The Bondwoman's Narrative (16 page)

M
OSES

When he was gone, when his retreating footsteps sounded no longer in the hall, nor on the stair my mistress arose with apparent
composure, and retired to her room. Yet I perceived perfectly well that the calmness was all forced, there was such wild disturbance
in her eyes, and something so unnatural in her carriage and manner. I knew it better when half an hour afterwards I stole
softly to her room, not because I was summoned, not
because
because I supposed that she desired my presence, neither was it through vain or idle curiosity, but because I could not bear
that in her great agony of spirit she should be alone, and no friend near to sympathise or condole with her.

Noiselessly and unobserved I entered the chamber. She was pacing the floor up and down, up and down—her hair in the wildest
disorder flung back from her brow over which was spread a deathly pallor, her bosom heaving with stifling sobs, and her whole
frame writhing as if in mortal pain. A slight noise informed her of my presence. Her face flushed a moment, and she articulated
“Hannah.” That was enough. Flinging myself at her feet, and clasping her hands I bathed them with my tears.

“My dear, good, kind, indulgent mistress” I said. “You will forgive me when I tell you that I know all you have suffered and
are suffering from that heartless cruel man—when I tell you that I overheard your conversation with him just now, not intentional[l]y
but by the merest accident, and when I implore you to confide in me, to entrust me with this dreadful secret, that knowing
I may more deeply sympathise with your woes and wrongs.”

I cannot tell why it was that I forgot that moment the disparity in our conditions, and that I approached and spoke to her
as though she had been my sister or a very dear friend, but
when
sorrow and affliction and death make us all equal, and I
felt it so the more when she sunk down beside me on the floor in her deep distress, clasped me in her arms, and rocking her
frame to and fro, entreated me to pity and save her if I could. And then in broken and incoherent sentences she related the
story of her life—
A dark one it was, though not on her part
how she had been brought up, and educated by a rich gentleman, whom she called father, and by whom she was introduced into
society as his daughter—how she had been taught by him to consider her mother as dead, and how she had since ascertained through
Mr Trappe, that whoever might be her paternal relative, her mother was a slave then toiling in the cotton feilds of Georgia.
The[n] she clasped her hands, and moaned and sorrowed, refusing to be comforted.

“Can you be certain that his information is correct” I inquired “and that he does not merely seek to torment and trouble you?”

“It is true, all true, I have had sufficient proofs. Only one thing is wanting to complete the chain of evidence, and that
is the testimony of an old woman, who it seems was my mother’s nurse, and who placed me in her lady’s bed, and by her lady’s
side, when that Lady
Lady
was to[o] weak and sick and delirious to notice that the dead was exchanged for the living.

“It seems that my mother, or the nurse, or some one privy to the affair preserved a record of these facts, and carefully concealed
it among my father’s papers. I much doubt that he ever discovered it. My confidence in his affection induces me to believe
that had such been the case he would have executed a deed of manumission in my favor. At any rate I was publicly known and
received in society as the daughter of his legitimate wife, as such I succeeded to his property as heiress, and never knew
a care till that old man discovered the secret of my birth.”

“That old man—have you long been acquainted with him.”

“Yes: yes very long. He was my father’s solicitor, and had a room at our house, but I never liked him. Even when a child the
shadow of his presence occasioned within me a thrill of dread and fear. As I grew older he professed a fondness for me, he
even sought my hand in marriage, and my refusal made him an enemy. He had been in the secret for some time before he gave
me any intimation of it, and then he did it to extort money. He has made a fortune that way. He has spent his life in hunting,
delving, and digging into family secrets, and when he has found them out he becomes ravenous for gold.

[“]I well remember the time when he first made known to me his discovery. I had long noticed something singular in his manner
and general bearing towards me. I felt, too an indefinable presentiment of evil in his presence, though we had little inter-course—no
more indeed, than was actually necessary in the details of business.”

One day contrary to his usual custom he requested the pleasure of seeing me in his room. Trembling with apprehension I ascended
the staircase, passed through the hall, and stood before him. He was seated at a low table, upon which lay a great pile of
books and papers that he seemed particularly interested in examining—so
much so indeed as
at first
not to notice my presence. This gave me an opportunity to look around his apartment. Its chief furniture was books and bundles
of papers. There were books on the floor, books in the corners, and books heaped up and piled up in an antique cupboard. Some
of them seemed to have been recently used, but on others the dust had thickly accumulated. I touched one of them; it fell
with a rattling sound, still he did not look round, and I began to construe his silence into studied neglect.

“I have come, Sir, according to your request” I said rather impatiently perhaps.

“Be not impatient, Madam” he answered. “What I have to say concerns yourself closely, and is of such a nature that after hearing
it you will thank me for deferring the communication as long as possible.” His voice, his manner, above all his singular words
quite overcame me, and I
was obliged to
leaned for support against the table. He noticed my emotion, and with a gleam of something like pity or remorse on his countenance,
arose from his seat, went to the cupboard, and took thence a bottle of wine, from which he poured
out
a glassful, and presenting
it entreated me to drink. I replied by pressing him to let me know the worst at once.

“Not till you have drank.”

I pressed the glass to my lips, and returning it again demanded to know the worst.

[“]Now I wish you to inform me of all that you know about a slave woman belonging to your father, whose countenance was nearly
white, and whose name was
Charlotte
Susan. You must remember such an [sic] one, for she was very fond of you.”

“Yes, I remember her; she was very beautiful; and father sold her.”

“Contrary to her wishes, I believe.”

“Very much so. They were oblidged to use force to carry her away, and then she shrieked and screamed in the wildest manner.”

“And did she not, previous to her departure clasp you in her arms, kiss you, weep over you, and call you her darling?—Did
she not do all this?”

“She did, Sir, but what of it?”

“Much very much.

“Well now” he said as he touched a secret drawer in the table that opened with a spring, and drew thence a portrait. “Well
now I wish you to look at this.”

I did so.

“Do you know it.”

“It resembles me” I answered “though I have never sate [sat] for my likeness to be taken.”

“Probably not, but can’t you think of some one else whom it resembles?”

[“]The slave
Charlotte
Susan.[”]

“And it was hers, and it is yours; for never did two persons more resemble each other, and now I wish you to examine this
paper.[”]

He held a paper towards me old, and torn, and yellow with age. I took it and commenced reading. At first I could make nothing
of it. I could not understand the horrible truth thus presented to me. I read and re-read but by degrees the mystery unfolded.
I perceived the worst and what I was, and must ever be. Then I fell to the floor without sense or motion.

“And after that”

[“]Of what happened after that for a long a very long time I have only a confused recollection. My thoughts were in Chaos.
I was half mad, half-wild, and then Mr Trappe who had occasioned all my misery undertook to console me—said that no one but
himself and two or three other obscure persons were informed of the secret and that gold would shut the mouths of all.

[“]And thus I bribed him to secresy, but you know the rest you
know the horrible foreboding that renders my very existence
a curse—and now what shall I do? Oh what shall I do?”

She ceased speaking, and it was my turn to say something. I saw that her only chance was in flight, flight immediate and precipitate.

“You have inquired what you shall do” I began “and though it becomes not a slave to advise I think the question might be satisfactorily
answered.”

“How—how?”

[“]You must fly from this house, from this place, from this country, fly immediately—to[-]night—or stay. I have a better plan.
My master as yet knows nothing of it. Mr Trappe is gone you can go away in open daylight and in your carriage giving out that
you design to visit a relative.[”]

My mistress was delighted with the plan. Her first thought was to escape from the horrible doom impending over her, and she
eagerly grasped the least shadow of hope. She thanked me, she kissed me, and for the first time she wept over me.

[“]And you will go with me?[”] she inquired.

“I will, my dear mistress.”

[“]Call me mistress no longer. Henceforth you shall be to me as a very dear sister” she said embracing me again. “Oh: to be
free, to be free.”

There was something ominous to me in the transports of her joy. Her eyes were illuminated and her countenance shone. The transition
was sudden and complete, but it is ever thus with impulsive natures.

“My dear Mistress.”

“There: there, mistress again when I have forbidden it.”

“Well then, my dear friend, let us weigh this matter well. I advise flight by all means, yet the time, the way, the route
should all
be duly considered. You have relatives residing near the Steamboat landing on the James River?”

“I have.”

“We will talk of going there to spend a week.”

But a revulsion was taking place in her feelings, and she burst into tears. “My husband” she said “how can I bear to deceive
him so.”

“Your flight will occasion less trouble to him when he comes to know the truth than any other course that you could take.”

Again she wept and moaned, while I comforted and consoled her, and sought to imbue her with the idea that it was a time for
thinking and acting rather than giving way to overstrained sensations of any kind.

“Oh I will try, I will try” she would say, when I thus reminded her. “I will to be composed, but you know not, you cannot
know, nor even imagine the mental agony that I have suffered. You will forgive me but I must weep” and then she would burst
into such a passion of tears, and wild hysterical sobbing that it alarmed me. After a few hours, however, she acquired serenity
of mind and greater fixedness of purpose. Yet she was impatient to be gone, but declined the project of visiting as she said
her husband would certainly wish to accompany her.

“How then?” I inquired.

[“]Why we will just go away, leave the place altogether. We can reach the river by morning I think, if we start at midnight,
and once there a steamboat will soon convey us beyond the reach of our pursuers.”

“And Lizzy.”

“I shall leave her.”

It was now near night, and the glorious summer sunset never looked more beautiful, yet my reflections were meloncholy, though
not so much on my own account as that of my mistress.
How would she bear the exposure—how endure the fatigue?, but relaxation
of purpose I never thought of. I knew that degradation and disgrace awaited her if she remained, and that she would be tortured
by a suspense more horrible than the worst reality. In a short time, probably her escape would be rendered doubly difficult,
if not impossible.

Thus I reasoned with myself while the shadows fell and night slowly gathered over the landscape.
At the usual time I went to the room of my mistress The still still night very quiet and beautiful and
The still still night on the dusty roads, and over the quiet woods over the gardens and the feilds I lifted the window and
looked out with a feeling akin to regret. Lindendale had been the home of childhood, and with it was connected all the associations
of my riper years. Within its shadows, though a slave, I had known many happy days. I had been the general favorite of the
young people on the estate, but though I loved them much, I loved my mistress more.

She had excused herself from meeting her husband at supper, and Lizzy had been dismissed to attend a dance in the neighborhood,
but we considered it expedient to defer all preparations till the house became quiet. How slowly the hours passed away—how
long the servants lingered in the kitchen. How long it seemed before the lights were extinguished in the surrounding cabins,
but little by little the voices, hum and confusion ceased; one by one the cabins were darkened. The time had arrived.

Silently I went to the room of my Mistress, and as silently entered. There was a dim light burning on the table, yet so shaded
as not to be seen from the window. She was dressed and vailed, and she rose to meet me with more composure than I had expected.
“My dear good Hannah” she said “I think you had better stay. You are of great use here. What will the old people, and the
children— the weak helpless ones do without you—what—”

But I interrupted her. “And leave you to go forth alone. My dear indulgent mistress—never, never.”

Just then the rising wind howled mournfully around the house, and the Linden creaked audibly. I shuddered at the sound.

“If you will go, if you really wish to go” she resumed [“]if you desire freedom for its own sake, far be it from me to speak
a word of discouragement, but we may be pursued, and overtaken and brought back, and then.”