Chapter VI: Part 6

I did not keep the Doctor and Harry long in the house. It was the plantation they wanted to see. We spent several hours in walking over it. I tried to do justice, not only to the plans and works of my friend, but to his father's schemes of agricultural improvement, and also to the very different labors of his uncle, Dr. George Shaler, who, utterly abstracted from matters of immediate utility, took the beautiful and the future under his affectionate protection. Through his vigilance and pertinacity, trees were felled, spared, and planted, with a judgment rare anywhere, singular here. If he gave into some follies, such as grottos, mimic ruins, and surprises, after the Italian fashion, even these are becoming respectable through time. They are very innocent monuments; for their construction gave as much delight to those who labored as to him who planned, and the completed work was not less their pride than his. His artificial mounds, which, while they were piling, were the jest of the wider neighborhood,--as the good old man himself has often told me,--now, covered with thrifty trees, skilfully set, are a legacy which it was, perhaps, worth the devotion of his modest, earnest life to bequeath.

Charles Shaler has piously spared all his uncle's works,--respecting the whimsical, as well as cherishing the excellent.

We went last to the quarters of the work-people. A few of the cabins were left standing. Most of them had been carried off piecemeal, probably to build or repair the cabins of other plantations. Those that remained seemed to have been protected by the strength and beauty of the vines in which they were embowered. I was glad to find still unmolested one which had an interest for me. It had been the home of an old man who used to be very kind to me. I lifted the latch and was opening the door, when I became aware of a movement inside, as of some one hastily and stealthily putting himself out of sight. If this was so, the purpose was instantly changed; for a firm step came forward, and the door was pulled open by a strong hand. I stepped back out of the little porch, and addressed some words to the Doctor, to make known that I was not alone; but the man followed me out, and saluted me and my companions respectfully and frankly. I offered him my hand, for he was an old acquaintance.

"Senator, why are you here?"

"Because I ought to be here."

"There is danger."

He did not reply, but the kindling of his look showed that he saw in danger only a challenge to his powers. He saluted us again, and walking away, with a slow, even step, disappeared in a thicket which shrouded one of Dr. George's favorite grottos.

"The true Othello, after all!" exclaimed the Doctor, when we turned to each other again, after watching until we were sure that we had seen the last of this apparition. "Of royal siege, assuredly!"

"He claims to be, or rather it is claimed for him," I answered. "His mother was a native African, a king's daughter, those who came with her said; and she bore, by all accounts, the stamp of primitive royalty as clearly impressed as her son does. Her title was never questioned either in the cabin or at the great house. She was a slave on the Westlake plantation,--but only for a few weeks, as I have heard."

"Did you ever see her?" the Doctor asked.

"No, she died long ago; but her story is still told on the plantation and in the neighborhood. Old Westlake bought her with four others, all native Africans, at Perara. The rest throve and made themselves at home. She, stately and still, endured until she had received her son into the world, and then, having consigned him to a foster-mother of her choice, passed tranquilly out of it. During her short abode on the plantation, she was an object of general homage, and when she died, the purple descended to her son."

"And the son has his story?" said the Doctor.

"A short one."

The Doctor and Harry both turned to me with expectation. They knew the Westlake plantation and its master; but you do not. If Senator's story has not the interest for you that it had for them, that must be the reason.

The prestige of rank was the only inheritance of the little foreign orphan. The very name his mother gave him, and which she impressed, by frequent, though faint repetition, upon those about her, was lost in the surprise of her sudden departure. The good souls to whom it had been committed strove faithfully to recover it. They were sure it was no proper Christian name, but a title of dignity; and, comparing their recollections of the sound, and their intuitions of the meaning, agreed among themselves that its nearest equivalent must be "Senator."

Senator was born on Christmas day; and this was regarded as all the greater distinction that it had been enjoyed before him by the young master,--the then heir and now owner, our present Westlake.

As he grew up, he took, as of course, and held, the place assigned to him in advance. At the age of sixteen he was already in authority over men, and exercised it with an ease and acceptance which proved that he was obeyed as instinctively as he commanded.

I do not know a prouder man than Westlake, or one more saturated with the prejudice of race. But he is not exempt from the laws which govern human intercourse. He came under the spell of Senator's cool self-reliance and unhesitating will. The petted slave did not directly or palpably misuse his power; yet his demeanor occasioned a secret dissatisfaction. He gave to his master's interests the whole force of his remarkable abilities, but it was not clear that he duly appreciated the indulgence which permitted him to exercise them untrammelled. He had never undergone punishment,--had hardly even met rebuke; but it was more than suspected that he attributed his immunities to his own merits. Westlake valued him for his high spirit as much as for his capacity; but should not Senator be very sensible to such magnanimity? This spirit had never been broken by fear; ought it not all the more to bend itself in love and gratitude?

Poor Westlake is very fond of gratitude. He enjoys it even from the most worthless and neglected of his slaves,--enjoys it even when it is prospective and conditional, and when he has the best reasons for knowing that the implied stipulations are not to be fulfilled. To Senator's gratitude he felt he had so entire a claim that he could not but believe in its existence. He tried to see in its very silence only a proof of its depth. But, if not necessary to his own feelings, some outward expression was important to his dignity in the eyes of others. He exerted himself, therefore, by gracious observations made in the presence of guests or before the assembled people on holidays, to afford Senator an opportunity at once of testifying to his master's liberality and of displaying the eloquence which was one of the chief glories of the plantation. These condescending efforts, constantly baffled by the self-possessed barbarian, were perpetually renewed.

One Christmas morning the common flood of adulation had been poured out more profusely than usual, and Westlake had quaffed it with more than usual satisfaction. His outlay for the festival had been truly liberal, and he felt that the quality of the entertainment guarantied that of the thanks. Besides the general benevolence of the dinner,--already arranged on long, low tables set about the lawn, to be enjoyed in anticipation by their devouring eyes,--special gifts were bestowed on the most deserving or the most favored. Senator was greatly distinguished, but took his assigned portion in silence; and Westlake felt, through every tingling nerve, that the attentive crowd had seen, as he had, that it was received as a tribute rather than as a favor. He had hitherto covered his defeats with the jolly laugh that seemed meant at once to apologize for his servant's eccentricity and to forgive it. But now he had made too sure of triumph; surprise and pain hurried him out of himself.

"What is it now?" he cried, fiercely, raising his clenched fist against the impassive offender.

"I have not spoken, Master."

"Speak, then! It is time. I have done more for you than for all the rest, and not a word!"

"We have done more for you than you for us all. What you give us we first give you."

It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen. The assembly scattered like a flock of frightened sheep.

I had this from Westlake himself. He came straight over to me. Not that Westlake and I are friends. There had never been any intimacy between us. There never has been any, unless for those few hours that day.

Senator had been secured. His sentence had been announced. It was banishment. Those who were nearest the master's confidence had leave to add the terrible name--New Orleans.

Senator had neither mother nor wife. He was nineteen, the age of enterprise and confidence. Perhaps, after all, it was the master on whom the doom would fall most heavily, I thought, while Westlake was making his recital. He was almost pale; his heavy features were sharpened; his firm, round cheeks were flaccid and sunken; his voice was hoarse and tremulous. Surely, that birthday might count for ten.

"I cannot overlook it," he groaned out. "You know that yourself, Colvil. I cannot forgive it. It would be against my duty, and---- Any way, I cannot. But--you may think it strange--but I am not angry. I was, but I am not now. I cannot bear to know him locked up there in the corn-barn, shackled and chained, and thinking all the time that it is I who have done it to him!"

Westlake had not seen the man since his imprisonment, and had come over to ask me to be present at the first interview. I declined positively.

"I do not believe," I said, "that he is to be reasoned out of his opinions. Certainly he will not be reasoned out of them by me. If anything could persuade a nature like his to submission, it would be the indulgent course you have till now pursued with him. If that has failed, no means within your reach will succeed."

"You do not understand me. I do not want you to reason with him, or to persuade him to anything. I only ask you to be witness to what I am going to say to him, that he may believe me,--that he may not himself thwart me in my plans."

"In what plans?"

"Plans that you will agree to, and that you will help me in, I hope,--but which I cannot trust to any one but you, nor to you except to have your help. If you will come with me, you shall know them; if not, I must take my chance, and he must take his."

I did not put much faith in Westlake's plans; but the thought of Senator chained and caged drew me to his prison. There might be nothing for me to do there; but, since I was called, I would go.

By the time my horse was saddled, Westlake had recovered his voice, and, in part, his color. This birthday would not count for more than five. He plucked up still more on the road; but when we came within a mile of his place, his trouble began to work on him again. He would have lengthened that last mile, but could not much. His horse snuffed home, and mine a near hospitality. Our entrance sustained the master's dignity handsomely. There was no misgiving or relenting to be construed out of that spirited trot.

We went together to the corn-barn. Senator was extended on the floor at the farther end of the room. He lifted his head when we entered, and then, as if compelled by an instinctive courtesy, rose to his fettered feet. I saw at once that there had been no more harshness than was needful for security; it even seemed that this had not been very anxiously provided for. The slender shackles would be no more than withes of the Philistines to such a Samson. A chain, indeed, fastened to a strong staple in the floor, passed to a ring in an iron belt about his waist; but it was long enough to allow him considerable liberty of movement. His hands were free. Perhaps Westlake had half expected to find the room empty. He stopped, a little startled, when he heard the first clank of the chain, and watched his prisoner as he slowly lifted himself from the ground and rose to his full height. Then, recollecting himself, he went forward. One ignorant of what had gone before might have mistaken between the culprit and the judge.

"Senator," Westlake began, in a voice whose faltering he could not control, "I have been a kind master to you."

No answer.

"You allow that?"

Senator was inflexible.

"I would never have sent you away of my own free will. This is your doing, not mine. You cannot _want_ to go!" This in indignant surprise,--for something like a smile had relaxed the features of the imperious slave.

Senator spoke.

"This is my home, as it is yours. I was born here, as you were. This land is dear to me as it is to you; dearer,--for I have given my labor to it, and you never have. In return, I have had a support, and the exercise of my strength and my skill. This has been enough for me until now. But I am a man. I look round and see how other men live. I want somebody else to do for: not you, but somebody that could not do without me."

"Things might have gone differently," Westlake began, recovering his self-complacency, as visions, doubtless, of the fine wedding he would have given Senator, of the fine names he would have bestowed upon his children, rose before his fancy. "Things might have gone differently, if you had been"----

"If I had been what I am not," answered Senator, becoming impatient as Westlake relapsed into pomposity. "It is enough, Master. We have done with each other, and we both know it. Let me go."

"I will let you go,"--Westlake spoke now with real dignity,--"but not as you think. If I would have you remember what I have been to you, it is for your own sake, not for mine. I am used to ingratitude; I do not complain of yours. I have never sold a servant left me by my father, and I do not mean to begin with you. You shall not drive me to it. You are to go, and forever, but by your own road. I will set you on it myself. Is there any one in the neighborhood you can trust? We shall need help."

A doubtful smile passed over Senator's face.

"There is no one, then? Think! no one?"

"I am not so unhappy. There are those whom I trust."

"Then I will trust them. Tell me who they are and where they are. And quick! This news will be everywhere soon. To-morrow morning the neighbors will be coming in. What is done must be done to-night. Senator, do not ruin yourself! I mean right by you. Here is Mr. Colvil to witness to what I say. Is this mad obstinacy only? or do you _dare_ not to trust yourself to me?"

"I do not trust to you those who trust me."

"Do you suppose I would give up those whose aid I have asked?"

"You would know where to find them when they give aid you have not asked."

"Colvil, speak to him! If he goes off by himself, I cannot hide it long. The country will be roused. I shall have to hunt him down myself. My honor will be at stake. I shall have to do it!"

The obdurate slave studied his master's features with curiosity mingled with triumph.

"Help me, Colvil! Help him! Tell him to listen to my plan and join in it! The useful time is passing!"

"Senator," I said at last, being so adjured, "your master means you well. He is not free to set you free,--you know it. You have done work for him,--good and faithful work; but never yet have you done him a pleasure, and he has intended you a good many. This is your last chance. Gratify him for once!"

Senator looked again, and saw, through the intent and wistful eyes, the poor, imploring soul within, which, hurried unconsenting towards crime, clung desperately to his rescue as its own. He comprehended that here was no tyrant, but a wretched victim of tyranny. A laugh, deep, reluctant, uncontrollable, no mirth in it, yet a certain bitter irony, and Senator had recovered his natural bearing, self-possessed and authoritative; he spoke in his own voice of composed decision.

"What is the plan, Master?"

Westlake told it eagerly. He was to save his authority with his people and his reputation with his neighbors by selling the rebellious servant,--that is to say, by pretending to sell him. Senator was to entitle himself to a commutation of his sentence into simple banishment by lending himself to the pious fraud and acting his part in it becomingly. Westlake had been so long accustomed to smooth his path of life by open subterfuges and falsehoods whose only guilt was in intention, that he had formed a very high opinion of his own address, and a very low one of the penetration of the rest of the world. As he proceeded with the details of his plot, childishly ingenious and childishly transparent, Senator listened, at first with attention, then with impatience, and at last not at all. When Westlake stopped to take breath, he interposed.

"Now hear me. Order the long wagon out, with the roans. Have me handcuffed and fastened down in it. Tell those whom you trust that you are taking me to Goosefield."

"To Goosefield?"

"To Dick Norman."

"Dick Norman! He help you! He is not an ----?"

Westlake could not bring himself to associate the word abolitionist with a man who had dined with him three days before.

"He is a slave-trader."

The blood, which had rushed furiously to the proud planter's cheeks, left them with a sudden revulsion. To be taken in by a disguised fanatic might happen to any man too honorable to be suspicious. He could have forgiven himself. But to have held a slave-trader by the hand! to have asked him to his table! Westlake knew that Senator never said anything that had to be taken back.

Richard Norman was a man of name and birth from old Virginia. Of easy fortune, so it was reported, still unmarried, he spent a great part of the year in travelling; and especially found pleasure in renewing old family ties with Virginian emigrants or their children in newer States. When he favored our neighborhood, he had his quarters at Goosefield, where he always took the same apartments in the house of a man, also Virginian by birth, who was said to be an old retainer of his family. Norman's father had been the fathers' friend of most of our principal planters. He was welcome in almost every household for the sake of these old memories, and apparently for his own. He was well-looking, well-mannered, possessed of various information, ready with amusing anecdote. And yet all the time it was perfectly known to every slave on every plantation where he visited what Mr. Richard Norman was. It was perfectly known to every planter except Westlake, and possibly Harvey. I do not remember to have heard of him at Harvey's. Those who never sold their servants, those who never separated families, those who never parted very young children from their mothers, found Norman a resource in those cases of necessity which exempt from law.

The slaves talked of him among themselves familiarly, though fearfully. He was the central figure of many a dark history; the house at Goosefield was known to them as Dick Norman's Den. The masters held their knowledge separately, each bound to consider himself its sole depository. If, arriving at the house of a friend, soon after a visitation of Richard Norman, one missed a familiar hand at his bridle, a kind old face at the door, curiosity was discreet; it would have been very ill manners to ask whether it was Death or Goosefield.

"Dick Norman starts at midnight. He has been ready these three days. He only waited to eat his Christmas dinner at old Rasey's."

Westlake had pondered and understood. "Where shall I really take you?" he asked, despondingly.

"Leave me anywhere six or eight miles from here, and I will do for myself."

"Colvil, you will ride along beside?"

"No."

I find in myself such an inaptitude for simulation or artifice of any kind, that I do not believe it was intended I should serve my fellow-men by those means.

"No," repeated Senator,--"not if we are going to Goosefield."

"It is true," assented Westlake, sadly; "nobody would believe you were going with me there!"

I rode off without taking leave of Senator. I felt sure of seeing him again. I thought I knew where the aid he would seek was to be found. Mine was just the half-way house to it. He would not be afraid of compromising me, for his master himself had called me to be witness to their compact. Senator would have the deciding voice, as usual; and Westlake would be guided by him now the more readily that he himself would tend in the direction of his only confidant. When I had put up my horse, I went into the house only for a few moments to tell my mother what I had seen and what I was expecting.

I walked up and down between the gate and the brook that evening,--I could not tell how long. I had time to become anxious,--time to invent disasters,--time to imagine encounters Westlake might have had on the way, with officious advisers, with self-proposed companions. I was disappointed more than once by distant wheels, which came nearer and nearer only to pass on, and farther and farther away, on the road which, crossing ours, winds round behind our place to Winker's Hollow. At last I caught sound of an approach which did not leave me an instant in uncertainty. This time, beyond mistake, it was the swift, steady tramp of Westlake's roans. As they entered our sandy lane, their pace slackened to a slow trot, and then to a walk. Westlake was on the lookout for me. I went into the middle of the road. He saw me; I heard him utter an exclamation of relief.

Senator, who had been stretched out on the bottom of the wagon, sat up when the horses stopped, took the manacles from his wrists and threw them down on the straw. With his master's help, he soon disencumbered himself of his fetters, and sprang lightly to the ground. Westlake followed, and the two stood there in the starlight confronting each other for the last time.

The face of the banished man was inscrutable. His master's worked painfully. This boy, born on his own twenty-first birthday, had been assigned to him, not only by his father's gift, but also, so it seemed, by destiny itself. He had had property in him; he had had pride in him; he had looked for a life-long devotion from him. And now, in one moment, all was to be over between them forever. The scene could not be prolonged. There was danger in every instant of delay.

"Westlake, he must go."

"He must go," Westlake repeated, but hesitatingly. And then, with a sudden impulse, he put out his hand to his forgiven, even if unrepentant, servant.

The movement was not met.

"No, Master; I will not wrong you by thanking you. This is not my debt." Senator raised towards heaven the coveted hand. "It is His who always pays."

TUESDAY, April 16, 1844.

You can always tell what view of certain questions Harry Dudley will take. You have only to suppose them divested of all that prejudice or narrow interest may have encumbered them with, and look at them in the light of pure reason. One of the charms of your intercourse with Dr. Borrow is that it is full of surprises.

"I have a weakness for Westlake, I own it," said the Doctor, when we were seated at the tea-table after our return from The Two Farms. "If you had known him when he was young, as I did, Colvil! Such an easy, soft-hearted, dependent fellow! You couldn't respect him very greatly, perhaps; but like him you must! His son Reginald you ought to like. I do. And--what you will think more to the purpose--so does Harry."

Harry enforced this with a look.

Reginald Westlake is a handsome boy, rather sullen-looking, but with a face capable of beaming out into a beautiful smile. He is always distant in his manners to me, I do not know whether through shyness or dislike.

"He will make a man," Doctor Borrow went on; "if I am any judge of men, he will make a man."

The Doctor was interrupted by the brisk trot of a horse coming up the road. The rider did not stop at the gate; he cleared it. In another moment Westlake's jolly red face was looking down on us through the window. I might have found this arrival untimely; but turning to Harry to know how he took it, I saw in his eyes the "merry sparkle" the Doctor had told of, and divined that there was entertainment in a colloquy between the classmates.

Westlake made a sign with his hand that he was going to take his horse to the stable. I went out to him, Harry following. I welcomed him as cordially as I could, but his manner was reserved at first. We had not met in a way to be obliged to shake hands since Shaler went away. Westlake knew that I was greatly dissatisfied with him at that time. Not more so, though, than he was with himself, poor fellow! He was evidently sincerely glad to see Harry again, and Harry greeted both him and his horse very kindly. Westlake is always well-mounted, and deserves to be: he loves his horses both well and wisely. It is something to be thoroughly faithful in any one relation of life, and here Westlake is faultless. The horse he rode that afternoon--one raised and trained by himself--bore witness in high spirit and gentle temper to a tutor who had known how to respect a fiery and affectionate nature. We all three gave our cares to the handsome creature, and this common interest put me quite in charity with my unexpected guest before we went into the house.

"This is a way to treat an old friend!" cried Westlake, as he gave his hand to the Doctor, who had come down the door-steps to meet him. "I cannot get two whole days from you, and then you come here and stay on as if you meant to live here!"

Tabitha watched my mother's reception of the new-comer, and, seeing it was hospitable, placed another chair at the table with alacrity. She knew he was out of favor here, but had never thought very hardly of him herself. Her race often judges us in our relations with itself more mildly than we can judge each other. In its strange simplicity, it seems to attribute to itself the part of the superior, and pities where it should resent.

"You cannot make it up to me, Borrow," Westlake went on, as soon as we had taken our places, "except by going right back with me to-night, or coming over to me to-morrow morning, and giving me as many days as you have given Colvil. Next week is the very time for you to be with us. I want you to see us at a gala season: next week is the great marrying and christening time of the year. It usually comes in June; but this year we have it two months earlier, on account of Dr. Baskow's engagements. My little Fanny is to give all the names. She has a fine imagination."

"Westlake, I would do all but the impossible to show my sense of your kindness. For the rest, my appreciation of little Miss Fanny's inventive powers could not be heightened."

"Does that mean no? Borrow, I shall think in earnest that you have done me a wrong in giving so much time away from me, if these are really your last days in our parts."

"We will make it up to you. I will tell you how we will make it up to you. Come to us,--come to Massachusetts: I will give you there a week of my time for every day we have taken from you here. Come to us in June: that is the month in which New England is most itself. Come and renew old associations."

"You will never see me again, if you wait to see me there."

"What now? You used to like it."

"I am not so sure that I used to like it, when I think back upon it. At any rate, if you want to see _me_, you must see me in my own place. I am not myself anywhere else. Equality, Borrow, equality is a very good thing for people who have never known anything better: may be a very good thing for people who can work themselves up out of it. But for a man who has grown up in the enjoyment of those privileges inappreciable by the vulgar, but which by the noble of every age have been regarded as the most real and the most valuable,--for such a man to sit, one at a long table, feeling himself nobody, and knowing all the time he has a right to be somebody! You can talk very easily about equality. You have never suffered from it. You have your learning and---- Well, you know how to talk. I have no learning, and I can't talk, except to particular friends. A man cannot ticket himself with his claims to estimation. Even Paris has too much equality for me. Flora liked it; she had her beauty and her toilet. But I! how I longed to be back here among my own simple, humble people! As soon as she was married, I made off home. In my own place, among my own people, I am, I might almost say, like a god, if I were not afraid of shocking you. And is not their fate in my hands? My frown is their night, my smile is their sunshine. The very ratification of their prayers to a Higher Power is intrusted to my discretion. Homage, Borrow, homage is the sweetest draught ever brought to mortal lips!"

"The homage of equals I suppose may be," said Dr. Borrow, modestly.

"You do not understand. How should you? Our modes of thinking and feeling are not to be comprehended by one brought up in a society so differently constituted. We avow ourselves an aristocracy."

"You do well: something of the inherent meaning of a word will always make itself felt. _Aristocracy!_ It is vain to try to dispossess it of its own. The world will not be disenchanted of the beautiful word. Cover yourselves with its prestige. It will stand you in good stead with outsiders. But, between ourselves, Westlake, how is it behind the scenes? Can you look each other in the face and pronounce it? Or have you really persuaded yourselves down here that you are governed by your best men?"

"We do not use the word so pedantically down here. By an aristocracy we mean a community of gentlemen."

"And, pronouncing it so emphatically, you of course use the word gentleman in the sense it had when it had a sense. You bear in mind what the gentleman was pledged to, when to be called one was still a distinction. 'To eschew sloth,' 'to detest all pride and haughtiness,'--these were among his obligations: doubtless they are of those most strictly observed in your community. He was required 'to be true and just in word and dealing'; 'to be of an open and liberal mind.' You find these conditions fulfilled in Rasey, your leading man."

"Our leading man?"

"Certainly, your leading man. Whose lead did you follow, when you joined in worrying Charles Shaler out of your community of gentlemen?"

Westlake shrank. He was conscious that he had been going down hill ever since Shaler left the neighborhood. The hold that Rasey took of him then the crafty old man has never let go.

When Westlake's plantation came into his possession by the death of his father, he undertook to carry it on himself, and has been supposed to do so ever since. It was carried on well from the time that Senator was old enough to take charge; but with his disappearance disappeared all the credit and all the comfort his good management had secured to his master. Westlake needed some one to lean on, and Rasey was ready to take advantage of this necessity. His ascendancy was not established all at once. It is only during the last year that it has been perfected. In the beginning, he gave just a touch of advice and withdrew; showed himself again at discreet intervals, gradually shortened; but, all the time, was casting about his victim the singly almost impalpable threads of his deadly thraldom, until they had formed a coil which forbade even an effort after freedom. Westlake had put no overseer between himself and his people; but he had, without well knowing how it came about, set a very hard one over both. He found the indulgences on his plantation diminished, the tasks more rigidly enforced, the holidays fewer. The punishments, which were before sometimes capriciously severe, but more often threatened and remitted, he was now expected to carry out with the inflexibility of fate. He has found himself reduced to plotting with his servants against himself,--to aiding them in breaking or evading his own laws; reduced--worst humiliation of all--to ordering, under the sharp eye and sharp voice of his officious neighbor, the infliction of chastisement for neglect which he himself had authorized or connived at.

All came of that unhappy Christmas I have told you of. If Westlake could only have been silent, the simple plot devised by Senator would have worked perfectly. All the neighborhood would have respected a secret that was its own. But Westlake could not be silent; he was too uneasy. It was not long before the culprit's escape and his master's part in it were more than surmised. In view of the effect of such a transaction on the servile imagination, Westlake's weakness was ignored by common consent; but it was not the less incumbent upon him to reinstate himself in opinion on the first opportunity. The opportunity was offered by the storm then brewing against Shaler.

Westlake's sufferings are, happily for him, intermittent. Rasey is away from the neighborhood one month out of every three, looking after the estates of yet more unlucky vassals,--his through debt, and not from simple weakness. During these intervals, Westlake takes his ease with his people, as thoughtless as they of consequences no more within his ability to avert than theirs. He has lately had an unusual respite. Rasey has been confined to the house by an illness,--the first of his life.

I do not know how far Dr. Borrow is aware of Westlake's humiliations; and Westlake, I think, does not know. When he was able to speak again, he sheltered himself under a question.

"Do you know Rasey?"

"He is owner of the plantation which lies south of yours and Shaler's, larger than both together."

"His plantation;--but do you know _him_?"

"Root and branch. But who does not know him, that knows anybody here? In the next generation his history may be lost in his fortune, but it is extant yet. His father was overseer on a Georgia plantation, from which he sucked the marrow: his employer's grandchildren are crackers and clay-eaters; his are--of your community."

"Not exactly."

"Strike out all who do not yet belong to it, and all who have ceased to have a full claim to belong to it, and what have you left?"

"Do you know old Rasey personally? Have you ever seen him?"

"I have seen him."

"Lately? I hear that a great change has come over him. He has lost his elder son."

"You might say his only one. He turned the other out of doors years ago, and has had no word of him since. The old man has a daughter; but her husband has challenged him to shoot at sight. He has lost his partner and heir, and, in the course of Nature, cannot himself hold on many years longer. If a way could be found of taking property over to the other side, he might be consoled. The old Gauls used to manage it: they made loans on condition of repayment in the other world; but I doubt whether Rasey's faith is of force to let him find comfort in such a transaction.

"I had to see him about a matter of business which had been intrusted to me. I went there the day I left you. If I had known how it was with him, I should have tried to find a deputy. It is an awful sight, a man who never had compassion needing it, a man who never felt sympathy claiming and repelling it in one.

"When I entered the room, where he was sitting alone, he looked up at me with a glare like a tiger-cat's. He was tamed for the moment by the mention of my errand, which was simply to make him a payment. He counted the money carefully, locked it up, and gave me a receipt. Then he began to talk to me, or rather to himself before me. I could acquiesce in all he said. I knew what Giles Rasey was, and understood that the loss of such a son, to such a father, was irreparable.

"'Another self! another self!' he repeated, until I hardly knew whether to pity him more for having had a son so like himself, or for having him no longer. It was an injustice that he felt himself suffering,--a bitter injustice. He had counted on this son as his successor, and the miscalculation was one with which he was not chargeable. 'Not thirty-five! I am past sixty, and a young man yet! My father lived to be ninety!'

"His rage against this wrong which had been done him was aggravated by another which he had done himself, a weakness into which he had been led by his son,--the only one, probably, in which they had ever been partners. The son had a slave whose ability made him valuable, whose probity made him invaluable.

"'I gave him to Giles myself,' said the old man. 'He was such as you don't find one of in a thousand; no, not in ten thousand. I could have had any money for him, if money could have bought him. It couldn't. I gave him to Giles.'

"Giles, on the death-bed where he found himself with very little warning, exacted of his father a promise that this man should be made free.

"'What could I refuse him then?' asked old Rasey.

"The man in whose behalf the promise was made, and who was present when it was made, took it in earnest.

"'A fellow whom we had trusted!' cried the old man. 'A fellow in whose attachment we had believed! We have let him carry away and pay large sums of money for us; have even let him go into Free States to pay them, and he always came back faithfully! You may know these people a life long and not learn them out! A fellow whom we had trusted!'

"The fellow bade good-day as soon as the funeral services were over. His master was sufficiently himself to surmise his purpose and to make an attempt to baffle it. But the intended freedman was too agile for him; he disappeared without even claiming his manumission-papers. Imagine Rasey's outraged feelings! It was like the Prince of Hell in the old legend, complaining of the uncivil alacrity with which Lazarus obeyed the summons to the upper air:--'He was not to be held, but, giving himself a shake, with every sign of malice, immediately he went away.'"

"So Rasey has lost Syphax! he has lost Syphax!" repeated Westlake, thoughtfully. "Rasey is not a good master, but he was good to him. It was hard, even for Rasey."

"Rasey has lost Syphax, and Syphax has found him," said the Doctor, dryly.

"You do not understand. You see in the rupture of these ties only a loss of service to the master. We feel it to be something more."

"The human heart is framed sensible to kindness; that you should have an attachment for the man who devotes his life to yours without return has nothing miraculous for me. I can believe that even Rasey is capable of feeling the loss of what has been useful to him."

"No, you do not understand the relation between us and this affectionate subject race."

"Frankly, I do not. I cannot enter into it on either side. If I were even as full of the milk of human kindness as we are bound to suppose these soft-tempered foreigners to be, it seems to me I should still like to choose my beneficiaries; and, in your place, I should have quite another taste in benefactors. When I indue myself in imagination with a black skin, and try to think and feel conformably, I find my innate narrowness too much for me; I cannot disguise from myself that I should prefer to lavish my benefits on my own flesh and blood. Resuming my personality, I can as little divest myself in fancy of my pride of race. If I must accept a state of dependence, I would take the bounty of a white man, hard and scanty though it might be, rather than receive luxurious daily bread at the hands of blacks."

"Borrow, you always had the knack of making a fellow feel uncomfortable. I would rather talk with Dudley than with you. I do not see that you are any better friend to our institutions than he is."

"A friend to slavery? Distrust the man not born and bred to it who calls himself one!

"I suppose I am as much of a pro-slavery man as you will easily find in New England,--for an unambitious, private man, I mean. Slavery does not mean for me power or place. What does slavery mean for me when I oppose its opponents? It means you, Westlake, my old schoolmate,--you and your wife and children. It means Harvey and his wife and children. I have the weakness to care more for you than for your slaves. I cannot resolve to see you deprived of comforts and luxuries that use has made necessary to you, that they may rise to wants they have no sense of as yet. As to your duties to your humble neighbors, and the way you fulfil them, that account is kept between you and your Maker. He has not made me a judge or a ruler over you."

Westlake's deep red deepened. "I leave religious matters to those whose charge it is. I have been instructed to hold the place which has been awarded me, without asking why I have been made to differ from others. And the teaching which is good enough for me is, I suppose, good enough for my servants. As for the rest, we know that our people are as well off as the same class in any part of the world, not excepting New England."

"I dare say such a class would be no better off there than here. But come and learn for yourself how it is there."

"I could not learn there how to live here. And I do not pretend that we can understand you better than you can us. But, Borrow, you are hard to suit. You twit us with our waste and improvidence, and yet you are not better pleased with Rasey, who follows gain like a New-Englander."

"Rasey follows gain from the blind impulse of covetousness. The New-Englander's zeal is according to knowledge. Rasey's greed is the inherited hunger of a precarious race. The New-Englander thrives because he has always thriven. He has in his veins 'the custom of prosperity.'

"Fuller tells us, that, in his time, 'a strict inquiry after the ancient gentry of England' would have found 'most of them in the class moderately mounted above the common level'; the more ambitious having suffered ruin in the national turmoils, while these even-minded men, 'through God's blessing on their moderation, have continued in their condition.' It was from this old stock that the planters of New England were chiefly derived, mingled with them some strong scions of loftier trees."

"Do we not know that there is no such thing as birth in New England? There, even if a man had ancestry, he would not dare to think himself the better for it."

"Disabuse yourself; the New-Englander is perfectly human in this respect, and only a very little wiser than the rest of the world. But he disapproves waste, even of so cheap a thing as words: he does not speak of his blood, because his blood speaks for itself.

"Rasey thinks whatever is held by others to be so much withheld from him. To make what is theirs his is all his aim. He has no conception of a creative wealth, of a diffusive prosperity. To live and make live is an aristocratic maxim. Rasey, and such as he, grudge almost the subsistence of their human tools. With the New-Englander, parsimony is not economy. The aristocratic household law is a liberal one, and it is his. He lives up to his income as conscientiously as within it. Rasey and his like think what is theirs, enjoyed by another, wasted;--they think it wasted, enjoyed by themselves. The New-Englander's rule of personal indulgence is the same with that given to the Persian prince Ghilan by his father, the wise Kyekyawus, who, warning him against squandering, adds, 'It is not squandering to spend for anything which can be of real use to thee either in this world or the next.'

"Together with the inherited habit of property, the well-descended have and transmit an inherited knowledge of the laws which govern its acquisition and its maintenance: laws older than legislation; as old as property itself; as old as man; a part of his primitive wisdom; always and everywhere the common lore of the established and endowed. If Rasey had inherited or imbibed this knowledge, perhaps he would have been more cautious. 'Beware of unjust gains,' says an Eastern sage, an ancient member of our Aryan race; 'for it is the nature of such, not only to take flight themselves, but to bear off all the rest with them.' 'Do not think,' it is set down in the book of Kabus, a compendium of Persian practical wisdom, 'Do not think even a good use of what has been ill acquired can make it thine. It will assuredly leave thee, and only thy sin will remain to thee.'

"The well-born would not dare to amass a fortune by such means as Rasey uses; amassed, they would not expose it to such hazards. 'The same word in the Greek'--I am citing now an English worthy, the contemporary of our New-England fathers--'The same word in the Greek--[Greek: ios]--means both rust and poison; and a strong poison is made of the rust of metals; but none more venomous than the rust of the laborer's wages detained in his employer's purse: it will infect and corrode a whole estate.'

"A man's descent is written on his life yet more plainly than on his features. In New England you shall see a youth come up from the country to the metropolis of his State with all his worldly goods upon his back. Twenty years later you shall find him as much at ease in the position he has retaken rather than gained, as he was in the farm-house where he was born, or on the dusty road he trudged over to the scene of his fortunes. His house is elegant, not fine; it is furnished with paintings not bought on the advice of the picture-dealer, with a library not ordered complete from the bookseller. He is simple in his personal habits, laborious still, severe to himself, lenient and liberal to those who depend upon him, munificent in his public benefactions, in his kindly and modest patronage. If he enters public life, it is not because he wants a place there, but because there is a place that wants him. He takes it to work, and not to shine; lays it down when he can, or when he must; and takes hold of the nearest duty, great or small as may be, with the same zeal and conscience. Such a man is called a self-made man. He is what ages of culture and highest discipline have made him,--ages of responsibility and thought for others.

"Stealthy winning and sterile hoarding are the marks of a degraded and outlawed caste. When these tendencies show themselves in a member of an honest race, they have come down from some forgotten interloper. The Raseys are the true representatives of the transported wretches who, and whose progeny, have been a dead weight upon the States originally afflicted with them, and upon those into which they have wandered out. In their native debasement, they furnish material for usurpation to work upon and with; raised here and there into fitful eminence, they infect the class they intrude upon with meannesses not its own.

"Thomas Dudley, writing to England from New England in its earliest days, when, as he frankly owns, it offered 'little to be enjoyed and much to be endured,' is explicit as to the class of men he and his colleagues would have join them. He invites only godly men of substance. Such, he says, 'cannot dispose of themselves and their estates more to God's glory.' Those who would 'come to plant for worldly ends' he dissuades altogether; for 'the poorer sort' it was 'not time yet.' As for reckless adventurers and the destitute idle, who sought the New World for gold or an indolent subsistence, when these, 'seeing no other means than by their labor to feed themselves,' went back discouraged, or off to find some more indulgent plantation, the colony felt itself 'lightened, not weakened.'

"The chief distinctive mark of high race is the quality the Romans called _fortitudo_,--a word of larger meaning than we commonly intend by ours derived from it: that strength of soul, namely, which gives way as little before work as before danger or under suffering. A Roman has defined this Roman fortitude as the quality which enables a man fearlessly to obey the highest law, whether by enduring or by achieving.

"Another mark of high race is its trust in itself. The early heads of New England did not try to secure a position to their children. They knew that blood finds its level just as certainly as water does. Degenerate sons they disowned in advance.

"Westlake, you ought to know New England better. Even if your memory did not prompt you to do it justice, there ought to be a voice to answer for it in your heart. But I find ancestry is very soon lost in the mists of antiquity down here. You come early into the advantages of a mythical background. Must I teach you your own descent?"

"I thank you. I am acquainted with it. My great-grandfather was an Englishman,--a man of some consideration, as I have been informed. He went over to Massachusetts; but my grandfather left it, as soon as he was of age, for a newer State, where he could enjoy greater freedom."