Dudley Bain

Dudley Bain. BY ELLEN LEE SANDERS. "White and colored races should never mix under any circumstances," said the old doctor, and the way in which his chin was thrust out to emphasize the remark was a plain challenge to us younger men to dispute him if we dared, and as the doctor was always interesting, even in his most radical moods, we were discretely silent. We had learned by experience that just the right amount of reticence as to our own opinion always provoked the doctor to prove his point. "I agree with Fenimore Cooper when he put it into the mouth of an Indian chief, who had taken a white captive for a wife, that 'the fruit is not good.' " And he scanned our faces in turn aggressively. ' 'Born of southern parents, sent north to be educated, and rushing from the lecture room to the battle field, almost before the ink was dry on my diploma, I've had an exceedingly good chance to become familiar with all the questions of enough importance to be worth noticing." He looked around to see if any of us fifty-year-old striplings had the temerity to doubt his word, and then proceeded to place and hammer another nail into the argument he was having all by himself. ' 'The direct results from having these sons of Ham among us, arose from the sin of miscegenation. It is not less in the free condition of the rascals, and it is the breeder of most of the horrors that have disgraced the archives of several of our states in recent years. Whenever I have taken the trouble to look up the

DUDLEY BAIN. 921 antecedents of a negro guilty of a particularly atrocious crime, I have always found white blood behind it— vicious white blood, too, for no other kind finds itself in the veins of negroes, or other dark races. And some of our worst white criminals have their blood stained with a little smut." We looked pleasantly interested, and the old doctor proceeded along the lines we expected. "I have had negroes in my employ, and can get along all right with a full-blooded one, but not with the mixtures. I could relate forty modern instances to prove my point,— (my next door neighbor nudged me gently and whispered, "It's coming!")— but I know of a case that happened just before the war that illustrates just what I mean." We all came to attention. ' 'When I was a young fellow, home from college on a vacation I went hunting with some friends about as discreet as I was, and got lost in a swamp. When we had about made up our minds that we would spend the night in mud and water up to our knees, we struck dry ground, and on a little rise, scarcely an acre in extent, we found a cute little two-roomed house, for it was too nice to call a cabin. It was furnished for a woman, and was so new that there were no weather stains on it, and it was neat and even pretty. "We were very glad to pass the night there, and as I was looking around for material to write a note to our unknown host, I found a lot of closely written, loose sheets of paper, and the little that I read gave me the idea that we had stumbled upon the retreat of either a mad poet or a criminal in love. So I took the papers, and we hastily left the place. "I read them all afterward, and from other sources gathered valuable additions to what they contained, and I am going to tell it to you in true story book style." Dan Crawford, a Southern planter, sat on the broad, shaded veranda of his inviting old Southern mansion, and expressed in every line of his comfortable, rotund body that he was in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. He mopped the perspiration from his forehead, chewed his cigar instead of smoking it, pulled at his

922 IMPROVEMENT ERA. forelock and buttoned his two-colored linen coat with nervous hands. The dog, wise to his master's ways, slunk off and eyed him with apprehension. Oh, he was aware that he had a terrible temper, and had flattered himself that he was always master of it; but today it had slipped its leash, and while it ruled him he had done some very regretable work, and his regret was not unmixed with apprehension. Fear was a word he would not tolerate, even in his private cogitations, still, there had been something positively menacing in the cool, defiant spirit that had looked out of the eyes of the slave he had whipped; whipped brutally, without conquering; whipped till shame paralyzed his arm as anger cooled, and he felt himself to be both a coward and a brute. Whatever may have been said or sung, written or romanced about, it was never a common thing in the South for a slave to be severely punished. Who but a fool would willfully deface a costly painting, break a rare vase, or perform any other act cf vandalism on his own property? A thousand dollar horse is not often abused or beaten except by a mad man, and a negro slave — a man in the prime of life, and of a good disposition, was worth a thousand dollars. Marks of the lash on his back lessened his value one half, as testifying to an ugly disposition. An unruly, dissatisfied slave was a dread to all slave owners. Insolence and insubordination is epidemic, and the slave ow^er made haste to part with a slave as soon as this spirit made itself manifest, as the easiest and surest method of dealing with insubordination. Dan Crawford picked up his hat as if to go, thought better of the impulse, and settled' himself in his chair again, but the dog watching his master through one half-closed eye did not yet attempt to approach him. The perspiration that trickled from the planter's face was not caused entirely by the warm weather, nor yet by the violent and unusual exercise he had been taking. He was suffering mental disturbances that were hard for a person of his placid temperament to bear. He tried to banish the theme of his worry, but he could not get rid of it, and as the slave's word

DUDLEY BAIN. 923 and manner came back to him, a flood of hot, angry blood, crimson with shame, surged over neck and face, till he looked capable of repeating the beating he had been regretting. Dan Crawford was a bachelor of forty, and owned a large plantation and many slaves. A "Sir Galihad"' in character, who had considered the only course possible to a Southern gentleman, when the lady he loved died, was to mourn for her all his days. So he had given his strength and energy to his estate, keeping bachelor's hall, till even the memory of the Southern flower he had loved and lost had faded to a fragrant shadow, so faint that it took an effort to recall her face. His house had been kept in pretty good order by a colored woman, who had been trained by his mother; and thus, as his mind traveled over the details of his domestic life, he thought agam of the negro he had whipped, — Dudley Bain, body servant, private secretary, slave, but not— no, no, not the other thing the wretch had dared to name! And even the planter's softly uttered r's, and habitual languid drawl did not destroy the force of his half muttered remarks, and the dog withdrew himself yet further into the shrubbery, and went to sleep. As usual he and Dudley Bain had been in the office together, and the master had been dictating and outlining letters to his sec-_ retary, going over some accounts, and estimating the probable cost of improvements Mr. Crawford contemplated making before his niece should come to make her home with him. It had pleased Dan Crawford to educate Dudley Bain till he could fill this position, in defiance of the strong prejudice in the South against educating negroes. He had found the lad bright, intelligent, industrious and trustworthy, and withal of a most docile and affectionate disposition; at times the master so far forgot moiety of negro blood in the lad as to treat him almost as a man, consulting him in such matters as were now under consideration — the renovating and decorating of the old mansion for its new mistress. When the morning's work was finished, Bain put his papers together preparatory to going to his own room, there to complete the work laid out. He paused with the papers in his hands,

924 IMPROVEMENT ERA. looked his master in the face irresolutely, turned pale, and turned hastily as though to quit the room. These signs of emotion did not escape the observation of the easy-going master. He had always had a special liking for the bright lad of twenty, whose mother had been a very white mullato from the Bain plantation, forty miles away. The mother had been bought at a bankrupt sale, for her many good qualities, to act as maid to Mr. Crawford's mother. The woman had died when Dudley was hardly more than a day old, leaving the helpless infant dependent on the kindness of Madam Crawford. For want of something better to do, perhaps, the good lady had taken care of the orphan herself; and, finding him particularly bright, had taught him to read and write; and when she knew that death was upon her, ten years later, had commended him to her son, and begged, in terms little short of commands, that the boy should never be sent into the fields to work among the negroes. "Because he is not strong enough for such work," she had said, but really it was because the white blood so predominated in Dudley Bain that Madam Crawford had felt that to treat him as a negro would be little short of a crime. His parentage was no secret to the noble woman who had protected his tender years. She knew that her pretty mulatto maid had fallen an easy victim to the blandishments of a peddler of cheap finery and ' 'pinch-beck" jewelry. The girl had loved him with the wild abandon of her race, and when he did not return and redeem his promises, had grieved herself into a state of health that was the real cause of her death. The doctors, of course, had learnedly and pompously talked of ''depleted vitality," etc., "resulting in heart failure;" but Mrs. Crawford, being a woman, knew that it was just a plain case of "heart-break," etc., "resulting in not caring to live." So it had pleased the son of this benevolent old lady to make a private secretary of his mother's protege, and the arrangement had proven entirely satisfactory. [to be continued.]