He had pledged his word to marry a rich heiress, and great trouble to both sides of their noble families wuz goin’ to take place and ensue if he did not go, and his own family wuz goin’ to be disgraced and dishonored if he did not keep his word.

Wall, men are often led to do things that at first they shrink from in mortal horror—yes, and wimmen are too.

De Chasseny vowed that he would not leave the woman he loved and the little girl they both worshipped, not for any reason—not for father, nor pride, nor for honor.

But he did. He left her, with plenty of money though, as it wuz spozed, and a broken heart, a ruined life, and a hoard of bitter-sweet and agonizin’ memories to haunt her for the rest of her days.

She wuz a lovin’-hearted woman bound up in the man she loved—the man she had forsaken honor and peace of mind for.

There wuz no marriage—there could be none between a white man and a woman with any colored blood in her veins.

So in the eyes of the world and the law he wuz not guilty when he left her and married a pure young girl.

Whether he wuz found guilty at that other bar where the naked souls of men and wimmen stand to be judged, I don’t spoze his rich and titled friends ever thought to ask themselves.

Anyway, he left Madeline and little Genieve—for so he had named the child after an old friend of his—he left them and sailed off for France and the new life to be lived out in the eyes of the world, where Happiness and gratified Ambition seemed to carry the torches to light him on his way.

Whether there wuz any other attendants who waited on him, a holdin’ up dim-burnin’ lamps to light him as he walked down Memory’s aisles, I don’t know, but I should dare presume to say there wuz.

I should presume to say that in the still night hours, when the palace lights burned low and the garlands and the feast robes put away for a spell, and his fair young wife wuz sleepin’ peacefully at his side—I should presume to say that these black-robed attendants, that are used to lightin’ folks down dark pathways, led him back to love—first, true, sweet love—and Madeline, and that under their cold, onsympathizin’ eyes he stayed there for some time.

As for Madeline, she wuz stunned and almost senseless by the blow, and wuz for a long time. Then she had a long sickness, and when she come to herself she seemed to be ponderin’ some deep thought all to herself.

The nurse who was watchin’ with her testified that she dropped to sleep one mornin’ before daylight, and when she woke up her patient wuz gone, and the child.

She had some money that her old mistress had give her from time to time, and that she had never had to use; that wuz taken, with some valuable jewelry too that that kind old friend had give her—for she had loved to set off her favorite’s dark beauty with the light of precious stones—all these wuz taken; but every article that Monseur De Chasseny had give her wuz left. And all the money that he left for her not a penny wuz ever called for. She disappeared as if she had never been; lawyers and detectives, hired, it wuz spozed, by De Chasseny, could find no trace of her.

There wuz a good, fatherly old missionary in the little settlement near by who might perhaps have given some information if he had wanted to; but they never thought of askin’ him, and they would have been no wiser if they had, most probable.

But about this time a woman in deep mournin’, with a beautiful young child, come to the little hamlet near Belle Fanchon.

She said she wuz a colored woman, though no one would have believed it.

The good priest in charge of the Mission—Father Gasperin—he seemed to know sunthin’ about her; he had a brother who wuz a priest in South Carolina. He got her employment as a nurse after her health improved a little.

She bought a little cottage and lived greatly respected by all classes, black and white, and nursed ’em both to the best of her abilities—some for nuthin’ and some at about a dollar a day.

But her earnest sympathies, her heart-felt affection wuz with the black race. She worked for their good and advancement in every way with a zeal that looked almost as if she wuz tryin’ to atone for some awful mistake in the past—as if she wuz tryin’ to earn forgiveness for forsakin’ her mother’s race for the white people, who wuz always faithless to her race, only when selfishness guided them—who would take the service of their whole life and strength, as if it belonged to ’em; who would take them up as a plaything to divert an hour’s leisure, and then throw the worthless thing down agin.

Her whole heart wuz bent upon the good of her mother’s people. She worked constantly for their advancement and regeneration. She bore their intolerable burdens for ’em, she agonized under their unexampled wrongs. She exhorted ’em to become Christians, to study, to learn to guide themselves aright; she besought ’em to elevate themselves by all means in their power.

She became a very earnest Christian; she went about doin’ good; she studied her Bible much. The Book that in her bright days of happiness she had slighted became to her now the lamp of her life.

Most of all did this heart-broken soul, who had bid good-bye to all earthly happiness, love the weird prophecies of St. John the Evangelist.

She loved to read of the BelovÉd City, and the sights that he saw, to her become realities. She said she saw visions in the night as she looked up from dyin’ faces into the high heavens—she foretold events. Her prophetic sayin’s became almost as inspired revelations to them about her.

She said she heard voices talkin’ to her out of the skies and the darkness, and I don’t know but she did—I don’t feel like disputin’ it either way; besides, I wuzn’t there.

But as I wuz a sayin’, from what I wuz told, the little girl, Genieve, inheritin’ as she did her mother’s imaginative nature and her father’s bright mind and wit, and contemplatin’ her mother’s daily life of duty and self-sacrifice, and bein’ brought up as she wuz under the very eaves of the New Jerusalem her mother wuz always readin’ about, it is no wonder that she grew up like a posy—that while its roots are in the earth its tall flowers open and wave in the air of Eden.

The other world, the land unseen but near, became more of a reality to her than this. “The voices” her mother said she heard was to her real and true as the voice of good Father Gasperin, who preached in the little chapel every month.

The future of her mother’s race wuz to her plain and distinct, lit with light failin’ from the new heavens on the new earth that she felt awaited her people.

The inspired prophecies to her pointed to their redemption and the upbuilding of a New Republic, where this warm-hearted, emotional, beauty-lovin’ race should come to their own, and, civilized and enlightened, become a great people, a nation truly brought out of great tribulations.

She grew up unlike any other girl, more beautiful than any other—so said every one who saw her. A mind different from any other—impractical perhaps, but prophetic, impassioned, delicate, sorrowful, inspired.

When she became old enough she followed her mother’s callin’ of nursin’ the sick, and it seemed indeed as if her slight hands held the gift of healin’ in them, so successful wuz she.

Guarded by her mother as daintily as if she wuz the daughter of a queen, she grew up to womanhood as innocent as Eve wuz when the garden wuz new.

She turned away almost in disgust from the attention of young men, white or colored.

But about a year before I went to Belle Fanchon she had met her king. And to her, truly, Victor wuz a crowned monarch. And the love that sprung up in both their hearts the moment they looked in each other’s eyes wuz as high and pure and ideal an attachment as wuz ever felt by man or woman.

Victor wuz the son of a white man and a colored woman, but he showed the trace of his mother’s ancestry as little as did Genieve.

His mother wuz a handsome mulatto woman, the nurse and constant attendant of the wife of Col. Seybert, whose handsome place, Seybert Court, could jest be seen from the veranda of Belle Fanchon.

Col. Seybert owned this plantation, but he had been abroad with his family many years, and in the States further South, where he also owned property.

He had come back to Seybert Court only a few months before Thomas J. bought Belle Fanchon.

Mrs. Seybert wuz a good woman, and in a long illness she had soon after her marriage she had been nursed so faithfully by Phyllis, Victor’s mother, that she had become greatly attached to her; and Phyllis and her only child, Victor, had attended the Colonel and his wife in all their wanderings. Indeed, Mrs. Seybert often said and felt, Heaven knows, that she could not live if Phyllis left her.

And Victor wuz his mother’s idol, and to be near her and give her comfort wuz one of the reasons why he endured his hard life with Col. Seybert.

For his master wuz not a good man. He wuz hard, haughty, implacable. He wuz attached to Victor much as a manufacturer would be to an extra good piece of machinery by which his gains wuz enhanced.

Victor wuz an exceptionally good servant; he watched over his employer’s interests, he wuz honest amongst a retinue of dishonest ones. He saved his employer’s money when many of his feller-servants seemed to love to throw it away. His keen intelligence and native loyalty and honesty found many ways of advancin’ his master’s interests, and he helped him in so many ways that Col. Seybert had come to consider his services invaluable to him.

Still, and perhaps he thought it wuz the best way to make Victor feel his place and not consider himself of more consequence than he wuz—and it wuzn’t in the nater of Col. Seybert to be anything but mean, mean as pusley, and meaner—

Anyway, he treated Victor with extreme insolence, and cruelty, and brutality. Mebby he thought that if he didn’t “hold the lines tight,” as he called it, Victor might make disagreeable demands upon his purse, or his time, or in some way seek for a just recognition of his services.

Col. Seybert, too, drank heavily, which might perhaps be some excuse for his brutality, but made it no easier for Victor to endure.

At such times Col. Seybert wuz wont to address Victor as “his noble brother,” and order his “noble brother” to take off his boots, or put them on, or carry him upstairs, or perform still more menial services for him, he swearin’ at him roundly all the time, and mixin’ his oaths with whatever vile and contemptible epithets he could think of—and he could think of a good many.

And perhaps it did not make it easier for Victor to obey him that he told the truth in his drunken babble. Victor wuz his brother, and they two wuz the only descendants of the gallant old Gen. Seybert, the handsomest, the wittiest, the bravest and the most courtly man of his day.

He went down to the grave the owner of many hundred slaves, the husband of a fair young bride, and the father of two children, one the only son of his pretty Northern bride, the other the son of his mother’s maid.

And what made matters still more complicated and hard to understand, to this unowned, despised son had descended all the bright wit and philosophical mind, and suave, gentle, courteous manners of this fine gentleman Gen. Seybert; and to the son and legal heir of all his wealth, not a bit of his father’s sense, bright mind, and good manners.

One of his maternal great-uncles had been a rich, new-made man of low tastes and swaggerin’, aggressive manners. It wuz a sad thing that these inherited traits and tastes should just bound over one gentlemanly generation and swoop down upon the downy, lace-festooned cradle of this only son and heir—but they did.

All the nobility of mind, the grace, the kindly consideration for others, and the manly beauty, all fell as a dower to the little lonely baby smuggled away like an accursed thing, in his maternal grandmother’s little whitewashed cabin.

To the young heir, Reginald, fell some hundreds of thousands of dollars, two or three plantations, and an honored name and place in society, the tastes of a pot-boy, the mind and habits of a clown, the swaggerin’, boastin’ cruelty of an American Nero.

Col. Seybert drove and swore, and threatened his negroes as his great-uncle Wiggins drove the white operatives in his big Northern factory, kept them at starvation wages, and piled up his money-bags over the prostrate forms of gaunt, overworked men and women, and old young children, who earned his money out of their own hopeless youth; with one hand dropped gold into his coffers, and with the other dug shallow graves that they filled too soon.

Northern cupidity and avarice, Southern avarice and cupidity, equally ugly in God’s sight, so we believe.

It wuz indeed strange that to Reginald should descend all the great-uncle’s traits and none of his father’s, only the passionate impulses that marred an otherwise almost faultless character; and to Victor, the cast-off, ignored son, should descend all the courtly graces inherited from a long line of illustrious ancestors, and all the brilliant qualities of mind too that made old Gen. Seybert’s name respected and admired wherever known.

His sin in regard to Victor’s mother wuz a sin directly traceable to the influence of Slavery. As the deeds a man commits when in liquor can be followed back to that source, so could this cryin’ sin be traced directly back to the Slave regime.

It wuz but one berry off of the poisonous Upas-tree of Slavery that gloomily shadowed the beautiful South land, and darkens it yet, Heaven knows.

The top of this tree may have been lowered a little by the burnin’ fires of war, but the deep roots remain; and as time and a false sense of security relaxes the watch kept over it, the poison shoots spring up and the land is plagued by its thorny branches, its impassable, thick undergrowth.

The tree may be felled to the earth before it springs up agin with a more dangerous, vigorous growth and destroys the hull nation.

So Cousin John Richard said; but I don’t know whether it will or not, and Josiah don’t.

But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom and continue on.

Reginald Seybert wuz tolerably good-lookin’ in an aggressive, florid style, and he had plenty of boldness and wealth. And some, or all of these qualities, made it possible for him to marry a good woman of an impoverished but aristocratic Southern family.

The marriage wuz a sudden one—he did not give the young lady time to change her mind. He met her at a fashionable watering-place where they wuz both strangers, and, as I said, he give her no time to repent her choice.

After the honeymoon trip and her husband brought her to his home, she heard many strange things she had been kept in ignorance of—amongst them this pitiful story of Victor and his mother—and being what she wuz, a good, tender-hearted woman, with high ideals and pure and charitable impulses—perhaps it wuz this that made her so good to Victor’s mother, so thoughtful and considerate of him, and that made her, during her husband’s long absences on his wild sprees, give him every benefit of teachers and opportunity to study.

And Victor almost worshipped his gentle mistress, his unhappy mistress, for it could not be otherwise, that after she knew him well, her feelin’s for her husband could hardly have been stronger than pity. Perhaps after a time aversion and disgust crept in, and as she had no children or brothers of her own, she grew strongly attached to Phyllis and to Victor, the only relative—for so this strange woman called him in her thoughts—the only relative near her who wuz kind to her.

For as her beauty faded, worn away by the anguished, feverish beatings of a sad heart, Col. Seybert grew cruel and brutal to her also. It was not in his nature to be kind to anything, or to value anything that did not minister to his selfishness. He lived only for the gratification of his appetites and his ambition.

He prized Victor, as we said, as a manufacturer would prize an extra good loom, on which valuable cloth might be woven, and which would bear any amount of extra pressure on occasion.

Victor’s loyal affection and gratitude to his mistress, and his determination to shield her all he could from her husband’s brutality, and his love for his mother, made him conceal from them all he could the fiendish cruelties his master sometimes inflicted upon him.

Old Gen. Seybert had been noted all his brilliant life for his tender consideration and thoughtful courtesy towards women, and his desire to shield them from all possible annoyance.

His son Victor had this trait also, added to the warm-hearted gratitude of his mother’s race towards one who befriends them.

Many a time did he carry a scarred back and a smilin’ face into the presence of his mother and mistress.

Many a time did he voluntarily absent himself from them for days, or until the bruises had healed that some too skilfully aimed missile had inflicted upon him.

But soon after he came to Belle Fanchon, and after he had met and loved Genieve, Col. Seybert’s treatment became so unendurable that Victor begged of his mother to go away with him, tellin’ her he could now earn a good livin’ for her; and he had dreams, hardly formulated to himself then, of the future of his mother’s race. They lay in his heart as seeds lie in the dark ground, waitin’ for the time to spring up—they were germinatin’, waitin’ for the dawn to waken them to rich luxuriance.

But his mother felt that she could not leave her kind mistress in her lonely troubles, and she entreated him prayerfully that he would not leave her, “and she could not go away and leave Miss Alice with that tyrant and murderer”—for so she called Col. Seybert in her wrath.

And his mistress’s anguished entreaties that he would not leave her, for she felt that she had but a little time to live, her health was failin’ all the time—

“And the blessed lamb would die without us anyway,” his mother would say to Victor—

And all these arguments added to his loyal desire to befriend this gentle mistress who had educated him and done for him all she could have done for son or brother—all these arguments caused him to stay on.

But after comin’ to Seybert Court, Victor had given Col. Seybert another opportunity to empty the vials of his wrath upon him.

Victor had a bosom friend, a young man in about the same circumstances that he wuz—only this friend, Felix Ward, had lived with a kind master and mistress durin’ his childhood and early youth.

His father and mother wuz both dead; his father bein’ killed in the war, and his mother soon followin’ him.

He wuz an intelligent negro, with no white blood in his veins, so far as he knew. Felix, for so he had been named when he looked like a tiny black doll, by his young mistress, to whom the world looked so happy and prosperous that everything assumed a roseate hue to her.

Her faithful servant, his mother, brought the little image in ebony to her room to show it to her, jest after she had read the letter from the man she loved askin’ her to be his wife.

She wuz happy; the world looked bright and prosperous to her. She gave the little pickaninny this name for a good omen—Felix: happy, prosperous.

But alas! though the pretty young mistress prospered well in her love and her life while it lasted, the poor little baby she had named had better have been called Infelix, so infelicitous had been his life—or, that is, the latter part of it.

For awhile, while he wuz quite young, it seemed as if his name would stand him in good stead and bring good fortune with it. For being owned till her death by this same gentle young mistress and her husband, both, like so many Southerners, so much better than the system they represented, they helped him, seein’ his brightness and intelligence, to an education, and afterwards through their influence he wuz placed at Hampton School, and at their death, which occurred very suddenly in a scourge of yeller fever, they left him a little money.

At Hampton School he got a good education, and learned the carpenter’s trade. And it wuz at Seybert Court, which wuz bein’ repaired, and he wuz one of the workmen, that Victor and he become such close friends.

Victor had come on to superintend some of the work that wuz bein’ done there to fit the place for the reception of his master’s family, who wuz at that time in New Orleans. And these two young men wuz together several months and become close friends. They wuz related on their mother’s side, and they wuz joined together in that closer, subtler relationship of kindred tastes, feelings, and aspirations.

He finally bought a little carpenter’s shop and settled down to work at his trade in the little hamlet of Eden Centre, where he soon after married a pretty mulatto girl, the particular friend of Genieve.

With the remains of the money his mistress had left him he bought a little cottage—or, that is, this money partly paid for it, and he thought that with his good health and good trade he could soon finish up the payment and own his own home.

It wuz a pretty cottage, but fallen into disorder and ruinous looks, through poor tenants; but his skilful hands and his labor of love soon made it over into a perfect gem of a cottage.

And there he and his pretty young wife Hester had spent two most happy years, when Col. Seybert come into the neighborhood to live, and his roamin’ fancy soon singled out Hester for a victim.

She had been lady’s maid in a wealthy, refined family, and her ladylike manners and pretty ways wuz as attractive as her face. She loved her husband, and wuz constant to him with all the fidelity of a lovin’ woman’s heart, and Col. Seybert she detested with all the force of her nature; but Col. Seybert wuz not one to give way to such a slight obstacle as a lawful husband.

He thought if Felix wuz out of the way the course of his untrue love would run comparatively smooth. Why, it seemed to him to be the height of absurdity that a “nigger” should stand in the way of his wishes.

Why, it wuz aginst all the traditions of his race and the entire Southern Aristocracy that so slight things as a husband’s honor and wife’s loyalty should dare oppose the lawless passions of a white gentleman.

Of course, so reasoned Col. Seybert; the war had made a difference in terms and enactments, but that wuz about all. The white race wuz still unconquered in their passion and their arrogance, and the black race wuz still under their feet; he could testify to the truth of this by his own lawless life full of deeds of unbridled license and cruelty.

So, wantin’ Victor out of the way, and bein’ exceedingly wroth aginst him, it wuz easy to persuade certain ignorant poor whites, and the dispensers of what they called law, that Felix wuz altogether too successful for a nigger.

He owned a horse, too, an almost capital offence in some parts of the South.

He had worked overhours to buy this pet animal for Hester’s use as well as his own. Many a hundred hard hours’ labor, when he wuz already tired out, had he given for the purchase money of this little animal.

It wuz a pretty, cream-colored creeter, so gentle that it would come up to the palin’ and eat little bits that Hester would carry out to it after every meal, with little Ned toddlin’ along by her side; and it wuz one of the baby boy’s choicest rewards for good behavior to be lifted up by the side of the kind-faced creeter and pat the glossy skin with his little fat hands.

This horse seemed to Felix and Hester to be endowed with an almost human intelligence, and come next to little Ned, their only child, in their hearts.

And Hester had herself taken in work and helped to pay for the plain buggy in which she rode out with her boy, and carried Felix to and from his work when he wuz employed some distance from his home.

But no matter how honestly he had earned this added comfort, no matter how hard they had both worked for it and how they enjoyed it—

“It wuz puttin’ on too much damned style for a nigger!”

This wuz Col. Seybert’s decree, echoed by many a low, brutal, envious mind about him, encased in black and white bodies.

And one mornin’, when Hester went out in the bright May sunshine to carry Posy its mornin’ bit of food from the breakfast-table, with little Ned followin’ behind with his bit of sugar for it, the pretty creeter had jest enough strength to drag itself up to its mistress and fix its pitiful eyes on her in helpless appeal, and dropped dead at her feet.

They found the remains of a poisoned cake in the pasture, and on the fence wuz pinned a placard bearin’ the inscription—