Daisy
one foot, and going into other awkward antics; not the less that most
of them had their arms filled with little black babies. I had got
enough for that day, and turning about, left the dell with Preston.
At the head of the dell, Preston led off in a new direction, along a wide
avenue that ran through the woods. Perfectly level and smooth, with the
woods closing in on both sides and making long vistas through their boles
and under their boughs. By and by we took another path that led off from
this one, wide enough for two horses to go abreast. The pine trees were
sweet overhead and on each hand, making the light soft and the air
fragrant. Preston and I wandered on in delightful roaming; leaving the
house and all that it contained at an unremembered distance. Suddenly we
came out upon a cleared field. It was many acres large; in the distance a
number of people were at work. We turned back again.
"Preston," I said, after a silence of a few minutes,--"there seemed to
be no women in those cottages. I did not see any."
"I suppose not," said Preston; "because there were not any to see."
"But had all those little babies no mothers?"
"Yes, of course, Daisy; but they were in the field."
"The mothers of those little babies?"
"Yes. What about it? Look here--are you getting tired?"
I said no; and he put his arm round me fondly, so as to hold me up a
little; and we wandered gently on, back to the avenue, then down its
smooth course further yet from the house, then off by another wood
path through the pines on the other side. This was a narrower path,
amidst sweeping pine branches and hanging creepers, some of them
prickly, which threw themselves all across the way. It was not easy
getting along. I remarked that nobody seemed to come there much.
"I never came here myself," said Preston, "but I know it must lead out
upon the river somewhere, and that's what I am after. Hollo! we are
coming to something. There is something white through the trees. I
declare, I believe----"
Preston had been out in his reckoning, and a second time had brought me
where he did not wish to bring me. We came presently to an open place, or
rather a place where the pines stood a little apart; and there in the
midst was a small enclosure. A low brick wall surrounded a square bit of
ground, with an iron gate on one side of the square; within, the grassy
plot was spotted with the white marble of tombstones. There were large
and small. Overhead, the great pine trees stood and waved their long
branches gently in the wind. The place was lonely and lovely. We had
come, as Preston guessed, to the river, and the shore was here high; so
that we looked down upon the dark little stream far below us. The
sunlight, getting low by this time, hardly touched it; but streamed
through the pine trees and over the grass, and gilded the white marble
with gold.
"I did not mean to bring you here," said Preston, "I did not know I
was bringing you here. Come, Daisy--we'll go and try again."
"Oh stop!" I said--"I like it. I want to look at it."
"It is the cemetery," said Preston. "That tall column is the monument
of our great--no, of our great-great-grandfather; and this brown one
is for mamma's father. Come, Daisy!----"
"Wait a little," I said. "Whose is that with the vase on top?"
"Vase?" said Preston--"it's an urn. It is an urn, Daisy. People do not
put vases on tombstones."
I asked what the difference was.
"The difference? O Daisy, Daisy! Why vases are to put flowers in; and
urns--I'll tell you, Daisy,--I believe it is because the Romans used
to burn the bodies of their friends and gather up the ashes and keep
them in a funeral urn. So an urn comes to be appropriate to a
tombstone."
"I do not see how," I said.
"Why because an urn comes to be an emblem of mortality and all that.
Come, Daisy; let us go."
"I think a vase of flowers would be a great deal nicer," I said. "We
do not keep the ashes of our friends."
"We don't put signs of joy over their graves either," said Preston.
"I should think we might," I said meditatively. "When people have gone
to Jesus--they must be very glad!"
Preston burst out with an expression of hope that Miss Pinshon would
"do something" for me; and again would have led me away; but I was not
ready to go. My eye, roving beyond the white marble and the low brick
wall, had caught what seemed to be a number of meaner monuments,
scattered among the pine trees and spreading down the slope of the
ground on the further side, where it fell off towards another dell. In
one place a bit of board was set up; further on a cross; then I saw a
great many bits of board and crosses; some more and some less
carefully made; and still as my eye roved about over the ground they
seemed to start up to view in every direction; too low and too humble
and too near the colour of the fallen pine leaves to make much show
unless they were looked for. I asked what they all were.
"Those? Oh, those are for the people, you know."
"The people?" I repeated.
"Yes, the people--the hands."
"There are a great many of them," I remarked.
"Of course," said Preston. "You see, Daisy, there have been I don't
know how many hundreds of hands here for a great many years, ever
since mother's grandfather's time."
"I should think," said I, looking at the little board slips and
crosses among the pine cones on the ground,--"I should think they
would like to have something nicer to put up over their graves."
"Nicer? those are good enough," said Preston. "Good enough for them."
"I should think they would like to have something better," I said.
"Poor people at the North have nicer monuments, I know. I never saw
such monuments in my life."
"Poor people!" cried Preston. "Why these are the _hands_, Daisy,--the
coloured people. What do they want of monuments?"
"Don't they care?" said I, wondering.
"Who cares if they care? I don't know whether they care," said
Preston, quite out of patience with me, I thought.
"Only, if they cared, I should think they would have something nicer,"
I said. "Where do they all go to church, Preston?"
"Who?" said Preston.
"These people?"
"What people? The families along the river do you mean?"
"No, no," said I; "I mean _our_ people--these people; the hands. You
say there are hundreds of them. Where do they go to church?"
I faced Preston now in my eagerness; for the little board crosses and
the forlorn look of the whole burying-ground on the side of the hill
had given me a strange feeling. "Where do they go to church,
Preston!"
"Nowhere, I reckon."
I was shocked, and Preston was impatient. How should he know, he said;
he did not live at Magnolia. And he carried me off. We went back to
the avenue and slowly bent our steps again towards the house; slowly,
for I was tired, and we both, I think, were busy with our thoughts.
Presently I saw a man, a negro, come into the avenue a little before
us with a bundle of tools on his back. He went as slowly as we, with
an indescribable, purposeless gait. His figure had the same look too,
from his lop-sided old white hat to every fold of his clothing, which
seemed to hang about him just as it would as lieve be off as on. I
begged Preston to hail him and ask him the question about church
going, which sorely troubled me. Preston was unwilling and resisted.
"What do you want me to do that for, Daisy?"
"Because Aunt Gary told Miss Pinshon that we have to drive six miles
to go to church. Do ask him where they go!"
"They don't go _anywhere_, Daisy," said Preston, impatiently; "they
don't care a straw about it, either. All the church they care about is
when they get together in somebody's house and make a great muss."
"Make a muss!" said I.
"Yes; a regular muss; shouting and crying and having what they call a
good time. That's what some of them do; but I'll wager if I were to
ask him about going to church, this fellow here would not know what I
mean."
This did by no means quiet me. I insisted that Preston should stop the
man; and at last he did. The fellow turned and came back towards us,
ducking his old white hat. His face was just like the rest of him; there
was no expression in it but an expression of limp submissiveness.
"Sambo, your mistress wants to speak to you."
"Yes, massa. I's George, massa."
"George," said I, "I want to know where you go to church?"
"Yes, missis. What missis want to know?"
"Where do you and all the rest go to church?"
"Reckon don't go nowhar, missis."
"Don't you ever go to church?"
"Church for white folks, missis; bery far; long ways to ride."
"But you and the rest of the people--don't you go anywhere to church?
to hear preaching?"
"Reckon not, missis. De preachin's don't come dis way, likely."
"Can you read the Bible, George?"
"Dunno read, missis. Never had no larnin'."
"Then don't you know anything about what is in the Bible? don't you
know about Jesus?"
"Reckon don't know not'ing, missis."
"About Jesus?" said I again.
"'Clar, missis, dis nigger don't know not'ing, but de rice and de
corn. Missis talk to Darry; he most knowin' nigger on plantation;
knows a heap."
"There!" exclaimed Preston, "that will do. You go off to your supper,
George--and Daisy, you had better come on if you want anything
pleasant at home. What on earth have you got now by that? What is the
use? Of course they do not know anything; and why should they? They
have no time and no use for it."
"They have no time on Sundays?" I said.
"Time to sleep. That is what they do. That is the only thing a negro
cares about, to go to sleep in the sun. It's all nonsense, Daisy."
"They would care about something else, I dare say," I answered, "if
they could get it."
"Well, they can't get it. Now, Daisy, I want you to let these fellows
alone. You have nothing to do with them, and you did not come to
Magnolia for such work. You have nothing on earth to do with them."
I had my own thoughts on the subject, but Preston was not a sympathising
hearer. I said no more. The evergreen oaks about the house came presently
in sight; then the low verandah that ran round three sides of it; then we
came to the door, and my walk was over.
CHAPTER III.
THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE.
My life at Magnolia might be said to begin when I came downstairs that
evening. My aunt and Miss Pinshon were sitting in the parlour, in the
light of a glorious fire of light wood and oak sticks. Miss Pinshon
called me to her at once; inquired where I had been; informed me I
must not for the future take such diversion without her leave first
asked and obtained; and then put me to reading aloud, that she might
see how well I could do it. She gave me a philosophical article in a
magazine for my proof piece; it was full of long words that I did not
know and about matters that I did not understand. I read mechanically,
of course; trying with all my might to speak the long words right,
that there might be no room for correction; but Miss Pinshon's voice
interrupted me again and again. I felt cast away in a foreign land;
further and further from the home feeling every minute; and it seemed
besides as if the climate had some power of petrifaction. I could not
keep Medusa out of my head. It was a relief at last when the tea was
brought in. Miss Pinshon took the magazine out of my hand.
"She has a good voice, but she wants expression," was her remark.
"I could not understand what she was reading," said my Aunt Gary.
"Nor anybody else," said Preston. "How are you going to give
expression, when there is nothing to express?"
"That is where you feel the difference between a good reader and one
who is not trained," said my governess. "I presume Daisy has never
been trained."