Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (108 page)

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Page 632
"Doubtless," said the Doctor; "but many permissions were given to them which were local and temporary; for if we hold them to apply to the human race, the Turks might quote the Bible for making slaves of us, if they could,and the Algerines have the Scripture all on their side,and our own blacks, at some future time, if they can get the power, might justify themselves in making slaves of us."
"I assure you, Sir," said Mr. Marvyn, "if I speak, it is not to excuse myself. But I am quite sure my servants do not desire liberty, and would not take it, if it were offered."
"Call them in and try it," said the Doctor. "If they refuse, it is their own matter."
There was a gentle movement in the group at the directness of this personal application; but Mr. Marvyn replied, calmly,
"Cato is up at the eight-acre lot, but you may call in Candace. My dear, call Candace, and let the Doctor put the question to her."
Candace was at this moment sitting before the ample fireplace in the kitchen, with two iron kettles before her, nestled each in its bed of hickory coals, which gleamed out from their white ashes like sleepy, red eyes, opening and shutting. In one was coffee, which she was burning, stirring vigorously with a pudding-stick,and in the other, puffy doughnuts, in shapes of rings, hearts, and marvellous twists, which Candace had such a special proclivity for making, that Mrs. Marvyn's table and closets never knew an intermission of their presence.
"Candace, the Doctor wishes to see you," said Mrs. Marvyn.
"Bress his heart!" said Candace, looking up, perplexed. "Wants to see me, does he? Can't nobody hab me till dis yer coffee's done; a minnit's a minnit in coffee;but I'll be in dereckly," she added, in a patronizing tone. "Missis, you jes' go 'long in, an' I'll be dar dereckly."
A few moments after, Candace joined the group in the sitting-room, having hastily tied a clean, white apron over her blue linsey working-dress, and donned the brilliant Madras which James had lately given her, and which she had a barbaric fashion of arranging so as to give to her head the air of

 

Page 633
a gigantic butterfly. She sunk a dutiful curtsy, and stood twirling her thumbs, while the Doctor surveyed her gravely.
"Candace," said he, "do you think it right that the black race should be slaves to the white?"
The face and air of Candace presented a curious picture at this moment; a sort of rude sense of delicacy embarrassed her, and she turned a deprecating look, first on Mrs. Marvyn and then on her master.
"Don't mind us, Candace," said Mrs. Marvyn; "tell the Doctor the exact truth."
Candace stood still a moment, and the spectators saw a deeper shadow roll over her sable face, like a cloud over a dark pool of water, and her immense person heaved with her labored breathing.
"Ef I must speak, I must," she said. "No,I neber did tink 'twas right. When Gineral Washington was here, I hearn 'em read de Declaration ob Independence and Bill o' Rights; an' I tole Cato den, says I, 'Ef dat ar' true, you an' I are as free as anybody.' It stands to reason. Why, look at me,I a'n't a critter. I's neider huffs nor horns. I's a reasonable bein',a woman,as much a woman as anybody," she said, holding up her head with an air as majestic as a palm-tree;"an' Cato,he's man, born free an' equal, ef dar's any truth in what you read,dat's all."
"But, Candace, you've always been contented and happy with us, have you not?" said Mr. Marvyn.
"Yes, Mass'r,I ha'n't got nuffin to complain ob in dat matter. I couldn't hab no better friends 'n you an' Missis."
"Would you like your liberty, if you could get it, though?" said Mr. Marvyn. "Answer me honestly."
"Why, to be sure I should! Who wouldn't? Mind ye," she said, earnestly raising her black, heavy hand, "'ta'n't dat I want to go off, or want to shirk work; but I want to
feel free.
Dem dat isn't free has nuffin to gib to nobody;dey can't show what dey would do."
"Well, Candace, from this day you are free," said Mr. Marvyn, solemnly.
Candace covered her face with both her fat hands, and shook and trembled, and, finally, throwing her apron over her

 

Page 634
head, made a desperate rush for the door, and threw herself down in the kitchen in a perfect tropical torrent of tears and sobs.
"You see," said the Doctor, "what freedom is to every human creature. The blessing of the Lord will be on this deed, Mr. Marvyn. 'The steps of a just man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way.'"
At this moment, Candace reappeared at the door, her butterfly turban somewhat deranged with the violence of her prostration, giving a whimsical air to her portly person.
"I want ye all to know," she said, with a clearing-up snuff, "dat it's my will an' pleasure to go right on doin' my work jes' de same; an', Missis, please, I'll allers put three eggs in de crullers, now; an' I won't turn de wash-basin down in de sink, but hang it jam-up on de nail; an' I won't pick up chips in a milk-pan, ef I'm in ever so big a hurry;I'll do eberyting jes' as ye tells me. Now you try me an' see ef I won't!"
Candace here alluded to some of the little private wilfulnesses which she had always obstinately cherished as reserved rights, in pursuing domestic matters with her mistress.
"I intend," said Mr. Marvyn, "to make the same offer to your husband, when he returns from work to-night."
"Laus, Mass'r,why, Cato he'll do jes' as I do,dere a'n't no kind o' need o' askin' him. 'Course he will."
A smile passed round the circle, because between Candace and her husband there existed one of those whimsical contrasts which one sometimes sees in married life. Cato was a small-built, thin, softly-spoken negro, addicted to a gentle chronic cough; and, though a faithful and skilful servant, seemed, in relation to his better half, much like a hill of potatoes under a spreading apple-tree. Candace held to him with a vehement and patronizing fondness, so devoid of conjugal reverence as to excite the comments of her friends.
"You must remember, Candace," said a good deacon to her one day, when she was ordering him about at a catechizing, "you ought to give honor to your husband; the wife is the weaker vessel."
"
I
de weaker vessel?" said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted com-

 

Page 635
forter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a nest,"
I
de weaker vessel? Umph!"
A whole woman's-rights' convention could not have expressed more in a day than was given in that single look and word. Candace considered a husband as a thing to be taken care of,a rather inconsequent and somewhat troublesome species of pet, to be humored, nursed, fed, clothed, and guided in the way that he was to go,an animal that was always losing off buttons, catching colds, wearing his best coat every day, and getting on his Sunday hat in a surreptitious manner for weak-day occasion; but she often condescended to express it as her opinion that he was a blessing, and that she didn't know what she should do, if it wasn't for Cato. In fact, he seemed to supply her that which we are told is the great want in woman's situation,an object in life. She sometimes was heard expressing herself very energetically in disapprobation of the conduct of one of her sable friends, named Jinny Stiles, who, after being presented with her own freedom, worked several years to buy that of her husband, but became afterwards so disgusted with her acquisition that she declared she would "neber buy anoder nigger."
"Now Jinny don't know what she's talkin' about," she would say. "S'pose he does cough and keep her awake nights, and take a little too much sometimes, a'n't he better'n no husband at all? A body wouldn't seem to hab nuffin to lib for, ef dey hadn't an ole man to look arter. Men is nate'lly foolish about some tings,but dey's good deal better'n nuffin."
And Candace, after this condescending remark, would lift off with one hand a brass kettle in which poor Cato might have been drowned, and fly across the kitchen with it as if it were a feather.

 

Page 636
XII.
Miss Prissy
Will our little Mary really fall in love with the Doctor?The question reaches us in anxious tones from all the circle of our readers; and what especially shocks us is, that grave doctors of divinity, and serious, stocking-knitting matrons seem to be the class who are particularly set against the success of our excellent orthodox hero, and bent on reminding us of the claims of that unregenerate James, whom we have sent to sea on purpose that our heroine may recover herself of that foolish partiality for him which all the Christian world seems bent on perpetuating.
"Now, really," says the Rev. Mrs. Q., looking up from her bundle of Sewing-Society work, "you are
not
going to let Mary marry the Doctor?"
My dear Madam, is not that just what you did, yourself, after having turned off three or four fascinating young sinners as good as James any day? Don't make us believe that you are sorry for it now!
"Is it possible," says Dr. Theophrastus, who is himself a stanch Hopkinsian divine, and who is at present recovering from his last grand effort on Natural and Moral Ability,"is it possible that you are going to let Mary forget that poor young man and marry Dr. Hopkins? That will never do in the world!"
Dear Doctor, consider what would have become of you, if some lady at a certain time had not the sense and discernment to fall in love with the
man
who came to her disguised as a theologian.
"But he's so old!" says Aunt Maria.
Not at all. Old? What do you mean? Forty is the very season of ripeness,the very meridian of manly lustre and splendor.
"But he wears a wig."
My dear Madam, so did Sir Charles Grandison, and Love-

 

Page 637
lace, and all the other fine fellows of those days; the wig was the distinguishing mark of a gentleman.
No,spite of all you may say and declare, we do insist that our Doctor is a very proper and probable subject for a young lady to fall in love with.
If women have one weakness more marked than another, it is towards veneration. They are born worshippers,makers of silver shrines for some divinity or other, which, of course, they always think fell straight down from heaven.
The first step towards their falling in love with an ordinary mortal is generally to dress him out with all manner of real or fancied superiority; and having made him up, they worship him.
Now a truly great man, a man really grand and noble in heart and intellect, has this advantage with women, that he is an idol ready-made to hand; and so that very painstaking and ingenious sex have less labor in getting him up, and can be ready to worship him on shorter notice.
In particular is this the case where a sacred profession and a moral supremacy are added to the intellectual. Just think of the career of celebrated preachers and divines in all ages. Have they not stood like the image that "Nebuchadnezzar the king set up," and all womankind, coquettes and flirts not excepted, been ready to fall down and worship, even before the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and so forth? Is not the faithful Paula, with her beautiful face, prostrate in reverence before poor, old, lean, haggard, dying St. Jerome, in the most splen-did painting of the world, an emblem and sign of woman's eternal power of self-sacrifice to what she deems noblest in man? Does not old Richard Baxter tell us, with delightful single-heartedness, how his wife fell in love with him first, spite of his long, pale face,and how she confessed, dear soul, after many years of married life, that she had found him
less
sour and bitter than she had expected?
The fact is, women are burdened with fealty, faith, reverence, more than they know what to do with; they stand like a hedge of sweet-peas, throwing out fluttering tendrils everywhere for something high and strong to climb by,and when they find it, be it ever so rough in the bark, they catch upon it. And instances are not wanting of those who have

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