Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  The yellow-fever carried off her kind-hearted but thoughtless patroness just as Juno reached the age of sixteen. M. Briot, having European connexions, immediately decided upon placing his young family under their care. His New Orleans establishment was accordingly broken up, and his slaves sold.

  Juno next became the property of an English settler; and thence the misery of her long and suffering life began. This man, struck by her unusual acquirements, amused himself by making her his companion and his mistress. He conversed with her as with a being of intellectual faculties equal to his own; furnished her with all the most stirring poetry of his country, for the gratification of seeing how it would work on her wild imagination; and having thus given her a glimpse of happiness not easily conceived by beings under ordinary circumstances, he too departed for Europe, taking with him a little yellow girl of eighteen months old, on whom he determined to bestow an education which should atone by its expense for the cruelty he considered himself obliged to practise by abandoning her mother. In a paroxysm of sentimental generosity, he determined, however, not to sell, but to give Juno to a friend he left behind him.

  The unfortunate was not the less a slave for the manner of the transfer; and when she recovered from the frenzy that fell upon her on seeing her child borne away in the arms of its father, she found herself again installed as the mistress of a white man.

  To him she bore many children; but her apathetic indifference to them and their father, though only manifested by an external tranquillity of demeanour alike undisturbed by love or hate, was in strange contrast to the wild fervour of her first affections.

  After ten years of cohabitation, this man died, leaving her and her eight children still slaves. His executors sold them all to the highest bidders; and it was said that Juno never inquired to whose hands fate had consigned her offspring. For the third time, she herself became the favourite of her owner, and again bore children; but she performed this task, as she did all others assigned her, much more like a well-regulated machine than a human being, never giving any outward indication whatever of either will, wish, or affections. On the marriage of this man, she was again sold; and having the good fortune to be now purchased by a widow lady, who, though a slaveholder, was nevertheless a very charitable and well-disposed Christian, the unhappy woman seemed in some degree to awake from the unnatural state of torpidity into which the detested degradation of the last fifteen years of her existence had plunged her. With this mistress she remained above twenty years, during which time her manner of life was irreproachable; and she so evidently possessed the good lady’s esteem, that everybody who knew the parties considered it as certain, that when the old lady died, she would leave Juno the legacy of her freedom.

  Poor Juno thought so too; and in the deep silence of her unopened heart she had resolved to what use that freedom should be turned. During the years which succeeded the departure of her first child for England, this miserable but favoured slave contrived to learn from time to time, from some who still maintained a correspondence with the one only object of her idolatry, that her child was still alive, and still fondly cherished by its father; then, that she had married an Englishman of good fortune; and then, that she had died, leaving one little girl.

  The tumult of hidden emotion into which these different tidings threw the forgotten mother need not be traced here. With care and pains that defeated every difficulty, she contrived to hear of the welfare of this grandchild, on whom her heart continued to fix all its burning fondness. She heard that the girl was beautiful, beyond even the far-famed beauty of the fair race among whom she dwelt; and the fancy of the poor negress sketched her image, and then clung to it as to an idol.

  The liberality of those with whom Juno had lived had made her mistress of some scores of dollars, and she had never expended a cent from the day on which her first child was taken from her. This sum, though not amounting to half that which the purchase of her freedom would require, was quite sufficient to pay a passage to England; and to England she determined to go, there to behold her glorious grandchild, and there to die, as soon as her old mistress should have winged her way to heaven, and left her in possession of her freedom.

  Her old mistress died at length. Bureaus, caskets, writing-desks, and chests were all searched to find her will, but searched in vain; and Juno, at the age of fifty, was still a slave.

  She was now again sold, and transferred to the estate known by the name of Paradise Plantation, near Natchez. This last frightful disappointment of the patient steadfast hope of many weary years for a time unsettled the wits of the unfortunate woman; but she had herself a strange consciousness that her mind was shaken, and took refuge in almost total silence, from the observations she dreaded to excite. She had now fallen into the hands of a planter who had bought her cheap, with many others of equally advanced age, merely for the drudgery of hoeing and weeding; an employment which, by keeping her entirely in the open air, certainly contributed to her recovery; and in about eighteen months after the death of her old mistress, Juno was so nearly well as to believe herself completely restored to mental health, and that without the overseers having ever suspected that it was a lunatic who performed her allotted tasks with so much more rapidity than any other in the gang.

  As soon as these daily tasks were over, it was her habit to steal forth into the forest that skirted the estate, where she found the greatest delight in recalling verses which she had committed to memory during the days of her happiness, and reciting them aloud. Even after her reason was in a great degree restored, this exercise continued to be her chief solace; and though she usually chose her time and place so well, that “her spirits,” as she chose to call the small green parrots that abound in that region, were for the most part her only auditors, yet it sometimes happened that she was overheard uttering these very unaccountable sounds; and the idea which had now become universal in the neighbourhood, that old Juno held intercourse with supernatural beings, had its origin in this.

  Three times had she been sold with the other live stock without being removed from the estate, when Edward and Lucy Bligh established themselves in the forest near it. She was then rather more than seventy years old; but it was easy to persuade all such as were much younger, especially as most of those employed on Colonel Dart’s property came there as strangers, that she was greatly more. She had quite ceased to think of freedom, or of England; and all that remained of her early affections was the idea, yearly becoming more vague, that she was the ancestress of a very beautiful and glorious race, to whom she should be reunited after death, provided that the days she had still to pass on earth were spent in doing all the good she could to the virtuous, and thwarting and tormenting the wicked to the utmost of her power.

  The consciousness that this power was very considerable, was certainly a source of no trifling pride and pleasure to old Juno; but if she sometimes used it rather wantonly in vexing and confounding the spirits she deemed sinful, she never relaxed in her efforts to aid and sustain those she believed to be good. Phebe had not been on the estate a week before old Juno discovered the difference between her and her fellow-labourers, and a farther knowledge of her and her mother had revived a greater feeling of affection in the heart of the poor old woman than she had felt since her sufferings began. She had become also one of the earliest and most devoted of Edward’s flock. Lucy’s delicate beauty recalled the visionary form she had so long cherished as that of her descendants; and her love and reverence to her, as well as to the cause in which she was engaged, was certainly sometimes expressed with a degree of vehemence that justified Edward’s doubts as to her sanity.

  Of Colonel Dart she had early conceived the very worst opinion; and that, amongst others, for three especial reasons. First, he liked to watch the flogging of his slaves; and notice was regularly given him by the various overseers when anything of the kind worth looking at was going on.

  Secondly, he was the most suspicious man alive; often dreaming of plots, and then acting m
uch as if they had been discovered and proved. And thirdly, he never went to church.

  However wandering and wild the cause on which the wits of old Juno might occasionally have rambled, their acuteness was in no degree blunted by the exercise; for when she called them home again to the scenes passing around her, they not only penetrated to the motives and feelings of those among whom she lived, but enabled her to influence them in a manner that certainly made her one of the most important persons at Paradise Plantation.

  For Whitlaw she conceived an aversion if possible more vehement than that inspired by his patron: and it is certain that many, many years had passed over her head since Juno experienced a degree of satisfaction so lively as that produced by the discovery that he too, while treating with ribald scorn the prophecies and revelations on which hang the hopes of the world, trembled before the mumbled incantations of an old woman.

  She had hitherto used her power over him with little other object than his torment and her own amusement; but while idly lying about, as was her wont, now under the shelter of a ditch, and now of a farrow, she had heard more than one hint that Phebe was likely to become the “favourite” of the confidential clerk. Her first interference in the affair was to ascertain whether the poor girl herself was likely to be a willing party to the arrangement; but when she had discovered the truth on that point, her determination was at once taken that Whitlaw should never obtain possession of her, and she set to work in her own peculiar manner to prevent it, with the most perfect confidence of success.

  It would be tedious to recount the glidings and the slidings, the creepings and the crawlings, the unseen exits and the unsuspected entrances, by which Juno learned all she wanted to know, and by aid of which she appeared wherever she wanted to be found: the effect of her agency may be easily traced without following all the intricacies of the machinery she employed.

  Having given this sketch of the origin of Juno and her diablerie, we may henceforward venture to describe her acts, without being suspected of any intention to mystify the reader.

  On reaching the little brook behind Peggy’s hut, the old woman stopped short, drawing figures in the air between her and it with her bamboo, which served her alternately as a crutch to sustain her failing strength on earth, and a wand with which to exercise power over the spirits of the air.

  As Whitlaw with uncertain and reluctant steps approached her, his eyes were fixed on this instrument, and something like a smile of contempt curled his lip. The old woman saw it, and, as was usual with her upon all occasions when she wished to be particularly cabalistic and impressive, she addressed him in doggerel rhyme.

  “Of human weakness, and of strength divine,

  A symbol see in this charm’d rod of mine!

  With this I stay my feeble steps on earth,

  With this I give to airy spirits birth.

  Beware! — lest in its twofold use you see

  Aught that should make you scorn my power or me.”

  These words were accompanied with some of Juno’s most effective grimaces. She opened wide her large prominent eyes, and glared upon him till the bold sceptic trembled; then fixing them on the earth, with her brows knit and her left hand supporting her chin, she stood as if meditating what she should do to punish him for the irreverent smile she had detected.

  “What would you say to me, good Juno?” said Whitlaw, in an accent of respect and kindness, which nothing but terror could have drawn from him, when addressing one of her race. Nobody could know this better than the old woman herself, and feeling that she had hold of his dastard spirit, she determined to give it a gripe before he escaped; therefore, again raising her very terrible-looking eyes to his face, and extending her bamboo towards him, she said:

  “What would Juno say to you?

  Unsmile that smile, or you shall rue!

  A negro and a slave am I; —

  But if it please the powers on high —

  Those fearful powers that fill the air,

  Holding mysterious counsel there —

  On me their wondrous gifts to send,

  All mortals must before me bend.

  Kneel lowly then upon the mossy sod;

  And kiss repentant my avenging rod.

  Obey! and love and joy are thine!

  Rebel! and vengeance deep is mine!”

  Upon this awful summons, the nominal freeman knelt down before the nominal slave, and did in sober earnest most literally kiss the cane she extended to him, while the old woman chuckled inwardly; nay, an observant and tranquil-minded spectator might have perceived that outwardly, too, she evinced somewhat of the malicious triumph which so agreeably tickled her spirit. Her queer mouth twisted and contracted itself in a very remarkable manner, and there was a comical movement in her head that would have infinitely amused any lover of fun who had seen and understood it.

  Whitlaw, however, neither saw nor understood anything, but that he was in the power of a hateful sorceress, leagued with the devil, and in some sort his vicegerent here on earth, whose power and activity in the particular spot he inhabited was the necessary consequence of the “wealth of niggers” on Paradise Plantation; an evil which he inwardly swore should be atoned, for by the sufferings of this accursed race. Meanwhile, self-preservation and self-gratification were of course his principal objects; and urged by the feeling which these dictated, he framed his features into a look of very meek obedience as he rose from his humble position, and repeated his question —

  “Now, good Juno, what would you say to me?”

  One of the old woman’s favourite tricks to produce effect was to change her dialect, from the English she had learned but too well during her days of happiness, to the negro gibberish usually spoken by her race; declaring that, when using the former, she was “under a power,” and could not help it.

  She now replied to Whitlaw without the aid of inspiration.

  “I’se right-down glad, massa ‘dential clerk, you dutiful to the spirits. I ‘spect Juno can help you a spell, Massa Whitlaw, with the black beauty. — Please speak civil, ‘cause of the spirits — One — two — three. Oh! there they are, skimming and dipping over your head. Speak civil, Massa Whitlaw, ‘cause else they’ll be on me ‘gen, and that works Juno.”

  “Civil!” muttered Whitlaw between his teeth. “D—”

  “Oh...h! Oh...h!” cried Juno, shuddering, and raising her bamboo towards the heavens, “Oh...h! They are coming, they are coming — .”

  “Well then,” said Whitlaw, turning pale, “there’s money for ye. And harkye—”

  Here he bent down to the level of old Juno’s ear, and, as if fearing that the spirits she talked of should overhear him, whispered the commission he wished to entrust to her.

  “Ay — ay — ay—” replied the sybil, nodding her head mysteriously three times, and then bursting out in a tone of triumph:

  “Done! done it shall be!

  And fear not that she

  Shall dare wres’tle with me,

  Or much longer continue rebellious to thee.”

  She then made a sign that he should again lower his head to a level with hers; and having in her turn whispered something to him, she started back towards the hut, then paused, and seeing that he still remained where she left him, her wand was raised into the air, and the word “Away!” uttered in a loud, shrill, shrieking accent, that seemed preternaturally prolonged till it had reached the craven heart of Whitlaw; when he too started off, and departed from the spot as fast as his long legs could carry him.

  CHAPTER II.

  WHATEVER might have been the whispered compact between Whitlaw and his inspired agent, the immediate consequence of it was the disappearance of Phebe from her mother’s hut. Several days passed, and Peggy heard no tidings of her; but in the interval Edward Bligh paid her another midnight visit, to inform her of the reasons he had for believing that her daughter had not been sold at Natchez.

  “Thank God for that, Master Edward!” she exclaimed. “Anything is better t
han to have her sold away off the place. — But do you think, sir,” she continued, “that the clerk has put her into prison?”

  Tears of deep but patient suffering rolled, almost unconsciously to herself, down Peggy’s cheeks as she spoke. Edward’s heart was wrung as he looked at her sunken, melancholy features; and though he certainly had no great faith in the circumstance himself, he related the manner in which Juno had replied to the inquiry of Lucy, by pronouncing the word “Safe.”

  “She did! she did!” cried Peggy in an ecstasy. “Then safe she is, Master Edward, as surely as I now hear your voice.”

  “Is it possible, Peggy,” replied the young man almost reproachfully, “that you, who are a Christian, can place such confidence in a word uttered by that poor crazed cripple?”

  “Crazed, Master Edward! — Oh! Juno is not crazed — unless crazed folks know more than uncrazed ones.”

  “How should she know more, Peggy? What means of knowledge can she possibly have beyond the rest of ye? I hope she is crazy, poor soul! for if not, she is unquestionably an impostor.”

  “I may not say no, when you say yes, Master Edward,” replied Peggy respectfully; “but the master himself knows, and all the overseers as well, that there is no use in not believing Juno. All she speaks comes true.” Edward wisely avoided any discussion on the subject, and proceeded to inquire the reason of the people’s having absented themselves from worship on the night of the Sabbath; to which Peggy replied that she would willingly tell him all she had heard. “But then again, Master Edward,” she said, “you will find that Juno knew more than any other body.”