Minnie's Sacrifice Part 3

"Why, she found out all about her, and said she should not stay on the place another day, and so she sent her down to Orleans to the n.i.g.g.e.r traders, and my heart's most broke," and Milly sat down, wiping her tears with her ap.r.o.n.

"Never mind, Milly," said Louis, "I'll go down to New Orleans and bring her back. Mother sha'n't do as she pleases with me, as if I were a boy, and must always be tied to her ap.r.o.n string. I've got some money of my own, and I mean to find Ellen if I have to look all over the country."

He entered the dining room, and saw his mother seated at the tea table, looking as bland and pleasant as a Spring morning, and asked, "Where is Ellen?"

The smile died from her lips, and she answered, curtly, "She is out of _your_ reach [?]. I've sold her."

"But where have you sold her?"

"Out of your reach, and that is all I am going to tell you."

Louis, without saying another word went out to the coachman, and asked what time the cars left the station.

"Ten minutes to nine."

"Can you take me there in time to reach the train? I want to go to the city tonight."

"Dunno, ma.s.sa; my best horse is lame, and what----"

"Never mind your excuse; here," said he, throwing him a dollar, "hitch up as quick as possible, and take me there without any 'buts' or 'ifs.'"

"All right, ma.s.sa," said Sam, grinning with delight. "I'll have you over there in short order."

The carriage harnessed, Samuel found no difficulty with his horses, and reached the depot almost a half hour before the time.

Louis arrived in the city after midnight, and the next day he devoted to hunting for Ellen. He searched through different slave pens, inquired of all the traders, until at last, ready to abandon his search in hopelessness, he heard of a private jail in the suburbs of the city.

Nothing daunted by his failure, he found the place and Ellen also.

The trader eyed him keenly, and saw from his manner that he was in earnest about having the girl.

"She is not for sale in this city. Whoever buys her must give me a pledge to take her out of this city. That was the bargain I made with her mistress. She made me promise her that I would sell her to no one in the vicinity of the city. In fact, she wanted me to sell her out of the way of her son. His mother said she had dedicated him to the Blessed Virgin, and I reckon she wanted to keep him out of the way of temptation. Now what will you give me for her?"

"Will you take a thousand for her?"

"Now you ain't saying nothing," said the trader, shutting one eye, and spitting on the floor.

"How will twelve hundred do?"

"It won't do at all, not for such a fancy article as that. I'd rather keep her for myself than sell her at such a low figure. Why, just look at her! Why, she's pretty as a picture! Look at that neck, and her shoulders. See how she carries her head! And look at that splendid head of hair. Why some of our nabobs would give three thousand dollars; but I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll let you have her for two thousand dollars; fancy article is cheap at that."

Louis demurred, but the trader was inexorable, and rather than let the opportunity to rescue Ellen from him escape he paid the exorbitant price, and had her brought to his hotel. His next work was to get a house for Ellen, and have her taken there, installed as his mistress. He then went back to the plantation as if nothing had happened, and his mother soon thought he was reconciled about the loss of Ellen. Only Milly knew his secret, and she kept it as a secret thing.

"I've got some pleasant news for you, Louis," said Mrs. Le Grange, one day to her son: "your uncle and cousin are coming down from Virginia, and I want you to be all attention to your cousin, for she is very rich.

She has a fortune in her right, which was left her by her grandmother, and besides she will have another one at her father's death, added, to which they say, she is a very beautiful girl."

Great preparations were made for the expected guests. Georgiette was Mrs. Le Grange's brother's child, and having been separated from him for more than fifteen years she was full of joyful antic.i.p.ations, when he apprised her of his intention of visiting her in company with his daughter. At length the welcome day arrived, and Mrs. Le Grange stood arranging her jewels and ribbons to receive the guests.

"You are welcome to Louisiana," said she, removing Georgiette's shawl, and tenderly kissing her, "and you too, brother," she said, as Mr.

Monteith followed his daughter. "How beautiful Georgiette has grown since I saw her. Why darling you look charming! I'm afraid I shan't be able to keep you long for some of the beaux will surely run away with you." "My son," said Mrs. Le Grange, introducing Louis, who just then entered the door.

Louis bowed very low, and expressed his pleasure in seeing them; and hoped they would have a happy time, and that nothing should be wanting on his part, to make it so. Very pleasantly pa.s.sed the time away; Georgiette was in high and charming spirits; and many a pleasant ride and delightful saunter she took with her cousin through the woods, or in visiting other plantations. She was very popular among the planters'

sons; admired by the young men, but feared and envied by the girls.

And thus the hours pa.s.sed in a whirl of pleasurable excitement, until Louis actually imagined himself in love with her, and found himself one pleasant afternoon offering her his hand and heart.

She blushed and sighed, and referred him to her papa; and in a few weeks they were engaged.

At length the time of their departure came; and Louis, after accompanying them to New Orleans, returned to make ready for the wedding. His father made him a present of a large plantation, which he stocked from his own purse, with three hundred slaves; and installed Ellen there as housekeeper till the arrival of the new mistress.

Chapter VI

"Thee is welcome to S.," said the cheerful voice of Thomas Carpenter, as Josiah Collins alighted, bringing with him his charge; "and is this the little child thee wrote me about? I am heartily glad thee has rescued her from that dreadful system!"

"Anna," said he, turning to his wife, who had just entered the room, "here is our friend, Josiah Collins, and the little girl I told thee about."

"I am glad thee has come," said Anna, "sit down and make thyself at home. And this is the little girl thee wrote Thomas about. She is a beautiful child," continued Anna, gazing admiringly at the child. "I hope she will be contented. Does she fret about her mother?"

"Not much; she would sometimes ask, 'where is mamma?' But the ladies in the cars were very kind to her, and she was quite at home with them. I told them I was taking her North; that I thought the North would better agree with her; and that it was not convenient for her mother to come on just now. I was really amused with the attention she received from the Southern ladies; knowing how they would have shrunk from such offices if they had known that one drop of the outcast blood ran in her veins."

"Why, Josiah," said Anna, "I have always heard that there was more prejudice against the colored people in the North than in the South.

There is a difference in the manifestations of this feeling, but I do not think there is as much prejudice here as there. [Here?] we have a prejudice which is [formed from?] traditional ideas. We see in many parts of the North a very few of the colored people, and our impressions of them have received their coloring more or less from what the slaveholders have said of them."

"We have been taught that they are idle, improvident, and unfitted for freedom, and incapable of progression; and when we see them in the cities we see them overshadowed by wealth, enterprise, and activity, so that our unfavorable impressions are too often confirmed. Still if one of that cla.s.s rises above this low mental condition, we know that there are many who are willing to give such a one a healthy recognition."

"I know that there are those that have great obstacles to overcome, but I think that while Southerners may have more personal likings for certain favorite servants, they have stronger prejudices than even we have, or if they have no more than we have, they have more self-restraint, and show it more virulently."

"But I [think?] they do not seem to have any horror of personal contact."

"Of course not; constant familiarity with the race has worn away all sense of physical repulsion but there is a prejudice which ought to be an American feeling; it is a prejudice against their rising in the scale of humanity. A prejudice which virtually says you are down, and I mean to keep you down. As a servant I tolerate you; you are useful as you are valuable, but rise one step in the scale of being, and I am ready to put you down. I see this in the treatment that the free colored people receive in parts of the South; they seem to me to be the outcasts of an outcast race. They are denied the right to walk in certain public places accessible to every cla.s.s unless they go as nurses, and are forbidden to a.s.semble in evening meetings, and forced to be in the house unless they have pa.s.ses, by an early hour in the night, and in fact they are hampered or hemmed in on every side; subject to insults from any rude, coa.r.s.e or brutal white, and in case of outrages, denied their testimony.

Prejudiced as we are in Pennsylvania, we do not go that far."

"But, Josiah, we have much to blush for in Pennsylvania; colored people are denied the privilege of riding in our street cars. Only last week when I was in Philadelphia I saw a very decent-looking colored woman with a child, who looked too feeble to walk, and the child too heavy for her to carry. She beckoned to a conductor, but he swept by and took no more heed of her than if she had been a dog. There was a young lady sitting in the car, who remarked to her mother, as a very filthy-looking white man entered, 'See, they will let that filthy creature ride and prohibit a decent respectable colored person!' The mother quietly a.s.sented.

"From her dress I took her to be a Quakeress, for she had a lovely dress of dove-colored silk. The young lady had scarcely uttered the words when a young man who sat next the mother deliberately arose, and beckoned to the man with the sooty clothes to take his seat; but fortunately for the Quakeress, a lady who was sitting next her daughter arose just at that moment, and left the seat, and the old man without noticing the manoeuvre pa.s.sed over to the other side, and thus avoided the contact. I was amused, however, about one thing; for the young man who gave up his seat was compelled to ride about a mile standing."

"Served him right," said Thomas Carpenter; "it was a very contemptible action, to attempt to punish the hardihood of the young lady by attempting to soil her mother's dress; and yet little souls who feel a morbid satisfaction in trampling on the weak, always sink themselves in the scale of manhood."

While this conversation was going on, the tea bell rang, and Josiah and his little charge sat down to a well supplied table; for the Friends, though plain and economical, are no enemies to good living.

Anna had brought the high-chair in which their own darling had sat a few months before, when she had made gladness and suns.h.i.+ne around her parent's path.

There was a tender light in the eye of the Quakeress as she dusted the chair, and sat Minnie at the table.

"Do you think," said Thomas, addressing Josiah, "that we will ever outgrow this wicked, miserable prejudice?"