Daisy
came that it was thought best he should try a long sea voyage--he was
going to China, my mother would go with him.
I think never in my life my spirits sank lower than they did when I
heard this news. I was not strong nor very well, which might have been
in part the reason. And I was dull-hearted to the last degree under
the influence of Miss Pinshon's system of management. There was no
power of reaction in me. It was plain that I was failing; and my aunt
interrupted the lessons, and took me again to watering-places at the
North, from one to another, giving me as much change as possible. It
was good for me to be taken off study, which Miss Pinshon had pressed
and crowded during the winter. Sea bathing did me good, too; and the
change of scene and habits was useful. I did not rise to the level of
enjoying anything much; only the sea waves when I was in them; at
other times I sat on the bank and watched the distant smokestack of a
steamer going out, with an inexpressible longing and soreness of
heart. Going where I would so like to go! But there was no word of
that. And indeed it would not have been advisable to take me to China.
I did think Egypt would not have been bad for me; but it was a thought
which I kept shut up in the farthest stores of my heart.
The sea voyage however was delayed. My mother took sick, was very ill,
and then unable to undertake the going to China. My father chose to
wait for her; so the summer was spent by them in Switzerland and the
autumn in Paris. With the first of the New Year they expected now to
sail. It suddenly entered my Aunt Gary's head that it was a good time
for _her_ to see Paris; and she departed, taking Ransom with her, whom
my father wished to place in a German university, and meantime in a
French school. Preston had been placed at the Military Academy at West
Point, my aunt thinking that it made a nice finishing of a gentleman's
education, and would keep him out of mischief till he was grown to
man's estate. I was left alone with Miss Pinshon to go back to
Magnolia and take up my old life there.
CHAPTER VII.
SINGLEHANDED.
As my aunt set sail for the shores of Europe, and Miss Pinshon and I
turned our faces towards Magnolia, I seemed to see before me a weary
winter. I was alone now; there was nobody to take my part in small or
great things; my governess would have her way. I was so much stronger
now that no doubt she thought I could bear it. So it was. The full
tale of studies and tasks was laid on me; and it lay on me from
morning till night.
I had expected that. I had looked also for the comfort and refreshment
of ministering to my poor friends in the kitchen on the Sunday
evenings. I began as usual with them. But as the Sundays came round, I
found now and then a gap or two in the circle; and the gaps as time
went on did not fill up; or if they did they were succeeded by other
gaps. My hearers grew fewer, instead of more; the fact was undoubted.
Darry was always on the spot; but the two Jems not always, and Pete
was not sure, and Eliza failed sometimes, and others; and this grew
worse. Moreover, a certain grave and sad air replaced the enjoying,
almost jocund, spirit of gladness which used to welcome me and listen
to the reading and join in the prayers and raise the song. The singing
was not less good than it used to be; but it fell oftener into the
minor key, and then poured along with a steady, powerful volume,
deepening and steadying as it went, which somehow swept over my heart
like a wind from the desert. I could not well tell why, yet I felt it
trouble me; sometimes my heart trembled with the thrill of those sweet
and solemn vibrations. I fancied that Darry's prayer had a somewhat
different atmosphere from the old. Yet when I once or twice asked
Margaret the next morning why such and such a one had not been at the
reading, she gave me a careless answer, that she supposed Mr. Edwards
had found something for them to do.
"But at night, Margaret?" I said. "Mr. Edwards cannot keep them at
work at night."
To which she made no answer; and I was for some reason unwilling to
press the matter. But things went on, not getting better but worse
until I could not bear it. I watched my opportunity and got Maria
alone.
"What is the matter," I asked, "that the people do not come on Sunday
evening as they used? Are they tired of the reading, Maria?"
"I 'spect dey's as tired as a fish mus' be of de water," said Maria.
She had a fine specimen under her hand at the moment, which I suppose
suggested the figure.
"Then why do they not come as usual, Maria? there were only a few last
night."
"Dere was so few, it was lonesome," said Maria.
"Then what is the reason?"
"Dere is more reasons for t'ings, den Maria can make out," she said
thoughtfully. "Mebbe it's to make 'em love de priv'lege mo'."
"But what keeps them away, Maria? what hinders?"
"Chile, de Lord hab His angels, and de debil he hab his ministers; and
dey takes all sorts o' shapes, de angels and de ministers too. I
reckon dere's some work o' dat sort goin' on."
Maria spoke in a sort of sententious wisdom which did not satisfy me
at all. I thought there was something behind.
"Who is doing the work, Maria?" I asked, after a minute.
"Miss Daisy," she said, "dere ain't no happenin' at all widout de Lord
lets it happen. Dere is much contrairy in dis world--fact, dere is;
but I 'spect de Lord make it up to us by'm by."
And she turned her face full upon me with a smile of so much quiet
resting in that truth, that for just a moment it silenced me.
"Miss Daisy ain't looking quite so peart as she use to look," Maria
went on. But I slipped away from that diversion.
"Maria," I said, "you don't tell me what is the matter; and I wish to
know. What keeps the people, Pete, and Eliza, and all, from coming?
What hinders them, Maria? I wish to know."
Maria busied herself with her fish for a minute, turning and washing
it; then, without looking up from her work, she said, in a lowered
tone,--
"'Spect de overseer, he don't hab no favour to such ways and
meetin's."
"But with _me_?" I said; "and with Aunt Gary's leave?"
"'Spose he like to fix t'ings his own way," said Maria.
"Does he forbid them to come?" I asked.
"I reckon he do," she said, with a sigh.
Maria was very even-tempered, quiet, and wise, in her own way. Her
sigh went through my heart. I stood thinking what plan I could take.
"De Lord is berry good, Miss Daisy," she said, cheerily, a moment
after; "and dem dat love Him, dere can be no sort o' separation, no
ways."
"Does Mr. Edwards forbid them _all_ to come?" I asked. "For a good
many do come."
"'Spect he don't like de meetin's, nohow," said Maria.
"But does he tell all the people they must not come?"
"I reckon he make it oncomfor'ble for 'em," Maria answered gravely.
"Dere is no end o' de mean ways o' sich folks. Know he ain't no
gentleman, nohow!"
"What does he do, Maria?" I said, trembling, yet unable to keep back
the question.
"He can do what he please, Miss Daisy," Maria said, in the same grave
way. "'Cept de Lord above, dere no one can hinder--now massa so fur.
Bes' pray de Lord, and mebbe He sen' His angel, some time."
Maria's fish was ready for the kettle; some of the other servants came
in, and I went with a heavy heart up the stairs. "Massa so fur"--yes!
I knew that; and Mr. Edwards knew it too. Once sailed for China, and
it would be long, long, before my cry for help, in the shape of one of
my little letters, could reach him and get back the answer. My heart
felt heavy as if I could die, while I slowly mounted the stairs to my
room. It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor friends,
nor even that their short enjoyment of the word of life was hindered
and interrupted; above this and worse than this was the sense of
_wrong_ done to these helpless people, and done by my own father and
mother. This sense was something too bitter for a child of my years to
bear; it crushed me for a time. Our people had a right to the Bible as
great as mine; a right to dispose of themselves as true as my father's
right to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as
well as for me; and here was my father--_my father_--practically
saying that they should not hear of it, nor know the message He had
sent to them. And if anything could have made this more bitter to me,
it was the consciousness that the _reason_ of it all was that we might
profit by it. Those unpaid hands wrought that our hands might be free
to do nothing; those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses
might be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept
unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be poured into
our treasury. I knew it. For I had written to my father once to beg
his leave to establish schools, where the people on the plantation
might be taught to read and write. He had sent a very kind answer,
saying it was just like his little Daisy to wish such a thing, and
that his wish was not against it, if it could be done; but that the
laws of the State, and for wise reasons, forbade it. Greatly puzzled
by this, I one day carried my puzzle to Preston. He laughed at me as
usual, but at the same time explained that it would not be safe; for
that if the slaves were allowed books and knowledge, they would soon
not be content with their condition, and would be banding together to
make themselves free. I knew all this, and I had been brooding over
it; and now when the powerful hand of the overseer came in to hinder
the little bit of good and comfort I was trying to give the people, my
heart was set on fire with a sense of sorrow and wrong that, as I
said, no child ought ever to know.
I think it made me ill. I could not eat. I studied like a machine, and
went and came as Miss Pinshon bade me; all the while brooding by
myself and turning over and over in my heart the furrows of thought
which seemed at first to promise no harvest. Yet those furrows never
break the soil for nothing. In due time the seed fell; and the fruit
of a ripened purpose came to maturity.
I did not give up my Sunday readings, even although the number of my
hearers grew scantier. As many as could, we met together to read and
to pray, yes, and to sing. And I shall never in this world hear such
singing again. One refrain comes back to me now--
"Oh, had I the wings of the morning--
Oh, had I the wings of the morning--
Oh, had I the wings of the morning--
I'd fly to my Jesus away!"
I used to feel so too, as I listened and sometimes sung with them.
Meantime, all that I could do with my quarterly ten dollars, I did.
And there was many a little bit of pleasure I could give; what with a
tulip here and a cup of tea there, and a bright handkerchief, or a
pair of shoes. Few of the people had spirit and cultivation enough to
care for the flowers. But Maria cherished some red and white tulips
and a hyacinth in her kitchen window, as if they had been her
children; and to Darry a white rose-tree I had given him seemed almost
to take the place of a familiar spirit. Even grave Pete, whom I only
saw now and then this winter at my readings, nursed and tended and
watched a bed of crocuses with endless delight and care. All the
while, my Sunday circle of friends grew constantly fewer; and the
songs that were sung at our hindered meetings had a spirit in them,
which seemed to me to speak of a deep-lying fire somewhere in the
hearts of the singers, hidden, but always ready to burst into a blaze.
Was it because the fire was burning in my own heart?
I met one of the two Jems in the pine-avenue one day. He greeted me
with the pleasantest of broad smiles.