The Boss of Little Arcady/Chapter 19
A worthless black hound
After an autumn speciously benign came our season of cold and snow. It proved to be a season of unwonted severity, every weather expert in town, from Uncle William McCormick, who had kept a diary record for thirty years, to Grandma Steck, who had foretold its coming from a goose-bone, agreeing that the cold was most unusual. The editor of the Argus not only spoke of "Nature's snowy mantle," but coined another happy phrase about Little Arcady being "locked in the icy embrace of winter." This was admitted to be accurately literal, in spite of its poetic daring.
Miss Caroline confessed homesickness to me after the first heavy snow. She spoke as lightly of it as she should have done, but I could see that her own land pulled at her heart with every blast that shook her casements. No longer, however, was there even a second-cousin whose hospitality she was free to claim, for Colonel Lucius Quintus Peavey, C. S. A., now slept with his fathers in far-off Virginia, leaving behind him only traditions and a little old sherry. The former Miss Caroline had always shared with him, and a cask of the latter he bequeathed to her with his love. And the valley being now void of her kin, she was doubly an exile.
Such new desolation as she must have felt was masked under jesting dispraise of our execrable Northern climate. Surely a land permitted to congeal so utterly had forfeited the grace of its Maker.
Clem's lack of executive genius also earned a meed of my neighbor's disparagement. He was a worthless, trifling "boy," an idling dreamer, an irresponsible, inconsequent visionary, in whose baseless fancies it was astounding that a woman of her years should fatuously place reliance.
I must confess that I was more than once guilty of irritation when Miss Caroline spoke thus slightingly of her "boy" of one who had been unable to view himself as other than her personal property. Again and again it seemed to me that, fine little creature that she was, her tone toward Clem lacked the right feeling. I should not have demanded gratitude precisely; at least no bald expression of it. But a manner of speech denoting, if not wording, a recognition of his unswerving loyalty would have accorded better with the estimate I had otherwise formed of her character. The absence of any tone or word that even one so devoted as I could construe to her advantage was puzzling in the extreme.
Still, feeling toward her as I did, I was compelled to excuse her as best I might by attributing her hardness to an evil system now happily abolished. But the nerves in my lost arm seemed to tingle with a secret satisfaction when I thought of Clem's empty reward for his life-work and remembered that I had helped, though ever so little, to free him and his kind from a bond so unfortunate for each of the parties to it.
The winter deepened about us, chill and bleak and ravaging. The smoke from our chimneys went up in tall columns that lost themselves in the gray sky. The snow shut us in, and presently the wind lay in wait to blast us when we dared the drifts.
Yet Miss Caroline throve, despite her nostalgia. She was even jaunty in her recital of the weather's minor hardships. To its rigors she brought a front of resolute gayety. A new stove graced the parlor, a stove with the proud nickeled title of "Frost King"; a title seen to be deserved when Clem had it properly gorged with dry wood. Within its tropic radiations Miss Caroline bloomed and was hale of being, like some hardy perennial.
Of Clem, nothing but hardiness was to be anticipated. He had been toughened by four other of our winters, all said to have been unusual for severity. And yet it was Clem, curiously enough, and not Miss Caroline, who found the season most trying. True, he had to be abroad most of the time, procuring sustenance for the insatiable "Frost King," or performing labor for other people by which Miss Caroline should preserve her independence; but it was not supposed that a creature of his sort could be subject to weaknesses natural enough to a superior race.
I believe this was his own view of the matter; for when he admitted to me one morning that he had "took cold in the chest," his manner was one of deprecating confusion, and he swore me against betrayal of his lapse to Miss Caroline.
She discovered his guilt for herself, however, after a few days, from his very annoying cough. She taxed him with it so sturdily that efforts at deception availed him not. His tale that the snow sifted into his "bref-place" and "tickled it" was pitifully unconvincing, for his cough was deeper than Eustace Eubanks's proudest note in the drinking song.
"He's a worthless thing," said Miss Caroline, telling me of his fault, and I said he was indeed—that he hadn't served me four years without my finding that out. I added that he was undoubtedly shamming, but that at the same time it might be as well to take a few simple precautions. Miss Caroline said that of course he was shamming, in order to get out of work, and that she would soon drive that nonsense out of his head if she had to wear the black wretch out to do it. She added that she was about tired of his nonsense.
It may be known that I have heretofore lost no opportunity to foist all faults of understanding upon the heads of my fellow-townsmen. And I should have liked to keep my record clear in that matter; but it would be uncandid to pretend, even at this late day, that I have ever divined the precise relationship that exists between Miss Caroline and her slave. I may know a bit more of its intricacies than does Little Arcady at large, but not enough to permit that certain thrill of superior discernment which I have so often been able to enjoy in Slocum County.
Each of the two, considered alone, is fairly comprehensible. But taken together, there is something between them which must always baffle me—something which I cannot believe to have been at all typical of the relation between owner and slave, else many of the facts noted by our discerning and impartial investigators were either imperfectly observed or unintelligently reported.
Up to a certain point my own studies of this slave holder aligned perfectly with the information which we of the North had been at such pains to gather. And I tried to hold Miss Caroline blameless, remembering that she had been long schooled to the inhumanity of it.
I resolved, nevertheless, to take Clem under my own roof—there was a small unused room almost directly under it—the moment Miss Caroline's impatience with him should move her to the extremes foretold by her abusive fashion of speech. I would not see even a negro turned out in the coldest of winters for no better reason than that he was sick and useless, though I planned to intervene delicately, so as not to affront my neighbor. For my heart was still hers, despite this hardness, for which I saw that she must not be blamed.
As I had feared, Clem's cough became more obtrusive, and with this Miss Caroline's irritation deepened toward him. She declared that his trifling, no-account nature made him all but impossible.
Then one morning—one to be distinguished by its cold even among many unusual mornings—there was no Clem to light my fires and to scent my snug dining room with unparalleled coffee. This brought it definitely home to me that the situation had become grave. I dressed with what speed I could and hurried to Miss Caroline's door. The time had come when I should probably have to do something.
My neighbor met me and said that Clem had meanly decided to remain in bed for the day. I searched her face for some sign of consideration as she said this, but I was disappointed. She seemed to feel only a fierce disgust for his foolishness.
"But you may go up and look at the black good-for-nothing if you like," she said, grudgingly enough I thought.
I climbed the brief flight of stairs. I knew that Clem had not refused to get up without reasons that seemed sufficient to him. In a narrow bed in one of the doll-house rooms he lay coughing.
"So you can't get up this morning?" I asked.
"Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah, Ah was a-gittin' up, but Ah was fohced to cough raght smahtly an' Miss Cahline she yehs it an' she awdeh me back to baid, seh. Then Ah calls out to huh that Ah ain't go'n a' have no sech foolishness in this yeh place, an so she stahts to come up, which fohces me to retiah huhiedly. Then she stands theh at th' head of th' staihs an' she faulted me—yes, seh—she threaten me, Mahstah Majah, an' she tek mah clothes away, an' so on an' so fothe. Then Ah huhd huh a' mekin' th' fiah an' then she brung this yeh cawfee an' she done mek it that foolish that Ah can't tech it. Yes, seh, she plumb ruined that theh cawfee, that's what she done!"
His tone was peevish. Clem himself was not talking as I thought would have been becoming in him. And there was a definite issue of veracity between him and his mistress. I went down again, for the room was cold.
"He has some fever," I said.
"He is a lazy black hound," said Miss Caroline.
"He says you ordered him to stay in bed—threatened him and hid his clothes."
"Oh, never fear but what that fellow will always have an excuse!" she retorted shortly.
Observing that she had a day's supply of wood at hand, I left, not a little annoyed at both of them. I missed my coffee.
When I knocked at the door that evening, no one came to admit me. I went in, hearing Clem's voice in truculent protest from a large room on the first floor which had been called the room of Little Miss. I went to the door of this room.
Clem and his bed were there. We had two physicians in Little Arcady, Old Doc and Young Doc. Young Doc was now present measuring powders into little papers which he folded neatly, while Miss Caroline stood at hand, cowering but stubborn under Clem's violence.
"Miss Cahline, yo' suttinly old enough t' know betteh'n that. Ah do wish yo' Paw was about th' house—he maghty quickly put yo'-all in yo' place. Now Ah tole yo' Ah ain't go'n a' have none o' this yeh Doctah foolishness. Yo' not go'n a' stravagate all that theh gole money on sech crazy doin's an' mek us be indigent in ouah ole aige. What Ah want with a Doctah? Hanh! Anseh me that! Yo'-all jes' git me a little bit calamus an' some catnip, an' Ah do all th' doctahin' tha's advisable." All this he brought out with difficulty, for his breathing was by no means free.
"He's up to his tricks," said Miss Caroline, contemptuously, to me. Then, to Clem, seeming to draw courage from my presence, "You be quiet, there, you lazy, black good-for-nothing, or I'll get some one here to wear you out!" And Clem was again the vanquished.
"Pneumonia," said Young Doc. "Bad," he added as we stepped into the drawing-room. "Take lots of care."
I thought it as well that Young Doc had come. Old Doc, though well liked, boasted that all any man of his profession needed, really, were calomel and a good knife. Young Doc had always seemed to be subtler. Anyway, he was of a later generation. I learned that Old Doc had scorned to make the call, believing that a "nigger" could not suffer from anything but yellow fever or cracked shins. For this reason he became genuinely interested in Clem's case as it was later reported to him by Young Doc.
To the rest of Little Arcady the case was also of interest. Sympathy had heretofore been with Clem, because Miss Caroline paid him no wages, and was believed to take what he earned from other people.
Now, however, an important number of persons veered—in wonder if not in absolute sympathy. That the woman should watch and nurse the black fellow, apparently with perfect single-heartedness, was not to be squared with any known laws of human association. "Nursing a nigger in her own house with her own hands," was the fashion of describing this untoward spectacle. It was like taking a sick horse into your house, and making play that it was human. The already puzzled town was further mystified, and it is probable that Miss Caroline fell a little in public esteem. Her course was not thought to be edifying. She could have sent Clem to the county poor farm, where he would have been seen to, after a fashion good enough for one of his color, by the proper authorities.
My own bewilderment was at first hardly less than the town's. Had Miss Caroline suddenly changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood. That would have been a simple case of awakened sensibility. But she continued to disparage him to his face and to me. She was venomous—scurrilous in her abuse. Yet only with the greatest difficulty could I persuade her to let me share the watch that must be kept over him. She called him an infamous black wretch, in tones befitting her words, but I could not get her to leave him even so long as her own health demanded.
There came nights, however, as the disease ran its course, when she had to give up from sheer lack of force. Then she permitted me to watch, though even at these times she often broke from sleep to come and be assured that the worthless black hound had not changed for the worse.
One dim, early morning, when she thought I had gone, after my night's watch, I returned softly to the half-opened door with a forgotten injunction about the medicines. All night Clem had babbled languidly of many things, of "a hunded thousan' hatchin' aigs," and "a thousan' brillion dollahs," of "Mahstah Jere" and "Little Miss," of a visiting Cousin Peavey whom he had been obliged to "whup" for his repeated misdemeanors; and darkly and often had he whispered, so low I could scarcely hear it, of an enemy that was entering the room with a fell design. "Tha' he is—he go'n a' sprinkle snake-dust in mah boots—tha' he is—watch out!"
He still maundered weakly as I reached the door, but it was not this that detained me at its threshold. It was Miss Caroline, who had actually knelt at his side. At first I thought she wept over one of his blue-black hands, which she clung eagerly to with both her own. Then I saw that there seemed to be no tears—yet silently, almost impassively, she gave me a sense of hopeless grief that I thought no outburst of weeping could have done.
I wondered wildly then if her fashion of speech for Clem might not mask some real affection for him. But this was unsatisfying. On the spot I gave up all wondering forever about Miss Caroline. I have ever since constrained myself to accept her without question, even in situations of difficulty. There is so much vain knowledge.
That day, too, was the bad day when news came that Little Miss had been stricken with the same dread pneumonia. When she told me this, Miss Caroline had a look in her eyes that I suspect must often have been there in the first half of the sixties. It was calm enough, but there was a resistance in it that promised to be unbreakable. And to my never-ending wonder she seemed still to be more concerned about Clem than about her daughter.
"Will you go to her?" I asked.
She smiled. "That could hardly be afforded just now."
"You could manage it, I think. Clem has some money due from me."
"Even so, I couldn't leave Clem. My daughter will be cared for, but Clem wouldn't have anybody. We'll fight it out on this line, Major."
I now saw that continuous questioning about Miss Caroline would bring one in time to madness, and I was glad of my resolve never again to indulge in this unprofitable occupation.
But even pneumonia has its defeats. Young Doc surprised Old Doc again; for the latter, once convinced that an African could suffer so civilized an affliction as pneumonia, had declined to believe that he could ever "throw it off," and had disclosed good reasons why he could not to an attentive group at the City Drug Store.
Yet after a night when Miss Caroline had refused to let me watch, she met me at the door as Young Doc was leaving. She was wearied but chipper, though there was an unsteady little lift in her voice as she said:—
"That lazy black wretch is going to get well!"
"It's about time," I said grimly. "I've been in a bad way without him. Indeed I'm very glad to hear you say so."
Her eyes twinkled approval upon me, I thought.
"You've behaved excellently, Major. Really, I am glad that we left you that other arm." This was almost in her old manner, though her eyes seemed a little dimmed by her excitement. Then, with a sudden return to the patient:—
"I wonder if you would be good enough to go in and swear at Clem. He's perfectly rational now, and it will hearten him wonderfully. He's dreadfully mortified because he's been sick so long. And it needs a man, you know, really. I'll close the door for you. Do it hard! Call him a damned black hound, if you please, and ask him what he means by it!"
I hurried in, for Miss Caroline's eyes were threatening to betray her.