likeness for several more weeks, still his daubings could not raise Robert Goodwin’s eyes from off our July. Caroline then placed all her wrath at the situation with Francis Bear. She was enraged—for was it not he who so cleverly managed to capture that scene for her friends to view? Come, Caroline was forced to hang the picture within a room that was rarely used. And obliged to demand that the artist return to her the gifted rum!
CHAPTER 27
READER, I BELIEVED AFTER all the fuss-fuss my son Thomas did make over the last pickney born to July, that I would soon have to endure his reproaches anew. Once he learned within my tale that July gave life to another child then the pulsing vein upon my son’s head would throb and wriggle once more. And with a face untouched by the fury that he felt, he would ask his mama, ‘Is this baby soon to be left upon a stone outside a preacher’s house, like the ugly black pickaninny July gave birth to? Or because the child Emily is coloured, a quadroon with fair skin and a white man for a father, did July look to cherish her instead?’
But an old-old woman should not be scolded by her own son! So I hid myself from him within the hut in our garden, for several hours while he perused those pages. Miss May, my son’s daughter, soon joined me. Seeing her old grandmama sitting small upon the tiny seat in that little wooden place, amongst all the broken-down things that were forgotten there, amused her. We two played old maid to pass the time and I beat her at every go. Oh how she wailed! I should let her win, she tell me. Why? I ask her. Because she is young was her only reasoning. Then she has time to learn to beat me, was my reply to that.
But my knees did ache from being folded so long within that wretched place—I was soon forced to hobble back to the house. And there my son greeted me without ever having missed me. As he handed back those pages he said with a thoughtful tone, ‘One thing, Mama . . .’ And how my heart began to race—come, it beat nearly through the cloth of my dress. Until he continued, ‘I believe I may have seen some of Mr Bear’s work,’ and commenced to describe for me, in weary detail, another of the silly artist’s pictures.
Reader, my son’s moods must now be as much of a puzzle to you, as they are to his own mama.
As I write, Miss May stands before me, shuffling her pack of cards. She commands me to stop scratching my pen upon this paper and play another hand of old maid with her. Come, I fear I will first have to allow this child to beat me if I am ever to get peace enough to continue my tale. Cha!
CHAPTER 28
THE OLD DISTILLER-MAN who toiled within the boiling house, Dublin Hilton, was one day wandering up near the great house when he did spy a white man with a fancy feathered hat upon his head. This man, standing still and erect as a doorpost, was wiping a small brush upon a large board that was resting stout upon an easel. Dublin Hilton, approaching upon this man from behind, did strain his neck to see what this man was doing. Painting a picture, Dublin soon said to himself. For there upon that board was a good likeness of Miss July (serving up something), a not-too-bad copy of the new massa, and a white woman resting upon a seat who looked like the missus—but nah, for she was too narrow.
After watching this man for a long while, Dublin Hilton soon came to think that this must be the artist he had heard so much chat-chat of. Leaning upon a stick Dublin dallied awhile longer, observing the artist painting the view of the lands of Amity into the background of this picture. One strange picture, Dublin was to tell everyone later. For the artist-man was looking down the hill and over the scruffy thatched tops of the houses within the negro village.
Now Dublin Hilton stood only a few feet behind the artist and yet this white man, gazing out with frowning absorption upon the view before him, time after time painted another bush where Dublin could clearly see the higgledy-piggledy of the negro village.