“Ah! But, Lisette, all this pretty house of ours, garden, and everything, is only built on air, after all, till we are free. Any accident can take it from us. Now, there’s Miss Nina; she is engaged, she tells me, to two or three lovers, as usual.”
“Engaged, is she?” said Lisette eagerly, female curiosity getting the better of every other consideration; “she always did have lovers, just, you know, as I used to.”
“Yes; but, Lisette, she will marry, some time, and what a thing that would be for you and me! On her husband will depend all my happiness for all my life. He may set her against me; he may not like me. Oh, Lisette! I’ve seen trouble enough coming of marriages; and I was hoping, you see, that before that time came the money for my freedom would all be paid in, and I should be my own man. But now, here it is. Just as the sum is almost made up, I must pay out five hundred dollars of it, and that throws us back two or three years longer. And what makes me feel the most anxious is, that I’m pretty sure Miss Nina will marry one of these lovers before long.”
“Why, what makes you think so, Harry?”
“Oh, I’ve seen girls before now, Lisette, and I know the signs.”
“What does she do? What does she say? Tell me, now, Harry.”
“Oh, well, she runs on abusing the man, after her sort; and she’s so very earnest and positive in telling me she don’t like him.”
“Just the way I used to do about you, Harry, isn’t it?”
“Besides,” said Harry, “I know, by the kind of character she gives of him, that she thinks of him very differently from what she ever did of any man before. Miss Nina little knows, when she is rattling about her beaux, what I’m thinking of. I’m saying, all the while, to myself, ‘Is that man going to be my master?’ and this Clayton, I’m very sure, is going to be my master.”
“Well, isn’t he a good man?”
“She says he is; but there’s never any saying what good men will do, never. Good men think it right sometimes to do the strangest things. This man may alter the whole agreement between us, — he will have a right to do it, if he is her husband; he may refuse to let me buy myself; and then, all the money that I’ve paid will go for nothing.”
“But, certainly, Harry, Miss Nina will never consent to such a thing.”
“Lisette, Miss Nina is one thing, but Mrs. Clayton may be quite another thing. I’ve seen all that, over and over again. I tell you, Lisette, that we who live on other people’s looks and words, we watch and think a great deal! Ah! we come to be very sharp, I can tell you. The more Miss Nina has liked me, the less her husband may like me; don’t you know that?”
“No; Harry, you don’t dislike people I like.”
“Child, child, that’s quite another thing.”
“Well, then, Harry, if you feel so bad about it, what makes you pay this money for Miss Nina? She don’t know anything about it; she don’t ask you to. I don’t believe she would want you to, if she did know it. Just go and pay it in, and have your freedom papers made out. Why don’t you tell her all about it?”
“No, I can’t, Lisette. I’ve had the care of her all her life, and I’ve made it as smooth as I could for her, and I won’t begin to trouble, her now. Do you know, too, that I’m afraid that, perhaps, if she knew all about it, she wouldn’t do the right thing. There’s never any knowing, Lisette. Now, you see, I say to myself, ‘Poor little thing! she doesn’t know anything about accounts, and she don’t know how I feel.’ But if I should tell her, and she shouldn’t care, and act as I’ve seen women act, why, then, you know I couldn’t think so any more. I don’t believe she would mind you; but then, I don’t like to try.”
“Harry, what does make you love her so much?”
“Don’t you know, Lisette, that Master Tom was a dreadful bad boy, always willful and wayward, almost broke his father’s heart; and he was always ugly and contrary to her? I’m sure I don’t know why; for she was a sweet little thing, and she loves him now, ugly as he is, and he is the most selfish creature I ever saw. And as for Miss Nina, she isn’t selfish — she is only inconsiderate. But I’ve known her do for him, over and over, just what I do for her, giving him her money and her jewels to help him out of a scrape. But then, to be sure, it all comes upon me, at last, which makes it all the more aggravating. Now, Lisette, I’m going to tell you something, but you mustn’t tell anybody. Nina Gordon is my sister!”
“Harry!”
“Yes, Lisette, you may well open your eyes,” said Harry, rising involuntarily; “I’m Colonel Gordon’s oldest son! Let me have the comfort of saying it once, if I never do again.”
“Harry, who told you?”
“He told me, Lisette — he, himself, told me, when he was dying, and charged me always to watch over her; and I have done it! I never told Miss Nina; I wouldn’t have her told for the world. It wouldn’t make her love me; more likely it would turn her against me. I’ve seen many a man sold for nothing else but looking too much like his father, or his brothers and sisters. I was given to her, and my sister and my mother went out to Mississippi with Miss Nina’s aunt.”
“I never heard you speak of this sister, Harry. Was she pretty?”
“Lisette, she was beautiful, she was graceful, and she had real genius. I’ve heard many singers on the stage that could not sing, with all their learning, as she did by nature.”
“Well, what became of her?”
“Oh, what becomes of such women always, among us! Nursed, and petted, and caressed; taught everything elegant, nothing solid. Why, the woman meant well enough that had the care of her, — Mrs. Stewart, Colonel Gordon’s sister, — but she couldn’t prevent her son’s wanting her, and taking her, for his mistress; and when she died there she was.”
“Well.”
“When George Stewart had lived with her two or three years, he was taken with smallpox. You know what perfect horror that always creates. None of his white acquaintances and friends would come near his plantation; the negroes were all frightened to death, as usual; overseer ran off. Well, then Cora Gordon’s blood came up; she nursed him all through that sickness. What’s more, she had influence to keep order on the place; got the people to getting the cotton crops themselves, so that when the overseer came sneaking back, things hadn’t all gone to ruin, as they might have done. Well, the young fellow had more in him than some of them do; for when he got well he left his plantation, took her up to Ohio, and married her, and lived with her there.”
“Why didn’t he live with her on his plantation?” said Lisette.
“He couldn’t have freed her there; it’s against the laws. But, lately, I’ve got a letter from her saying that he had died and left to her and her son all his property on the Mississippi.”
“Why, she will be rich, won’t she?”
“Yes, if she gets it. But there’s no knowing how that will be; there are fifty ways of cheating her out of it, I suppose. But now, as to Miss Nina’s estate, you don’t know how I feel about it. I was trusted with it, and trusted with her. She never has known, more than a child, where the money came from, or went to; and it sha’n’t be said that I’ve brought the estate in debt for the sake of getting my own liberty. If I have one pride in life, it is to give it up to Miss Nina’s husband in good order. But then, the trouble of it, Lisette! The trouble of getting anything like decent work from these creatures; the ways that I have to turn and twist to get round them, and manage them, to get anything done. They hate me; they are jealous of me. Lisette, I’m just like the bat in the fable; I’m neither bird nor beast. How often I’ve wished that I was a good, honest, black nigger, like Uncle Pomp! Then I should know what I was; but now, I’m neither one thing nor another. I come just near enough to the condition of the white to look into it, to enjoy it, and want everything that I see. Then the way I’ve been educated makes it worse. The fact is, that when the fathers of such as we feel any love for us, it isn’t like the love they have for their white children. They are half ashamed of us; they are ashamed to show their love,
if they have it; and then, there’s a kind of remorse and pity about it, which they make up to themselves by petting us. They load us with presents and indulgences. They amuse themselves with us while we are children, and play off all our passions as if we were instruments to be played on. If we show talent and smartness, we hear some one say, aside, ‘It’s rather a pity, isn’t it?’ or, ‘He is too smart for his place.’ Then, we have all the family blood and the family pride; and what to do with it? I feel that I am a Gordon. I feel in my very heart that I’m like Colonel Gordon — I know I am, and sometimes, I know I look like him, and that’s one reason why Tom Gordon always hated me; and then, there’s another thing, the hardest of all, to have a sister like Miss Nina, to feel she is my sister, and never dare to say a word of it! She little thinks, when she plays and jokes with me, sometimes, how I feel. I have eyes and senses; I can compare myself with Tom Gordon. I know he never would learn anything at any of the schools he was put to; and I know that when his tutors used to teach me, how much faster I got along than he did. And yet he must have all the position, and all the respect; and then, Miss Nina so often says to me, by way of apology, when she puts up with his ugliness, ‘Ah! well, you know, Harry, he is the only brother I have got in the world!’ Isn’t it too bad? Colonel Gordon gave me every advantage of education, because I think he meant me for just this place which I fill. Miss Nina was his pet. He was wholly absorbed in her, and he was frightened at Tom’s wickedness; and so he left me bound to the estate in this way, only stipulating that I should buy myself on favorable terms before Miss Nina’s marriage. She has always been willing enough. I might have taken any and every advantage of her inconsiderateness. And Mr. John Gordon has been willing, too, and has been very kind about it, and has signed an agreement as guardian, and Miss Nina has signed it too, that, in case of her death, or whatever happened, I’m to have my freedom on paying a certain sum, and I have got his receipts for what I have paid. So that’s tolerably safe. Lisette, I had meant never to have been married till I was a free man; but, somehow, you bewitched me into it. I did very wrong.”
“Oh, pshaw! pshaw!” interrupted Lisette. “I ain’t going to hear another word of this talk! What’s the use? We shall do well enough. Everything will come out right, —— you see if it don’t, now. I was always lucky, and I always shall be.”
The conversation was here interrupted by a loud whooping, and a clatter of horse’s heels.
“What’s that?” said Harry, starting to the window. “As I live, now, if there isn’t that wretch of a Tomtit, going off with that horse! How came he here? He will ruin him! Stop there! hallo!” he exclaimed, running out of doors after Tomtit.
Tomtit, however, only gave a triumphant whoop, and disappeared among the pine-trees.
“Well, I should like to know what sent him here!” said Harry, walking up and down, much disturbed.
“Oh, he’s only going round through the grove; he will be back again,” said Lisette; “never fear. Isn’t he a handsome little rogue?”
“Lisette, you never can see trouble anywhere!” said Harry, almost angrily.
“Ah! yes I do,” said Lisette, “when you speak in that tone! Please don’t, Harry. What should you want me to see trouble for?”
“I don’t know, you little thing,” said Harry, stroking her head fondly.
“Ah, there comes the little rascal, just as I knew he would!” said Lisette. “He only wanted to take a little race; he hasn’t hurt the horse;” and tripping lightly out, she caught the reins, just as Tomtit drove up to the gate; and it seemed but a moment before he was over in the garden, with his hands full of flowers.
“Stop, there, you young rascal, and tell me what sent you here!” said Harry, seizing him, and shaking him by the shoulder.
“Laws, Massa Harry, I wants to get peaches, like other folks,” said the boy, peeping roguishly in at the window, at the tea-table.
“And he shall have a peach, too,” said Lisette, “and some flowers, if he’ll be a good boy, and not tread on my borders.”
Tomtit seized greedily at the peach she gave him, and sitting flat down where he stood, and throwing the flowers on the ground beside him, began eating it with an earnestness of devotion as if his whole being were concentrated in the act. The color was heightened in his brown cheek by the exercise, and with his long, drooping curls and eyelashes, he looked a very pretty centre to the flower-piece which he had so promptly improvised.
“Ah, how pretty he is!” said Lisette, touching Harry’s elbow. “I wish he was mine!”
“You’d have your hands full, if he was,” said Harry, eying the intruder discontentedly, while Lisette stood picking the hulls from a fine bunch of strawberries which she was ready to give him when he had finished the peach.
“Beauty makes fools of all you girls,” said Harry cynically.
“Is that the reason I married you?” said Lisette archly. “Well, I know I could make him good, if I had the care of him. Nothing like coaxing; is there, Tom?”
“I’ll boun’ there ain’t!” said Tom, opening his mouth for the strawberries with much the air of a handsome, saucy robin.
“Well,” said Harry, “I should like to know what brought him over here. Speak, now, Tom! Weren’t you sent with some message?”
“Oh laws, yes!” said Tom, getting up and scratching his curly head. “Miss Nina sent me. She wants you to get on dat ar horse, and make tracks for home like split foot. She done got letters from two or three of her beaux, and she is dancing and tearing round there real awful. She done got scared, spects; ‘feard they’d all come together.”
“And she sent you on a message, and you haven’t told me, all this time!” said Harry, making a motion as though he was going to box the child’s ears; but the boy glided out of his hands as if he had been water, and was gone, vanishing among the shrubbery of the garden; and while Harry was mounting his horse, he reappeared on the roof of the little cabin, caracoling and dancing, shouting at the topmost of his voice, —
“Away down old Virginny,
Dere I bought a yellow girl for a guinea.”
“I’ll give it to you, some time!” said Harry, shaking his fist at him.
“No, he won’t, either,” cried Lisette, laughing. “Come down here, Tomtit, and I’ll make a good boy of you.”
CHAPTER VI
THE DILEMMA
IN order to understand the occasion which hurried Harry home, we must go back to Canema. Nina, after taking her letters from the hands of Tomtit, as we have related, ran back with them into Mrs. Nesbit’s room, and sat herself down to read them. As she read, she evidently became quite excited and discomposed, crumpling a paper with her little hand, and tapping her foot impatiently on the carpet.
“There, now, I’m sure I don’t know what I shall do, Aunt Nesbit!” addressing her aunt, because it was her outspoken habit to talk to any body or thing which happened to be sitting next to her. “I’ve got myself into a pretty scrape now!”
“I told you you’d get into trouble, one of these days!”
“Oh, you told me so! If there’s anything I hate, it is to have anybody tell me ‘I told you so!’ But now, aunt, really, I know I’ve been foolish, but I don’t know what to do. Here are two gentlemen coming together, that I wouldn’t have meet each other here for the world; and I don’t know really what I had better do.”
“You’d better do just as you please, as you always do, and always would, ever since I knew you,” said Aunt Nesbit, in a calm, indifferent tone.
“But, really, aunt, I don’t know what’s proper to do in such a case.”
“Your and my notions of propriety, Nina, are so different, that I don’t know how to advise you. You see the consequences, now, of not attending to the advice of your friends. I always knew these flirtations of yours would bring you into trouble.” And Aunt Nesbit said this with that quiet, satisfied air with which precise elderly people so often edify their thoughtless young friends under difficulties.
“Well,
I didn’t want a sermon, now, Aunt Nesbit; but as you’ve seen a great deal more of the world than I have, I thought you might help me a little, just to tell me whether it wouldn’t be proper for me to write and put one of these gentlemen off; or make some excuse for me, or something. I’m sure I never kept house before. I don’t want to do anything that don’t seem hospitable; and yet I don’t want them to come together. Now, there, that’s flat!”
There was a long pause, in which Nina sat vexed and coloring, biting her lips, and nestling uneasily in her seat.
Mrs. Nesbit looked calm and considerate, and Nina began to hope that she was taking the case a little to heart.
At last the good old lady looked up, and said, very quietly, “I wonder what time it is.”
Nina thought she was debating the expediency of sending some message; and therefore she crossed the room with great alacrity, to look at the old clock in the entry.
“It’s half past two, aunt!” and she stood, with her lips apart, looking at Mrs. Nesbit for some suggestion.
“I was going to tell Rosa,” said she abstractedly, “that that onion in the stuffing does not agree with me. It rose on my stomach all yesterday morning; but it’s too late now.”
Nina actually stamped with anger.
“Aunt Nesbit, you are the most selfish person I ever saw in my life!”
“Nina, child, you astonish me!” said Aunt Nesbit, with her wonted placidity. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t care!” said Nina; “I don’t care a bit! I don’t see how people can be so! If a dog should come to me and tell me he was in trouble, I think I should listen to him, and show some kind of interest to help him! I don’t care how foolish anybody has been; if they are in trouble, I’d help them, if I could; and I think you might think enough of it to give me some little advice!”
“Oh, you are talking about that affair, yet?” said her aunt. “Why, I believe I told you I didn’t know what to advise, didn’t I? Shouldn’t give way to this temper, Nina; it’s very unladylike, besides being sinful. But then, I don’t suppose it’s any use for me to talk!” And Aunt Nesbit, with an abused air, got up, walked quietly to the looking-glass, took off her morning-cap, unlocked her drawer, and laid it in; took out another, which Nina could not see differed a particle from the last, held it up thoughtfully on her hand, and appeared absorbed in the contemplation of it, — while Nina, swelling with a mixture of anger and mortification, stood regarding her as she leisurely picked out each bow, and finally, with a decorous air of solemnity, arranged it upon her head, patting it tenderly down.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 69