March (19 page)

 

Marmee’s great desire was to keep Flora with us through her confinement. She hated the thought of letting her go on, in her condition, to an uncertain future in a new country. Even though her welcome among the free blacks in Canada was assured, that community had few resources. I saw her point, but even setting my own selfish anxieties aside, I could not think it wise. The Fugitive Slave Act hung heavy over every escapee, even in Massachusetts, and I could not condone keeping the girl, and the infant she carried, at daily risk of their being returned to bondage. So we resolved that she should stay with us a fortnight, resting safely while her feet mended, and Marmee set about nursing the little mother-to-be with her own prodigious motherly skills.

In the days that followed, we tried to keep as close to our normal routines as possible so as to attract no unwelcome attention. Meg went to her work with the King children, and that week, for once, I didn’t have to chide any overheard grumbles about the difficulties of “running after spoiled midgets all day.” Likewise, Jo had no ill words for her aunt’s crotchets, and even Amy managed to speak only cheerfully of her vexing schoolmates.

Flora I saw little: despite my soft words to her, she seemed shy of me to the point of fear, and I did not press myself upon her. Given her condition, I could imagine several reasons why she might associate only ill things with white men of my age. But Marmee, too, reported the girl impenetrably withdrawn.

It was our little Mouse, Beth, herself the embodiment of shyness, who was able to break through Flora’s carapace and learn a little of what lay within. Beth’s poor heath and delicate spirit made her unfit for the world’s bustle, and so she went neither to school nor to work, but stayed home and diligently helped Hannah with the household chores, taking what schooling she needed from her mother and me. Flora was not able to leave the house, for fear of being noted by unfriendly eyes—feelings ran hot on this issue, even in Concord, and Brown’s raid had raised the temperature. The village was, as well, a stopping place for teamsters, and who knew the opinions of the travelers who frequented the taverns?

Since the weather remained bitter and our visitor needed rest, it hardly seemed a penance for her to remain indoors, but little Beth, who loved Nature in all its seasons, brought fronds of tangy pine and bright holly clusters back with her from her daily walks, and decked Flora’s hidey-hole with these reminders of the outdoor world. Sometimes during the day, as I passed by on the stairs, I would hear two soft voices speaking together: Beth’s familiar, diffident whispers and then the unfamiliar Southern cadence in reply. I longed to know what they spoke of: Mouse, at eleven years old, had led a completely sheltered life, while this other poor girl, who could be no more than fifteen, had been exposed to the world’s most miserable depravities. I feared for my little one’s innocence and her peace of mind, and yet to have interfered in their communion would have been unconscionable. My little Miss Tranquillity had a giving soul, and our poor guest surely needed a friend.

In the afternoon, when Flora had been with us three days, I was in my study, reading with interest a new manuscript of Waldo’s, on which he had asked me to comment. I barely heard the scratch upon my door, but when it came a second time I raised my head.

“Yes?”

“Father,” squeaked Mouse. “May I come in?”

“Of course you may, my darling girl!” I said, setting aside my papers, rising. Such an interruption was most unlike my Beth, and as I didn’t want her to feel it unwelcome to me, I moved toward my fireside armchair so that the great cliff of my desk did not stand between us, and gestured for her to sit on my knee.

Her little fist was balled up in her pinafore, worrying the fabric nervously. I took the tiny hand in mine, straightened out and kissed the little fingers, and smiled encouragingly. “What is it, my dear?”

“Well, I know we do not consume milk or cheese any longer, because these are the rightful property of the calf, but I was wondering if you think that the calf might not mind sparing just a little of its milk for Flora, for she is very thin. She has worked since childhood in a factory in Richmond-oh!” Her hand fluttered to her lips. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“Never mind, my darling, the secret is safe with me. Go on.”

She looked at me trustingly. “I know it is, Father.” Her smooth brow furrowed. “I always thought, you know, even when we were reading Mrs. Beecher’s book, that at least the slaves have the free air and the sunlight and the warm soil to console them. I never thought about factories in the South, or that people might be locked up and enslaved to foul, noisy machines such as Flora describes ...” Her little head drooped and I heard a sniff and passed her my handkerchief I smoothed the soft brown hair where it parted neatly at the crown. Presently, she continued. “She walked six days, you know, before they caught her the first time and dragged her back and gave her that whipping, and then she contrived to escape again, not a fortnight after. She is so very brave, Father, and she is bound to have such hardships ahead- of her, and Hannah says custards and so on would be just the very thing ...”

“My darling girl, you are quite right, and so very wise to think of this. Tell Hannah she has a free hand with the provisions as long as Flora is with us. Whatever she thinks the girl needs, if we can afford it, she shall have.”

Beth beamed at me, slid from my lap, and scurried off to the kitchen. When she’d gone, I got up and paced, my mind in turmoil. Memories I had long suppressed came flooding back: memories of a hot day, a dark barn, and a whip biting into a young woman’s bare flesh. I went to the window and stared out on the bleak, ice-blackened trees. Anger-at the cruelty, and at my own impotence in the face of itroiled within me. Without knowing I did it, I balled my hand into a fist and brought it down, hard, on the sill. The glass rattled in the frame.

 

 

As we were obliged to follow our usual habits as closely as possible, Marmee and I could not decline every invitation that came our way, and so we went to luncheon one day in honor of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had but lately returned to our village after years abroad. The talk, still, was of John Brown, and the ongoing hunt, led by influential Southern politicians in Washington, to locate his co-conspirators. This, of course, made me uneasy, and all the more so. when Hawthorne, who had been absent during the mellowing of Northern sentiment, opined that “never had a man been so justly hung.” Every eye in the room turned to me, expecting a passionate defense of Brown, but I remained mute.

Marmee felt my discomfort, I think, and complained of a slight headache, so that we were among the first to leave. As we walked the short way to our house I held her arm more tightly than usual, and thought of all the times we had walked this way in our years together, and I thought that I would not survive it if I were to be deprived of her companionship. When we arrived at our gate, I saw the pathway churned up by the marks of heavy boots. I hurried up to the door, and when I opened it, I saw Hannah, on all fours, wiping away the muddy tracks that led within.

“Bless us, I’m glad you’re back!” she said. “That one’s in a right state.” She inclined her head to the parlor, where Beth was lying on the sofa, her face blotched with agitation and tears.

“Whatever is the matter!” cried Marmee, running to kneel beside her and feeling her forehead for fever.

“The constable came searching for Flora,” Beth said, her voice quavering.

“I weren’t here,” Hannah interrupted. “I were gone to the market, so the poor child had to face it all alone ...”

Beth’s eyes were welling again, and Marmee wrapped her arms around her. “There, there! It isn’t your fault! There’s nothing you could have done to save her ...”

“Ah, but she did save her, and there’s the wonder of it,” said Hannah, getting heavily to her feet and throwing the muddy rag into the bucket. “Flora’s safe, up yonder. Our little mite here set that constable on his road right smart, she did.” Hannah beamed at Beth, who was sitting up now, her head resting on Marmee’s shoulder. “Who’d a thought she’d a had the courage! I’ll make some hot drinks now for you all, you’ll be wanting some, I spect.”

Hannah went out and Marmee gently urged Beth to recount what had happened. In a small voice, she told how the heavy knock had come at the door.

“Flora and I had been playing with the kittens upstairs in my room, but to be safe she went to the hidey-hole while I went down to answer the door, and that was just as well, for the man barged right in, without introduction or by your leave,” she said. “He had the loudest, angry-sounding voice. He said he had information that we were sheltering a runaway slave here, so I told him his informant was mistaken.”

“Beth!” I exclaimed. I could barely imagine little Mouse talking to a stranger-much less a loud-voiced law officer-and uttering a bald-faced falsehood.

“It wasn’t a lie, Father,”she said calmly, as if reading my mind. “I told him I had never seen a slave in this house, and that is the simple truth. Haven’t you told us, many times, that there are no slaves in God’s eyes? God sees everything, and if he sees no slaves in this house, how can there be any?”

Her mother and I exchanged a look over the top of the little - brown head, sharing the happiness of a truly gratifying child.

“He was very rude then, and said he would see that for himself, and made to go up the stairs, but I put myself in his way, and said that before he should see anything, I should be obliged to see his warrant. He turned a strange color, for he hadn’t one, and he stomped out.”

“Beth,” I said. “You are a marvel.”

The sad truth was that though the constable would not quickly find a magistrate in Concord to provide a warrant, there were plenty of Massachusetts judges who upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, and gratified as I was by the quality of my joinery, pride in my craftsmanship did not extend to risking Flora’s freedom by putting it to the test of a thorough search. So Flora had to leave us, and speedily. I sent Hannah to speak with our friends, and as soon as it was dark, Henry arrived to take her away to Edwin Bigelow, the blacksmith, who would arrange her onward journey. Jo and Meg, who had not returned from their day’s employment, didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye. There were tears from Beth and Amy, and Marmee and I felt close to shedding a few. Flora herself was dry-eyed, but she embraced Beth before Henry led her out, up over the hill behind our house, and through the wooded paths that threaded a private way to the smith’s house.

 

A year later, we received a letter from the Canadian lady who had taken Flora into service. Flora herself had asked that the letter be written, as she wanted to convey to us that though her baby had not lived, she herself was well. “Despite her natural grief over the fate of her infant,” the Canadian lady wrote, “she holds an optimistic view of the future and places her trust in God, whom, she says, would not have delivered her from bondage in Egypt without a plan for her, when he has left so many others in chains. She is an intelligent young woman and I know I need not tell you of her courage and resolve. I am having her taught her letters, so you may expect something from her own hand in the future. I remain, etc.”

As it happened, this letter found us just one day after Jefferson Davis surrendered his seat in the Senate of these no longer United States. I read the letter, and then the newspaper, aloud to the girls as we gathered in the parlor. Before Davis’s final adieu, I read that he had “told his fellow senators that he felt no hostility, and wished every one of them well. According to a Senate source, he confided that he would spend the night in prayers for peace.”

Well, we all of us prayed for peace. But in my heart I expected war. As anxious winter gave way to gloomy spring, it became clear to me that John Brown was right: not in his infliction of blind and indiscriminate terror, but in his prophecy of inevitable bloodshed. For how could one turn the other cheek to this evil, when the cheek one turned was not one’s own, but that of innocents, like the girl with the ruined feet and scarred back, who had cowered from the slave catchers in a hole at the top of our stairs?

War came, of course, and in early summer, the young soldiers who were to. go south from our village mustered in the Cattle Show grounds. Like others of the citizenry, we walked down to cheer them on their hard road south. Many of the young men knew me, and one cried out: “Don’t you have a word for us, Mr. March?” Soon, others took up the cry, and I found myself ushered through a throng of young, eager faces, and assisted onto the precarious pulpit of a fallen log. They were all looking up at me, expectantly, these youngsters who were prepared to peril their lives. I found myself wondering how many of them would return to us. My gaze stopped on a sandy-haired youth who looked pale and pensive. I recognized him. He was the son of a Quaker family. I knew it must have cost him a great struggle of conscience to be here.

“You know that even he whom we call the Prince of Peace once told his followers, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.’ Now it has come to that day for us. We did not ask that the evil of war be unleashed upon us, but it has been; and it is well, on such a day, that we reflect on why we go to war, and against what it is that we fight.

“Does not the Bible say, ‘We ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel, until we have brought them into their place... We will not return into our houses until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance.’

“We go because there is within this blessed country an unholy land. A land where it is become a crime to teach God’s children God’s word. We go, because within this country is a blighted land, where a man
may
put asunder those whom God has joined together. We go because there is in this country a land which one may, which one must, in all reverence, call a
damnable
land, and we must go forth and root out the evil that lies within.” Even as I cried out these words, I felt their essential emptiness. What were words, after all, when set beside the action these young men were about to take? Action, now, was all that mattered.