“It is indeed a most splendid establishment!” replied Mrs. Allen Barnaby, raising her hand as in admiration.
“It is a great loss as to labour, in course,” resumed Mrs. Beauchamp; “but my colonel is a very liberal, high-minded gentleman, and chooses that his wife and his daughter should live in all luxury, according as they have a right to do. Doubtless, dear lady,” she continued, with a pitying shake of the head, “you have heard and read enough about the want of helps among the American ladies; and it serves them right too, there is no denying it, for thinking of such a thing as turning a free-born American into a drudge, to -come and go at anybody’s bidding. True it is, no doubt of it, and very fitting too, that they should want helps; but now, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, ma’am, I flatter myself you will have an opportunity of making your own observations, and finding out for yourself the alone reason why so many of the finest ladies in the world are often forced to do their own dirty work, and will be able to do justice to the real gentility of those who know better what is due to themselves. Walk in, dear ladies, walk in, and pray remember that you may all of you just ring and call as much as you like. Indeed, you’ll only have to clap your hands, ladies, in order to bring as many domestic blacks about you as you can want or wish for. Pray make no scruples, and don’t fear that you are taking them from out-door work, for they are never sent into the grounds from year’s end to year’s end, except just for punishment, and then they get their flogging in the fields, which is a deal better, you know, than having it to do in the house.”
This speech, which was begun as they left the carriage, lasted the whole length of an enormous hall which traversed the building from front to back, affording by its perfect shade, and the current of air which passed through it, a very agreeable contrast to the heat, which the travellers had been enduring.
“Oh goodness! What a delightful place!” exclaimed Madame Tornorino.— “I hope, ma’am, you mean to sit down here a little?”
“This is beautiful, to be sure!” chimed in the greatly comforted Matilda, beginning to fan herself anew with refreshed strength and violence.
“Beautiful?” repeated Mrs. Allen Barnaby, in an accent that seemed to scorn the insufficient epithet. “It is noble! It is magnificent!”
Mrs. Beauchamp, with patriotic and domestic pride both busy at her heart, looked round upon the admiring guests, as if she could have kissed them all.
“Oh my!” she gaily exclaimed, “you mustn’t talk about this being beautiful. It is just large, and lofty, and fresh, — that’s all. But you, my dear Mrs. Allen Barnaby, have taught your own clear sighted way of seeing everything to your whole party, and I’m sure it’s a glory and a pleasure to show you anything. But now please to walk in here, ladies. This is what we call number one, because it is our littlest drawing-room. But that’s the proper way to begin, you know. We ought always to begin with the beginning, and so I always bring new visitors in here first. Now do please to sit down, all of you, and refresh yourselves. Major Allen Barnaby and Monsieur must be so kind, I expect, to excuse pa’s stealing off so. It has always been his way, gentlemen, and we mustn’t look for his changing it now. If it’s twenty times in a year that he goes from home, the first thing he does upon coming back to it, is to go into a little dark room of his own picking and choosing, and then he lights a cigar, and gets a nigger or two to bring him a mint julep, with a nice bit of ice in it; and then, gentlemen, he sends off for his confidential looker, who presently puts him up to everything that has happened on the estate since he went; and I don’t believe he’d lay down in his bed till he had heard all this, if it was ever so.”
The major and his son-in-law hastened to assure their amiable hostess that they should be immeasurably sorry if their being at Big-Gang Bank should in any degree interfere with the habits of Colonel Beauchamp; all of which having been said with the most perfect politeness on all sides, the whole party sat down on the various couches and sofas that seemed to invite them, and then Mrs. Colonel Beauchamp clapped her hands. Upon this two handsome negro-girls made their appearance, side by side, at the door, and with a movement so similar and simultaneous that they rather looked like one piece of machinery than two self-moving human beings.
“Sangaree, whisky, melons, ice, and cakes,” said Mrs. Beauchamp, in a voice of authority that sounded a little like a word of command given on parade, and ere the eye could wink, the two figures became invisible.
“And this is the country,” exclaimed Mrs. Allen Barnaby, with emotion, “which the audacity of English travellers has dared to libel as inferior to their own! I blush to think that I am an Englishwoman.”
“Never mind that, dearest Mrs. Allen Barnaby!” replied her amiable hostess, in a tone of the most friendly spirit of consolation.
“That is a sort of misfortune, you know, that nobody can help, let them wish it ever so much. But this I will say, that if ever a lady deserved to be a free-born American female, it is you yourself!”
“Dear, kind Mrs. Beauchamp!” returned the travelling lady.
“How sweet it is to hear you say so! I would not exchange such praise as those words contain for the richest diadem that ever encircled the tyrannical head of a European monarch!”
Mrs. Allen Barnaby uttering these words, appeared to be overpowered by her feelings, and drew forth her pocket-handkerchief to catch the drops that emotion forced to flow. Fortunately, the black automatons reappeared at this moment, each bearing a tray, the twin of which was in the hands of the other.
Those who have never partaken of iced sangaree when the thermometer stands at a hundred, cannot be trusted to calculate its power of soothing the spirits. Mrs. Allen Barnaby tasted and was revived — drank freely — for it is a mixture that, like Cowper’s tea, “cheers, but not inebriates,” and was herself again — gay, animated, inspired, and eloquent.
“Well, now!” said Mrs. Beauchamp, looking cheerfully round her, “I do think we shall be as pleasant a party as ever was got together. I wonder what has become of the young English gentleman, Mr. Egerton? I heard him say positively that he would be here to-day, and unless he has right-down lost himself some way or another, I expect he ought to be here by this time; for I calculate he must have come to the same point by steam as we did, only setting off by the next turn. What’s that, Annie?” she continued, looking out of the window as conveniently as she could without approaching it. “Is not that a gentleman on horseback?”
“I don’t know, mamma,” said the young lady, suddenly passing through a pair of folding doors into an inner room. I grieve that she should so have said, because next to Mrs. Allen Barnaby herself, Annie Beauchamp is the heroine of the present narrative; and, as the words thus uttered were not true, I feel compelled to acknowledge that she does not altogether deserve the dignified position in which my partiality has induced me to place her.
Annie Beauchamp said that she did not know whether the approaching figure were that of a gentleman on horseback, whereas she did know perfectly well, not only that it was a gentleman on horseback, but that, moreover, the gentleman was Frederic Egerton. Whatever might have been the motive for such falsification, it was of course indefensible, and I must leave her to the mercy of those to whom I have been compelled by my love of historic truth to make this disclosure.
A few minutes more, and the fact became evident to all, and Mrs. Beauchamp prepared herself again to do the honours of her mansion, her sangaree, and her slaves, in such a manner as to elevate her country in the eyes of another European, to the highest pitch that it was possible for her to reach.
The young man paid his compliments to the circle assembled, with his usual graceful ease, although it did not appear to consist exactly of the party he expected to find there. Perhaps he was disappointed because Colonel Beauchamp was not himself present to welcome him.
Neither the colonel nor his daughter, however, made their appearance till the hour of dinner; the former being engaged exactly in the manner his lady had described, and the latter choosin
g for some reason or other to pass the interval in her own room.
It was really a pretty room, that allotted to the heiress of Big-Gang Bank, for it was decorated according to her own fancy. It was on the ground-floor, at the north-east corner of one of the wings, and opened by two large French windows upon a very small, but bright and fragrant flower-garden, inclosed for, and kept sacred to, her own especial use and benefit.
And here all Annie’s private hours were passed, and all her private studies carried on; and, considering that she did not deal in necromancy, or any other branch of the art usually denominated black, a very remarkable degree of mystery attended the prosecution of these studies.
Annie Beauchamp had for the last year of her life been very busily engaged in educating herself; having with a good deal of acuteness discovered that during the time others had been engaged in teaching her, she had learnt nothing. But in order to perform this double part of tutor and pupil, it was absolutely necessary that she should not be watched; for as everybody excepting herself considered her education not only completed, but completed on the most liberal and extended scale, her own exertions would have been treated as a work of supererogation, which it would be quite as well to leave alone. Moreover, this self-education was carried on in a style that would indisputably have brought upon her as many ‘ reproofs for neglecting her studies in one line, as for prosecuting them unnecessarily in another.
Annie had cost her adoring parents a vast number of “quarters” in all the most approved branches of American female accomplishments, to no single one of which she had devoted an hour since she left “college.” Algebra and mathematics she wholly neglected; her plane trigonometry she tore into fragments, and made her own little slave, Nina, sweep it all away: astronomy fared not much better; and all the elements of all the ologies were crammed into a basket together, and carried off in company with the trigonometry. From both music and painting, which had of course been “quartered” upon her as long as she remained in other hands than her own, she also turned resolutely away, not in distaste, but despair. In short, Annie Beauchamp did nothing but read, and that she did with an avidity and perseverance for which nothing but her unlimited credit with a New York bookseller could have supplied materials.
To the scene of all this quiet study, the eccentric little girl now repaired; but instead of taking a book, she placed herself at the greatest possible distance from her reading corner; and seating herself in a low chair, with her fairy feet upon a somewhat high footstool, her crossed arms resting on her lap, and her absent eyes fixed upon the floor, she would have made as pretty a study for the attitude commonly described by the words “nose and knees,” as ever was seen. Ere she had indulged many minutes in this halfsulky, half-happy position, which at that moment was particularly well suited to her state of mind, her enjoyment of it was disturbed by the entrance of Nina.
This Nina was a negro-girl exactly of her own age, who had been commanded to play with her in infancy, and elected to the especial honour of being the young heiress’s personal attendant from the time of her return from school. She was not suffered, however, to leave the plantation when her young mistress went from home; because, as the confidential manager of the household gang informed his master, she was so “damation ‘cute,” that she’d be sure to bring home mischief if she did.
The black and white girls, therefore, had been separated for two months, and despite the tremendous interval between the heiress and the slave, the pleasure of meeting was mutual, though perhaps not quite equal in degree. Annie had many things to think about; Nina had but one, and that one was her young mistress.
The black girl entered through the open window with the light spring of an antelope, and dropping upon her knees before Annie’s footstool, seized first upon one delicate hand, and then upon the other, to kiss and fondle them, while she exclaimed in English, as pure as that spoken by her well-read young mistress —
“It is like shade in the midst of the rice-ground.”
“What is like shade, Nina?” said Annie, smiling kindly on her.
The girl sighed deeply, and did not answer.
“What is like shade, Nina?” repeated her mistress.
“The sight of something very dear and long unseen,” replied the girl. “But it is not like the shade of the free forest,” she continued, looking up to the face of Annie, with an expression of great suffering.
“What is the matter with you, Nina?” said the young lady, looking with much surprise at the troubled countenance of her pretty slave. “Do you mean to say that you want me to give you your freedom?”
“My freedom? Do you think, Miss Annie, that it is possible I could ever wish to be free whilst I belong to you? Oh, do not think it! Such a wish never crossed my mind for a single instant once I have been old enough to know what wishing meant.”
“Then what do you mean, my dear girl? And wharf; does that tear mean, Nina? Why do you look upon me so very sadly? I never saw you in this humour before,” said Annie, looking earnestly at the dark face that rested cm her knees.
“How should I be able to tell you?” replied the girl, evasively. “Even you, Miss Annie, sometimes seem hardly to know what is passing in your own mind; and do you wonder that with all my ignorance, I should not know more than you do?”
“What have you been reading, Nina, since I went away?” demanded Annie, looking grave. “I think you have been wasting your time with some of those foolish novels. Foolish for you, they certainly are, for they cannot by possibility convey to you a single useful idea.”
“I have not. — But never mind now, dearest Miss Annie, about my reading. It matters little what a negro-girl reads, so that she leave not her work undone.”
“But why do you look so sad, Nina? You have not told me that, you know,” said her young mistress, looking curiously in the large eyes that had not yet been able to wink away their superfluous moisture “Why are your eyes full of tears, my poor girl?”
“Why the truth is, Miss Annie,” said the young slave, “I am sorry you are come home, though I lore to see you. I was so glad when I heard you were going to be very happy, and to travel about; “and that is the reason, you know, why I may be sorry you are come home again so soon.”
“I should scarcely have thought you would have cried about it either,” said Annie, looking puzzled for a moment. “But you were always an odd girl, Nina, though a good one too, as times go. But there — go now, I can’t talk to you any longer, for I am thinking of something else. You may go into my bedroom, Nina, and unpack all my things, and bring all the books you find into this room. There — go.”
At first hearing the word “go,” the girl had sprung upon her feet, but even after hearing it a second time, she still lingered.
“I will go,” she said, but without moving.
“What ails you, Nina?” said Annie, laughing; “I think you are bewitched. Why do you not go where I bid you? What a spoilt girl you are, Nina! Tell me now, naughty blacky, ought I not to send you to the rice ground?”
“If you did, Miss Annie,” she replied, shaking her head, “perhaps I should go more quickly.”
She now moved a step or two towards the door, but before she reached it, turned round and said —
“Will you not go, Miss Annie, and pay a visit to the good lady at Portico Lodge?”
“To be sure I shall go and pay a visit to the good lady at Portico Lodge?” replied Annie. “Did you ever know me neglect my kind old friend? But you do not want me to go this very moment, Nina, do you?”
Again the young slave stood silent for a while before she answered, and looked irresolute and embarrassed, as if she had something on her mind that she wished to express, but for some reason or other did not choose to utter it.
“What are you dreaming about, Nina?” said Annie, laughing. “I do believe, girl, that you are in love.”
Nina shook her head, sighing, however, at the same time so very deeply, that her mistress laughed again, saying —
“Oh my! Miss Annie!” returned the girl, tears again starting to her eyes, “I wish you would not talk so idly! Go and see good Madam Whitlaw as soon as ever you can. She is a kind lady, and she loves you dearly, Miss Annie; and besides, she knows everything and everybody, and will be likely, if any one can, to—”
Here Nina suddenly stopped short, rapidly turning her eyes away as if to avoid meeting those of her mistress, which were fixed upon her.
“If you are not in love, Nina, you are most certainly gone or agoing out of your wits,” said Miss Beauchamp, waving her off. “And if you don’t go away directly, it is very likely that I shall lose mine; for all you do say is as unintelligible as all you do not say. Besides, Nina, I tell you I am thinking of something else.” Once again the black girl heaved a very heavy sigh, and then retreated, leaving her mistress less disposed to meditate upon her mystery and her melancholy than she probably would have been, had she not been, as she said, thinking of something else.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE day following this large influx of visitors at Big-Gang Bank, witnessed the sending off of half-a-dozen notes containing dinner invitations to the six principal proprietors in the neighbourhood.
There was a seventh, concerning whom Mrs. Beauchamp and the colonel differed in opinion.
This seventh great proprietor, within a circle of five miles round Big-Gang Bank, was a certain maiden lady of the name of Whitlaw, the same whom the young slave, Nina, was so anxious her mistress should visit. For many years she had been known in the-neighbourhood as Mrs. Clio Whitlaw; but this singular Christian name had been dropped on the death of a widowed sister-in-law, and the greatest female landowner in America had now become simply Mrs. Whitlaw.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 355