The slave ship
showed her and swung her, and presently in the wheel she came to me
again. Up and down and around and across went the auld Scots dance, and
I was dancing both in the glen at home and here in Virginia, with the
cold and the hot alike in my heart and my head. I danced like the deil.
A girl they named Catherine--we were dancing so fast, the feet were so
twinkling--came plump into my arms, screamed and laughed and skimmed
away. Judith again took my hand. “It’s right now, isn’t it? We’re doing
finely!” Up and down and around and across, and the great room and the
fiddles and the blazing fire, and we were all one being and that in a
mad dance.
The fiddlers ceased for a moment. We stood panting a little, at rest
before the final and intricate square and wheel. Across, from the group
of elders by the fire, pointed and keen as a poniard, came the thin
voice of a yellow and wrinkled woman in a satin gown. “Well, for a
bought servant, I must say he has his boldness with him!”
Instantly the fiddlers were fiddling again and we were all dancing.
But “Catherine!” called a voice from the fireside and called twice,
and Catherine, so imperiously bidden, left our company. The next
step brought me facing Mr. Warwick Beaufort, who had, I had already
observed, an interest in Mistress Judith. I divine that lightning and
thunder had been gathering there for some minutes. At any rate his
brows now were as black as Erebus. We danced, and down the line came
Judith again, and she laughed at him and laughed at me, and her eyes
sent their own dazzling lightnings. Her slim white hand was in mine
that the ax had hardened. We danced, and every Scott and Stuart and all
Jacobite Scotland, and David Scott himself and all his wrongs, and men
and women everywhere, just their essential selves, were dancing on an
oaken floor to the music of eternity.--Then it all broke, the figure
was confused. Mr. Warwick Beaufort had said something offensive, and I
struck him.
Well, the end of all that was that I went back to the tree-cutting and
never entered that house again.
Nelly Barget!
When first we talked together the blackbirds were chattering in the
March trees and the bloodroot whitening the forest floor. I was hewing
by myself, Dick Merry having cut his foot and gone away to quarter.
She had been on an errand to parsonage a mile up river, and instead of
using the high road for her return chose the forest path. The spring,
I reckon, was in her blood, and a maid as well as a man may like wild
flowering. Now Dick’s foot had bled beside the pine tree we had been
chopping. She saw it and turned aside and came to me--just showing I
must have been, through the trees, and my ax not ringing at the moment.
“Yours?” She knew my name. “Have you hurt yourself, David Scott?”
“No. It was Dick Merry. He cut his foot badly, but we bandaged it up
and he’s gone to quarter.”
“Well, I’m glad nobody’s killed!” A patch of little purple and white
flowers growing beside her own foot she stooped and plucked them. “It’s
a lovely day.”
“Aye. ’Tis spring.”
“Don’t you get tired chopping? Chopping trees and tending tobacco?”
“No, of course not.”
“That’s a lie!” said Nelly Barget. She moved to gather violets from a
sunny place. “How do you like Virginia?”
“If I were not a slave I might like it well enough.”
“You aren’t a slave. Not like Pickaninny. Not like Eboe Sam.”
“There are differences. But still I am a slave.”
With that I began to cut the tree, and having gathered the violets, she
moved away.
Two days afterwards she came again this way, and still Dick Merry was
crippled and could not work.
“Tell me about Scotland. When I was a little girl I lived in England. I
remember mountains and a city ten times as big as Williamsburg.”
I rested my ax and sat upon a log and told of Edinburgh and that glen
and loch I best knew. She sat near me with her hands over her knee,
but all the time she kept a sharp watch. “There’s somebody coming!”
she said at last, and starting up walked sedately away upon the wood
path that wound between Barget’s house and the parsonage and one or two
other small dwellings. That morning as I worked I constantly saw her
face among the branches--kind and freckled with wide mouth and bright
blue eyes.
Sunday I saw her at church. She sat between her father and mother and
looked straight through the window behind the parson, and sang in a
lilting, sweet voice:
“_I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the House of the Lord_----”
On Wednesday I saw her again on the path. But Dick was with me, and
she went by without a sign or look.
But now I meant to see her and talk to her. By this time Dick Merry
followed me in what I did or said, and had the staunchness of a good
dog. I told him, “I want to talk to Barget’s daughter. She will talk
with me, but not when you are by. They don’t care how we cut, so that
we get this tract done. To-morrow about this time you take those trees
in the hollow.”
“All right!” answered Dick. “I’ve seen her look at you in church, when
she thought everybody else was marking the other way. Lord! If there
happens a snatched kiss, who’s the worse for it?”
And nothing ever happened more than the snatched kiss--the snatched
kiss and the pressed hands, and the arm around her one day when it was
all so sunny gold and fine, the small flowers blooming around and one
rich bird singing, singing, in the beech tree overhead. And that was
the last, as it was the best, for a child, going through the wood, told
her mother.
Barget stormed at me. “She’s gone to Williamsburg to my sister. And
either the Colonel will sell you from this place, or he and Williams
may find another helper than me!”
“I did her no harm, man!” I said. “She’s nothing but frank and young
and kind, and it’s the springtime--even in Virginia! I kissed her, yes.
It’s a fearful crime!”
But still he shook his stick. “You’re going from here or I go!”
“Shall I weep and howl if I go?” I answered. “I think not!”
For that and other things. I was sold at the courthouse, and Eboe Sam,
who likewise was unruly and a runaway, was sold at the same time.
The Colonel on Cherry parted with us that morning before Old Mill
quarter. “Scott, you’ve piled up trouble for yourself steadily since
you’ve been here. I’m not a hard master--I’ve got a name for just the
other thing. You might have accepted the lot you brought on yourself
and made something of it, and in the end been a happy enough man. But
you didn’t choose that way, and now I’m thinking you’ll fall into hands
less easy than mine!”
He told the truth there.--Well, I look back over years and see that he
was a spirit caught in his own toils, as I was caught in mine, and Eboe
Sam in his, and Barget in his.
Gervase Morrison also came down to Old Mill quarter. “I told the
Colonel I wished to say good-by to you.”
“Yes. Well, good-by!”
“David Scott, you could do more with yourself than you’re doing.”
I laughed. “Likely enough I might become a saint like old Walter
who smiles and talks with the Universe while he makes shoes for the
Colonel’s servants!”
“You’ve arrived at the man named Bitter. After that comes Vengeful and
then Cruel.”
“Well?”
“I don’t mean to preach,” said Morrison. “I can’t. I’m no preacher. I’m
a wastrel. I don’t like preachers, either. But don’t go running and
sliding and leaping down Perdition’s slope! There’s something in you--I
saw it on the _King William_--that looked like a soul.”
“It’s hard for souls to flourish in slavery,” I said, and bade him
good-by with an aridity that I like not now to remember.
In the morning at dawn we went to the courthouse. Before noon I
had been bought by Mr. Daniel Askew, a man of little education and
less feeling, living twenty miles nearer to nowhere than the Amory
plantation, and in bad odor with all the better kind of Virginians.
CHAPTER VII
I walked into two years of pelting wretchedness. It is quite true that
Amory Hall and Colonel Amory and Williams and Barget and Old Mill
quarter took on by comparison an angelic hue. I had been bought by a
man who in any land or time would have been a kind of devil.
I suppose many Virginians knew that he was an “unkind” master. But
he kept just within the law, that to be sure allowed impatient or
exacting masters leeway enough. And there was the greatest feeling of
sanctity of property and of the individual rights of owners. So no one
interfered. They would have said that they “could” not, that he was
within his “rights.” It is true that there was a social displeasure, at
times coming within sight of ostracism. Virginians are no unkindlier
than Englishmen and Scots, whom in truth they are. Domestic tyranny
occurs in England too, and now and then arises there or anywhere some
misbegotten son of darkness who works havoc. But slavery may place many
in the power of a demon.
David Scott did not philosophize those two years. He suffered in a
black and dumb rage, and he hardened and grew more evil than he was.
Eboe Sam was with me, but Askew broke Eboe Sam’s spirit. He became an
apathetic or timidly smiling poor Negro. My spirit was not broken, but
I arrived at the man named Vengeful.
I ran away, was taken and maltreated; ran away again and was taken and
maltreated. I began to think of murder.
It would have come to that, but the third time I tried _I got
away_.
It was September. I left at night, and it was hot and very still with
tension in the air. I sweated as I ran through the forest. Askew had
great dogs, and I knew he would follow with them. What I aimed at was a
stream running through the forest. If I could reach it, I might throw
them off the scent. It was some distance away and a question if I could
gain it before dawn, gain it and wade down it and across and begin
again with a faint, a temporary security. As I ran the stars went out
above me, group by group. “Storm!” I thought. “Well, it might help.”
The forest leaped into a pale gold, instant light, then died again into
blackness. Thunder followed. “You’re coming up quickly at the last,”
I thought, “but you’ve been on the way for a day and night.” A hot
puff of wind struck my cheek, the forest began to talk. There came a
dazzling glare, a Judgment crack. In a moment the forest was shouting,
then rushed a downpour like the crest of Noah’s forty days. I could
not run, but crouched beside an uprooted tree and exulted in the deluge
that would wash my tracks away.
At dawn still was howling and havoc. I knew now that it was no ordinary
storm, but one of those gales, edges or effects of the more southerly
hurricanes, that at long intervals struck Virginia. While it lasted I
might make hay. It lasted two days, and the land ran with water like
a sluice. The stream I sought for had become a dozen, great trees
were overthrown and doubtless chimneys fell. None but a runagate with
Askew to fear would have liked that being abroad! But I liked it. I
liked that great fight with wind and water that were yet my helpers
and might be exulted in and with. I was fey. And, ah, God, I liked the
loneliness, I liked my freedom!
I went west for a time and then I bent south to the River James that
was running high and strong and yellow. I wished to cross it and make
for North Carolina, yet how I did not know. It might not be swam as it
was, and no boats were forth to-day, and if they were how would they
receive me who had not a groat, and “man in trouble” written all over
him? Askew’s ragged, grim plantation lay considerably to the west and
the wilderness from the Amory Hall neighborhood. Hereabouts stretched
ancient forest, and any dwellings, few and small, stood far apart. A
road ran near the river, bottomless now with mud and pools of water. I