In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories Page 11

  A CHEAP NIGGER.

  I.

  "Have you seen the Clayville Dime?"

  Moore chucked me a very shabby little sheet of printed matter. Itfluttered feebly in the warm air, and finally dropped on my recumbentframe. I was lolling in a hammock in the shade of the verandah.

  I did not feel much inclined for study, but I picked up the ClayvilleDime and lazily glanced at that periodical, while Moore relapsed into thepages of Ixtlilxochitl. He was a literary character for a planter, hadbeen educated at Oxford (where I made his acquaintance), and hadinherited from his father, with a large collection of Indian and Mexicancuriosities, a taste for the ancient history of the New World.

  Sometimes I glanced at the newspaper; sometimes I looked out at thepleasant Southern garden, where the fountain flashed and fell amongweeping willows, and laurels, orange-trees, and myrtles.

  "Hullo!" I cried suddenly, disturbing Moore's Aztec researches, "here isa queer affair in the usually quiet town of Clayville. Listen to this;"and I read aloud the following "par," as I believe paragraphs are styledin newspaper offices:--

  "'Instinct and Accident.--As Colonel Randolph was driving through our town yesterday and was passing Captain Jones's sample-room, where the colonel lately shot Moses Widlake in the street, the horses took alarm and started violently downhill. The colonel kept his seat till rounding the corner by the Clayville Bank, when his wheels came into collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently shot out. He is now lying in a very precarious condition. This may relieve Tom Widlake of the duty of shooting the colonel in revenge for his father. It is commonly believed that Colonel Randolph's horses were maddened by the smell of the blood which has dried up where old Widlake was shot. Much sympathy is felt for the colonel. Neither of the horses was injured.'"

  "Clayville appears to be a lively kind of place," I said. "Do you oftenhave shootings down here?"

  "We do," said Moore, rather gravely; "it is one of our institutions withwhich I could dispense."

  "And do you 'carry iron,' as the Greeks used to say, or 'go heeled,' asyour citizens express it?"

  "No, I don't; neither pistol nor knife. If any one shoots me, he shootsan unarmed man. The local bullies know it, and they have some scrupleabout shooting in that case. Besides, they know I am an awkward customerat close quarters."

  Moore relapsed into his Mexican historian, and I into the newspaper.

  "Here is a chance of seeing one of your institutions at last," I said.

  I had found an advertisement concerning a lot of negroes to be sold thatvery day by public auction in Clayville. All this, of course, was"before the war."

  "Well, I suppose you ought to see it," said Moore, rather reluctantly. Hewas gradually emancipating his own servants, as I knew, and was evensuspected of being a director of "the Underground Railroad" to Canada.

  "Peter," he cried, "will you be good enough to saddle three horses andbring them round?"

  Peter, a "darkey boy" who had been hanging about in the garden, grinnedand went off. He was a queer fellow, Peter, a plantation humourist, welltaught in all the then unpublished lore of "Uncle Remus." Peter had away of his own, too, with animals, and often aided Moore in collectingobjects of natural history.

  "Did you get me those hornets, Peter?" said Moore, when the blackreturned with the horses.

  "Got 'em safe, massa, in a little box," replied Peter, who then mountedand followed at a respectful distance as our squire.

  Without many more words we rode into the forest which lay betweenClayville and Moore's plantation. Through the pine barrens ran the road,and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers. Thesweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance ofhoneysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfectblossom. Here and there an aloe reminded me that we were not at home,and dwarf palms and bayonet palmettoes, with the small pointed leaf ofthe "live oak," combined to make the scenery look foreign and unfamiliar.There was a soft haze in the air, and the sun's beams only painted, as itwere, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road wascanopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on allthe boughs.

  The trees grew thinner as the road approached the town. Dusty were theways, and sultry the air, when we rode into Clayville and were making for"the noisy middle market-place." Clayville was but a small border town,though it could then boast the presence of a squadron of cavalry, sentthere to watch the "border ruffians." The square was neither large norcrowded, but the spectacle was strange and interesting to me. Men whohad horses or carts to dispose of were driving or riding about, noisilyproclaiming the excellence of their wares. But buyers were moreconcerned, like myself, with the slave-market. In the open air, in themiddle of the place, a long table was set. The crowd gathered roundthis, and presented types of various sorts of citizens. The common "meanwhite" was spitting and staring--a man fallen so low that he had nonigger to wallop, and was thus even more abject, because he had nonatural place and functions in local society, than the slaves themselves.The local drunkard was uttering sagacities to which no mortal attended.Two or three speculators were bidding on commission, and there were a fewplanters, some of them mounted, and a mixed multitude of tradesmen,loafers, bar-keepers, newspaper reporters, and idlers in general. Ateither end of the long table sat an auctioneer, who behaved with thetraditional facetiousness of the profession. As the "lots" came on forsale they mounted the platform, generally in family parties. A partywould fetch from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, according toits numbers and "condition." The spectacle was painful and monstrous.Most of the "lots" bore the examination of their points with a kind ofplacid dignity, and only showed some little interest when the biddingsgrew keen and flattered their pride.

  The sale was almost over, and we were just about to leave, when a howl ofderision from the mob made us look round. What _I_ saw was theapparition of an extremely aged and debilitated black man standing on thetable. What Moore saw to interest him I could not guess, but he grewpale and uttered an oath of surprise under his breath, though he rarelyswore. Then he turned his horse's head again towards the auctioneer.That merry tradesman was extolling the merits of nearly his last lot. "Avery remarkable specimen, gentlemen! Admirers of the antique cannotdispense with this curious nigger--very old and quite imperfect. Like somany of the treasures of Greek art which have reached us, he has had themisfortune to lose his nose and several of his fingers. How much offeredfor this exceptional lot--unmarried and without encumbrances of any kind?He is dumb too, and may be trusted with any secret."

  "Take him off!" howled some one in the crowd.

  "Order his funeral!"

  "Chuck him into the next lot."

  "What, gentlemen, _no_ bids for this very eligible nigger? With a fewmore rags he would make a most adequate scarecrow."

  While this disgusting banter was going on I observed a planter ride up toone of the brokers and whisper for some time in his ear. The planter wasa bad but unmistakable likeness of my friend Moore, worked over, so tospeak, with a loaded brush and heavily glazed with old Bourbon whisky.After giving his orders to the agent he retired to the outskirts of thecrowd, and began flicking his long dusty boots with a serviceable cowhidewhip.

  "Well, gentlemen, we must really adopt the friendly suggestion of JudgeLee and chuck this nigger into the next lot."

  So the auctioneer was saying, when the broker to whom I have referredcried out, "Ten dollars."

  "_This_ is more like business," cried the auctioneer. "Ten dollarsoffered! What amateur says more than ten dollars for this lot? Hisextreme age and historical reminiscences alone, if he could communicatethem, would make him invaluable to the student."

  To my intense amazement Moore shouted from horseback, "Twenty dollars."

  "What, _you_ want a cheap nigger to get your hand in, do you, you blank-blanked abolitionist?" cried a man who stood near. He was a big, dirty-lo
oking bully, at least half drunk, and attending (not unnecessarily) tohis toilet with the point of a long, heavy knife.

  Before the words were out of his mouth Moore had leaped from his horseand delivered such a right-handed blow as that wherewith the wanderingbeggar-man smote Irus of old in the courtyard of Odysseus, Laertes' son."On his neck, beneath the ear, he smote him, and crushed in the bones;and the red blood gushed up through his mouth, and he gnashed his teethtogether as he kicked the ground." Moore stooped, picked up the bowie-knife, and sent it glittering high through the air.

  "Take him away," he said, and two rough fellows, laughing, carried thebully to the edge of the fountain that played in the corner of thesquare. He was still lying crumpled up there when we rode out ofClayville.

  The bidding, of course, had stopped, owing to the unaffected interestwhich the public took in this more dramatic interlude. The broker, it istrue, had bid twenty-five dollars, and was wrangling with the auctioneer.

  "You have my bid, Mr. Brinton, sir, and there is no other offer. Knockdown the lot to me."

  "You wait your time, Mr. Isaacs," said the auctioneer. "No man can dotwo things at once and do them well. When Squire Moore has settled withDick Bligh he will desert the paths of military adventure for the calmerand more lucrative track of commercial enterprise."

  The auctioneer's command of long words was considerable, and wasobviously of use to him in his daily avocations.

  When he had rounded his period, Moore was in the saddle again, and noddedsilently to the auctioneer.

  "Squire Moore bids thirty dollars. Thirty dollars for this once despisedbut now appreciated fellow-creature," rattled on the auctioneer.

  The agent nodded again.

  "Forty dollars bid," said the auctioneer.

  "Fifty," cried Moore.

  The broker nodded.

  "Sixty."

  The agent nodded again.

  The bidding ran rapidly up to three hundred and fifty dollars.

  The crowd were growing excited, and had been joined by every child in thetown, by every draggled and sunburnt woman, and the drinking-bar haddisgorged every loafer who felt sober enough to stay the distance to thecentre of the square.

  My own first feelings of curiosity had subsided. I knew how strong andburning was Moore's hatred of oppression, and felt convinced that hemerely wished at any sacrifice of money to secure for this old negro somepeaceful days and a quiet deathbed.

  The crowd doubtless took the same obvious view of the case as I did, andwas now eagerly urging on the two competitors.

  "Never say die, Isaacs."

  "Stick to it, Squire; the nigger's well worth the dollars."

  So they howled, and now the biddings were mounting towards one thousanddollars, when the sulky planter rode up to the neighbourhood of thetable--much to the inconvenience of the "gallery"--and whispered to hisagent. The conference lasted some minutes, and at the end of it theagent capped Moore's last offer, one thousand dollars, with a bid of onethousand two hundred.

  "Fifteen hundred," said Moore, amidst applause.

  "Look here, Mr. Knock-'em-down," cried Mr. Isaacs: "it's hot and thirstywork sitting, nodding here; I likes my ease on a warm day; so just youreckon that I see the Squire, and go a hundred dollars more as long as Ihold up my pencil."

  He stuck a long gnawed pencil erect between his finger and thumb, andstared impertinently at Moore. The Squire nodded, and the bidding wenton in this silent fashion till the bids had actually run up to threethousand four hundred dollars. All this while the poor negro, whoselimbs no longer supported him, crouched in a heap on the table, turninghis haggard eye alternately on Moore and on the erect and motionlesspencil of the broker. The crowd had become silent with excitement.Unable to stand the heat and agitation, Moore's unfriendly brother hadcrossed the square in search of a "short drink." Moore nodded once more.

  "Three thousand six hundred dollars bid," cried the auctioneer, andlooked at Isaacs.

  With a wild howl Isaacs dashed his pencil in the air, tossed up hishands, and thrust them deep down between his coat collar and his body,uttering all the while yells of pain.

  "Don't you bid, Mr. Isaacs?" asked the auctioneer, without receiving anyanswer except Semitic appeals to holy Abraham, blended with Aryanprofanity.

  "Come," said Moore very severely, "his pencil is down, and he haswithdrawn his bid. There is no other bidder; knock the lot down to me."

  "No more offers?" said the auctioneer slowly, looking all round thesquare.

  There were certainly no offers from Mr. Isaacs, who now was bounding likethe gad-stung Io to the furthest end of the place.

  "This fine buck-negro, warranted absolutely unsound of wind and limb,going, going, a shameful sacrifice, for a poor three thousand six hundreddollars. Going, going--gone!"

  The hammer fell with a sharp, decisive sound.

  A fearful volley of oaths rattled after the noise, like thunder rollingaway in the distance.

  Moore's brother had returned from achieving a "short drink" just in timeto see his coveted lot knocked down to his rival.

  We left the spot, with the negro in the care of Peter, as quickly asmight be.

  "I wonder," said Moore, as we reached the inn and ordered a trap to carryour valuable bargain home in--"I wonder what on earth made Isaacs run offlike a maniac."

  "Massa," whispered Peter, "yesterday I jes' caught yer Brer Horneta-loafin' around in the wood. 'Come wi' me,' says I, 'and bottled him inthis yer pasteboard box,'" showing one which had held Turkish tobacco."When I saw that Hebrew Jew wouldn't stir his pencil, I jes' crept upsoftly and dropped Brer Hornet down his neck. Then he jes' rose andwent. Spec's he and Brer Hornet had business of their own."

  "Peter," said Moore, "you are a good boy, but you will come to a badend."