The Flower of the Chapdelaines | Page 6

the English
language, on her tongue, was like a painter's palette and brushes in the
hands of a monkey. Her first question to me after my last want was
supplied came cautiously, after a long gaze at my lighted lamp, from a
seat on the floor. "Miss Maud, when was de conwention o' coal-oil
'scuvvud?" And to her good night she added, in allusion to my eventual
return to the North, "I hope it be a long time afo' you make dat repass!"
At the next bedtime she began on me with the innocent question of my
favorite flower, but I had not answered three other questions before she
had placed me where I must either say I did not believe in the right to
hold slaves, or must keep silence; and when I kept silence of course she
knew. For a long moment she dropped her eyes, and then, with a soft
smile, asked if I would tell her some Bible stories, preferably that of
"Moses in de boundaries o' Egyp'."
She listened in gloating silence, rarely interrupting; but at the words,
"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 'Let my people go,'" the response,
"Pra-aise Gawd!" rose from her lips in such volume that she threw her
hands to her mouth. After that she spoke only soft queries, but they
grew more and more significant, and I soon saw that her supposed
content was purely a pious endurance, and that her soul felt bondage as
her body would have felt a harrow. So I left the fugitives of Egyptian
slavery under the frown of the Almighty in the wilderness of Sin;

Sidney was trusting me; uncle and aunt were trusting me; and between
them I was getting into a narrow corner. After a meditative silence my
questioner asked:
"Miss Maud, do de Bible anywhuz capitulate dat Moses aw Aaron aw
Joshaway aw Cable buy his freedom--wid money?"
Her manner was childlike, yet she always seemed to come up out of
deep thought when she asked a question; she smiled diffidently until
the reply began to come, then took on a reverential gravity, and as soon
as it was fully given sank back into thought. "Miss Maud, don't you
reckon dat ef Moses had a-save' up money enough to a-boughtened his
freedom, dat'd a-been de wery sign mos' pleasin' to Gawd dat he 'uz
highly fitten to be sot free widout paying?" To that puzzle she waited
for no answer beyond the distress I betrayed, but turned to matters less
speculative, and soon said good night.
On the third evening--my! If I could have given all the topography of
the entire country between uncle's plantation and my native city on the
margin of the Great Lakes, with full account of its every natural and
social condition, her questions would have wholly gathered them in.
She asked if our climate was very hard on negroes; what clothing we
wore in summer, and how we kept from freezing in midwinter; about
wages, the price of food, what crops were raised, and what the
"patarolers" did with a negro when they caught one at night without a
pass.
She made me desperate, and when the fourth night saw her crouched on
my floor it found me prepared; I plied her with questions from start to
finish. She yielded with a perfect courtesy; told of the poor lot of the
few free negroes of whom she knew, and of the time-serving and shifty
indolence, the thievishness, faithlessness, and unaspiring torpidity of
"some niggehs"; and when I opened the way for her to speak of uncle
and aunt she poured forth their praises with an ardor that brought her
own tears. I asked her if she believed she could ever be happy away
from them.
She smiled with brimming eyes: "Why, I dunno, Miss Maud;
whatsomeveh come, and whensomeveh, and howsomeveh de Lawd sen'
it, ef us feels his ahm und' us, us ought to be 'shame' not to be happy,
oughtn't us?" All at once she sprang half up: "I tell you de Lawd neveh
gi'n no niggeh de rights to snuggle down anywhuz an' fo'git de

auction-block!"
As suddenly the outbreak passed, yet as she settled down again her
exaltation still showed through her fond smile. "You know what dat
inqui'ance o' yone bring to my 'memb'ance? Dass ow ole Canaan
hymn----
"'O I mus' climb de stony hill Pas' many a sweet desiah, De flow'ry
road is not fo' me, I follows cloud an' fiah.'"
After she was gone I lay trying so to contrive our next conversation that
it should not flow, as all before it had so irresistibly done, into that one
deep channel of her thoughts which took in everything that fell upon
her mind, as a great river drinks