and the metallic polish of the French powder had effectually concealed the huge freckles which spotted her cheeks.
Dropping a low courtesy, I requested her to come with me to the dining-room and inspect my work. With a smile, she followed, and upon examination, seemed well pleased.
"Now, Ann, if you do well in officiating, it will be well for you; but if you fail, if you make one mistake, you had better never been born, for," and she grasped me strongly by the shoulder, "I will flay you alive; you shall ache and smart in every limb and nerve."
Terror-stricken at this threat, I made the most earnest promises to exert my very best energies. Yet her angry manner and threatening words so unnerved me, that I was not able to go on with the work in the same spirit in which I had begun, for we all know what a paralysis fear is to exertion.
I stepped out on the balcony for some purpose, and there, standing at the end of the gallery, but partially concealed by the clematis blossoms, stood Miss Jane, and a tall gentleman was leaning over the railing talking very earnestly to her. In that uncertain light I could see the flash of her eye and the crimson glow of her cheek. She was twirling and tearing to pieces, petal by petal, a beautiful rose which she held in her hand. Here, I thought here is happiness; this woman loves and is beloved. She has tasted of that one drop which sweetens the whole cup of existence. Oh, what a thing it is to be free—free and independent, with power and privilege to go whithersoever you choose, with no cowardly fear, no dread of espionage, with the right to hold your head proudly aloft, and return glance for glance, not shrink and cower before the white man's look, as we poor slaves must do. But not many moments could I thus spend in thought, and well, perhaps, it was for me that duty broke short all such unavailing regrets.
Hastening back to the dining-room, I gave another inquiring look at the table, fearful that some article had been omitted. Satisfying myself on this point, I moved on to the kitchen, where Aunt Polly was busy frying a chicken.
"Here, child," she exclaimed, "look in thar at them biscuits. See is they done. Oh, that's prime, browning beautiful-like," she said, as I drew from the stove a pan of nice biscuits, "and this ar' chicken is mighty nice. Oh, but it will make the young gemman smack his lips," and wiping the perspiration from her sooty brow, she drew a long breath, and seated herself upon a broken stool.
"Wal, this ar' nigger is tired. I's bin cooking now this twelve years, and never has I had 'mission' to let my old man come to see me, or I to go see him."
The children, with eyes wide open, gathered round Aunt Polly to hear a recital of her wrongs. "Laws-a-marcy, sights I's seen in my times, and often it 'pears like I's lost my senses. I tells you, yous only got to look at this ar' back to know what I's went through." Hereupon she exposed her back and arms, which were frightfully scarred.
"This ar' scar," and she pointed to a very deep one on her left shoulder, "Masser gib me kase I cried when he sold my oldest son; poor Jim, he was sent down the river, and I've never hearn from him since." She wiped a stray tear from her old eyes.
"Oh me! 'tis long time since my eyes hab watered, and now these tears do feel so quare. Poor Jim is down the river, Johnny is dead, and Lucy is sold somewhar, so I have neither chick nor child. What's I got to live fur?"
This brought fresh to my mind recollections of my own mother's grief, when she was forced to give me up, and I could not restrain my tears.
"What fur you crying, child?" she asked. "It puts me in mind ov my poor little Luce, she used to cry this way whenever anything happened to me. Oh, many is the time she screamed if master struck me."
"Poor Aunt Polly," I said, as I walked up to her side, "I do pity you. I will be kind to you; I'll be your daughter."
She looked up with a wild stare, and with a deep earnestness seized hold of my out-stretched hand; then dropping it suddenly, she murmured,
"No, no, you ain't my darter, you comes to me with saft words, but you is jest like Lindy and all the rest of 'em; you'll go to the house and tell tales to the white folks on me. No, I'll not trust any of you."
Springing suddenly into the room, with his eyes flaming, came Jones, and, cracking his whip right and left, he struck each of the listening group. I retreated hastily to an extreme corner of the kitchen, where, unobserved by him, I could watch the affray.
"You devilish old wretch, Polly, what are you gabbling and snubbling here about? Up with your old hide, and git yer supper ready. Don't you know thar is company in the house?" and here he gave another sharp cut of the whip, which descended upon that poor old scarred back with a cruel force, and tore open old cicatriced wounds. The victim did not scream, nor shrink, nor murmur; but her features resumed their wonted hard, encrusted expression, and, rising up from her seat, she went on with her usual work.
"Now, cut like the wind," he added, as he flourished his whip in the direction of the young blacks, who had been the interested auditors of Aunt Polly's hair-breadth escapes, and quick as lightning they were off to their respective quarters, whilst I proceeded to assist Aunt Polly in dishing up the supper.
"This chicken," said I, in a tone of encouragement, "is beautifully cooked. How brown it is, and oh, what a delightful savory odor."
"I'll be bound the white folks will find fault wid it. Nobody ever did please Miss Jane. Her is got some of the most perkuler notions 'bout cookin'. I knows she'll be kommin' out here, makin' a fuss 'long wid me 'bout dis same supper," and the old woman shook her head knowingly.
I made no reply, for I feared the re-appearance of Mr. Jones, and too often and too painfully had I felt the sting of his lash, to be guilty of any wanton provocation of its severity.
Silently, but with bitter thoughts curdling my life-blood, did I arrange the steaming cookies upon the luxurious board, and then, with a deferential air, sought the parlor, and bade them walk out to tea.
I found Miss Jane seated near a fine rosewood piano, and standing beside her was a gentleman, the same whom I had observed with her upon the verandah. Miss Matilda was at the window, looking out upon the western heaven. I spoke in a soft tone, asking them, "Please walk out to tea." The young gentleman rose, and offered his arm to Miss Jane, which was graciously accepted, and Miss Matilda followed. I swung the dining-room door open with great pomp and ceremony, for I knew that anything showy or grand, either in the furniture of a house or the deportment of a servant, would be acceptable to Miss Jane. Fashion, or style, was the god of her worship, and she often declared that her principal objection to the negro, was his great want of style in thought and action. She was not deep enough to see, that, fathoms down below the surface, in all the crudity of ignorance, lay a stratum of this same style, so much worshipped by herself. Does not the African, in his love of gaud, show, and tinsel, his odd and grotesque decorations of his person, exhibit a love of style? But she was not philosopher enough to see that this was a symptom of the same taste, though ungarnished and semi-barbarous.
The supper passed off very handsomely, so far as my part was concerned. I carried the cups round on a silver salver to each one; served them with chicken, plied them with cakes, confections, &c., and interspersed my performance with innumerable courtesies, bows and scrapes.
"Ah," said Miss Jane to the gentleman, "ah, Mr. Somerville, you have visited us at the wrong season; you should be here later in the autumn, or earlier in the summer," and she gave one of her most benign smiles.
"Any season is pleasant here," replied Mr. Somerville, as he held the wing of a chicken between his thumb and fore-finger. Miss Jane simpered and looked down; and Miss Matilda arched her brows and gave a significant side-long glance toward her sister.
"Here, you cussed yallow gal," cried Mr. Peterkin, in a rage, "take this split spoon away and fetch me a fork what I ken use. These darned things is only made for grand folks," and he held the silver fork to me. Instantly I replaced it with a steel one.
"Now this looks something like. We only uses them ar' other ones when we has company, so I suppose, Mr. Somerville, the girl sot the table in this grand way bekase you is here."
No thunder-cloud was ever darker than Miss Jane's brow. It gathered, and deepened, and darkened like a thick-coming