Among the Pines Part 39

"I think not, madam," I replied; "at least not now."

I continued reading, for a time, when, tiring of the book, I laid it down, and followed them to the little burial-ground.

The grave of Sam was open, and the plantation blacks were gathered around it. In the centre of the group, and at the head of the rude coffin, the Colonel was seated, and near him the octoroon woman and her son. The old preacher was speaking.

"My chil'ren," he said: "she hab gone ter Him, wid har chile: gone up dar, whar dey doan't sorrer no more, whar dey doan't weep no more, whar all tears am wiped from dar eyes foreber. I knows she lay han's on ha.r.s.eff, and dat, my chil'ren, am whot none ob us shud do, 'case we'm de Lord's; He put us har, an' he'll take us 'way when we's fru wid our work, not afore. We hab no right ter gwo afore. Pore Juley did--but p'raps she cudn't help it. P'raps de great sorrer war so big in har heart, dat she cudn't fine rest nowhar but in de cole, dark riber.

P'raps she warn't ter blame--p'raps," and here his eyes filled: "p'raps ole Pomp war all ter blame, for I tole har, my chil'ren"--he could say no more, and sinking down on a rude seat, he covered his face, and sobbed audibly. Even the Colonel's strong frame heaved with emotion, and not a dry eye was near. After a time the old man rose again, and with streaming eyes, and upturned face, continued:

"Dars One up dar, my chil'ren, dat say: 'Come unter Me, all ye dat am a weary an' a heaby laden, an' I will gib you ress.' He, de good Lord, He say dat; and p'raps Juley hard Him say it, an' dat make har gwo." Again his voice failed, and he sank down, weeping and moaning as if his heart would break.

A pause followed, when the Colonel rose, and aided by Jim and two other blacks, with his own hands nailed down the lid, and lowered the rude coffin into the ground. Then the earth was thrown upon it, and then the long, low chant which the negroes raise over the dead, mingling now with sobs and moans, and breaking into a strange wild wail, went up among the pines, and floating off on the still night air, echoed through the dark woods, till it sounded like music from the grave. I have been in the chamber of the dying; I have seen the young and the beautiful laid away in the earth; but I never felt the solemn awfulness of death, as I did, when, in the stillness and darkness of night, I listened to the wild grief of that negro group, and saw the bodies of that slave mother and her child, lowered to their everlasting rest by the side of Sam.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOMEWARD.

The morning broke bright and mellow with the rays of the winter sun, which in Carolina lends the warmth of October to the chills of January, when, with my portmanteau strapped, and my thin overcoat on my arm, I gave my last "G.o.d bless you" to the octoroon woman, and turned my face toward home.

Jim shouted "all ready," the driver cracked his whip, and we were on our way to Georgetown.

The recent rains had hardened the roads, the bridges were repaired, and we were whirled rapidly forward, and, at one o'clock, reached Bucksville. There we met a cordial welcome, and remained to dinner. Our host pressed us to pa.s.s the night at his house, but the Colonel had business with one of his secession friends residing down the road--my wayside acquaintance, Colonel A----, and desired to stay overnight with him. At three o'clock, bidding a kindly farewell to Captain B---- and his excellent family, we were again on our way.

The sun was just sinking among the western pines, when we turned into a broad avenue, lined with stately old trees, and rode up to the door-way of the rice-planter. It was a large, square, dingy old house, seated on a gentle knoll, a short half-mile from the river, along whose banks stretched the rice-fields. We entered, and were soon welcomed by its proprietor.

He received my friend warmly, and gave me a courteous greeting, remarking, when I mentioned that I was homeward bound, that it was wise to go. "Things are very unsettled; there's no telling what a day may bring forth; feeling is running very high, and a Northern man, whatever his principles, is not safe here. By-the-way," he added, "did you not meet with some little obstruction at Conwayboro', on your way up?"

"Yes, I did; a person there ordered me back, but when things began to look serious, Scipio, the negro whom you saw with me, got me out of the hobble."

"Didn't he tell the gentleman that you were a particular friend of mine, and had met me by appointment at Captain B----'s?" he asked, smiling.

"I believe he did, sir; but I a.s.sure you, _I_ said nothing of the kind, and I think the black should not be blamed, under the circ.u.mstances."

"Oh, no; I don't blame him. I think he did a smart thing. He might have said you were my grandmother, if it would have served you, for that low fellow is as fractious as the devil, and dead sure on the trigger."

"You are very good, sir," I replied: "how did you hear of it?"

"A day or two afterward, B---- pa.s.sed here on his way to Georgetown. I had been riding out, and happened to be at the head of my avenue when he was going by. He stopped, and asked if I knew you. Not knowing, then, the circ.u.mstances, I said that I had met you casually at Bucksville, but had no particular acquaintance with you. He rode on, saying nothing further. The next morning, I had occasion to go to Georgetown, and at Mr. Fraser's office, accidentally heard that Scip--who is well-known and universally liked there--was to have a public whipping that evening.

Something prompted me to inquire into it, and I was told that he had been charged by B---- with s.h.i.+elding a well-known abolitionist at Conwayboro'--a man who was going through the up-country, distributing such d.a.m.nable publications as the New York _Independent_ and _Tribune_.

I knew, of course, it referred to you, and that it wasn't true. I went to Scip and got the facts, and by stretching the truth a little, finally got him off. There was a slight discrepancy between my two accounts of you" (and here he laughed heartily), "and B----, when we were before the Justice, remarked on it, and came d----d near calling me a liar. It was lucky he didn't, for if he had, he'd have gone to h--l before the place was hot enough for him."

"I cannot tell you, my dear sir, how grateful I am to you for this. It would have pained me more than I can express, if Scip had suffered for doing a disinterested kindness to me."

Early in the morning we were again on our way, and twelve o'clock found us seated at a dinner of bacon, corn-bread, and waffles, in the "first hotel" of Georgetown. The Charleston boat was to leave at three o'clock; and, as soon as dinner was over, I sallied out to find Scip. After a half-hour's search I found him on "Shackelford's wharf," engaged in loading a schooner bound for New York with a cargo of cotton and turpentine.

He was delighted to see me, and when I had told him I was going home, and might never see him again, I took his hand warmly in mine, and said:

"Scip, I have heard of the disgrace that was near being put upon you on my account, and I feel deeply the disinterested service you did to me; now, I _can not_ go away without doing _something_ for you--showing you in _some_ way that I appreciate and _like_ you."

"I like's _you_, ma.s.sa," he replied, the tears coming to his eyes: "I tuk ter you de bery fuss day I seed you, 'case, I s'pose," and he wrung my hand till it ached: "you pitied de pore brack man. But you karnt do nuffin fur _me_, ma.s.sa; I doant want nuffin; I doant want ter leab har, 'case de Lord dat put me har, arn't willin' I shud gwo. But you kin do suffin, ma.s.sa, fur de pore brack man,--an' dat'll be doin' it fur _me_, 'case my heart am all in dat. You kin tell dem folks up dar, whar you lib, ma.s.sa, dat we'm not like de brutes, as dey tink we is. Dat we's got souls, an' telligence, an' feelin's, an' am men like demselfs. You kin tell 'em, too, ma.s.sa,--'case you's edication, and kin talk--how de pore wite man 'am kep' down har; how he'm ragged, an' starvin', an' ob no account, 'case de brack man am a slave. How der chil'ren can't get no schulein', how eben de grow'd up ones doan't know nuffin--not eben so much as de pore brack slave, 'case de 'stockracy wan't dar votes, an cudn't get 'em ef dey 'low'd 'em larning. Ef your folks know'd all de trufh--ef dey know'd how both de brack an' de pore w'ite man, am on de groun', and can't git up, ob demselfs--dey'd do _suffin'_--dey'd break de Constertution--dey'd do suffin' ter help us. I doant want no one hurted, I doant want no one wronged; but jess tink ob it, ma.s.sa, four million ob bracks, and nigh so many pore wites, wid de bressed gospil s.h.i.+nin' down on 'em, an' dey not knowin' on it. All dem--ebry one of 'em--made in de image ob de great G.o.d, an' dey driven roun', an' 'bused wuss dan de brutes. You's seed dis, ma.s.sa, wid your own eyes, an' you kin tell 'em on it; an' you _will_ tell 'em on it, ma.s.sa;" and again he took my hand while the tears rolled down his cheeks; "an' Scip will bress you fur it, ma.s.sa; wid his bery la.s.s breaf he'll bress you; an' de good Lord will bress you, too, ma.s.sa; He will foreber bress you, for He'm on de side ob de pore, an' de 'flicted: His own book say dat, an'

it am true, I knows it, fur I feels it _har_;" and he laid his hand on his heart, and was silent.

I could not speak for a moment. When I mastered my feelings, I said, "I _will_ do it Scip; as G.o.d gives me strength, I _will_."

Reader, I am keeping my word.

CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

This is not a work of fiction. It is a record of facts, and therefore the reader will not expect me to dispose of its various characters on artistic principles--that is, lay them away in one of those final receptacles for the creations of the romancer--the grave and matrimony.

Death has been among them, but nearly all are yet doing their work in this breathing, busy world.

The characters I have introduced are real. They are not drawn with the pencil of fancy, nor, I trust, colored with the tints of prejudice. The scenes I have described are true. I have taken some liberties with the names of persons and places, and, in a few instances, altered dates; but the events themselves occurred under my own observation. No one acquainted with the section of country I have described, or familiar with the characters I have delineated, will question this statement.

Lest some one who has not seen the slave and the poor white man of the South, as he actually is, should deem my picture overdrawn, I will say that "the half has not been told!" If the whole were related--if the Southern system, in all its naked ugliness, were fully exposed--the truth would read like fiction, and the baldest relation of fact like the wildest dream, of romance.

The overseer was never taken. A letter which I received from Colonel J----, shortly prior to the stoppage of the mails, informed me that Moye had succeeded in crossing the mountains into Tennessee, where, in an interior town, he disposed of the horse, and then made his way by an inland route to the free states. The horse the Colonel had recovered, but the overseer he never expected to see. Moye is now, no doubt, somewhere in the North, and is probably at this present writing a zealous Union man, of somewhat the same "stripe" as the conductors of the New York _Herald_ and the Boston _Courier_.

I have not heard directly from Scipio, but one day last July, after a long search, I found on one of the wharves of South Street, a coasting captain, who knew him well, and who had seen him the month previous at Georgetown. He was at that time pursuing his usual avocations, and was as much respected and trusted, as when I met him.

A few days after the tidings of the fall of Sumter were received in New York, and when I had witnessed the spontaneous and universal uprising of the North, which followed that event, I dispatched letters to several of my Southern friends, giving them as near as I could an account of the true state of feeling here, and representing the utter madness of the course the South was pursuing. One of these letters went to my Union acquaintance whom I have called, in the preceding pages, "Andy Jones."

He promptly replied, and a pretty regular correspondence ensued between us, which has continued, at intervals, even since the suspension of intercourse between the North and the South.

Andy has stood firmly and n.o.bly by the old flag. At the risk of every thing, he has boldly expressed his sentiments everywhere. With his life in his hand, and--a revolver in each of his breeches-pockets, he walked the streets of Wilmington when the secession fever was at its height, openly proclaiming his undying loyalty to the Union, and "no man dared gainsay him."

But with all his patriotism, Andy keeps a bright eye on the "main chance." Like his brother, the Northern Yankee, whom he somewhat resembles and greatly admires, he never omits an opportunity of "turning an honest penny." In defiance of custom-house regulations, and of our strict blockade, he has carried on a more or less regular traffic with New York and Boston (_via_ Halifax and other neutral ports), ever since North Carolina seceded. His turpentine--while it was still his property--has been sold in the New York market, under the very eyes of the government officials--and, honest reader, _I_ have known of it.

By various roundabout means, I have recently received letters from him.

His last, dated in April, and brought to a neutral port by a s.h.i.+pmaster whom he implicitly trusts, has reached me since the previous chapters were written. It covers six pages of foolscap, and is written in defiance of all grammatical and orthographical principles; but as it conveys important intelligence, in regard to some of the persons mentioned in this narrative, I will transcribe a portion of it.

It gave me the melancholy tidings of the death of Colonel J----. He had joined the Confederate army, and fell, bravely meeting a charge of the Ma.s.sachusetts troops, at Roanoke.

On receiving the news of his friend's death, Andy rode over to the plantation, and found Madam P---- plunged in the deepest grief. While he was there a letter arrived from Charleston, with intelligence of the dangerous illness of her son. This second blow crushed her. For several days she was delirious, and her life despaired of; but throughout the whole the n.o.ble corn-cracker, neglecting every thing, remained beside her.

When she returned to herself, and had in a measure recovered her strength, she learned that the Colonel had left no will; that she was still a slave; and soon to be sold, with the rest of the Colonel's _personal property_, according to law.

This is what Andy writes about the affair. I give the letter as he wrote it, merely correcting the punctuation, and enough of the spelling, to make it intelligible.

"W'en I hard thet th' Cunel hadent leff no wil, I was hard put what ter dew; but arter thinkin' on it over a spell, I knowed shede har on it sumhow; so I 'cluded to tel har miseff. She tuk on d----d hard at fust, but arter a bit, grew more calm like, and then she sed it war G.o.d's wil, an' she wudent komplane. Ye nows I've got a wife, but wen the ma'am sed thet, she luk'd so like an angel, thet d----d eff I cud help puttin' my arms round har, an' hugin' on har, till she a'moste screeched. Wal, I toled har, Id stan' by har eff evrithing went ter h--l--an I wil, by ----.