Part 24 (1/2)

Of Clem, nothing but hardiness was to be antic.i.p.ated. He had been toughened by four other of our winters, all said to have been unusual for severity. And yet it was Clem, curiously enough, and not Miss Caroline, who found the season most trying. True, he had to be abroad most of the time, procuring sustenance for the insatiable ”Frost King,”

or performing labor for other people by which Miss Caroline should preserve her independence; but it was not supposed that a creature of his sort could be subject to weaknesses natural enough to a superior race.

I believe this was his own view of the matter; for when he admitted to me one morning that he had ”took cold in the chest,” his manner was one of deprecating confusion, and he swore me against betrayal of his lapse to Miss Caroline.

She discovered his guilt for herself, however, after a few days, from his very annoying cough. She taxed him with it so st.u.r.dily that efforts at deception availed him not. His tale that the snow sifted into his ”bref-place” and ”tickled it” was pitifully unconvincing, for his cough was deeper than Eustace Eubanks's proudest note in the drinking song.

”He's a worthless thing,” said Miss Caroline, telling me of his fault, and I said he was indeed--that he hadn't served me four years without my finding _that_ out. I added that he was undoubtedly shamming, but that at the same time it might be as well to take a few simple precautions.

Miss Caroline said that of course he was shamming, in order to get out of work, and that she would soon drive _that_ nonsense out of his head if she had to wear the black wretch out to do it. She added that she was about tired of his nonsense.

It may be known that I have heretofore lost no opportunity to foist all faults of understanding upon the heads of my fellow-townsmen. And I should have liked to keep my record clear in that matter; but it would be uncandid to pretend, even at this late day, that I have ever divined the precise relations.h.i.+p that exists between Miss Caroline and her slave. I may know a bit more of its intricacies than does Little Arcady at large, but not enough to permit that certain thrill of superior discernment which I have so often been able to enjoy in Sloc.u.m County.

Each of the two, considered alone, is fairly comprehensible. But taken together, there is something between them which must always baffle me--something which I cannot believe to have been at all typical of the relation between owner and slave, else many of the facts noted by our discerning and impartial investigators were either imperfectly observed or unintelligently reported.

Up to a certain point my own studies of this slave-holder aligned perfectly with the information which we of the North had been at such pains to gather. And I tried to hold Miss Caroline blameless, remembering that she had been long schooled to the inhumanity of it.

I resolved, nevertheless, to take Clem under my own roof--there was a small unused room almost directly under it--the moment Miss Caroline's impatience with him should move her to the extremes foretold by her abusive fas.h.i.+on of speech. I would not see even a negro turned out in the coldest of winters for no better reason than that he was sick and useless, though I planned to intervene delicately, so as not to affront my neighbor. For my heart was still hers, despite this hardness, for which I saw that she must not be blamed.

As I had feared, Clem's cough became more obtrusive, and with this Miss Caroline's irritation deepened toward him. She declared that his trifling, no-account nature made him all but impossible.

Then one morning--one to be distinguished by its cold even among many unusual mornings--there was no Clem to light my fires and to scent my snug dining room with unparalleled coffee. This brought it definitely home to me that the situation had become grave. I dressed with what speed I could and hurried to Miss Caroline's door. The time had come when I should probably have to do something.

My neighbor met me and said that Clem had meanly decided to remain in bed for the day. I searched her face for some sign of consideration as she said this, but I was disappointed. She seemed to feel only a fierce disgust for his foolishness.

”But you may go up and look at the black good-for-nothing if you like,”

she said, grudgingly enough I thought.

I climbed the brief flight of stairs. I knew that Clem had not refused to get up without reasons that seemed sufficient to him. In a narrow bed in one of the doll-house rooms he lay coughing.

”So you can't get up this morning?” I asked.

”Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah, Ah _was_ a-gittin' up, but Ah was fohced to cough raght smahtly an' Miss Cahline she yehs it an' she awdeh me back to baid, seh. Then Ah calls out to huh that Ah ain't go'n' a' have no sech foolishness in this yeh place, an' so she stahts to come up, which fohces me to retiah huhiedly. Then she stands theh at th' head of th'

staihs an' she faulted me--yes, seh--she _threaten_ me, Mahstah Majah, an' she tek mah clothes away, an' so on an' so fothe. Then Ah huhd huh a' mekin' th' fiah an' then she brung this yeh cawfee an' she done mek it that foolish that Ah can't tech it. Yes, seh, she plumb ruined that theh cawfee, _that's_ what she done!”

His tone was peevish. Clem himself was not talking as I thought would have been becoming in him. And there was a definite issue of veracity between him and his mistress. I went down again, for the room was cold.

”He has some fever,” I said.

”He is a lazy black hound,” said Miss Caroline.

”He says you ordered him to stay in bed--threatened him and hid his clothes.”

”Oh, never fear but what that fellow will always have an excuse!” she retorted shortly.

Observing that she had a day's supply of wood at hand, I left, not a little annoyed at both of them. I missed my coffee.

When I knocked at the door that evening, no one came to admit me. I went in, hearing Clem's voice in truculent protest from a large room on the first floor which had been called the room of Little Miss. I went to the door of this room.

Clem and his bed were there. We had two physicians in Little Arcady, Old Doc and Young Doc. Young Doc was now present measuring powders into little papers which he folded neatly, while Miss Caroline stood at hand, cowering but stubborn under Clem's violence.

”Miss Cahline, yo' suttinly old enough t' know betteh'n that. Ah do wish yo' Paw was about th' house--he maghty quickly put yo'-all in yo' place.