Hubert's Wife Part 14

To do justice to Mrs. Lisle, she had intended to have sold both Kizzie and her son to the same buyer. As she herself said, she was always having trouble with Kizzie. There were times when she was positively afraid of her. Just before the proposed sale she had had a serious difficulty with her. Mistress and servant regarded each other as two enraged tigers might do, whenever they met. Mrs. Lisle made up her mind she would have Kizzie taken to the Court House and sold. Court was to be holden in a week or so; at such a time more or less slaves were put up at auction.

Kizzie was not sorry when informed of the proposed plan; though she shared, with others of her cla.s.s, a horror of being "sold South," she had come to think she could not possibly fall into more cruel hands.

Besides, in that region so terrible to the imagination of the slaves, she might come across one or all of her lost sons! At any rate, she would be beneath the same sky, and the dear hope of meeting them would be a continual comfort.

A whole day was consumed by Tippy--her real name was Xantippe--in plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and in fixing her up to appear to the best advantage for youth and sprightliness. She was only sixty, but hard labor and severe usage had told upon her heavily.

Aunt Kizzie, in her new linsey-woolsey and shining bandana as a turban, started off in great glee for the Court House. That she might appear there fresh, brisk, and pert, she was not suffered to walk, but Washington, the coachman, was ordered to drive her in the ark of the plantation wagon. Joe, smart, smiling, and newly-equipped in clothes, sat by her side, scarcely knowing whether he had best share in his mother's uncommon gaiety, or yield to his own anxious misgiving.

Another thing contributed to Aunt Kizzie's happiness. All the way to the Court House she was at perfect liberty to caress her nosegay of pinks and camomile. Kizzie had two grand pa.s.sions; one was for her children, the other for her fragrant pinks. If she was allowed a garden patch the size of a hat-crown, it was devoted to her favorite flowers. She was wont to have her loom festooned with them; she drank in their perfume as did her web its woof; by night she had them scattered over her pillow, that, even in sleep, she might not lose their presence.

"I should think pinks would grow out of her nose," the servants were in the habit of remarking. It really often looked like they did, for, morning and evening, at her milking, her nose, instead of her hand, served as bouquet-holder.

Over the rough roads then, from Thornton Hall to the Court House, her attention was devoted to Joe and her pinks. She was to be sold--that was true--but then she had left a hated mistress. She had with her all she loved, her immense nosegay, her baby Joe, and, in her small bundle, her one pair of ruffled pillow-slips. She was starting out in the world again, and the world looked to her unaccountably new and beautiful.

It was morning now that shone upon Aunt Kizzie and her child. But night came, utterly dark and cheerless night, to both mother and boy. The two were put upon the block together. The boy showed for himself. But the s.e.xagenarian human chattel was mercilessly scrutinized. She was made to sing, dance, and run. Her red turban was torn off, and in spite of the hirsutian manipulations to which she had been subjected, her wool appeared, like Shakspeare's spirits, mixed, black, white, and grey.

She was seized by the nose and chin, as if she had been a horse, and made to distend her jaws even painfully. She experienced a qualm or two when she thought of what a story her few remaining broken teeth would tell. Still, like the world and all the "rest of mankind," she had never fully realized that she had pa.s.sed her prime and her usefulness.

This purchaser did not want her, nor did that, nor alas! the other! Each and every one were eager for the boy. The auctioneer's instructions had been to sell the two together, if possible, if not, at all events to sell the boy, as he would command a good price, and _money must be_ raised.

Kizzie went wild when she saw her boy knocked off to a man who refused to take her, even as a gift!

O angels in heaven, what pitiful sights do ye not behold upon this earth of ours! Had ye no drop of balm from your vials of tender mercy to pour into the desolate heart of the stricken slave-mother, as she returned homeward in the dark, clutching frantically at her withered pinks, as did the talons of the vulture of grief at her wounded heart!

This blow to poor Kizzie occurred about the time of her mistress'

marriage. The price of her agony, the money obtained for Joe, was sent to New York, and returned to Mrs. Rush in glittering jewels. Had this haughty woman been capable of realizing her sin, the showy baubles would have melted in the fiery furnace of her shame and contrition.

Kizzie became a changed woman; crazed, as some thought. Joe had been her baby, and her baby still at fourteen. How could her baby get along without his mother? This was the burden of her complaint, her unceasing utterance of sorrow. And still she lived on, sitting from morning until night at her loom, her tear of sorrow or sigh of despair inwoven with every thread, and from her bleeding heart going up the incessant prayer for Heaven's vengeance upon her persecutor.

One day, not far off, shall it not be more tolerable for Kizzie than for the beautiful mistress of Thornton Hall?

CHAPTER XVI.

TIME AND CHANGE.

Time and change! Why add the latter word? Doth not the former include all? Doth not time sadly overcome all things?

And this Time, which, according to Sir Thomas Brown, sitteth on a sphinx, and looketh into Memphis and old Thebes, which reclineth on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of t.i.tanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams--or something to that effect. This old Father Time, so much abused, misused, has given ten years to Kennons, ten years to Philip and his second wife in the far away homes of the Mussulman, ten years to the little Althea, who has bloomed into a beautiful girl of fourteen, beneath the roof of her loving guardians, John and Juliet Temple.

Ten years! and the fiery war of words has been followed by the deadlier fire of arms; civil war has raged over the sunny South, destroyed loving homes, mutilated fair forms, blotted out countless lives, and sent mult.i.tudes of souls unshriven before their Maker; but thanks be to G.o.d, riveted bonds have been broken and the slave hath been set free! Grand as was the sacrifice, infinite was the gain.

"I thought," said Amy, when she stood on her mount of Pisgah, rolling up her melancholy eyes to the heaven, whence her deliverance had come, "I thought it would come some time, to our children, or our children's children, but not in my time, and to me! Moses was in de wilderness forty years; for what should I tink dat de Lord would gib us our liberty sooner'n to his own faithful servant? And we to have our'n in four years! But I knew it would come some time, sure as was a G.o.d in heaven.

Hadn't we been prayin' and prayin', an' beseechin', an' how could de Lord stan' de prayers of such 'pressed, trodden people as we? Bress de Lord, O my soul, an' all dat is in me!"

Thousands like Amy sang their songs of deliverance. And like her, they arose from the sad waters of their Babylon, took their harps from the willows, seeking out joyfully new ways to lands of promise.

Those persons who had been kind, nay, even moderately just to their servants, were not at once abandoned. Some for months, some for years, were still faithfully served for hire. As a rule, however, the freed people scattered; but they went not far from their life-long homes. An innate love for early scenes and a.s.sociations kept them where they might occasionally visit familiar persons and places.

Duncan Lisle was now a grave man of fifty. Threads of silver shone in his dark hair, but his tall form was erect and graceful as ever. He had become, in manner and speech, exceedingly reserved; his countenance wore almost habitually a melancholy, thoughtful expression. There were times, however, when his still attractive face lighted up with the old smile; and that smile revealed a gentle, n.o.ble spirit, still retaining its freshness unchafed by the carking cares and vexatious trials to which he had been daily subject. While to some men a.s.sociation with so peculiar and trying a nature as Rusha Thornton's might have brought moroseness and all unloveliness, Duncan Lisle, like the philosopher of hemlock fame, had turned his wife's shrewishness into a coat of armor, within which he preserved his soul serene, contemplative, and peaceful.

This is saying very much for Duncan Lisle.

During the stormy period to which we have just referred, when the nation was in her throes of anguish, Mr. Lisle remained loyal to the Government. Aside from reason, common-sense, and humanity, he had seen more than enough in his wife's treatment of servants to disgust him with slavery. Though he took no active part, and, except when occasion required, preserved his usual reticence upon this subject also, he was nevertheless heart and soul upon the one side.

It is needless to observe that his wife was upon the other extreme. The idea of slavery was grateful to her intolerant nature. For herself she acknowledged no superior. The very G.o.d Almighty of Heaven she never took into _her_ account. Had she been Lucifer among the angels, she too would have rebelled. Had she been daughter of Servius Tullius, she would have ridden over the dead body of her father. The golden rule was for others to practice, not for her; its Divine Author, the G.o.d-Man, was beyond her comprehension; His teachings fit but for underlings and slaves. Though scorning and hating the slave, she clung to slavery as if it were her life's blood. She poured forth all the venom of her nature upon the Northern foe, which was aiming to seize this petted horror from her grasp. She recalled often the tyrant's wish; like him would have given worlds had the subjects of Yankeedom but a single neck, that she might sever the Gorgonian head at one happy stroke.

She went almost wild upon the subject, and was the more violent that she could not draw her husband into her views. It was not enough that he should listen with apparent patience to her harangues, she demanded his verbal a.s.sent to her opinions. His silence, his attempts at evasion, provoked her equally as his firmly expressed disapproval. Nothing could satisfy her.

The marching of soldiers came even upon the grounds of Kennons. At times the noise and smoke of battle filled the atmosphere, as had the direful cholera thirty years before.

Rusha Lisle would have turned Kennons into an hospital for Southern soldiers. Even when her husband, hiding for his life, was hunted and dogged by rebel soldiers, her hand fed them with food; _her_ hand that was never known to be stretched forth in charity to the deserving; nay, the roof, forbidden by prowling rebels to shelter its master, was proffered to his enemies by its dishonored mistress.

When tried beyond reason, Duncan Lisle arose in his wrath and a.s.serted his mastery. Well might any true woman have quailed before that uprising, but not Rusha Thornton Lisle. A woman weaker-minded would have packed her silver, gathered her valuables, and fled to Thornton Hall, where she might harbor her dear rebels _ad infinitum_. This strong-minded woman well knew that by such a course of action she would be pleasing everybody but herself. She was not so fond of conferring happiness, nor so capable of self-sacrifice. So she continued to wage war within her household, more constantly vexatious to her husband, more tyrannous to her servants.

What added to Mrs. Lisle's bitterness was the conduct of her son. At the opening of hostilities, he had joined a rebel company, inflated with the idea that in a few weeks, or months at farthest, the Northern "mudsills"

would be overwhelmed and out of sight. No one, except his mother, had talked louder and faster than himself. With his single hand he could slay a dozen of the cowardly Yankees.

After all this bravado, at the first smell of gunpowder, Thornton Rush threw down his firearms in a panic and ran as if from a sweeping tempest of fire and brimstone. Sleeping by day in hollow logs, traveling by night with haste and stealth, he made his way to the hated Northern lines, went as fast as cars could carry him to New York city, and, on a flying steamer, sneaked to Europe. There, once landed, he wrote his mother a letter. She had thought him dead, and mourned him proudly, as for a hero fallen for his country. She half read his letter, and threw it into the fire. Not dead, but a poltroon, a coward! She stamped her foot with contempt. _Her_ son to lack courage?--_her_ son a deserter from his post? She, woman as she was, would have gone into battle with the courage of a Caesar, the constancy of a Hannibal; but this son of hers, in whose veins flowed the cowardly northern blood, what could she expect of him, the son of Jude Rush?--and she curled her lip with contempt for both father and son. She ceased to mention his name, and revealed to no one that he still lived. Moreover, she disdained answering his letter, even had she not destroyed his written, but unread address and fict.i.tious name.

Hubert Lisle, too, had volunteered, but it was to his country, and he was contending bravely, steadfastly, in the Northern ranks. Only good reports came back to Kennons of Ellice's brave son. This was galling to Rusha's pride; but it refuted silently her a.s.sertion that courage flowed not in Northern blood, for Hubert's mother had been a Northerner.

This young man, at the firing of Sumter, had pa.s.sed his twenty-first year. He had graduated with honor from school and college, and was on the eve of embarking for Paris, where he was to pursue his medical studies. The call of his country stayed his uplifted foot, and placed in his not unwilling hand weapons of metal other than implements of dissection.

For three years Hubert was on active duty, when he became one of the unlucky prisoners at Salisbury. At the end of three months he was amongst the exchanged, and emerged from that infamous place such a walking skeleton as might have scared a ghost. Being unable to reenter the service, after several weeks recruiting in the hospital, he was permitted to visit Kennons.

That was a harder place for him than Salisbury. If it were not so trite, we would say he had fallen from Scylla upon Charybdis; or, if it were not vulgar, we might a.s.sert him to have fallen from the frying-pan into the fire; we will simply say, that not finding his father's wife at all agreeable, and having a remote suspicion that she might be tempted to put something that was not pure Java into his coffee, he left, after a few days, for the more congenial city where his college days had been spent.

The civil war, then, had come to a close. Men had fought bravely on either side. It is idle to a.s.sert that all the courage and gallantry was with one or with the other. Both Northerner and Southerner fought like men. Right conquered, and the South yielded gracefully enough. The humiliation of her proud spirit was sufficient for her to bear; taunts and sneers should have been spared her.

Mr. Fuller was still overseer at Kennons, and had managed with Mr. Lisle to retain a majority of the field-hands at a fair salary.

Of the house-servants, Amy and Chloe, being well advanced in years, offered to remain for the sake of their master. He, knowing what it must have cost them to make this resolve, and touched by their devotion, counselled them to leave at least the house. On the farthest corner of his plantation he would give them a few acres, build them a cabin, where, with their youngest children, they could live comfortably. This proposal they received with joy; they would be near the dear master, while removed from the authority of the mistress.

As to Rusha's servants, at the first announcement of freedom, every one went out from her presence forever, so soon as they could gather their wretched wardrobes into shape for departure. The most of them wore their all away, and that was sufficiently scanty. All went, we say. No, Kizzie remained. She was now a poor old woman of seventy. While watching the others depart, she sat down upon a rickety bench, folded her bony fingers over her knees, and cried silently. She was thinking. It would be hard either way, to go out among strangers, or to stay where her life had been so sorry and hopeless. She believed, on the whole, she would stay.

She did not like to leave her little cabin, where she had suffered so much, and where, after all, she had had her crumbs of comfort. How could she sleep out of her own bed, whose pillows were now ever adorned with her own article of luxury--ruffled pillow-slips? How could she leave that household G.o.d which stood day and night by her bedside, the cradle that had rocked her children? Should she find elsewhere a patch of ground for her darling pinks?

Besides, had there not been deep in her heart a hope that some time one of her boys--Joe, perhaps--might be led to seek his mother? How should he find her if she went out none knowing whither? Yes, she would stay.

Miss Rusha was glad of her resolution. She had hired a stranger for cook, and Kizzie, though now somewhat decrepit, could do her many a service. But it was not in this woman's nature to acknowledge a kindness; she acted and spoke as if she were doing this old servant a great favor by allowing her to remain.

It was but a few days ere Mrs. Lisle, who was now more than ever hasty in temper, raised her hand against Kizzie. Kizzie's eyes flashed, and she answered her mistress with angry words. This was more than Mrs.

Lisle could bear, and she struck her a blow.

"A free woman to be whipped like a slave," thought Kizzie; "that time has gone by;" and she threatened to leave.