Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key Read Online Free PDF Page B

like.”
    “Mmm-hm.” Sejanus took up a crowbar and set about dismantling the window frame.
    “You must excuse me,” said Mr. Tudeley. “I have moved so long amongst indecent people, I scarcely recognize an honest man when I see him anymore.”
    “That’s all right,” said John, pulling the cabin’s wainscoting away.
    “I have often thought it must be something in the air of this place,” said Mr. Tudeley, in a mournful voice. “I used to imagine the tropics would be like Paradise, when I was in London. Reading Raleigh’s book, you know, imagining green palms waving in the sunlight, and luscious fruits growing all year round, and quaint birds and monkeys. It seemed another Eden.
    “I’d no idea I’d find such heat, such rogues and drunkards, such…sweat and stink and filth! Mr. Cox had been a reasonable and upright man in London; Squire Darrow had great reason to trust him with the plantation. Yet I watched him rot before mine eyes in this sweltering heat, doing no more but lying in his hammock all hours of the day and swilling rum. I spoke with him long and earnestly, pointing out his duty, and was told to go to perdition for my pains. Was that fair, sir, I ask you?”
    “I don’t reckon life’s fair, mate,” said John.
    “And yet, I know I was blamed,” said Mr. Tudeley. He put his spectacles back on and bent to pick up the wooden slats that John was scattering everywhere. “Mr. Cox drinking himself into an early grave, who was left to blame but me? Squire Darrow’s reproach was almost more than I could bear. Yet it is all of a piece with the course of my life.”
    “Mm-hm,” said Sejanus.
    “Do tell,” said John.
    “Nothing but disappointments,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Disappointed at school, in my marriage, in my prospects, all hopes blighted. It’s enough to make a man rail at God.”
    “Chah!” said Sejanus. “Why don’t you, then? If it makes you feel any better.”
    Mr. Tudeley shuddered. “Bitter as the crust of my life has been, how much worse might it be was I to call down the wrath of the Almighty?”
    “Now, see, you’re like my father,” said Sejanus.
    “How dare you!”
    “There he was, lying in chains in a pool of shite, rolling to and fro as the slave-ship rolled, and what did he say? ‘Oh, merciful Damballah, I don’t know what I did to make you angry with me, but I’m sorry!’ And then there he was, sold naked as a baby on the auction block, and dragged away to sweat on a tobacco plantation, and what did he say? ‘Oh, merciful Damballah, I know I must have earned your anger, but if you’ll show me what you want me to do, I’ll do it!’
    “And then there he was, lamed when a wagon rolled over his leg, and sold away to old Reverend Walker of Boston, who made him fetch and carry anyway and married him to an ugly woman, and what did he say? ‘Oh, merciful Damballah, I just know you have a reason for all the sufferings you’ve inflicted on me, and maybe someday you’ll please to tell me what it is?’
    “And you know what he always said to me? ‘Respect the loas, Bandele! They are great and powerful and they watch over us always!’ ”
    “What’s a loa?” asked John.
    “Well, what can you expect of your heathen gods?” said Mr. Tudeley with a sniff. “Our Lord God Almighty is the
true
divinity.”
    “And so said Reverend Walker,” said Sejanus. “He gave me schooling, he said to me, ‘Little Sejanus, I cannot save thy father’s obdurate soul, but I shall save thine.’ He said, ‘The Lord Almighty in His infinite mercy has visited the burden of slavery upon thy sinful people, and thou must bear it patiently, for it is part of His divine plan.’ I said to myself,
Oh, yes, that’ll make me love your Lord Almighty!
    “But he preached at me every day, did the Reverend Walker, trying to save my black soul. He’d lean out the window and preach at me the whole time I’d be weeding in his garden. He preached at me every mile of the way I had to