She ceased; but it was some minutes before Edward answered her. At length he said, “Lucy, the utter destitution of my position has sometimes suggested thoughts that, wild as I know they must appear to you, would yet have in them a world of consolation, were it not — But I will not leave you, Lucy—”
“Leave me!” exclaimed the poor girl, turning first pale, and then red, “leave me, brother! — Oh! no, you will not do that — it is impossible!”
“It is impossible, dearest, — I do not think of it; but were you placed where I could believe that you were safe and happy, I have quite decided what my destiny should be.”
“Will you not tell me, Edward?”
“Yes, my love, I will, for the subject is much in my thoughts, and it will be a pleasure to me to talk to you of it. But fancy not that I think of putting it in execution: it is but one of those dreams with which the unhappy, I believe, often solace existence.”
“Let me then dream with you,” said his sister. “If it be a solace, let me share it.”
“You shall; but take care that you do not laugh at me. You know, Lucy, what were my father’s opinions respecting slavery. You know, I think, that he had amongst his books nearly every publication of every land which treated of the subject; but perhaps you do not know the deep, the engrossing interest which this subject excited in me?”
“Your reading was so general,” replied his sister, “that I certainly did not remark that these publications occupied you particularly.”
“They occupied me too intensely to permit my talking of them. I feared to be deemed an enthusiast on a subject to which I would willingly have brought profitable and efficient wisdom at the cost of half my life. The point on which my meditations turned by day and by night, was less the personal bondage of the negro race, than the brute ignorance in which their masters permit them to remain; an ignorance which in a thousand — ay, in a hundred thousand instances — prevents the wretched victims of our frightful laws from knowing good from evil. Had our condition remained for a few weeks longer unchanged, Lucy, I was determined to have petitioned my father for immediate leave to obtain ordination, and then to have passed my life in journeying through the regions where this plague-spot of our country is the darkest, in the hope that under the sanction of my sacred calling I might awaken some of these unfortunates to a consciousness of their immortality. This hope is passed away, like every other that embellished that period of our existence; yet still my spirit seems to bear me perpetually to those scenes of misery with the description of which I have become familiar, and hopeless and helpless as I am myself, I still cannot help believing that, were I at liberty to wander forth among them, I might lead many an ignorant but innocent spirit to hold commune with HIM who is not less the God of the black man than of the white. This, Lucy, is what I would attempt, were it not my first and dearest duty to watch over you.”
“And were it not that you lack all means for such an enterprise, Edward, and would do so no less if I lay in the grave-yard beside our father. Were it not for this, I might be still more wretched than I am, from knowing that I am a restraint upon you. Had we wherewithal to sustain life as we journeyed, I would not be your hindrance, brother, but your aid. I would go with you, and I can even think that I too might be useful. Could I but meet such pupils as my poor Phebe, I should never be weary of teaching.”
All this seemed at the time but idle talk; but accident ripened the thoughts that were then dropped, and much that deeply affected the destinies of the brother and sister resulted from it.
They both pursued their labours in the village school they had instituted, successfully, though wearily, and even found that they were enabled to gain more than they required for their daily support. Their uncomplaining industry, and the conscientious manner in which they performed the duties they had undertaken, brought them all the patronage and all the assistance which the poor neighbourhood could give; and it is probable that they might long have continued in the same occupation, had not the arrival of the following letter awakened feelings which led them to a different and much less tranquil mode of life.
The letter was from black Phebe, the affectionately remembered slave and pupil of Lucy Bligh.
“HONOURED LADY AND MISTRESS, “Grief and sorrow are at my heart. I wish our God had not made it his command that we must not die and go to him, when sufferings come too much to bear. I do not think that you, or our kind master, or our Master Edward, know anything at all about what being a slave means in this fearful country near Natchez. It means labour till strength fails — stripes till the blood runs down wickedness till God must turn away his face — and shame, and suffering, and woe, till life seems worse, much worse than death.
“Dear and honoured mistress, I write to ask if you can tell me where my promised husband is. Oh, my poor Cæsar! — if he could see me, and all that is about me! Perhaps Cæsar is dead. I sometimes think he must be; and if I knew it, I think, dear honoured mistress, I should die too, without offending God.”
* * * *
The letter then proceeded, at greater length than it is necessary for the reader to follow, to describe the state of Colonel Dart’s slaves — their ignorance, their vice, and their sufferings — and, concluded by saying that if the unhappy writer heard nothing as to the fate of her lover, or concerning the protectors, the friends, and instructors of her youth, she thought these would prove to be her dying words, for that she felt her heart sinking within her, and trusted that God would take her to his mercy before she had suffered much more.
How poor Phebe had contrived to convey her melancholy letter to the post remained a mystery; but its effect upon her former mistress proved that she had not overrated the interest felt for her by those from whom she had been so cruelly torn. Lucy wept over it bitterly, and when she put it into her brother’s hand, she said, with a feeling of enthusiasm almost equal to his own, “Edward! if we had one hundred dollars in the world, I should say that, useless and unconnected with the world as we are, we should do well to set forth together on a pilgrimage to the wretched land where our poor Phebe and her fellow sufferers languish. We should have no power to redeem them from their worse than Egyptian bondage; but might we not be enabled to throw such a light upon the everlasting future, as might teach them to feel with less bitterness the miseries of the dreadful but passing hours of the present?”
Lucy’s soft eyes were lighted up with an energy and earnestness that her brother had never seen in them before. He took Phebe’s letter, and having perused it attentively, returned it in silence, and left the little room, which by degrees he had converted into a decent shelter. In a few minutes he returned, bearing in his hand a small box, which he opened, and poured the contents into his sister’s lap.
“Here are forty dollars, Lucy,” he said, “obtained partly by the sale of linen which was no longer fit for my use, and partly by the little weekly savings we have made since my poor father’s death. This sum is already sufficient to convey us to Natchez, and to support us in the manner in which we now live for several months. I do believe, my sister, that we are called to this work. The singular education we have received, and the still more singular isolation of our condition, seems to point us out as belonging to those who, having no worldly ties to withhold them, should go forth amongst the wretched and the ignorant to pour the balm of God’s word into their hearts. While I thought you, Lucy, unequal to the task, I put the hope of performing it far from me, for I deemed that my first duty was to cherish and protect my orphan sister: but now — now that I read in your eyes the same devotion to this cause which I feel at my own heart, shall I, from any cowardly misgivings of your strength or my own, attempt to check your holy zeal? Forbid it, Heaven! — I am ready, Lucy. Let us finish the labours of the week, dispose of the trifles we have collected round us, and, armed with the courage which such a cause should give, let us set forth for the plantations of Louisiana. Perhaps we may again find bread, by collecting a school among the white settlers in the fore
st behind Natchez. But this is a secondary consideration. — Lucy, have you courage to do this?”
It would be difficult to analyse the feelings of Lucy Bligh as she listened to this proposal. What she had uttered in the first warmth of her feelings, on reading the melancholy statement of the poor slave, though as perfect in truth as her own spotless heart, was nevertheless spoken with such a conviction that the scheme she mentioned was impracticable, that her mind had in fact never contemplated the dangers and difficulties it must involve. But now that it was at once brought before her as a thing to be done, or not done, according to her judgment and her will, she trembled.
“If indeed, my brother, you deem this great enterprise possible, and our duty, I will follow you in it, body and soul, so long as nature shall give me strength to do so.”
It was thus that, after a few moments’ delay, Lucy replied to the unexpected proposal; and if the fervour of her consent was tempered by a shade of timidity, her brother saw it not. The most earnest wish of his heart was about to be fulfilled; enthusiasm had taken the place of all ordinary considerations of prudence, and even the dangers and difficulties which his sister must inevitably encounter appeared to his exalted feelings only a ray the more in the crown of glory they were about to win.
Their walk to the banks of the Ohio, their embarkation on board a steam-boat, the various sufferings of the delicate Lucy during her deck-passage of many days, and the changeful feelings of her brother, wavering between the tenderness of a man and the sternness of a martyr, must be passed by without any detailed description; and the reader must rest contented with knowing that at the distance of one month from the period of the conversation I have last recorded, the brother and sister had established themselves in a small room, with a loft over it, at an obscure clearing in the forest to the north-east of Natchez, which made part of the premises of a poor back-woodsman, who thankfully restricted his family to the use of half their dwelling, for the consideration of twenty-five cents per week, as the rent of the remainder.
The curiosity of their host and his wife was satisfied or baffled by being informed that they were an orphan brother and sister desirous of gaining a living by instructing the children of the neighbouring settlers. As this statement was strictly true, it was threatened with no danger from any discovery; and as their scholars were not at first very numerous, the long rambles which Edward took in the forest and neighbourhood attracted neither attention nor inquiry.
In a country so thickly peopled with slaves as Natchez and its vicinity, it was but too easy for the enthusiastic and persevering Edward Bligh to discover a multitude of human beings totally deficient in that knowledge which it was the sole passion of his young heart to spread abroad. And never did a hope more holy, an ambition more sublime, engross the soul of man. Remote as is good from evil, was the principle which sent him forth, thus self-elected and self-devoted, to raise the poor crushed victims, of an infernal tyranny from the state of grovelling ignorance to which they were chained by their well-calculating masters, from that which swells with most unrighteous vanity the hearts of many among ourselves, inclined to separate from the established faith in which they were educated, and to hold themselves apart, as chosen saints and apostles of another.
As well might a philanthropist labouring in a desert where no abler hand could be found to minister relief to the sick and suffering — as well might such a one be compared to the audacious quack who, thrusting instructed science aside, claims reverence for his own daring ignorance, as Edward Bligh to the self-seeking fanatics who canker our establishment.
It is true, indeed, that the praise justly due to his excellent intentions cannot be as fully accorded to his prudence. His judgment was unquestionably shaken by the fervour of his zeal, or he would not have urged his young sister to an enterprise so pregnant with difficulty and danger. But this chapter is a retrospect, and therefore must not forestall the future.
About two months before the domiciliary visit of young Whitlaw to the hut of Phebe’s mother, Lucy and Edward Bligh had found means to see and converse with their former dependants. But terror at the idea of being discovered to hold intercourse with strangers almost conquered the delight with which the affectionate Phebe greeted her beloved mistress, and nearly all their subsequent meetings had been held at dead of night in the depth of the forest which divided the boundary of Colonel Dart’s plantation from the dwelling which sheltered the Blighs.
Phebe’s hut was very favourably situated for her stealing to these midnight meetings. A clear spring which rose near the verge of the woods had led to the erection of a washing house beside it: in this house Phebe and her mother had been recently placed as laundresses to a part of the establishment; and as no other dwelling was within sight, the grateful and affectionate girl ran little risk of discovery when creeping from her pallet into the forest, and returning to it again before sun-rise.
Before leaving Kentucky, Edward Bligh ascertained from the auctioneer who sold his father’s slaves that Cæsar had become the property of a manufacturer at New Orleans; intelligence which caused as great joy to Phebe, as the knowledge that the loved one was living next door might have done to a less despairing mistress. Having satisfied the poor girl on this point, Edward proceeded to explain to her the hopes which had brought him to the scene her letter described as so full of misery and sin. The dialogue which followed this communication may throw some light on the circumstances which took place afterwards.
“I hope, Phebe,” said Edward, “that you will be able to put me in the way of awakening your miserable fellow-labourers to a sense of their own importance in the sight of Heaven, and to the blessed hopes of happiness in a life to come.”
“Ah! dear master. Edward!” replied Phebe, “the poor black souls think only but of their bodies in this world, and their stripes and their labour and their bad food when the overseer is angry. They will not believe that there is a good God in heaven watching to make it all up to them by-and-by.”
“Have you never told them this, Phebe?”
“When first I came, Master Edward, and heard them speak, and saw them do, like beings having no souls for the life that is to be after this is over, and when I thought of Cæsar, and that I should never never see him more till I met him in heaven, I prayed on my knees every night, when all the world was sleeping, except Phebe — I prayed to God to let me die—”
“Phebe!” interrupted Edward somewhat sternly.
“Master Edward! — don’t think me grown bad! — I know it was a sin, I found it out myself though I had no church to go to, no good master to tell me what was right, no Bible to read — I found it out in my own heart, and then I prayed to God to forgive me, and then I strove to do good to those lower, and more wretched than myself, but they could not understand one word I said.”
“Then it is the more necessary, Phebe, that we should endeavour to instruct them. Did they receive kindly what you said to them?”
“Alas! no, Master Edward, I would not have your ears hear, and still less my dear Miss Lucy’s, the terrible words and deeds spoken and done here. The negroes of this country are very miserable — but they are very wicked, too.”
“Perhaps it is not their fault, Phebe,” said Lucy, “perhaps they might be easily reclaimed, if one could be found, who, without being a slave himself, could feel for slaves. Do you not think that they would listen to Edward?”
“And where could they listen to him, Miss Lucy? — In the grounds? — Why, if they did but stop to raise their eyes to him, the lash would be on their backs. And think you Master Edward himself would be safe? No! no! you must not peril your precious life, Master Edward, for such as we are. Do you not know that the planters have sworn together to take vengeance on anyone who should only be caught teaching a negro to read? And how much more dreadful vengeance would they take on any who should dare to say that the soul of a black man is like the soul of a white one! — You must not think of it, Master Edward, — your life would pay for it.”
“And my life shall pay for it, Phebe, if such be the will of Heaven,” replied the enthusiast. “Do not throw difficulties in my way, my good girl, by endeavouring to terrify my sister. I am here to preach the doctrine of hope and salvation to the despairing slaves, and neither hardships nor sufferings, nor danger, nor threatenings — no, nor death itself, shall appal me. So help me Heaven as I keep my word!”
The solemn silence of the night as Edward Bligh uttered these words in the deep still voice of profound emotion added to their effect. The moon shed, through the light boughs of the locust trees under which they walked, a soft pale light on the uplifted face of the young man, which seemed to give an unearthly expression to his countenance. He raised his hat reverently from his brow as he spoke, the cool night-breeze blew the dark curls from his forehead, and as he raised his eyes to heaven, he might have furnished the finest model for a representation of youthful piety that ever blessed a painter.
Phebe gazed at him with reverence, and suddenly dropping on her knees, exclaimed, “Then may Heaven help your work, Master Edward! And Phebe, would die too, rather than hinder it: but do not let them see you, Master Edward — the master is—”
“It matters not, Phebe, what he is,” resumed Edward. “But kneel not to me, poor child; kneel before the throne of God, and pray for power to help me to perform the task he sets me. You may do it, Phebe, — you may do much to help me.”
“Tell me what it is, and I will do it,” replied the girl, “though they should lash me into rags for it. What is it I can do, Master Edward?”
Edward Bligh did not reply immediately. Perhaps some feeling of doubt and dread as to the peril to which the poor slave would be exposed if discovered to be his agent kept him awhile in suspense; but the impulse that urged him onward in defiance of every danger which might befall himself and his still dearer sister soon drove before it whatever reluctance this thought might have created: he paused in his walk, and the two young girls who were on each side of him pausing likewise, looked up into his young and beautiful countenance as if they were to read their destiny there.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 10