Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866», sayfa 13
LVII
Some time in mid-May of this year Maverick writes:—
"My dear Johns,—I shall again greet you, God willing, in your own home, some forty days hence, and I shall come as a repentant Benedick; for I now wear the dignities of a married man. Your kind letter counted for a great deal toward my determination; but I will not affect to conceal from you, that my tender interest in the future of Adèle counted for a great deal more. As I had supposed, the communication to Julie (which I effected through her brother) that her child was still living, and living motherless, woke all the tenderness of her nature. I cannot say that the sudden change in her inclinations was any way flattering to me; but knowing her recent religious austerities, I was prepared for this. I shall not undertake to describe to you our first interview, which I can never forget. It belongs to those heart-secrets which cannot be spoken of; but this much I may tell you,—that, if there was no kindling of the old and wayward love, there grew out of it a respect for her present severity and elevation of character that I had never anticipated. At our age, indeed, (though, when I think of it, I must be many years your junior,) a respect for womanly character most legitimately takes the place of that disorderly sentiment which twenty years ago blazed out in passion.
"We have been married according to the rites of the Romish Church. If I had proposed other ceremony, more agreeable to your views, I am confident that she would not have listened to me. She is wrapped as steadfastly in her creed as ever you in yours. To do otherwise in so sacred a matter—and with her it wore solely that aspect—than as her Church commands, would have been to do foully and vainly. I had prepared you, I think, for her perversity in this matter; nor do I think that all your zeal and powers of persuasion could make her recreant to the faith for which she has immolated all the womanly vanities which certainly once belonged to her. Indeed, the only trace of worldliness which I see in her is her intense yearning toward our dear Adèle, and her passionate longing to clasp her child once more to her heart. Nor will I conceal from you that she hopes, with all the fervor of a mother's hope, to wean her from what she counts the heretical opinions under which she has been reared, and to bring her into the fold of the faithful.
"You will naturally ask, my dear Johns, why I do not combat this; but I am too old and too far spent for a fight about creeds. I should have made a lame fight on that score at any day; but now my main concern, it would seem, should be to look out personally for the creed which has most of mercy in it. If I seem to speak triflingly, my dear Johns, I pray you excuse me; it is only my business way of stating the actual facts in the case. As for Madame Maverick, I am sure you will find no trifling in her (if you ever meet her); she is terribly in earnest. I tell her she would have made a magnificent lady prioress, whereat she thumbs her beads and whispers a Latin distich, as if she were exorcising a demon. Yet I should do wrong if I were to represent her as always severe, even upon such a theme; there certainly belongs to her a tender, appealing manner (reminding of Adèle in a way that brings tears to my eyes); but it is always bounded by allegiance to her sworn faith. You will think it an exaggeration, but she reminds me at times of those women of the New Testament (which I have not altogether forgotten) who gave up all for the following of the Master. If I were in your study, my dear Johns, you might ask me who those women were? And for my soul I could not tell you. Yet I have a vague recollection that there were those who showed a beautiful devotion to the Christian faith, that somehow sublimated their lives and memories. Again, I feel constrained to put before you another feature in her character, which I am confident will make you feel kindly toward her; my home near to Marseilles, which has been but a gypsy home for so many years, she has taken under her hand, and by its new appointments and order has convicted me of the losses I have felt so long. True, you might object to the oratoire; but in all else I am confident you would approve, and in all else felicitate Adèle upon the home which was preparing for her.
"Madame Maverick will not sail with me for America; although the marriage, under French law, may have admitted Adèle to all rights and even social immunities, yet I have represented that another law and custom rules with you. Whatever opprobrium might attach to the mother, Julie, with her exalted religious sentiment, would not weigh for a moment; but as regards Adèle, she manifests a strange tenderness. To spare her any pang, or possible pangs, she is content to wait. I have feared, too, I must confess, that any undue expression of condemnation or distrust might work revulsion of her own feeling. But while she assents,—with some reluctance, I must admit,—to this plan of deferring her meeting with Adèle, on whom all her affections seem to centre, she insists, in a way that I find it difficult to combat, upon her child's speedy return. That her passionate love will insure entire devotion on the part of Adèle, I cannot doubt. And how the anti-Romish faith which must have been instilled in the dear girl by your teachings, as well as by her associations, may withstand the earnest attack of Madame Maverick, I cannot tell. I have a fear it may lead to some dismal complications. You know what the earnestness of your own faith is; but I don't think you yet know the earnestness of an opposing faith, with a Frenchwoman to back it. Even as I write, she comes to cast a glance at my work, and says, 'Monsieur Maverick,' (she called me Frank once,) 'what are you saying there to the heretical Doctor?'
"Whereupon I translate for her ear a sentence or two. 'Tell him,' says she, 'that I thank him for his kindness; tell him besides, that I can in no way better atone for the guiltiness of the past, than by bringing back this wandering lamb into the true fold. Only when we kneel before the same altar, her hand in mine, can I feel that she is truly my child.'
"I fear greatly this zeal may prove infectious.
"And now, my dear Johns, in regard to the revelation to Adèle of what is written here,—of the whole truth, in short, for it must come out,—I haven't the heart or the courage to make it myself. I must throw myself on your charity. For Heaven's sake, tell the story as kindly as you can. Don't let her think too harshly of me. See to it, I pray, that my name don't become a bugbear in the village. I have pretty broad shoulders, and could bear it, if I only were to be sufferer; but I am sure 't would react fearfully on the sensibilities of poor Adèle. That sin is past cure and past preachment; no good can come from trumpeting wrath against it. Do me this favor, Johns, and you will find me a more willing listener in what is to come. I can't promise, indeed, to accept all your dogmas; there is a thick crust of the world on me, and I doubt if you could force them through it; but, for Adèle's sake, I think I could become a very orderly and presentable person, even for a New England meeting-house. I will make a beginning now by turning over the little property which you hold for Adèle, in trust, for disbursement in your parish charities. The dear child won't need it, and the parish may."
The Doctor was happy to be relieved of the worst part of the revelation; but he had yet to communicate the fact that the mother was still alive, and (what was to him worst of all) that she was imbruted with the delusions of the Romish Church. He chose his hour, and, meeting her upon the village street, asked her into his study.
"Adaly, your father is coming. He will be here within a month."
"At last! at last!" said she, with a cry of joy.
"But, Adaly," continued he, with great gravity, "I have perhaps led you into error. Your mother, Adaly,—your mother is still living."
"Living!" and an expression almost of radiance shot over the fair face. But in an instant it was gone. Was not the poor lady she had so religiously mourned over her mother? That death embrace and the tomb were, then, only solemn mockeries! With a frightful alertness her thought ran to them,—weighed them. "New Papa," said she, approaching him with a gravity that matched his own, "is this some new delusion? Is it true? Has he written me?"
"He has not written you, my child; but I have a letter, informing me of his marriage, and begging me to make the revelation to you as kindly as I might."
"Marriage! Marriage to whom?" says Adèle, her eyes flashing fire, and her lips showing a tempest of scarce controllable feeling.
"Marriage to your mother, Adaly. He would be just at last."
"O my God!" exclaimed Adèle, with a burst of tears. "It's false! I shall never see my mother again in this world. I know it! I know it!"
"But, Adaly, my child, consider!" said the old gentleman.
Adèle did not heed him. She was lost in her own griefs. She could only exclaim, "O my father! my father!"
The old Doctor was greatly moved; he laid down his spectacles, and paced up and down the room. The earnestness of her doubt made him almost believe that he was himself deceived.
"Can it be? can it be?" he muttered, half under breath, while Adèle sat drooping in her chair. "May be the instinct of the poor girl is right, after all," thought he,—"sin is so full of disguises."
At this moment there is a sharp tap at the door, and Miss Eliza steps in, the bearer of a letter from Reuben.
KILLED AT THE FORD
He is dead, the beautiful youth,
The heart of honor, the tongue of truth,—
He, the life and light of us all,
Whose voice was blithe as a bugle call,
Whom all eyes followed with one consent,
The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,
Hushed all murmurs of discontent.
Only last night, as we rode along
Down the dark of the mountain gap,
To visit the picket-guard at the ford,
Little dreaming of any mishap,
He was humming the words of some old song:
"Two red roses he had on his cap
And another he bore at the point of his sword."
Sudden and swift a whistling ball
Came out of a wood, and the voice was still;
Something I heard in the darkness fall,
And for a moment my blood grew chill;
I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks
In a room where some one is lying dead;
But he made no answer to what I said.
We lifted him up on his saddle again,
And through the mire and the mist and the rain
Carried him back to the silent camp,
And laid him as if asleep on his bed;
And I saw by the light of the surgeon's lamp
Two white roses upon his cheeks,
And one just over his heart blood-red!
And I saw in a vision how far and fleet
That fatal bullet went speeding forth,
Till it reached a town in the distant North,
Till it reached a house in a sunny street,
Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat
Without a murmur, without a cry;
And a bell was tolled in that far-off town,
For one who had passed from cross to crown,—
And the neighbors wondered that she should die.
THE LATE INSURRECTION IN JAMAICA
If Cuba be the Queen of the Antilles, then fairest of the sisterhood which adorn her regal state is Jamaica. A land of streams and mountains, from the one it derives almost inexhaustible fertility of valleys and plains; from the other, enchanting prospects, which challenge comparison with the scenery even of Tyrol and Switzerland. Tropical along its shores, temperate up its steep hills, the sun of Africa on its plains, the frosts of New England in its mountains, there is scarcely a luxury of the South or a comfort of the North which may not be cultivated to advantage somewhere within its borders. Here is the natural home of the sugar-cane; and it is scarcely a figure of speech to say that the sugar supply of the world might come from the teeming bosom of this little island. Here too are slopes of hills, and broad savannas, where "the grass may almost be seen growing," and where may be bred cattle fit to compete with the far-famed herds of England. The forests are full of mahogany and logwood. The surrounding waters swarm with fish of every variety, and of the finest flavor. Nominally, at least, the people are free and self-governed; and if, under propitious skies, the burdens either of the private home or of the state are heavy and crushing, it is because of mismanagement and not of necessity. To a casual observer, therefore, it would seem as if nowhere in the same space were gathered more elements of wealth, prosperity, and happiness than in Jamaica.
Yet Jamaica is poor and discontented, and from year to year is growing more miserable and more full of complaints. While on the little island of Barbadoes, which is flat and comparatively destitute of natural beauty, the inhabitant is proud to the verge of the ludicrous of his home, the Jamaican, dwelling amid scenes of perpetual loveliness, despises his native soil. And not without reason. For Jamaica presents that saddest and least flattering sight, a land sinking into hopeless ruin. Her plantations are left uncultivated. Her cities look time-worn and crumbling. Her fields, which once blossomed like the rose, are relapsing into the wilderness. She does not feed her people. She does not clothe them. She does not furnish them shelter. With three hundred and fifty thousand negroes she has not sufficient labor. With twenty thousand whites she has not employers enough who are capable of managing wisely and paying honestly what labor she has. With a soil which Nature has made one broad pasture, she does not raise the half of her own beef and pork. With plains which ought to be waving with luxuriant harvests of wheat and corn, her children are fed from our overflowing granaries. With woods filled with trees fit for building, she sends all the way to the Provinces for shingles, joist, and boards. On her two hundred swift, sparkling rivers there was not, in 1850, a single saw-mill. In an age of invention and labor-saving machines, the plough is to her a modern innovation; and her laborers still scratch the soil which they seek to till with tools of the Middle Ages. Even the production of sugar, to which she has sacrificed every other industrial interest, has sunk from the boasted hundred and fifty thousand hogsheads of the last century, to a meagre yearly crop of thirty thousand. Nine tenths of her proprietors are absentees. More than that proportion of her great estates are ruinously mortgaged. A tourist gives as the final evidence of exhaustion, that Jamaica has no amusements, no circus, no theatre, no opera, none of the pleasant trifles which surplus wealth creates.
Nor are the moral aspects any more encouraging. Slavery, dying, cursed the soil with its fatal bequest, contempt for labor; and the years which have elapsed since emancipation have done little or nothing to give to the toiler conscious dignity and worth. The bondsman, scarcely yet freed from all his chains, naturally enough thinks that, "if Massa will not work," it is the highest gentility in him not to work either, and sighs for a few acres whereon he may live in sluggish content. And his quondam master, left to his own resources, will not any more than before put his shoulder to the work; and, though sunk himself in sloth, ceases not to complain of another's indolence. The spirit of caste is still relentless. The white man despises the black man, and, if he can, cheats him and tramples upon him. The black man, in return, suspects and fears his old oppressor, and sometimes, goaded to desperation, turns upon him. A perpetual discontent has always brooded over Jamaica; and it is recorded that no less than thirty bloody rebellions have left their crimson stains on her ignoble annals.
It is in vain to inquire for the causes of this physical and moral decay. For every class has its special complaint, every traveller his favorite theory, and every political economist his sufficient explanation. But let the cause be what it may, the fact stands out black and repulsive. Jamaica, which came from the hand of the Creator a fair and well-watered garden, has presented for more than half a century that melancholy spectacle, too common in Equatorial America, of a land rich in every natural advantage, and yet through the misfortune or folly of its people plunged in poverty and misery.
The world at large had become tired of the griefs of Jamaica, and reconciled itself to her wretchedness as a foregone conclusion, when the events of last October lent a fresh and terrible interest to her history. An insurrection, including in its purpose the murder of every white man on the island, has been quenched in the blood of its leaders, say the Governor of Jamaica and his defenders. An insignificant riot has been followed by a wholesale and indiscriminate massacre, sparing not even the women and children, reply their opponents.
Admitting for a moment the whole planter theory of a general insurrection, the question inevitably arises, What are the causes which would prompt such a rebellion, and which, while they do not justify violence, furnish reasons why every humane mind should desire to treat with leniency the errors, and even the crimes, of an ignorant and oppressed race? The ordinary burden of the Jamaica negro is far from a light one. The yearly expense of his government is not less than a million dollars, or about three dollars for every man, woman, and child on the island. The executive and judicial departments are on a scale of expense which would befit a continent. The Governor receives a salary of forty thousand dollars, the Chief Justice fifteen thousand dollars, the Associate Justices ten thousand dollars. The ecclesiastical establishment, which ministers little or nothing to the religious wants of the colored race, absorbs another huge portion of the public revenue. And all this magnificence of expenditure in a population of twenty thousand bankrupt whites and three hundred and fifty thousand half-naked blacks. If, now, the negro believed that this burden was distributed evenly, he might bear it with patience. But he does not believe so. He is sure, on the contrary, that the white man, who controls legislation, so assesses the revenue that it shall relieve the rich and burden the poor. He tells you that the luxuries of the planter are admitted at a nominal duty, while the coarse fabrics with which he must clothe himself and family pay forty per cent; that while the planter's huge hogshead of seventeen hundred pounds' weight pays only an excise of three shillings, the hard-raised barrel of his home produce of two hundred pounds must pay two shillings; that every miserable mule-cart of the petty land-owner is subjected to eighteen shillings license, while the great ox-carts of the thousand-acre plantation go untaxed,—a law under which the number of little carts in one district sunk from five hundred to less than two hundred, and with it sunk who shall tell how much growing enterprise. These complaints may be unjust, but the negro believes in them, and they chafe and exasperate him.
Another important question is, What is the ability of the negro to bear these burdens? A defender of the planters gravely asserts "that the negro demands a price for his labor which would be exorbitant in any part of the world." What is that exorbitant price? An able-bodied agricultural laborer in Jamaica receives from eighteen to thirty cents a day; and, if he is both fortunate and industrious, may net for a year's work the fabulous sum of from fifty to eighty dollars. And this in a country which is one of the dearest in the world; where the necessaries of life are always at war prices; where flour is now twenty dollars a barrel, and eggs are fifty cents a dozen, and butter is forty cents a pound, and ham twenty-five, and beef and mutton still higher.
Did the laborer actually receive his pittance, his lot might be more tolerable. But it is the almost universal complaint, that, either from inability or disinclination, the planter does not keep his agreements. Sometimes the overseer, when the work has been done, and well done, arbitrarily retains a quarter, or even a half, of the stipulated wages. The negro says he has no chance for redress; that even a written agreement is worth no more than a blank paper, for the magistrates are either all planters, or their dependents, and have no ears to hear the cry of the lowly. Add now to all this the fact, that the last few seasons have been unfavorable to agriculture; that planters and peasants alike are even more than usually poor; that in whole districts the blacks are destitute, their children up to the age of ten or twelve years from absolute necessity going about stark naked, and their men and women wearing only rags and streamers, which do not preserve even the show of decency;—and is there not sufficient reason, not indeed to justify murder and arson, but why a whole race of suffering and excitable people should not be stamped as fiends in human shape for the outrages of a few of their number?
Turn now to the actual scene of conflict. In a little triangular tract of country on the east shore of Jamaica, hemmed in between the sea and the Blue Mountains, twenty-five miles long and two thirds as wide, occurred in October last what Governor Eyre has seen fit to dignify with the name of an insurrection. The first act of violence was committed at Morant Bay,—a town where it is said that no missionary to the blacks has been permitted to live for thirty-five years,—in the parish of St. Thomas in the East,—that very St. Thomas, possibly, whose court-house was called forty years ago the "hell of Jamaica," and where is preserved as a pleasant relic of the past a record book wherein the curious traveller reads the prices paid in the palmy days of slavery for cutting off the ears and legs, and slitting the noses, of runaway negroes. Had these negroes of Morant Bay any special causes of exasperation? They had. Their complaint was threefold. First, that the only magistrate who protected their interests had been arbitrarily removed. Second, that a plantation claimed by them to be deserted was as arbitrarily adjudged to be the rightful property of a white man. Third, that the plucking of fruit by the wayside, which had been a custom from time immemorial, and which resembled the plucking of ears of corn under the Jewish law, was by new regulations made a crime. Thus matters stood on the day of the outbreak; a general condition of poverty and discontent throughout the island; a special condition of exasperation in the parish of St. Thomas in the East, and particularly at Morant Bay.
On the 7th of last October, a negro was arrested for picking two cocoanuts, value threepence. This arrest had every exasperating condition. The fruit was taken from a plantation whose title was disputed, and upon which the negroes had squatted. The law which made the plucking of fruit a crime was itself peculiarly obnoxious. The magistrate before whom the offence was to be tried, rightly or wrongly, was accused by the blacks of gross partiality and injustice. The accused man was followed to the court by a crowd of his friends, armed, it is said, with clubs, though this latter statement seems to be doubtful. When a sentence of four shillings' fine, or, in default of payment, thirty days' imprisonment, was imposed, the award was received in silence. But when the costs were adjudged to be twelve shillings and sixpence, there were murmurs. Some tumultuously advised the man not to pay. Some, believing the case involved the title to the land, told him to appeal to a higher court. The magistrate ordered the arrest of all noisy persons. But these fled to the street, and, shielded by the citizens, escaped. The next day but one, six constables armed with a warrant proceeded to Stony Gut, the scene of the original arrest, to take into custody twenty-eight persons accused of riot. But they were forcibly resisted, handcuffed with their own irons, and forced ignominiously to take their way back. Some of the arrests, however, were made quietly a little time after.
On the 11th of October dawned an eventful day. The magistrates were assembled in the court-house at Morant Bay for the purpose of examining the prisoners. The court-house was guarded by twenty armed volunteers, a body apparently of local militia. Some four or five hundred excited blacks surrounded the court-house, armed with bludgeons, grasping stones. What led to a collision can never be known. Very probably missiles were thrown at the guard. At any rate the officer in command ordered them to fire upon the crowd, and fifteen of the rioters fell dead or wounded. Then all restraint was at an end. The negroes threw themselves with incredible fury upon the guard, drove them into the court-house, summoned them to surrender at discretion, then set fire to the building, and murdered, with many circumstances of atrocity, the unhappy inmates, as they sought to flee. Sixteen were killed, and eighteen wounded, while a few escaped unharmed, by the help of the negroes themselves. This was the beginning and the end of the famous armed insurrection, so far as it ever was armed insurrection. The rioters dispersed. The spirit of insubordination spread to the plantations. There was general confusion, some destruction of property, some robbery. The whites were filled with alarm. Many left all and fled. The most exaggerated reports obtained credence. But if we except a Mr. Hine, who had rendered himself especially unpopular, and who was murdered on his plantation, not one white man appears to have been killed in cold blood, and not one white woman or child suffered from violence of any sort. Facts to the contrary may yet come to light. Official reports may reveal some secret chapter of bloodshed. But the chances of such a revelation are small enough. Three months have elapsed since the first tidings of the outbreak reached the mother country. There has been a great excitement; investigation has been demanded; facts have been called for; the defenders of the planters have been defied to produce facts. Meanwhile the Governor of Jamaica has written home repeated despatches; the commander of the military forces which crushed the rebellion has visited England; the planters' journals have come laden with vulgar abuse of the negro, and with all sorts of evil surmises as to his motives and purposes; letters have been received from Jamaica from persons in every position in life; and still no new facts,—not so much as one clear accusation of any further fatal violence. The conclusion is irresistible, that this was a riot, and not an insurrection; and that it began and ended, so far as armed force was concerned, at Morant Bay, on that unhappy day, the 11th of last October.
It cannot be denied that the occurrences of that day were marked by some circumstances of painful ferocity. Men were literally hacked to pieces, crying for mercy. One man's tongue was cut from his mouth even while he lived. Another, escaping, was thrown back into the burning building, and roasted to death. The joints of the hand of the dead chief magistrate were dissevered by the blacks, who cried out exultingly, "This hand will write no more lying despatches to the Queen." But the events of that day were marked also by instances of humanity. The clerk of the court was rescued by his negro servant, who thrust him beneath the floor, and, watching his opportunity, conveyed him to the shelter of the woods next morning. A child, who happened to be with his father in the court-house, was snatched up by a negro woman, who, at the risk of her own life, carried him to a place of safety. But admitting the worst charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the restraints of self-control and the law are thrown off.
With a people so excitable as the blacks of Jamaica, and among whom there existed so many causes of disaffection, the greatest promptitude of action was a virtue. Had Governor Eyre marched with a military force into the district, had he crushed out every vestige of armed resistance, had he brought before proper tribunals and punished with severity all persons who were convicted of any complicity in these outrages, he would have merited the praise of every good man. What he did was to let loose upon a little district, unmuzzled, the dogs of war. What he did was to gather from all quarters an armed force, a motley crew, regulars and militia, sailors and landsmen, black and white, and permit them to hold for fourteen long days a saturnalia of blood. What he did was to summon the savage Maroon tribes to the feast of death, that by their barbaric warfare they might add yet one more shade of gloom to the picture. The official accounts are enough to blanch the cheek with horror. In two days after the riot martial law was declared. In four, the outbreak was hemmed into narrow quarters. In a week, it ceased to exist in any shape. Yet the work of death went on. Bands of maddened soldiers pierced the country in every direction. Men were arrested upon the slightest suspicion. Every petty officer constituted himself a judge; every private soldier became an executioner. If the black man fled, he was shot as a rebel; if he surrendered, he was hung on the same pretext, after the most summary trial. If the number of prisoners became inconveniently large, they were shot, or else whipped and let go, apparently according to the whim of the officer in command. Women were seized, stripped half naked, and thrown among the vulgar soldiery to be scourged. The estimate is that five hundred and fifty were hung by order of drum-head court-martials, five hundred destroyed by the Maroons, two thousand shot by the soldiery, and that three hundred women were catted, and how many men nobody presumes even to guess. One asks, At what expense of life to the victors was all this slaughter accomplished? And he reads, that not one soldier was killed, that not one soldier was wounded, that not one soldier received so much as a scratch, unless from the bushes through which he pursued his human prey. It was not war: it was a massacre. These poor people fled like panic-struck sheep, and the soldiery tracked them like wolves. The human heart could wish to take refuge in incredulity, but alas! the worst testimony of all is found in the official reports of the actors themselves.
