Daisy
They know, if they don't do their part, the lash will come down: and
it don't come down easy."
I suppose I must have looked as if it had come down on me. Preston
stopped talking and began to take care of me, putting his arm round me
to support my steps homeward. In the verandah my aunt met us. She
immediately decided that I was ill, and ordered me to go to bed at
once. It was the thing of all others I would have wished to do. It
saved me from the exertion of trying to hold myself up and of speaking
and moving and answering questions. I went to bed in dull misery,
longing to go to sleep and forget all my troubles of mind and body
together; but while the body rested, the mind would not. That kept the
consciousness of its burden; and it was that, more than any physical
ail, which took away my power of eating, and created instead a
wretched sort of half nausea, which made even rest unrefreshing. As
for rest in my mind and heart, it seemed at that time as if I should
never know it again. Never again! I was a child--I had but vague ideas
respecting even what troubled me; nevertheless I had been struck,
where may few children be struck! in the very core and quick of my
heart's reverence and affection. It had come home to me that papa was
somehow doing wrong. My father was in my childish thought and belief,
the ideal of chivalrous and high-bred excellence;--and _papa_ was
doing wrong. I could not turn my eyes from the truth; it was before me
in too visible a form. It did not arrange itself in words, either; not
at first; it only pressed upon my heart and brain that seven hundred
people on my father's property were injured, and by his will, and for
his interests. Dimly the consciousness came to me; slowly it found its
way and spread out its details before me; bit by bit one point after
another came into my mind to make the whole good; bit by bit one item
after another came in to explain and be explained and to add its quota
of testimony; all making clear and distinct and dazzling before me the
truth which at first it was so hard to grasp. And this is not the less
true because my childish thought at first took everything vaguely and
received it slowly. I was a child and a simple child; but once getting
hold of a clue of truth, my mind never let it go. Step by step, as a
child could, I followed it out. And the balance of the golden rule, to
which I was accustomed, is an easy one to weigh things in; and even
little hands can manage it.
For an hour after they put me to bed my heart seemed to grow chill
from minute to minute; and my body, in curious sympathy, shook as if I
had an ague. My aunt and Miss Pinshon came and went and were busy
about me; making me drink negus and putting hot bricks to my feet.
Preston stole in to look at me; but I gathered that neither then nor
afterwards did he reveal to any one the matter of our conversation the
hour before. "Wearied"--"homesick"--"feeble"--"with no sort of
strength to bear anything"--they said I was. All true, no doubt; and
yet I was not without powers of endurance, even bodily, if my mind
gave a little help. Now the trouble was, that all such help was
wanting. The dark figures of the servants came and went too, with the
others; came and stayed; Margaret and Mammy Theresa took post in my
room, and when they could do nothing for me, crouched by the fire and
spent their cares and energies in keeping that in full blast. I could
hardly bear to see them; but I had no heart to speak even to ask that
they might be sent away, or for anything else; and I had a sense
besides that it was a gratification to them to be near me; and to
gratify any one of the race I could have borne a good deal of pain.
It smites my heart now, to think of those hours. The image of them is
sharp and fresh as if the time were but last night. I lay with shut
eyes, taking in as it seemed to be, additional loads of trouble with
each quarter of an hour; as I thought and thought, and put one and
another thing together, of things past and present, to help my
understanding. A child will carry on that process fast and to far-off
results; give her but the key and set her off on the track of truth
with a sufficient impetus. My happy childlike ignorance and childlike
life was in a measure gone; I had come into the world of vexed
questions, of the oppressor and the oppressed, the full and the empty,
the rich and the poor. I could make nothing at all of Preston's
arguments and reasonings. The logic of expediency and of consequences
carried no weight with me, and as little the logic of self-interest. I
sometimes think a child's vision is clearer, even in worldly matters,
than the eyes of those can be who have lived among the fumes and
vapours that rise in these low grounds, unless the eyes be washed day
by day in the spring of truth, and anointed with unearthly ointment.
The right and the wrong were the two things that presented themselves
to my view; and oh, my sorrow and heartbreak was, that papa was in the
wrong. I could not believe it, and yet I could not get rid of it.
There were oppressors and oppressed in the world; and _he_ was one of
the oppressors. There is no sorrow that a child can bear, keener and
more gnawingly bitter than this. It has a sting of its own, for which
there is neither salve nor remedy; and it had the aggravation, in my
case, of the sense of personal dishonour. The wrong done and the
oppression inflicted were not the whole; there was besides the
intolerable sense of living upon other's gains. It was more than my
heart could bear.
I could not write as I do--I could not recall these thoughts and that
time--if I had not another thought to bring to bear upon them; a
thought which at that time I was not able to comprehend. It came to me
later with its healing, and I have seen and felt it more clearly as I
grew older. I see it very clearly now. I had not been mistaken in my
childish notions of the loftiness and generosity of my father's
character. He was what I had thought him. Neither was I a whit wrong
in my judgment of the things which it grieved me that he did and
allowed. But I saw afterwards how he, and others, had grown up and
been educated in a system and atmosphere of falsehood, till he failed
to perceive that it was false. His eyes had lived in the darkness till
it seemed quite comfortably light to him; while to a fresh vision,
accustomed to the sun, it was pure and blank darkness, as thick as
night. He followed what others did and his father had done before him,
without any suspicion that it was an abnormal and morbid condition of
things they were all living in; more especially without a tinge of
misgiving that it might not be a noble, upright, dignified way of
life. But I, his little unreasoning child, bringing the golden rule of
the gospel only to judge of the doings of hell, shrank back and fell
to the ground, in my heart, to find the one I loved best in the world
concerned in them.
So when I opened my eyes that night, and looked into the blaze of the
firelight, the dark figures that were there before it stung me with
pain every time; and every soft word and tender look on their
faces--and I had many a one, both words and looks--racked my heart in
a way that was strange for a child. The negus put me to sleep at last,
or exhaustion did; I think the latter, for it was very late; and the
rest of that night wore away.
When I awoke, the two women were there still, just as I had left them
when I went to sleep. I do not know if they sat there all night, or if
they had slept on the floor by my side; but there they were, and
talking softly to one another about something that caught my
attention. I bounced out of bed--though I was so weak, I remember I
reeled as I went from my bed to the fire, and steadied myself by
laying my hand on Mammy Theresa's shoulder. I demanded of Margaret
_what_ she had been saying. The women both started, with expressions
of surprise, alarm, and tender affection, raised by my ghostly looks,
and begged me to get back into bed again. I stood fast, bearing on
Theresa's shoulder.
"What was it?" I asked.
"'Twarn't nothin', Miss Daisy, dear!" said the girl.
"Hush! don't tell me that," I said. "Tell me what it was--tell me what
it was. Nobody shall know; you need not be afraid; nobody shall know."
For I saw a cloud of hesitation in Margaret's face.
"'Twarn't nothin', Miss Daisy--only about Darry."
"What about Darry?" I said, trembling.
"He done went and had a praise-meetin'," said Theresa; "and he knowed
it war agin the rules; he knowed that. 'Course he did. Rules mus' be
kep'."
"Whose rules?" I asked.
"Laws, honey, 'taint 'cording to rules for we coloured folks to hold
meetin's no how. 'Course, we's ought to 'bey de rules; dat's clar."
"Who made the rules?"
"Who make 'em? Mass' Ed'ards--he made de rules on dis plantation.
Reckon Mass' Randolph, he make 'em a heap different."
"Does Mr. Edwards make it a rule that you are not to hold
prayer-meetings?"
"Can't spec' for to have everyt'ing jus like de white folks," said the
old woman. "We's no right to spect it. But Uncle Darry, he sot a sight
by his praise-meetin'. He's cur'ous, he is. S'pose Darry's cur'ous."
"And does anybody say that you shall not have prayer-meetings?"
"Laws, honey! what's we got to do wid praise-meetin's or any sort of
meetin's? We'se got to work. Mass' Ed'ards, he say dat de meetin's dey
makes coloured folks onsettled; and dey don't hoe de corn good if dey
has too much prayin' to do."
"And does he forbid them then? doesn't he let you have
prayer-meetings?"
"'Tain't Mr. Edwards alone, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, speaking low.
"It's agin the law for us to have meetin's anyhow, 'cept we get leave,
and say what house it shall be, and who's a comin', and what we'se
comin' for. And it's no use asking Mr. Edwards, 'cause he don't see no
reason why black folks should have meetin's."
"Did Darry have a prayer-meeting without leave?" I asked.
"'Twarn't no count of a meetin'!" said Theresa, a little touch of
scorn, or indignation, coming into her voice; "and Darry, he war in
his own house prayin'. Dere warn't nobody dere, but Pete and ole
'Liza, and Maria, cook, and dem two Johns dat come from de lower
plantation. Dey couldn't get a strong meetin' into Uncle Darry's
house; 'tain't big enough to hold 'em."
"And what did the overseer do to Darry?" I asked.
"Laws, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, with a quick look at the other
woman; "he didn't do nothing to hurt Darry; he only want to scare de
folks."
"Dey's done scared," said Theresa, under her breath.
"What is it?" I said, steadying myself by my hold on Theresa's
shoulder, and feeling that I must stand till I had finished my
inquiry: "how did he know about the meeting? and what did he do to
Darry? Tell me! I must know. I must know, Margaret."
"Spect he was goin' through the quarters, and he heard Darry at his
prayin'," said Margaret. "Darry he don't mind to keep his prayers
secret, he don't," she added, with a half laugh. "Spect nothin' but
they'll bust the walls o' that little house some day."
"Dey's powerful!" added Theresa. "But he warn't prayin' no harm; he
was just prayin', 'Dy will be done on de eart' as it be in de
heaven'--Pete, he tell me. Darry warn't saying not'ing--he just pray
'Dy will be done.'"
"Well?" I said, for Margaret kept silent.
"And de oberseer, he say--leastways he swore, he did--dat _his_ will
should be done on dis plantation, and he wouldn't have no such work.
He say, der's nobody to come togedder after it be dark, if it's two or
t'ree, 'cept dey gets his leave, Mass' Ed'ards, he say; and dey won't
get it."
"But what did he do to Darry?" I could scarcely hold myself on my feet
by this time.
"He whipped him, I reckon," said Margaret, in a low tone, and with a