the remark, “He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the
brim with bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. How refreshing it
was! I feel better.”
Tom’s mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached
her son with all the wheedling and supplication servilities that fear
and interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave.
She stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring
exclamations over his manly stature and general handsomeness,
and Tom put an arm under his head and hoisted a leg over the
sofa back in order to look properly indifferent.
“My lan’, how you is growed, honey! ‘Clah to goodness, I wouldn’t
a-knowed you, Marse Tom! ‘Deed I wouldn’t! Look at me good;
does you ‘member old Roxy? Does you know yo’ old nigger mammy, honey?
Well now, I kin lay down en die in peace, ‘ca’se I’se seed–”
“Cut it short, Goddamn it, cut it short! What is it you want?”
“You heah dat? Jes the same old Marse Tom, al’ays so gay and funnin’
wid de ole mammy. I’uz jes as shore–”
“Cut it short, I tell you, and get along! What do you want?”
This was a bitter disappointment. Roxy had for so many days nourished
and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to see his
old nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a
cordial word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that
he was not funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and
foolish variety, a shabby and pitiful mistake. She was hurt to the heart,
and so ashamed that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or
how to act. Then her breast began to heave, the tears came,
and in her forlornness she was moved to try that other dream of hers–
an appeal to her boy’s charity; and so, upon the impulse,
and without reflection, she offered her supplication:
“Oh, Marse Tom, de po’ ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days;
en she’s kinder crippled in de arms and can’t work, en if you could
gimme a dollah–on’y jes one little dol–”
Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled
into a jump herself.
“A dollar!–give you a dollar! I’ve a notion to strangle you!
Is _that_ your errand here? Clear out! And be quick about it!”
Roxy backed slowly toward the door. When she was halfway she stopped,
and said mournfully:
“Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I raised you
all by myself tell you was ‘most a young man; en now you is young
en rich, en I is po’ en gitt’n ole, en I come heah b’leavin’ dat you
would he’p de ole mammy ‘long down de little road dat’s lef’ ‘twix’
her en de grave, en–”
Tom relished this tune less than any that he preceded it,
for it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience;
so he interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity,
that he was not in a situation to help her, and wasn’t going to do it.
“Ain’t you ever gwine to he’p me, Marse Tom?”
“No! Now go away and don’t bother me any more.”
Roxy’s head was down, in an attitude of humility. But now the fires
of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely.
She raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time
her great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude,
with all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it.
She raised her finger and punctuated with it.
“You has said de word. You has had yo’ chance, en you has trompled
it under yo’ foot. When you git another one, you’ll git down on yo’
knees en _beg_ for it!”
A cold chill went to Tom’s heart, he didn’t know why; for he did not
reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source,
and so solemnly delivered, could not easily fail of that effect.