Hugh Worthington

With heavy eyes and aching head Adah worked day after day upon the dress, which ’Lina had coaxed her to make, saying both to her and Aunt Eunice that, as she wished to surprise Hugh with a sight of herself in full array, they were not to tell him that the dress was new, but suffer him to think it the old pink silk which she was fixing.

“I hardly suppose he’d know the difference,” she said, “but if you can arrange it not to work when he is here, I wish you would.”

’Lina could be very gracious when she chose, and as she saw a way by which Adah might be useful to her, she chose to be so now, and treated the unsuspecting girl so kindly, that Adah promised to undertake the task, which proved a harder one than she had anticipated. Anxious to gratify ’Lina, and keep what she was doing a secret from Hugh, who came to the cottage often, she was obliged to work early and late, bending over the dress by the dim candle light, until her head seemed bursting with pain, and rings of fire danced before her eyes. She never would have succeeded but for Uncle Sam, who proved a most efficient member of the household, fitting in every niche and corner, until Aunt Eunice wondered how she had ever lived without him. Particularly did he attach himself to Willie, relieving Adah from all care, and thus enabling her to devote every spare moment to the party dress.

“You’s workin’ yourself to death,” he said to her, as late on Saturday night she sat bending to the tallow candle, her hair brushed back from her forehead and a purplish glow upon her cheek.

“I know I’m working too hard,” Adah replied, and leaning back in her chair she closed her eyes wearily, while Sam, gazing admiringly at her continued, “You ’minds me some of de young lady in Virginny. Has I ever tole you ’bout her?”

“No, who was she?” Adah said, and Sam replied,

“She’s what teached me the way to God. She took my dried-up-hand in dem little soft ones of hern, white as cotton bats, and lead me up to de narrow gap. She push me in and say, ‘Go on now, Sam. You’ve got in de right track, that leads to glory hallelujah.’ Didn’t word it just dem words, be sure, but that’s the heft of the meaning. I tell you Sam was mighty nigh as shipwrecked as dat Pollo somebody what Miss Ellis read about in the good book.”

“Miss who?” Adah asked, and Sam replied,

“Miss Ellis. I done forget de other name. Ellis they call her way down thar whar Sam was sold, when dat man with the big splot on his forerd steal me away and sell me in Virginny. Miss ever hearn tell o’ dat?”

“Big what?” Adah asked, and Sam replied, “Big scar or mark kinder purple, on his forrid, right clus to the har.”

Adah shuddered, for the one she knew as her guardian was marked in that way, and she asked Sam to tell her more of the man with the splot.

Delighted to tell the story which he never tired of telling, Sam, in his own peculiar dialect, related how four years before, a man calling himself Sullivan had appeared in the neighborhood of his former master’s plantation ingratiating himself into the good graces of the negroes and secretly offering to conduct any to the land of freedom who would put themselves under his protection.

“I had an idee,” Sam said, “that freedom was sweet as bumble bees’ honey and I hankered to get a taste, so me and two more fools steal away from the old cabin one rainy night, and go with Mas’r Sullivan, who strut round mighty big, with his three niggers, tellin’ us not to say one word ef we not want to be cotched. We thinks he’s takin’ a bee line for Canada, when fust we knows we’s in ole Virginny, and de villain not freein’ us at all. He sells us. Me he most give away, ’case I was old, and the mas’r who buy some like Mas’r Hugh, he sorry for ole shaky nigger. Sam tell him on his knees how he comed from Kaintuck, but Mas’r Sullivan say he bought ’em far, and that the right mas’r sell ’em sneakin like to save raisin a furse, and he show a bill of sale. They believe him spite of dis chile, and so Sam ’long to anodder mas’r.

“Mas’r Fitzhugh live on big plantation—and one day she comed, with great trunk, a visitin’. She’d been to school with Miss Mabel, Mas’r Fitzhugh’s daughter.

“They all think heap of Miss Ellis, and I hear de blacks tellin’ how she berry rich, and comed from way off thar whar white niggers live—Masser-something.”

“Massachusetts,” suggested Adah.

“Yes; that’s the very mas’r. I’se got mizzable memory, and I disremembers her last name. The folks call her Ellis, and the blacks Miss Ellis.”

“A queer name for a first one,” Adah thought, while Sam continued,

“She jest like a bright angel, in her white gownds and dem long curls, and Sam like her so much. She talk to Sam, too, and her voice so sweet, just like falling water when the moon is shining on it. Sam very sick, want to go home so much, and lie all day in his little cabin, when she come in, holdin’ up her skirts so dainty like, and set right down with me. Ki, wasn’t her little hand soft though when she put it on my head and said, ‘Poor Sam, Ellis is sorry.’ Sam cry berry much then; cry so loud Miss Mabel hear, and come in, tellin’ Miss Ellis, ‘Pooh he’s only homesick; says he was stole from Kentucky but papa don’t believe him. Do come out of this hole,’ but Miss Ellis not go. She say, ‘Then he needs comforting,’ and she do that very thing. She talk so good, she ax Sam all ’bout it, and Sam feel she b’lieve him. She promise to write to Mas’r Brown and tell him whar I is. I didn’t cry loud then—heart too full. I cry whimperin’ like, and she cry too. Then she tell me about God, and Sam listen, oh, listen so much, for that’s what he want to hear so long. Miss Nancy, in Kentuck, be one of them that reads her pra’rs o’ Sundays, and ole mas’r one that hollers ’em. Sam liked that way best, seemed like gettin’ along and make de Lord hear, but it don’t show Sam the way, and when the ministers come in, he listen, but them that reads and them that hollers only talk about High and Low—Jack and the Game, or something, Sam misremembers so bad; got mizzable memory. He only knows he not find the way, till Miss Ellis tell him of Jesus, once a man and always God. It’s very queer, but Sam believe it and then she sing, ‘Come unto me.’

“Oh, so fine, the very rafters hold their breff, and Sam find the way. Sam feel the hand she say was stretched out for him. He grasp it tight. He never let it go, never cease thankin’ God that ‘Come unto me’ mean just such an ole nigger as Sam, or that Miss Ellis was sent to him. She teach me ‘Our Father,’ and I say it every day, and I ’members her, too, and now I puts her and Mas’r Hugh in de same words. Seems ef they make good span, only Mas’r Hugh not so fixed up as she, but he’s good.”

“Where is Miss Ellis now?” Adah asked, and Sam replied,

“Gone home. Gone to Masser—what you say once—but not till letter come to her from Mas’r Brown, sayin’ Sam was stealed, and ’fore long Mas’r Brown come on hisself after me and the others. Miss Ellis so glad, and Mas’r Fitzhugh, too. Sam not much ’count, he say, and let me go easy, that’s the way I come home. Miss Ellis gived me five dollars and then ask what else. I look at her and say, ‘Sam wants a spear or two of yer shinin’ har’, and Miss Mabel takes shears and cut a little curl. I’se got ’em now. I never spend the money,” and from an old leathern wallet Sam drew a bill and a soft silken curl which he laid across Adah’s hand.

“And where is Sullivan?” asked Adah, a chill creeping over her as she remembered how about four years ago the man she called her guardian was absent for some time, and came back to her with colored hair and whiskers.

“Oh, he gone long before, nobody know whar. Sam b’lieves, though, he hear they cotch him, but misremembers, got such mizzable memory.”

“You said he had a mark?” Adah continued. And Sam replied, “Yes, queer mark,—must of been thar when he was borned, showd better when he’s cussin mad. You ever seen him?”

“I do not know,” and Adah half groaned aloud at the sad memories which Sam’s story had awakened within her.

She could scarcely doubt that Sullivan the negro-stealer, and Redfield, her guardian, were the same, but where was he now, and why had he treated her so treacherously, when he had always seemed so kind? Why did everybody desert her? What had she done to deserve so sad a fate? All the old bitter anguish was welling up again, and desirous of being alone, she bade Sam leave her as it was growing late.

“Miss Adah prays,” the old man answered, “Won’t she say Our Father with Sam?”

Adah could not refuse, and falling on her knees she joined her voice with that of Sam’s in that most beautiful of all prayers—the one our Saviour taught. Sam did not know it correctly, but God heard him all the same; heard too, the strangely-worded petition that “He would bless Mas’r Hugh, Miss Ellis, and Miss Adah, and fotch ’em all right some time.”

Surely Hugh’s sleep was sweeter that night for the prayer breathed by the lowly negro, and even the wild tumult in Adah’s heart was hushed by Sam’s simple childlike faith that God would bring all right at last.

Early on Monday afternoon ’Lina, taking advantage of Hugh’s absence, came over for her dress, finding much fault, and requiring some of the work to be done twice ere it suited her. Without a murmur Adah obeyed, but when the last stitch was taken and the party dress was gone, her overtaxed frame gave way, and Sam himself helped her to her bed, where she lay moaning, with the blinding pain in her head, which increased so fast that she scarcely saw the tempting little supper which Aunt Eunice brought, asking her to eat. Of one thing, however, she was conscious, and that of the dark form bending over her pillow and whispering soothingly the passage which had once brought Heaven to him, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.”

Dear old Sam! there was a world of kindness in his breast, and if he could he would gladly have taken Adah’s suffering upon himself.

The night had closed in dark and stormy, and the wintry rain beat against the windows; but for this he did not hesitate a moment when at midnight Aunt Eunice, alarmed at Adah’s rapidly increasing fever, asked if he could find his way to Spring Bank, and in a few moments the old, shriveled form was out in the darkness, groping its way over the fences, and through the pitfalls, stumbling often, and losing his hat past recovery, so that the snowy hair was dripping wet when Spring Bank was reached and he stood upon the porch.

In much alarm Hugh dressed himself and hastened to the cottage. But Adah did not know him and only talked of dresses and parties, and George, whom she begged to come back and restore her good name. The dresses and the party were enigmas to Hugh, and as Aunt Eunice kept silent for fear of his wrath, he gathered nothing from Sam’s muttered jumble about, “working herself blind for Miss ’Lina over dar.” He knew she must have medical advice, and giving a few directions to Aunt Eunice he went himself for the family physician and then returned to Spring Bank in quest of his mother, who, he was sure, would not hesitate to brave the storm for Adah’s sake.