FullReads

For reasons, however, which we at this subsequent period can appreciate, this confabulation could not last for aye, and when, finally, little Martha trotted back homeward Lawrence bethought himself it was high time to reconnoiter the immediate scene of action within his house. He found a group of servants huddled about the door. Chloe, Becky, Ann, Snowdrop, Pearl, Susan, Tilly–all, usually cheerful and smiling, wore distressful countenances now. Nor did they speak to him as had been their wont. They seemed to be afraid of him, yet what had he done–what had he ever done that these well-fed, well-treated slaves should shrink from him in his hour of trouble?

It was still gloomier inside the house. Aunt Lizzie and Miss Bettie, the nurses, had taken supreme charge of affairs. At this moment Aunt Lizzie, having brewed a pot of tea, was regaling Mistress Carter and Mistress Fairfax and the venerable Miss Dorcas Culpeper, spinster, with a desultory but none the less interesting narrative of her performances on countless occasions similar to the event about to take place. The appearance of Lawrence well-nigh threw Miss Culpeper into hysterics, and, to escape the dismal groans, prodigious sighs, and reproachful glances of the others, Lawrence made haste to get out of the apartment. The next room was desolate enough, but it was under Mary’s room and there was some comfort in knowing that. Yet the nearer Lawrence came to Mary’s room the more helpless he grew. He could not explain it, but he was lamentably weak and miserable. A strange fear undid him and he fairly trembled.

“I will go up and ask if there is anything I can do,” he said to himself, for he was ashamed to admit his cowardice.

But his knees failed him and he sat down on the stairs and listened and wished he had never been born.

Oh, how quiet the house was. Lawrence strained his ears to catch a sound from Mary’s room. He could hear a faint echo of the four chattering women in the front chamber below, but not a sound from Mary’s room. Now and then a shrill cry of a jay or the lowing of the oxen in the pasture by the creek came to him from the outside world–but not a sound from Mary’s room. His heart sank; he would have given the finest plantation in Westmoreland County for the echo of Mary’s voice or the music of Mary’s footfall now.

Presently the door of Mary’s room opened. The cold, unrelenting, forbidding countenance of Miss Bettie, the nurse, confronted Lawrence’s upturned, pleading face.

“Oh, it ‘s you, is it?” said Miss Bettie, unfeelingly, and with this cheerless remark she closed the door again, and Lawrence was more miserable than ever. He stole down-stairs into a back room, escaped through a window, and slunk away toward the stables. The whole world seemed turned against him–in the flower of early manhood he found himself unwillingly and undeservedly an Ishmaelite.

He rebelled against this cruel injustice.

Then he grew weak and childish again.

Anon he anathematized humanity, and then again he ruefully regretted his own existence.

In a raging fever one moment, he shivered and chattered like a sick magpie the next.

But when he thought of Mary his heart softened and sweeter emotions thrilled him. She, at least, he assured himself, would defend him from these persecutions were she aware of them. So, after roaming aimlessly between the barn and the creek, the creek and the overseer’s house, the overseer’s house and the swash, the swash and the grove, the grove and the servants’ quarters, Lawrence made up his mind that he ‘d go back to the house (like the brave man he wanted to make himself believe he was) and help Mary endure “the ordeal,” as Miss Dorcas Culpeper, spinster, was pleased to term the event. But Lawrence could not bring himself to face the feminine quartet in the front chamber–now that he came to think of it he recollected that he always had detested those four impertinent gossips! So he crept around to the side window, raised it softly, crawled in through, and slipped noiselessly toward the stairway.