“And who are you, pray?”
“Please, missis, I’s Tiff Peyton, I is. I’s raised in Yirginny, on de great Peyton place, and I’s gin to Miss Sue’s mother; and when Miss Sue married dis yer man, dey was all ‘fended, and wouldn’t speak to her; but I tuck up for her, ‘cause what’s de use of makin’ a bad thing worse? I’s a ‘pinion, and telled ‘em, dat he oughter be ‘couraged to behave hisself, seein’ the thing was done, and couldn’t be helped. But no, dey wouldn’t; so I jest tells ‘em, says I, ‘ You may do jis you please but old Tiff’s a-gwine with her,’ says I. ‘I’ll follow Miss Sue to de grave’s mouth,’ says I; and ye see I has done it.”
“Well done of you! I like you better for it,” said Nina. “You just drive up to the kitchen, there, and tell Rose to give you some breakfast, while I go up to Aunt Nesbit.”
“No, thank you, Miss Nina, I’s noways hungry.’Pears like, when a body’s like as I be, swallerin’ down, and all de old times risin’ in der throat all de time, dey can’t eat; dey gets filled all up to der eyes with feelin’s. Lord, Miss Nina, I hope ye won’t never know what ’tis to stand outside de gate, when de best friend you’ve got’s gone in; it’s hard, dat ar is!” And Tiff pulled out a decayed-looking handkerchief, and applied it under his spectacles.
“Well, wait a minute, Tiff.” And Nina ran into the house, while Tiff gazed mournfully after her.
“Well, Lor; just de way Miss Sue used to run — trip, trip, trip! — little feet like mice! Lord’s will be done!”
“Oh, Milly!” said Nina, meeting Milly in the entry, “here you are. Here’s a poor fellow waiting out by the hedge, his mistress dead all alone in the house, with children, — no woman to do for them. Can’t you go down? you could do so well! You know how better than any one else in the house.”
“Why, that must be poor old Tiff!” said Milly; “faithful old creature! So that poor woman’s gone, at last? the better for her, poor soul! Well, I’ll ask Miss Loo if I may go — or you ask her, Miss Nina.”
A quick, imperative’ tap on her door startled Aunt Nesbit, who was standing at her toilet, finishing her morning’s dressing operations. —
Mrs. Nesbit was a particularly systematic early riser. Nobody knew why; only folks who have nothing to do are often the most particular to have the longest possible time to do it in.
“Aunt,” said Nina, “there’s a poor fellow, out here, whose mistress is just dead, all alone in the house, and wants to get some woman to go there to help. Can’t you spare Milly?”
“Milly was going to clear-starch my caps, this morning,” said Aunt Nesbit. “I have arranged everything with reference to it, for a week past.”
“Well, aunt, can’t she do it to-morrow, or next day, just as well?”
“To-morrow she is going to rip up that black dress, and wash it. I am always systematic, and have everything arranged beforehand. Should like very much to do anything I could, if it wasn’t for that. Why can’t you send Aunt Katy?”
“Why, aunt, you know we are to have company to dinner, and Aunt Katy is the only one who knows where anything is, or how to serve things out to the cook. Besides, she’s so hard and cross to poor people, I don’t think she would go. I don’t see, I’m sure, in such a case as this, why you couldn’t put your starching off. Milly is such a kind, motherly, experienced person, and they are in affliction.”
“Oh, these low families don’t mind such things much,” said Aunt Nesbit, fitting on her cap quietly; “they never have much feeling. There’s no use doing for them — they are miserable poor creatures.”
“Aunt Nesbit, do, now, as a favor to me! I don’t often ask favors,” said Nina. “Do let Milly go! she’s just the one wanted. Do, now, say yes!” And Nina pressed nearer, and actually seemed to overpower her slow-feeling, torpid relative with the vehemence that sparkled in her eyes.
“Well, I don’t care, if” —
“There, Milly, she says yes!” said she, springing out the door. “She says you may. Now, hurry; get things ready. I’ll run and have Aunt Katy put up biscuits and things for the children; and you get all that you know you will want, and be off quick, and I’ll have the pony got up, and come on behind you.”
CHAPTER X
THE PREPARATION
THE excitement produced by the arrival of Tiff, and the fitting out of Milly to the cottage, had produced a most favorable diversion in Nina’s mind from her own especial perplexities. Active and buoyant, she threw herself at once into whatever happened to come uppermost on the tide of events. So, having seen the wagon dispatched, she sat down to breakfast in high spirits.
“Aunt Nesbit, I declare I was so interested in that old man! I intend to have the pony, after breakfast, and ride over there.”
“I thought you were expecting company.”
“Well, that’s one reason, now, why I’d like to be off. Do I want to sit all primmed up, smiling and smirking, and running to the window to see if my gracious lord is coming? No, I won’t do that, to please any of them. If I happen to fancy to be out riding, I will be out riding.”
“I think,” said Aunt Nesbit, “that the hovels of these miserable creatures are no proper place for a young lady of your position in life.”
“My position in life! I don’t see what that has to do with it. My position in life enables me to do anything I please — a liberty which I take pretty generally. And then, really, I couldn’t help feeling rather sadly about it, because that Old Tiff, there (I believe that’s his name), told me that the woman had been of a good Virginia family. Yery likely she may have been just such another wild girl as I am, and thought as little about bad times, and of dying, as I do. So I couldn’t help feeling sad for her. It really came over me when I was walking in the garden. Such a beautiful morning as it was — the birds all singing, and the dew all glittering and shining on the flowers! Why, aunt, the flowers really seemed alive; it seemed as though I could hear them breathing, and hear their hearts beating like mine. And, all of a sudden, I heard the most wild, mournful singing, over in the woods. It wasn’t anything very beautiful, you know, but it was so wild, and strange! ‘ She is dead and gone to heaven!
—— she is dead and gone to heaven!’ And pretty soon I saw the funniest old wagon — I don’t know what to call it —— and this queer old black man in it, with an old white hat and surtout on, and a pair of great, funny-looking spectacles on his nose. I went to the fence to see who he was; and he came up and spoke to me, made the most respectful bow — you ought to have seen it! And then, poor fellow, he told me how his mistress was lying dead, with the children around her, and nobody in the house! The poor old creature, he actually cried, and I felt so for him! He seemed to be proud of his dead mistress, in spite of her poverty.”
“Where do they live?” said Mrs. Nesbit.
“Why, he told me over in the pine woods, near the swamp.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Nesbit, “I dare say it’s that Cripps family, that’s squatted in the pine woods. A most miserable set — all of them liars and thieves! If I had known who it was, I’m sure I shouldn’t have let Milly go over. Such families oughtn’t to be encouraged; there oughtn’t a thing to be done for them; we shouldn’t encourage them to stay in the neighborhood. They always will steal from off the plantations, and corrupt the negroes, and get drunk, and everything else that’s bad. There’s never a woman of decent character among them, that ever I heard of; and if you were my daughter, I shouldn’t let you go near them.”
“Well, I’m not your daughter, thank fortune!” said Nina, whose graces always rapidly declined in controversies with her aunt, “and so I shall do as I please. And I don’t know what you pious people talk so for; for Christ went with publicans and sinners, I’m sure.”
“Well,” said Aunt Nesbit, “the Bible says we mustn’t cast pearls before swine; and when you’ve lived to be as old as I am, you’ll know more than you do now. Everybody knows that you can’t do anything with these people. You can’t give them Bibles nor tracts, fo
r they can’t read. I’ve tried it, sometimes, visiting them, and talking to them; but it didn’t do them any good. I always thought there ought to be a law passed to make ’em all slaves, and then there would be somebody to take care of them.”
“Well, I can’t see,” said Nina, “how it’s their fault. There isn’t any school where they could send their children, if they wanted to learn; and then, if they want to work, there’s nobody who wants to hire them. So what can they do?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Aunt Nesbit, in that tone which generally means “I don’t care.”
“All I know is, that I want them to get away from the neighborhood. Giving to them is just like putting into a bag with holes. I’m sure I put myself to a great inconvenience on their account to-day; for if there’s anything I do hate, it is having things irregular. And to-day is the day for clearstarching the caps — and such a good, bright, sunny day!
—— and to-morrow, or any other day of the week, it may rain. Always puts me all out to have things that I’ve laid out to do put out of their regular order. I’d been willing enough to have sent over some old things; but why they must needs take Milly’s time, just as if the funeral couldn’t have got ready without her! These funerals are always miserable drunken times with them! And then, who knows, she may catch the smallpox, or something or other. There’s never any knowing what these people die of.”
“They die of just such things as we do,” said Nina. “They have that in common with us, at any rate.”
“Yes; but there’s no reason for risking our lives, as I know of — especially for such people — when it don’t do any good.”
“Why, aunt, what do you know against these folks? Have you ever known of their doing anything wicked?”
“Oh, I don’t know that I know anything against this family in particular; but I know the whole race. These squatters — I’ve known them ever since I was a girl in Virginia. Everybody that knows anything knows exactly what they are. There isn’t any help for them, unless, as I said before, they were made slaves; and then they could be kept decent. You may go to see them, if you like, but I don’t want my arrangements to be interfered with on their account.” —
Mrs. Nesbit was one of those quietly persisting people whose yielding is like the stretching of an india-rubber band, giving way only to a violent pull, and going back to the same place when the force is withdrawn. She seldom refused favors that were urged with any degree of importunity; not because her heart was touched, but simply because she seemed not to have force enough to refuse; and whatever she granted was always followed by a series of subdued lamentations over the necessity which had wrung them from her.
Nina’s nature was so vehement and imperious, when excited, that it was a disagreeable fatigue to cross her. Mrs. Nesbit, therefore, made amends by bemoaning herself as we have seen. Nina started up hastily, on seeing her pony brought round to the door; and soon arrayed in her riding-dress, she was cantering through the pine woods in high spirits. The day was clear and beautiful. The floor of the woodland path was paved with a thick and cleanly carpet of the fallen pine leaves. And Harry was in attendance with her, mounted on another horse, and riding but a very little behind; not so much so but what his mistress could, if she would, keep up a conversation with him. “You know this Old Tiff, Harry?”
“Oh yes, very well. A very good, excellent creature, and very much the superior of his master, in most respects.”
“Well, he says his mistress came of a good family.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Harry. “She always had a delicate appearance, very different from people in their circumstances generally. The children, too, are remarkably pretty, well-behaved children; and it’s a pity they couldn’t be taught something, and not grow up and go on the miserable ways of these poor whites!”
“Why don’t anybody ever teach them?” said Nina. “Well, Miss Nina, you know how it is: everybody has his own work and business to attend to — there are no schools for them to go to — there’s no work for them to do. In fact, there don’t seem to be any place for them in society. Boys generally grow up to drink and swear. And as for girls, they are of not much account. So it goes on from generation to generation.”
“This is so strange, and so different from what it is in the northern states! Why, all the children go to school there — the very poorest people’s children! Why, a great many of the first men, there, were poor children! Why can’t there be some such thing here?”
“Oh, because people are settled in such a scattering way they can’t have schools. All the land that’s good for anything is taken up for large estates. And then, these poor folks that are scattered up and down in between, it’s nobody’s business to attend to them, and they can’t attend to themselves; and so they grow up, and nobody knows how they live, and everybody seems to think it a pity they are in the world. I’ve seen those sometimes that would be glad to do something, if they could find anything to do. Planters don’t want them on their places — they’d rather have their own servants. If one of them wants to be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, there’s no encouragement. Most of the large estates have their own carpenters and blacksmiths. And there’s nothing for them to do, unless it is keeping dogs to hunt negroes; or these little low stores where they sell whiskey, and take what’s stolen from the plantations. Sometimes a smart one gets a place as overseer on a plantation. Why, I’ve heard of their coming so low as actually to sell their children to traders, to get a bit of bread.”
“What miserable creatures! But do you suppose it can be possible that a woman of any respectable family can have married a man of this sort?”
“Well, I don’t know, Miss Nina; that might be. You see, good families sometimes degenerate; and when they get too poor to send their children off to school, or keep any teachers for them, they run down very fast. This man is not bad looking, and he really is a person who, if he had had any way opened to him, might have been a smart man, and made something of himself and family; and when he was young and better looking, I shouldn’t wonder if an uneducated girl, who had never been off a plantation, might have liked him; he was fully equal, I dare say, to her brothers. You see, Miss Nina, when money goes, in this part of the country, everything goes with it; and when a family is not rich enough to have everything in itself, it goes down very soon.”
“At any rate, I pity the poor things,” said Nina. “I don’t despise them, as Aunt Nesbit does.”
Here Nina, observing the path clear and uninterrupted for some distance under the arching pines, struck her horse into a canter, and they rode on for some distance without speaking. Soon the horse’s feet splashed and pattered on the cool, pebbly bottom of a small, shallow stream, which flowed through the woods. This stream went meandering among the pines like a spangled ribbon, sometimes tying itself into loops, leaving open spots — almost islands of green — graced by its waters. Such a little spot now opened to the view of the two travelers. It was something less than a quarter of an acre in extent, entirely surrounded by the stream, save only a small neck of about four feet, which connected it to the mainland.
Here a place had been cleared and laid off into a garden, which, it was evident, was carefully tended. The log cabin which stood in the middle was far from having the appearance of wretchedness which Nina had expected. It was almost entirely a dense mass of foliage, being covered with the intermingled drapery of the Virginia creeper and the yellow jessamine. Two little borders, each side of the house, were blooming with flowers. Around the little island the pine-trees closed in unbroken semicircle, and the brook meandered away through them, to lose itself eventually in that vast forest of swampy land which girdles the whole Carolina shore. The whole air of the place was so unexpectedly inviting, in its sylvan stillness and beauty, that Nina could not help checking her horse, and exclaiming, —
“I’m sure, it’s a pretty place. They can’t be such very forsaken people, after all.”
“Oh, that’s all Tiff’s wor
k,” said Harry. “He takes care of everything outside and in, while the man is off after nobody knows what. You’d be perfectly astonished to see how that old creature manages. He sews, and he knits, and works the garden, does the housework, and teaches the children. It’s a fact! You’ll notice that they haven’t the pronunciation or the manners of these wild white children; and I take it to be all Tiff’s watchfulness, for that creature hasn’t one particle of selfishness in him. He just identifies himself with his mistress and her children.”
By this time Tiff had perceived their approach, and came out to assist them in dismounting.
“De Lord above bless you, Miss Gordon, for coming to see my poor missis! Ah! she is lying dere just as beautiful, just as she was the very day she was married! All her young looks come back to her; and Milly, she done laid her out beautiful! Lord, I’s wanting somebody to come and look at her, because she has got good blood, if she be poor. She is none of your common sort of poor whites, Miss Nina. Just come in; come in, and look at her.”
Nina stepped into the open door of the hut. The bed was covered with a clean white sheet, and the body, arrayed in a long white night-dress brought by Milly, lay there so very still, quiet, and lifelike, that one could scarcely realize the presence of death. The expression of exhaustion, fatigue, and anxiety, which the face had latterly worn, had given place to one of tender rest, shaded by a sort of mysterious awe, as if the closed eyes were looking on unutterable things. The soul, though sunk below the horizon of existence, had thrown back a twilight upon the face radiant as that of the evening heavens.
By the head of the bed the little girl was sitting, dressed carefully, and her curling hair parted in front, apparently fresh from the brush; and the little boy was sitting beside her, his round blue eyes bearing an expression of subdued wonder.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 74