“Well, but, missis, you never would give
your consent—to—to—”
“Nonsense, child! to be sure, I shouldn’t.
What do you talk so for? I would as soon have
one of my own children sold. But really, Eliza,
you are getting altogether too proud of that little
fellow. A man can’t put his nose into the
door, but you think he must be coming to buy him.”
Reassured by her mistress’ confident tone, Eliza
proceeded nimbly and adroitly with her toilet, laughing
at her own fears, as she proceeded.
Mrs. Shelby was a woman of high class, both intellectually
and morally. To that natural magnanimity and
generosity of mind which one often marks as characteristic
of the women of Kentucky, she added high moral and
religious sensibility and principle, carried out with
great energy and ability into practical results.
Her husband, who made no professions to any particular
religious character, nevertheless reverenced and respected
the consistency of hers, and stood, perhaps, a little
in awe of her opinion. Certain it was that he
gave her unlimited scope in all her benevolent efforts
for the comfort, instruction, and improvement of her
servants, though he never took any decided part in
them himself. In fact, if not exactly a believer
in the doctrine of the efficiency of the extra good
works of saints, he really seemed somehow or other
to fancy that his wife had piety and benevolence enough
for two—to indulge a shadowy expectation
of getting into heaven through her superabundance of
qualities to which he made no particular pretension.
The heaviest load on his mind, after his conversation
with the trader, lay in the foreseen necessity of
breaking to his wife the arrangement contemplated,—meeting
the importunities and opposition which he knew he
should have reason to encounter.
Mrs. Shelby, being entirely ignorant of her husband’s
embarrassments, and knowing only the general kindliness
of his temper, had been quite sincere in the entire
incredulity with which she had met Eliza’s suspicions.
In fact, she dismissed the matter from her mind, without
a second thought; and being occupied in preparations
for an evening visit, it passed out of her thoughts
entirely.
Eliza had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood,
as a petted and indulged favorite.
The traveller in the south must often have remarked
that peculiar air of refinement, that softness of
voice and manner, which seems in many cases to be
a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women.
These natural graces in the quadroon are often united
with beauty of the most dazzling kind, and in almost
every case with a personal appearance prepossessing
and agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described
her, is not a fancy sketch, but taken from remembrance,
as we saw her, years ago, in Kentucky. Safe under
the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had reached
maturity without those temptations which make beauty
so fatal an inheritance to a slave. She had been
married to a bright and talented young mulatto man,
who was a slave on a neighboring estate, and bore the
name of George Harris.
