to love you?' He held back the tears that were pressing to his eyes,—'I want all the peoples to love me.' But he did not give way, for he was in the right.
"Candor, however, obliges me to add that he did not always give way when he was in the wrong. Oh, Iwasin the right sometimes."—The Doctor laughed good-humoredly in answer to my involuntary smile.—"You may believe it, for Harry has admitted it himself later. Our debates were not always fruitless. I have known him come to me, three months, six months, after a discussion in which we had taken opposite sides, and say,—'I see now that you knew better about that than I did. I was mistaken.'On the other hand, some of his little sayings have worked on me with time, if not to the modification of my opinions, at least to that of my conduct, and sometimes in a way surprising to myself. For the rest, I liked to have him hold his ground well, and was just as content, when he did make a concession, that it was made out of deference, not to me, but to truth.
"I don't know whose opinion was authority with him. He did not respect even the wisdom of the world's ages as condensed in its proverbs, but coolly subjected them to the test of his uncompromising reason. I remember somebody's citing to him one day, 'A penny saved is a penny earned.' He considered it, and then rejected it decisively, proposing as a substitute,—'A penny spent is a penny saved.' I suppose that little word of his has spent me many a penny I might have saved,—but I don't know that I am the poorer.
"Another of his childish sayings passed into a by-word in the household. He was filling with apples for her grandchildren the tin kettle of an old family pensioner, whose eyes counted the rich, red spoil, as it rolled in. 'Enough!' says the conscientious gardener, who is looking on. 'Enough!' echoes the modest beneficiary. 'Enough is not enough!' gives sentence the little autocrat, and heaps the measure. I thought of this as he waswalking beside me, grave and silent, over Harvey's well-ordered plantation. 'The child is father of the man.'"
The time was past when the Doctor had scruples in talking of Harry or I in asking. He forgot his flowers, and I my writing. Nothing more interesting to me than real stories of childhood. As a means of instruction, it seems to me the study of the early years of the human being has been strangely neglected by the wise. I listened well, then, whenever, after one of his contemplative pauses, the Doctor began again with a new "I remember."
"I remember being in the garden with him once when a barefooted boy came in and asked for shoes. Harry ran off, and presently reappeared with a fine, shining pair, evidently taken on his own judgment. A woman, who had been looking from the window, came hurrying out, and arrived in time to see the shoes walking out of the gate on strange feet. 'Why, Harry, those were perfectly good shoes!' 'I should not have given them to him, if they had not been good,' the child answered, tranquilly. The poor woman was posed. As for me, I ignored the whole affair, that I might not be obliged to commit myself. But I thought internally that we should not have had the saying, 'Cold as charity,' current in our Christian world, if all its neighborly love had been of the type of Harry's.
"You are not to suppose that Harry and I were always at variance. Our skirmishing was our amusement. He was teachable, very teachable,—and more and more as he grew older. Some of the happiest hours I have to look back upon were passed with him by my side, his reverent and earnest look showing how devoutly, with what serious joy, his young soul welcomed its first conscious perceptions of the laws of Nature, the sacred truths of Science."
By the Riverside.
The morning called me out imperatively. It is almost like that Sunday morning on which I took my first early walk with Harry. I fell into the same path we followed then. This path led us to the Dohuta. We walked slowly along its fringed bank, as I have been walking along it now, and stopped here where the river makes a little bend round a just perceptible rising graced by three ilex-trees. We found ourselves here more than once afterwards. We never thought beforehand what way we should take; we could not go amiss, where we went together.
The river holds its calm flow as when Harry was beside it with me. Here are the trees whose vigorous growth he praised, their thorny foliage glittering in the new sunlight as it glittered then.These associates of that pleasant time, renewing their impressions, awaken more and more vividly those of the dearer companionship.
It is strange the faithfulness with which the seemingly indifferent objects about us keep for us the record of hours that they have witnessed, rendering up our own past to us in a completeness in which our memory would not have reproduced it but for the suggestions of these unchosen confidants. Without displacing the familiar scene, distant and far other landscapes rise before me, visions that Harry Dudley called up for me here; to all the clear, fresh sounds of the early morning join themselves again our asking and replying voices.
I knew at once when a place had a particular interest for Harry, by the tone in which he pronounced the name. Fiesole was always a beautiful word for me, but how beautiful now that I must hear in it his affectionate accent! Volterra has a charm which it does not owe to its dim antiquity, or owes to it as revivified by him. His strong sympathy, embracing the remoter and the near, makes the past as actual to him as the present, and both alike poetic.
Harry's researches have not been carried on as a pastime, or even as a pursuit, but as a true study, a part of his preparation for a serviceable life. Itis the history of humanity that he explores, and he reads it more willingly in its achievements than in its failures. The remains of the early art of Etruria, its grand works of utility, give evidence of the immemorial existence of a true civilization upon that favored soil, the Italy of Italy.
Among the retributions of time—as just in its compensations as in its revenges—there is hardly one more remarkable than this which is rendering justice to the old Etruscans, awakening the world to a long unacknowledged debt. Their annals have been destroyed, their literature has perished, their very language has passed away; but their life wrote itself on the country for whose health, fertility, and beauty they invented and labored,—wrote itself in characters so strong that the wear of the long ages has not effaced them. This original civilization has never been expelled from the scene of its ancient reign. Through all changes, under all oppressions, amid all violences, it has held itself in life,—has found means to assert and reassert its beneficent rights. Its very enemies have owed to it that they have been able to blend with their false glory some share of a more honorable fame. In its early seats it has never left itself long without a witness; but still some new gift to the world, in letters, in art, or in science, has given proof of its yet unexhausted resources.
As freedom is older than despotism, so civilization is older than barbarism. Man, made in the image of God, was made loving, loyal, beneficently creative.
No country except his own is nearer to Harry's heart than Italy,—not even France, though it is almost a second home to him; but perhaps there cannot be that passion in our love for the prosperous. For me, too, Italy has always stood alone;—sacred in her triple royalty of beauty, genius, and sorrow.
Harry has ties of his own to Italy, and of those which endear most closely. It was the scene of his first great grief,—as yet his only one. The firm, devout expression which his face took, whenever he spoke of his brother, showed that the early departure of the friend with whom he had hoped to walk hand in hand through life had not saddened or discouraged him,—had only left with him a sense of double obligation.
Harry does not speak of himself uninvited; but he was ready to do so, as simply and frankly as of anything else, when I drew him to it. He has his day-dreams like other young men, and found a true youthful delight in sharing them. I could not but observe that into his plans for the future—apart from the little home, vaguely, yet tenderly sketched, for which a place was supposed in them—his ownadvantage entered only inasmuch as they provided him a sphere of beneficent activity.
The one great duty of our time may oblige him to postpone all designs which have not its fulfilment for their immediate object. But only to postpone, I will hope. For why should we suppose that the struggle with slavery is to last through the life of the present generation? May we not believe that the time may come, even in our day, when we shall only have to build and to plant, no longer to overthrow and uproot?
Karl and Fritz have found me out here. They came to propose to me that we should have our service this morning in the open air, at the same place where we had it Sunday before last. They had already been at the house, and had obtained my mother's assent. Karl was the spokesman, as usual; but he stopped at the end of every sentence and looked for his brother's concurrence.
I have remarked a change in Karl lately. He has the advantage of Fritz, not only in years, but in capacity and energy. He has always been a good brother; but his superiority has been fully taken for granted between them, and all its rights asserted and admitted without a struggle. Within a short time, however, his character has matured rapidly. He has shown greater consideration forFritz, and in general more sympathy with what is weaker or softer or humbler than himself. I had observed a greater thoughtfulness in him before Harry Dudley's visit here. But that short intercourse has extended his view in many directions. The entire absence of assumption, where there was so incontestable a superiority, could not but affect him profoundly. And then Harry, although Karl's strength and cleverness made him a very satisfactory work-fellow, took a great interest in Fritz, in whom he discovered fine perceptions. He tried to draw him out of his reserve, and to give him pleasure by making him feel he could contribute to that of others. Some latent talents, which the shy boy had cultivated unnoticed, brought him into a new importance. He knows the habits of all our birds, and has a marvellous familiarity with insects. His observations on their modes of life had been so exact, that Doctor Borrow, in questioning him, had almost a tone of deference. He was able to render signal service to the Doctor, too, by discovering for him, from description, tiny plants hard to find when out of bloom. Hans, who is fondest of the son that never rivalled him, exulted greatly in this sudden distinction. Karl took a generous pleasure in it; and, under the double influence of increased respect from without and enhanced self-esteem, Fritz's diffident powers are warming out wonderfully.
The boys thanked me very gratefully, as if I had done them a real favor, when I gave my consent to their plan; though I do not know why they should not suppose it as agreeable to me as to themselves.
Evening.
When I went home to breakfast this morning, I found the chairs already gone, except the great arm-chair. Nobody was expected to-day of sufficient dignity to occupy it. I was unwilling to draw it up to the table for myself. I believe I should have taken my breakfast standing, if it had not been that this would have called for explanation. How little I thought, when the Doctor first took his place among us, that a time would come when I should not wish to have his seat filled by any one else! I did not know how much I cared for him, until after he was gone; I do not think I knew it fully until this morning, when I came in and saw that solitary, empty chair. Then it came over me with a pang that he would never lay down the law to me from it again,—never would lean towards me sideways over its arm, to tell me, with moderated tone and softened look, little childish stories of his foster-son.
Karl stayed behind to-day, instead of Tabitha, to warn those who arrived of the place of meeting. He came in with the Lintons, who were late,—thefault of their poor old mule, or rather his misfortune. He fell down, and so broke and otherwise deranged his ingenious harness that the family were obliged to re-manufacture it on the road.
My mother did a courageous thing this morning. When the Hanthams came, she addressed them by name, and, calling the daughter up to her, took her hand and said some kind words to her. I thought they would be thrown away on her, but they were not. Her look to-day had in it less of purpose and more of sympathy. The Blantys were not here. I cannot understand why, in such fine weather. We missed them very much. But all the rest of those who are most to be desired came. We had a happy and united little assemblage.
I read Jeremy Taylor's second sermon on the "Return of Prayers." I am sure that we all heard and felt together, and were left with softened and more trustful hearts; yet doubtless each took away his own peculiar lesson or solace, according to his separate need. What has remained with me is a quickened sense of the Divine munificence, which so often grants us more and better than we pray for. "We beg for a removal of a present sadness, and God gives us that which makes us able to bear twenty sadnesses."
After the services were over, Franket came up and handed me a letter,—a most unexpected anda most welcome one. If I had not seen Harry's writing before, I think I should have known his strong, frank hand. I held the letter up before my mother, and her face brightened with recognition. Harry writes in fine spirits. The Doctor has been very successful. And they met Shaler again. "Perhaps he will be one of us on the nineteenth." That is good news indeed. Altogether this has been a very happy Sunday.
Davis Barton stayed with us until four o'clock, and then I rode part of the way home with him. This boy is becoming of importance to me; he is bringing a new interest into my life. This morning, after I had read Harry's letter aloud, and after my mother had read it over again to herself, I gave it to him to read. His eyes sparkled, and he cast up to me a quick glance of gratitude; for he felt, as I meant he should, that this was a mode of admitting him to full fellowship. I saw, as he walked off before us to the house, that he was a little taller already with the sense of it. Just before we arrived, however, he was overtaken by a sudden humiliation. Looking round at me, who, with Fritz, was carrying my mother's couch, the poor child espied Karl and Tabitha following, both loaded with chairs. He stood for an instant thoroughly shame-stricken, and then darted by us without lifting his eyes. He made so many and suchrapid journeys, that he brought back more chairs than anybody, after all. When dinner was over, I gave Davis some engravings to look at, meaning to spend an hour in writing to you. I had taken out my portfolio, but had not yet begun to write, when I found him standing beside me, looking up at me with a pretty, blushing smile, which asked me to ask him what he wanted. He wanted me to teach him.—"What do you want to learn?"—"Whatever I ought to know."—Whatever I am able to teach, then, I will teach him, and perhaps more; for, in thinking out what he ought to know, I shall discover what I ought to know myself. It was soon settled. He is to come over three times a week, very early in the morning. I shall give him an hour before breakfast, and another in the course of the day. I shall have an opportunity of testing some of the theories I have talked over with Harry. Davis has a good mother, and has been pretty well taught, and, what is more important, very well trained, up to this time. I am looking forward to a busier and more useful summer than I have known for a long while.
Monday, April 15, 1844.
"When are we going to see the Shaler plantation?" the Doctor asked me abruptly one morning at breakfast. "We passed it by on our way here, knowing that we should have more pleasure in going over it with you."
I had been over it only once since Shaler left it, and that once was with himself on one of his rare visits. Franket's house is near the great gates. It was a porter's lodge in the old time, and is now a sort of post-office,—Franket having added to his other avocations the charge of going once a week to Tenpinville with letters intrusted to him, and bringing back those he is empowered to receive. When I go there to ask for letters or to leave them, no old associations are roused, for I did not use the main entrance formerly. I had a key to a little gate which opens on a bridle-path through the oak-wood. I entered the grounds through this gate when I was last there with Shaler, and I had pleased myself with the thought, that, when I entered them by it again, it would be again with him, on that happy return to which he is always looking forward.
But it seemed no violation of my compact withmyself to unlock this gate for Harry, to walk with him through these grounds sacred to him as to me; for I knew that in his thought, as in mine, these untenanted lands were not so much deserted as dedicated. It was right that these places should know him. And what pleasure hereafter to talk of him as having been there,—to point out to Shaler the trees he had distinguished, the views that had delighted him! But I wished this visit to be the last we should make together. My delay in proposing it had, perhaps, made Harry attribute to me a secret reluctance. After the first eager expression of his desire to see the early home of his friend and mine, when we talked of Shaler together that pleasant afternoon on Prospect Hill, he did not mention the subject again. The Doctor did not second him then; but I knew he felt as much curiosity as Harry did interest, before his impatience broke bounds as I have told you.
"Let us go on Thursday, if you will," I answered.
Harry understood me.—"The right day!"
"Any day is the right one for me," said the Doctor, who would have named an earlier one, perhaps, if I had asked him to choose.
On Thursday, then, the last day but one of their visit here, I was their guide over "The Farms."
Two brothers settled at Metapora side by side.Their two plantations were carried on as one, under the direction of the younger brother, Colonel Shaler, the father of my friend. The brothers talked together of "The Farms"; their people took up the name; it gradually became the accepted one in the neighborhood, and has maintained itself, although the two places, having both been inherited by Charles Shaler, are now really one estate.
I opened the little gate for the Doctor and Harry to pass in, and followed them along the wood-path. All was the same as formerly; unkindly the same, it seemed.
"You have not been missed," said the Doctor, entering into my feeling, though not quite sympathizing with it. "You have not been missed, and you are not recognized. The birds are not jubilant because you have come back. The wood was as resonant before your key turned in the lock." He stopped and looked about him at the grand old oaks. "The man who grew up under these trees, and calls them his, may well long for them, but they will wait very patiently for his return. We could not spare trees and birds, but they can do without us well enough. Strange the place of man on his earth! Everything is necessary to him, and he is necessary to nothing."
Shaler had left the key of his house with me. There could be no indiscretion in introducing suchguests into it. We went first into the dining-room. Everything was as it used to be, except that the family portraits had been taken away. The cords to which they had been attached still hung from the hooks, ready to receive them again. The large oval table kept its place in the middle of the room. What pleasant hours I had had in that room, at that table!
Colonel Shaler was our first friend in this part of the world. My father and he were distantly related, and had had a week's acquaintance at the house of a common friend when my father was a very young man and the Colonel a middle-aged one. On the third day after our arrival here, my father somewhat nervously put into my hand a note which had taken some time to write, and asked me to find the way with it to Colonel Shaler's plantation, which lay somewhere within ten miles of us in a southeasterly direction. As I was to go on horseback, I liked the adventure very much, and undertook it heartily. I was first made conscious that it had a shady side, when I found myself in the hall of the great, strange house, waiting to be ushered into the presence of its master.
"Hallo!" exclaimed a voice beside and far above me, as I stood with eyes fixed on the ground, expecting that serious moment of entrance. "You are Ned Colvil's son!" And my hand was lostin a capacious clasp, well proportioned to the heart it spoke for. I looked up to see a massive head, shaggy with crisp curls of grizzled hair, and to meet quick, bright blue eyes, that told of an active spirit animating the heavy frame. The Colonel did not expect me to speak. "We are to be neighbors! Good news! Your horse cannot go back at once, and I cannot wait. You must take another for to-day, and we will send yours home to you to-morrow."
Colonel Shaler's stout gray was soon led round, and presently followed, for me, a light-made, graceful black, the prettiest horse I had ever yet mounted. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it must be his son's, and visions of friendship already floated before me.
"One of Charles's," said the Colonel; "he is out on the other. I wish he was here to go with us, but we cannot wait."
I did not keep the Doctor and Harry long in the house. It was the plantation they wanted to see. We spent several hours in walking over it. I tried to do justice, not only to the plans and works of my friend, but to his father's schemes of agricultural improvement, and also to the very different labors of his uncle, Dr. George Shaler, who, utterly abstracted from matters of immediate utility, took the beautiful and the future under his affectionate protection. Through his vigilance and pertinacity,trees were felled, spared, and planted, with a judgment rare anywhere, singular here. If he gave into some follies, such as grottos, mimic ruins, and surprises, after the Italian fashion, even these are becoming respectable through time. They are very innocent monuments; for their construction gave as much delight to those who labored as to him who planned, and the completed work was not less their pride than his. His artificial mounds, which, while they were piling, were the jest of the wider neighborhood,—as the good old man himself has often told me,—now, covered with thrifty trees, skilfully set, are a legacy which it was, perhaps, worth the devotion of his modest, earnest life to bequeath.
Charles Shaler has piously spared all his uncle's works,—respecting the whimsical, as well as cherishing the excellent.
We went last to the quarters of the work-people. A few of the cabins were left standing. Most of them had been carried off piecemeal, probably to build or repair the cabins of other plantations. Those that remained seemed to have been protected by the strength and beauty of the vines in which they were embowered. I was glad to find still unmolested one which had an interest for me. It had been the home of an old man who used to be very kind to me. I lifted the latch and was opening the door, when I became aware of a movement inside, as of some one hastily and stealthily putting himself out of sight. If this was so, the purpose was instantly changed; for a firm step came forward, and the door was pulled open by a strong hand. I stepped back out of the little porch, and addressed some words to the Doctor, to make known that I was not alone; but the man followed me out, and saluted me and my companions respectfully and frankly. I offered him my hand, for he was an old acquaintance.
"Senator, why are you here?"
"Because I ought to be here."
"There is danger."
He did not reply, but the kindling of his look showed that he saw in danger only a challenge to his powers. He saluted us again, and walking away, with a slow, even step, disappeared in a thicket which shrouded one of Dr. George's favorite grottos.
"The true Othello, after all!" exclaimed the Doctor, when we turned to each other again, after watching until we were sure that we had seen the last of this apparition. "Of royal siege, assuredly!"
"He claims to be, or rather it is claimed for him," I answered. "His mother was a native African, a king's daughter, those who came with her said; and she bore, by all accounts, the stamp of primitive royalty as clearly impressed as her son does. Her title was never questioned either in the cabin or at the great house. She was a slave on the Westlake plantation,—but only for a few weeks, as I have heard."
"Did you ever see her?" the Doctor asked.
"No, she died long ago; but her story is still told on the plantation and in the neighborhood. Old Westlake bought her with four others, all native Africans, at Perara. The rest throve and made themselves at home. She, stately and still, endured until she had received her son into the world, and then, having consigned him to a foster-mother of her choice, passed tranquilly out of it. During her short abode on the plantation, she was an object of general homage, and when she died, the purple descended to her son."
"And the son has his story?" said the Doctor.
"A short one."
The Doctor and Harry both turned to me with expectation. They knew the Westlake plantation and its master; but you do not. If Senator's story has not the interest for you that it had for them, that must be the reason.
The prestige of rank was the only inheritance of the little foreign orphan. The very name his mother gave him, and which she impressed, by frequent, though faint repetition, upon those about her, was lost in the surprise of her sudden departure. The good souls to whom it had been committed strove faithfully to recover it. They were sure it was no proper Christian name, but a title of dignity; and, comparing their recollections of the sound, and their intuitions of the meaning, agreed among themselves that its nearest equivalent must be "Senator."
Senator was born on Christmas day; and this was regarded as all the greater distinction that it had been enjoyed before him by the young master,—the then heir and now owner, our present Westlake.
As he grew up, he took, as of course, and held, the place assigned to him in advance. At the age of sixteen he was already in authority over men, and exercised it with an ease and acceptance which proved that he was obeyed as instinctively as he commanded.
I do not know a prouder man than Westlake, or one more saturated with the prejudice of race. But he is not exempt from the laws which govern human intercourse. He came under the spell of Senator's cool self-reliance and unhesitating will. The petted slave did not directly or palpably misuse his power; yet his demeanor occasioned a secret dissatisfaction. He gave to his master's interests the whole force ofhis remarkable abilities, but it was not clear that he duly appreciated the indulgence which permitted him to exercise them untrammelled. He had never undergone punishment,—had hardly even met rebuke; but it was more than suspected that he attributed his immunities to his own merits. Westlake valued him for his high spirit as much as for his capacity; but should not Senator be very sensible to such magnanimity? This spirit had never been broken by fear; ought it not all the more to bend itself in love and gratitude?
Poor Westlake is very fond of gratitude. He enjoys it even from the most worthless and neglected of his slaves,—enjoys it even when it is prospective and conditional, and when he has the best reasons for knowing that the implied stipulations are not to be fulfilled. To Senator's gratitude he felt he had so entire a claim that he could not but believe in its existence. He tried to see in its very silence only a proof of its depth. But, if not necessary to his own feelings, some outward expression was important to his dignity in the eyes of others. He exerted himself, therefore, by gracious observations made in the presence of guests or before the assembled people on holidays, to afford Senator an opportunity at once of testifying to his master's liberality and of displaying the eloquence which was one of the chief glories of the plantation.These condescending efforts, constantly baffled by the self-possessed barbarian, were perpetually renewed.
One Christmas morning the common flood of adulation had been poured out more profusely than usual, and Westlake had quaffed it with more than usual satisfaction. His outlay for the festival had been truly liberal, and he felt that the quality of the entertainment guarantied that of the thanks. Besides the general benevolence of the dinner,—already arranged on long, low tables set about the lawn, to be enjoyed in anticipation by their devouring eyes,—special gifts were bestowed on the most deserving or the most favored. Senator was greatly distinguished, but took his assigned portion in silence; and Westlake felt, through every tingling nerve, that the attentive crowd had seen, as he had, that it was received as a tribute rather than as a favor. He had hitherto covered his defeats with the jolly laugh that seemed meant at once to apologize for his servant's eccentricity and to forgive it. But now he had made too sure of triumph; surprise and pain hurried him out of himself.
"What is it now?" he cried, fiercely, raising his clenched fist against the impassive offender.
"I have not spoken, Master."
"Speak, then! It is time. I have done more for you than for all the rest, and not a word!"
"We have done more for you than you for us all. What you give us we first give you."
It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen. The assembly scattered like a flock of frightened sheep.
I had this from Westlake himself. He came straight over to me. Not that Westlake and I are friends. There had never been any intimacy between us. There never has been any, unless for those few hours that day.
Senator had been secured. His sentence had been announced. It was banishment. Those who were nearest the master's confidence had leave to add the terrible name—New Orleans.
Senator had neither mother nor wife. He was nineteen, the age of enterprise and confidence. Perhaps, after all, it was the master on whom the doom would fall most heavily, I thought, while Westlake was making his recital. He was almost pale; his heavy features were sharpened; his firm, round cheeks were flaccid and sunken; his voice was hoarse and tremulous. Surely, that birthday might count for ten.
"I cannot overlook it," he groaned out. "You know that yourself, Colvil. I cannot forgive it. It would be against my duty, and—— Any way, I cannot. But—you may think it strange—but I am not angry. I was, but I am not now. I cannot bear to know him locked up there in the corn-barn,shackled and chained, and thinking all the time that it is I who have done it to him!"
Westlake had not seen the man since his imprisonment, and had come over to ask me to be present at the first interview. I declined positively.
"I do not believe," I said, "that he is to be reasoned out of his opinions. Certainly he will not be reasoned out of them by me. If anything could persuade a nature like his to submission, it would be the indulgent course you have till now pursued with him. If that has failed, no means within your reach will succeed."
"You do not understand me. I do not want you to reason with him, or to persuade him to anything. I only ask you to be witness to what I am going to say to him, that he may believe me,—that he may not himself thwart me in my plans."
"In what plans?"
"Plans that you will agree to, and that you will help me in, I hope,—but which I cannot trust to any one but you, nor to you except to have your help. If you will come with me, you shall know them; if not, I must take my chance, and he must take his."
I did not put much faith in Westlake's plans; but the thought of Senator chained and caged drew me to his prison. There might be nothing for me to do there; but, since I was called, I would go.
By the time my horse was saddled, Westlake had recovered his voice, and, in part, his color. This birthday would not count for more than five. He plucked up still more on the road; but when we came within a mile of his place, his trouble began to work on him again. He would have lengthened that last mile, but could not much. His horse snuffed home, and mine a near hospitality. Our entrance sustained the master's dignity handsomely. There was no misgiving or relenting to be construed out of that spirited trot.
We went together to the corn-barn. Senator was extended on the floor at the farther end of the room. He lifted his head when we entered, and then, as if compelled by an instinctive courtesy, rose to his fettered feet. I saw at once that there had been no more harshness than was needful for security; it even seemed that this had not been very anxiously provided for. The slender shackles would be no more than withes of the Philistines to such a Samson. A chain, indeed, fastened to a strong staple in the floor, passed to a ring in an iron belt about his waist; but it was long enough to allow him considerable liberty of movement. His hands were free. Perhaps Westlake had half expected to find the room empty. He stopped, a little startled, when he heard the first clank of the chain, and watched his prisoner as he slowly lifted himselffrom the ground and rose to his full height. Then, recollecting himself, he went forward. One ignorant of what had gone before might have mistaken between the culprit and the judge.
"Senator," Westlake began, in a voice whose faltering he could not control, "I have been a kind master to you."
No answer.
"You allow that?"
Senator was inflexible.
"I would never have sent you away of my own free will. This is your doing, not mine. You cannotwantto go!" This in indignant surprise,—for something like a smile had relaxed the features of the imperious slave.
Senator spoke.
"This is my home, as it is yours. I was born here, as you were. This land is dear to me as it is to you; dearer,—for I have given my labor to it, and you never have. In return, I have had a support, and the exercise of my strength and my skill. This has been enough for me until now. But I am a man. I look round and see how other men live. I want somebody else to do for: not you, but somebody that could not do without me."
"Things might have gone differently," Westlake began, recovering his self-complacency, as visions, doubtless, of the fine wedding he would have givenSenator, of the fine names he would have bestowed upon his children, rose before his fancy. "Things might have gone differently, if you had been"——
"If I had been what I am not," answered Senator, becoming impatient as Westlake relapsed into pomposity. "It is enough, Master. We have done with each other, and we both know it. Let me go."
"I will let you go,"—Westlake spoke now with real dignity,—"but not as you think. If I would have you remember what I have been to you, it is for your own sake, not for mine. I am used to ingratitude; I do not complain of yours. I have never sold a servant left me by my father, and I do not mean to begin with you. You shall not drive me to it. You are to go, and forever, but by your own road. I will set you on it myself. Is there any one in the neighborhood you can trust? We shall need help."
A doubtful smile passed over Senator's face.
"There is no one, then? Think! no one?"
"I am not so unhappy. There are those whom I trust."
"Then I will trust them. Tell me who they are and where they are. And quick! This news will be everywhere soon. To-morrow morning the neighbors will be coming in. What is done must be done to-night. Senator, do not ruin yourself!I mean right by you. Here is Mr. Colvil to witness to what I say. Is this mad obstinacy only? or do youdarenot to trust yourself to me?"
"I do not trust to you those who trust me."
"Do you suppose I would give up those whose aid I have asked?"
"You would know where to find them when they give aid you have not asked."
"Colvil, speak to him! If he goes off by himself, I cannot hide it long. The country will be roused. I shall have to hunt him down myself. My honor will be at stake. I shall have to do it!"
The obdurate slave studied his master's features with curiosity mingled with triumph.
"Help me, Colvil! Help him! Tell him to listen to my plan and join in it! The useful time is passing!"
"Senator," I said at last, being so adjured, "your master means you well. He is not free to set you free,—you know it. You have done work for him,—good and faithful work; but never yet have you done him a pleasure, and he has intended you a good many. This is your last chance. Gratify him for once!"
Senator looked again, and saw, through the intent and wistful eyes, the poor, imploring soul within, which, hurried unconsenting towards crime, clung desperately to his rescue as its own. He comprehended that here was no tyrant, but a wretched victim of tyranny. A laugh, deep, reluctant, uncontrollable, no mirth in it, yet a certain bitter irony, and Senator had recovered his natural bearing, self-possessed and authoritative; he spoke in his own voice of composed decision.
"What is the plan, Master?"
Westlake told it eagerly. He was to save his authority with his people and his reputation with his neighbors by selling the rebellious servant,—that is to say, by pretending to sell him. Senator was to entitle himself to a commutation of his sentence into simple banishment by lending himself to the pious fraud and acting his part in it becomingly. Westlake had been so long accustomed to smooth his path of life by open subterfuges and falsehoods whose only guilt was in intention, that he had formed a very high opinion of his own address, and a very low one of the penetration of the rest of the world. As he proceeded with the details of his plot, childishly ingenious and childishly transparent, Senator listened, at first with attention, then with impatience, and at last not at all. When Westlake stopped to take breath, he interposed.
"Now hear me. Order the long wagon out, with the roans. Have me handcuffed and fastened down in it. Tell those whom you trust that you are taking me to Goosefield."
"To Goosefield?"
"To Dick Norman."
"Dick Norman! He help you! He is not an ——?"
Westlake could not bring himself to associate the word abolitionist with a man who had dined with him three days before.
"He is a slave-trader."
The blood, which had rushed furiously to the proud planter's cheeks, left them with a sudden revulsion. To be taken in by a disguised fanatic might happen to any man too honorable to be suspicious. He could have forgiven himself. But to have held a slave-trader by the hand! to have asked him to his table! Westlake knew that Senator never said anything that had to be taken back.
Richard Norman was a man of name and birth from old Virginia. Of easy fortune, so it was reported, still unmarried, he spent a great part of the year in travelling; and especially found pleasure in renewing old family ties with Virginian emigrants or their children in newer States. When he favored our neighborhood, he had his quarters at Goosefield, where he always took the same apartments in the house of a man, also Virginian by birth, who was said to be an old retainer of his family. Norman's father had been the fathers' friend of most of our principal planters. He waswelcome in almost every household for the sake of these old memories, and apparently for his own. He was well-looking, well-mannered, possessed of various information, ready with amusing anecdote. And yet all the time it was perfectly known to every slave on every plantation where he visited what Mr. Richard Norman was. It was perfectly known to every planter except Westlake, and possibly Harvey. I do not remember to have heard of him at Harvey's. Those who never sold their servants, those who never separated families, those who never parted very young children from their mothers, found Norman a resource in those cases of necessity which exempt from law.
The slaves talked of him among themselves familiarly, though fearfully. He was the central figure of many a dark history; the house at Goosefield was known to them as Dick Norman's Den. The masters held their knowledge separately, each bound to consider himself its sole depository. If, arriving at the house of a friend, soon after a visitation of Richard Norman, one missed a familiar hand at his bridle, a kind old face at the door, curiosity was discreet; it would have been very ill manners to ask whether it was Death or Goosefield.
"Dick Norman starts at midnight. He has been ready these three days. He only waited to eat his Christmas dinner at old Rasey's."
Westlake had pondered and understood. "Where shall I really take you?" he asked, despondingly.
"Leave me anywhere six or eight miles from here, and I will do for myself."
"Colvil, you will ride along beside?"
"No."
I find in myself such an inaptitude for simulation or artifice of any kind, that I do not believe it was intended I should serve my fellow-men by those means.
"No," repeated Senator,—"not if we are going to Goosefield."
"It is true," assented Westlake, sadly; "nobody would believe you were going with me there!"
I rode off without taking leave of Senator. I felt sure of seeing him again. I thought I knew where the aid he would seek was to be found. Mine was just the half-way house to it. He would not be afraid of compromising me, for his master himself had called me to be witness to their compact. Senator would have the deciding voice, as usual; and Westlake would be guided by him now the more readily that he himself would tend in the direction of his only confidant. When I had put up my horse, I went into the house only for a few moments to tell my mother what I had seen and what I was expecting.
I walked up and down between the gate and thebrook that evening,—I could not tell how long. I had time to become anxious,—time to invent disasters,—time to imagine encounters Westlake might have had on the way, with officious advisers, with self-proposed companions. I was disappointed more than once by distant wheels, which came nearer and nearer only to pass on, and farther and farther away, on the road which, crossing ours, winds round behind our place to Winker's Hollow. At last I caught sound of an approach which did not leave me an instant in uncertainty. This time, beyond mistake, it was the swift, steady tramp of Westlake's roans. As they entered our sandy lane, their pace slackened to a slow trot, and then to a walk. Westlake was on the lookout for me. I went into the middle of the road. He saw me; I heard him utter an exclamation of relief.
Senator, who had been stretched out on the bottom of the wagon, sat up when the horses stopped, took the manacles from his wrists and threw them down on the straw. With his master's help, he soon disencumbered himself of his fetters, and sprang lightly to the ground. Westlake followed, and the two stood there in the starlight confronting each other for the last time.
The face of the banished man was inscrutable. His master's worked painfully. This boy, born on his own twenty-first birthday, had been assigned tohim, not only by his father's gift, but also, so it seemed, by destiny itself. He had had property in him; he had had pride in him; he had looked for a life-long devotion from him. And now, in one moment, all was to be over between them forever. The scene could not be prolonged. There was danger in every instant of delay.
"Westlake, he must go."
"He must go," Westlake repeated, but hesitatingly. And then, with a sudden impulse, he put out his hand to his forgiven, even if unrepentant, servant.
The movement was not met.
"No, Master; I will not wrong you by thanking you. This is not my debt." Senator raised towards heaven the coveted hand. "It is His who always pays."
Tuesday, April 16, 1844.
You can always tell what view of certain questions Harry Dudley will take. You have only to suppose them divested of all that prejudice or narrow interest may have encumbered them with, and look at them in the light of pure reason. One of the charms of your intercourse with Dr. Borrow is that it is full of surprises.
"I have a weakness for Westlake, I own it," said the Doctor, when we were seated at the tea-table after our return from The Two Farms. "If you had known him when he was young, as I did, Colvil! Such an easy, soft-hearted, dependent fellow! You couldn't respect him very greatly, perhaps; but like him you must! His son Reginald you ought to like. I do. And—what you will think more to the purpose—so does Harry."
Harry enforced this with a look.
Reginald Westlake is a handsome boy, rather sullen-looking, but with a face capable of beaming out into a beautiful smile. He is always distant in his manners to me, I do not know whether through shyness or dislike.
"He will make a man," Doctor Borrow went on; "if I am any judge of men, he will make a man."
The Doctor was interrupted by the brisk trot of a horse coming up the road. The rider did not stop at the gate; he cleared it. In another moment Westlake's jolly red face was looking down on us through the window. I might have found this arrival untimely; but turning to Harry to know how he took it, I saw in his eyes the "merry sparkle" the Doctor had told of, and divined that there was entertainment in a colloquy between the classmates.
Westlake made a sign with his hand that he was going to take his horse to the stable. I went out to him, Harry following. I welcomed him as cordially as I could, but his manner was reserved at first. We had not met in a way to be obliged to shake hands since Shaler went away. Westlake knew that I was greatly dissatisfied with him at that time. Not more so, though, than he was with himself, poor fellow! He was evidently sincerely glad to see Harry again, and Harry greeted both him and his horse very kindly. Westlake is always well-mounted, and deserves to be: he loves his horses both well and wisely. It is something to be thoroughly faithful in any one relation of life, and here Westlake is faultless. The horse he rode that afternoon—one raised and trained by himself—bore witness in high spirit and gentle temper to a tutor who had known how to respect a fiery andaffectionate nature. We all three gave our cares to the handsome creature, and this common interest put me quite in charity with my unexpected guest before we went into the house.
"This is a way to treat an old friend!" cried Westlake, as he gave his hand to the Doctor, who had come down the door-steps to meet him. "I cannot get two whole days from you, and then you come here and stay on as if you meant to live here!"
Tabitha watched my mother's reception of the new-comer, and, seeing it was hospitable, placed another chair at the table with alacrity. She knew he was out of favor here, but had never thought very hardly of him herself. Her race often judges us in our relations with itself more mildly than we can judge each other. In its strange simplicity, it seems to attribute to itself the part of the superior, and pities where it should resent.
"You cannot make it up to me, Borrow," Westlake went on, as soon as we had taken our places, "except by going right back with me to-night, or coming over to me to-morrow morning, and giving me as many days as you have given Colvil. Next week is the very time for you to be with us. I want you to see us at a gala season: next week is the great marrying and christening time of the year. It usually comes in June; but this year wehave it two months earlier, on account of Dr. Baskow's engagements. My little Fanny is to give all the names. She has a fine imagination."
"Westlake, I would do all but the impossible to show my sense of your kindness. For the rest, my appreciation of little Miss Fanny's inventive powers could not be heightened."
"Does that mean no? Borrow, I shall think in earnest that you have done me a wrong in giving so much time away from me, if these are really your last days in our parts."
"We will make it up to you. I will tell you how we will make it up to you. Come to us,—come to Massachusetts: I will give you there a week of my time for every day we have taken from you here. Come to us in June: that is the month in which New England is most itself. Come and renew old associations."
"You will never see me again, if you wait to see me there."
"What now? You used to like it."
"I am not so sure that I used to like it, when I think back upon it. At any rate, if you want to seeme, you must see me in my own place. I am not myself anywhere else. Equality, Borrow, equality is a very good thing for people who have never known anything better: may be a very good thing for people who can work themselves up out of it.But for a man who has grown up in the enjoyment of those privileges inappreciable by the vulgar, but which by the noble of every age have been regarded as the most real and the most valuable,—for such a man to sit, one at a long table, feeling himself nobody, and knowing all the time he has a right to be somebody! You can talk very easily about equality. You have never suffered from it. You have your learning and—— Well, you know how to talk. I have no learning, and I can't talk, except to particular friends. A man cannot ticket himself with his claims to estimation. Even Paris has too much equality for me. Flora liked it; she had her beauty and her toilet. But I! how I longed to be back here among my own simple, humble people! As soon as she was married, I made off home. In my own place, among my own people, I am, I might almost say, like a god, if I were not afraid of shocking you. And is not their fate in my hands? My frown is their night, my smile is their sunshine. The very ratification of their prayers to a Higher Power is intrusted to my discretion. Homage, Borrow, homage is the sweetest draught ever brought to mortal lips!"
"The homage of equals I suppose may be," said Dr. Borrow, modestly.
"You do not understand. How should you? Our modes of thinking and feeling are not to becomprehended by one brought up in a society so differently constituted. We avow ourselves an aristocracy."
"You do well: something of the inherent meaning of a word will always make itself felt.Aristocracy!It is vain to try to dispossess it of its own. The world will not be disenchanted of the beautiful word. Cover yourselves with its prestige. It will stand you in good stead with outsiders. But, between ourselves, Westlake, how is it behind the scenes? Can you look each other in the face and pronounce it? Or have you really persuaded yourselves down here that you are governed by your best men?"
"We do not use the word so pedantically down here. By an aristocracy we mean a community of gentlemen."
"And, pronouncing it so emphatically, you of course use the word gentleman in the sense it had when it had a sense. You bear in mind what the gentleman was pledged to, when to be called one was still a distinction. 'To eschew sloth,' 'to detest all pride and haughtiness,'—these were among his obligations: doubtless they are of those most strictly observed in your community. He was required 'to be true and just in word and dealing'; 'to be of an open and liberal mind.' You find these conditions fulfilled in Rasey, your leading man."
"Our leading man?"
"Certainly, your leading man. Whose lead did you follow, when you joined in worrying Charles Shaler out of your community of gentlemen?"
Westlake shrank. He was conscious that he had been going down hill ever since Shaler left the neighborhood. The hold that Rasey took of him then the crafty old man has never let go.
When Westlake's plantation came into his possession by the death of his father, he undertook to carry it on himself, and has been supposed to do so ever since. It was carried on well from the time that Senator was old enough to take charge; but with his disappearance disappeared all the credit and all the comfort his good management had secured to his master. Westlake needed some one to lean on, and Rasey was ready to take advantage of this necessity. His ascendancy was not established all at once. It is only during the last year that it has been perfected. In the beginning, he gave just a touch of advice and withdrew; showed himself again at discreet intervals, gradually shortened; but, all the time, was casting about his victim the singly almost impalpable threads of his deadly thraldom, until they had formed a coil which forbade even an effort after freedom. Westlake had put no overseer between himself and his people; but he had, without well knowing how it cameabout, set a very hard one over both. He found the indulgences on his plantation diminished, the tasks more rigidly enforced, the holidays fewer. The punishments, which were before sometimes capriciously severe, but more often threatened and remitted, he was now expected to carry out with the inflexibility of fate. He has found himself reduced to plotting with his servants against himself,—to aiding them in breaking or evading his own laws; reduced—worst humiliation of all—to ordering, under the sharp eye and sharp voice of his officious neighbor, the infliction of chastisement for neglect which he himself had authorized or connived at.
All came of that unhappy Christmas I have told you of. If Westlake could only have been silent, the simple plot devised by Senator would have worked perfectly. All the neighborhood would have respected a secret that was its own. But Westlake could not be silent; he was too uneasy. It was not long before the culprit's escape and his master's part in it were more than surmised. In view of the effect of such a transaction on the servile imagination, Westlake's weakness was ignored by common consent; but it was not the less incumbent upon him to reinstate himself in opinion on the first opportunity. The opportunity was offered by the storm then brewing against Shaler.
Westlake's sufferings are, happily for him, intermittent. Rasey is away from the neighborhood one month out of every three, looking after the estates of yet more unlucky vassals,—his through debt, and not from simple weakness. During these intervals, Westlake takes his ease with his people, as thoughtless as they of consequences no more within his ability to avert than theirs. He has lately had an unusual respite. Rasey has been confined to the house by an illness,—the first of his life.
I do not know how far Dr. Borrow is aware of Westlake's humiliations; and Westlake, I think, does not know. When he was able to speak again, he sheltered himself under a question.
"Do you know Rasey?"
"He is owner of the plantation which lies south of yours and Shaler's, larger than both together."
"His plantation;—but do you knowhim?"
"Root and branch. But who does not know him, that knows anybody here? In the next generation his history may be lost in his fortune, but it is extant yet. His father was overseer on a Georgia plantation, from which he sucked the marrow: his employer's grandchildren are crackers and clay-eaters; his are—of your community."
"Not exactly."
"Strike out all who do not yet belong to it, and all who have ceased to have a full claim to belong to it, and what have you left?"
"Do you know old Rasey personally? Have you ever seen him?"
"I have seen him."
"Lately? I hear that a great change has come over him. He has lost his elder son."
"You might say his only one. He turned the other out of doors years ago, and has had no word of him since. The old man has a daughter; but her husband has challenged him to shoot at sight. He has lost his partner and heir, and, in the course of Nature, cannot himself hold on many years longer. If a way could be found of taking property over to the other side, he might be consoled. The old Gauls used to manage it: they made loans on condition of repayment in the other world; but I doubt whether Rasey's faith is of force to let him find comfort in such a transaction.
"I had to see him about a matter of business which had been intrusted to me. I went there the day I left you. If I had known how it was with him, I should have tried to find a deputy. It is an awful sight, a man who never had compassion needing it, a man who never felt sympathy claiming and repelling it in one.
"When I entered the room, where he was sitting alone, he looked up at me with a glare like a tiger-cat's. He was tamed for the moment by the mention of my errand, which was simply to make hima payment. He counted the money carefully, locked it up, and gave me a receipt. Then he began to talk to me, or rather to himself before me. I could acquiesce in all he said. I knew what Giles Rasey was, and understood that the loss of such a son, to such a father, was irreparable.
"'Another self! another self!' he repeated, until I hardly knew whether to pity him more for having had a son so like himself, or for having him no longer. It was an injustice that he felt himself suffering,—a bitter injustice. He had counted on this son as his successor, and the miscalculation was one with which he was not chargeable. 'Not thirty-five! I am past sixty, and a young man yet! My father lived to be ninety!'
"His rage against this wrong which had been done him was aggravated by another which he had done himself, a weakness into which he had been led by his son,—the only one, probably, in which they had ever been partners. The son had a slave whose ability made him valuable, whose probity made him invaluable.
"'I gave him to Giles myself,' said the old man. 'He was such as you don't find one of in a thousand; no, not in ten thousand. I could have had any money for him, if money could have bought him. It couldn't. I gave him to Giles.'
"Giles, on the death-bed where he found himself with very little warning, exacted of his father a promise that this man should be made free.
"'What could I refuse him then?' asked old Rasey.
"The man in whose behalf the promise was made, and who was present when it was made, took it in earnest.
"'A fellow whom we had trusted!' cried the old man. 'A fellow in whose attachment we had believed! We have let him carry away and pay large sums of money for us; have even let him go into Free States to pay them, and he always came back faithfully! You may know these people a life long and not learn them out! A fellow whom we had trusted!'
"The fellow bade good-day as soon as the funeral services were over. His master was sufficiently himself to surmise his purpose and to make an attempt to baffle it. But the intended freedman was too agile for him; he disappeared without even claiming his manumission-papers. Imagine Rasey's outraged feelings! It was like the Prince of Hell in the old legend, complaining of the uncivil alacrity with which Lazarus obeyed the summons to the upper air:—'He was not to be held, but, giving himself a shake, with every sign of malice, immediately he went away.'"
"So Rasey has lost Syphax! he has lost Syphax!" repeated Westlake, thoughtfully. "Rasey is not a good master, but he was good to him. It was hard, even for Rasey."
"Rasey has lost Syphax, and Syphax has found him," said the Doctor, dryly.
"You do not understand. You see in the rupture of these ties only a loss of service to the master. We feel it to be something more."
"The human heart is framed sensible to kindness; that you should have an attachment for the man who devotes his life to yours without return has nothing miraculous for me. I can believe that even Rasey is capable of feeling the loss of what has been useful to him."
"No, you do not understand the relation between us and this affectionate subject race."