Chapter 17

"Then come here yourself!"

And the gay captain made a bootjack of the old negro.

"Now shut up the house and go to bed!" he said, dismissing him with a kick.

After Toby had retired, and Salina had wiped her eyes, and Lysander had got his feet comfortably installed in the old clergyman's slippers, the long-estranged couple grew affectionate and confidential.

"Law, Sallie!" said the captain, caressingly, "we can be as happy as two pigs in clover!" And he proceeded to interpret, in plain prosaic detail, those blissful possibilities expressed by the choice poetic figure.

It was evident to Salina that all his domestic plans were founded on the supposition that the slippers he had on were the dead man's shoes he had been waiting for. Was she shocked by this cold, atrocious spirit of calculation? At first she was; but since she had begun to pardon his faults, she could easily overlook that. She, who had lately been so spiteful and bitter, was now all charity towards this man. Even the image of her blind and aged father faded from her mind; even the pure and beautiful image of her sister grew dim; and the old, revivified attachment became supreme. Shall we condemn the weakness? Or shall we pity it, rather? So long her affections had been thwarted! So long she had carried that lonely and hungry heart! So long, like a starved, sick child, it had fretted and cried, till now, at last, nurture and warmth made it grateful and glad! A babe is a sacred thing; and so is love. But if you starve and beat them? Perhaps Salina's unhappiness of temper owed its development chiefly to this cause. No wonder, then, that we find her melancholy, morbid, unreasonable, and now so ready to cling again to this wretch, this scamp, her husband, forgiving all, forgetting all (for the moment at least), in the wild flood of love and tears that drowned the past.

"O, yes! I do think we can be happy!" she said--"if you will only be kind and good to me! If not here, why, then, somewhere else; for place is of no consequence; all I want is love."

"Ah!" said Lysander, knocking the ashes from his cigar, "but I have a fancy for this place! And what should we leave it for?"

"Because--you know--there is no certainty--I believe father is alive yet, and well."

"Not unless Toby lied to me!--Did he?"

"Pshaw! you can't place any reliance on what Toby says!"--evasively.

"But I tell you Pepperill confirms his report about the dead bodies in the ravine! Now, what do you know to the contrary?" Lysander appeared very much excited, and a quarrel was imminent. Salina dreaded a quarrel. She broke into a laugh.

"The truth is, Toby did fool you. He couldn't help bragging to me about it."

O Toby, Toby! that little innocent vanity of yours is destined to cost you, and others besides you, very dear! Lysander sprang upon his feet; his eyes sparkled with rage. Salina saw that it was now too late to keep the secret from him; there was no way but to tell him all. She showed Virginia's note. Virginia and her father alive and safe--that was what maddened Lysander!

But where were they?

Salina could not answer that question; for the most she had been able to get out of Toby was only a vague hint that they were hidden somewhere in a cave.

"No matter!" said Lysander, with a diabolical laugh showing his clinched and tobacco-stained teeth. "I'll have the nigger licked! I'll have the truth out of him, or I'll have his life?"

XXXII.

_TOBY'S REWARD._

Filled with disgust and wrath, Toby had obeyed the man who assumed to be his master, and gone to bed. But he was scarcely asleep, when he felt somebody shaking him, and awoke to see bending over him, with smiling countenance, lamp in hand, Captain Lysander.

"What's wantin', sar?"

"I want you to do an errand for me, Toby," Lysander kindly replied.

"Wal, sar, I don'o', sar," said Toby, reluctant, sitting up in bed and rubbing his elbows. "You know I had a right smart tramp. I's a tuckered-out nigger, sar; dat's de troof."

"Yes, you had a hard time, Toby. But you'll just run over to the school-house for me, I know. That's a good fellow!"

Toby hardly knew what to make of Lysander's extraordinarily persuasive and indulgent manner. He didn't know before that a Sprowl could smile so pleasantly, and behave so much like a gentleman. Then, the captain had called him a good fellow, and his African soul was not above flattery. Weary, sleepy as he was, he felt strongly inclined to get up out of his delicious bed, and go and do Lysander's errand.

"You've only to hand this note to Lieutenant Ropes. And I'll give you something when you come back--something you don't get every day, Toby! Something you've deserved, and ought to have had long ago!" And Lysander, all smiles, patted the old servant's shoulder.

This was too much for Toby. He laughed with pleasure, got up, pulled on his clothes, took the note, and started off with alacrity, to convince the captain that he merited all the good that was said of him, and that indefinite "something" besides.

What could that something be? He thought of many things by the way: a dollar; a knife; a new pair of boots with red tops, such as Lysander himself wore;--which last item reminded him of the bootjack he had been used for, and the kick he had received.

He stopped in the street, his wrath rising up again at the recollection. "Good mind ter go back, and not do his old arrant." But then he thought of the smiles and compliments, and the promised reward. "Somefin' kinder decent 'bout dat mis'ble Sprowl, 'long wid a heap o' mean tings, arter all!" And he started on again.

Lysander's note was in these words:--

"Leiutent Ropes Send me with the bearrer of This 2 strappin felloes capble of doin a touhgh Job."

This letter was duly signed, and duly delivered, and it brought the "2 strappin felloes." The internal evidence it bore, that Lysander had not pursued his studies at school half as earnestly as he had of late pursued the schoolmaster, made no difference with the result.

The two strapping fellows returned with Toby. They were raw recruits, who had travelled a long distance on foot in order to enlist in the confederate ranks. They had an unmistakable foreign air. They called themselves Germans. They were brothers.

"All right, Toby!" said Lysander, well pleased. "What are you bowing and grinning at me for? O, I was to give you something!"

"If you please, sar," said Toby--wretched, deceived, cajoled, devoted Toby.

"Well, you go to the woodshed and bring the clothes line for these fellows--to make a swing for the ladies, you know--then I'll tell you what you're to have."

"Sartin, sar." And Toby ran for the clothes line.

"Good old Toby! Now, what you have deserved so long, and what these stout Dutchmen will proceed to give you, is the damnedest licking you ever had in your life!"

Toby almost fainted; falling upon his knees, and rolling up his eyes in consternation. Sprowl smiled. The "Dutchmen" grinned. Just then Salina darted into the room.

"Lysander! what are you going to do with that old man?"

She put the demand sharply, her short upper lip quivering, cheeks flushed, eyes flaming.

"I'm going to have him whipped."

"No, you are not. You promised me you wouldn't. You told me that if he would go to the Academy for you, and be respectful, you would forgive him. If I had known what you were sending for, he should never have left this house. Now send those men back, and let him go."

"Not exactly, my lady. I am master in this house, whatever turns up. I am this nigger's master, too."

"You are not; you never were. Toby has his freedom. He shall not be whipped!" And with a gesture of authority, and with a stamp of her foot, Salina placed herself between the kneeling old servant and the grinning brothers.

Alas! this woman's dream of love and happiness had been brief, as all such dreams, false in their very nature, must ever be. She loved him well enough to concede much. She was not going to quarrel with him any more. To avoid a threatened quarrel, she betrayed Toby. But she was not heartless: she had a sense of justice, pride, temper, an impetuous will, not yet given over in perpetuity to the keeping of her husband.

The captain laughed devilishly, and threw his arms about his wife (this time in no loving embrace), and seizing her wrists, held them, and nodded to the soldiers to begin their work.

They laid hold of Toby, still kneeling and pleading, bound his arms behind him with the cord, and then looked calmly at Lysander for instructions.

"Take him to the shed," said the captain. "One of you carry this light. You can string him up to a crossbeam. If you don't understand how that's done, I'll go and show you. He's to have twenty lashes to begin with, for lying to me. Then he's to be whipped till he tells where our escaped prisoners are hid in the mountains. You understand?"

"Ve unterstan," said the brothers, coldly.

Toby groaned. They took hold of him, and dragged him away.

"Now will you behave, my girl? A pretty row you're making! Ye see it's no use. I am master. The nigger'll only get it the worse for your interference."

Lysander looked insolently in his wife's face. It was livid.

"Hey?" he said. "One of your tantrums?"

He placed her on a chair. She was rigid; she did not speak; he would have thought she was in a fit but for the eyes which she never took off of him--eyes fixed with deep, unutterable, deadly, despairing hate.

"I reckon you'll behave--you'd better!" he said, shaking his finger warningly at her as he retired backwards from the room.

She saw the door close behind him. She did not move: her eyes were still fixed on that door: heavy and cold as stone, she sat there, and gazed, with that same look of unutterable hate. Perhaps five minutes. Then she heard blows and shrieks. Toby's shrieks: he had no Carl now to rush in and cut his bands.

The twenty lashes for lying had been administered on the negro's bare back. Then Lysander put the question: Was he prepared to tell all he knew about the fugitives and the cave?

"O, pardon, sar! pardon, sar!" the old man implored; "I can't tell nuffin', dat am de troof!"

"Work away, boys," said Lysander.

Was it supposed that the good old practice of applying torture to enforce confession had long since been done away with? A great mistake, my friend. Driven from that ancient stronghold of conservatism, the Spanish Inquisition, it found refuge in this modern stronghold of conservatism, American Slavery. Here the records of its deeds are written on many a back.

But Toby was not a slave. No matter for that. For in the school of slavery, this is the lesson that soon or late is learned: Not simply that there are two castes, freeman and slave; two races, white and black; but that there are two great classes, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the lord and the laborer, one born to rule, and the other to be ruled. All, who are not masters, are, or ought to be, slaves: black or white, it makes no difference; and the slave has no rights. This is the first principle of human slavery. This every slave society tends directly to develop. It may be kept carefully out of sight, but there it lurks, in the hardened hearts of men, like water within rocks. It is forever gushing up in little springs of despotism. Once it burst forth in a vast convulsive flood, and that was the Rebellion.

Although Lysander had never owned a slave, he had all his life breathed the atmosphere of the institution, and imbibed its spirit. He hated labor. He was ambitious. But he was poor. Like a flying fish, he had forced himself out of the lower element of society, to which he naturally belonged, and had long desperately endeavored to soar. The struggle it had cost him to attain his present position rendered him all the more violent in his hatred of the inferior class, and all the more eager to enjoy the privileges of the aristocracy. Do not blame this man too much. The injustice, the cruelty, the atrocious selfishness he displays, do not belong so much to the individual as to the institution. The milk of this wolf makes the child it nourishes wolfish.

Torture to the extent of ten lashes was applied; then once more the question was put. Gashed, bleeding, strung up by his thumbs to the crossbeam; every blow of the extemporized whips extorting from him a howl of agony; no rescue at hand; Lysander looking on with a merciless smile; the brothers doing their assigned work with merciless nonchalance; well might poor Toby cry out, in the wild insanity of pain,--

"Yes, sar! I'll tell, I'll tell, sar!"

"Very good," said Lysander. "Let him breathe a minute, boys."

But in that minute Toby gathered up his soul again, dismissed the traitor, Cowardice, and took counsel of his fidelity. Betray his good old master to these ruffians? Break his promise to Virginia, his oath to Cudjo and Pomp? No, he couldn't do that. He thought of Penn, who would certainly be hung if captured; and hung through his treachery!

"Now, out with it," said Lysander. "All about the cave. And don't ye lie, for you'll have to go and show it to us when we're ready."'

"I can't tell!" said Toby. "Dar ain't no cave! none't I knows about--dat's shore!" This was of course a downright lie; but it was told to save from ruin those he loved; and I do not think it stands charged against his soul on the books of the recording angel.

"Ten more, boys," said Lysander.

"O, wait, wait, sar!" shrieked Toby. "Des guv me time to tink!"

He thought of ten lashes; ten more afterwards; and still another ten; for he knew that the whipping would not cease until either he betrayed the fugitives or died; and every lash was to him an agony.

"Think quick," said Captain Sprowl.

Just then the door, of the kitchen opened. Toby grasped wildly at that straw of hope. It broke instantly. The comer was Salina. She had had the power to betray him, but not the power to save. She stood with folded arms, and smiled.

"I can't help you, Toby, but I can be revenged."

"Hello!" cried Lysander, with a start. "What smoke is that?"

She had left the door open, and a draught of air wafted a strange smell of burning cloth and pine wood to his nostrils.

"Nothing," replied Salina, "only the house is afire."

XXXIII.

_CARL MAKES AN ENGAGEMENT._

Lysander looked in through the doors and saw flames. She had touched the lamp to the sitting-room curtains, and they had ignited the wood-work.

"Your own house," he said, furiously. "What a fiend!"

"It was my father's house until you took possession of it," she answered. "Now it shall burn."

If he had not already considered that he had an interest at stake, that gentle remark reminded him.

"Boys! come quick! By----! we must put out the fire!"

He rushed into the kitchen. The German brothers had come to execute his commands: whether to flay a negro or extinguish a fire, was to them a matter of indifference; and they followed him, seizing pails.

Salina was prepared for the emergency. She held a butcher-knife concealed under her folded arms. With this she cut the cords above Toby's thumbs. It was done in an instant.

"Now, take this and run! If they go to take you, kill them!"

She thrust the handle of the knife into his hand, and pushed him from the shed. Terrified, bewildered, weak, he seemed moving in a kind of nightmare. But somehow he got around the corner of the shed, and disappeared in the darkness.

The brothers saw him go. They were drawing water at the well, and handing it to Lysander in the house. But they had been told to hand water, not to catch the negro. So they looked placidly at each other, and said nothing.

The fire was soon extinguished; and Lysander, with his coat off, pail in hand, excited, turned and saw his "fiend" of a wife seated composedly in a chair, regarding him with a smile sarcastic and triumphant. He uttered a frightful oath.

"Any more of your tantrums, and I'll kill you!"

"Any more of yours," she replied, "and I'll burn you up. I can set fires faster than you can put them out. I don't care for the house any more than I care for my life, and that's precious little."

By the tone in which she said these words, level, determined, distinct, with that spice which compressed fury lends, Captain Lysander Sprowl knew perfectly well that she meant them.

The brothers looked at each other intelligently. One said something in German, which we may translate by the words "Incompatibility of temper;" and he smiled with dry humor. The other responded in the same tongue, and with a sleepy nod, glancing phlegmatically at Sprowl. What he said may be rendered by the phrase--"Caught a Tartar."

Although Lysander did not understand the idiom, he seemed to be quite of the Teutonic opinion. He regarded Mrs. Sprowl with a sort of impotent rage. If he was reckless, she had shown herself more reckless. Though he was so desperate, she had outdone him in desperation. He saw plainly that if he touched her now, that touch must be kindness, or it must be death.

"Have you let Toby go?"

"Yes," replied Salina.

"We can catch him," said Lysander.

"If you do you will be sorry. I warn you in season."

Since she said so, Lysander did not doubt but that it would be so. He concluded, therefore, not to catch Toby--that night. Moreover, he resolved to go back to his quarters and sleep. He was afraid of that wildcat; he dreaded the thought of trusting himself in the house with her. He durst not kill her, and he durst not go to sleep, leaving her alive. The Germans, perceiving his fear, looked at each other and grunted. That grunt was the German for "mean cuss." They saw through Lysander.

After all were gone, Salina went out and called Toby. The old negro had fled for his life, and did not hear. She returned into the house, the aspect of which was rendered all the more desolate and drear by the marks of fire, the water that drenched the floor, the smoky atmosphere, and the dim and bluish lamp-light. The unhappy woman sat down in the lonely apartment, and thought of her brief dream of happiness, of this last quarrel which could never be made up, and of the hopeless, loveless, miserable future, until it seemed that the last drop of womanly blood in her veins was turned to gall.

At the same hour, not many miles away, on a rude couch in a mountain cave, by her father's side, Virginia was tranquilly sleeping, and dreaming of angel visits. Across the entrance of the cavern, like an ogre keeping guard, Cudjo was stretched on a bed of skins. The fire, which rarely went out, illumined faintly the subterranean gloom. By its light came one, and looked at the old man and his child sleeping there, so peacefully, so innocently, side by side. The face of the father was solemn, white, and calm; that of the maiden, smiling and sweet. The heart of the young man yearned within him; his eyes, as they gazed, filled with tears; and his lips murmured with pure emotion,--

"O Lord, I thank thee for their sakes! O Lord, preserve them and bless them!"

And he moved softly away, his whole soul suffused with ineffable tenderness towards that good old man and the dear, beautiful girl. He had stolen thither to see that all was well. All was indeed well. And now he retired once more to a recess in the rock, where he and Pomp had made their bed of blankets and dry moss.

The footsteps on the solid floor of stone had not awakened her. And what was more remarkable, the lover's beating heart and worshipping gaze had not disturbed her slumber. But now the slightest movement on the part of her blind parent banishes sleep in an instant.

"Daughter, are you here?"

"I am here, father!"

"Are you well, my child?"

"O, very well! I have had such a sweet sleep! Can I do anything for you?"

"Yes. Let me feel that you are near me. That is all." She kissed him. "Heaven is good to me!" he said.

She watched him until he slept again. Then, her soul filled with thankfulness and peace, she closed her eyes once more, and happy thoughts became happy dreams.

At about that time Salina threw herself despairingly upon her bed, at home, gnashing her teeth, and wishing she had never been born. And these two were sisters. And Salina had the house and all its comforts left to her, while Virginia had nothing of outward solace for her delicate nature but the rudest entertainment. So true it is that not place, and apparel, and pride make us happy, but piety, affection, and the disposition of the mind.

The night passed, and morning dawned, and they who had slept awoke, and they who had not slept watched bitterly the quickening light which brought to them, not joy and refreshment, but only another phase of weariness and misery.

Captain Lysander Sprowl was observed to be in a savage mood that day. The cares of married life did not agree with him: they do not with some people. Because Salina had baffled him, and Toby had escaped, his inferiors had to suffer. He was sharp even with Lieutenant Ropes, who came to report a fact of which he had received information.

"Stackridge was in the village last night!"

"What's that to me?" said Lysander.

"The lieutenant-colonel--" whispered Silas. Sprowl grew attentive. By the lieutenant-colonel was meant no other person than Augustus Bythewood, who had received his commission the day before. Well might Lysander, at the mention of him to whom both these aspiring officers owed everything, bend a little and listen. Ropes proceeded. "He feels a cussed sight badder now he believes the gal is in a cave somewhars with the schoolmaster, than he did when he thought she was burnt up in the woods. He entirely approves of your conduct last night, and says Toby must be ketched, and the secret licked out of him. In the mean while he thinks sunthin' can be done with Stackridge's family. Stackridge was home last night, and of course his wife will know about the cave. The secret might be frightened out on her, or, I swear!" said Silas, "I wouldn't object to using a little of the same sort of coercion you tried with Toby; and Bythewood wouldn't nuther. Only, you understand, he musn't be supposed to know anything about it."

Lysander's eyes gleamed. He showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a way that boded no good to any of the name of Stackridge.

"Good idee?" said Silas, with a coarse and brutal grin.

"Damned good!" said Lysander. Indeed, it just suited his ferocious mood. "Go yourself, lieutenant, and put it into execution."

"There's one objection to that," replied Silas, thrusting a quid into his cheek. "I know the old woman so well. It's best that none of us in authority should be supposed to have a hand in't. Send somebody that don't know her, and that you can depend on to do the job up harnsome. How's them Dutchmen?"

"Just the chaps!" said Lysander, growing good-natured as the pleasant idea of whipping a woman developed itself more and more to his appreciative mind.

From flogging a slave, to flogging a free negro, the step is short and easy. From the familiar and long-established usage of beating slave-women, to the novel fashion of whipping the patriotic wives of Union men, the step is scarcely longer, or more difficult. Even the chivalrous Bythewood, who was certainly a gentleman in the common acceptation of the term, magnificently hospitable to his equals, gallant to excess among ladies worthy of his smiles,--yet who never interfered to prevent the flogging of slave-mothers on his estates,--saw nothing extraordinary or revolting in the idea of extorting a secret from a hated Union woman by means of the lash. To such gross appetites for cruelty as Ropes had cultivated, the thing relished hugely. The keen, malignant palate of Lysander tasted the flavor of a good joke in it.

The project was freely discussed, and in the hilarity of their hearts the two officers let fall certain words, like crumbs from their table, which a miserable dog chanced to pick up.