The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
It was impossible for my wife to visit me except by stealth. She slept every night upon the carpet in her mistress's roony, — for a floor is esteemed in America, a good enough bed for a slave, even for a favorite and a woman. She was liable to be called upon in the night, at the caprice of a mistress, who was in fact, a mere spoiled child; and she could only visit me at the risk of a discovery, which might have been attended with very unpleasant consequences; for if these clandestine visits had been detected, i fear that not all Cassy's charms — whatever poets: may have fabled of the power of beauty — could have saved her from the lash. Yet short and uncertain as these visits were, they sufficed to create and to sustain a new and singular state of feeling. My wife was seldom with me, but her image was ever before my eyes, and appeared to make me regardless of all beside. Things seemed to pass as in a happy dream. The labor of the field was nothing; the lash of the overseer was scarcely felt. My mind became so occupied and as it were, filled up, with the pleasure which I found in our mutual affection, and by the anticipated delights of each successive interview, that it seemed to have no room for disagreeable emotions. Strong as was my passion, there was nothing in it, uneasy or unsatisfied. When I clasped the dear girl to my bosom, I seemed to have reached the height of human fruition. I was happy; greater happiness I could not imagine, and did not desire.
The intoxication of passion is the same in the slave and in the master; it is exquisite; and while it lasts, all-sufficient in itself. I found it so. With almost every thing to make me miserable, still was I happy, — for the excess of my passion rendered me insensible to any thing save its own indulgence.
But such ecstasies are unsuited to the human constitution. They are soon over, and perhaps are ever purchased at too dear a price; for they are but too apt to be succeeded by all the anguish of disappointed hope, and all the bitterness of deep despair. Still I look back with pleasure to that time. It is one of the bright spots of my existence which eager memory discovers in her retrospections, scattered and scarcely visible, — tiny islets of delight, surrounded on all sides, by a gloomy and tempestuous ocean.
We had been married about a fortnight. It was near midnight, and I was sitting before my door, waiting for my wife to come. The moon was full and bright; the sky was cloudless. I was still at the height and flood of my intoxication; and as I watched the planet, and admired her brightness, I gave thanks to heaven that the base tendencies of a servile condition, had not yet totally extinguished within me, all the higher and nobler emotions of man's nature.
Presently I observed a figure approaching. I should have known her at any distance, and I sprang forward and caught my wife in my arms. But as I pressed her to my heart, I felt her bosom to be strangely agitated; and when I brought her face to mine, my cheek was moistened with her tears.
Alarmed at these unusual indications, I hurried her into the house, and hastily inquired the cause of her agitation. My inquiries appeared to increase it. She sunk her head upon my breast; burst into sobs; and seemed wholly incapable of speaking. I knew not what to think, or what to do. I exerted myself to compose her; I kissed off the tears that trickled fast down her cheeks; I pressed my hand against her beating heart, as if, in that way, I could have checked its palpitations. At length she grew more calm; but it was by slow degrees, and in broken sentences, that I learned the origin of her terror.
It seemed that colonel Moore, ever since his return, had distinguished her by particular kindness. He had made her several little presents; had sought frequent occasions to talk with her, and was ever, half jocosely, complimenting her beauty. He had even dropped certain hints, which Cassy could not help understanding, but of which, she thought it best to take no notice. He was not to be repelled in that way; but proceeded to words and actions, of which, it was not possible for her to affect to misunderstand the meaning. Her native modesty, her love for me, her religious feelings, were all alarmed; and the poor girl began to tremble at the fate that seemed to await her. But as yet, she kept her terrors to herself. She was reluctant to torture me with the story of insults, which however they might pierce my heart, I had no power to repel.
That day, Mrs Moore and her daughter had gone to visit one of the neighbors, and Cassy was left at home. She was employed on some needle-work in her mistress's room, when colonel Moore entered. She rose up hastily and would have gone away; but he bade her stop and listen to what he had to say to her. He did not seem to notice her agitation, and appeared perfectly self-possessed himself. He told her that he had promised her mistress to provide her with a husband, in place of that scoundrel Archy; that he had looked about, but did not see any body who was worthy of her; and, on the whole — he had concluded to take her himself.
This he said with a tone of tenderness, which no doubt, he meant to be irresistible. To many women, in Cassy's situation, it would have been so. They would have esteemed themselves highly honored by their master's notice, and would have felt not a little flattered, by the delicate terms under which he concealed the real character of his proposal. But she — poor child — heard him with shame and dread; and was ready, she told me, to sink into the earth, with terror and dismay. In relating it, she blushed — she hesitated — she shuddered — her breathing became short and quick — she clung to me, as if some visible image of horror were present before her, and bringing her lips close to my ear, she exclaimed in a trembling and scarcely audible whisper — "Oh Archy! — and he my father!"
Colonel Moore, she believed, could not have misunderstood the feelings with which she listened to his offer. But if so, he disregarded them; for he proceeded to enumerate all the advantages she would derive from this connexion, and strove to tempt her by promises of idleness and finery. She stood with her eyes upon the floor, and only answered him by sobs and tears, which she strove in vain to suppress. Upon this, colonel Moore in a tone of pique and displeasure, told her "not to be a fool;" and catching one of her hands in his, he threw his arm about her waist, and bade her not provoke him by a useless resistance. She uttered a scream of surprise and terror, and sunk at his feet. At that moment, the sound of the carriage wheels fell, she said, like heavenly music on her ear. Her master heard it too; for he let go his grasp, and muttering something about another time, hastily left the room. She remained almost senseless on the floor, till the sound of her mistress's footsteps in the passage, recalled her to herself. The rest of the afternoon and evening, she had passed, she hardly knew how. Her head, she told me, was dizzy; a cloud swam before her eyes; and she had hardly been sensible of any thing but a painful feeling of languor and oppression. She had not dared to leave her mistress's room; and had waited with impatience for the hour that would permit her to throw herself into the arms of her husband, her natural protector.
Her natural protector! — alas, of what avail is the natural right of a husband to protect his wife against the assaults of a villain, who is at once her owner and his!
Such was Cassy's story; and strange as it may seem, I heard it quite unmoved. Although I held the panting, trembling, weeping narrator in my arms, I listened to her story with far less emotion, than I have since experienced in recounting it. In truth, I was prepared for it; I had anticipated it; I expected it.
I knew well that Cassy's charms were too alluring not to excite a voluptuary in whom.a long indulgence had extinguished all the better feelings, and rendered incapable of controlling himself; and to whom, neither the fear of punishment, nor the dread of public indignation, supplied the place of conscience. What else could be reasonably expected of a man, who knew well, let him proceed to what extremities he might, not only that the law would justify him, but that any body who might think of calling tins to account before the bar of public opinion, would be denounced by the public voice, as an impertinent intermeddler in the affairs of other people?
Little of paternal tenderness as colonel Moore ever showed to me, at least from the moment that he found [ knew him to be my father, 1 have too much of filial respect, to entertain the wish of misrepresenting him. Though he was of a warm and voluptuous temperament, he was naturally a good natured man; and his honor was, as I have said, unquestioned. But honor is of a very diverse character. There is honor among gentlemen, and honor among thieves; and though both these codes contain several excellent enactments, neither can fairly claim to be regarded as a perfect system of morality. Of that code in which he had been educated, colonel Moore was a strict observer. To have made an attempt on the chastity of a neighbor's wife or daughter, he would have esteemed, and so the honorary code of Virginia esteems it, an offence of the blackest dye; an offence, he well knew, to be expiated only by the offender's life. But beyond this, he did not dream of prohibition or restraint. Hardened and emboldened by certain impunity, — provided the sufferer were a slave, — he regarded the most atrocious outrage that could be perpetrated upon the person and feelings of a woman, rather asa matter of jest, a thing to be laughed at over the fourth bottle, than a subject of serious and sober reprehension.
Of all this, I was well aware. I had from the first foreseen, that Cassy would be devoted by her master to the same purposes which had been fulfilled by my mother and her own. It was from these intentions, as I had all along believed, that his opposition to our marriage had originated. In imagining that it might spring from another cause, I had done him an honor to which — as was now too evident — he had not the slightest title, What 1 had just now heard, I had daily expected to hear. I had expected it; yet such had been my intoxication, that even anticipations terrible as this, had not been able to alarm or distress me; and now that anticipation was changed into reality, still I remained unmoved. The ecstasy of passion still sustained me; and as I pressed my wretched, trembling wife to my bosom, I still rose superior to the calamity that assailed me; even yet, I was happy.
This seems incredible? —
Love then as I did; or if that suit your temperament better, hate with the same intensity with which I loved. Be absorbed in any passion, and while the fit continues, you will find yourself endowed with a surprising and almost superhuman energy.
My mind was already made up. The unhappy slave has but one way of escaping any threatening infliction; a poor and wretched resource, to which he recurs always at the imminent risk of redoubling his miseries. That remedy is flight.
Our preparations were soon made, My wife returned to the House, and gathered up a little bundle of clothing. In the mean time, I employed myself in collecting such provisions as I could readiest lay my hands on, A couple of blankets, a hatchet, a little kettle, and a few other small: articles, completed my equipments; and by the time my wife returned, I was ready for a start. We set out, with no other companion, but a faithful dog. I did not wish to take him, for fear that some how or other, he might lead to our detection; but he would hot be driven back, and I was afraid to tie him, lest his howlings might give an alarm, and lead to an immediate pursuit.
Lower Virginia had already begun to feel the effects of that blight, which has since lighted so heavily upon her, and which in truth, she has so well deserved. Already her fields were beginning to be deserted; already impenetrable thickets had commenced to cover plantations, which, had
the soil been cultivated by freemen, might still have produced a rich and abundant harvest. There was a deserted plantation about ten miles from Spring-Meadow. I had formerly visited it several times, in company with my young master, James, who, when he was well enough to ride about, had a strange taste for wandering into out-of-the-way places. It was thither that, in the hurry of the moment, I resolved to go.
The by-road which had formerly led to this estate, and the fields on both sides, were grown over with small scrubby pines, so close and tangled as to render the thicket almost impenetrable. I contrived however, to keep on in the right direction. But the difficulties of the way were so
at, that the morning had dawned before we reached the plantation buildings. They were still standing; but in a most dilapidated condition. The great House had been a structure of large size, and considerable pretensions: But the windows were gone, the doors had dropped from their hinges, and the roof was partly fallen in. The court yard was completely grown up with young trees. Wild vines were creeping over the house; — and all was silent, desolate and deserted. The stables, and what had been the servants' quarter, were mere heaps of ruins, overgrown with weeds and grass.
At some distance behind the house, there was a rapid descent, which formed one side of a deep ravine; and near the bottom of this hollow, a fine bubbling spring burst from under the hill. It was now half choked with leaves and sand, but its waters were pure and cool as ever. Near the spring, was a little low building of brick, which perhaps had been intended for a dairy, or some such purpose, The door was gone, and half the roof had tumbled in. The other half still kept its position, and the vacancy occasioned by the part that had fallen, served well enough to admit the light and air, and to supply the place of windows, which had formed no part of the original construction. This ruinous little building was shaded by several large and ancient trees; and was so completely hidden by a more recent growth, as to be invisible at the distance of a few paces. Jt was by mere accident that we stumbled upon it, as we were searching for the spring, of which I had drank upon my former visits, but the situation of which, I did no exactly recollect. It struck us at once, that this was the place for our temporary habitation; and we resolved forthwith to clear it of the rubbish it contained, and to turn it into a dwelling.