 Chapter 4 of Dread, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dread, Chapter 4, The Gordon Family A week or two had passed over the head of Nina Gordon since she was first introduced to our readers, and during this time she had become familiar with the details of her home life. Nominally she stood at the head of her plantation as mistress and queen in her own right of all, both indoors and out. But really she found herself, by her own youth and inexperience, her ignorance of practical details, very much in the hands of those she professed to govern. The duties of a southern housekeeper on a plantation are onerous beyond any amount of northern conception. Every article wanted for daily consumption must be kept under lock and key and doled out as need arises. For the most part the servants are only grown up children without consideration, quarreling with each other and divided into parties and factions, hopeless of any reasonable control. Every article of where, for some hundreds of people, must be thought of, purchased, cut and made under the direction of the mistress, and add to this the care of young children whose childish mothers are totally unfit to govern or care for them, and we have some slight idea of what devolves on southern housekeepers. Our reader has seen what Nina was on her return from New York and can easily imagine that she had no idea of embracing in good earnest the hard duties of such a life. In fact, since the death of Nina's mother the situation of the mistress of the family had been only nominally filled by her aunt, Mrs. Nesbitt, the real housekeeper in fact was an old mulatto woman named Katie who had been trained by Nina's mother. Notwithstanding the great inefficiency and childishness of negro servants there often are to be found among them those of great practical ability. Whenever owners, through necessity or from tact, select such servants and subject them to the kind of training and responsibility which belongs to a state of freedom, the same qualities are developed which exist in free society. Nina's mother, being always in delicate health, had from necessity been obliged to commit much responsibility to Aunt Katie, as she was called, and she had grown up in the discipline into a very efficient housekeeper. With her tall red turban, her jingling bunch of keys, and an abundant sense of the importance of her office, she was a dignitary not likely to be disregarded. It is true that she professed the utmost deference for her young mistress and very generally passed the compliment of inquiring what she would have done, but it was pretty generally understood that her assent to Aunt Katie's propositions was considered as much a matter of course as the Queen's to a ministerial recommendation. Indeed, had Nina chosen to demur, her prawn minister had the power, without departing in the slightest degree from a respectful bearing, to involve her in labyrinths of perplexity without end. And as Nina hated trouble and wanted above all things to have her time to herself for her own amusement, she wisely concluded not to interfere with Aunt Katie's reign, and to get by persuasion and coaxing what the old body would have been far too consequential and opinionated to give to authority. In like manner at the head of all outdoor affairs was the young quadruped Harry whom we introduced in the first chapter. In order to come fully at the relation in which he stood to the estate, we must, after the fashion of historians generally, go back a hundred years or so in order to give our readers a fair start. Behold us therefore assuming historic dignity as follows. Among the first immigrants to Virginia in its colonial days was one Thomas Gordon, Knight, a distant offshoot of the noble Gordon family renowned in Scottish history. Being a gentleman of some considerable energy and impatient of the narrow limits of the old world where he found little opportunity to obtain that wealth which was necessary to meet the demands of his family pride, he struck off for himself into Virginia. Naturally of an adventurous turn he was one of the first to propose the enterprise which afterwards resulted in a settlement on the banks of the Chowan River in North Carolina. Here he took up for himself a large tract of the finest alluvial land and set himself to the business of planting with the energy and skill characteristic of his nation. And as the soil was new and fertile he soon received a very munificent return for his enterprise. Inspired with remembrances of old ancestral renown the Gordon family transmitted in their descent all the traditions, feelings and habits which were the growth of the aristocratic caste from which they sprung. The name of Kenema given to the estate came from an Indian guide and interpreter who accompanied the first Colonel Gordon as confidential servant. The estate being entailed passed down through the colonial times unbroken in the family whose wealth for some years seemed to increase with every generation. The family mansion was one of those fond reproductions of the architectural style of the landed gentry in England in which as far as their means could composite the planters were fond of indulging. Carpenters and carvers had been brought over at great expense from the old country to give the fruits of their skill in its erection and it was a fancy of the ancestor who built it to display in its woodwork that exuberance of new and rare woods with which the American continent was supposed to abound. He had made an adventurous voyage into South America and brought from fence specimens of those materials more brilliant than rosewood and hard as ebony which grow so profusely on the banks of the Amazon that the natives used them for timber. The floor of the central hall of the house was a curiously inlaid parquet of these brilliant materials arranged in fine blockwork highly polished. The outside of the house was built in the old Virginian fashion with two tiers of balconies running completely round as being much better suited to the American climate than any of European mode. The inside however was decorated with sculpture and carvings copied many of them from ancestral residences in Scotland giving to the mansion an air of premature antiquity. Here for two or three generations the Gordon family had lived in opulence. During the time however of Nina's father and still more after his death there appeared evidently on the place signs of that gradual decay which has conducted many an old Virginian family to poverty and ruin. Slave labor of all others the most worthless and profitless had exhausted the first vigor of the soul and the proprietors gradually degenerated from those habits of energy which were called forth by the necessities of the first settlers and everything proceeded with that free and easy abandon in which both master and slave appeared to have one common object that of proving who should waste with most freedom. At Colonel Gordon's death he had bequeathed as we have already shown the whole family estate to his daughter under the care of a servant of whose uncommon intelligence and thorough devotion of heart he had the most ample proof. When it is reflected that the overseers are generally taken from a class of whites who are often lower in ignorance and barbarism than even the slaves and that their wastefulness and rapacity are a byword among the planters it is no wonder that Colonel Gordon thought that in leaving his plantation under the care of one so energetic competent and faithful as Harry he had made the best possible provision for his daughter. Harry was the son of his master and inherited much of the temper and constitution of his father tempered by the soft and genial temperament of the beautiful Ebo Mulatris who was his mother. From this circumstance Harry had received advantages of education very superior to what commonly fell to the lot of his class. He had also accompanied his master as a valet during the tour of Europe and thus his opportunities of general observation had been still further enlarged and that tact by which those of the mixed blood seemed so peculiarly fitted to appreciate all the finer aspects of conventional life had been called out and exercised so that it would be difficult in any circle to meet with a more agreeable and gentlemanly person. In leaving a man of this character and his own son still in the bonds of slavery Colonel Gordon was influenced by that passionate devotion to his daughter which with him overpowered every consideration. A man so cultivated he argued to himself might find many avenues opened to him in freedom might be tempted to leave the estate to other hands and seek his own fortune. He therefore resolved to leave him bound by an indissoluble tie for a term of years trusting to his attachment to Nina to make this service tolerable. Possessed of a very uncommon judgment, firmness and knowledge of human nature Harry had found means to acquire great ascendancy over the hands of the plantation and either through fear or through friendship there was a universal subordination to him. The executors of the estate scarcely made even a faint of overseeing him and he proceeded to all intents and purposes with the perfect ease of a free man. Everybody for miles around knew and respected him and had he not been possessed of a good share of the thoughtful forecasting temperament derived from his Scottish parentage he might have been completely happy and forgotten even the existence of the chains whose weight he never felt. It was only in the presence of Tom Gordon, Colonel Gordon's lawful son, that he ever realized that he was a slave. From childhood there had been a rooted enmity between the brothers which deepened as the years passed on and as he found himself on every return of the young man to the place subjected to taunts and ill usage to which his defenseless position left him no power to reply. He had resolved never to marry and lay the foundation for a family until such time as he should be able to have command of his own destiny and that of his household. But the charms of a pretty French quadroon overcame the dictates of prudence. The history of Tom Gordon is the history of many a young man grown up under the institutions and in the state of society which formed him. Nature had endowed him with no mean share of talent and with that perilous quickness of nervous organization which, like fire, is a good servant but a bad master. Out of those elements with due training might have been formed an efficient and eloquent public man, but brought up from childhood among servants to whom his infant will was law, indulged during the period of infantile beauty and grace in the full expression of every whim, growing into boyhood among slaves with but an average amount of plantation morality, his passions developed at a fearfully early time of life and before his father thought of seizing the reigns of authority they had gone out of his hands forever. Tutor after tutor was employed on the plantation to instruct him and left terrified by his temper. The secluded nature of the plantation left him without that healthful stimulus of society which is often a help in enabling a boy to come to the knowledge and control of himself. His associates were either the slaves or the overseers who are generally unprincipled and artful or the surrounding whites who lay in a yet lower deep of degradation. For one reason or another it was for the interest of all these to flatter his vices and covertly to assist him in opposing and deceiving his parents. Thus an early age saw him an adept in every low form of vice. In despair he was at length sent to an academy at the north where he commenced his career on the first day by striking the teacher in the face and was consequently expelled. Since he went to another where learning caution from experience he was enabled to maintain his foothold. There he was a successful colporteur and missionary in the way of introducing a knowledge of bowie knives, revolvers, and vicious literature. Artful, bold, and daring his residence for a year at a school was sufficient to initiate in the way of ruin perhaps one fourth of the boys. He was handsome and when not provoked good-natured and had that offhand way of spending money which passes among boys for generosity. The simple sons of hard-working farmers bred in habits of industry and frugality were dazzled and astonished by the freedom with which he talked and drank and spit and swore. He was a hero in their eye and they began to wonder at the number of things to them unknown before which went to make up the necessaries of life. From school he was transferred to college and there placed under the care of a professor who was paid an exorbitant sum for overlooking his affairs. The consequence was that while many a northern boy whose father could not afford to pay for similar patronage was disciplined, rusticated, or expelled as the case might be, Tom Gordon exploited gloriously through college, getting drunk every week or two, breaking windows, smoking freshmen, heading various sprees in different parts of the country, and at last graduating nobody knew how except the patron professor who received an extra sum for the extra difficulties of the case. Returned home he went into a lawyer's office in Raleigh where by a pleasant fiction he was said to be reading law because he was occasionally seen at the office during the intervals of his more serious avocations of gambling and horse racing and drinking. His father, an affectionate but passionate man, was wholly unable to control him and the conflicts between them often shook the whole domestic fabric. Nevertheless to the last, Colonel Gordon indulged the old hope for such cases made and provided that Tom would get through sowing his wild oats sometime and settle down to be a respectable man in which hope he left him the half of his property. Since that time Tom seemed to have studied on no subject except how to accelerate the growth of those wings which riches are said to be inclined to take under the most favorable circumstances. As often happens in such cases of utter ruin Tom Gordon was a much worse character for all the elements of good which he possessed. He had sufficient perception of right and sufficient conscience remaining to make him bitter and uncomfortable. In proportion as he knew himself unworthy of his father's affection and trust he became jealous and angry at any indications of the want of it. He had contracted a settled ill will to his sister for no other apparent reason except that the father took a comfort in her which he did not in him. From childhood it was his habit to vex and annoy her in every possible way and it was for this reason among many others that Harry had persuaded Mr. John Gordon, known as Uncle and Guardian to place her at the New York boarding school where she acquired what is termed an education. After finishing her school career she had been spending a few months in a family of a cousin of her mother's and running with loose reign the career of fashionable gaiety. Luckily she brought home with her unspoiled a genuine love of nature which made the rural habits of plantation life agreeable to her. Neighbors there were few. Her uncle's plantation five miles distant was the nearest. Other families with whom the Gordon's were in the habit of exchanging occasional visits were some ten or fifteen miles distant. It was Nina's delight however in her Muslim wrapper and straw hat to patter about over the plantation to chat with the negroes among their cabins amusing herself with the various droleries and peculiarities to which long absence had given the zest of novelty. Then she would call for her pony and attended by Harry or some of her servants would career through the woods gathering the wildflowers with which they abound. Perhaps stop for a day at her uncle's have a chat and a rump with him and return the next morning. In the comparative solitude of her present life her mind began to clear itself of some former folly's as water when at rest deposits the sediment which clouded it. Apart from the crowd the world of gaiety's which had dizzyed her she could not help admitting to herself the folly of much she had been doing. Something doubtless was added to this by the letters of Clayton the tone of them so manly and sincere so respectful and kind so removed either from adulation or sentimentalism had an effect upon her greater than she was herself aware of. So Nina in her positive and offhand way sat down one day and wrote farewell letters to both her other lovers and felt herself quite relieved by the process. A young person could scarce stand more entirely alone as to sympathetic intercourse with relations than Nina. It is true that the presence of her mother's sister in the family caused it to be said that she was residing under the care of an aunt. Miss Nesbitt however was simply one of those well-bred well-dressed lay figures whose only office in life seems to be to occupy a certain room in a house to sit in certain chairs at proper hours to make certain remarks at suitable intervals of conversation. In her youth this lady had run quite a career as a belle and beauty. Nature had endowed her with a handsome face and figure and youth and the pleasure of admiration for some years supplied a sufficient flow of animal spirits to make the beauty effective. Early married she became the mother of several children who were one by one swept into the grave. The death of her husband last of all left her with a very small fortune alone in the world and like many in similar circumstances she was content to sink into an appendage to another's family. Mrs. Nesbitt considered herself very religious and as there is a great deal that passes for religion ordinarily, of which she may be fairly considered a representative, we will present our readers with a philosophical analysis of the article. When young she had thought only of self in the form of admiration and the indulgence of her animal spirits. When married she had thought of self only in her husband and children whom she loved because they were hers and for no other reason. When death swept away her domestic circle and time stole the beauty and freshness of animal spirits herself love took another form and perceiving that this world was becoming to her somewhat passe. She determined to make the best of her chance for another. Religion she looked upon in light of a ticket which being once purchased and snugly laid away in a pocket book is to be produced at the celestial gate and thus secure admission to heaven. At a certain period of her life while she deemed this ticket unpurchased she was extremely low spirited and gloomy and went through a quantity of theological reading enough to have astonished herself had she foreseen it in the days of her bellship. As the result of all she at last presented herself as a candidate for admission to a Presbyterian church in the vicinity there professing her determination to run the Christian race. By the Christian race she understood going at certain stated times to religious meetings, reading the Bible and hymn book at certain hours in the day, giving at regular intervals stipulated sums to religious charities and preserving a general state of leaden indifference to everybody and everything in the world. She thus fondly imagined that she had renounced the world because she looked back with disgust on gayities for which she had no longer strength or spirits. Nor did she dream that the intensity with which her mind traveled the narrow world of self dwelling on the plates of her caps, the cut of her stone colored satin gowns, the making of her tea and her bed and the saving of her narrow income was exactly the same in kind though far less agreeable in development as that which once expanded itself in dressing and dancing. Like many other apparently negative characters she had a pertinacious intensity of an extremely narrow and aimless self will. Her plans of life, small as they were, had a thousand crimson plaques to every one of which she adhered with invincible pertinacity. The poor lady little imagined when she sat with such punctilious satisfaction, while the reverend Mr. Orthodoxy demonstrated that selfishness is the essence of all moral evil, that the sentiment had the slightest application to her, nor dreamed that the little quiet muddy current of self will, which ran without noise or in decorum under the whole structure of her being, might be found in a future day to have undermined all her hopes of heaven. Of course Mrs. Nesbitt regarded Nina and all other lively young people with a kind of melancholy endurance, a shocking spectacles of worldliness. There was but little sympathy to be sure between the dashing and outspoken and almost defiant little Nina and the somber silver-gray apparition which glided quietly about the wide halls of her paternal mansion. In fact, it seemed to afford the latter a mischievous pleasure to shock her respectable relative on all convenient occasions. Mrs. Nesbitt felt it occasionally her duty, as she remarked, to call her lively niece into her apartment and endeavour to persuade her to read some such volume as Law's serious call, or Owen on the 119th Psalm, and to give her a general and solemn warning against all the vanities of the world in which were generally included dressing in any colour but black and drab, dancing, flirting, writing love letters, and all other enormities down to the eating of peanut candy. One of these scenes is just now enacting in this good lady's apartment upon which we will raise the curtain. Mrs. Nesbitt, a diminutive, blue-eyed, fair complexioned little woman of some five feet high, sat gently swaying in that respectable asylum for American old age, commonly called a rocking chair. Every rustle of her silvery silk gown, every fold of the snowy kerchief on her neck, every plait of her immaculate cap, spoke a soul long retired from this world and its cares. The bed, arranged with extremist precision, however, was covered with a melange of French finery, flounces, laces, among which Nina kept up a continual agitation, like that produced by a breeze in a flower bed, as she unfolded, turned, and fluttered them before the eyes of her relative. I have been through all this, Nina, said the lighter with the melancholy shake of her head, and I know the vanity of it. Well, Auntie, I haven't been through it, so I don't know. Yes, my dear, when I was of your age, I used to go to balls and parties, and could think of nothing but of dress and admiration. I have been through it all, and seen the vanity of it. Well, Aunt, I want to go through it and see the vanity of it, too. That's just what I'm after. I'm on the way to be as somber and solemn as you are, but I'm bound to have a good time first. Now, look at this pink brocade. Had the brocade been a pall, it could scarcely have been regarded with a more lugubrious aspect. Ah, child, such a dying world as this, to spend so much time and thought on dress. Well, Aunt Nesbitt, yesterday you spent just two whole hours in thinking whether you should turn the breadth of your black silk dress upside down or downside up. And this was a dying world all the time. Now, I don't see that it's any better to think of black silk than it is of pink. This was a view of the subject, which seemed never to have occurred to the good lady. But now, Aunt, do cheer up, and look at this box of artificial flowers. You know, I thought I'd bring a stock on from New York. Now, aren't these perfectly lovely? I like flowers that mean something. Now, these are all imitations of natural flowers, so perfect that you'd scarcely know them from the real. See there, that's a moss rose. And now look at these sweet peas. You'd think they'd just been picked, and there the heliotrope, and these jesemines, and those orange blossoms. And that wax camellia. Turn off my eyes from beholding vanity, said Miss Nesbitt, shutting her eyes and shaking her head. What if I wear the richest vest, peacocks and flies are better dressed. This flesh with all its glorious forms must drop to earth and feed the worms. Aunt, I do think you have the most horrid, disgusting set of hymns all about worms and dust and such things. It's my duty, child, when I see you so much taken up with such sinful finery. Why, Aunt, do you think artificial flowers are sinful? Yes, dear, they are a wasteful sin of time and money, and take off our mind from more important things. Well, Aunt, then what did the Lord make sweet peas and roses and orange blossoms for? I'm sure it's only doing as He does to make flowers. He don't make everything gray or stone color. Now, if you only would come out in the garden this morning and see the oleanders and the quaint myrtle and the pinks, the roses and the tulips and the hyacinths, I'm sure it would do you good. Oh, I should certainly catch cold, child, if I went outdoors. Milly left a crack open in the window last night, and I sneezed three or four times since. It will never do for me to go out in the garden. The feeling of the ground striking up through my shoes is very unhealthy. Well, at any rate, Aunt, I should think if the Lord didn't wish us to wear roses and jazimines, He would not have made them. And it is the most natural thing in the world to want to wear flowers. It only feeds vanity and a love of display, my dear. I don't think it's vanity or a love of display. I should want to dress prettily if I were the only person in the world. I love pretty things because they are pretty. I like to wear them because they make me look pretty. There it is, child. You want to dress up your poor, perishing body to look pretty. That's the thing. To be sure I do. Why shouldn't I? I mean to look as pretty as I can as long as I live. You seem to have quite a conceit of your beauty, said Aunt Nesbitt. Well, I know I'm pretty. I'm not going to pretend I don't. I like my own looks. Now that's a fact. I'm not like one of your Greek statues, I know. I'm not wonderfully handsome, no likely to set the world on fire with my beauty. I'm just a pretty little thing. And I like flowers and laces and all of those things. And I mean to like them. And I don't think there'll be a bit of religion in my not liking them. And as for all that disagreeable stuff about the worms that you are always telling me, I don't think it does me a particle of good. And if religion is going to make me so pokey, I shall put it off as long as I can. I used to feel just as you do, dear, but I've seen the folly of it. If I've got to lose my love for everything that is bright, everything that is lively, and everything that is pretty, and like to read such horrid, stupid books, why, I'd rather be buried and done with it. That's the opposition of the natural heart, my dear. The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of a bright, curly-headed mulatto boy burying Mrs. Nesbitt's daily luncheon. Oh, here comes Tom Tit, said Naina, now for a scene. Let's see what he has forgotten now. Tom Tit was, in his way, a great character in the mansion. He and his grandmother were the property of Mrs. Nesbitt. His true name was no less respectable and methodical than that of Thomas, but as he was one of those restless and effervescent sprites who seemed to be born for the confusion of quiet people, Naina had rechristened him, Tom Tit, which sober Kay was immediately recognized by the whole household as being eminently descriptive and appropriate. A constant ripple and eddy of drollery seemed to pervade his whole being. His large, saucy black eyes had always a laughing vire in them, and it was impossible to meet without a smile in return. Slave and property, though he was, yet the first sentiment of reverence for any created thing seemed yet wholly unawakened in his curly paint. Breezy, idle, careless, flighty as his woodland namesake, life to him seemed only a repressed and pent-up ebullition of animal enjoyment, and almost the only excitement of Mrs. Nesbitt's quiet life was her chronic controversy with Tom Tit. Forty or fifty times a day could the old body assure him that she was astonished at his conduct, and as many times would he reply by showing the whole set of his handsome teeth on the broad grin, wholly inconsiderate of the state of despair into which he had thus reduced her. On the present occasion as he entered the room his eye was caught by the great display of finery on the bed, and hastily dumping the waiter on the first chair that occurred, with a flirt and a spring as lith as that of a squirrel, he was seated in a moment astride the footboard, indulging in a burst of merriment. Good law, Miss Nine-Up, where on earth did you come from? Good law some more on them for me, isn't there? You see that child now said Mrs. Nesbitt rocking back in her chair with the air of a martyr, after all my talkings to him. Niner, you ought not to allow that, it just encourages him. Tom, get down, you naughty creature you, and get the stand and put the waiter on it. Mind yourself now, said Niner, laughing. Tom Tit cut a summer set from the footboard to the floor and striking up on a very high key. I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag. He danced out a small table, as if it had been a partner, and deposited it with a jerk at the side of Mrs. Nesbitt, who aimed a cuff at his ears, but as he adequately ducked his head, the intended blow came down upon the table, with more force than was comfortable to the inflictor. I believe that child is made of air. I never can hit him, said the good lady, waxing red in the face. He's enough to provoke a saint. So he is Aunt, enough to provoke two saints like you and me. Tom Tit, you rogue, she said, giving a gentle pull to a handful of his curly hair. Be good now, and I'll show you the pretty things, by and by. Come, put the waiter on the table now, see if you can't walk for once. Casting down his eyes with an irresistible look of mock solemnity, Tom Tit marched with the waiter and placed it by his mistress. The good lady, after drawing off her gloves and making sundry little decorous preparations, set a short grace over her meal, during which time Tom Tit seemed to be holding his sides with repressed merriment. Then, gravely laying hold of the handle of the teapot, she stopped short, gave an exclamation, and flirted her fingers as if she felt it almost scalding hot. Tom Tit, I do believe you intend to burn me to death someday. Laws, Misses, got there hot? Oh, sure, I was tickler to set the nose round to the fire. No, you didn't. You stuck the handle right into the fire, as you're always doing. Laws, now, wonder if I did, said Tom Tit, assuming an abstracted appearance. Peers as if I never can remember which dam there is, nose and which handle. Now, as I studied on that there most all the morning was so, said he, gathering confidence, as he saw by Nina's dancing eyes how greatly she was amused. You need a sound whipping, sir. That's what you need, said Mrs. Nesbitt, kindling up a sudden wrath. Oh, I knows it, said Tom Tit. We's unprofitable servants, all on us. Laws, mercy that we ain't soomed all on us. Nina was so completely overcome by this novel application of the text, which she had heard her aunt laboriously drumming into Tom Tit's sabbath before, that she left aloud with rather a broyous merriment. Oh, aunt, there's no use. He don't know anything. He's nothing but an incarnate joke, a walking hoax. No, I doesn't know nothing, Miss Nina, said Tom Tit, at the same time looking out from under his long eyelashes. Don't know nothing at all. Never can. Well, now, Tom Tit, said Mrs. Nesbitt, drawing out a little blue cow hide from under her chair and looking at him resolutely. You see, if this teapot handle is hot again, I'll give it to you. Do you hear? Yes, Mrs., said Tom Tit, with that indescribable sing-song of indifference, which is so common and so provoking in his class. And now, Tom Tit, you go downstairs and clean the knives for dinner. Yes, Mrs., said he, pirouetting towards the door, and once in the passage he struck up a vigorous, oh, I'm going to glory, won't you go along with me, accompanying himself by slapping his own sides as he went down two stairs at a time. Going to glory? He looks like it, I think. It's the third or fourth time that that child has blistered my fingers with this teapot, and I know he does it on purpose. So ungrateful when I spend my time teaching him hour after hour laboring with him so. I declare I don't believe these children have got any souls. Well, Aunt, I declare, I should think you'd get out of all patience with him, yet he's so funny, I cannot for the life of me help laughing. Here, a distant hoop on the staircase and a tempestuous chorus to the Methodist hymn with the words, oh, come, my love and brethren. Announced that Tom Tit was on the return and very soon throwing open the door he marched in with an air of the greatest importance. Tom Tit, didn't I tell you to go clean the knives? Law misses, come up here to bring Miss Nanna's love letters, said he, producing two or three letters. Good law, though, said he, checking himself, forgot to put them on a wady and before a word could be said, he was out of the room and downstairs and at the height of furious contest with the girl who was cleaning the silver for a waiter to put Miss Nanna's letters on. Darn Miss Nanna, appealing to her when she appeared, Rosa won't let me have no wady. I could pull your hair for you, you little image, said Nanna, seizing the letters from his hands and laughing while she cuffed his ears. Well, said Tom Tit, looking after her with great solemnity, misses in to write on it, ain't no kind of ordering this your house, despite all I can do. One says put letters on wady, another one won't let you have a wady to put letters on and finally Miss Nanna, she pulled them all away. Just a wady things going on and this your house all the time. I can't help it, done all I can, just the way misses says. There was one member of Nanna's establishment of a character so marked that we cannot refrain from giving her a separate place in a picture of her surroundings and this was Millie, the waiting woman of Aunt Nesbeth. Aunt Millie, as she was commonly called, was a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested African woman with a fullness of figure approaching to corpulence. Her habit of standing and of motion was peculiar and majestic, reminding one of the scripture expression upright as the palm tree. Her skin was of a peculiar blackness and softness, not unlike black velvet. Her eyes were large, full and dark and had about them that expression of wishfulness and longing which one may sometimes have remarked in dark eyes. Her mouth was large and her lips, though partaking of the African fullness, had nevertheless something decided and energetic in their outline which was still further seconded by the heavy molding of the chin. A frank smile which was common with her disclosed a row of the most splendid and perfect teeth. Her hair, without approaching to the character of the Anglo-Saxon, was still different from the ordinary woolly coat of the Negro and seemed more like an infinite number of close-knotted curls of brilliant glossy blackness. The parents of Millie were prisoners taken in African wars and she was a fine specimen of one of those warlike and splendid races of whom as they have seldom been reduced to slavery there are but few and rare specimens among the slaves of the South. Her usual headdress was a high turban of those brilliant-colored madras handkerchiefs in which the instinctive taste of the dark races leads them to delight. Millie's was always put on and worn with a regal air as if it were the coronet of a queen. For the rest, her dress consisted of a well-fitted gown of dark stuff of a quality somewhat finer than the usual household apparel. A neatly starched white muslin handkerchief folded across her bosom and a clean white apron completed her usual costume. No one could regard her as a whole and not feel their prejudice in favor of the exclusive comeliness of white races somewhat shaken. Placed among the gorgeous surroundings of African landscape and scenery, it might be doubted that Millie's taste could have desired as a completion to her appearance to have blanched the glossy skin whose depth of coloring harmonizes so well with the intense and fiery glories of a tropical landscape. In character, Millie was worthy of her remarkable external appearance. Heaven had endowed her with a soul as broad and generous as her ample frame. Her passions rolled and burned in her bosom with a tropical fervor, a shrewd and abundant mother-wit, united with a vein of occasional drollery, gave to her habits of speech a quaint velocity. A native hadrightness gave an unwanted command over all the functions of her fine body so that she was endowed with that much coveted property which the New Englander denominates faculty, which means the intuitive ability to seize at once on the right and best way of doing everything which is to be done. At the same time, she was possessed of that high degree of self-respect which led her to be incorruptibly faithful and thorough in all she undertook, less as it often seemed from any fealty or deference to those whom she served than from a kind of native pride in well-doing which led her to deem it beneath herself to slight or pass over the least thing which she had undertaken. Her promises were inviolable. Her owners always knew that what she once said would be done if it were within the bounds of possibility. The value of an individual thus endowed in person and character may be easily conceived by those who understand how rare either among slaves or freemen is such a combination. Millie was therefore always considered in the family as a most valuable piece of property and treated with more than common consideration. As a mind, even when uncultivated, will ever find its level, it often happened that Millie's amount of being and force of character gave her ascendancy even over those who were nominally her superiors. As her ways were commonly found to be the best ways, she was left in most cases to pursue them without opposition or control. But favored as she was, her life had been one of deep sorrows. She had been suffered, too, to contract a marriage with a very finely endowed mulatto man on a plantation adjoining her owners by whom she had a numerous family of children who inherited all her fine physical and mental endowments. With more than usual sensibility and power of reflection, the idea that the children so dear to her were from their birth, not her own, that they were from the first hour of their existence, was the result of her own self-sufficiency. The family to which she belonged, being reduced to poverty, there remained often no other means of making up the deficiency of income than the annual sale of one or two negroes. Millie's children from their fine developments were much coveted articles. Their owner was often tempted by extravagant offers for them and, therefore, to meet one crisis or another of family difficulties they had been successively sold from her. At first she had met this doom with almost the ferocity of a lioness, but the blow, oftentimes repeated, had brought with it a dull endurance and Christianity had entered, as it often does with the slave, through the rents and fissures of a broken heart. Those instances of piety, which are sometimes, though rarely, found among slaves and which transcend the ordinary development of the best instructed, are generally the results of calamities and afflictions so utterly desolating as to force the soul to depend on God alone. But where one soul is thus raised to higher piety, thousands are crushed in hopeless piety. End of Chapter 4 The Gordon Family Chapter 5 Of Dread A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by William Jones Benita Springs, Florida Chapter 5 Harry and His Wife Several miles from the Gordon estate, on an old and somewhat decayed plantation, stood a neat log cabin whose external aspect showed both taste and care. It was almost enveloped in luxuriant wreaths of yellow jasmine and garlanded with a magnificent landmark rose whose cream-colored buds and flowers contrasted beautifully with the dark, polished green of the finely cut leaves. The house stood in an enclosure formed by a high hedge of the American holly whose evergreen foliage and scarlet berries made it at all times of the year a beautiful object. Within the enclosure was a garden carefully tended and devoted to the finest fruits and flowers. This little dwelling, so different in its air of fanciful neatness from ordinary southern cabins, was the abode of Harry's little wife, Lisette, which was her name was the slave of a French Creole woman to whom a plantation had recently fallen by inheritance. She was a delicate airy little creature, formed by a mixture of the African and French blood, producing one of those fanciful, exotic combinations that give one the same impression of richness that one receives from tropical insects and flowers. From both parent races she was endowed with a sensuous being exquisitely quick and fine, a nature of everlasting childhood with all its freshness of present life, all its thoughtless, unreasoning fearlessness of the future. She stands there at her ironing table just outside her college door singing gaily at her work. Her round, plump childish form is shown to advantage by the trim-blue basket laced in front over a shimmy set of white linen. Her head is wreathed with a gay turban from which escapes, known then a wandering curl of her silky black hair. Her eyes, as she races them, have the hazy, dreamy languor which is so characteristic of the mixed races. Little childish hands are busy with nimble fingers adroitly plaiting and arranging various articles of feminine toilet too delicate and expensive to have belonged to those in humble circumstances. She ironed, plaited, and sang with busy care. Occasionally, however, she would suspend her work and running between the flower borders of the hedge, look wistfully along the road, shading her eyes with her hand. When she saw a man on horseback approaching, she flew lightly out and ran to meet him. Harry, Harry, you've come at last. I'm so go ahead. And what have you got in that paper? Is it anything for me? He held it up, shook it at her, while she leaped after it. No, no, little curiosity, he said gaily. I know it's something for me, said she, with a pretty half-pouting air. And why do you know it's for you? Is everything to be for you in the world, you little good for nothing? Good for nothing! With the toss of the gaily-trimmed little head, you may well save that, sir. Just look at the two dozen shirts I've ironed since morning. Come now. Take me up. I want to ride. Harry put out the toe of his boot and his hand, and with an adroit spring she was in a moment before him, on his horse's neck and with a quick turn snatched a paper parcel from his hand. Woman's curiosity, said he. Well, I want to see what it is. Dare me! What a tight string! Oh, I can't break it. Well, here goes, I'll tear a hole in anyhow. Oh, silk as I live! Aha! Tell me now this isn't for me, you bad thing, you. Why, how do you know it isn't to make me a summer coat? Summer coat? Likely story? Aha! I found you out, mister. But come, do make the horse canter. I want to go fast. Make him canter, too. Harry gave a sudden jerk to the reins, and in a minute the two were flying off SF on the wings of the wind. On and on they went through a small copies of pines, while the white-hearted laugh rang on the breeze behind them. Now they were lost from view. In a few minutes, emerging from the pine woods in another direction, they came sweeping, gay, and laughing up to the gate. To fasten the horse, to snatch the little wife on his shoulder, and run to the cottage with her, seemed the work of only a moment. And as he set her down, still laughing, he exclaimed, I see a little picture as you are. I have helped them get up les tableaux vivants at their great houses. But you are my tableaux. You aren't good for much. You're nothing but a hummingbird made to live on honey. That's what I am, said the little one. It takes a great deal of honey to keep me. I want to be praised, flattered and loved all the time. It isn't enough to have you love me so every day and hour and minute. And I want you always to admire me and praise everything that I do. Now, particularly when you tear holes in packages, said Harry, oh, my silk, my new silk dress, said Lisette, thus reminded of the package which she held in her hand. This hateful string, how it cuts my fingers. I will break it all, bite it into. Harry, Harry, don't you see how it hurts my fingers? Why don't you cut it? And the little sprite danced about the cottage floor, tearing the paper and tugging at the string like an enraged hummingbird. Harry came laughing behind her and taking whole of her two hands held them quite still while he cut the string of the parcel and unfolded a gorgeous plaid silk, crimson green and orange. There now. What do you think of that? Miss Nina brought it when she came home last week. Oh, how lovely. Isn't she a beauty? Isn't she good? How beautiful it is. Dear me, dear me, how happy I am, how happy we are. Ain't we, Harry? A shadow came over Harry's forehead as he answered with a half sigh. Yes. I was up at three o'clock this morning on purpose to get all my ironing done today because I thought you were to come home tonight. Ah, ah, you don't know what supper I've got ready. You'll see by and by. I'm going to do something uncommon. You mustn't look in that other room, Harry. You mustn't. mustn't I, said Harry, getting up and going to the door. There now. Who's curiosity now, I wonder? Said she, springing nimbly between him and the door. No? You shan't go in, though. There now. Don't. Don't. Be good now, Harry. Well, I may as well give up first as last. This is your house, not mine, I suppose, said Harry. Mr. Submission, how meek we are all of a sudden. Well, while the fit lasts you go to the spring and get me some water to fill this tea kettle. Off with you now, this minute. Mind you don't stop the play, by the way. And while Harry is going to the spring, we will follow the wife into the forbidden room. Very cool and pleasant it is, with its white window curtains, its matted floor, and displaying in the corner that draped feather-bed with its ruffled pills and French curtains, which is the great ambition of the southern cabin to attain and maintain. The door, which opened on to a show of most brilliant flowers, was overlaid completely by the Lamarque rose we have before referred to, and large clusters of its creamy blossoms and wreaths of its dark green leaves had been enticed in and tied to sundry nails and pegs by the small hands of the little mistress to form an arch of flowers and roses. A little table stood in the door, draped with a spotless damaged tablecloth, fine enough for the use of a princess, and only produced by the little mistress on festive occasions. On it were arranged dishes curiously trimmed with moss and fine leaves, which displayed strawberries and peaches with a pitcher of cream and one of whey, small dishes of curd, delicate cakes and biscuit, and fresh golden butter. After patting and arranging the tablecloth, Lisette tripped gaily around and altered here and there the arrangement of a dish occasionally stepping back and cocking her little head on one side much like a bird, singing gaily as she did so. Then she would pick a bit of moss from this and a flower from that and retreat again and watch the effect. How surprised he will be, she said to herself, still humming a tune in a low gurgling undertone. She danced hither and thither round the apartment. First she gave the curtains a little shake and, unlooping one of them, looped it up again so as to throw the beams of the evening sun on the table. There, there, there, how pretty the light falls through those nest regimes. I wonder if the room smells of the mignonette. I gathered it when the dew was on it and they say it will make it smell all day. Now here's Harry's bookcase. Dear me, those flies! How they do get on to everything! Shoo, shoo now, now! And catching a gay bandana hanger-chiff from the drawer, she perfectly exhausted herself in flying about the room in pursuit of the buzzing intruders who soared and dived and careered after the manner of flies in general, seeming determined to go anywhere but out of the door. Finally were seen brushing their wings and licking their feet with great alertness on the very topmost height of the sacred bed curtains. And as just this moment a glimpse was caught of Harry returning from the spring, the set was obliged to abandon the chase and rush into the other room to prevent a premature development of her little tea tableau. Then a small pugnosed black tea kettle came on to the stage of action from some unknown cupboard and Harry had to fill it with water and of course spilled the water onto the ironing table which made another little breezy chattering commotion and then the flat irons were cleared away and the pugnosed kettle rained in their stead on the charcoal brasher. Now Harry, was ever such a smart wife as I am? Only think, besides all the rest that I've done, I've ironed your white linen suit to complete. Now go put it on. Not in there. Not in there. She said, pushing him away from the door. You can't go there yet. You'll do well enough out here. In a way she went seen through the garden walks and the song floating back behind her seemed like an odor brushed from the flowers. The refrain came rippling in at the door. Me think not what to-morrow bring. Me happy so me sing. Poor little thing, said Harry to himself. Why should I try to teach her anything? In a few minutes she was back again, her white apron thrown over her arm and blossoms of yellow jasmine, spikes of blue lavender and buds of moss roses peeping out from it. She skipped gaily along and deposited her treasures on the ironing table. Then with a zealous bustling earnestness which characterized everything she did she began sorting them into two bouquets, alternately talking and singing as she did so. Come on, heroes, the hours all joy and gladness bring. You see, Harry, you're going to have a bouquet to put in the buttonhole of that coat. It will make you look so handsome. There now, there now. We'll strewth away with flowers and merrily, merrily sing. Suddenly stopping she looked at him archally and said, You can't tell now what I'm doing all this for. There is never any telling what you women do anything for. Do hear him talk so pompous. Well, sir, it's for your birthday now. Ha-ha! You thought because I can't keep the day of the month that I don't know anything about it? But I did and I have put down now a chalkmark every day for four weeks right under where I keep my ironing account so as to be sure of it. And I've been busy about it ever since two o'clock this morning. And now, there, the tea kettle is boiling and away she flew to the door. Oh, dear me, dear me now I've killed myself now I have. She cried holding up one of her hands and flirting it up in the air. Dear me, who knew it was so hot? I should think a little woman that is so used to the holder might have known it, said Harry as he caressed the little burnt hand. Come now let me carry it for you, said Harry and I'll make the tea. If you'll let me go and do that mysterious room. Indeed, no, Harry. I'm going to do everything myself and forgetting the burnt finger as that was off in a moment and back in a moment with a shining teapot in her hand the tea was made and alas the mysterious door opened and Lisette stood with her eyes fixed upon Harry to watch the effect. Ah, superb! Magnificent! Splendid! Well, this is good enough for a king and where did you get all these things, said Harry. Oh, out of our garden. All but the peaches. Those old misty gave me. They come from Florida. I watched at me last summer when I set those strawberry vines and made all sorts of fun of me. And what do you think now? Think. I think you're a wonderful little thing. A perfect witch. Come now. Let's sit down then. You there and I here. And opening the door of the birdcage which hung in the Lamar Rose Bush little button shall come too. Button. The bright yellow canary with a smart black tough upon his head seemed to understand his part in the little domestic scene perfectly for he stepped obediently upon the finger which was extended to him and was soon sitting quite at his ease on the mossy edge of one of the dishes pecking at the strawberries. And now do tell me, said Lisette, all about Miss Nina. How does she look? Pretty and smart as ever, said Harry. Just the same witchy willful ways with her. Did she show you her dresses? Oh yes, the wool. Oh, do tell me about them, Harry. Do. Well, there's a lovely pink gauze covered with spangles to be worn over white satin. With flounces, said Lisette, earnestly. With flounces. How many? Really, I don't remember. How many flounces? Why, Harry, how stupid! Say, Harry, don't you suppose she will let me come and look at her things? Oh yes, dear, I don't doubt she will. And that will save my making a gazette of myself. Oh, when will you take me there, Harry? Perhaps tomorrow, dear. And now, said Harry, that you have accomplished your surprise upon me. I have a surprise in return for you. You can't guess, now, what Miss Nina brought for me. No indeed, what? Said Lisette's bringing up. Do, tell me, quick! Patience, patience, said Harry, deliberately fumbling in his pocket, amusing himself with her excited air. But who should speak the astonishment and rapture which widened Lisette's dark eyes when the watch was produced? She clapped her hands and danced for joy to the imminent risk of upsetting the table and all the things on it. I do think we are the most fortunate people, you and I, Harry. Everything goes just as we wanted to. Doesn't it now? Harry's assent to this comprehensive proposition was much less fervent than suited his little wife. Now, what's the matter with you? What goes wrong? What choices I do, said she, coming and seating herself down upon his knee. Come now, you've been working too hard. I know. I'm going to sing to you now. I want something to cheer you up. Lisette took down her banjo and sat down on the doorway under the arch of Lamarck roses and began thrumming gaily. This is the nicest little thing, this banjo, she said. I wouldn't change it if I were in charge in the world. Now, Harry, I'm going to sing something specially for you. And, Lisette sung, what are the joys of white men here? What are his pleasures say? He great, he proud, he haughty fine, while I, my banjo, play. He sleep all day, he wake all night, he full of care, his heart no light, he sorry, so he fret. Me envy not the white men here, though he so proud and gay, he great, he proud, he haughty fine, while I, my banjo, play. Me work all day, me sleep all night, me have no care, me hearty as light, me think not what to-morrow bring, me happy, so he sing. Lisette rattled the strings of the banjo saying with such a hearty abandonment of enjoyment that it was a comfort to look at her. One would have thought that a bird's soul put into a woman's body would have sung just so. There, she said, throwing down her banjo and seating herself on her husband's knee, do you know I think you're like white men in that song? I should like to know what is a matter with you. I can see plain enough when you're not happy, but I don't see why. Oh, Lisette, I have very perplexing business to manage, said Harry. Miss Nina is a dear, good little mistress, but she doesn't know anything about accounts or money. And here she has brought me home a set of bills to settle, and I'm sure I don't know where the money is to be got from. It's hard work to make the old place profitable in our days. The ground is pretty much worked up. It doesn't bear the crops that we used to. And then our people are so childish. They don't, a soul of them, care how much they spend or how carelessly they work. It's very expensive keeping up such an establishment. You know that Gordon's must be Gordon's. Things can't be done now as some other families would do them. And then those bills, which Miss Nina brings from New York, are perfectly frightful. Well, Harry, what are you going to do?" said Lizette, nestling down close on the shoulder. You always know how to do something. Why, Lizette, I shall have to do what I've done two or three times before. Take the money that I have saved to pay these bills. Our freedom money, Lizette. Oh, well then, don't worry. We can get it again, you know. Why, you know, Harry, you can make a good deal and then, as for me, why, you know, my ironing and my mouselands, how celebrated they are. Come, don't worry one bit. We shall get on nicely. Ah, but, Lizette, all this pretty house of ours, garden and everything, is only built on air, after all, till we are free. Any accident can take it from us. Now, there's Miss Nina. She is engaged. She tells me to love her as usual. Engaged as she, said Lizette, eagerly, female curiosity, getting the better of every other consideration. She always did have lovers, just, you know, as I used to. Yes, but, Lizette, she will marry sometime and what a thing that would be for you and me. On her husband will depend all my happiness for all my life. He may set her against me. He may not like me. Oh, Lizette, I've seen trouble enough coming of marriages and I was hoping, you see, that before that time came the money for my freedom would all be paid in and I should be my own man. But now, here it is. Just as the sum is almost made up, I must pay out five hundred dollars of it and that throws us back two or three years longer. And what makes me feel the most anxious is that I'm pretty sure Miss Nina will marry one of these lovers before long. Why, what makes you think so, Harry? Oh, I've seen girls before now, Lizette, and I know the signs. What does she do? What does she say? Tell me now, Harry. Oh, well, she runs on abusing the man after her sort and she's so very earnest and positive in telling me she don't like him. Is this the way I used to do about you, Harry, is it? Besides, said Harry, I know by the kind of character she gives of him that she thinks of him very differently from what she ever did of any man before. Miss Nina little knows when she is rattling about her bow what I am thinking of. I'm saying all the while to myself, is that man going to be my master? And this Clayton, I'm very sure, is going to be my master. Well, isn't he a good man? Well, she says he is, but there's never any saying what good men will do, never. Good men think it right sometimes to do the strangest things. This man may alter the whole agreement between us. He will have a right to do it. If he is her husband he may refuse to let me by myself and then all the money that I've paid will go for nothing. But certainly, Harry, Miss Nina will never consent to such a thing. Lizette, Miss Nina is one thing, but Mrs. Clayton may be quite another. I've seen all that over and over again. I tell you, Lizette, that we who live on other people's looks and words, we watch and think a great deal. We come to be very sharp, I can tell you. The more Miss Nina has liked me the less her husband may like me. Don't you know that? No, Harry. You don't dislike people I like. Child, child, that's quite another thing. Well then, Harry, if you feel so bad about it what makes you pay this money for Miss Nina? She don't know anything about it. She don't ask you to. I don't believe she would want you to if she did know it. Just go and pay it in and have your freedom papers made out. Why don't you tell her all about it? No, I can't, Lizette. I've had the care of her all my life and I've made it as smooth as I could for her. And I won't begin to trouble her now. Do you know, too, that I'm afraid that perhaps if she knew all about it she wouldn't do the right thing. There's never any knowing, Lizette. Now, you see, I say to myself, poor little thing, she doesn't know anything about accounts and she doesn't know how I feel. But if I should tell her and she shouldn't care and act as I've seen women act, why then, you know, I couldn't think so anymore. I don't believe she would, mind you, but then I don't like to try. Harry, what does make you love her so much? Don't you know, Lizette, that Master Tom was a dreadful bad boy, always willful and wayward, almost broke his father's heart and he was always ugly and contrary to her. I'm sure I don't know why, for she was a sweet little thing and she loves him now, ugly as he is and he is the most selfish creature I ever saw. As for Miss Nina, she isn't selfish, she is only inconsiderate, but I have known her to do for him over and over just what I do for her, giving him her money and her jewels to help him out of a scrape. But then, to be sure it all comes upon me at last, which makes it all the more aggravating. Now, Lizette, I'm going to tell you something, but you mustn't tell anybody. Nina Gordon is my sister. Harry! Yes, Lizette, you may well open your eyes, said Harry rising involuntarily. I'm Colonel Gordon's oldest son. Let me have the comfort of saying it once if I never do again. Harry, who told you? He told me, Lizette, he himself told me when he was dying and charged me always for her. And I have done it. I never told Miss Nina. I wouldn't have told her for the world. It wouldn't make her love me. More likely it would turn her against me. I've seen many a man sold for nothing else, but for looking too much like his father or his brothers and sisters. I was given to her and my sister and my mother went out to Mississippi with Miss Nina's aunt. Of this sister, Harry, was she pretty? Lizette, she was beautiful. She was graceful and she had real genius. I've heard many singers on the stage that could not sing with all their learning as she did by nature. Well, what became of her? Oh, what becomes of such women always among us, nursed and petted and caressed, taught everything elegant, nothing solid. She meant well enough that had the care of her. Mrs. Stewart, Colonel Gordon's sister, but she couldn't prevent her sons wanting her and taking her for his mistress and when she died, there she was. Well, when George Stewart had lived with her two or three years, he was taken with smallpox. You know what perfect horror that always creates. None of his white acquaintances and friends would come near his plantation. The Negroes were all frightened to death as usual. Overseer ran off. Well, then Corey Gordon's blood came up. She nursed him all through that sickness. What's more, she had influence to keep order on the place, got the people to getting the cotton crops themselves so that when the overseer came sneaking back, things hadn't all gone to ruin as they might have done. The young fellow had more in him than some of them do, for when he got well, he left his plantation, took her up to Ohio and married her and lived with her there. Why didn't he live with her on his plantation, said Lisette? He couldn't have freed her there. It's against the laws. But lately I've got a letter from her saying that he had died and left to her and to her son all his property on the Mississippi. Why, she will be rich, won't she? Yes, if she gets it. But there's no knowing how that will be. There are fifty ways of cheating her out of it, I suppose. But now, as to Miss Nina as a state, you don't know how I feel about it. I was trusted with it and trusted with her. She never has known more than a child where the money came from or went to. And it shent be said that I've brought the estate in debt for the sake of getting my own liberty. If I have one pride in life it is to give it up to Miss Nina's husband in good order. But then the trouble of it, Lisette, the trouble of getting anything like decent work from these creatures, the ways that I have to turn and twist to get round them and manage them to get anything done. They hate me. They are jealous of me. Lisette, I'm just like that bat in the fable. I'm neither bird nor beast. How often I've wished that I was a good, honest black nigger like Uncle Pump. Then I should know what I was. But now I'm neither one thing nor another. I come just near enough to the condition of the white to look into it, to enjoy it and want everything that I see. Then the way I've been educated makes it worse. The fact is that when the fathers of such as we feel any love for us, it isn't like the love they have for their white children. They are half ashamed of us. They are ashamed to show their love if they have it. And then there's a kind of remorse and pity about it which they make up to themselves by pettiness. They amuse themselves with us while we are children and play off all our passions as if we were instruments to be played on. If we show talent and smartness we hear someone say aside, it's rather a pity, isn't it? Or he is too smart for his place. Then we have all the family blood and the family pride and what to do with it? I feel that I am a Gordon. I feel in my very heart like Colonel Gordon. I know I am. And sometimes I know I look like him and that's one reason why Tom Gordon always hated me. And then there's another thing the hardest of all to have a sister like Miss Nina to feel she is my sister and never dare say a word of it. She little thinks when she plays and jokes with me sometimes how I feel. And senses I can compare myself with Tom Gordon. I know he never would learn anything at any of the schools he was put to and I know that when his tutors used to teach me how much faster I got along than he did. And yet he must have all the position and all the respect. And then Miss Nina so often says to me by way of apology would she put up with his ugliness ah well you know Harry he is the only brother I have got in the world. Isn't it too bad Colonel Gordon gave me every advantage of education because I think he meant me for just this place which I feel. Miss Nina was his pet. He was wholly absorbed in her and he was frightened at Tom's wickedness. And so he left me bound to this state in this way only stipulating that I should buy myself unfavorable terms before Miss Nina's marriage. She has always been willing enough I might have taken any and every advantage of her inconsiderateness. And Mr. John Gordon has been willing to and has been very kind about it and has signed an agreement as guardian and Miss Nina has signed it too. Then in case of her death or whatever happened I am to have my freedom on paying a certain sum and I have got his receipts for what I have paid. So that's tolerably safe. Lisette, I admit never to have been married till I was a free man but somehow you bewitched me into it. I did very wrong. Oh, pshaw, pshaw! he erupted Lisette. I ain't going to hear another word of this talk. What's the use? We shall do well enough. Everything will come out right. You see if it don't now. I was always lucky and I always shall be. The conversation was here interrupted by a loud whooping and the clatter of horses' heels. What's that? said Harry, starting to the window. As I live now if there isn't that wretch of a Tom Tit going off with that horse. How came he here? He will run him. Stop there! Hello! he exclaimed running out of doors after Tom Tit. Tom Tit, however, gave only a triumphant whooped and disappeared amongst the pine trees. Well, I should like to know what sent him here, said Harry, walking up and down, much disturbed. Oh, he's only going around through the grove. He won't be back again. said Lisette. Never fear. Isn't he a handsome little rogue? Lisette, you never can see trouble anywhere, said Harry, almost angrily. Ah, yes I do, said Lisette. When you speak in that tone. Please don't, Harry. What should you want me to see trouble for? I don't know, you little thing, said Harry, stroking her head fondly. Ah, here comes the little rascal, just as I knew he would, said Lisette. He only wanted to take a little race. He hasn't hurt the horse. And, tripping lightly out, she caught the range just as Tom Tit drove up to the gate. That seemed but a moment before he was over in the garden with his hands full of flowers. Stop there, you young rascal, and tell me what sent you here, said Harry, ceasing him and shaking him by the shoulder. Zaw was mass of Harry. I want to get peaches like other folks, said the boy, peeping ruggishly in at the window at the tea table. And he shall have a peach, too, said Lisette, and some flowers if he'll be a good boy and not tread on my borders. Tom Tit seized greedily at the peach she gave him and sitting flat down where he stood and throwing the flowers on the ground beside him began eating it with an earnestness of devotion as if his full being were concentrated in the act. The color was heightened in his brown cheek by the exercise and with his long, grooving curls and eyelashes he looked a very pretty center to the flower piece which he had so promptly improvised. Ah, how pretty he is! said Lisette, touching Harry's elbow. I wish he was mine. You'd have your hands full if he was, said Harry, eyeing the intruder discontentedly while Lisette stood picking the holes from a fine bunch of strawberries which she was ready to give him when he had finished the peach. Beauty makes fools of all you girls, said Harry cynically. Is that the reason I married you, said Lisette Ursulae? Well, I know I could make him good if I had the care of him. Nothing like coaxing is there, Tom. I'll buy on there I ain't, said Tom, opening his mouth for the strawberries with much the air of a handsome saucy robin. Well, said Harry, I shall like to know what brought him over here. Speak now, Tom. Weren't you sent with some message? Oh, laws, yes. Said Tom, getting up and scratching his curly head. Miss Nina sent me. She wants you to get on that there horse and make tracks for home like split foot. She done got letters from two or three of her bow and she is dancing and tearing round there real awful. She done got scared, specks fear that all come together. And she sent you on a message and you haven't told me all this time, said Harry, making a motion as though he were going to box the child's ears. But the boy glided out of his hands as if he had been water and was gone, vanishing among the shrubbery of the garden. And while Harry was mounting his horse he reappeared on the roof of the little cabin, caracoling and dancing, shouting at the top most of his voice, a way down old Virginia there I bought a yellow girl for a guinea. I'll give it to you some time," said Harry, shaking his fist at him. No, he won't either. Cried Lizzette, laughing. Come down here, Tom did, and I'll make a good boy of you. End of Chapter 5 Harry and his Wife Chapter 6 of Dread, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org This recording by Michelle Fry Battenridge, Louisiana Dread Chapter 6 The Dilemma In order to understand the occasion which hurried Harry home we must go back to Canemah. Nina, after taking her letters from the hands of Tom Tit as we have related, ran back with them into Mrs. Nesbit's room and sat herself down to read them. As she read, she evidently became quite excited and discomposed, crumpling a paper with her little hand and tapping her foot impatiently on the carpet. There, now I'm sure I don't know what I shall do Aunt Nesbit, addressing her aunt because it was her outspoken habit to talk to anybody or thing which happened to be sitting next to her. I've gotten myself into a pretty scrape now. I told you you'd get into trouble one of these days. Oh, you told me so. If there's anything I hate it is to have anybody tell me I told you so. But now Aunt, really I know I've been foolish but I don't know what to do. Here are two gentlemen coming together that I wouldn't have meet each other here for the world and I don't know really what I had better do. You'd better do just as you please as you always do and always would ever since I knew you, said Aunt Nesbit in a calm, indifferent tone. But really, Aunt, I don't know what's proper to do in such a case. Your and my notions of propriety, Nina are so different that I don't know how to advise you. You see the consequences now of not attending to the advice of your friends. I always knew these flirtations of yours would bring you into trouble. And Aunt Nesbit said this with that quiet satisfied air with which precise elderly people so often edify their thoughtless young friends under difficulties. Well, I didn't want to sermon now Aunt Nesbit but as you've seen a great deal more of the world than I have, I thought you might help me a little just to tell me whether it wouldn't be proper for me to write and put one of these gentlemen off or make some excuse for me or something. I'm sure I never kept house before. I don't want to do anything that don't seem hospitable and yet I don't want them to come together. Now there, that's flat. There was a long pause in which Nina sat vexed and coloring biting her lips and nestling uneasily in her seat. Mrs. Nesbit looked calm and considerate and Nina began to hope that she was taking the case a little too hard. At last the good old lady looked up and said very quietly I wonder what time it is. Nina thought she was debating the expediency of sending some message and therefore she crossed the room with great alacrity to look at the old clock in the entry. It's half past two Aunt and she stood with her lips apart looking at Mrs. Nesbit for some suggestion. I was going to tell Rosa, she said abstractedly, that the onion in the stuffing does not agree with me. It rose on my stomach all yesterday morning but it's too late now. Nina actually stamped with anger. Aunt Nesbit, you are the most selfish person I ever saw in my life. Nina Child you astonish me, said Aunt Nesbit with her wanted placidity. What's the matter? I don't care, said Nina, I don't care a bit. I don't see how people can be so. If a dog should come to me and tell me he was in trouble I think I should listen to him and show some kind of interest to help him. I don't care how foolish anybody has been. If they are in trouble I'd help them, if I could and I think you might think enough of it to give me some little advice. Oh, you're talking about the affair yet? said her Aunt. Why, I believe I told you I didn't know what to advise, didn't I? Shouldn't give way to this temper, Nina. It's very unladylike besides being sinful. But then I don't suppose it's any use for me to talk. And Aunt Nesbit, with an abused air, got up, walked quietly to the looking-glass, took off her morning cap, unlocked her drawer and laid it in, took out another which Nina could not see different a particle from the last, held it up thoughtfully on her hand, and appeared absorbed in the contemplation of it. While Nina, swelling with a mixture of anger and mortification, stood regarding her as she leisurely picked out each bow and finally, with the decorous air of solemnity, arranged it upon her head, patting it tenderly down. Aunt Nesbit, she said suddenly, as if the words hurt her, I think I spoke improperly and I'm very sorry for it. I beg your pardon. Oh, it's no matter child. I didn't care about it. I'm pretty well used to your temper. Bang went the door and in a moment Nina stood in the entry, shaking her fist at it with impotent wrath. You stony, stiff, disagreeable old creature. How came you ever to be my mother's sister? And with the word mother, she burst into a tempest of tears and rushed violently to her own chamber. The first object that she saw was Millie arranging some clothes in her drawer and, to her astonishment, Nina rushed up to her and throwing her arms around her neck, sobbed and wept in such tumultuous excitement that the good creature was alarmed. Laws, bless my soul, my dear little lamb. What's the matter? Why, don't, don't, honey. Why, bless the dear little soul. Bless the dear precious lamb. Who's been a hurting of it? And at each word of endearment, Nina's distress broke out afresh and she sobbed so bitterly that the faithful creature really began to be frightened. Laws, Miss Nina, I hope there ain't nothing happen to you now. No, no, nothing Millie, only I am lonesome and I want my mother. I haven't got any mother, dear me, she said with her fresh burst. Ah, the poor thing, said Millie, compassionately, sitting down and fondling Nina in her arms as if she had been a babe. Poor child. Laws, yes, I remember your Ma was a beautiful woman. Yes, said Nina, speaking between her wives. The girls at school had mothers and there was Mary Brooks. She used to read to me her mother's letters and I used to feel so all the while to think nobody wrote such letters to me. And there's Aunt Nespot. I don't care what they say about her being religious, she is the most selfish, hateful creature I ever did see. I do believe if I was lying dead and laid out in the next room to her she would be thinking what she'd get next for dinner. Oh, don't, my poor lamb, don't, said Millie, compassionately. Yes, I will, too. She's always taken it for granted that I'm the greatest sinner on the face of the earth. She don't scold me, she don't care enough about me to scold. She only takes it for granted in her hateful, quiet way that I'm going to destruction and that she can't help it and don't care. Supposing I'm no good. What's to make me good? Is it going to make me good for people to sit up so stiff and tell me they always knew I was a fool and a flirt and all that? Millie, I've had dreadful terms of wanting to be good and I've laid awake nights and cried because I wasn't good. And what makes it worse is that I think if Mama was alive she could help me. She wasn't like Aunt Nespot, was she, Millie? No, honey, she wasn't. I'll tell you about you, Ma, sometime, honey. The worst of it is, said Nana, when Aunt Nespot speaks to me in her hateful way, I get angry and then I speak in a way that isn't proper, I know. Oh, if she only would get angry with me back again. Or if she'd do anything in the world but stand still in her still way telling me she is astonished at me. That's a lie, too, for she never was astonished at anything in her life she hasn't life enough to be. Ah, Miss Nana, we mustn't expect more folks than there is in them. Expect? I don't expect. Well, bless you, honey. When you know what folks is, don't let's worry. You can't fill a quart cup out of a thimble, honey. No way you can fix it. There's just where it is. I know Jamal and I know Miss Lou said she was a girl. It appears like they went no more alike than snow is like sugar. Miss Lou, when she was a girl she was that pretty that everybody was wondering after her. But to the love that there went after your mom. Couldn't tell you why it was, honey. It appeared like Miss Lou wasn't touchy nor she was one of your bursting out sorts, scolding around. It appeared like she'd never hurt nobody and yet our people, they couldn't under them by her. It appeared like nobody did nothing for her with a will. Well, good reason, said Nina. She never did anything for anybody else with a will. She never cared for anybody. Now, I'm selfish. I always knew it. I do a great many selfish things. But it's a different kind from hers. Do you know Millie? She don't seem to know she is selfish. There she sits rocking in her old chair. She's going straight to heaven and don't care whether anybody else gets there or not. Oh, laws now, Miss Nina. She was too hard on her. Why, look how patience she sits with Tom Tit teaching him his hymns and viruses. And you think that's because she carries anything about him? Do you know she thinks he isn't fit to go to heaven and that if he dies, he'll go to the bad place. And yet, if he was to die tomorrow without clear starch in her caps, no wonder the child don't love her. She talks to him just as she does to me. Tells him she don't expect anything of him. She knows he'll never come to any good and the little wretch has got it by heart now. Do you know that though I get in a passion with Tom sometimes and though I'm sure I should perish sitting boring with him over those old books, yet I really believe I care more for him than she does. And he knows it too. He sees through her as plain as I do. You'll never make me believe that Aunt Nesbitt has got religion. I know there is such a thing as religion, but she hasn't got it. It isn't all being sober and crackling old stiff religious newspapers and boring with texts and hymns that make people religious. She is just as worldly minded as I am. Only it's another way. There now, I wanted her to advise me about something today. Why, merely all girls want somebody to talk with. And if she'd only show the least interest in what I said she might scold me and lecture me as much as she'd aligned to. But to have her not even hear me and when she must have seen that I was troubled and perplexed and wanted somebody to advise me, she turned around so cool and began to talk about the onions and the stuffing. Got me so angry. I suppose she is in her room now, rocking and thinking what a sinner I am. Well, now Miss Nina, peers though you've talked enough about that are. Peers like it won't make you feel no better. Yes, it does make me feel better. I had to speak to somebody, Billy, or else I should have burst. And now I wonder where Harry is. He always could find a way for me out of anything. He has gone over to see his wife I think Miss Nina. Oh too bad. Do send Tom Titt after him right away. Tell him I want him to come right home this very minute. Something very particular. And Millie you just go until old hundred to get out the carriage and horses and I'll go over and drop a note in the post office myself. I won't trust it to Tom Titt for I know he'll lose it. Miss Nina said Millie looking hesitantly. I suspect you don't know how things go about round here. But the fact is old hundred has got so kind of curious lately. They can't nobody do nothing with him except Harry don't tend to do nothing miss Lou tells him to as feared he'll make up some story other about the horses. But he won't get him out. Now mind I tell you child. He won't. I should like to know if he won't when I tell him to a pretty story that would be I'll soon teach him that he has a live mistress somebody quite different from ant Lou well well child perhaps you better go he wouldn't mind me I know maybe he'll do it for you oh yes I'll just run down to his house and hurry him up and Nana quite restored to her usual good humor tripped gaily across to the cabin of old hundred that stood the other side of the house old hundred true name was in fact John but he had derived the appellation by which he was always known from the extreme moderation of all his movements old hundred had a double share of that profound sense of dignity of his office which is an attribute of the tribe of coachmen in general he seemed to consider the horses and carriage as a sort of family arc of which he was the high priest and which it was his business to save from desecration according to his own showing all the people on the plantation and indeed the whole world in general were in a state of habitual conspiracy against the family carriage and horses and he was standing for them single-handed at the risk of his life it was as much part of his duty in virtue of his office to show cause on every occasion why the carriage should not be used as it is for state attorneys to undertake prosecutions and it was also a part of the accomplishment of his situation to conduct his refusal in the most decorous manner always showing that it was only the utter impossibility of the case which prevented the available grounds of refusal old hundred had made a life study and had always sure of them cut and drive for use already at a moment's notice in the first place there were always a number of impossibilities with regard to the carriage either it was muddy and he was laying out to wash it or else he had washed it and couldn't have it splashed or he had taken out the back curtain and had laid out put a little stitch in it one of these here days or there was something that mattered with the irons he reckoned they was a little bit strong he loud he'd asked the blacksmith about it some of these here times and then as to the horses the possibilities were rich and abundant what with strains and loose shoes and stones getting in at the hooves dangers of all sorts of complaints for which he had his own vocabulary of names it was next to an impossibility according to any ordinary rule of computing chances the two should be in complete order together utterly ignorant however of the magnitude of the undertaking which she was attempting and buoyant with the consciousness of authority Nina tripped singing along and found old hundred tranquilly reclining in his tent door watching through his half shut eyes while the afternoon sunbeam irradiated the smoke which rose from the old pipe between his teeth a large black one-eyed crow approaching with a quizzical air upon his knee and when he heard Nina's footsteps approaching cocked his remaining eye towards her with a smart observing attitude as if he had been deputed to look out for applications while his master dozed between this crow who had received the sub-requet of Uncle Jeff and his master there existed a most particular bond of friendship and enmity this was further strengthened by the fact that they were both equally disliked by all the inhabitants of the place like many people who are called to stand in responsible positions old hundred had rather failed in the humble virtues and become dogmatical and dictatorial to that degree that nobody but his own wife could do anything with him and as to Jeff if the principle of thievery could be incarnate he might have won a temple among the Lachodemonians in various skirmishes and battles consequent on his misdeed Jeff had lost an eye and had a considerable portion of the feathers scalded off on one side of his head while the remaining ones discomposed by the incident ever after stood up in a protesting attitude imparting something still more sinister to his goblin appearance in another encounter he had received a permanent twist in the neck which gave him always the appearance of looking over his shoulder and added not a little to the oddity of the general effect Uncle Jeff thieved with an aciduity and skill which were worthy of a better cause and when not upon any serious enterprise of this kind employed his time in pulling up corn scratching up newly planted flower seeds tangling yarn pulling out knitting needles pecking the eyes of sleeping people scratching and biting children and any other little miscellaneous mischief which occurred to him he was invaluable to Old Hundred because he was a standing apology for any and all discoveries made on his premises of things which ought not to have been there no matter what was brought to light whether spoons from the Great House or a pair of sleeve buttons or a handkerchief or a pipe from the neighboring cabin Jeff was always called up to answer Old Hundred regularly scalded on these occasions and declared he was enough to spoil the character of any man's house and Jeff would look at him comically over the shoulder and wink his remaining eye as much as to say that this scolding was a settled thing between them and that he wasn't going to take it at all in ill part Uncle John said, Nina I want you to get the carriage out for me right away I want to take a ride over the cross run Laws bless your sweet face on a child I was dreadful sorry but you can't do it this year day Can't do it, why not? Why bless your child it ain't possible no way, can't have the carriage and horses this year afternoon but I must go over the cross run to the post office I must go this minute Law child you can't do it for you can't walk and it's certain you can't ride this year horses nor this year carriage can't stir out this year afternoon no way you can fix it might go perhaps tomorrow or next week oh Uncle John I don't believe a word of it I want them this afternoon and I say I must have them no you can't child said old hundred in a tender condescending tone as if you were speaking to a baby I'll tell you that there is impossible while bless your soul Miss Nina your sentence is all off the carriage well put them on again Miss Nina that air ain't all Pete was desperate sick last night took with them thumps, powerful bad while Miss Nina he was that sick I had to be up with him most all night and while old hundred thus adorantly issued this little work of fiction the raven nodded waggishly at Nina as much as to say you hear that fellow now perplexed biting her lips and old hundred seem to go into a profound slumber I don't believe but what the horses can go today I mean to go and look law son a child you can't now the doze all locked and I got the key in my pocket every one of them critters would have been killed 40 times over for now I think everybody in this year world is at a dim dark critters Miss Lou she wanted them to go one way and Harry's dollars using the critters got one out this year at noon riding over to see his wife don't see no use in his riding round so grand no way laws miss nine at your Paul used to say to me says he Uncle John you know more about them critters than I do and now I tell you what it is Uncle John you take care of them critters don't you let nobody kill him for nothing now miss Nina has always a walking in the steps of the colonels directions now good clear bright weather over good roads I like to try the critters out that there's reasonable but then what roads is over to cross run I want to know them their roads is the most miserable as things you ever did see mud high off for to see the mud down there by the quick why the bridge all tear it off man down in that dare creek once was so it ain't no sort of road for young ladies to go over tell you miss nine why don't you let Harry carry a letter over if he must be a ride around the country don't see why he couldn't do some good with his riding why the carriage wouldn't get over before 10 o'clock this year night now mine I tell you besides it's going for the rain I've been feeling that there in my corns all this year morning and Jeff he's been acting like the very devil his self the way he always does for it rains never no dad they're signed to fail the short of the matter is Uncle John you are determined not to go said Nina but I tell you you shall go there now now do you get up immediately and get out those horses old hundreds still sat quiet smoking and Nina after reiterating her orders till she got thoroughly angry began at last to ask herself the question how she was going to carry them into execution old hundred appeared to have descended into himself in a profound reverie and to betrayed not the smallest sign of hearing anything she said I wish Harry would come back quick she said to herself as she principally retraced her steps through the garden but Tom Titt had taken the commission to go for him in his usual leisurely way spending the greater part of the afternoon on the road now ain't you ashamed of yourself you mean oh nigger said Aunt Rose the wife of old hundred who had been listening to the conversation talking about the creek and the mud and the critters and Lord knows what all when we know it's nothing but your laziness well said old hundred what would come of the critters if I wasn't lazy I want to know laziness it's the very best thing for the critters can be where them horses have been now if I had been one of your highfalutin sort always driving around where they have been and what would they have been hey who wants to see horses all skin and bone Lord if I had been like some of the coachman the buzzards would have had to pick into them critters long ago I really believe that you've told them their lies till you begin to believe them yourself said Rose telling our dear sweet young lady about your being up with Pete all night when the Lord knows you laid here snoring fit to tie the roof off well must say something folks must be respectful to the ladies of course I couldn't tell her that I wouldn't take the critters out so I just trots out a excuse lots of them excuses I keeps I tell you now excuses is excellent things why excuses is like this year that keeps the wheels from squeaking Lord bless you the whole world turns round on excuses worried the world be if everybody was such fools to tell the real reason for everything they are going forward to do or ain't going forward to end of chapter 6 the dilemma