University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
THE SLAVE GIRL'S SELF-DEVOTION.

How true a thing is it of the human heart, and alas!
how pitiful a thing, that use has such wondrous power over
it, whether for good or for evil; but mostly—perhaps because
such is its original nature—unto evil. Custom will harden the
softest spirit to the ice-brook's temper, and blind the clearest
philosophic eye to all discrimination, that things the most horrible
to behold shall be beheld with pleasure, and things the most
unjust regarded as simple justice, or, at least, as the inevitable
course and pervading law of nature. True as this is, in all
respects, in none is it more clearly or fatally discoverable than
in every thing connected with what may be called slavery, in

the largest sense—including the subjugation, by whatever
means, not only of man to man, but even of animals to the
human race. In all such cases, it would appear that the
hardening and deteriorating influence of habit, and perhaps
the unavoidable tendency to believe every thing subordinate
as in itself inferior, soon brings the mind to regard the power
to enforce and the capacity to perform, as the rule of justice
between the worker and the master.

The generally good and kind-hearted man, who has all his
life been used to see his beasts of burden dragging a few
pounds' weight above their proper and merciful load, soon
comes to regard the extraordinary measure as the proper
burden, and to look upon the hapless brute, which is pining
away by inches, in imperceptible and insensible decay, as
merely performing the work, and filling the station, to perform
and fill which it was created. And so, and yet more
fatally, as regards the subjugation of man, or a class of men,
to man. We commence by degrading, and end by thinking
of him as of one naturally degraded. We reduce him to the
standard and condition of a brute, then assume that he is but
a brute in feelings, intellect, capacity to acquire, and thence
argue—in the narrowest of circles—that being but a brute, it
is but right and natural to deal with him as what he is. Nor
is this tendency of the human mind limited in its operation to
actual slavery; but prevails, more or less, in relation to all
servitude and inferiority, voluntary or involuntary; so that
many of the best, all indeed but the very best, among us,
come in the end to look upon all, placed by circumstances
and society in inferior positions, as inferiors in very deed, and
as naturally unequal to themselves in every capacity, even that

of enjoyment, and to regard them, in fact, as a subordinate
class of animals and beings of a lower range of creation.

This again, still working in a circle, tends really to lower
the inferior person; and, by the tendency of association, the
inferior class; until degenerating still, as must occur, from
sire to son, through centuries, the race itself sinks from social
into natural degradation.

This had already occurred in a very great degree in the
Saxon serfs of England, who had been slaves of Saxons, for
many centuries, before the arrival of the Norman conquerors.
The latter made but small distinction, in general, between the
free-born and the slave of the conquered race, but reduced
them all to one common state of misery and real or quasi
servitude—for many, who had once been land-holders and
masters, sunk into a state of want and suffering so pitiable
and so abject, that, generation succeeding generation with
neither the means nor the ambition to rise, they became almost
undistinguishable from the original serfs, and in many instances
either sold themselves into slavery to avoid actual starvation,
or were seized and enslaved, in defiance of all law, in the
dark and troublous time which followed the Norman conquest.

There being then two classes of serfs existing on British
soil, though not recognized as different by law, or in any wise
differing in condition, Kenric, himself descended in the third degree
from a freeman and landholder, exhibited a fair specimen at
the first; although it by no means followed of course that men
in his relative position were actually superior to the progeny of
those, who could designate no point before which their ancestors
were free. And this became evident, at once, to those
who looked at the characters of Kenric the Dark, and Eadwulf

the Red, of whom the former was in all respects a man
of sterling qualities, frank, bold demeanor, and all the finer
characteristics of independent, hardy, English manhood; while
the second, though his own brother, was a rude, sullen, thankless,
spiritless, obstinate churl, with nothing of the man, except
his sordid, sensual appetites, and every thing of the beast, except
his tameless pride and indomitable freedom.

It was, therefore, even with one of the better class of these
unfortunate men, a matter of personal character and temper,
whether he retained something of the relative superiority he
bore to his yet more unfortunate companions in slavery, or
whether he sank self-lowered to their level. Nothing, it is
true, had either to which he might aspire; no hope of bettering
his condition; no chance of rising in the scale of humanity.
Acts of emancipation, as rewards of personal service, had
been rare even among the Saxons, since, the utmost personal
service being due by the thrall to his lord, no act of personal
service, unless in most extreme cases, could be esteemed a
merit; and such serfs as owed their freedom to the voluntary
commiseration of their owners, owed it, in the great majority
of cases, to their superstition rather than to their mercy, and
were liberated on the deathbed, when they could serve their
masters in no otherwise, than in becoming an atonement for
their sins, and smoothing their path through purgatory to
paradise.

With the Normans, the chance of liberation was diminished
an hundred-fold; for the degraded race, held in utter abhorrence
and contempt, and looked upon as scarce superior to the
abject Jew, was excluded from all personal contact with their
haughty lords, who rarely so much as knew them by sight or

by name—was incapable of serving them directly, in the most
menial capacity—and, therefore, could hardly, by the wildest
good fortune, hope for a chance of attracting even observation,
much less such praise as would be like to induce the high
boon of liberty.

Again, on the deathbed, the Norman knight or noble, scarce
condescending to think of his serf as a human being, could
never have entertained so preposterous an idea, as that the
better or worse usage, nay! even the life or death of hundreds
of these despised wretches could weigh either for him or against
him, before the throne of grace. So that the deathbed emancipations,
which had been so frequent before the conquest, and
which were recommended and inculcated by abbots and prelates,
while abbots and prelates were of Saxon blood, as acts
acceptable on high, now that the high clergy, like the high
barons of the realm, were strangers to the children of the soil,
had fallen into almost absolute disuse.

In fact, in the twelfth century, the Saxon serf-born man had
little more chance of acquiring his freedom, than an English
peasant of the present day has of becoming a temporal or
spiritual peer of the realm; and, lacking all object for emulation
or exertion, these men too often justified the total indifference
with which they were looked upon by the owners of
the soil. This fact, or rather this condition of things in their
physical and moral aspect, has been dwelt upon, somewhat at
length, in order to show how it is possible that a gentleman
of the highest birth, of intellects, acquirements, ideas of justice
and right, vastly more correct than those entertained by the
majority of his caste—a gentleman, sensitive, courteous,
kindly, the very mirror of faith and honor—should have distorted

devotion so noble, faith so disinterested, a sense of
honor so high, a piety so pure, as that displayed by Kenric
the Dark, in his refusal of the bright jewel liberty, in his eloquent
assertion of his rights, his sympathies, his spiritual essence
as a man, into an act of outrecuidance, almost into a
personal affront to his own dignity. Yet, so it was, and alas!
naturally so—for so little was he, or any of his fellows, used
to consider his serf in the light of an arguing, thinking, responsible
being, that probably Balaam was but little more
astonished when his ass turned round on him and spoke, than
was Yvo de Taillebois, when the serf of the soil stood up in
his simple dignity as a man, and refused to be free, unless
those he loved, whom it was his duty to support, cherish,
shield, and comfort, might be free together with him. Certain
it is, that he left the cottage which he had entered full
of gratitude, and eager to be the bearer of good tidings, disappointed,
exasperated against Kenric, vexed that his endeavors
to prove his gratitude had been frustrated, and equally
uncertain how he should disclose the unwelcome tidings to his
daughter, and how reconcile to his host the conduct of the
Saxon, which he had remained in the hope of fathoming, and
explaining to his satisfaction.

In truth, he felt himself indignant and wounded at the unreasonable
perduracy of the man, in refusing an inestimable
boon, for what he chose to consider a cause so trivial; and
this, too, though had he himself been in the donjon of the infidel,
expecting momentary death by the faggot or the rack,
and been offered liberty, life, empire, immortality, on condition
of leaving the least-valued Christian woman to the harem of

the Mussulman, he would have spurned the offer with his
most arrogant defiance.

This seemed to him much as it would seem to the butcher,
if the bull, with the knife at his throat, were to speak up and
refuse to live, unless his favorite heifer might be allowed to
share his fortunes. It appeared to him wondrous, indeed, but
wondrously annoying, and almost absurd. In no respect did
it strike him as one of the noblest and most generous deeds
of self-abandonment of which the human soul is capable;
though, had the self-same offer been spurned, as the slave
spurned it, and in the very words which he had found in the
rude eloquence of indignation, by belted knight or crowned
king, he had unhesitatingly styled it an action of the highest
glory, and worthy of immortal record in herald's tale or minstrel's
story. Such is the weight of circumstance upon the
noblest minds of men.

With his brow bent, and his arms folded on his breast,
moodily, almost sorrowfully, did the good knight of Taillebois
wend his way back toward the towers of Waltheofstow, making
no effort to overtake his brother-in-arms and entertainer,
whom he could clearly see stalking along before him, in no
more placable mood than himself, but burying himself on his
return in his own chamber, whence he made his appearance
no more that evening; though he might hear Sir Philip
storming through the castle, till the vaulted halls and passages
resounded from barbican to battlement.

Meantime, in the lowly cottage of the serf—for the lord,
though angry and indignant, had not failed of his plighted
word—the lykewake of the dead boy went on—for that was
a Saxon no less than a Celtic custom, though celebrated by

the former with a sort of stolid decorum, as different as night
is from day from the loud and barbarous orgies of their wilder
neighbors.

The consecrated tapers blazed around the swathed and
shrouded corpse, and sent long streams of light through the
open door and lattices of the humble dwelling, as though it
had been illuminated for a high rejoicing. The death hymn
was chanted, and the masses sung by the gray brothers from
the near Saxon cloister. The dole to the poor had been given
largely, out of the lord's abundance; and the voices of the
rioting slaves, emancipated from all servitude and sorrow, for
the nonce, by the humming ale and strong metheglin, were
loud in praises of their bounteous master, until, drenched and
stupefied with liquor, and drunk with maudlin sorrow, they
staggered off to their respective dens, to snore away the fumes
of their unusual debauch, until aroused at dawn by the harsh
cry of the task-master.

By degrees the quiet of the calm summer night sank down
over the dwelling and garden of Kenric, as guest after guest
departed, until no one remained save one old Saxon brother,
who sat by the simple coffin, telling his beads in silence, or
muttering masses for the soul of the dead, apparently unconscious
of any thing passing around him.

The aged woman had been removed, half by persuasion,
half by gentle force, from the dwelling-room, and had soon
sunk into the heavy and lethargic slumber which oftentimes
succeeds to overwhelming sorrow. The peaceful moonlight
streamed in through the open door of the cheerless home, like
the grace of heaven into a disturbed and sinful heart, as one
by one the tapers flickered in their sockets and expired. The

shrill cry of the cricket, and the peculiar jarring note of the
night-hawk, replaced the droning of the monkish chants, and
the suppressed tumult of vulgar revelry; but, though there
was solitude and silence without, there was neither peace nor
heart-repose within.

Sorely shaken, and cruelly gored by the stag in trunk and
limbs, and yet more sorely shaken in his mind by the agitation
and excitement of the angry scene with his master, and
by the internal conflict of natural selfishness with strong conscientious
will, Kenric lay, with his eyes wide open, gazing on
his dead nephew, although his mind was far away, with his
head throbbing, and his every nerve jerking and tense with
the hot fever.

But by his side, soothing his restless hand with her caressing
touch, bathing his burning temples with cold lotions,
holding the soft medicaments to his parched lips, beguiling
his wild, wandering thoughts with gentle lover's chidings, and
whispering of better days to come, sat the fair slave girl,
Edith, his promised wife, for whose dear sake he had cast
liberty to the four winds, and braved the deadly terrors of the
unforgiving Norman frown.

She had heard enough, as she entered the house at that decisive
moment, to comprehend the whole; and, if the proud
and high-born knights were at a loss to understand, much less
appreciate, the noble virtue of the serf, the poor uneducated
slave girl had seen and felt it all—felt it thrill to her heart's
core, and inspire her weakness with equal strength, equal devotion.

She had argued, she had prayed, she had implored, clinging
to his knees, that for the love of Heaven, for the love of herself,

he would accept the boon of freedom, and leave her to
her fate, which would be sweeter far to her, she swore, from
the knowledge of his prosperity, than it could be rendered by
the fruition of the greatest worldly bliss. And then, when
she found prayer and supplication fruitless, she, too, waxed
strong and glorious. She lifted her hand to heaven, and
swore before the blessed Virgin and her ever-living Son, that,
would he yield to her entreaties and be free, she would be true
to him, and to him alone, forever; but should he still persist
in his wicked and mad refusal of God's own most especial
gift of freedom, she would at least deprive him of the purpose
of his impious resolution, place an impenetrable barrier between
them two, and profess herself the bride of Heaven.

At length, as he only chafed and resisted more and more,
till resistance and fever were working almost delirium—any
thing but conviction and repentance—like a true woman, she
betook herself from argument, and tears, and supplication, to
comforting, consoling, and caressing; and, had the rage and
fever of his body, or the terrible excitement of his tortured
mind, been less powerful, she could not but have won the day,
in the noblest of all strifes—the strife of mutual disinterestedness
and devotion.