Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 28

"Mercy! there is no sugar on the table. The stupid creatures! How can you wonder, papa, that I allow myself to look down on them a little?"

"I don't believe it is possible to get all the virtues and all the talents for nothing a year, or even for ten dollars a month. I will try to induce the Major-General commanding to come and wait on table for us.

But I am really afraid I sha'n't succeed. He is very busy. Meantime suppose you should hint to one of the handmaidens, as politely as you can, that I am accustomed to take sugar in my tea."

"Julia!" called Lillie to a mulatto girl of eighteen, who just then entered from the kitchen. "You have given us no sugar. How could you be so silly?"

"Don't!" expostulated the Doctor. "I never knew a woman but scolded her servants, and I never knew a servant but waited the worse for it. All that the good-natured creature desired was to know what you wanted. It didn't clear her head nor soften her heart a bit to call her silly; nor would it have helped matters at all if you had gone on to pelt her with all the hard names in the English language. Be courteous, my dear, to everything that is human. We owe that much of respect to the fact that man is made in the image of his Maker. Politeness is a part of piety."

"When would Mr. Carter be able to visit them?" was Lillie's next spoken idea. Papa really could not say, but hoped very soon--whereupon he was immediately questioned as to the reasons of his hope. Having no special reason to allege, and being driven to admit that, after all, the visit could not positively be counted upon, he was sharply catechised as to _why_ he thought Mr. Carter would not come, to which he could only reply by denying he had entertained such a thought. Then followed in rapid succession, "Suppose the brigade leaves Thibodeaux, where will it go to?

Suppose General Banks attacks Port Hudson, won't he be obliged to leave Colonel Carter to defend the Lafourche Interior? Suppose the brigade is ordered into the field, will it not, being the best brigade, be always kept in reserve, out of the range of fire?"

"My dear child," deprecated the hunted Doctor, "what happy people those early Greeks must have been who were descended from the immortal G.o.ds!

They could ask their papas all sorts of questions about the future, and get reliable answers."

"But I am _so_ anxious!" said Lillie, dropping back in her chair with a sob, and wiping away her tears with her napkin.

"My poor dear little girl, you must try to keep up a better courage,"

urged papa in a compa.s.sionate tone which only made the drops fall faster, so affecting is pity.

"Nothing has happened to him yet, and we have a right to hope and pray that nothing will."

"But something _may_," was the persevering answer of anxiety.

As soon as supper was over she hurried to her room, locked the door, knelt on the bit of carpet by the bedside, buried her face in the bed-clothes, and prayed a long time with tears and sobs, that her husband, her own and dear husband, might be kept from danger. She did not even ask that he might be brought to her; it was enough if he might only be delivered from the awful perils of battle; in the humility of her earnestness and terror she had not the face to require more. After a while she went down stairs again with an expression of placid exhaustion, rendered sweeter by a soft glory of religious trust, as the sunset mellowness of our earthly atmosphere is rayed by beams from a mightier world. Sitting on a stool at her father's feet, and laying her head on his knee, she talked in more cheerful tones of Carter, of their own prospects, and then again of Carter--for ever of Carter.

"I _will_ teach the negroes to read," she said. "I will try to do good--and to be good."

She was thinking how she could best win the favor and protection of Heaven for her husband. She would teach the negroes for Carter's sake; she had not yet learned to do it for Jesus Christ's sake. She was not a heathen; she had received the same evangelical instruction that most young Americans receive; she was perfectly well aware of the doctrine of salvation by faith and not by works. But no profound sorrow, no awful sense of helplessness under the threatening of dangers to those whom she dearly loved, had ever made these things matters of personal experience and realizing belief.

When the Doctor called in the negroes at nine o'clock, and read to them a chapter from the Bible, and a prayer, Lillie joined in the devotions with an unusual sense of humility and earnestness. In her own room, before going to bed, she prayed again for Carter, and not for him only, but for herself. Then she quickly fell asleep, for she was young and very tired. How some elderly people, who have learned to toss and count the hours till near morning, envy these infants, whether of twenty months or twenty years, who can so readily cast their sorrows into the profound and tranquil ocean of slumber!

CHAPTER XIX.

THE REORGANIZATION OF SOUTHERN LABOR IS CONTINUED WITH VIGOR.

By six o'clock in the morning the Doctor was out visiting the quarters of his sable dependants. Having on the previous evening told Major Scott, the head man or overseer of the gang, that he should expect the people to rise by daybreak and get their breakfasts immediately, so as to be ready for early work, he was a little astonished to find half of them still asleep, and two or three absent. The Major himself was just leaving the water-b.u.t.t in rear of the plantation house, where he had evidently been performing his morning ablutions.

"Scott," said the Doctor, "you shouldn't use that water. The b.u.t.t holds hardly enough for the family."

"Yes sah," answered with a reverential bow the Major. "But the b.u.t.t that we has is mighty dry."

"But there is the bayou, close by."

"Yes sah, so 'tis," a.s.sented the Major, with another bow. "I guess I'll think of that nex' time."

"But what are you all about?" asked the Doctor. "I understood that you were all to be up and ready for work by this time."

"I tole the boys so," said the Major in a tone of indignant virtue. "I tole 'em every one to be up an' about right smart this mornin'. I tole 'em this was the fust mornin' an' they orter be up right smart, cos everythin' 'pended on how we took a start. 'Pears like they didn't mine much about it some of 'em."

"I'm afraid you didn't set them an example, Scott. Have you had your breakfast?"

"No sah. 'Pears like the ole woman couldn't fetch nothin' to pa.s.s this mornin'."

"Well, Scott, you must set them an example, if you want to influence them. Never enjoin any duty upon a man without setting him an example."

"Yes sah; that's the true way," coincided the unabashed Major. "That's the way Abraham an' Isaac an' Jacob went at it," he added, turning his large eyes upward with a sanctimoniousness of effect which, most men could not have equalled without the aid of lifted hands, tonsures and priestly gowns. "An' they was G.o.d's 'ticlar child'n, an 'lightened by his holy sperrit."

The Doctor studied him for a moment with the interest of a philosopher in a moral curiosity, and said to himself, rather sadly, that a monkey or a parrot might be educated to very nearly the same show of piety.

"Are all the people here?" he inquired, reverting from a consideration of the spiritual harvest to matters connected with temporal agriculture.

"No sah. I'se feared not. Tom an' Jim is gone fo' suah. Tom he went off las' night down to the fote. 'Pears like he's foun' a gal down thar that he's a co'ting. Then Jim;--don' know whar Jim is nohow. Mighty poor mean n.i.g.g.e.r he is, I specs. Sort o' no 'count n.i.g.g.e.r."

"Is he?" said the Doctor, eyeing Scott with a suspicious air, as if considering the possibility that he too might be a negro of no account.

"I must have a talk with these people. Get them all together, every man, woman and pickaninny."

The Major's face was radiant at the prospect of a speech, a scene, a spectacle, an excitement. He went at his subordinates with a will, dragging them out of their slumbers by the heels, jerking the little ones along by the shoulder, and shouting in a grand ba.s.s voice, "Come, start 'long! Pile out! Git away frum hyer. Mars Ravenel gwine to make a speech."

In a few minutes he had them drawn up in two ranks, men in front, women in the rear, tallest on the right, younglings on the left.

"I knows how to form 'em," he said with a broad smile of satisfied vanity. "I used to c'mand a comp'ny under Gineral Phelps. I was head boss of his cullud 'campment. He fus' give me the t.i.tle of Major."

He took his post on the right of the line, honored the Doctor with a military salute, and commanded in a hollow roar, "'Tention!"

"My friends," said the Doctor, "we are all here to earn our living."

"That's so. Bress the Lawd! The good time am a comin'," from the not unintelligent audience.

"Hear me patiently and don't interrupt," continued the Doctor. "I see that you understand and appreciate your good fortune in being able at last to work for the wages of freedom."

"Yes, Mars'r," in a subdued hoa.r.s.e whisper from Major Scott, who immediately apologized for his liberty by a particularly grand military salute.

"I want to impress upon you," said Ravenel, "that the true dignity of freedom does not consist in laziness. A lazy man is sure to be a poor man, and a poor man is never quite a free man. He is not free to buy what he would like, because he has no money. He is not free to respect himself, for a lazy man is not worthy even of his own respect. We must all work to get any thing or deserve any thing. In old times you used to work because you were afraid of the overseer." "Whip," he was about to say, but skipped the degrading word.

"Now you are to work from hope, and not from fear. The good time has come when our nation has resolved to declare that the laborer is worthy of his hire."

"Oh, the blessed Scripter!" shouted Madam Scott in a piercing pipe, whereupon her husband gave her a white-eyed glare of reproof for daring to speak when he was silent.

"Your future depends upon yourselves," the Doctor went on. "You can become useful and even influential citizens, if you will. But you must be industrious and honest, and faithful to your engagements. I want you to understand this perfectly. I will talk more to you about it some other time. Just now I wish chiefly to impress upon you your immediate duties while you are on this plantation. I shall expect you all to sleep in your quarters. I shall expect you to be up at daybreak, get your breakfasts as soon as possible, and be ready to go to work at once. You must not leave the plantation during the day without my permission. You will work ten hours a day during the working season. You will be orderly, honest, virtuous and respectable. In return I am to give you rations, clothing, quarters, fuel, medical attendance, and instruction for children. I am also to pay you as wages eight dollars a month for first-cla.s.s hands, and six for second-cla.s.s. Each of you will have his little plot of land. Finally, I will endeavor to see that you are all, old and young, taught to read."

Here there was an unanimous shout of delight, followed by articulate blessings and utterances of grat.i.tude.

"Whenever any one gets dissatisfied," concluded the Doctor, "I will apply to find him another place. You know that, if you go off alone and without authority, you are exposed to be picked up by the provost-marshal, and put in the army. Now then, get your breakfasts.

Major Scott, you will report to me when they are ready to go to work."