_ CHAPTER XLII. AN INHERITANCE OF WRONG
"I tell you," Doctor Keene used to say, "that old woman's a thinker." His allusion was to Clemence, the _marchande des calas_. Her mental activity was evinced not more in the cunning aptness of her songs than in the droll wisdom of her sayings. Not the melody only, but the often audacious, epigrammatic philosophy of her tongue as well, sold her _calas_ and gingercakes.
But in one direction her wisdom proved scant. She presumed too much on her insignificance. She was a "study," the gossiping circle at Frowenfeld's used to say; and any observant hearer of her odd aphorisms could see that she herself had made a life-study of herself and her conditions; but she little thought that others--some with wits and some with none--young hare-brained Grandissimes, Mandarins and the like--were silently, and for her most unluckily, charging their memories with her knowing speeches; and that of every one of those speeches she would ultimately have to give account.
Doctor Keene, in the old days of his health, used to enjoy an occasional skirmish with her. Once, in the course of chaffering over the price of _calas_, he enounced an old current conviction which is not without holders even to this day; for we may still hear it said by those who will not be decoyed down from the mountain fastnesses of the old Southern doctrines, that their slaves were "the happiest people under the sun." Clemence had made bold to deny this with argumentative indignation, and was courteously informed in retort that she had promulgated a falsehood of magnitude.
"W'y, Mawse Chawlie," she replied, "does you s'pose one po' nigga kin tell a big lie? No, sah! But w'en de whole people tell w'at ain' so--if dey know it, aw if dey don' know it--den dat _is_ a big lie!" And she laughed to contortion.
"What is that you say?" he demanded, with mock ferocity. "You charge white people with lying?"
"Oh, sakes, Mawse Chawlie, no! De people don't mek up dat ah; de debble pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de grett cyount'-feiteh? Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek an' put some debblemen' on de under side, an' one o' his pootiess lies on top; an' 'e gilt dat lie, and 'e rub dat lie on 'is elbow, an' 'e shine dat lie, an' 'e put 'is bess licks on dat lie; entel ev'ybody say: 'Oh, how pooty!' An' dey tek it fo' good money, yass--and pass it! Dey b'lieb it!"
"Oh," said some one at Doctor Keene's side, disposed to quiz, "you niggers don't know when you are happy."
"Dass so, Mawse--_c'est vrai, oui_!" she answered quickly: "we donno no mo'n white folks!"
The laugh was against him.
"Mawse Chawlie," she said again, "w'a's dis I yeh 'bout dat Eu'ope country? 's dat true de niggas is all free in Eu'ope!"
Doctor Keene replied that something like that was true.
"Well, now, Mawse Chawlie, I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat is _so_, den fo' w'y I yeh folks bragg'n 'bout de 'stayt o' s'iety in Eu'ope'?"
The mincing drollery with which she used this fine phrase brought another peal of laughter. Nobody tried to guess.
"I gwan tell you," said the _marchande_; "'t is becyaze dey got a 'fixed wuckin' class.'" She sputtered and giggled with the general ha, ha. "Oh, ole Clemence kin talk proctah, yass!"
She made a gesture for attention.
"D' y' ebber yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow de cyaht gotteh be haul'? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is heel'"--she suited the action to the word--"an' tah' roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say: 'Whoopy! shoo! shoo! dis yeh country gittin' _too_ free!'"
"Oh," she resumed, as soon as she could be heard, "white folks is werry kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we happy--dey _wants to b'lieb_ we is. W'y, you know, dey 'bleeged to b'lieb it--fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem weh wid de preache's; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n-houses; dey b'liebs us lak it de bess, an' dey _knows_ dey lak it de bess."
The laugh at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving, with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to see these efforts meet, or seem to meet, some degree of success. Happily man cannot so place his brother that his misery will continue unmitigated. You may dwarf a man to the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he will put out green leaves. "Free from care," we benignly observe of the dwarfed classes of society; but we forget, or have never thought, what a crime we commit when we rob men and women of their cares.
To Clemence the order of society was nothing. No upheaval could reach to the depth to which she was sunk. It is true, she was one of the population. She had certain affections toward people and places; but they were not of a consuming sort.
As for us, our feelings, our sentiments, affections, etc., are fine and keen, delicate and many; what we call refined. Why? Because we get them as we get our old swords and gems and laces--from our grandsires, mothers, and all. Refined they are--after centuries of refining. But the feelings handed down to Clemence had come through ages of African savagery; through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning, nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the rest--she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, with pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked, as an additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard of her since. She had had children, assorted colors--had one with her now, the black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others were here and there, some in the Grandissime households or field-gangs, some elsewhere within occasional sight, some dead, some not accounted for. Husbands--like the Samaritan woman's. We know she was a constant singer and laugher.
And so on that day, when Honore Grandissime had advised the Governor-General of Louisiana to be very careful to avoid demonstration of any sort if he wished to avert a street war in his little capital, Clemence went up one street and down another, singing her song and laughing her professional merry laugh. How could it be otherwise? Let events take any possible turn, how could it make any difference to Clemence? What could she hope to gain? What could she fear to lose? She sold some of her goods to Casa Calvo's Spanish guard and sang them a Spanish song; some to Claiborne's soldiers and sang them Yankee Doodle with unclean words of her own inspiration, which evoked true soldiers' laughter; some to a priest at his window, exchanging with him a pious comment or two upon the wickedness of the times generally and their Americain Protestant-poisoned community in particular; and (after going home to dinner and coming out newly furnished) she sold some more of her wares to the excited groups of Creoles to which we have had occasion to allude, and from whom, insensible as she was to ribaldry, she was glad to escape. The day now drawing to a close, she turned her steps toward her wonted crouching-place, the willow avenue on the levee, near the Place d'Armes. But she had hardly defined this decision clearly in her mind, and had but just turned out of the rue St. Louis, when her song attracted an ear in a second-story room under whose window she was passing. As usual, it was fitted to the passing event:
"Apportez moi mo' sabre,
Ba boum, ba boum, boum, boum."
"Run, fetch that girl here," said Dr. Keene to the slave woman who had just entered his room with a pitcher of water.
"Well, old eavesdropper," he said, as Clemence came, "what is the scandal to-day?"
Clemence laughed.
"You know, Mawse Chawlie, I dunno noth'n' 'tall 'bout nobody. I'se a nigga w'at mine my own business."
"Sit down there on that stool, and tell me what is going on outside."
"I d' no noth'n' 'bout no goin's on; got no time fo' sit down, me; got sell my cakes. I don't goin' git mix' in wid no white folks's doin's."
"Hush, you old hypocrite; I will buy all your cakes. Put them out there on the table."
The invalid, sitting up in bed, drew a purse from behind his pillow and tossed her a large price. She tittered, courtesied and received the money.
"Well, well, Mawse Chawlie, 'f you ain' de funni'st gen'leman I knows, to be sho!"
"Have you seen Joseph Frowenfeld to-day?" he asked.
"He, he, he! W'at I got do wid Mawse Frowenfel'? I goes on de off side o' sich folks--folks w'at cann' 'have deyself no bette'n dat--he, he, he! At de same time I did happen, jis chancin' by accident, to see 'im."
"How is he?"
Dr. Keene made plain by his manner that any sensational account would receive his instantaneous contempt, and she answered within bounds.
"Well, now, tellin' the simple trufe, he ain' much hurt."
The doctor turned slowly and cautiously in bed.
"Have you seen Honore Grandissime?"
"W'y--das funny you ass me dat. I jis now see 'im dis werry minnit."
"Where?"
"Jis gwine into de house wah dat laydy live w'at 'e runned over dat ah time."
"Now, you old hag," cried the sick man, his weak, husky voice trembling with passion, "you know you're telling me a lie."
"No, Mawse Chawlie," she protested with a coward's frown, "I swah I tellin' you de God's trufe!"
"Hand me my clothes off that chair."
"Oh! but, Mawse Chawlie--"
The little doctor cursed her. She did as she was bid, and made as if to leave the room.
"Don't you go away."
"But Mawse Chawlie, you' undress'--he, he!"
She was really abashed and half frightened.
"I know that; and you have got to help me put my clothes on."
"You gwan kill yo'se'f, Mawse Chawlie," she said, handling a garment.
"Hold your black tongue."
She dressed him hastily, and he went down the stairs of his lodging-house and out into the street. Clemence went in search of her master. _