Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/50

42 that sympathy with the actual miseries of life was better than weeping over romances. She was rising above the deleterious influences of her early education, and beginning to feel the dignity of usefulness. She said to her husband, "I shall not be sorry, if we are always poor. It is so pleasant to help you, who have done so much for me! And Alfred, dear, I want to give some of my earnings to Aunt Debby. The poor old soul is trying to lay up money to pay that friend of yours who bought her son and sent him to Canada. Surely, I, of all people in the world, ought to be willing to help slaves who have been less fortunate than I have. Sometimes, when I lie awake in the night, I have very solemn thoughts come over me. It was truly a wonderful Providence that twice saved me from the dreadful fate that awaited me. I can never be grateful enough to God for sending me such a blessed friend as my good Alfred."

They were living thus contented with their humble lot, when a letter from Frank Helper announced that the extensive house of Grossman & Co. had stopped payment. Their human chattels had been put up at auction, and among them was the title to our beautiful fugitive. The chance of capture was considered so hopeless, that, when Mr. Helper bid sixty-two dollars, no one bid over him; and she became his property, until there was time to transfer the legal claim to his friend.

Feeling that they could now be safe under their own vine and fig-tree, Alfred returned to the United States, where he became first a clerk, and afterward a prosperous merchant. His natural organization unfitted him for conflict, and though his peculiar experiences had imbued him with a thorough abhorrence of slavery, he stood aloof from the ever-increasing agitation on that subject; but every New Year's day, one of the Vigilance Committees for the relief of fugitive slaves received one hundred dollars "from an unknown friend." As his pecuniary means increased, he purchased several slaves, who had been in his employ at Mobile, and established them as servants in Northern hotels. Madame Labassé was invited to spend the remainder of her days under his roof; but she came only in the summers, being unable to conquer her shivering dread of snow-storms.

Loo Loo's personal charms attracted attention wherever she made her appearance. At church, and other public places, people pointed her out to strangers, saying, "That is the wife of Mr. Alfred Noble. She was the orphan daughter of a rich planter at the South, and had a great inheritance left to her; but Mr. Noble lost it all in the financial crisis of 1837." Her real history remained a secret, locked within their own breasts. Of their three children, the youngest was named Loo Loo, and greatly resembled her beautiful mother. When she was six years old, her portrait was taken in a gypsy hat garlanded with red berries. She was dancing round a little white dog, and long streamers of ribbon were floating behind her. Her father had it framed in an arched environment of vine-work, and presented it to his wife on her thirtieth birth-day. Her eyes moistened as she gazed upon it; then kissing his hand, she looked up in the old way, and said, "I thank you, Sir, for buying me."