Читать книгу Zina: the Slave Girl; or, Which the Traitor? - A. Thompson Richard - Страница 7

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Brightly. A fact, as said old Bob, “Cotton is king,” and a truer boast never was made.

Myers. Some idle slush that happens to suit the vanity of the cotton growers. Our roosters always strut the loudest.

Brightly. Why not? If two hundred millions’ worth of cotton never crossed the sea, how long would you have to hunt for a gold coin on the Atlantic seaboard?

Myers. What of your gold mines?

Brightly. A drop, only. Shut off the cotton production and how would we carry on a foreign trade?

Myers. Exchange your cereals. Again,—if you had nothing to buy with, you wouldn’t buy. No matter how much you produce here, you are forced to part with it to feed your always famished vanity. Before California, your cotton, cereals and meat went. Now it is California as well! Mark this: If thrown on your own resources, without a particle of foreign importation, you would be infinitely better off, because it would give an impetus to the development of your natural resources, so unparalleled.

Brightly. Come to natural resources, how came New York and New England with their wealth, and how would your pauper labor obtain their cheap clothing?

Myers. Egypt can raise cotton enough for the world. Thrift, hard labor and plenty of brains will make anybody what he needs.

Brightly. Of course, even if the business was basswood, hams and Peter Funk jewelry.

Myers. It is not to your credit that they find a susceptible market here.

Brightly. Why, Myers, we run the rest of this country as middlemen. We have tolerated the leeches a hundred years. Now we propose to shut down.

Myers. When you will spoil the whole. (Enter Hood R.) It takes brains to run a country like this, and the south haven’t got the material.

Hood. Indeed!

Myers. Yes, sir; indeed. It is one thing to raise cotton and another thing to make it valuable. You never had sense enough in the south to utilize it. If you have, where are your mills? The south is loaded with water-power. The brains of the country are in New England and the middle states. Kick those friends in the face and where are you? England, you say? They would hold the same relation to you at once. What do you gain? An enemy on the border. I owe allegiance to the British crown, but I like your country. It will be my future home.

Brightly. I was going to say—that I was afraid this country couldn’t do without ye.

Myers. Sum the south and its institutions, and what is it? Planters who know nothing but to buy and work a nigger. A large element whose highest ambition is hog, hominy, a horse race and whiskey enough for the present. Politicians, who discover nothing but that the north is leeching its living from the south and stealing its niggers.

Brightly. How much would it cost to get two or three Johnny Bulls like you to come over and run this machine?

Myers. Sarcasm don’t answer argument. It takes a variety of people and interests to make a country like this. I have travelled it all over. It’s a big thing. Believe me, gentlemen, when I say that you require New England for its manufacturing push, the west for its bread and meat, the south for its cotton and sugar. Kick out one and you spoil the whole.

Brightly. Myers, you should have chosen the law instead of Faro and speckelatin in niggers.

Myers. Why?

Brightly. You got so much cheek, and you can twist a lie so it will look like a fact.

Myers. Now don’t insult me!

Brightly. Oh, get out! You are as sensitive as a Yankee nigger stealer. (Enter D’Arneaux R.)

D’A. Good morning, gentlemen. Brightly, please say to my mother, pressing business calls me to Charleston, at once.

Brightly. The devil! What is up now?

D’A. The last dispatches announce that the bombardment of Sumter has commenced.

Brightly. Jest as I expected.

D’A. I enter the army tonight, Capt. Hood, may I expect to enter under your command?

Hood. Sorry, but my company is full. Everything is full.

Brightly. Why not stick to the Regulators? You got a commission there?

D’A. Then I will return to Creelsboro tonight, take leave of my mother in the morning, then hie for the frontier.

Brightly. What’s your rush? I can’t get ready as soon as that!

D’A. The state owns the right to my head and arm now. A quick blow, and an honorable, bloodless peace.

Hood. Well said, my boy. We fight our own countrymen, whose ancestors stood shoulder to shoulder with ours for the first independence. The first shot makes me shudder, for I cannot see the end.

D’A. War is cruel, and I have hoped against hope that it would not come.

Hood. I like your sentiments, my boy. May I hope a bullet may never find you. But the north will fight. It is the exasperation wrought by cruel pictures of the wrong we have carried as best we could, through the first century of the Republic.

Brightly. Now, gentlemen, don’t get melancholy. Yankees won’t fight. They are by instinct thieves and shopkeepers. I will bet you my best nigger you can’t hire one to cross the line.

Myers. I have travelled in that country some, and I will meet your wager and go you one better, that you smell as much Yankee gunpowder the next year as you can take care of.

Brightly. (Pointing to Myers, laughing.) It’s chronic, Johnny Bull!

Hood. Did I understand you that you are an Englishman?

Myers. An Australian, sir, on a spec, plying between Mobile and Havana. Got anything to sell?

Hood. Your line of trade?

Myers. I prefer handsome women.

D’A. And when he is tired of them, they are turned over to another master in the auction yards of Havana.

Myers. Exactly. I made $700 on the last one.

Hood. It remains for Old and New England to furnish the men, that have loaded the south with its most ignominious reputation. (Myers springs to his feet.)

Myers. Do you insult the legitimate business of your country?

Hood. The absolute freedom the Republic confers upon you has never legalized a crime against humanity.

Myers. What say you, sir?

Hood. When this country opens its doors to the citizens of another state, it expects no insults to its hospitality!

Myers. Do you fight, sir?

Hood. I do, sir, most assuredly.

D’A. You can take your choice, sir.

Myers (to D’Arneaux). I have no quarrel with you, sir. (To Hood.) You will hear from me in the morning. Your profession, sir?

Hood. It is honorable, sir. Be assured that I feel the degradation of the match as much as yourself.

Myers. This squabble with the free states has seemed to convey the idea to every scrub in the south that he must carry the honor of his own section on his own little back.

D’A. Squabble?

Myers. Well, what else? Neither section has an army, or a respectable ship of war. There are not ten thousand men in the country that know a right-shoulder shift from a present. This is a fanatical mob broke loose.

Brightly. Myers, it is cruelty to a lunatic to fight you.

Myers. Nothing collapses the vanity of a ponderous presumption so quick as a ridiculous fact.

Brightly (to Hood and D’Arneaux). Oh, he knows it all. (To Myers.) Look here. I knew of a Johnny Bull once that had the conceit taken out of him by a little nation that made a navy out of its little coasting schooners. It lays hard on Johnny’s stomach to this day.

Hood. Whatever the merits of this quarrel may be, John Bull will soon observe that it don’t take three years to make a soldier on this side of the water.

Myers. Come, Brightly, as you and I have not quarrelled, let us have a whack at the national game. (Deals cards—they play.)

Brightly. Myers, you are the sauciest devil in Mobile.

Myers. Why?

Brightly. Because you are the best shot, I suppose.

Myers. Then Mobile tolerates me, does it?

Hood. It does.

Myers. Then suppose it should choose to do otherwise?

Hood. Some citizen would wring your nose and kick you out. (Myers springs to his feet, Brightly between.)

Brightly. Hold on, gentlemen. There’s time enough to settle this hash in the morning. (Pushes Myers to his chair.) Deal the cards.

Myers. These gentlemen insist on being insultingly snappish.

Hood. This is a slave state, sir, but not an auction room. I desire you to understand the strength of my contempt for yourself and the business that gives you a dishonorable living.

Myers. If you should ever cross the water, do you think anything in the line of Royalty would be able to obtain any condescension from you?

Hood. I associate with nothing but gentlemen, sir.

Myers. And I suppose you fight nothing but gentlemen, sir?

Hood. I sometimes kick a ruffian!

Myers (suppressed rage). Indeed! We will see how hard you kick, in the morning. Say, Brightly. Now you are off for the army, sell me that little red-cheeked jade I saw carrying your baggage to the depot.

Brightly (catching a look from D’A.). No siree! That girl is the smartest piece of meat in the whole of Tennessee! I brought her up from a baby. Why, she can sing like an Opera, and read—wal, she does all the readin’ and letter writin’ on the plantation. (Hood and D’A. converse—R.)

Myers. I s’pose that all goes for talk!

Brightly. Why, bless your heart, there ain’t a nigger or white woman in Creelsboro’ that wouldn’t die for her! She’s one er the institutions of that place.

Myers. Worth about a thousand more, I suppose, on account of that! Never saw a Tennessee trader that didn’t have sixteen or seventeen hundred dollars’ worth of extra virtues in his particular nigger!

Brightly. On er bright, and no blowin’!

Myers. Oh the south is full of them!

Brightly. Then go and buy ’em.

Myers. Brightly, I don’t know why, but I have just taken a liking to that little romp. She is pretty and fresh as a new picture. Say, she hasn’t been married?

Brightly. Not a bit of it. She’s only jest sixteen.

Myers. Say, I will give twelve hundred for her, because you and I are old friends.

Brightly. No, yer don’t!

Myers. Fifteen?

Brightly. It’s no use talkin’! If I should sell that little brat, there would be hell to pay in Creelsboro’ for two years.

Myers. Now look here, Brightly; when I take a liking I am willing to pay for it. I am going to make you an offer you won’t refuse—twenty-five hundred!

Brightly. You had better wait and see if you get by Hood in the morning.

Myers. I shall kill him at the first shot.

Brightly. But he fires once, himself.

Myers. He will die too soon for that. I have never found it necessary to fire twice. The other man always forgets to finish his business.

Brightly. Why, Myers, you hain’t no more idea of what there is in that gal, than you have of kingdom come. (Blows a whistle, and Zina dashes in R, looking inquiringly.) Ain’t that jest the handsomest piece of furnicher ye ever looked at?

Myers. Beautiful!

Brightly. Now I jest want you to hear her sing. Now, little one, hoe in. Do yer handsomest, and I’ll give yer four days off.

Zina. Oh please, master, I feel so bad today. (Falling on her knees and covering her face.)

Brightly (Rising and drawing a whip from under his coat.) Ah ha! Sulks again? Niggers don’t say won’t to me.

Zina. Please don’t make me sing, master, today. (Falls on face sobbing.)

Brightly (interrupting). Ah, you won’t, hey? Then I will give you something to sulk for. (Advances towards her, and D’Arneaux steps between. They look each other in the face a moment. Brightly goes to seat again.) The young one ain’t well today.

Myers. Well, three thousand.

Brightly. (Catching a look from D’Arneaux.) I’ll tell ye tomorrow.

Myers. I’ll bet ye five hundred on this hand without lookin’. (D’A. raises Zina up to knees. She clings to D’A.’s hands—face hid.)

Brightly. All right. My chance is as good as your’n, then. Show!

Myers (as both show). Got ye! This is a matter of pure luck, and may as well be done blindfolded. Do you know I lost fifteen thousand dollars once in Havana at one sitting?

Brightly. Enough to make me rich! (Rests face on hands.)

Myers. I was teetotally cleaned out. I put up my breastpin and won. When I got up, I was five thousand dollars better off than I was when I commenced. Try it again?

Brightly. I have just about enough left to get me home again. (Turns away.)

Myers. Borrow?

Brightly. (To D’A.) D’Arneaux, lend me a thousand dollars.

D’A. I shall be obliged to use all I have tomorrow. I would play no more.

Myers. I want him to win back part of this, so we can part with good feeling.

D’A. Then give it to him, and have done with it!

Brightly. I refuse a gift from any one!

Myers. Any gentleman would say that.

D’A. Then return what you have won dishonestly.

Myers (springing to his feet). This is the second time you have insulted me tonight, without provocation.

D’A. Gentlemen resent the first insult!

Myers. Can I expect to see you at “Bayou Sara” with your friend in the morning?

D’A. You can, sir! I prefer to meet you first myself.

Myers. It is immaterial to me.

Brightly. Now, gentlemen, this quarrel is for nothing.

D’A. He has insulted the hospitality of my country. He must carry his life in his hands for that!

Myers. Do your boasting after the fight. Brightly, I lend you five hundred to continue the game. I want to go out from here with one friend.

Brightly. Jest as you say (they seat at table). I am going to get ye this time. You dealt last (deals cards).

Myers. Will bet you the even $500, and show as before.

Brightly. Playin’ is all luck, anyway.

Myers. Do you go it?

Brightly. Yes. What have ye got (both show)?

Myers. Sorry, Brightly. I was hoping you would win this. Nevertheless, luck will come somewhere. Say, I will bet you thirty-five hundred against the girl?

Brightly. No, I won’t! (D’A. and Zina, excited, gather nearer.)

Myers. That would give you a chance to win 2000 more than you had when you commenced. Try it again.

Brightly. (Hesitating, finally brings his fist down on the table.) Done!

Zina. Oh, master. (Zina drops on her knees and bows her head on Brightly, sobbing. Brightly throws her off.)

D’A. (Dashing forward and flinging his pocket-book on the table.) No, by heaven, you shall not! There are eighteen hundred dollars. It is all I have. Take it and say the girl is free. Then waste the money if you like.

Myers. (To Brightly.) Do you take this scoundrel through the country as guardian for your property, because you are unfit to handle it yourself?

Brightly. What I own I control. Deal the cards! It is $3500 or the girl!

Myers. Thirty-five hundred dollars or the girl. Show (both show.) You have lost again!

D’A. And you have won dishonestly!

Myers. You lie! (Zina half rises in terror.)

D’A. Take that money and let the girl go free.

Myers. Who are you (rises and confronts)?

D’A. What are you?

Myers. Well, say it.

D’A. A gambler with the honor of a thief.

Myers. In the morning you shall swallow that.

D’A. A libertine without an honorable thought!

Myers. This shall be your last croak!

D’A. A ruffian, whose business it is to send—

Myers. Have done—

D’A. Beauty and virtue to the auction block for prostitution! (Myers strikes D’Arneaux and is struck in return.)

Myers. I will not wait for morning to settle this. (Flings off hat, draws knife. Zina rises in terror.)

D’A. It shall be as you choose (dashing to bar and seizing a knife). And the freedom of this helpless girl shall be the issue!

Brightly. (Dashing between.) Hold on, gentlemen!

D’A. Stand aside, sir! This is a question of manhood you are unfit to decide. (Myers dashes by Brightly and attacks D’A. They fight. Myers is killed L. at once. D’A. drops his knife and stands aghast at his work. Turning suddenly to R.) It is a poltroon who would not fight from such a provocation. (Zina drops on her knees sobbing.)

D’A. (To Brightly.) The result of this duel ends your control as master here. (Zina falls on face sobbing.)

Brightly. When did I give papers to convey her?

D’A. I sought the quarrel that has ended that miscreant’s life, because he has lived in vandalism on the ruins of helpless innocence!

Brightly. What is that to me?

D’A. By every sense of even a gambler’s honor, this child is free. If you deny that, it shall be the last time the law shall protect your infamy. Peril her liberty and honor again if you dare, and you shall answer to me. (Curtain.)