Chapter 1

Produced by David Widger

MAM' LYDDY'S RECOGNITION

By Thomas Nelson Page

Charles Scribner's Sons New York, 1908

Copyright, 1891, 1904, 1906

I

When Cabell Graeme was courting pretty Betty French up at the Château place, though he had many rivals and not a few obstacles to overcome, he had the good fortune to secure one valuable ally, whose friendship stood him in good stead. She was of a rich chocolate tint, with good features, and long hair, possibly inherited from some Arab ancestor, bead-like black eyes, and a voice like a harp, but which on occasion could become a flame. Her figure was short and stocky; but more dignity was never compressed within the same number of cubic inches.

Mam' Lyddy had been in the French family all her life, as her mother and grandmother had been before her. She had rocked on her ample bosom the best part of three generations. And when Freedom came, however much she may have appreciated being free, she had much too high an estimate of the standing of the Frenches to descend to the level of the class she had always contemned as “free niggers.” She was a deep-dyed aristocrat.

The Frenches were generally esteemed to be among the oldest and best families in the county, and the Château plantation, with its wide fields and fine old mansion, was commonly reckoned one of the finest in that section. But no such comparative statement would have satisfied Mam' Lyddy. She firmly believed that the Frenches were the greatest people in the world, and it would have added nothing to her dignity had they been princes, because it could have added nothing to it to be told that she was a member of a royal house. Part mentor, part dependent, part domestic, she knew her position, and within her province her place was as unquestioned as was that of her mistress, and her advice was as carefully considered.

Caesar, her husband, a tall, ebony lath, with a bald head and meek eyes, had come out of another family and was treated with condescension. No one knew how often he was reminded of his lower estate; but it was often enough, for he was always in a somewhat humble and apologetic attitude.

The Frenches were known as a “likely” family, but Betty, with her oval face, soft eyes, and skin like a magnolia flower, was so undeniably the beauty that she was called “Pretty Betty.” She was equally undeniably the belle. And while the old woman, who idolized her, found far more pleasure than even her mother in her belleship, she was as watchful over her as Argus. Every young man of the many who haunted the old French mansion among its oaks and maples had to meet the scrutiny of those sharp, tack-like eyes. The least slip that one made was enough to prove his downfall. The old woman sifted them as surely as she sifted her meal, and branded them with an infallible instinct akin to that of a keen watchdog. Many a young man who passed that silent figure without a greeting, or spoke lightly of some one, unheeding her presence, wondered at his want of success and felt without knowing why that he was pulling against an unseen current.

“We must drop him--he ain't a gent'man,” she said of one. Of another: “Oh! Oh! honey, he won't do. He ain't our kind.” Or, “Betty, let him go, my Lamb. De Frenches don't pick up dat kine o' stick.”

Happily for Cabell Graeme, he had the old woman's approval. In the first place, he was related to the Frenches, and this in her eyes was a patent of gentility. Then, he had always been kind to little Betty and particularly civil to herself. He not only never omitted to ask after her health, but also inquired as to her pet ailments of “misery in her foot” and “whirlin' in her head,” with an interest which flattered her deeply. But it went further back than that Once, when Betty was a little girl, Cabell, then a well-grown boy of twelve, had found her and her mammy on the wrong side of a muddy road, and wading through, he had carried Betty across, and then wading back, had offered to carry Mam' Lyddy over, too.

“Go way f'om heah, boy, you can't carry me.”

“Yes, I can, Mam' Lyddy. You don't know how strong I am.” He squared himself for the feat.

She laughed at him, and with a flash in his gray eyes he suddenly grabbed her.

“I 'll show you.”

There was quite a scuffle. She was too heavy for him, but he won her friendship then and there, and as he grew up straight and sturdy, the friendship ripened. That he teased her and laughed at her did not in the least offend her. No one else could have taken such a liberty with her, but Cabell's references to old Caesar's declining health, and his innuendoes whenever she was “fixed up” that she was “looking around” in advance only amused her. It made no difference to her that he was poor, while several others of Betty's beaux were rich. He was “a gent'man,” and she was an aristocrat.

At times they had pitched battles, but each knew that the other was an ally.

Cabell won his final victory by an audacity which few would have dared venture on. Among his rivals was one Mr. Hereford, whom he particularly disliked, partly because he frequently “outsat” him, and partly because he thought Miss Betty favored his attentions too much, and whom Mammy Lyddy detested because he always ignored her. Cabell charged her with deserting his cause and going over to the side of Mr. Hereford, and threatened to carry off the prize in spite of her and her ally.

“You cyant cyah off nothin',” she said with a sniff of mock disdain. His eyes snapped. Without a word he seized her, and notwithstanding her resistance he lifted her, and flinging her over his shoulder, as if she had been a sack of corn, stalked up the steps and into the house, where he set her down abashed and vanquished before her astonished young mistress. The old woman pretended to be furious, but that day Cabell Graeme carried off more than Mam' Lyddy.

When Cabel and pretty Betty were married, Mam' Lyddy threw in her lot with “her lamb.”

Through all the evil days of carpet-bag rule, no white, not even Cabell Graeme himself, who was a leader of the young men, had looked with more burning contempt on the new-comers, or shown a sterner front to the miscreants who despoiled the country. And when Negro rule was at its worst, Mam' Lyddy was its most bitter reviler. Cabell Graeme was a captain among the young men who finally put down the evil element that had been running its riotous course. And during the fierce fight that was waged, he was much away from home; but he knew that in Mam' Lyddy he had left as redoubtable a guardian of his wife and babies as ever kept watch on a picket line.

Among the most obnoxious of the colored leaders was one Amos Brown, a young negro with some education, who to the gift of fluency added enough shrewdness to become a leader. He was while in power one of the most dangerous men in the State, and so long as he had backing enough, he staggered at nothing to keep the negroes stirred up. One of his schemes was to get money from the negroes with which to pay, as he claimed, ten per cent, for the best plantations in the State, after which, according to his account, the Government was to give them the places. This scheme worked well enough till the day of reckoning came, but happily it came. Among those who were duped was old Caesar, who, unknown to Mam' Lyddy, invested all his little savings in Amos Brown's homestead-plan and was robbed. Partly in terror of Mam' Lyddy and partly in hopes of saving his money, the old man made a full disclosure of the scheme, and with the proof he furnished, Cabell Graeme and others succeeded in sending the statesman to the penitentiary.

What Caesar possibly had to endure from Mam' Lyddy, only those could imagine who knew her blistering tongue. From that time she took herself not only everything that she made, but every cent that old Caesar made.

“You keep 'dis for me, Marse Cab. I 'm never goin' to trust dat Caesar wid a cent long as I live. A nigger ain't got a bit o' sense about money.”

But though Caesar would gladly have paid all he made to purchase immunity from her revilings, it is probable that he heard of his error at least three times a day during the rest of his natural life.

II

As long as the old people lived, the French place was kept up; but the exactions of hereditary hospitality ate deeply into what the war had left, and after the death of old Colonel French and Mrs. French, and the division of the estate, there was little left but the land, and that was encumbered.

Happily, Cabell Graeme was sufficiently successful as a lawyer, not only to keep his little family in comfort, but to receive an offer of a connection in the North, which made it clearly to his interest to go there. One of the main obstacles in the way of the move was Mam' Lyddy. She would have gone with them, but for the combined influences of Old Caesar and a henhouse full of hens that were sitting. The old man was in his last illness, and a slow decline, and the chickens would soon be hatched. Since, however, it was apparent that old Cæsar would soon be gone, as that the chickens would soon be hatched, Graeme having arranged for Cæsar's comfort, took his family with him when he moved.

He knew that the breaking-up would be a wrench; but it was worse than he had expected, for their roots were deep in the old soil. Old friends, when they said good-by, wrung his hand with the faces men wear when they take a last look at a friend's face. The parting with the mammy was especially bitter. It brought the break-up home as few things had done. And when Mr. and Mrs. Graeme reached their new home with its strange surroundings, her absence made it all the stranger.

The change in the servants marked the change in the life. The family found it hard to reconcile themselves to it. Mrs. Graeme had always been accustomed to the old servants, who were like members of the family, and to find her domestics regarding her as an enemy or as their prey disturbed and distressed her.

“You are going to try colored servants?” asked one of her new friends in some surprise.

“Oh, yes, I am quite used to them.”

“Well.--Perhaps--but I doubt if you are used to these.”

Mrs. Graeme soon discovered her mistake. One after another was tried and discarded. Those who knew nothing remained until they had learned enough to be useful and then departed, while those who knew a little thought they knew everything and brooked no direction. And all were insolent. With or without notice the dusky procession passed through the house, each out-goer taking with her some memento of her transient stay.

“I do not know what is the matter,” sighed Mrs. Graeme. “I always thought I could get along with colored people; but somehow these are different. Why is it, Cabell!”

“Spoiled,” said her husband, laconically. “The mistake was in the emancipation proclamation. _Domestic_ servants ought to have been excepted.”

His humor, however, did not appeal to his wife. The case was too serious.

“The last one I had told me, that if I did not like what she called coffee--and which I really thought was tea--I 'd better cook for myself. And that other maid, after wearing one of my best dresses, walked off with a brand-new waist. I am only standing the present one till Mammy comes. She says she likes to be called 'Miss Johnson.'”

“_I_ paid twenty dollars last week for the privilege of chucking a dusky gentleman down the steps; but I did not begrudge it,” said her husband, cheerfully. “The justice who imposed the fine said to me afterward that the only mistake I had made was in not breaking his neck.”

*****

At last, old Caesar was gathered to his dusky fathers, and the chickens having been mainly disposed of, Mr. Graeme went down and brought the old mammy on.

He had written the old woman to come by a certain train to Washington where he would meet her, and true to his appointment he met that train. But in the motley throng that filed through the gate was no Mam' Lyddy, and inquiring of the train men showed that no one answering to her description could have been on the train.

Just as Graeme was turning away to go to the telegraph desk, one of the gray-clad colored porters, a stout, middle-aged man with a pleasant voice, and the address of a gentleman, approached him,

“Were you looking for some one, sir?”

“Yes, for an old colored woman, my wife's old mammy.”

“Well, I think you may find her in the inner waiting-room. There is an old lady in there, who has been waiting there all day. She came in on the morning train, and said she was expecting you. If you will come with me, I will show you.”

“She 's been there all day,” the porter said, with a laugh, as they walked along. “I asked who she was waiting for; but she wouldn't tell me. She said it was none of my business.”

“I fancy that 's she,” said Graeme.

“Yes, sir, that 's she, sure.”

Graeme thanked him. With a chuckle he led the way to where ensconced in a corner, surrounded by bundles and baskets and clad in the deepest black, and with a flaming red bow at her throat, sat Mammy Lyddy.

“Here 's the gentleman you were looking for,” said the porter kindly.

At sight of Graeme she rose so hastily that many of her bundles rolled on the floor.

“Why, Mammy! Why did n't you come on the train I wrote you to come on?” enquired Graeme.

“Well, you tole me to come to-day, and I thought I would like to be on time, so I came this morning.”

“Now, if you will let me have your tickets, I will attend to everything for you,” said the porter to Graeme.

The old woman gave him a swift glance, and then seeing Graeme hand him his ticket, she turned her back, and began to fish in some mysterious recess in her garments, and after a long exploration brought out a small bag containing her ticket.

“Is he one of your servants!” she asked Graeme in an undertone.

Graeme smiled. “Well, I think he is--he is everybody's servant and friend.”

“I did n't know. He comes roun' inquirin' 'bout my business so officious I thought sure he was one o' dese Gov'ment folks, and I done had 'nough to do wid dat kind.”

“Like Amos Brown, Caesar's friend.”

It was a sore subject with the old woman.

“Well, I did n't know--I thought he was one o' dese perliss. So I sent him 'long 'bout he own business. But if you know him it 's all right.”

The passengers who streamed through the great station the evening of her arrival, were surprised to see a pudgy old black woman escorted by a gentleman who, loaded down with her bundles and baskets, was guiding her through the throng as respectfully as if she had been the first lady in the land. At the gate a lady and several children were awaiting her, and at sight of her a cry of joy went up. Dropping her bundles, the old woman threw herself into the lady's arms and kissed her again and again, after which she received a multitude of kisses from the children.

“Well, I never saw anything like that,” said a stranger to another.

“She is their mammy,” said the other one simply, with a pleasant light in his eyes.

The old woman's presence seemed to transform the house. She was no sooner installed than she took possession. That very morning she established her position, after a sharp but decisive battle with the airy “colored lady,” who for some days had been dawdling about the house. The mammy had gauged her as soon as her sharp eyes fell on her.

“What does yo' call yo'self?” she asked her.

“What is my name? I am called 'Miss Johnson--Miss Selina Johnson.'”

The old woman gave a sniff.

“Yo' is! Well, what does yo' call you'self doin' heah?”

“You mean what is my employment! I am the help--one of the help.”

“Yo' is!” Mam' Lyddy tightened her apron-strings about her stout waist. “Well, 'Miss Johnson,' you git holt of that mat-trass and help me meek up dis heah bed so it 'll be fit for you' mistis to sleep on it.” With a jerk she turned up the mattress. The maid was so taken aback for a moment that she did not speak. Then she drew herself up.

“I know I ain' gwine to tetch it. I done made it up onct to-day. An' I ain't got no mistis.”

The mammy turned on her.

“Umh'm! I thought so! I knows jest yo' kind. Well, de sooner you git out o' dis room de better for you. 'Cause if I lay my han' 'pon you I won't let you go till I'se done what yo' mammy ought to 'a' done to you ev'y day o' yo' life.”

She moved toward her with so dangerous a gleam in her sharp little eyes that “Miss Johnson” deemed it safest to beat a hasty retreat, and before bedtime had disappeared from the premises entirely.

In the kitchen the old woman had been equally strenuous. She had shown the cook in one evening that she knew more about cooking than that well-satisfied person had ever dreamed any one knew. She had taught the other maid that she knew by instinct every lurking place of dirt, however skilfully hidden, and, withal, she had inspired them both with so much dread of her two-edged tongue that they were doing their best to conciliate her by a zeal and civility they had never shown before.

For the first time the Graemes knew what comfort was in their new home.

“Well, this is something like home,” said Mrs. Graeme that evening as she sat by the lamp. “Why, I feel like little Ben. He said to-night, 'Mamma, Mammy brought old times with her.'”

“May she live forever!” said Graeme.

In time, however, Mrs. Graeme began to feel that the old woman was confining herself too closely to the house. She needed some recreation. She had not even been to church, and Mrs. Graeme knew that this was her chief delight.

Yes, she would like to go to church, she said, but she did not know “about dese fine chutches.” She did not like much to go on the streets. “Dere was too many strange folks around for her. Dey did n't keer nuthin' for her ner she for dem.” And it was “de same way, she reckoned, with de chutches. Dey wuz new niggers, and she did n't had no use for dem, nor dey for her.”

Mrs. Graeme, however, was insistent. Not far off, she had learned, was a colored church, “Mount Salem,” over which the Reverend Amos Johnson presided with much show of broadcloth and silk hat. He had considerable reputation as a speaker, and from time to time appeared in the newspapers as a rather ranting writer on matters with a political coloring. Mrs. Graeme explained to the old woman that she need have no more to do with the people than she wished, and the following Sunday she went herself with her to the door of the church. Before leaving her she gave her a half-dollar to put in the plate, and asked a solemn-looking usher to show her a good seat.

When the old woman returned she was interested, but critical. “I'se been used to chutch all my life,” she declared, “but I never saw no fixin's like dat. Br'er George Wash'n'ton Thomas of Mount Zion was de fancies' one I ever seen; but he could n't tetch dat man. Why, dey outdoes white folks!”

“Were n't they nice to you!” asked her mistress.

“Nor 'm', none too nice. Dat one what you spoke to for me wuz gwine to give me a seat; but a uppish young yaller one stopped him an' made him teck me back and stick me in a corner behind a pillar. But he did n't stick me so fur back 't dey did n't fine me when dey tecked up de money. When I put in dat fif'-cent you gi' me, he jumped like a pin had stick him. I dropped 't in so 't would soun', I tell you!”

This gave Mrs. Graeme an idea, and she encouraged her to go again the following Sunday, and this time gave her a dollar to put in the plate.

“Be sure and drop it in so it will sound,” she said to her.

“I 'm gwine to.”

“Well, how did you come out to-dayf” she asked her on her return.

“Right well. Dey did n't stick me quite so fur back, and when I drap de dollar in dey wuz several on 'em lookin', and when de chutch was over dey come runnin' arter me, an', tell me ef I come next time dey 'll have a good seat for me. I 'm gwine agin, but fust thing dey know I 'm gwine to fool 'em. I ain't gwine put a dollar in agin, I know.”

Mrs. Graeme laughed. “Oh! you must pay for being in society. We all do.”

“I know _I_ ain't,” declared the old woman, “and I don't reckon you gwine to gi' me a dollar ev 'y Sunday.”

“I certainly am not. I am only getting you launched.”

The following week Mrs. Graeme said to her husband, “I think Mammy is launched. The preacher came to the front door to-day and asked to see Mrs. Quivers. At first I did not know whom he meant. Then he said it was 'a colored lady.' You never saw any one so gotten up--silk hat, kid gloves, and ebony cane. And Mammy was quite set up by it. She says the preacher is from home and knew Caesar. She was really airy afterward.”

Mr. Graeme uttered an objurgation. “You will ruin that old woman, and with her the best old negro that ever was.”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Graeme, “there is no danger of that. You could n't spoil her.”

A few weeks later she said: “Yes, Mammy is launched. She told me to-day she wanted to join the club, and when I asked, what club, she said, 'the Colored Ladies Siciety Club.'” “I should say she was launched,” sniffed Mr. Graeme. “She told me she wanted her money to invest it herself. The old fool! They will rob her of it.”

III

The weeks that followed, and Mam' Lyddy's immersion in “Siciety” began apparently to justify Mr. Graeme's prophecy. A marked change had taken place in the old woman's dress, and no less a change had taken place in herself. She began to go out a good deal, and her manner was quite new. She was what a few weeks before she would have derided as “citified and airified.” At length Mrs. Graeme could not conceal it from herself any longer.

One evening as her husband on his return from his office threw himself on his chair with the evening paper, she brought up the subject.

“Cabell, it is true; you have noticed the change!”

“What? I have no doubt I have.” He glanced at his wife to see if she had on a new dress or had changed the mode of wearing her hair, then gazed about him rather uneasily to see if the furniture had been shifted about, or if the pictures had been changed; points on which his wife was inclined to be particular.

“The change in Mammy! Why, I should never know her for the same person.”

“Of course, I have. I have noticed nothing else. Why, she is dressed as fine as a fiddle. She is 'taking notice.' She 'll be giving Old Caesar a successor. Then what will you do? I thought that fat darky I have seen going in at the back gate with a silk hat and a long-tailed coat looked like a preacher. You 'd better look out for him. You know she was always stuck on preachers. He is a preacher, sure.”

“He is,” observed the small boy on the floor. “That 's the Reverend Mr. Johnson. And, oh! He certainly can blow beautiful smoke-rings. He can blow a whole dozen and make 'em go through each other. You just ought to see him, papa.”

His father glanced casually at the cigar box on the table.

“I think I will some day,” said he, half grimly.

“I never would know her for the same person. Why, she is so changed!” pursued Mrs. Graeme. “She goes out half the time, and this morning she was so cross! She says she is as good as I am if she is black. She is getting like these others up here.”

Mr. Graeme flung down the paper he was reading.

“It is these Northern negroes who have upset her, and the fools like the editor of that paper who have upset them.”

Mrs. Graeme looked reflective.

“That preacher has been coming here a good deal lately. I wonder if that could have anything to do with it!” she said, slowly.

Her husband sniffed.

“I will find out.”