---

Uncle Tom's Cabin
Or, Life Among the Lowly

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 3

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4

---

CHAPTER XX

Topsy


One morning, while Miss Ophelia was busy in some of her domestic cares,
St. Clare's voice was heard, calling her at the foot of the stairs.

"Come down here, Cousin, I've something to show you."

"What is it?" said Miss Ophelia, coming down, with her sewing in her
hand.

"I've made a purchase for your department,--see here," said St. Clare;
and, with the word, he pulled along a little negro girl, about eight or
nine years of age.

She was one of the blackest of her race; and her round shining eyes,
glittering as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances over
everything in the room. Her mouth, half open with astonishment at the
wonders of the new Mas'r's parlor, displayed a white and brilliant set
of teeth. Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails, which
stuck out in every direction. The expression of her face was an odd
mixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly drawn, like a
kind of veil, an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity.
She was dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and
stood with her hands demurely folded before her. Altogether, there was
something odd and goblin-like about her appearance,--something, as Miss
Ophelia afterwards said, "so heathenish," as to inspire that good lady
with utter dismay; and turning to St. Clare, she said,

"Augustine, what in the world have you brought that thing here for?"

"For you to educate, to be sure, and train in the way she should go.
I thought she was rather a funny specimen in the Jim Crow line. Here,
Topsy," he added, giving a whistle, as a man would to call the attention
of a dog, "give us a song, now, and show us some of your dancing."

The black, glassy eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and the
thing struck up, in a clear shrill voice, an odd negro melody, to which
she kept time with her hands and feet, spinning round, clapping her
hands, knocking her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of
time, and producing in her throat all those odd guttural sounds which
distinguish the native music of her race; and finally, turning a
summerset or two, and giving a prolonged closing note, as odd and
unearthly as that of a steam-whistle, she came suddenly down on the
carpet, and stood with her hands folded, and a most sanctimonious
expression of meekness and solemnity over her face, only broken by the
cunning glances which she shot askance from the corners of her eyes.

Miss Ophelia stood silent, perfectly paralyzed with amazement. St.
Clare, like a mischievous fellow as he was, appeared to enjoy her
astonishment; and, addressing the child again, said,

"Topsy, this is your new mistress. I'm going to give you up to her; see
now that you behave yourself."

"Yes, Mas'r," said Topsy, with sanctimonious gravity, her wicked eyes
twinkling as she spoke.

"You're going to be good, Topsy, you understand," said St. Clare.

"O yes, Mas'r," said Topsy, with another twinkle, her hands still
devoutly folded.

"Now, Augustine, what upon earth is this for?" said Miss Ophelia. "Your
house is so full of these little plagues, now, that a body can't set
down their foot without treading on 'em. I get up in the morning, and
find one asleep behind the door, and see one black head poking out from
under the table, one lying on the door-mat,--and they are mopping and
mowing and grinning between all the railings, and tumbling over the
kitchen floor! What on earth did you want to bring this one for?"

"For you to educate--didn't I tell you? You're always preaching about
educating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught
specimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way
she should go."

"‘I’ don't want her, I am sure;--I have more to do with 'em now than I
want to."

"That's you Christians, all over!--you'll get up a society, and get some
poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let
me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take
the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that,
they are dirty and disagreeable, and it's too much care, and so on."

"Augustine, you know I didn't think of it in that light," said Miss
Ophelia, evidently softening. "Well, it might be a real missionary
work," said she, looking rather more favorably on the child.

St. Clare had touched the right string. Miss Ophelia's conscientiousness
was ever on the alert. "But," she added, "I really didn't see the need
of buying this one;--there are enough now, in your house, to take all my
time and skill."

"Well, then, Cousin," said St. Clare, drawing her aside, "I ought to
beg your pardon for my good-for-nothing speeches. You are so good,
after all, that there's no sense in them. Why, the fact is, this concern
belonged to a couple of drunken creatures that keep a low restaurant
that I have to pass by every day, and I was tired of hearing her
screaming, and them beating and swearing at her. She looked bright and
funny, too, as if something might be made of her;--so I bought her, and
I'll give her to you. Try, now, and give her a good orthodox New England
bringing up, and see what it'll make of her. You know I haven't any gift
that way; but I'd like you to try."

"Well, I'll do what I can," said Miss Ophelia; and she approached her
new subject very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black
spider, supposing them to have benevolent designs toward it.

"She's dreadfully dirty, and half naked," she said.

"Well, take her down stairs, and make some of them clean and clothe her
up."

Miss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions.

"Don't see what Mas'r St. Clare wants of 'nother nigger!" said Dinah,
surveying the new arrival with no friendly air. "Won't have her around
under ‘my’ feet, ‘I’ know!"

"Pah!" said Rosa and Jane, with supreme disgust; "let her keep out of
our way! What in the world Mas'r wanted another of these low niggers
for, I can't see!"

"You go long! No more nigger dan you be, Miss Rosa," said Dinah,
who felt this last remark a reflection on herself. "You seem to tink
yourself white folks. You an't nerry one, black ‘nor’ white, I'd like to
be one or turrer."

Miss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that would undertake
to oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new arrival; and so she
was forced to do it herself, with some very ungracious and reluctant
assistance from Jane.

It is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of
a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world, multitudes must live
and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of
their fellow-mortals even to hear described. Miss Ophelia had a good,
strong, practical deal of resolution; and she went through all the
disgusting details with heroic thoroughness, though, it must be
confessed, with no very gracious air,--for endurance was the utmost
to which her principles could bring her. When she saw, on the back and
shoulders of the child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable
marks of the system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart
became pitiful within her.

"See there!" said Jane, pointing to the marks, "don't that show she's
a limb? We'll have fine works with her, I reckon. I hate these nigger
young uns! so disgusting! I wonder that Mas'r would buy her!"

The "young un" alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and
doleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and
furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in
her ears. When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole
clothing, her hair cropped short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some
satisfaction, said she looked more Christian-like than she did, and in
her own mind began to mature some plans for her instruction.

Sitting down before her, she began to question her.

"How old are you, Topsy?"

"Dun no, Missis," said the image, with a grin that showed all her teeth.

"Don't know how old you are? Didn't anybody ever tell you? Who was your
mother?"

"Never had none!" said the child, with another grin.

"Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?"

"Never was born!" persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so
goblin-like, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might
have fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land
of Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was not nervous, but plain and
business-like, and she said, with some sternness,

"You mustn't answer me in that way, child; I'm not playing with you.
Tell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were."

"Never was born," reiterated the creature, more emphatically; "never had
no father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with
lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us."

The child was evidently sincere, and Jane, breaking into a short laugh,
said,

"Laws, Missis, there's heaps of 'em. Speculators buys 'em up cheap, when
they's little, and gets 'em raised for market."

"How long have you lived with your master and mistress?"

"Dun no, Missis."

"Is it a year, or more, or less?"

"Dun no, Missis."

"Laws, Missis, those low negroes,--they can't tell; they don't know
anything about time," said Jane; "they don't know what a year is; they
don't know their own ages.

"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?"

The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.

"Do you know who made you?"

"Nobody, as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh.

The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and
she added,

"I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me."

"Do you know how to sew?" said Miss Ophelia, who thought she would turn
her inquiries to something more tangible.

"No, Missis."

"What can you do?--what did you do for your master and mistress?"

"Fetch water, and wash dishes, and rub knives, and wait on folks."

"Were they good to you?"

"Spect they was," said the child, scanning Miss Ophelia cunningly.

Miss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy; St. Clare was leaning
over the back of her chair.

"You find virgin soil there, Cousin; put in your own ideas,--you won't
find many to pull up."

Miss Ophelia's ideas of education, like all her other ideas, were
very set and definite; and of the kind that prevailed in New England
a century ago, and which are still preserved in some very retired and
unsophisticated parts, where there are no railroads. As nearly as could
be expressed, they could be comprised in very few words: to teach them
to mind when they were spoken to; to teach them the catechism, sewing,
and reading; and to whip them if they told lies. And though, of course,
in the flood of light that is now poured on education, these are left
far away in the rear, yet it is an undisputed fact that our grandmothers
raised some tolerably fair men and women under this regime, as many of
us can remember and testify. At all events, Miss Ophelia knew of nothing
else to do; and, therefore, applied her mind to her heathen with the
best diligence she could command.

The child was announced and considered in the family as Miss Ophelia's
girl; and, as she was looked upon with no gracious eye in the kitchen,
Miss Ophelia resolved to confine her sphere of operation and instruction
chiefly to her own chamber. With a self-sacrifice which some of our
readers will appreciate, she resolved, instead of comfortably making her
own bed, sweeping and dusting her own chamber,--which she had hitherto
done, in utter scorn of all offers of help from the chambermaid of the
establishment,--to condemn herself to the martyrdom of instructing Topsy
to perform these operations,--ah, woe the day! Did any of our readers
ever do the same, they will appreciate the amount of her self-sacrifice.

Miss Ophelia began with Topsy by taking her into her chamber, the first
morning, and solemnly commencing a course of instruction in the art and
mystery of bed-making.

Behold, then, Topsy, washed and shorn of all the little braided
tails wherein her heart had delighted, arrayed in a clean gown, with
well-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia, with an
expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral.

"Now, Topsy, I'm going to show you just how my bed is to be made. I am
very particular about my bed. You must learn exactly how to do it."

"Yes, ma'am," says Topsy, with a deep sigh, and a face of woful
earnestness.

"Now, Topsy, look here;--this is the hem of the sheet,--this is the
right side of the sheet, and this is the wrong;--will you remember?"

"Yes, ma'am," says Topsy, with another sigh.

"Well, now, the under sheet you must bring over the bolster,--so--and
tuck it clear down under the mattress nice and smooth,--so,--do you
see?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Topsy, with profound attention.

"But the upper sheet," said Miss Ophelia, "must be brought down in this
way, and tucked under firm and smooth at the foot,--so,--the narrow hem
at the foot."

"Yes, ma'am," said Topsy, as before;--but we will add, what Miss Ophelia
did not see, that, during the time when the good lady's back was turned
in the zeal of her manipulations, the young disciple had contrived to
snatch a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which she had adroitly slipped
into her sleeves, and stood with her hands dutifully folded, as before.

"Now, Topsy, let's see ‘you’ do this," said Miss Ophelia, pulling off
the clothes, and seating herself.

Topsy, with great gravity and adroitness, went through the exercise
completely to Miss Ophelia's satisfaction; smoothing the sheets, patting
out every wrinkle, and exhibiting, through the whole process, a gravity
and seriousness with which her instructress was greatly edified. By an
unlucky slip, however, a fluttering fragment of the ribbon hung out of
one of her sleeves, just as she was finishing, and caught Miss Ophelia's
attention. Instantly, she pounced upon it. "What's this? You naughty,
wicked child,--you've been stealing this!"

The ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve, yet was she not in
the least disconcerted; she only looked at it with an air of the most
surprised and unconscious innocence.

"Laws! why, that ar's Miss Feely's ribbon, an't it? How could it a got
caught in my sleeve?

"Topsy, you naughty girl, don't you tell me a lie,--you stole that
ribbon!"

"Missis, I declar for 't, I didn't;--never seed it till dis yer blessed
minnit."

"Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "don't you now it's wicked to tell lies?"

"I never tell no lies, Miss Feely," said Topsy, with virtuous gravity;
"it's jist the truth I've been a tellin now, and an't nothin else."

"Topsy, I shall have to whip you, if you tell lies so."

"Laws, Missis, if you's to whip all day, couldn't say no other way,"
said Topsy, beginning to blubber. "I never seed dat ar,--it must a got
caught in my sleeve. Miss Feeley must have left it on the bed, and it
got caught in the clothes, and so got in my sleeve."

Miss Ophelia was so indignant at the barefaced lie, that she caught the
child and shook her.

"Don't you tell me that again!"

The shake brought the glove on to the floor, from the other sleeve.

"There, you!" said Miss Ophelia, "will you tell me now, you didn't steal
the ribbon?"

Topsy now confessed to the gloves, but still persisted in denying the
ribbon.

"Now, Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "if you'll confess all about it, I
won't whip you this time." Thus adjured, Topsy confessed to the ribbon
and gloves, with woful protestations of penitence.

"Well, now, tell me. I know you must have taken other things since you
have been in the house, for I let you run about all day yesterday. Now,
tell me if you took anything, and I shan't whip you."

"Laws, Missis! I took Miss Eva's red thing she wars on her neck."

"You did, you naughty child!--Well, what else?"

"I took Rosa's yer-rings,--them red ones."

"Go bring them to me this minute, both of 'em."

"Laws, Missis! I can't,--they 's burnt up!"

"Burnt up!--what a story! Go get 'em, or I'll whip you."

Topsy, with loud protestations, and tears, and groans, declared that she
‘could’ not. "They 's burnt up,--they was."

"What did you burn 'em for?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Cause I 's wicked,--I is. I 's mighty wicked, any how. I can't help
it."

Just at this moment, Eva came innocently into the room, with the
identical coral necklace on her neck.

"Why, Eva, where did you get your necklace?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Get it? Why, I've had it on all day," said Eva.

"Did you have it on yesterday?"

"Yes; and what is funny, Aunty, I had it on all night. I forgot to take
it off when I went to bed."

Miss Ophelia looked perfectly bewildered; the more so, as Rosa, at that
instant, came into the room, with a basket of newly-ironed linen poised
on her head, and the coral ear-drops shaking in her ears!

"I'm sure I can't tell anything what to do with such a child!" she said,
in despair. "What in the world did you tell me you took those things
for, Topsy?"

"Why, Missis said I must 'fess; and I couldn't think of nothin' else to
'fess," said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.

"But, of course, I didn't want you to confess things you didn't do,"
said Miss Ophelia; "that's telling a lie, just as much as the other."

"Laws, now, is it?" said Topsy, with an air of innocent wonder.

"La, there an't any such thing as truth in that limb," said Rosa,
looking indignantly at Topsy. "If I was Mas'r St. Clare, I'd whip her
till the blood run. I would,--I'd let her catch it!"

"No, no Rosa," said Eva, with an air of command, which the child could
assume at times; "you mustn't talk so, Rosa. I can't bear to hear it."

"La sakes! Miss Eva, you 's so good, you don't know nothing how to get
along with niggers. There's no way but to cut 'em well up, I tell ye."

"Rosa!" said Eva, "hush! Don't you say another word of that sort!" and
the eye of the child flashed, and her cheek deepened its color.

Rosa was cowed in a moment.

"Miss Eva has got the St. Clare blood in her, that's plain. She can
speak, for all the world, just like her papa," she said, as she passed
out of the room.

Eva stood looking at Topsy.

There stood the two children representatives of the two extremes of
society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes,
her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her
black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor. They stood the
representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation,
command, education, physical and moral eminence; the Afric, born of ages
of oppression, submission, ignorance, toil and vice!

Something, perhaps, of such thoughts struggled through Eva's mind. But a
child's thoughts are rather dim, undefined instincts; and in Eva's noble
nature many such were yearning and working, for which she had no power
of utterance. When Miss Ophelia expatiated on Topsy's naughty, wicked
conduct, the child looked perplexed and sorrowful, but said, sweetly.

"Poor Topsy, why need you steal? You're going to be taken good care of
now. I'm sure I'd rather give you anything of mine, than have you steal
it."

It was the first word of kindness the child had ever heard in her life;
and the sweet tone and manner struck strangely on the wild, rude
heart, and a sparkle of something like a tear shone in the keen, round,
glittering eye; but it was followed by the short laugh and habitual
grin. No! the ear that has never heard anything but abuse is strangely
incredulous of anything so heavenly as kindness; and Topsy only thought
Eva's speech something funny and inexplicable,--she did not believe it.

But what was to be done with Topsy? Miss Ophelia found the case a
puzzler; her rules for bringing up didn't seem to apply. She thought she
would take time to think of it; and, by the way of gaining time, and in
hopes of some indefinite moral virtues supposed to be inherent in dark
closets, Miss Ophelia shut Topsy up in one till she had arranged her
ideas further on the subject.

"I don't see," said Miss Ophelia to St. Clare, "how I'm going to manage
that child, without whipping her."

"Well, whip her, then, to your heart's content; I'll give you full power
to do what you like."

"Children always have to be whipped," said Miss Ophelia; "I never heard
of bringing them up without."

"O, well, certainly," said St. Clare; "do as you think best. Only I'll
make one suggestion: I've seen this child whipped with a poker, knocked
down with the shovel or tongs, whichever came handiest, &c.; and, seeing
that she is used to that style of operation, I think your whippings will
have to be pretty energetic, to make much impression."

"What is to be done with her, then?" said Miss Ophelia.

"You have started a serious question," said St. Clare; "I wish you'd
answer it. What is to be done with a human being that can be governed
only by the lash,--’that’ fails,--it's a very common state of things
down here!"

"I'm sure I don't know; I never saw such a child as this."

"Such children are very common among us, and such men and women, too.
How are they to be governed?" said St. Clare.

"I'm sure it's more than I can say," said Miss Ophelia.

"Or I either," said St. Clare. "The horrid cruelties and outrages that
once and a while find their way into the papers,--such cases as Prue's,
for example,--what do they come from? In many cases, it is a gradual
hardening process on both sides,--the owner growing more and more
cruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like
laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
I saw this very early when I became an owner; and I resolved never to
begin, because I did not know when I should stop,--and I resolved,
at least, to protect my own moral nature. The consequence is, that my
servants act like spoiled children; but I think that better than for us
both to be brutalized together. You have talked a great deal about our
responsibilities in educating, Cousin. I really wanted you to ‘try’ with
one child, who is a specimen of thousands among us."

"It is your system makes such children," said Miss Ophelia.

"I know it; but they are ‘made’,--they exist,--and what ‘is’ to be done
with them?"

"Well, I can't say I thank you for the experiment. But, then, as it
appears to be a duty, I shall persevere and try, and do the best I
can," said Miss Ophelia; and Miss Ophelia, after this, did labor, with
a commendable degree of zeal and energy, on her new subject. She
instituted regular hours and employments for her, and undertook to teach
her to read and sew.

In the former art, the child was quick enough. She learned her letters
as if by magic, and was very soon able to read plain reading; but the
sewing was a more difficult matter. The creature was as lithe as a
cat, and as active as a monkey, and the confinement of sewing was her
abomination; so she broke her needles, threw them slyly out of the
window, or down in chinks of the walls; she tangled, broke, and
dirtied her thread, or, with a sly movement, would throw a spool away
altogether. Her motions were almost as quick as those of a practised
conjurer, and her command of her face quite as great; and though Miss
Ophelia could not help feeling that so many accidents could not possibly
happen in succession, yet she could not, without a watchfulness which
would leave her no time for anything else, detect her.

Topsy was soon a noted character in the establishment. Her talent for
every species of drollery, grimace, and mimicry,--for dancing, tumbling,
climbing, singing, whistling, imitating every sound that hit her
fancy,--seemed inexhaustible. In her play-hours, she invariably had
every child in the establishment at her heels, open-mouthed with
admiration and wonder,--not excepting Miss Eva, who appeared to be
fascinated by her wild diablerie, as a dove is sometimes charmed by
a glittering serpent. Miss Ophelia was uneasy that Eva should fancy
Topsy's society so much, and implored St. Clare to forbid it.

"Poh! let the child alone," said St. Clare. "Topsy will do her good."

"But so depraved a child,--are you not afraid she will teach her some
mischief?"

"She can't teach her mischief; she might teach it to some children, but
evil rolls off Eva's mind like dew off a cabbage-leaf,--not a drop sinks
in."

"Don't be too sure," said Miss Ophelia. "I know I'd never let a child of
mine play with Topsy."

"Well, your children needn't," said St. Clare, "but mine may; if Eva
could have been spoiled, it would have been done years ago."

Topsy was at first despised and contemned by the upper servants. They
soon found reason to alter their opinion. It was very soon discovered
that whoever cast an indignity on Topsy was sure to meet with some
inconvenient accident shortly after;--either a pair of ear-rings or
some cherished trinket would be missing, or an article of dress would
be suddenly found utterly ruined, or the person would stumble
accidently into a pail of hot water, or a libation of dirty slop would
unaccountably deluge them from above when in full gala dress;-and on all
these occasions, when investigation was made, there was nobody found to
stand sponsor for the indignity. Topsy was cited, and had up before
all the domestic judicatories, time and again; but always sustained her
examinations with most edifying innocence and gravity of appearance.
Nobody in the world ever doubted who did the things; but not a scrap of
any direct evidence could be found to establish the suppositions, and
Miss Ophelia was too just to feel at liberty to proceed to any length
without it.

The mischiefs done were always so nicely timed, also, as further to
shelter the aggressor. Thus, the times for revenge on Rosa and Jane,
the two chamber maids, were always chosen in those seasons when (as not
unfrequently happened) they were in disgrace with their mistress, when
any complaint from them would of course meet with no sympathy. In short,
Topsy soon made the household understand the propriety of letting her
alone; and she was let alone, accordingly.

Topsy was smart and energetic in all manual operations, learning
everything that was taught her with surprising quickness. With a few
lessons, she had learned to do the proprieties of Miss Ophelia's chamber
in a way with which even that particular lady could find no fault.
Mortal hands could not lay spread smoother, adjust pillows more
accurately, sweep and dust and arrange more perfectly, than Topsy, when
she chose,--but she didn't very often choose. If Miss Ophelia, after
three or four days of careful patient supervision, was so sanguine as
to suppose that Topsy had at last fallen into her way, could do without
over-looking, and so go off and busy herself about something else, Topsy
would hold a perfect carnival of confusion, for some one or two hours.
Instead of making the bed, she would amuse herself with pulling off the
pillowcases, butting her woolly head among the pillows, till it would
sometimes be grotesquely ornamented with feathers sticking out in
various directions; she would climb the posts, and hang head downward
from the tops; flourish the sheets and spreads all over the apartment;
dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's night-clothes, and enact various
performances with that,--singing and whistling, and making grimaces
at herself in the looking-glass; in short, as Miss Ophelia phrased it,
"raising Cain" generally.

On one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best scarlet
India Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a turban, going on
with her rehearsals before the glass in great style,--Miss Ophelia
having, with carelessness most unheard-of in her, left the key for once
in her drawer.

"Topsy!" she would say, when at the end of all patience, "what does make
you act so?"

"Dunno, Missis,--I spects cause I 's so wicked!"

"I don't know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy."

"Law, Missis, you must whip me; my old Missis allers whipped me. I an't
used to workin' unless I gets whipped."

"Why, Topsy, I don't want to whip you. You can do well, if you've a mind
to; what is the reason you won't?"

"Laws, Missis, I 's used to whippin'; I spects it's good for me."

Miss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a terrible
commotion, screaming, groaning and imploring, though half an hour
afterwards, when roosted on some projection of the balcony, and
surrounded by a flock of admiring "young uns," she would express the
utmost contempt of the whole affair.

"Law, Miss Feely whip!--wouldn't kill a skeeter, her whippins. Oughter
see how old Mas'r made the flesh fly; old Mas'r know'd how!"

Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enormities,
evidently considering them as something peculiarly distinguishing.

"Law, you niggers," she would say to some of her auditors, "does you
know you 's all sinners? Well, you is--everybody is. White folks is
sinners too,--Miss Feely says so; but I spects niggers is the biggest
ones; but lor! ye an't any on ye up to me. I 's so awful wicked there
can't nobody do nothin' with me. I used to keep old Missis a swarin' at
me half de time. I spects I 's the wickedest critter in the world;"
and Topsy would cut a summerset, and come up brisk and shining on to a
higher perch, and evidently plume herself on the distinction.

Miss Ophelia busied herself very earnestly on Sundays, teaching Topsy
the catechism. Topsy had an uncommon verbal memory, and committed with a
fluency that greatly encouraged her instructress.

"What good do you expect it is going to do her?" said St. Clare.

"Why, it always has done children good. It's what children always have
to learn, you know," said Miss Ophelia.

"Understand it or not," said St. Clare.

"O, children never understand it at the time; but, after they are grown
up, it'll come to them."

"Mine hasn't come to me yet," said St. Clare, "though I'll bear
testimony that you put it into me pretty thoroughly when I was a boy."'

"Ah, you were always good at learning, Augustine. I used to have great
hopes of you," said Miss Ophelia.

"Well, haven't you now?" said St. Clare.

"I wish you were as good as you were when you were a boy, Augustine."

"So do I, that's a fact, Cousin," said St. Clare. "Well, go ahead and
catechize Topsy; may be you'll make out something yet."

Topsy, who had stood like a black statue during this discussion, with
hands decently folded, now, at a signal from Miss Ophelia, went on:

"Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell
from the state wherein they were created."

Topsy's eyes twinkled, and she looked inquiringly.

"What is it, Topsy?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Please, Missis, was dat ar state Kintuck?"

"What state, Topsy?"

"Dat state dey fell out of. I used to hear Mas'r tell how we came down
from Kintuck."

St. Clare laughed.

"You'll have to give her a meaning, or she'll make one," said he. "There
seems to be a theory of emigration suggested there."

"O! Augustine, be still," said Miss Ophelia; "how can I do anything, if
you will be laughing?"

"Well, I won't disturb the exercises again, on my honor;" and St. Clare
took his paper into the parlor, and sat down, till Topsy had finished
her recitations. They were all very well, only that now and then she
would oddly transpose some important words, and persist in the mistake,
in spite of every effort to the contrary; and St. Clare, after all his
promises of goodness, took a wicked pleasure in these mistakes, calling
Topsy to him whenever he had a mind to amuse himself, and getting her to
repeat the offending passages, in spite of Miss Ophelia's remonstrances.

"How do you think I can do anything with the child, if you will go on
so, Augustine?" she would say.

"Well, it is too bad,--I won't again; but I do like to hear the droll
little image stumble over those big words!"

"But you confirm her in the wrong way."

"What's the odds? One word is as good as another to her."

"You wanted me to bring her up right; and you ought to remember she is a
reasonable creature, and be careful of your influence over her."

"O, dismal! so I ought; but, as Topsy herself says, 'I 's so wicked!'"

In very much this way Topsy's training proceeded, for a year or
two,--Miss Ophelia worrying herself, from day to day, with her, as a
kind of chronic plague, to whose inflictions she became, in time, as
accustomed, as persons sometimes do to the neuralgia or sick headache.

St. Clare took the same kind of amusement in the child that a man might
in the tricks of a parrot or a pointer. Topsy, whenever her sins brought
her into disgrace in other quarters, always took refuge behind his
chair; and St. Clare, in one way or other, would make peace for her.
From him she got many a stray picayune, which she laid out in nuts and
candies, and distributed, with careless generosity, to all the children
in the family; for Topsy, to do her justice, was good-natured and
liberal, and only spiteful in self-defence. She is fairly introduced
into our ‘corps be ballet’, and will figure, from time to time, in her
turn, with other performers.



CHAPTER XXI

Kentuck


Our readers may not be unwilling to glance back, for a brief interval,
at Uncle Tom's Cabin, on the Kentucky farm, and see what has been
transpiring among those whom he had left behind.

It was late in the summer afternoon, and the doors and windows of the
large parlor all stood open, to invite any stray breeze, that might feel
in a good humor, to enter. Mr. Shelby sat in a large hall opening
into the room, and running through the whole length of the house, to
a balcony on either end. Leisurely tipped back on one chair, with his
heels in another, he was enjoying his after-dinner cigar. Mrs. Shelby
sat in the door, busy about some fine sewing; she seemed like one who
had something on her mind, which she was seeking an opportunity to
introduce.

"Do you know," she said, "that Chloe has had a letter from Tom?"

"Ah! has she? Tom 's got some friend there, it seems. How is the old
boy?"

"He has been bought by a very fine family, I should think," said Mrs.
Shelby,--"is kindly treated, and has not much to do."

"Ah! well, I'm glad of it,--very glad," said Mr. Shelby, heartily. "Tom,
I suppose, will get reconciled to a Southern residence;--hardly want to
come up here again."

"On the contrary he inquires very anxiously," said Mrs. Shelby, "when
the money for his redemption is to be raised."

"I'm sure ‘I’ don't know," said Mr. Shelby. "Once get business running
wrong, there does seem to be no end to it. It's like jumping from one
bog to another, all through a swamp; borrow of one to pay another, and
then borrow of another to pay one,--and these confounded notes falling
due before a man has time to smoke a cigar and turn round,--dunning
letters and dunning messages,--all scamper and hurry-scurry."

"It does seem to me, my dear, that something might be done to straighten
matters. Suppose we sell off all the horses, and sell one of your farms,
and pay up square?"

"O, ridiculous, Emily! You are the finest woman in Kentucky; but still
you haven't sense to know that you don't understand business;--women
never do, and never can.

"But, at least," said Mrs. Shelby, "could not you give me some little
insight into yours; a list of all your debts, at least, and of all
that is owed to you, and let me try and see if I can't help you to
economize."

"O, bother! don't plague me, Emily!--I can't tell exactly. I know
somewhere about what things are likely to be; but there's no trimming
and squaring my affairs, as Chloe trims crust off her pies. You don't
know anything about business, I tell you."

And Mr. Shelby, not knowing any other way of enforcing his ideas, raised
his voice,--a mode of arguing very convenient and convincing, when a
gentleman is discussing matters of business with his wife.

Mrs. Shelby ceased talking, with something of a sigh. The fact was,
that though her husband had stated she was a woman, she had a clear,
energetic, practical mind, and a force of character every way superior
to that of her husband; so that it would not have been so very absurd
a supposition, to have allowed her capable of managing, as Mr. Shelby
supposed. Her heart was set on performing her promise to Tom and Aunt
Chloe, and she sighed as discouragements thickened around her.

"Don't you think we might in some way contrive to raise that money? Poor
Aunt Chloe! her heart is so set on it!"

"I'm sorry, if it is. I think I was premature in promising. I'm not
sure, now, but it's the best way to tell Chloe, and let her make up
her mind to it. Tom'll have another wife, in a year or two; and she had
better take up with somebody else."

"Mr. Shelby, I have taught my people that their marriages are as sacred
as ours. I never could think of giving Chloe such advice."

"It's a pity, wife, that you have burdened them with a morality above
their condition and prospects. I always thought so."

"It's only the morality of the Bible, Mr. Shelby."

"Well, well, Emily, I don't pretend to interfere with your religious
notions; only they seem extremely unfitted for people in that
condition."

"They are, indeed," said Mrs. Shelby, "and that is why, from my soul,
I hate the whole thing. I tell you, my dear, ‘I’ cannot absolve myself
from the promises I make to these helpless creatures. If I can get the
money no other way I will take music-scholars;--I could get enough, I
know, and earn the money myself."

"You wouldn't degrade yourself that way, Emily? I never could consent to
it."

"Degrade! would it degrade me as much as to break my faith with the
helpless? No, indeed!"

"Well, you are always heroic and transcendental," said Mr. Shelby,
"but I think you had better think before you undertake such a piece of
Quixotism."

Here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Aunt Chloe,
at the end of the verandah.

"If you please, Missis," said she.

"Well, Chloe, what is it?" said her mistress, rising, and going to the
end of the balcony.

"If Missis would come and look at dis yer lot o' poetry."

Chloe had a particular fancy for calling poultry poetry,--an application
of language in which she always persisted, notwithstanding frequent
corrections and advisings from the young members of the family.

"La sakes!" she would say, "I can't see; one jis good as turry,--poetry
suthin good, any how;" and so poetry Chloe continued to call it.

Mrs. Shelby smiled as she saw a prostrate lot of chickens and ducks,
over which Chloe stood, with a very grave face of consideration.

"I'm a thinkin whether Missis would be a havin a chicken pie o' dese
yer."

"Really, Aunt Chloe, I don't much care;--serve them any way you like."

Chloe stood handling them over abstractedly; it was quite evident that
the chickens were not what she was thinking of. At last, with the short
laugh with which her tribe often introduce a doubtful proposal, she
said,

"Laws me, Missis! what should Mas'r and Missis be a troublin theirselves
'bout de money, and not a usin what's right in der hands?" and Chloe
laughed again.

"I don't understand you, Chloe," said Mrs. Shelby, nothing doubting,
from her knowledge of Chloe's manner, that she had heard every word of
the conversation that had passed between her and her husband.

"Why, laws me, Missis!" said Chloe, laughing again, "other folks hires
out der niggers and makes money on 'em! Don't keep sich a tribe eatin
'em out of house and home."

"Well, Chloe, who do you propose that we should hire out?"

"Laws! I an't a proposin nothin; only Sam he said der was one of dese
yer ‘perfectioners’, dey calls 'em, in Louisville, said he wanted a good
hand at cake and pastry; and said he'd give four dollars a week to one,
he did."

"Well, Chloe."

"Well, laws, I 's a thinkin, Missis, it's time Sally was put along to
be doin' something. Sally 's been under my care, now, dis some time, and
she does most as well as me, considerin; and if Missis would only let
me go, I would help fetch up de money. I an't afraid to put my cake, nor
pies nother, 'long side no ‘perfectioner's’.

"Confectioner's, Chloe."

"Law sakes, Missis! 'tan't no odds;--words is so curis, can't never get
'em right!"

"But, Chloe, do you want to leave your children?"

"Laws, Missis! de boys is big enough to do day's works; dey does well
enough; and Sally, she'll take de baby,--she's such a peart young un,
she won't take no lookin arter."

"Louisville is a good way off."

"Law sakes! who's afeard?--it's down river, somer near my old man,
perhaps?" said Chloe, speaking the last in the tone of a question, and
looking at Mrs. Shelby.

"No, Chloe; it's many a hundred miles off," said Mrs. Shelby.

Chloe's countenance fell.

"Never mind; your going there shall bring you nearer, Chloe. Yes, you
may go; and your wages shall every cent of them be laid aside for your
husband's redemption."

As when a bright sunbeam turns a dark cloud to silver, so Chloe's dark
face brightened immediately,--it really shone.

"Laws! if Missis isn't too good! I was thinking of dat ar very thing;
cause I shouldn't need no clothes, nor shoes, nor nothin,--I could save
every cent. How many weeks is der in a year, Missis?"

"Fifty-two," said Mrs. Shelby.

"Laws! now, dere is? and four dollars for each on em. Why, how much 'd
dat ar be?"

"Two hundred and eight dollars," said Mrs. Shelby.

"Why-e!" said Chloe, with an accent of surprise and delight; "and how
long would it take me to work it out, Missis?"

"Some four or five years, Chloe; but, then, you needn't do it all,--I
shall add something to it."

"I wouldn't hear to Missis' givin lessons nor nothin. Mas'r's quite
right in dat ar;--'t wouldn't do, no ways. I hope none our family ever
be brought to dat ar, while I 's got hands."

"Don't fear, Chloe; I'll take care of the honor of the family," said
Mrs. Shelby, smiling. "But when do you expect to go?"

"Well, I want spectin nothin; only Sam, he's a gwine to de river with
some colts, and he said I could go long with him; so I jes put my things
together. If Missis was willin, I'd go with Sam tomorrow morning, if
Missis would write my pass, and write me a commendation."

"Well, Chloe, I'll attend to it, if Mr. Shelby has no objections. I must
speak to him."

Mrs. Shelby went up stairs, and Aunt Chloe, delighted, went out to her
cabin, to make her preparation.

"Law sakes, Mas'r George! ye didn't know I 's a gwine to Louisville
tomorrow!" she said to George, as entering her cabin, he found her busy
in sorting over her baby's clothes. "I thought I'd jis look over sis's
things, and get 'em straightened up. But I'm gwine, Mas'r George,--gwine
to have four dollars a week; and Missis is gwine to lay it all up, to
buy back my old man agin!"

"Whew!" said George, "here's a stroke of business, to be sure! How are
you going?"

"Tomorrow, wid Sam. And now, Mas'r George, I knows you'll jis sit down
and write to my old man, and tell him all about it,--won't ye?"

"To be sure," said George; "Uncle Tom'll be right glad to hear from us.
I'll go right in the house, for paper and ink; and then, you know, Aunt
Chloe, I can tell about the new colts and all."

"Sartin, sartin, Mas'r George; you go 'long, and I'll get ye up a bit o'
chicken, or some sich; ye won't have many more suppers wid yer poor old
aunty."



CHAPTER XXII

"The Grass Withereth--the Flower Fadeth"


Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend
Tom, till two years were gone. Though parted from all his soul held
dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never
positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human
feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can
wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review
appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that
each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so
that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.

Tom read, in his only literary cabinet, of one who had "learned in
whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content." It seemed to him
good and reasonable doctrine, and accorded well with the settled and
thoughtful habit which he had acquired from the reading of that same
book.

His letter homeward, as we related in the last chapter, was in due time
answered by Master George, in a good, round, school-boy hand, that
Tom said might be read "most acrost the room." It contained various
refreshing items of home intelligence, with which our reader is fully
acquainted: stated how Aunt Chloe had been hired out to a confectioner
in Louisville, where her skill in the pastry line was gaining wonderful
sums of money, all of which, Tom was informed, was to be laid up to go
to make up the sum of his redemption money; Mose and Pete were thriving,
and the baby was trotting all about the house, under the care of Sally
and the family generally.

Tom's cabin was shut up for the present; but George expatiated
brilliantly on ornaments and additions to be made to it when Tom came
back.

The rest of this letter gave a list of George's school studies, each
one headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new
colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the
same connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the
letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most
wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He
was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on
the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing but
the difficulty of arranging it so that both sides of the page would show
at once stood in the way of this undertaking.

The friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child's growth. It
would be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart
of her faithful attendant. He loved her as something frail and earthly,
yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine. He gazed on
her as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,--with a
mixture of reverence and tenderness; and to humor her graceful fancies,
and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like
a many-colored rainbow, was Tom's chief delight. In the market, at
morning, his eyes were always on the flower-stalls for rare bouquets
for her, and the choicest peach or orange was slipped into his pocket to
give to her when he came back; and the sight that pleased him most was
her sunny head looking out the gate for his distant approach, and her
childish questions,--"Well, Uncle Tom, what have you got for me today?"

Nor was Eva less zealous in kind offices, in return. Though a child, she
was a beautiful reader;--a fine musical ear, a quick poetic fancy, and
an instinctive sympathy with what's grand and noble, made her such a
reader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard. At first, she read to
please her humble friend; but soon her own earnest nature threw out its
tendrils, and wound itself around the majestic book; and Eva loved it,
because it woke in her strange yearnings, and strong, dim emotions, such
as impassioned, imaginative children love to feel.

The parts that pleased her most were the Revelations and the
Prophecies,--parts whose dim and wondrous imagery, and fervent
language, impressed her the more, that she questioned vainly of their
meaning;--and she and her simple friend, the old child and the young
one, felt just alike about it. All that they knew was, that they spoke
of a glory to be revealed,--a wondrous something yet to come, wherein
their soul rejoiced, yet knew not why; and though it be not so in the
physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not
always profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between
two dim eternities,--the eternal past, the eternal future. The light
shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn
towards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to
her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and
answers in her own expecting nature. Its mystic imagery are so many
talismans and gems inscribed with unknown hieroglyphics; she folds them
in her bosom, and expects to read them when she passes beyond the veil.

At this time in our story, the whole St. Clare establishment is, for the
time being, removed to their villa on Lake Pontchartrain. The heats of
summer had driven all who were able to leave the sultry and unhealthy
city, to seek the shores of the lake, and its cool sea-breezes.

St. Clare's villa was an East Indian cottage, surrounded by light
verandahs of bamboo-work, and opening on all sides into gardens and
pleasure-grounds. The common sitting-room opened on to a large garden,
fragrant with every picturesque plant and flower of the tropics, where
winding paths ran down to the very shores of the lake, whose silvery
sheet of water lay there, rising and falling in the sunbeams,--a picture
never for an hour the same, yet every hour more beautiful.

It is now one of those intensely golden sunsets which kindles the whole
horizon into one blaze of glory, and makes the water another sky. The
lake lay in rosy or golden streaks, save where white-winged vessels
glided hither and thither, like so many spirits, and little golden
stars twinkled through the glow, and looked down at themselves as they
trembled in the water.

Tom and Eva were seated on a little mossy seat, in an arbor, at the foot
of the garden. It was Sunday evening, and Eva's Bible lay open on her
knee. She read,--"And I saw a sea of glass, mingled with fire."

"Tom," said Eva, suddenly stopping, and pointing to the lake, "there 't
is."

"What, Miss Eva?"

"Don't you see,--there?" said the child, pointing to the glassy water,
which, as it rose and fell, reflected the golden glow of the sky.
"There's a 'sea of glass, mingled with fire.'"

"True enough, Miss Eva," said Tom; and Tom sang--

"O, had I the wings of the morning,
I'd fly away to Canaan's shore;
Bright angels should convey me home,
To the new Jerusalem."

"Where do you suppose new Jerusalem is, Uncle Tom?" said Eva.

"O, up in the clouds, Miss Eva."

"Then I think I see it," said Eva. "Look in those clouds!--they look
like great gates of pearl; and you can see beyond them--far, far
off--it's all gold. Tom, sing about 'spirits bright.'"

Tom sung the words of a well-known Methodist hymn,

"I see a band of spirits bright,
That taste the glories there;
They all are robed in spotless white,
And conquering palms they bear."

"Uncle Tom, I've seen ‘them’," said Eva.

Tom had no doubt of it at all; it did not surprise him in the least.
If Eva had told him she had been to heaven, he would have thought it
entirely probable.

"They come to me sometimes in my sleep, those spirits;" and Eva's eyes
grew dreamy, and she hummed, in a low voice,

"They are all robed in spotless white,
And conquering palms they bear."

"Uncle Tom," said Eva, "I'm going there."

"Where, Miss Eva?"

The child rose, and pointed her little hand to the sky; the glow of
evening lit her golden hair and flushed cheek with a kind of unearthly
radiance, and her eyes were bent earnestly on the skies.

"I'm going ‘there’," she said, "to the spirits bright, Tom; ‘I'm going,
before long’."

The faithful old heart felt a sudden thrust; and Tom thought how often
he had noticed, within six months, that Eva's little hands had grown
thinner, and her skin more transparent, and her breath shorter; and how,
when she ran or played in the garden, as she once could for hours, she
became soon so tired and languid. He had heard Miss Ophelia speak often
of a cough, that all her medicaments could not cure; and even now that
fervent cheek and little hand were burning with hectic fever; and yet
the thought that Eva's words suggested had never come to him till now.

Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their
names are always on grave-stones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly
eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of
yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all
the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms
of one who ‘is not’. It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels,
whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the
wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in
their homeward flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the
eye,--when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser
than the ordinary words of children,--hope not to retain that child; for
the seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from
its eyes.

Even so, beloved Eva! fair star of thy dwelling! Thou are passing away;
but they that love thee dearest know it not.

The colloquy between Tom and Eva was interrupted by a hasty call from
Miss Ophelia.

"Eva--Eva!--why, child, the dew is falling; you mustn't be out there!"

Eva and Tom hastened in.

Miss Ophelia was old, and skilled in the tactics of nursing. She was
from New England, and knew well the first guileful footsteps of that
soft, insidious disease, which sweeps away so many of the fairest
and loveliest, and, before one fibre of life seems broken, seals them
irrevocably for death.

She had noted the slight, dry cough, the daily brightening cheek;
nor could the lustre of the eye, and the airy buoyancy born of fever,
deceive her.

She tried to communicate her fears to St. Clare; but he threw back
her suggestions with a restless petulance, unlike his usual careless
good-humor.

"Don't be croaking, Cousin,--I hate it!" he would say; "don't you see
that the child is only growing. Children always lose strength when they
grow fast."

"But she has that cough!"

"O! nonsense of that cough!--it is not anything. She has taken a little
cold, perhaps."

"Well, that was just the way Eliza Jane was taken, and Ellen and Maria
Sanders."

"O! stop these hobgoblin' nurse legends. You old hands got so wise, that
a child cannot cough, or sneeze, but you see desperation and ruin at
hand. Only take care of the child, keep her from the night air, and
don't let her play too hard, and she'll do well enough."

So St. Clare said; but he grew nervous and restless. He watched Eva
feverishly day by day, as might be told by the frequency with which
he repeated over that "the child was quite well"--that there wasn't
anything in that cough,--it was only some little stomach affection, such
as children often had. But he kept by her more than before, took her
oftener to ride with him, brought home every few days some receipt or
strengthening mixture,--"not," he said, "that the child ‘needed’ it, but
then it would not do her any harm."

If it must be told, the thing that struck a deeper pang to his heart
than anything else was the daily increasing maturity of the child's mind
and feelings. While still retaining all a child's fanciful graces, yet
she often dropped, unconsciously, words of such a reach of thought, and
strange unworldly wisdom, that they seemed to be an inspiration. At such
times, St. Clare would feel a sudden thrill, and clasp her in his arms,
as if that fond clasp could save her; and his heart rose up with wild
determination to keep her, never to let her go.

The child's whole heart and soul seemed absorbed in works of love and
kindness. Impulsively generous she had always been; but there was
a touching and womanly thoughtfulness about her now, that every one
noticed. She still loved to play with Topsy, and the various colored
children; but she now seemed rather a spectator than an actor of their
plays, and she would sit for half an hour at a time, laughing at the odd
tricks of Topsy,--and then a shadow would seem to pass across her face,
her eyes grew misty, and her thoughts were afar.

"Mamma," she said, suddenly, to her mother, one day, "why don't we teach
our servants to read?"

"What a question child! People never do."

"Why don't they?" said Eva.

"Because it is no use for them to read. It don't help them to work any
better, and they are not made for anything else."

"But they ought to read the Bible, mamma, to learn God's will."

"O! they can get that read to them all ‘they’ need."

"It seems to me, mamma, the Bible is for every one to read themselves.
They need it a great many times when there is nobody to read it."

"Eva, you are an odd child," said her mother.

"Miss Ophelia has taught Topsy to read," continued Eva.

"Yes, and you see how much good it does. Topsy is the worst creature I
ever saw!"

"Here's poor Mammy!" said Eva. "She does love the Bible so much, and
wishes so she could read! And what will she do when I can't read to
her?"

Marie was busy, turning over the contents of a drawer, as she answered,

"Well, of course, by and by, Eva, you will have other things to think
of besides reading the Bible round to servants. Not but that is very
proper; I've done it myself, when I had health. But when you come to
be dressing and going into company, you won't have time. See here!" she
added, "these jewels I'm going to give you when you come out. I wore
them to my first ball. I can tell you, Eva, I made a sensation."

Eva took the jewel-case, and lifted from it a diamond necklace. Her
large, thoughtful eyes rested on them, but it was plain her thoughts
were elsewhere.

"How sober you look child!" said Marie.

"Are these worth a great deal of money, mamma?"

"To be sure, they are. Father sent to France for them. They are worth a
small fortune."

"I wish I had them," said Eva, "to do what I pleased with!"

"What would you do with them?"

"I'd sell them, and buy a place in the free states, and take all our
people there, and hire teachers, to teach them to read and write."

Eva was cut short by her mother's laughing.

"Set up a boarding-school! Wouldn't you teach them to play on the piano,
and paint on velvet?"

"I'd teach them to read their own Bible, and write their own letters,
and read letters that are written to them," said Eva, steadily. "I know,
mamma, it does come very hard on them that they can't do these things.
Tom feels it--Mammy does,--a great many of them do. I think it's wrong."

"Come, come, Eva; you are only a child! You don't know anything about
these things," said Marie; "besides, your talking makes my head ache."

Marie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not
exactly suit her.

Eva stole away; but after that, she assiduously gave Mammy reading
lessons.



CHAPTER XXIII

Henrique


About this time, St. Clare's brother Alfred, with his eldest son, a boy
of twelve, spent a day or two with the family at the lake.

No sight could be more singular and beautiful than that of these twin
brothers. Nature, instead of instituting resemblances between them, had
made them opposites on every point; yet a mysterious tie seemed to unite
them in a closer friendship than ordinary.

They used to saunter, arm in arm, up and down the alleys and walks
of the garden. Augustine, with his blue eyes and golden hair, his
ethereally flexible form and vivacious features; and Alfred, dark-eyed,
with haughty Roman profile, firmly-knit limbs, and decided bearing. They
were always abusing each other's opinions and practices, and yet never
a whit the less absorbed in each other's society; in fact, the very
contrariety seemed to unite them, like the attraction between opposite
poles of the magnet.

Henrique, the eldest son of Alfred, was a noble, dark-eyed, princely
boy, full of vivacity and spirit; and, from the first moment of
introduction, seemed to be perfectly fascinated by the spirituelle
graces of his cousin Evangeline.

Eva had a little pet pony, of a snowy whiteness. It was easy as a
cradle, and as gentle as its little mistress; and this pony was now
brought up to the back verandah by Tom, while a little mulatto boy of
about thirteen led along a small black Arabian, which had just been
imported, at a great expense, for Henrique.

Henrique had a boy's pride in his new possession; and, as he advanced
and took the reins out of the hands of his little groom, he looked
carefully over him, and his brow darkened.

"What's this, Dodo, you little lazy dog! you haven't rubbed my horse
down, this morning."

"Yes, Mas'r," said Dodo, submissively; "he got that dust on his own
self."

"You rascal, shut your mouth!" said Henrique, violently raising his
riding-whip. "How dare you speak?"

The boy was a handsome, bright-eyed mulatto, of just Henrique's size,
and his curling hair hung round a high, bold forehead. He had white
blood in his veins, as could be seen by the quick flush in his cheek,
and the sparkle of his eye, as he eagerly tried to speak.

"Mas'r Henrique!--" he began.

Henrique struck him across the face with his riding-whip, and, seizing
one of his arms, forced him on to his knees, and beat him till he was
out of breath.

"There, you impudent dog! Now will you learn not to answer back when I
speak to you? Take the horse back, and clean him properly. I'll teach
you your place!"

"Young Mas'r," said Tom, "I specs what he was gwine to say was, that the
horse would roll when he was bringing him up from the stable; he's so
full of spirits,--that's the way he got that dirt on him; I looked to
his cleaning."

"You hold your tongue till you're asked to speak!" said Henrique,
turning on his heel, and walking up the steps to speak to Eva, who stood
in her riding-dress.

"Dear Cousin, I'm sorry this stupid fellow has kept you waiting," he
said. "Let's sit down here, on this seat till they come. What's the
matter, Cousin?--you look sober."

"How could you be so cruel and wicked to poor Dodo?" asked Eva.

"Cruel,--wicked!" said the boy, with unaffected surprise. "What do you
mean, dear Eva?"

"I don't want you to call me dear Eva, when you do so," said Eva.

"Dear Cousin, you don't know Dodo; it's the only way to manage him,
he's so full of lies and excuses. The only way is to put him down at
once,--not let him open his mouth; that's the way papa manages."

"But Uncle Tom said it was an accident, and he never tells what isn't
true."

"He's an uncommon old nigger, then!" said Henrique. "Dodo will lie as
fast as he can speak."

"You frighten him into deceiving, if you treat him so."

"Why, Eva, you've really taken such a fancy to Dodo, that I shall be
jealous."

"But you beat him,--and he didn't deserve it."

"O, well, it may go for some time when he does, and don't get it. A few
cuts never come amiss with Dodo,--he's a regular spirit, I can tell you;
but I won't beat him again before you, if it troubles you."

Eva was not satisfied, but found it in vain to try to make her handsome
cousin understand her feelings.

Dodo soon appeared, with the horses.

"Well, Dodo, you've done pretty well, this time," said his young master,
with a more gracious air. "Come, now, and hold Miss Eva's horse while I
put her on to the saddle."

Dodo came and stood by Eva's pony. His face was troubled; his eyes
looked as if he had been crying.

Henrique, who valued himself on his gentlemanly adroitness in all
matters of gallantry, soon had his fair cousin in the saddle, and,
gathering the reins, placed them in her hands.

But Eva bent to the other side of the horse, where Dodo was standing,
and said, as he relinquished the reins,--"That's a good boy,
Dodo;--thank you!"

Dodo looked up in amazement into the sweet young face; the blood rushed
to his cheeks, and the tears to his eyes.

"Here, Dodo," said his master, imperiously.

Dodo sprang and held the horse, while his master mounted.

"There's a picayune for you to buy candy with, Dodo," said Henrique; "go
get some."

And Henrique cantered down the walk after Eva. Dodo stood looking after
the two children. One had given him money; and one had given him what he
wanted far more,--a kind word, kindly spoken. Dodo had been only a
few months away from his mother. His master had bought him at a slave
warehouse, for his handsome face, to be a match to the handsome pony;
and he was now getting his breaking in, at the hands of his young
master.

The scene of the beating had been witnessed by the two brothers St.
Clare, from another part of the garden.

Augustine's cheek flushed; but he only observed, with his usual
sarcastic carelessness.

"I suppose that's what we may call republican education, Alfred?"

"Henrique is a devil of a fellow, when his blood's up," said Alfred,
carelessly.

"I suppose you consider this an instructive practice for him," said
Augustine, drily.

"I couldn't help it, if I didn't. Henrique is a regular little
tempest;--his mother and I have given him up, long ago. But, then, that
Dodo is a perfect sprite,--no amount of whipping can hurt him."

"And this by way of teaching Henrique the first verse of a republican's
catechism, 'All men are born free and equal!'"

"Poh!" said Alfred; "one of Tom Jefferson's pieces of French sentiment
and humbug. It's perfectly ridiculous to have that going the rounds
among us, to this day."

"I think it is," said St. Clare, significantly.

"Because," said Alfred, "we can see plainly enough that all men are
‘not’ born free, nor born equal; they are born anything else. For
my part, I think half this republican talk sheer humbug. It is the
educated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have
equal rights and not the canaille."

"If you can keep the canaille of that opinion," said Augustine. "They
took ‘their’ turn once, in France."

"Of course, they must be ‘kept down’, consistently, steadily, as
I ‘should’," said Alfred, setting his foot hard down as if he were
standing on somebody.

"It makes a terrible slip when they get up," said Augustine,--"in St.
Domingo, for instance."

"Poh!" said Alfred, "we'll take care of that, in this country. We must
set our face against all this educating, elevating talk, that is getting
about now; the lower class must not be educated."

"That is past praying for," said Augustine; "educated they will be, and
we have only to say how. Our system is educating them in barbarism and
brutality. We are breaking all humanizing ties, and making them brute
beasts; and, if they get the upper hand, such we shall find them."

"They shall never get the upper hand!" said Alfred.

"That's right," said St. Clare; "put on the steam, fasten down the
escape-valve, and sit on it, and see where you'll land."

"Well," said Alfred, "we ‘will’ see. I'm not afraid to sit on the
escape-valve, as long as the boilers are strong, and the machinery works
well."

"The nobles in Louis XVI.'s time thought just so; and Austria and Pius
IX. think so now; and, some pleasant morning, you may all be caught up
to meet each other in the air, ‘when the boilers burst’."

"‘Dies declarabit’," said Alfred, laughing.

"I tell you," said Augustine, "if there is anything that is revealed
with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses
are to rise, and the under class become the upper one."

"That's one of your red republican humbugs, Augustine! Why didn't you
ever take to the stump;--you'd make a famous stump orator! Well, I hope
I shall be dead before this millennium of your greasy masses comes on."

"Greasy or not greasy, they will govern ‘you’, when their time comes,"
said Augustine; "and they will be just such rulers as you make them. The
French noblesse chose to have the people '‘sans culottes’,' and they
had '‘sans culotte’' governors to their hearts' content. The people of
Hayti--"

"O, come, Augustine! as if we hadn't had enough of that abominable,
contemptible Hayti!* The Haytiens were not Anglo Saxons; if they
had been there would have been another story. The Anglo Saxon is the
dominant race of the world, and ‘is to be so’."

* In August 1791, as a consequence of the French Revolution,
the black slaves and mulattoes on Haiti rose in revolt
against the whites, and in the period of turmoil that
followed enormous cruelties were practised by both sides.
The "Emperor" Dessalines, come to power in 1804, massacred
all the whites on the island. Haitian bloodshed became an
argument to show the barbarous nature of the Negro, a
doctrine Wendell Phillips sought to combat in his celebrated
lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture.

"Well, there is a pretty fair infusion of Anglo Saxon blood among our
slaves, now," said Augustine. "There are plenty among them who have only
enough of the African to give a sort of tropical warmth and fervor to
our calculating firmness and foresight. If ever the San Domingo hour
comes, Anglo Saxon blood will lead on the day. Sons of white fathers,
with all our haughty feelings burning in their veins, will not always
be bought and sold and traded. They will rise, and raise with them their
mother's race."

"Stuff!--nonsense!"

"Well," said Augustine, "there goes an old saying to this effect, 'As
it was in the days of Noah so shall it be;--they ate, they drank, they
planted, they builded, and knew not till the flood came and took them.'"

"On the whole, Augustine, I think your talents might do for a circuit
rider," said Alfred, laughing. "Never you fear for us; possession is our
nine points. We've got the power. This subject race," said he, stamping
firmly, "is down and shall ‘stay’ down! We have energy enough to manage
our own powder."

"Sons trained like your Henrique will be grand guardians of your
powder-magazines," said Augustine,--"so cool and self-possessed!
The proverb says, 'They that cannot govern themselves cannot govern
others.'"

"There is a trouble there" said Alfred, thoughtfully; "there's no doubt
that our system is a difficult one to train children under. It gives too
free scope to the passions, altogether, which, in our climate, are
hot enough. I find trouble with Henrique. The boy is generous and
warm-hearted, but a perfect fire-cracker when excited. I believe I shall
send him North for his education, where obedience is more fashionable,
and where he will associate more with equals, and less with dependents."

"Since training children is the staple work of the human race," said
Augustine, "I should think it something of a consideration that our
system does not work well there."

"It does not for some things," said Alfred; "for others, again, it does.
It makes boys manly and courageous; and the very vices of an abject race
tend to strengthen in them the opposite virtues. I think Henrique,
now, has a keener sense of the beauty of truth, from seeing lying and
deception the universal badge of slavery."

"A Christian-like view of the subject, certainly!" said Augustine.

"It's true, Christian-like or not; and is about as Christian-like as
most other things in the world," said Alfred.

"That may be," said St. Clare.

"Well, there's no use in talking, Augustine. I believe we've been round
and round this old track five hundred times, more or less. What do you
say to a game of backgammon?"

The two brothers ran up the verandah steps, and were soon seated at a
light bamboo stand, with the backgammon-board between them. As they were
setting their men, Alfred said,

"I tell you, Augustine, if I thought as you do, I should do something."

"I dare say you would,--you are one of the doing sort,--but what?"

"Why, elevate your own servants, for a specimen," said Alfred, with a
half-scornful smile.

"You might as well set Mount AEtna on them flat, and tell them to
stand up under it, as tell me to elevate my servants under all the
superincumbent mass of society upon them. One man can do nothing,
against the whole action of a community. Education, to do anything, must
be a state education; or there must be enough agreed in it to make a
current."

"You take the first throw," said Alfred; and the brothers were soon lost
in the game, and heard no more till the scraping of horses' feet was
heard under the verandah.

"There come the children," said Augustine, rising. "Look here, Alf! Did
you ever see anything so beautiful?" And, in truth, it ‘was’ a beautiful
sight. Henrique, with his bold brow, and dark, glossy curls, and glowing
cheek, was laughing gayly as he bent towards his fair cousin, as they
came on. She was dressed in a blue riding dress, with a cap of the same
color. Exercise had given a brilliant hue to her cheeks, and heightened
the effect of her singularly transparent skin, and golden hair.

"Good heavens! what perfectly dazzling beauty!" said Alfred. "I tell
you, Auguste, won't she make some hearts ache, one of these days?"

"She will, too truly,--God knows I'm afraid so!" said St. Clare, in a
tone of sudden bitterness, as he hurried down to take her off her horse.

"Eva darling! you're not much tired?" he said, as he clasped her in his
arms.

"No, papa," said the child; but her short, hard breathing alarmed her
father.

"How could you ride so fast, dear?--you know it's bad for you."

"I felt so well, papa, and liked it so much, I forgot."

St. Clare carried her in his arms into the parlor, and laid her on the
sofa.

"Henrique, you must be careful of Eva," said he; "you mustn't ride fast
with her."

"I'll take her under my care," said Henrique, seating himself by the
sofa, and taking Eva's hand.

Eva soon found herself much better. Her father and uncle resumed their
game, and the children were left together.

"Do you know, Eva, I'm sorry papa is only going to stay two days here,
and then I shan't see you again for ever so long! If I stay with you,
I'd try to be good, and not be cross to Dodo, and so on. I don't mean
to treat Dodo ill; but, you know, I've got such a quick temper. I'm not
really bad to him, though. I give him a picayune, now and then; and you
see he dresses well. I think, on the whole, Dodo 's pretty well off."

"Would you think you were well off, if there were not one creature in
the world near you to love you?"

"I?--Well, of course not."

"And you have taken Dodo away from all the friends he ever had, and now
he has not a creature to love him;--nobody can be good that way."

"Well, I can't help it, as I know of. I can't get his mother and I can't
love him myself, nor anybody else, as I know of."

"Why can't you?" said Eva.

"‘Love’ Dodo! Why, Eva, you wouldn't have me! I may ‘like’ him well
enough; but you don't ‘love’ your servants."

"I do, indeed."

"How odd!"

"Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?"

"O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many such things; but, then,
nobody ever thinks of doing them,--you know, Eva, nobody does."

Eva did not speak; her eyes were fixed and thoughtful for a few moments.

"At any rate," she said, "dear Cousin, do love poor Dodo, and be kind to
him, for my sake!"

"I could love anything, for your sake, dear Cousin; for I really think
you are the loveliest creature that I ever saw!" And Henrique spoke
with an earnestness that flushed his handsome face. Eva received it with
perfect simplicity, without even a change of feature; merely saying,
"I'm glad you feel so, dear Henrique! I hope you will remember."

The dinner-bell put an end to the interview.



CHAPTER XXIV

Foreshadowings


Two days after this, Alfred St. Clare and Augustine parted; and Eva, who
had been stimulated, by the society of her young cousin, to exertions
beyond her strength, began to fail rapidly. St. Clare was at last
willing to call in medical advice,--a thing from which he had always
shrunk, because it was the admission of an unwelcome truth.

But, for a day or two, Eva was so unwell as to be confined to the house;
and the doctor was called.

Marie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child's gradually decaying
health and strength, because she was completely absorbed in studying out
two or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself was
a victim. It was the first principle of Marie's belief that nobody ever
was or could be so great a sufferer as ‘herself’; and, therefore, she
always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her
could be sick. She was always sure, in such a case, that it was nothing
but laziness, or want of energy; and that, if they had had the suffering
‘she’ had, they would soon know the difference.

Miss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal fears about
Eva; but to no avail.

"I don't see as anything ails the child," she would say; "she runs
about, and plays."

"But she has a cough."

"Cough! you don't need to tell ‘me’ about a cough. I've always been
subject to a cough, all my days. When I was of Eva's age, they thought
I was in a consumption. Night after night, Mammy used to sit up with me.
O! Eva's cough is not anything."

"But she gets weak, and is short-breathed."

"Law! I've had that, years and years; it's only a nervous affection."

"But she sweats so, nights!"

"Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after night, my
clothes will be wringing wet. There won't be a dry thread in my
night-clothes and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up
to dry! Eva doesn't sweat anything like that!"

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now that Eva was fairly
and visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie, all on a sudden,
took a new turn.

"She knew it," she said; "she always felt it, that she was destined
to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her wretched
health, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her
eyes;"--and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded,
with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new misery.

"My dear Marie, don't talk so!" said St. Clare. "You ought not to give up
the case so, at once."

"You have not a mother's feelings, St. Clare! You never could understand
me!--you don't now."

"But don't talk so, as if it were a gone case!"

"I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If ‘you’ don't
feel when your only child is in this alarming state, I do. It's a blow
too much for me, with all I was bearing before."

"It's true," said St. Clare, "that Eva is very delicate, ‘that’ I always
knew; and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust her strength; and
that her situation is critical. But just now she is only prostrated by
the heat of the weather, and by the excitement of her cousin's visit,
and the exertions she made. The physician says there is room for hope."

"Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side, pray do; it's a
mercy if people haven't sensitive feelings, in this world. I am sure I
wish I didn't feel as I do; it only makes me completely wretched! I wish
I ‘could’ be as easy as the rest of you!"

And the "rest of them" had good reason to breathe the same prayer, for
Marie paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts
of inflictions on every one about her. Every word that was spoken by
anybody, everything that was done or was not done everywhere, was only
a new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted, insensible beings,
who were unmindful of her peculiar sorrows. Poor Eva heard some of these
speeches; and nearly cried her little eyes out, in pity for her mamma,
and in sorrow that she should make her so much distress.

In a week or two, there was a great improvement of symptoms,--one of
those deceitful lulls, by which her inexorable disease so often beguiles
the anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave. Eva's step was again
in the garden,--in the balconies; she played and laughed again,--and
her father, in a transport, declared that they should soon have her
as hearty as anybody. Miss Ophelia and the physician alone felt no
encouragement from this illusive truce. There was one other heart, too,
that felt the same certainty, and that was the little heart of Eva. What
is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its
earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or
the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be it what it may,
it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty
that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright
stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by
sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

For the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was unfolding
before her with every brightness that love and wealth could give, had no
regret for herself in dying.

In that book which she and her simple old friend had read so much
together, she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one who
loved the little child; and, as she gazed and mused, He had ceased to
be an image and a picture of the distant past, and come to be a living,
all-surrounding reality. His love enfolded her childish heart with more
than mortal tenderness; and it was to Him, she said, she was going, and
to his home.

But her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave
behind. Her father most,--for Eva, though she never distinctly thought
so, had an instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than
any other. She loved her mother because she was so loving a creature,
and all the selfishness that she had seen in her only saddened and
perplexed her; for she had a child's implicit trust that her mother
could not do wrong. There was something about her that Eva never could
make out; and she always smoothed it over with thinking that, after all,
it was mamma, and she loved her very dearly indeed.

She felt, too, for those fond, faithful servants, to whom she was as
daylight and sunshine. Children do not usually generalize; but Eva was
an uncommonly mature child, and the things that she had witnessed of the
evils of the system under which they were living had fallen, one by
one, into the depths of her thoughtful, pondering heart. She had vague
longings to do something for them,--to bless and save not only them,
but all in their condition,--longings that contrasted sadly with the
feebleness of her little frame.

"Uncle Tom," she said, one day, when she was reading to her friend, "I
can understand why Jesus ‘wanted’ to die for us."

"Why, Miss Eva?"

"Because I've felt so, too."

"What is it Miss Eva?--I don't understand."

"I can't tell you; but, when I saw those poor creatures on the boat,
you know, when you came up and I,--some had lost their mothers, and some
their husbands, and some mothers cried for their little children--and
when I heard about poor Prue,--oh, wasn't that dreadful!--and a great
many other times, I've felt that I would be glad to die, if my dying
could stop all this misery. ‘I would’ die for them, Tom, if I could,"
said the child, earnestly, laying her little thin hand on his.

Tom looked at the child with awe; and when she, hearing her father's
voice, glided away, he wiped his eyes many times, as he looked after
her.

"It's jest no use tryin' to keep Miss Eva here," he said to Mammy, whom
he met a moment after. "She's got the Lord's mark in her forehead."

"Ah, yes, yes," said Mammy, raising her hands; "I've allers said so.
She wasn't never like a child that's to live--there was allers something
deep in her eyes. I've told Missis so, many the time; it's a comin'
true,--we all sees it,--dear, little, blessed lamb!"

Eva came tripping up the verandah steps to her father. It was late in
the afternoon, and the rays of the sun formed a kind of glory behind
her, as she came forward in her white dress, with her golden hair and
glowing cheeks, her eyes unnaturally bright with the slow fever that
burned in her veins.

St. Clare had called her to show a statuette that he had been buying
for her; but her appearance, as she came on, impressed him suddenly and
painfully. There is a kind of beauty so intense, yet so fragile, that we
cannot bear to look at it. Her father folded her suddenly in his arms,
and almost forgot what he was going to tell her.

"Eva, dear, you are better now-a-days,--are you not?"

"Papa," said Eva, with sudden firmness "I've had things I wanted to say
to you, a great while. I want to say them now, before I get weaker."

St. Clare trembled as Eva seated herself in his lap. She laid her head
on his bosom, and said,

"It's all no use, papa, to keep it to myself any longer. The time is
coming that I am going to leave you. I am going, and never to come
back!" and Eva sobbed.

"O, now, my dear little Eva!" said St. Clare, trembling as he spoke, but
speaking cheerfully, "you've got nervous and low-spirited; you mustn't
indulge such gloomy thoughts. See here, I've bought a statuette for
you!"

"No, papa," said Eva, putting it gently away, "don't deceive
yourself!--I am ‘not’ any better, I know it perfectly well,--and I am
going, before long. I am not nervous,--I am not low-spirited. If it were
not for you, papa, and my friends, I should be perfectly happy. I want
to go,--I long to go!"

"Why, dear child, what has made your poor little heart so sad? You have
had everything, to make you happy, that could be given you."

"I had rather be in heaven; though, only for my friends' sake, I would
be willing to live. There are a great many things here that make me sad,
that seem dreadful to me; I had rather be there; but I don't want to
leave you,--it almost breaks my heart!"

"What makes you sad, and seems dreadful, Eva?"

"O, things that are done, and done all the time. I feel sad for our poor
people; they love me dearly, and they are all good and kind to me. I
wish, papa, they were all ‘free’."

"Why, Eva, child, don't you think they are well enough off now?"

"O, but, papa, if anything should happen to you, what would become of
them? There are very few men like you, papa. Uncle Alfred isn't like
you, and mamma isn't; and then, think of poor old Prue's owners! What
horrid things people do, and can do!" and Eva shuddered.

"My dear child, you are too sensitive. I'm sorry I ever let you hear
such stories."

"O, that's what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and
never to have any pain,--never suffer anything,--not even hear a sad
story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, an
their lives;--it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to
feel about them! Such things always sunk into my heart; they went down
deep; I've thought and thought about them. Papa, isn't there any way to
have all slaves made free?"

"That's a difficult question, dearest. There's no doubt that this way
is a very bad one; a great many people think so; I do myself I heartily
wish that there were not a slave in the land; but, then, I don't know
what is to be done about it!"

"Papa, you are such a good man, and so noble, and kind, and you always
have a way of saying things that is so pleasant, couldn't you go all
round and try to persuade people to do right about this? When I am dead,
papa, then you will think of me, and do it for my sake. I would do it,
if I could."

"When you are dead, Eva," said St. Clare, passionately. "O, child, don't
talk to me so! You are all I have on earth."

"Poor old Prue's child was all that she had,--and yet she had to hear it
crying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their
children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor
Mammy loves her children; I've seen her cry when she talked about them.
And Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things
are happening, all the time!"

"There, there, darling," said St. Clare, soothingly; "only don't
distress yourself, don't talk of dying, and I will do anything you
wish."

"And promise me, dear father, that Tom shall have his freedom as soon
as"--she stopped, and said, in a hesitating tone--"I am gone!"

"Yes, dear, I will do anything in the world,--anything you could ask me
to."

"Dear papa," said the child, laying her burning cheek against his, "how
I wish we could go together!"

"Where, dearest?" said St. Clare.

"To our Saviour's home; it's so sweet and peaceful there--it is all so
loving there!" The child spoke unconsciously, as of a place where she
had often been. "Don't you want to go, papa?" she said.

St. Clare drew her closer to him, but was silent.

"You will come to me," said the child, speaking in a voice of calm
certainty which she often used unconsciously.

"I shall come after you. I shall not forget you."

The shadows of the solemn evening closed round them deeper and deeper,
as St. Clare sat silently holding the little frail form to his bosom.
He saw no more the deep eyes, but the voice came over him as a spirit
voice, and, as in a sort of judgment vision, his whole past life rose in
a moment before his eyes: his mother's prayers and hymns; his own early
yearnings and aspirings for good; and, between them and this hour, years
of worldliness and scepticism, and what man calls respectable living.
We can think ‘much’, very much, in a moment. St. Clare saw and felt many
things, but spoke nothing; and, as it grew darker, he took his child
to her bed-room; and, when she was prepared for rest; he sent away the
attendants, and rocked her in his arms, and sung to her till she was
asleep.



CHAPTER XXV

The Little Evangelist

It was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was stretched on a bamboo lounge in
the verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. Marie lay reclined on a
sofa, opposite the window opening on the verandah, closely secluded,
under an awning of transparent gauze, from the outrages of the
mosquitos, and languidly holding in her hand an elegantly bound
prayer-book. She was holding it because it was Sunday, and she imagined
she had been reading it,--though, in fact, she had been only taking a
succession of short naps, with it open in her hand.

Miss Ophelia, who, after some rummaging, had hunted up a small Methodist
meeting within riding distance, had gone out, with Tom as driver, to
attend it; and Eva had accompanied them.

"I say, Augustine," said Marie after dozing a while, "I must send to the
city after my old Doctor Posey; I'm sure I've got the complaint of the
heart."

"Well; why need you send for him? This doctor that attends Eva seems
skilful."

"I would not trust him in a critical case," said Marie; "and I think
I may say mine is becoming so! I've been thinking of it, these two
or three nights past; I have such distressing pains, and such strange
feelings."

"O, Marie, you are blue; I don't believe it's heart complaint."

"I dare say ‘you’ don't," said Marie; "I was prepared to expect ‘that’.
You can be alarmed enough, if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the
matter with her; but you never think of me."

"If it's particularly agreeable to you to have heart disease, why, I'll
try and maintain you have it," said St. Clare; "I didn't know it was."

"Well, I only hope you won't be sorry for this, when it's too late!"
said Marie; "but, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the
exertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have
long suspected."

What the ‘exertions’ were which Marie referred to, it would have been
difficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself,
and went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was,
till a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia
alighted.

Miss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, to put away her bonnet
and shawl, as was always her manner, before she spoke a word on any
subject; while Eva came, at St: Clare's call, and was sitting on his
knee, giving him an account of the services they had heard.

They soon heard loud exclamations from Miss Ophelia's room, which,
like the one in which they were sitting, opened on to the verandah and
violent reproof addressed to somebody.

"What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?" asked St. Clare. "That
commotion is of her raising, I'll be bound!"

And, in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high indignation, came dragging
the culprit along.

"Come out here, now!" she said. "I ‘will’ tell your master!"

"What's the case now?" asked Augustine.

"The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this child, any longer! It's
past all bearing; flesh and blood cannot endure it! Here, I locked her
up, and gave her a hymn to study; and what does she do, but spy
out where I put my key, and has gone to my bureau, and got a
bonnet-trimming, and cut it all to pieces to make dolls' jackets! I never
saw anything like it, in my life!"

"I told you, Cousin," said Marie, "that you'd find out that these
creatures can't be brought up without severity. If I had ‘my’ way, now,"
she said, looking reproachfully at St. Clare, "I'd send that child out,
and have her thoroughly whipped; I'd have her whipped till she couldn't
stand!"

"I don't doubt it," said St. Clare. "Tell me of the lovely rule of
woman! I never saw above a dozen women that wouldn't half kill a horse,
or a servant, either, if they had their own way with them!--let alone a
man."

"There is no use in this shilly-shally way of yours, St. Clare!" said
Marie. "Cousin is a woman of sense, and she sees it now, as plain as I
do."

Miss Ophelia had just the capability of indignation that belongs to the
thorough-paced housekeeper, and this had been pretty actively roused
by the artifice and wastefulness of the child; in fact, many of my
lady readers must own that they should have felt just so in her
circumstances; but Marie's words went beyond her, and she felt less
heat.

"I wouldn't have the child treated so, for the world," she said; "but,
I am sure, Augustine, I don't know what to do. I've taught and taught;
I've talked till I'm tired; I've whipped her; I've punished her in every
way I can think of, and she's just what she was at first."

"Come here, Tops, you monkey!" said St. Clare, calling the child up to
him.

Topsy came up; her round, hard eyes glittering and blinking with a
mixture of apprehensiveness and their usual odd drollery.

"What makes you behave so?" said St. Clare, who could not help being
amused with the child's expression.

"Spects it's my wicked heart," said Topsy, demurely; "Miss Feely says
so."

"Don't you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says she has
done everything she can think of."

"Lor, yes, Mas'r! old Missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a heap
harder, and used to pull my har, and knock my head agin the door; but
it didn't do me no good! I spects, if they 's to pull every spire o' har
out o' my head, it wouldn't do no good, neither,--I 's so wicked! Laws!
I 's nothin but a nigger, no ways!"

"Well, I shall have to give her up," said Miss Ophelia; "I can't have
that trouble any longer."

"Well, I'd just like to ask one question," said St. Clare.

"What is it?"

"Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child,
that you can have at home here, all to yourself, what's the use of
sending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands of just
such? I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what thousands of
your heathen are."

Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood a
silent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to
follow her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the verandah,
which St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy
disappeared into this place.

"What's Eva going about, now?" said St. Clare; "I mean to see."

And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the
glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips,
he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat the
two children on the floor, with their side faces towards them. Topsy,
with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but, opposite to
her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large
eyes.

"What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won't you try and be good? Don't
you love ‘anybody’, Topsy?"

"Donno nothing 'bout love; I loves candy and sich, that's all," said
Topsy.

"But you love your father and mother?"

"Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva."

"O, I know," said Eva, sadly; "but hadn't you any brother, or sister, or
aunt, or--"

"No, none on 'em,--never had nothing nor nobody."

"But, Topsy, if you'd only try to be good, you might--"

"Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good," said
Topsy. "If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then."

"But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would
love you, if you were good."

Topsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of expressing
incredulity.

"Don't you think so?" said Eva.

"No; she can't bar me, 'cause I'm a nigger!--she'd 's soon have a
toad touch her! There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do
nothin'! ‘I’ don't care," said Topsy, beginning to whistle.

"O, Topsy, poor child, ‘I’ love you!" said Eva, with a sudden burst of
feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder;
"I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or
friends;--because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I
want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live
a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I
wish you would try to be good, for my sake;--it's only a little while I
shall be with you."

The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with
tears;--large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on
the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray
of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She
laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,--while the
beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some
bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

"Poor Topsy!" said Eva, "don't you know that Jesus loves all alike? He
is just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do,--only
more, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go
to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you
were white. Only think of it, Topsy!--’you’ can be one of those spirits
bright, Uncle Tom sings about."

"O, dear Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva!" said the child; "I will try, I will
try; I never did care nothin' about it before."

St. Clare, at this instant, dropped the curtain. "It puts me in mind of
mother," he said to Miss Ophelia. "It is true what she told me; if we
want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ
did,--call them to us, and ‘put our hands on them’."

"I've always had a prejudice against negroes," said Miss Ophelia, "and
it's a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I
don't think she knew it."

"Trust any child to find that out," said St. Clare; "there's no keeping
it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit
a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never
excite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance
remains in the heart;--it's a queer kind of a fact,--but so it is."

"I don't know how I can help it," said Miss Ophelia; "they ‘are’
disagreeable to me,--this child in particular,--how can I help feeling
so?"

"Eva does, it seems."

"Well, she's so loving! After all, though, she's no more than
Christ-like," said Miss Ophelia; "I wish I were like her. She might
teach me a lesson."

"It wouldn't be the first time a little child had been used to instruct
an old disciple, if it ‘were’ so," said St. Clare.



CHAPTER XXVI

Death

Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
In life's early morning, hath hid from our eyes.*


* "Weep Not for Those," a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

Eva's bed-room was a spacious apartment, which, like all the other
robins in the house, opened on to the broad verandah. The room
communicated, on one side, with her father and mother's apartment;
on the other, with that appropriated to Miss Ophelia. St. Clare had
gratified his own eye and taste, in furnishing this room in a style
that had a peculiar keeping with the character of her for whom it was
intended. The windows were hung with curtains of rose-colored and white
muslin, the floor was spread with a matting which had been ordered
in Paris, to a pattern of his own device, having round it a border of
rose-buds and leaves, and a centre-piece with full-flown roses. The
bedstead, chairs, and lounges, were of bamboo, wrought in peculiarly
graceful and fanciful patterns. Over the head of the bed was an
alabaster bracket, on which a beautiful sculptured angel stood,
with drooping wings, holding out a crown of myrtle-leaves. From this
depended, over the bed, light curtains of rose-colored gauze, striped
with silver, supplying that protection from mosquitos which is an
indispensable addition to all sleeping accommodation in that climate.
The graceful bamboo lounges were amply supplied with cushions of
rose-colored damask, while over them, depending from the hands of
sculptured figures, were gauze curtains similar to those of the bed. A
light, fanciful bamboo table stood in the middle of the room, where a
Parian vase, wrought in the shape of a white lily, with its buds, stood,
ever filled with flowers. On this table lay Eva's books and little
trinkets, with an elegantly wrought alabaster writing-stand, which her
father had supplied to her when he saw her trying to improve herself
in writing. There was a fireplace in the room, and on the marble mantle
above stood a beautifully wrought statuette of Jesus receiving little
children, and on either side marble vases, for which it was Tom's pride
and delight to offer bouquets every morning. Two or three exquisite
paintings of children, in various attitudes, embellished the wall. In
short, the eye could turn nowhere without meeting images of childhood,
of beauty, and of peace. Those little eyes never opened, in the morning
light, without falling on something which suggested to the heart
soothing and beautiful thoughts.

The deceitful strength which had buoyed Eva up for a little while was
fast passing away; seldom and more seldom her light footstep was heard
in the verandah, and oftener and oftener she was found reclined on a
little lounge by the open window, her large, deep eyes fixed on the
rising and falling waters of the lake.

It was towards the middle of the afternoon, as she was so
reclining,--her Bible half open, her little transparent fingers lying
listlessly between the leaves,--suddenly she heard her mother's voice,
in sharp tones, in the verandah.

"What now, you baggage!--what new piece of mischief! You've been picking
the flowers, hey?" and Eva heard the sound of a smart slap.

"Law, Missis! they 's for Miss Eva," she heard a voice say, which she
knew belonged to Topsy.

"Miss Eva! A pretty excuse!--you suppose she wants ‘your’ flowers, you
good-for-nothing nigger! Get along off with you!"

In a moment, Eva was off from her lounge, and in the verandah.

"O, don't, mother! I should like the flowers; do give them to me; I want
them!"

"Why, Eva, your room is full now."

"I can't have too many," said Eva. "Topsy, do bring them here."

Topsy, who had stood sullenly, holding down her head, now came up
and offered her flowers. She did it with a look of hesitation and
bashfulness, quite unlike the eldrich boldness and brightness which was
usual with her.

"It's a beautiful bouquet!" said Eva, looking at it.

It was rather a singular one,--a brilliant scarlet geranium, and one
single white japonica, with its glossy leaves. It was tied up with an
evident eye to the contrast of color, and the arrangement of every leaf
had carefully been studied.

Topsy looked pleased, as Eva said,--"Topsy, you arrange flowers very
prettily. Here," she said, "is this vase I haven't any flowers for. I
wish you'd arrange something every day for it."

"Well, that's odd!" said Marie. "What in the world do you want that
for?"

"Never mind, mamma; you'd as lief as not Topsy should do it,--had you
not?"

"Of course, anything you please, dear! Topsy, you hear your young
mistress;--see that you mind."

Topsy made a short courtesy, and looked down; and, as she turned away,
Eva saw a tear roll down her dark cheek.

"You see, mamma, I knew poor Topsy wanted to do something for me," said
Eva to her mother.

"O, nonsense! it's only because she likes to do mischief. She knows she
mustn't pick flowers,--so she does it; that's all there is to it. But,
if you fancy to have her pluck them, so be it."

"Mamma, I think Topsy is different from what she used to be; she's
trying to be a good girl."

"She'll have to try a good while before ‘she’ gets to be good," said
Marie, with a careless laugh.

"Well, you know, mamma, poor Topsy! everything has always been against
her."

"Not since she's been here, I'm sure. If she hasn't been talked to, and
preached to, and every earthly thing done that anybody could do;--and
she's just so ugly, and always will be; you can't make anything of the
creature!"

"But, mamma, it's so different to be brought up as I've been, with
so many friends, so many things to make me good and happy; and to be
brought up as she's been, all the time, till she came here!"

"Most likely," said Marie, yawning,--"dear me, how hot it is!"

"Mamma, you believe, don't you, that Topsy could become an angel, as
well as any of us, if she were a Christian?"

"Topsy! what a ridiculous idea! Nobody but you would ever think of it. I
suppose she could, though."

"But, mamma, isn't God her father, as much as ours? Isn't Jesus her
Saviour?"

"Well, that may be. I suppose God made everybody," said Marie. "Where is
my smelling-bottle?"

"It's such a pity,--oh! ‘such’ a pity!" said Eva, looking out on the
distant lake, and speaking half to herself.

"What's a pity?" said Marie.

"Why, that any one, who could be a bright angel, and live with angels,
should go all down, down down, and nobody help them!--oh dear!"

"Well, we can't help it; it's no use worrying, Eva! I don't know what's
to be done; we ought to be thankful for our own advantages."

"I hardly can be," said Eva, "I'm so sorry to think of poor folks that
haven't any."

"That's odd enough," said Marie;--"I'm sure my religion makes me
thankful for my advantages."

"Mamma," said Eva, "I want to have some of my hair cut off,--a good deal
of it."

"What for?" said Marie.

"Mamma, I want to give some away to my friends, while I am able to give
it to them myself. Won't you ask aunty to come and cut it for me?"

Marie raised her voice, and called Miss Ophelia, from the other room.

The child half rose from her pillow as she came in, and, shaking down
her long golden-brown curls, said, rather playfully, "Come aunty, shear
the sheep!"

"What's that?" said St. Clare, who just then entered with some fruit he
had been out to get for her.

"Papa, I just want aunty to cut off some of my hair;--there's too much
of it, and it makes my head hot. Besides, I want to give some of it
away."

Miss Ophelia came, with her scissors.

"Take care,--don't spoil the looks of it!" said her father; "cut
underneath, where it won't show. Eva's curls are my pride."

"O, papa!" said Eva, sadly.

"Yes, and I want them kept handsome against the time I take you up to
your uncle's plantation, to see Cousin Henrique," said St. Clare, in a
gay tone.

"I shall never go there, papa;--I am going to a better country. O, do
believe me! Don't you see, papa, that I get weaker, every day?"

"Why do you insist that I shall believe such a cruel thing, Eva?" said
her father.

"Only because it is ‘true’, papa: and, if you will believe it now,
perhaps you will get to feel about it as I do."

St. Clare closed his lips, and stood gloomily eying the long, beautiful
curls, which, as they were separated from the child's head, were laid,
one by one, in her lap. She raised them up, looked earnestly at them,
twined them around her thin fingers, and looked from time to time,
anxiously at her father.

"It's just what I've been foreboding!" said Marie; "it's just what has
been preying on my health, from day to day, bringing me downward to the
grave, though nobody regards it. I have seen this, long. St. Clare, you
will see, after a while, that I was right."

"Which will afford you great consolation, no doubt!" said St. Clare, in
a dry, bitter tone.

Marie lay back on a lounge, and covered her face with her cambric
handkerchief.

Eva's clear blue eye looked earnestly from one to the other. It was the
calm, comprehending gaze of a soul half loosed from its earthly bonds;
it was evident she saw, felt, and appreciated, the difference between
the two.

She beckoned with her hand to her father. He came and sat down by her.

"Papa, my strength fades away every day, and I know I must go. There are
some things I want to say and do,--that I ought to do; and you are so
unwilling to have me speak a word on this subject. But it must come;
there's no putting it off. Do be willing I should speak now!"

"My child, I ‘am’ willing!" said St. Clare, covering his eyes with one
hand, and holding up Eva's hand with the other.

"Then, I want to see all our people together. I have some things I
‘must’ say to them," said Eva.

"‘Well’," said St. Clare, in a tone of dry endurance.

Miss Ophelia despatched a messenger, and soon the whole of the servants
were convened in the room.

Eva lay back on her pillows; her hair hanging loosely about her face,
her crimson cheeks contrasting painfully with the intense whiteness of
her complexion and the thin contour of her limbs and features, and her
large, soul-like eyes fixed earnestly on every one.

The servants were struck with a sudden emotion. The spiritual face, the
long locks of hair cut off and lying by her, her father's averted face,
and Marie's sobs, struck at once upon the feelings of a sensitive and
impressible race; and, as they came in, they looked one on another,
sighed, and shook their heads. There was a deep silence, like that of a
funeral.

Eva raised herself, and looked long and earnestly round at every one.
All looked sad and apprehensive. Many of the women hid their faces in
their aprons.

"I sent for you all, my dear friends," said Eva, "because I love you.
I love you all; and I have something to say to you, which I want you
always to remember. . . . I am going to leave you. In a few more weeks
you will see me no more--"

Here the child was interrupted by bursts of groans, sobs, and
lamentations, which broke from all present, and in which her slender
voice was lost entirely. She waited a moment, and then, speaking in a
tone that checked the sobs of all, she said,

"If you love me, you must not interrupt me so. Listen to what I say. I
want to speak to you about your souls. . . . Many of you, I am afraid,
are very careless. You are thinking only about this world. I want you
to remember that there is a beautiful world, where Jesus is. I am going
there, and you can go there. It is for you, as much as me. But, if you
want to go there, you must not live idle, careless, thoughtless lives.
You must be Christians. You must remember that each one of you
can become angels, and be angels forever. . . . If you want to be
Christians, Jesus will help you. You must pray to him; you must read--"

The child checked herself, looked piteously at them, and said,
sorrowfully,

"O dear! you ‘can't’ read--poor souls!" and she hid her face in the
pillow and sobbed, while many a smothered sob from those she was
addressing, who were kneeling on the floor, aroused her.

"Never mind," she said, raising her face and smiling brightly through
her tears, "I have prayed for you; and I know Jesus will help you, even
if you can't read. Try all to do the best you can; pray every day; ask
Him to help you, and get the Bible read to you whenever you can; and I
think I shall see you all in heaven."

"Amen," was the murmured response from the lips of Tom and Mammy,
and some of the elder ones, who belonged to the Methodist church. The
younger and more thoughtless ones, for the time completely overcome,
were sobbing, with their heads bowed upon their knees.

"I know," said Eva, "you all love me."

"Yes; oh, yes! indeed we do! Lord bless her!" was the involuntary answer
of all.

"Yes, I know you do! There isn't one of you that hasn't always been very
kind to me; and I want to give you something that, when you look at,
you shall always remember me, I'm going to give all of you a curl of my
hair; and, when you look at it, think that I loved you and am gone to
heaven, and that I want to see you all there."

It is impossible to describe the scene, as, with tears and sobs, they
gathered round the little creature, and took from her hands what seemed
to them a last mark of her love. They fell on their knees; they sobbed,
and prayed, and kissed the hem of her garment; and the elder ones poured
forth words of endearment, mingled in prayers and blessings, after the
manner of their susceptible race.

As each one took their gift, Miss Ophelia, who was apprehensive for the
effect of all this excitement on her little patient, signed to each one
to pass out of the apartment.

At last, all were gone but Tom and Mammy.

"Here, Uncle Tom," said Eva, "is a beautiful one for you. O, I am so
happy, Uncle Tom, to think I shall see you in heaven,--for I'm sure I
shall; and Mammy,--dear, good, kind Mammy!" she said, fondly throwing
her arms round her old nurse,--"I know you'll be there, too."

"O, Miss Eva, don't see how I can live without ye, no how!" said the
faithful creature. "'Pears like it's just taking everything off the
place to oncet!" and Mammy gave way to a passion of grief.

Miss Ophelia pushed her and Tom gently from the apartment, and thought
they were all gone; but, as she turned, Topsy was standing there.

"Where did you start up from?" she said, suddenly.

"I was here," said Topsy, wiping the tears from her eyes. "O, Miss Eva,
I've been a bad girl; but won't you give ‘me’ one, too?"

"Yes, poor Topsy! to be sure, I will. There--every time you look at
that, think that I love you, and wanted you to be a good girl!"

"O, Miss Eva, I ‘is’ tryin!" said Topsy, earnestly; "but, Lor, it's so
hard to be good! 'Pears like I an't used to it, no ways!"

"Jesus knows it, Topsy; he is sorry for you; he will help you."

Topsy, with her eyes hid in her apron, was silently passed from the
apartment by Miss Ophelia; but, as she went, she hid the precious curl
in her bosom.

All being gone, Miss Ophelia shut the door. That worthy lady had wiped
away many tears of her own, during the scene; but concern for the
consequence of such an excitement to her young charge was uppermost in
her mind.

St. Clare had been sitting, during the whole time, with his hand shading
his eyes, in the same attitude.

When they were all gone, he sat so still.

"Papa!" said Eva, gently, laying her hand on his.

He gave a sudden start and shiver; but made no answer.

"Dear papa!" said Eva.

"‘I cannot’," said St. Clare, rising, "I ‘cannot’ have it so! The
Almighty hath dealt ‘very bitterly’ with me!" and St. Clare pronounced
these words with a bitter emphasis, indeed.

"Augustine! has not God a right to do what he will with his own?" said
Miss Ophelia.

"Perhaps so; but that doesn't make it any easier to bear," said he, with
a dry, hard, tearless manner, as he turned away.

"Papa, you break my heart!" said Eva, rising and throwing herself into
his arms; "you must not feel so!" and the child sobbed and wept with
a violence which alarmed them all, and turned her father's thoughts at
once to another channel.

"There, Eva,--there, dearest! Hush! hush! I was wrong; I was wicked. I
will feel any way, do any way,--only don't distress yourself; don't sob
so. I will be resigned; I was wicked to speak as I did."

Eva soon lay like a wearied dove in her father's arms; and he, bending
over her, soothed her by every tender word he could think of.

Marie rose and threw herself out of the apartment into her own, when she
fell into violent hysterics.

"You didn't give me a curl, Eva," said her father, smiling sadly.

"They are all yours, papa," said she, smiling--"yours and mamma's; and
you must give dear aunty as many as she wants. I only gave them to our
poor people myself, because you know, papa, they might be forgotten when
I am gone, and because I hoped it might help them remember. . . . You
are a Christian, are you not, papa?" said Eva, doubtfully.

"Why do you ask me?"

"I don't know. You are so good, I don't see how you can help it."

"What is being a Christian, Eva?"

"Loving Christ most of all," said Eva.

"Do you, Eva?"

"Certainly I do."

"You never saw him," said St. Clare.

"That makes no difference," said Eva. "I believe him, and in a few days
I shall ‘see’ him;" and the young face grew fervent, radiant with joy.

St. Clare said no more. It was a feeling which he had seen before in his
mother; but no chord within vibrated to it.

Eva, after this, declined rapidly; there was no more any doubt of the
event; the fondest hope could not be blinded. Her beautiful room was
avowedly a sick room; and Miss Ophelia day and night performed the
duties of a nurse,--and never did her friends appreciate her value more
than in that capacity. With so well-trained a hand and eye, such perfect
adroitness and practice in every art which could promote neatness
and comfort, and keep out of sight every disagreeable incident of
sickness,--with such a perfect sense of time, such a clear, untroubled
head, such exact accuracy in remembering every prescription and
direction of the doctors,--she was everything to him. They who had
shrugged their shoulders at her little peculiarities and setnesses, so
unlike the careless freedom of southern manners, acknowledged that now
she was the exact person that was wanted.

Uncle Tom was much in Eva's room. The child suffered much from nervous
restlessness, and it was a relief to her to be carried; and it was Tom's
greatest delight to carry her little frail form in his arms, resting on
a pillow, now up and down her room, now out into the verandah; and when
the fresh sea-breezes blew from the lake,--and the child felt freshest
in the morning,--he would sometimes walk with her under the orange-trees
in the garden, or, sitting down in some of their old seats, sing to her
their favorite old hymns.

Her father often did the same thing; but his frame was slighter, and
when he was weary, Eva would say to him,

"O, papa, let Tom take me. Poor fellow! it pleases him; and you know
it's all he can do now, and he wants to do something!"

"So do I, Eva!" said her father.

"Well, papa, you can do everything, and are everything to me. You read
to me,--you sit up nights,--and Tom has only this one thing, and his
singing; and I know, too, he does it easier than you can. He carries me
so strong!"

The desire to do something was not confined to Tom. Every servant in the
establishment showed the same feeling, and in their way did what they
could.

Poor Mammy's heart yearned towards her darling; but she found no
opportunity, night or day, as Marie declared that the state of her mind
was such, it was impossible for her to rest; and, of course, it was
against her principles to let any one else rest. Twenty times in a
night, Mammy would be roused to rub her feet, to bathe her head, to find
her pocket-handkerchief, to see what the noise was in Eva's room, to let
down a curtain because it was too light, or to put it up because it was
too dark; and, in the daytime, when she longed to have some share in the
nursing of her pet, Marie seemed unusually ingenious in keeping her busy
anywhere and everywhere all over the house, or about her own person; so
that stolen interviews and momentary glimpses were all she could obtain.

"I feel it my duty to be particularly careful of myself, now," she would
say, "feeble as I am, and with the whole care and nursing of that dear
child upon me."

"Indeed, my dear," said St. Clare, "I thought our cousin relieved you of
that."

"You talk like a man, St. Clare,--just as if a mother ‘could’ be
relieved of the care of a child in that state; but, then, it's all
alike,--no one ever knows what I feel! I can't throw things off, as you
do."

St. Clare smiled. You must excuse him, he couldn't help it,--for St.
Clare could smile yet. For so bright and placid was the farewell voyage
of the little spirit,--by such sweet and fragrant breezes was the small
bark borne towards the heavenly shores,--that it was impossible to
realize that it was death that was approaching. The child felt no
pain,--only a tranquil, soft weakness, daily and almost insensibly
increasing; and she was so beautiful, so loving, so trustful, so
happy, that one could not resist the soothing influence of that air of
innocence and peace which seemed to breathe around her. St. Clare found
a strange calm coming over him. It was not hope,--that was impossible;
it was not resignation; it was only a calm resting in the present, which
seemed so beautiful that he wished to think of no future. It was like
that hush of spirit which we feel amid the bright, mild woods of autumn,
when the bright hectic flush is on the trees, and the last lingering
flowers by the brook; and we joy in it all the more, because we know
that soon it will all pass away.

The friend who knew most of Eva's own imaginings and foreshadowings was
her faithful bearer, Tom. To him she said what she would not disturb her
father by saying. To him she imparted those mysterious intimations which
the soul feels, as the cords begin to unbind, ere it leaves its clay
forever.

Tom, at last, would not sleep in his room, but lay all night in the
outer verandah, ready to rouse at every call.

"Uncle Tom, what alive have you taken to sleeping anywhere and
everywhere, like a dog, for?" said Miss Ophelia. "I thought you was one
of the orderly sort, that liked to lie in bed in a Christian way."

"I do, Miss Feely," said Tom, mysteriously. "I do, but now--"

"Well, what now?"

"We mustn't speak loud; Mas'r St. Clare won't hear on 't; but Miss
Feely, you know there must be somebody watchin' for the bridegroom."

"What do you mean, Tom?"

"You know it says in Scripture, 'At midnight there was a great cry
made. Behold, the bridegroom cometh.' That's what I'm spectin now, every
night, Miss Feely,--and I couldn't sleep out o' hearin, no ways."

"Why, Uncle Tom, what makes you think so?"

"Miss Eva, she talks to me. The Lord, he sends his messenger in the
soul. I must be thar, Miss Feely; for when that ar blessed child goes
into the kingdom, they'll open the door so wide, we'll all get a look in
at the glory, Miss Feely."

"Uncle Tom, did Miss Eva say she felt more unwell than usual tonight?"

"No; but she telled me, this morning, she was coming nearer,--thar's
them that tells it to the child, Miss Feely. It's the angels,--'it's
the trumpet sound afore the break o' day,'" said Tom, quoting from a
favorite hymn.

This dialogue passed between Miss Ophelia and Tom, between ten and
eleven, one evening, after her arrangements had all been made for the
night, when, on going to bolt her outer door, she found Tom stretched
along by it, in the outer verandah.

She was not nervous or impressible; but the solemn, heart-felt manner
struck her. Eva had been unusually bright and cheerful, that afternoon,
and had sat raised in her bed, and looked over all her little trinkets
and precious things, and designated the friends to whom she would
have them given; and her manner was more animated, and her voice more
natural, than they had known it for weeks. Her father had been in, in
the evening, and had said that Eva appeared more like her former self
than ever she had done since her sickness; and when he kissed her for
the night, he said to Miss Ophelia,--"Cousin, we may keep her with us,
after all; she is certainly better;" and he had retired with a lighter
heart in his bosom than he had had there for weeks.

But at midnight,--strange, mystic hour!--when the veil between the frail
present and the eternal future grows thin,--then came the messenger!

There was a sound in that chamber, first of one who stepped quickly. It
was Miss Ophelia, who had resolved to sit up all night with her
little charge, and who, at the turn of the night, had discerned what
experienced nurses significantly call "a change." The outer door was
quickly opened, and Tom, who was watching outside, was on the alert, in
a moment.

"Go for the doctor, Tom! lose not a moment," said Miss Ophelia; and,
stepping across the room, she rapped at St. Clare's door.

"Cousin," she said, "I wish you would come."

Those words fell on his heart like clods upon a coffin. Why did they?
He was up and in the room in an instant, and bending over Eva, who still
slept.

What was it he saw that made his heart stand still? Why was no word
spoken between the two? Thou canst say, who hast seen that same
expression on the face dearest to thee;--that look indescribable,
hopeless, unmistakable, that says to thee that thy beloved is no longer
thine.

On the face of the child, however, there was no ghastly imprint,--only
a high and almost sublime expression,--the overshadowing presence of
spiritual natures, the dawning of immortal life in that childish soul.

They stood there so still, gazing upon her, that even the ticking of the
watch seemed too loud. In a few moments, Tom returned, with the doctor.
He entered, gave one look, and stood silent as the rest.

"When did this change take place?" said he, in a low whisper, to Miss
Ophelia.

"About the turn of the night," was the reply.

Marie, roused by the entrance of the doctor, appeared, hurriedly, from
the next room.

"Augustine! Cousin!--O!--what!" she hurriedly began.

"Hush!" said St. Clare, hoarsely; ‘"she is dying!"‘

Mammy heard the words, and flew to awaken the servants. The house was
soon roused,--lights were seen, footsteps heard, anxious faces thronged
the verandah, and looked tearfully through the glass doors; but St.
Clare heard and said nothing,--he saw only ‘that look’ on the face of
the little sleeper.

"O, if she would only wake, and speak once more!" he said; and, stooping
over her, he spoke in her ear,--"Eva, darling!"

The large blue eyes unclosed--a smile passed over her face;--she tried
to raise her head, and to speak.

"Do you know me, Eva?"

"Dear papa," said the child, with a last effort, throwing her arms about
his neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare raised his
head, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face,--she struggled
for breath, and threw up her little hands.

"O, God, this is dreadful!" he said, turning away in agony, and wringing
Tom's hand, scarce conscious what he was doing. "O, Tom, my boy, it is
killing me!"

Tom had his master's hands between his own; and, with tears streaming
down his dark cheeks, looked up for help where he had always been used
to look.

"Pray that this may be cut short!" said St. Clare,--"this wrings my
heart."

"O, bless the Lord! it's over,--it's over, dear Master!" said Tom; "look
at her."

The child lay panting on her pillows, as one exhausted,--the large clear
eyes rolled up and fixed. Ah, what said those eyes, that spoke so
much of heaven! Earth was past,--and earthly pain; but so solemn, so
mysterious, was the triumphant brightness of that face, that it
checked even the sobs of sorrow. They pressed around her, in breathless
stillness.

"Eva," said St. Clare, gently.

She did not hear.

"O, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?" said her father.

A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said,
brokenly,--"O! love,--joy,--peace!" gave one sigh and passed from death
unto life!

"Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after
thee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. O, woe for them who watched
thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold
gray sky of daily life, and thou gone forever!"



CHAPTER XXVII

"This Is the Last of Earth"*

* "This is the last of Earth! I am content," last words of
John Quincy Adams, uttered February 21, 1848.

The statuettes and pictures in Eva's room were shrouded in white
napkins, and only hushed breathings and muffled footfalls were heard
there, and the light stole in solemnly through windows partially
darkened by closed blinds.

The bed was draped in white; and there, beneath the drooping
angel-figure, lay a little sleeping form,--sleeping never to waken!

There she lay, robed in one of the simple white dresses she had been
wont to wear when living; the rose-colored light through the curtains
cast over the icy coldness of death a warm glow. The heavy eyelashes
drooped softly on the pure cheek; the head was turned a little to
one side, as if in natural steep, but there was diffused over every
lineament of the face that high celestial expression, that mingling of
rapture and repose, which showed it was no earthly or temporary sleep,
but the long, sacred rest which "He giveth to his beloved."

There is no death to such as thou, dear Eva! neither darkness nor shadow
of death; only such a bright fading as when the morning star fades in
the golden dawn. Thine is the victory without the battle,--the crown
without the conflict.

So did St. Clare think, as, with folded arms, he stood there gazing.
Ah! who shall say what he did think? for, from the hour that voices
had said, in the dying chamber, "she is gone," it had been all a dreary
mist, a heavy "dimness of anguish." He had heard voices around him; he
had had questions asked, and answered them; they had asked him when
he would have the funeral, and where they should lay her; and he had
answered, impatiently, that he cared not.

Adolph and Rosa had arranged the chamber; volatile, fickle and childish,
as they generally were, they were soft-hearted and full of feeling;
and, while Miss Ophelia presided over the general details of order and
neatness, it was their hands that added those soft, poetic touches to
the arrangements, that took from the death-room the grim and ghastly air
which too often marks a New England funeral.

There were still flowers on the shelves,--all white, delicate and
fragrant, with graceful, drooping leaves. Eva's little table, covered
with white, bore on it her favorite vase, with a single white moss
rose-bud in it. The folds of the drapery, the fall of the curtains, had
been arranged and rearranged, by Adolph and Rosa, with that nicety of
eye which characterizes their race. Even now, while St. Clare stood
there thinking, little Rosa tripped softly into the chamber with a
basket of white flowers. She stepped back when she saw St. Clare, and
stopped respectfully; but, seeing that he did not observe her, she came
forward to place them around the dead. St. Clare saw her as in a dream,
while she placed in the small hands a fair cape jessamine, and, with
admirable taste, disposed other flowers around the couch.

The door opened again, and Topsy, her eyes swelled with crying,
appeared, holding something under her apron. Rosa made a quick
forbidding gesture; but she took a step into the room.

"You must go out," said Rosa, in a sharp, positive whisper; "‘you’
haven't any business here!"

"O, do let me! I brought a flower,--such a pretty one!" said Topsy,
holding up a half-blown tea rose-bud. "Do let me put just one there."

"Get along!" said Rosa, more decidedly.

"Let her stay!" said St. Clare, suddenly stamping his foot. "She shall
come."

Rosa suddenly retreated, and Topsy came forward and laid her offering at
the feet of the corpse; then suddenly, with a wild and bitter cry,
she threw herself on the floor alongside the bed, and wept, and moaned
aloud.

Miss Ophelia hastened into the room, and tried to raise and silence her;
but in vain.

"O, Miss Eva! oh, Miss Eva! I wish I 's dead, too,--I do!"

There was a piercing wildness in the cry; the blood flushed into St.
Clare's white, marble-like face, and the first tears he had shed since
Eva died stood in his eyes.

"Get up, child," said Miss Ophelia, in a softened voice; "don't cry so.
Miss Eva is gone to heaven; she is an angel."

"But I can't see her!" said Topsy. "I never shall see her!" and she
sobbed again.

They all stood a moment in silence.

"‘She’ said she ‘loved’ me," said Topsy,--"she did! O, dear! oh, dear!
there an't ‘nobody’ left now,--there an't!"

"That's true enough" said St. Clare; "but do," he said to Miss Ophelia,
"see if you can't comfort the poor creature."

"I jist wish I hadn't never been born," said Topsy. "I didn't want to be
born, no ways; and I don't see no use on 't."

Miss Ophelia raised her gently, but firmly, and took her from the room;
but, as she did so, some tears fell from her eyes.

"Topsy, you poor child," she said, as she led her into her room, "don't
give up! ‘I’ can love you, though I am not like that dear little child.
I hope I've learnt something of the love of Christ from her. I can love
you; I do, and I'll try to help you to grow up a good Christian girl."

Miss Ophelia's voice was more than her words, and more than that were
the honest tears that fell down her face. From that hour, she acquired
an influence over the mind of the destitute child that she never lost.

"O, my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much of good," thought St.
Clare, "what account have I to give for my long years?"

There were, for a while, soft whisperings and footfalls in the chamber,
as one after another stole in, to look at the dead; and then came the
little coffin; and then there was a funeral, and carriages drove to the
door, and strangers came and were seated; and there were white scarfs
and ribbons, and crape bands, and mourners dressed in black crape; and
there were words read from the Bible, and prayers offered; and St. Clare
lived, and walked, and moved, as one who has shed every tear;--to the
last he saw only one thing, that golden head in the coffin; but then
he saw the cloth spread over it, the lid of the coffin closed; and he
walked, when he was put beside the others, down to a little place at the
bottom of the garden, and there, by the mossy seat where she and Tom
had talked, and sung, and read so often, was the little grave. St. Clare
stood beside it,--looked vacantly down; he saw them lower the little
coffin; he heard, dimly, the solemn words, "I am the resurrection and
the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live;" and, as the earth was cast in and filled up the little grave,
he could not realize that it was his Eva that they were hiding from his
sight.

Nor was it!--not Eva, but only the frail seed of that bright, immortal
form with which she shall yet come forth, in the day of the Lord Jesus!

And then all were gone, and the mourners went back to the place which
should know her no more; and Marie's room was darkened, and she lay on
the bed, sobbing and moaning in uncontrollable grief, and calling every
moment for the attentions of all her servants. Of course, they had no
time to cry,--why should they? the grief was ‘her’ grief, and she was
fully convinced that nobody on earth did, could, or would feel it as she
did.

"St. Clare did not shed a tear," she said; "he didn't sympathize with
her; it was perfectly wonderful to think how hard-hearted and unfeeling
he was, when he must know how she suffered."

So much are people the slave of their eye and ear, that many of the
servants really thought that Missis was the principal sufferer in the
case, especially as Marie began to have hysterical spasms, and sent for
the doctor, and at last declared herself dying; and, in the running and
scampering, and bringing up hot bottles, and heating of flannels, and
chafing, and fussing, that ensued, there was quite a diversion.

Tom, however, had a feeling at his own heart, that drew him to his
master. He followed him wherever he walked, wistfully and sadly; and
when he saw him sitting, so pale and quiet, in Eva's room, holding
before his eyes her little open Bible, though seeing no letter or word
of what was in it, there was more sorrow to Tom in that still, fixed,
tearless eye, than in all Marie's moans and lamentations.

In a few days the St. Clare family were back again in the city;
Augustine, with the restlessness of grief, longing for another scene, to
change the current of his thoughts. So they left the house and garden,
with its little grave, and came back to New Orleans; and St. Clare
walked the streets busily, and strove to fill up the chasm in his heart
with hurry and bustle, and change of place; and people who saw him in
the street, or met him at the cafe, knew of his loss only by the weed
on his hat; for there he was, smiling and talking, and reading the
newspaper, and speculating on politics, and attending to business
matters; and who could see that all this smiling outside was but a
hollowed shell over a heart that was a dark and silent sepulchre?

"Mr. St. Clare is a singular man," said Marie to Miss Ophelia, in a
complaining tone. "I used to think, if there was anything in the world
he did love, it was our dear little Eva; but he seems to be forgetting
her very easily. I cannot ever get him to talk about her. I really did
think he would show more feeling!"

"Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me," said Miss Ophelia,
oracularly.

"O, I don't believe in such things; it's all talk. If people have
feeling, they will show it,--they can't help it; but, then, it's a great
misfortune to have feeling. I'd rather have been made like St. Clare. My
feelings prey upon me so!"

"Sure, Missis, Mas'r St. Clare is gettin' thin as a shader. They say, he
don't never eat nothin'," said Mammy. "I know he don't forget Miss Eva;
I know there couldn't nobody,--dear, little, blessed cretur!" she added,
wiping her eyes.

"Well, at all events, he has no consideration for me," said Marie; "he
hasn't spoken one word of sympathy, and he must know how much more a
mother feels than any man can."

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness," said Miss Ophelia, gravely.

"That's just what I think. I know just what I feel,--nobody else seems
to. Eva used to, but she is gone!" and Marie lay back on her lounge, and
began to sob disconsolately.

Marie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose
eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in
possession. Whatever she had, she seemed to survey only to pick flaws in
it; but, once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it.

While this conversation was taking place in the parlor another was going
on in St. Clare's library.

Tom, who was always uneasily following his master about, had seen him go
to his library, some hours before; and, after vainly waiting for him to
come out, determined, at last, to make an errand in. He entered softly.
St. Clare lay on his lounge, at the further end of the room. He was
lying on his face, with Eva's Bible open before him, at a little
distance. Tom walked up, and stood by the sofa. He hesitated; and, while
he was hesitating, St. Clare suddenly raised himself up. The honest
face, so full of grief, and with such an imploring expression of
affection and sympathy, struck his master. He laid his hand on Tom's,
and bowed down his forehead on it.

"O, Tom, my boy, the whole world is as empty as an egg-shell."

"I know it, Mas'r,--I know it," said Tom; "but, oh, if Mas'r could only
look up,--up where our dear Miss Eva is,--up to the dear Lord Jesus!"

"Ah, Tom! I do look up; but the trouble is, I don't see anything, when I
do, I wish I could."

Tom sighed heavily.

"It seems to be given to children, and poor, honest fellows, like you,
to see what we can't," said St. Clare. "How comes it?"

"Thou has 'hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes,'"
murmured Tom; "'even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.'"

"Tom, I don't believe,--I can't believe,--I've got the habit of
doubting," said St. Clare. "I want to believe this Bible,--and I can't."

"Dear Mas'r, pray to the good Lord,--'Lord, I believe; help thou my
unbelief.'"

"Who knows anything about anything?" said St. Clare, his eyes wandering
dreamily, and speaking to himself. "Was all that beautiful love and
faith only one of the ever-shifting phases of human feeling, having
nothing real to rest on, passing away with the little breath? And is
there no more Eva,--no heaven,--no Christ,--nothing?"

"O, dear Mas'r, there is! I know it; I'm sure of it," said Tom, falling
on his knees. "Do, do, dear Mas'r, believe it!"

"How do you know there's any Christ, Tom! You never saw the Lord."

"Felt Him in my soul, Mas'r,--feel Him now! O, Mas'r, when I was sold
away from my old woman and the children, I was jest a'most broke up. I
felt as if there warn't nothin' left; and then the good Lord, he stood
by me, and he says, 'Fear not, Tom;' and he brings light and joy in
a poor feller's soul,--makes all peace; and I 's so happy, and loves
everybody, and feels willin' jest to be the Lord's, and have the Lord's
will done, and be put jest where the Lord wants to put me. I know it
couldn't come from me, cause I 's a poor, complainin' cretur; it comes
from the Lord; and I know He's willin' to do for Mas'r."

Tom spoke with fast-running tears and choking voice. St. Clare leaned
his head on his shoulder, and wrung the hard, faithful, black hand.

"Tom, you love me," he said.

"I 's willin' to lay down my life, this blessed day, to see Mas'r a
Christian."

"Poor, foolish boy!" said St. Clare, half-raising himself. "I'm not
worth the love of one good, honest heart, like yours."

"O, Mas'r, dere's more than me loves you,--the blessed Lord Jesus loves
you."

"How do you know that Tom?" said St. Clare.

"Feels it in my soul. O, Mas'r! 'the love of Christ, that passeth
knowledge.'"

"Singular!" said St. Clare, turning away, "that the story of a man that
lived and died eighteen hundred years ago can affect people so yet.
But he was no man," he added, suddenly. "No man ever had such long and
living power! O, that I could believe what my mother taught me, and pray
as I did when I was a boy!"

"If Mas'r pleases," said Tom, "Miss Eva used to read this so
beautifully. I wish Mas'r'd be so good as read it. Don't get no readin',
hardly, now Miss Eva's gone."

The chapter was the eleventh of John,--the touching account of the
raising of Lazarus, St. Clare read it aloud, often pausing to wrestle
down feelings which were roused by the pathos of the story. Tom knelt
before him, with clasped hands, and with an absorbed expression of love,
trust, adoration, on his quiet face.

"Tom," said his Master, "this is all ‘real’ to you!"

"I can jest fairly ‘see’ it Mas'r," said Tom.

"I wish I had your eyes, Tom."

"I wish, to the dear Lord, Mas'r had!"

"But, Tom, you know that I have a great deal more knowledge than you;
what if I should tell you that I don't believe this Bible?"

"O, Mas'r!" said Tom, holding up his hands, with a deprecating gesture.

"Wouldn't it shake your faith some, Tom?"

"Not a grain," said Tom.

"Why, Tom, you must know I know the most."

"O, Mas'r, haven't you jest read how he hides from the wise and prudent,
and reveals unto babes? But Mas'r wasn't in earnest, for sartin, now?"
said Tom, anxiously.

"No, Tom, I was not. I don't disbelieve, and I think there is reason to
believe; and still I don't. It's a troublesome bad habit I've got, Tom."

"If Mas'r would only pray!"

"How do you know I don't, Tom?"

"Does Mas'r?"

"I would, Tom, if there was anybody there when I pray; but it's all
speaking unto nothing, when I do. But come, Tom, you pray now, and show
me how."

Tom's heart was full; he poured it out In prayer, like waters that have
been long suppressed. One thing was plain enough; Tom thought there was
somebody to hear, whether there were or not. In fact, St. Clare felt
himself borne, on the tide of his faith and feeling, almost to the gates
of that heaven he seemed so vividly to conceive. It seemed to bring him
nearer to Eva.

"Thank you, my boy," said St. Clare, when Tom rose. "I like to hear you,
Tom; but go, now, and leave me alone; some other time, I'll talk more."

Tom silently left the room.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Reunion


Week after week glided away in the St. Clare mansion, and the waves of
life settled back to their usual flow, where that little bark had
gone down. For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's
feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities
move on! Still must we eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again,--still
bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions,--pursue, in short,
a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold
mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has
fled.

All the interests and hopes of St. Clare's life had unconsciously wound
themselves around this child. It was for Eva that he had managed his
property; it was for Eva that he had planned the disposal of his time;
and, to do this and that for Eva,--to buy, improve, alter, and arrange,
or dispose something for her,--had been so long his habit, that now she
was gone, there seemed nothing to be thought of, and nothing to be done.

True, there was another life,--a life which, once believed in, stands as
a solemn, significant figure before the otherwise unmeaning ciphers of
time, changing them to orders of mysterious, untold value. St. Clare
knew this well; and often, in many a weary hour, he heard that slender,
childish voice calling him to the skies, and saw that little hand
pointing to him the way of life; but a heavy lethargy of sorrow lay on
him,--he could not arise. He had one of those natures which could better
and more clearly conceive of religious things from its own perceptions
and instincts, than many a matter-of-fact and practical Christian. The
gift to appreciate and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations
of moral things, often seems an attribute of those whose whole life
shows a careless disregard of them. Hence Moore, Byron, Goethe, often
speak words more wisely descriptive of the true religious sentiment,
than another man, whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds,
disregard of religion is a more fearful treason,--a more deadly sin.

St. Clare had never pretended to govern himself by any religious
obligation; and a certain fineness of nature gave him such an
instinctive view of the extent of the requirements of Christianity, that
he shrank, by anticipation, from what he felt would be the exactions
of his own conscience, if he once did resolve to assume them. For,
so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to
undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.

Still St. Clare was, in many respects, another man. He read his
little Eva's Bible seriously and honestly; he thought more soberly
and practically of his relations to his servants,--enough to make him
extremely dissatisfied with both his past and present course; and one
thing he did, soon after his return to New Orleans, and that was to
commence the legal steps necessary to Tom's emancipation, which was to
be perfected as soon as he could get through the necessary formalities.
Meantime, he attached himself to Tom more and more, every day. In all
the wide world, there was nothing that seemed to remind him so much
of Eva; and he would insist on keeping him constantly about him, and,
fastidious and unapproachable as he was with regard to his deeper
feelings, he almost thought aloud to Tom. Nor would any one have
wondered at it, who had seen the expression of affection and devotion
with which Tom continually followed his young master.

"Well, Tom," said St. Clare, the day after he had commenced the legal
formalities for his enfranchisement, "I'm going to make a free man of
you;--so have your trunk packed, and get ready to set out for Kentuck."

The sudden light of joy that shone in Tom's face as he raised his hands
to heaven, his emphatic "Bless the Lord!" rather discomposed St. Clare;
he did not like it that Tom should be so ready to leave him.

"You haven't had such very bad times here, that you need be in such a
rapture, Tom," he said drily.

"No, no, Mas'r! 'tan't that,--it's bein' a ‘freeman!’ that's what I'm
joyin' for."

"Why, Tom, don't you think, for your own part, you've been better off
than to be free?"

"‘No, indeed’, Mas'r St. Clare," said Tom, with a flash of energy. "No,
indeed!"

"Why, Tom, you couldn't possibly have earned, by your work, such clothes
and such living as I have given you."

"Knows all that, Mas'r St. Clare; Mas'r's been too good; but, Mas'r,
I'd rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have 'em
‘mine’, than have the best, and have 'em any man's else,--I had ‘so’,
Mas'r; I think it's natur, Mas'r."

"I suppose so, Tom, and you'll be going off and leaving me, in a month
or so," he added, rather discontentedly. "Though why you shouldn't, no
mortal knows," he said, in a gayer tone; and, getting up, he began to
walk the floor.

"Not while Mas'r is in trouble," said Tom. "I'll stay with Mas'r as long
as he wants me,--so as I can be any use."

"Not while I'm in trouble, Tom?" said St. Clare, looking sadly out of
the window. . . . "And when will ‘my’ trouble be over?"

"When Mas'r St. Clare's a Christian," said Tom.

"And you really mean to stay by till that day comes?" said St. Clare,
half smiling, as he turned from the window, and laid his hand on Tom's
shoulder. "Ah, Tom, you soft, silly boy! I won't keep you till that day.
Go home to your wife and children, and give my love to all."

"I 's faith to believe that day will come," said Tom, earnestly, and
with tears in his eyes; "the Lord has a work for Mas'r."

"A work, hey?" said St. Clare, "well, now, Tom, give me your views on
what sort of a work it is;--let's hear."

"Why, even a poor fellow like me has a work from the Lord; and Mas'r St.
Clare, that has larnin, and riches, and friends,--how much he might do
for the Lord!"

"Tom, you seem to think the Lord needs a great deal done for him," said
St. Clare, smiling.

"We does for the Lord when we does for his critturs," said Tom.

"Good theology, Tom; better than Dr. B. preaches, I dare swear," said
St. Clare.

The conversation was here interrupted by the announcement of some
visitors.

Marie St. Clare felt the loss of Eva as deeply as she could feel
anything; and, as she was a woman that had a great faculty of making
everybody unhappy when she was, her immediate attendants had still
stronger reason to regret the loss of their young mistress, whose
winning ways and gentle intercessions had so often been a shield to them
from the tyrannical and selfish exactions of her mother. Poor old Mammy,
in particular, whose heart, severed from all natural domestic ties, had
consoled itself with this one beautiful being, was almost heart-broken.
She cried day and night, and was, from excess of sorrow, less skilful
and alert in her ministrations of her mistress than usual, which drew
down a constant storm of invectives on her defenceless head.

Miss Ophelia felt the loss; but, in her good and honest heart, it bore
fruit unto everlasting life. She was more softened, more gentle; and,
though equally assiduous in every duty, it was with a chastened and
quiet air, as one who communed with her own heart not in vain. She was
more diligent in teaching Topsy,--taught her mainly from the Bible,--did
not any longer shrink from her touch, or manifest an ill-repressed
disgust, because she felt none. She viewed her now through the softened
medium that Eva's hand had first held before her eyes, and saw in her
only an immortal creature, whom God had sent to be led by her to glory
and virtue. Topsy did not become at once a saint; but the life and death
of Eva did work a marked change in her. The callous indifference was
gone; there was now sensibility, hope, desire, and the striving for
good,--a strife irregular, interrupted, suspended oft, but yet renewed
again.

One day, when Topsy had been sent for by Miss Ophelia, she came, hastily
thrusting something into her bosom.

"What are you doing there, you limb? You've been stealing something,
I'll be bound," said the imperious little Rosa, who had been sent to
call her, seizing her, at the same time, roughly by the arm.

"You go 'long, Miss Rosa!" said Topsy, pulling from her; "'tan't none o'
your business!"

"None o' your sa'ce!" said Rosa, "I saw you hiding something,--I know
yer tricks," and Rosa seized her arm, and tried to force her hand into
her bosom, while Topsy, enraged, kicked and fought valiantly for what
she considered her rights. The clamor and confusion of the battle drew
Miss Ophelia and St. Clare both to the spot.

"She's been stealing!" said Rosa.

"I han't, neither!" vociferated Topsy, sobbing with passion.

"Give me that, whatever it is!" said Miss Ophelia, firmly.

Topsy hesitated; but, on a second order, pulled out of her bosom a
little parcel done up in the foot of one of her own old stockings.

Miss Ophelia turned it out. There was a small book, which had been given
to Topsy by Eva, containing a single verse of Scripture, arranged for
every day in the year, and in a paper the curl of hair that she had
given her on that memorable day when she had taken her last farewell.

St. Clare was a good deal affected at the sight of it; the little book
had been rolled in a long strip of black crape, torn from the funeral
weeds.

"What did you wrap ‘this’ round the book for?" said St. Clare, holding
up the crape.

"Cause,--cause,--cause 't was Miss Eva. O, don't take 'em away, please!"
she said; and, sitting flat down on the floor, and putting her apron
over her head, she began to sob vehemently.

It was a curious mixture of the pathetic and the ludicrous,--the little
old stockings,--black crape,--text-book,--fair, soft curl,--and Topsy's
utter distress.

St. Clare smiled; but there were tears in his eyes, as he said,

"Come, come,--don't cry; you shall have them!" and, putting them
together, he threw them into her lap, and drew Miss Ophelia with him
into the parlor.

"I really think you can make something of that concern," he said,
pointing with his thumb backward over his shoulder. "Any mind that
is capable of a ‘real sorrow’ is capable of good. You must try and do
something with her."

"The child has improved greatly," said Miss Ophelia. "I have great hopes
of her; but, Augustine," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "one
thing I want to ask; whose is this child to be?--yours or mine?"

"Why, I gave her to you," said Augustine.

"But not legally;--I want her to be mine legally," said Miss Ophelia.

"Whew! cousin," said Augustine. "What will the Abolition Society think?
They'll have a day of fasting appointed for this backsliding, if you
become a slaveholder!"

"O, nonsense! I want her mine, that I may have a right to take her to
the free States, and give her her liberty, that all I am trying to do be
not undone."

"O, cousin, what an awful 'doing evil that good may come'! I can't
encourage it."

"I don't want you to joke, but to reason," said Miss Ophelia. "There is
no use in my trying to make this child a Christian child, unless I save
her from all the chances and reverses of slavery; and, if you really are
willing I should have her, I want you to give me a deed of gift, or some
legal paper."

"Well, well," said St. Clare, "I will;" and he sat down, and unfolded a
newspaper to read.

"But I want it done now," said Miss Ophelia.

"What's your hurry?"

"Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in," said Miss
Ophelia. "Come, now, here's paper, pen, and ink; just write a paper."

St. Clare, like most men of his class of mind, cordially hated the
present tense of action, generally; and, therefore, he was considerably
annoyed by Miss Ophelia's downrightness.

"Why, what's the matter?" said he. "Can't you take my word? One would
think you had taken lessons of the Jews, coming at a fellow so!"

"I want to make sure of it," said Miss Ophelia. "You may die, or fail,
and then Topsy be hustled off to auction, spite of all I can do."

"Really, you are quite provident. Well, seeing I'm in the hands of a
Yankee, there is nothing for it but to concede;" and St. Clare rapidly
wrote off a deed of gift, which, as he was well versed in the forms
of law, he could easily do, and signed his name to it in sprawling
capitals, concluding by a tremendous flourish.

"There, isn't that black and white, now, Miss Vermont?" he said, as he
handed it to her.

"Good boy," said Miss Ophelia, smiling. "But must it not be witnessed?"

"O, bother!--yes. Here," he said, opening the door into Marie's
apartment, "Marie, Cousin wants your autograph; just put your name down
here."

"What's this?" said Marie, as she ran over the paper. "Ridiculous! I
thought Cousin was too pious for such horrid things," she added, as she
carelessly wrote her name; "but, if she has a fancy for that article, I
am sure she's welcome."

"There, now, she's yours, body and soul," said St. Clare, handing the
paper.

"No more mine now than she was before," Miss Ophelia. "Nobody but God
has a right to give her to me; but I can protect her now."

"Well, she's yours by a fiction of law, then," said St. Clare, as he
turned back into the parlor, and sat down to his paper.

Miss Ophelia, who seldom sat much in Marie's company, followed him into
the parlor, having first carefully laid away the paper.

"Augustine," she said, suddenly, as she sat knitting, "have you ever
made any provision for your servants, in case of your death?"

"No," said St. Clare, as he read on.

"Then all your indulgence to them may prove a great cruelty, by and by."

St. Clare had often thought the same thing himself; but he answered,
negligently.

"Well, I mean to make a provision, by and by."

"When?" said Miss Ophelia.

"O, one of these days."

"What if you should die first?"

"Cousin, what's the matter?" said St. Clare, laying down his paper
and looking at her. "Do you think I show symptoms of yellow fever or
cholera, that you are making post mortem arrangements with such zeal?"

"'In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Miss Ophelia.

St. Clare rose up, and laying the paper down, carelessly, walked to the
door that stood open on the verandah, to put an end to a conversation
that was not agreeable to him. Mechanically, he repeated the last word
again,--’"Death!"‘--and, as he leaned against the railings, and watched
the sparkling water as it rose and fell in the fountain; and, as in a
dim and dizzy haze, saw flowers and trees and vases of the courts, he
repeated, again the mystic word so common in every mouth, yet of such
fearful power,--"DEATH!" "Strange that there should be such a word,"
he said, "and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be
living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day,
and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!"

It was a warm, golden evening; and, as he walked to the other end of the
verandah, he saw Tom busily intent on his Bible, pointing, as he did so,
with his finger to each successive word, and whispering them to himself
with an earnest air.

"Want me to read to you, Tom?" said St. Clare, seating himself
carelessly by him.

"If Mas'r pleases," said Tom, gratefully, "Mas'r makes it so much
plainer."

St. Clare took the book and glanced at the place, and began reading one
of the passages which Tom had designated by the heavy marks around it.
It ran as follows:

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels
with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before
him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from
another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." St. Clare
read on in an animated voice, till he came to the last of the verses.

"Then shall the king say unto him on his left hand, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me no
meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, an ye
took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: I was sick, and in prison,
and ye visited me not. Then shall they answer unto Him, Lord when saw
we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or
in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he say unto them,
Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, ye
did it not to me."

St. Clare seemed struck with this last passage, for he read it
twice,--the second time slowly, and as if he were revolving the words in
his mind.

"Tom," he said, "these folks that get such hard measure seem to have
been doing just what I have,--living good, easy, respectable lives;
and not troubling themselves to inquire how many of their brethren were
hungry or athirst, or sick, or in prison."

Tom did not answer.

St. Clare rose up and walked thoughtfully up and down the verandah,
seeming to forget everything in his own thoughts; so absorbed was he,
that Tom had to remind him twice that the teabell had rung, before he
could get his attention.

St. Clare was absent and thoughtful, all tea-time. After tea, he and
Marie and Miss Ophelia took possession of the parlor almost in silence.

Marie disposed herself on a lounge, under a silken mosquito curtain,
and was soon sound asleep. Miss Ophelia silently busied herself with her
knitting. St. Clare sat down to the piano, and began playing a soft and
melancholy movement with the AEolian accompaniment. He seemed in a deep
reverie, and to be soliloquizing to himself by music. After a little, he
opened one of the drawers, took out an old music-book whose leaves were
yellow with age, and began turning it over.

"There," he said to Miss Ophelia, "this was one of my mother's
books,--and here is her handwriting,--come and look at it. She copied
and arranged this from Mozart's Requiem." Miss Ophelia came accordingly.

"It was something she used to sing often," said St. Clare. "I think I
can hear her now."

He struck a few majestic chords, and began singing that grand old Latin
piece, the "Dies Irae."

Tom, who was listening in the outer verandah, was drawn by the sound
to the very door, where he stood earnestly. He did not understand the
words, of course; but the music and manner of singing appeared to affect
him strongly, especially when St. Clare sang the more pathetic parts.
Tom would have sympathized more heartily, if he had known the meaning of
the beautiful words:

Recordare Jesu pie
Quod sum causa tuar viae
Ne me perdas, illa die
Querens me sedisti lassus
Redemisti crucem passus
Tantus laor non sit cassus.*


* These lines have been thus rather inadequately translated:

Think, O Jesus, for what reason
Thou endured'st earth's spite and treason,
Nor me lose, in that dread season;
Seeking me, thy wom feet hasted,
On the cross thy soul death tasted,
Let not all these toils be wasted.
[Mrs. Stowe's note.]

St. Clare threw a deep and pathetic expression into the words; for
the shadowy veil of years seemed drawn away, and he seemed to hear his
mother's voice leading his. Voice and instrument seemed both living, and
threw out with vivid sympathy those strains which the ethereal Mozart
first conceived as his own dying requiem.

When St. Clare had done singing, he sat leaning his head upon his hand a
few moments, and then began walking up and down the floor.

"What a sublime conception is that of a last judgment!" said he,--"a
righting of all the wrongs of ages!--a solving of all moral problems, by
an unanswerable wisdom! It is, indeed, a wonderful image."

"It is a fearful one to us," said Miss Ophelia.

"It ought to be to me, I suppose," said St. Clare stopping,
thoughtfully. "I was reading to Tom, this afternoon, that chapter in
Matthew that gives an account of it, and I have been quite struck with
it. One should have expected some terrible enormities charged to those
who are excluded from Heaven, as the reason; but no,--they are condemned
for ‘not’ doing positive good, as if that included every possible harm."

"Perhaps," said Miss Ophelia, "it is impossible for a person who does no
good not to do harm."

"And what," said St. Clare, speaking abstractedly, but with deep
feeling, "what shall be said of one whose own heart, whose education,
and the wants of society, have called in vain to some noble purpose; who
has floated on, a dreamy, neutral spectator of the struggles, agonies,
and wrongs of man, when he should have been a worker?"

"I should say," said Miss Ophelia, "that he ought to repent, and begin
now."

"Always practical and to the point!" said St. Clare, his face breaking
out into a smile. "You never leave me any time for general reflections,
Cousin; you always bring me short up against the actual present; you
have a kind of eternal ‘now’, always in your mind."

"‘Now’ is all the time I have anything to do with," said Miss Ophelia.

"Dear little Eva,--poor child!" said St. Clare, "she had set her little
simple soul on a good work for me."

It was the first time since Eva's death that he had ever said as many
words as these to her, and he spoke now evidently repressing very strong
feeling.

"My view of Christianity is such," he added, "that I think no man can
consistently profess it without throwing the whole weight of his being
against this monstrous system of injustice that lies at the foundation
of all our society; and, if need be, sacrificing himself in the battle.
That is, I mean that ‘I’ could not be a Christian otherwise, though
I have certainly had intercourse with a great many enlightened and
Christian people who did no such thing; and I confess that the apathy
of religious people on this subject, their want of perception of wrongs
that filled me with horror, have engendered in me more scepticism than
any other thing."

"If you knew all this," said Miss Ophelia, "why didn't you do it?"

"O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in
lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs
and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to
be martyrs."

"Well, are you going to do differently now?" said Miss Ophelia.

"God only knows the future," said St. Clare. "I am braver than I was,
because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all
risks."

"And what are you going to do?"

"My duty, I hope, to the poor and lowly, as fast as I find it out," said
St. Clare, "beginning with my own servants, for whom I have yet done
nothing; and, perhaps, at some future day, it may appear that I can
do something for a whole class; something to save my country from the
disgrace of that false position in which she now stands before all
civilized nations."

"Do you suppose it possible that a nation ever will voluntarily
emancipate?" said Miss Ophelia.

"I don't know," said St. Clare. "This is a day of great deeds. Heroism
and disinterestedness are rising up, here and there, in the earth. The
Hungarian nobles set free millions of serfs, at an immense pecuniary
loss; and, perhaps, among us may be found generous spirits, who do not
estimate honor and justice by dollars and cents."

"I hardly think so," said Miss Ophelia.

"But, suppose we should rise up tomorrow and emancipate, who would
educate these millions, and teach them how to use their freedom? They
never would rise to do much among us. The fact is, we are too lazy
and unpractical, ourselves, ever to give them much of an idea of that
industry and energy which is necessary to form them into men. They will
have to go north, where labor is the fashion,--the universal custom;
and tell me, now, is there enough Christian philanthropy, among your
northern states, to bear with the process of their education and
elevation? You send thousands of dollars to foreign missions; but could
you endure to have the heathen sent into your towns and villages, and
give your time, and thoughts, and money, to raise them to the Christian
standard? That's what I want to know. If we emancipate, are you willing
to educate? How many families, in your town, would take a negro man and
woman, teach them, bear with them, and seek to make them Christians? How
many merchants would take Adolph, if I wanted to make him a clerk; or
mechanics, if I wanted him taught a trade? If I wanted to put Jane and
Rosa to a school, how many schools are there in the northern states that
would take them in? how many families that would board them? and yet
they are as white as many a woman, north or south. You see, Cousin,
I want justice done us. We are in a bad position. We are the more
‘obvious’ oppressors of the negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the
north is an oppressor almost equally severe."

"Well, Cousin, I know it is so," said Miss Ophelia,--"I know it was so
with me, till I saw that it was my duty to overcome it; but, I trust I
have overcome it; and I know there are many good people at the north,
who in this matter need only to be ‘taught’ what their duty is, to do
it. It would certainly be a greater self-denial to receive heathen among
us, than to send missionaries to them; but I think we would do it."

"‘You’ would I know," said St. Clare. "I'd like to see anything you
wouldn't do, if you thought it your duty!"

"Well, I'm not uncommonly good," said Miss Ophelia. "Others would,
if they saw things as I do. I intend to take Topsy home, when I go.
I suppose our folks will wonder, at first; but I think they will be
brought to see as I do. Besides, I know there are many people at the
north who do exactly what you said."

"Yes, but they are a minority; and, if we should begin to emancipate to
any extent, we should soon hear from you."

Miss Ophelia did not reply. There was a pause of some moments; and St.
Clare's countenance was overcast by a sad, dreamy expression.

"I don't know what makes me think of my mother so much, tonight," he
said. "I have a strange kind of feeling, as if she were near me. I keep
thinking of things she used to say. Strange, what brings these past
things so vividly back to us, sometimes!"

St. Clare walked up and down the room for some minutes more, and then
said,

"I believe I'll go down street, a few moments, and hear the news,
tonight."

He took his hat, and passed out.

Tom followed him to the passage, out of the court, and asked if he
should attend him.

"No, my boy," said St. Clare. "I shall be back in an hour."

Tom sat down in the verandah. It was a beautiful moonlight evening,
and he sat watching the rising and falling spray of the fountain, and
listening to its murmur. Tom thought of his home, and that he should
soon be a free man, and able to return to it at will. He thought how he
should work to buy his wife and boys. He felt the muscles of his
brawny arms with a sort of joy, as he thought they would soon belong
to himself, and how much they could do to work out the freedom of his
family. Then he thought of his noble young master, and, ever second to
that, came the habitual prayer that he had always offered for him; and
then his thoughts passed on to the beautiful Eva, whom he now thought of
among the angels; and he thought till he almost fancied that that bright
face and golden hair were looking upon him, out of the spray of the
fountain. And, so musing, he fell asleep, and dreamed he saw her
coming bounding towards him, just as she used to come, with a wreath
of jessamine in her hair, her cheeks bright, and her eyes radiant with
delight; but, as he looked, she seemed to rise from the ground; her
cheeks wore a paler hue,--her eyes had a deep, divine radiance, a golden
halo seemed around her head,--and she vanished from his sight; and Tom
was awakened by a loud knocking, and a sound of many voices at the gate.

He hastened to undo it; and, with smothered voices and heavy tread,
came several men, bringing a body, wrapped in a cloak, and lying on a
shutter. The light of the lamp fell full on the face; and Tom gave a
wild cry of amazement and despair, that rung through all the galleries,
as the men advanced, with their burden, to the open parlor door, where
Miss Ophelia still sat knitting.

St. Clare had turned into a cafe, to look over an evening paper. As he
was reading, an affray arose between two gentlemen in the room, who
were both partially intoxicated. St. Clare and one or two others made an
effort to separate them, and St. Clare received a fatal stab in the side
with a bowie-knife, which he was attempting to wrest from one of them.

The house was full of cries and lamentations, shrieks and screams,
servants frantically tearing their hair, throwing themselves on the
ground, or running distractedly about, lamenting. Tom and Miss Ophelia
alone seemed to have any presence of mind; for Marie was in strong
hysteric convulsions. At Miss Ophelia's direction, one of the lounges in
the parlor was hastily prepared, and the bleeding form laid upon it. St.
Clare had fainted, through pain and loss of blood; but, as Miss Ophelia
applied restoratives, he revived, opened his eyes, looked fixedly on
them, looked earnestly around the room, his eyes travelling wistfully
over every object, and finally they rested on his mother's picture.

The physician now arrived, and made his examination. It was evident,
from the expression of his face, that there was no hope; but he applied
himself to dressing the wound, and he and Miss Ophelia and Tom proceeded
composedly with this work, amid the lamentations and sobs and cries of
the affrighted servants, who had clustered about the doors and windows
of the verandah.

"Now," said the physician, "we must turn all these creatures out; all
depends on his being kept quiet."

St. Clare opened his eyes, and looked fixedly on the distressed beings,
whom Miss Ophelia and the doctor were trying to urge from the apartment.
"Poor creatures!" he said, and an expression of bitter self-reproach
passed over his face. Adolph absolutely refused to go. Terror had
deprived him of all presence of mind; he threw himself along the
floor, and nothing could persuade him to rise. The rest yielded to Miss
Ophelia's urgent representations, that their master's safety depended on
their stillness and obedience.

St. Clare could say but little; he lay with his eyes shut, but it was
evident that he wrestled with bitter thoughts. After a while, he laid
his hand on Tom's, who was kneeling beside him, and said, "Tom! poor
fellow!"

"What, Mas'r?" said Tom, earnestly.

"I am dying!" said St. Clare, pressing his hand; "pray!"

"If you would like a clergyman--" said the physician.

St. Clare hastily shook his head, and said again to Tom, more earnestly,
"Pray!"

And Tom did pray, with all his mind and strength, for the soul that was
passing,--the soul that seemed looking so steadily and mournfully from
those large, melancholy blue eyes. It was literally prayer offered with
strong crying and tears.

When Tom ceased to speak, St. Clare reached out and took his hand,
looking earnestly at him, but saying nothing. He closed his eyes, but
still retained his hold; for, in the gates of eternity, the black hand
and the white hold each other with an equal clasp. He murmured softly to
himself, at broken intervals,

"Recordare Jesu pie--
* * * *
Ne me perdas--illa die
Querens me--sedisti lassus."

It was evident that the words he had been singing that evening were
passing through his mind,--words of entreaty addressed to Infinite Pity.
His lips moved at intervals, as parts of the hymn fell brokenly from
them.

"His mind is wandering," said the doctor.

"No! it is coming HOME, at last!" said St. Clare, energetically; "at
last! at last!"

The effort of speaking exhausted him. The sinking paleness of death
fell on him; but with it there fell, as if shed from the wings of some
pitying spirit, a beautiful expression of peace, like that of a wearied
child who sleeps.

So he lay for a few moments. They saw that the mighty hand was on him.
Just before the spirit parted, he opened his eyes, with a sudden light,
as of joy and recognition, and said ‘"Mother!"‘ and then he was gone!



CHAPTER XXIX

The Unprotected


We hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a
kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God's earth is
left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these
circumstances.

The child who has lost a father has still the protection of friends,
and of the law; he is something, and can do something,--has acknowledged
rights and position; the slave has none. The law regards him, in every
respect, as devoid of rights as a bale of merchandise. The only possible
acknowledgment of any of the longings and wants of a human and immortal
creature, which are given to him, comes to him through the sovereign and
irresponsible will of his master; and when that master is stricken down,
nothing remains.

The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power
humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave
knows it best of all; so that he feels that there are ten chances of
his finding an abusive and tyrannical master, to one of his finding
a considerate and kind one. Therefore is it that the wail over a kind
master is loud and long, as well it may be.

When St. Clare breathed his last, terror and consternation took hold
of all his household. He had been stricken down so in a moment, in the
flower and strength of his youth! Every room and gallery of the house
resounded with sobs and shrieks of despair.

Marie, whose nervous system had been enervated by a constant course of
self-indulgence, had nothing to support the terror of the shock, and,
at the time her husband breathed his last, was passing from one fainting
fit to another; and he to whom she had been joined in the mysterious tie
of marriage passed from her forever, without the possibility of even a
parting word.

Miss Ophelia, with characteristic strength and self-control, had
remained with her kinsman to the last,--all eye, all ear, all attention;
doing everything of the little that could be done, and joining with her
whole soul in the tender and impassioned prayers which the poor slave
had poured forth for the soul of his dying master.

When they were arranging him for his last rest, they found upon his
bosom a small, plain miniature case, opening with a spring. It was the
miniature of a noble and beautiful female face; and on the reverse,
under a crystal, a lock of dark hair. They laid them back on the
lifeless breast,--dust to dust,--poor mournful relics of early dreams,
which once made that cold heart beat so warmly!

Tom's whole soul was filled with thoughts of eternity; and while he
ministered around the lifeless clay, he did not once think that the
sudden stroke had left him in hopeless slavery. He felt at peace about
his master; for in that hour, when he had poured forth his prayer
into the bosom of his Father, he had found an answer of quietness
and assurance springing up within himself. In the depths of his own
affectionate nature, he felt able to perceive something of the fulness
of Divine love; for an old oracle hath thus written,--"He that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." Tom hoped and trusted, and was
at peace.

But the funeral passed, with all its pageant of black crape, and
prayers, and solemn faces; and back rolled the cool, muddy waves of
every-day life; and up came the everlasting hard inquiry of "What is to
be done next?"

It rose to the mind of Marie, as, dressed in loose morning-robes, and
surrounded by anxious servants, she sat up in a great easy-chair, and
inspected samples of crape and bombazine. It rose to Miss Ophelia, who
began to turn her thoughts towards her northern home. It rose, in silent
terrors, to the minds of the servants, who well knew the unfeeling,
tyrannical character of the mistress in whose hands they were left. All
knew, very well, that the indulgences which had been accorded to them
were not from their mistress, but from their master; and that, now he
was gone, there would be no screen between them and every tyrannous
infliction which a temper soured by affliction might devise.

It was about a fortnight after the funeral, that Miss Ophelia, busied
one day in her apartment, heard a gentle tap at the door. She opened
it, and there stood Rosa, the pretty young quadroon, whom we have before
often noticed, her hair in disorder, and her eyes swelled with crying.

"O, Miss Feeley," she said, falling on her knees, and catching the skirt
of her dress, "‘do, do go’ to Miss Marie for me! do plead for me! She's
goin' to send me out to be whipped--look there!" And she handed to Miss
Ophelia a paper.

It was an order, written in Marie's delicate Italian hand, to the master
of a whipping-establishment to give the bearer fifteen lashes.

"What have you been doing?" said Miss Ophelia.

"You know, Miss Feely, I've got such a bad temper; it's very bad of me.
I was trying on Miss Marie's dress, and she slapped my face; and I spoke
out before I thought, and was saucy; and she said that she'd bring
me down, and have me know, once for all, that I wasn't going to be so
topping as I had been; and she wrote this, and says I shall carry it.
I'd rather she'd kill me, right out."

Miss Ophelia stood considering, with the paper in her hand.

"You see, Miss Feely," said Rosa, "I don't mind the whipping so much, if
Miss Marie or you was to do it; but, to be sent to a ‘man!’ and such a
horrid man,--the shame of it, Miss Feely!"

Miss Ophelia well knew that it was the universal custom to send women
and young girls to whipping-houses, to the hands of the lowest of
men,--men vile enough to make this their profession,--there to be
subjected to brutal exposure and shameful correction. She had ‘known’ it
before; but hitherto she had never realized it, till she saw the slender
form of Rosa almost convulsed with distress. All the honest blood of
womanhood, the strong New England blood of liberty, flushed to her
cheeks, and throbbed bitterly in her indignant heart; but, with habitual
prudence and self-control, she mastered herself, and, crushing the paper
firmly in her hand, she merely said to Rosa,

"Sit down, child, while I go to your mistress."

"Shameful! monstrous! outrageous!" she said to herself, as she was
crossing the parlor.

She found Marie sitting up in her easy-chair, with Mammy standing
by her, combing her hair; Jane sat on the ground before her, busy in
chafing her feet.

"How do you find yourself, today?" said Miss Ophelia.

A deep sigh, and a closing of the eyes, was the only reply, for a
moment; and then Marie answered, "O, I don't know, Cousin; I suppose
I'm as well as I ever shall be!" and Marie wiped her eyes with a cambric
handkerchief, bordered with an inch deep of black.

"I came," said Miss Ophelia, with a short, dry cough, such as commonly
introduces a difficult subject,--"I came to speak with you about poor
Rosa."

Marie's eyes were open wide enough now, and a flush rose to her sallow
cheeks, as she answered, sharply,

"Well, what about her?"

"She is very sorry for her fault."

"She is, is she? She'll be sorrier, before I've done with her! I've
endured that child's impudence long enough; and now I'll bring her
down,--I'll make her lie in the dust!"

"But could not you punish her some other way,--some way that would be
less shameful?"

"I mean to shame her; that's just what I want. She has all her life
presumed on her delicacy, and her good looks, and her lady-like airs,
till she forgets who she is;--and I'll give her one lesson that will
bring her down, I fancy!"

"But, Cousin, consider that, if you destroy delicacy and a sense of
shame in a young girl, you deprave her very fast."

"Delicacy!" said Marie, with a scornful laugh,--"a fine word for such
as she! I'll teach her, with all her airs, that she's no better than the
raggedest black wench that walks the streets! She'll take no more airs
with me!"

"You will answer to God for such cruelty!" said Miss Ophelia, with
energy.

"Cruelty,--I'd like to know what the cruelty is! I wrote orders for only
fifteen lashes, and told him to put them on lightly. I'm sure there's no
cruelty there!"

"No cruelty!" said Miss Ophelia. "I'm sure any girl might rather be
killed outright!"

"It might seem so to anybody with your feeling; but all these creatures
get used to it; it's the only way they can be kept in order. Once let
them feel that they are to take any airs about delicacy, and all that,
and they'll run all over you, just as my servants always have. I've
begun now to bring them under; and I'll have them all to know that
I'll send one out to be whipped, as soon as another, if they don't mind
themselves!" said Marie, looking around her decidedly.

Jane hung her head and cowered at this, for she felt as if it was
particularly directed to her. Miss Ophelia sat for a moment, as if she
had swallowed some explosive mixture, and were ready to burst. Then,
recollecting the utter uselessness of contention with such a nature,
she shut her lips resolutely, gathered herself up, and walked out of the
room.

It was hard to go back and tell Rosa that she could do nothing for
her; and, shortly after, one of the man-servants came to say that her
mistress had ordered him to take Rosa with him to the whipping-house,
whither she was hurried, in spite of her tears and entreaties.

A few days after, Tom was standing musing by the balconies, when he was
joined by Adolph, who, since the death of his master, had been entirely
crest-fallen and disconsolate. Adolph knew that he had always been an
object of dislike to Marie; but while his master lived he had paid but
little attention to it. Now that he was gone, he had moved about in
daily dread and trembling, not knowing what might befall him next. Marie
had held several consultations with her lawyer; after communicating with
St. Clare's brother, it was determined to sell the place, and all the
servants, except her own personal property, and these she intended to
take with her, and go back to her father's plantation.

"Do ye know, Tom, that we've all got to be sold?" said Adolph, and go
back to her father's plantation.

"How did you hear that?" said Tom.

"I hid myself behind the curtains when Missis was talking with the
lawyer. In a few days we shall be sent off to auction, Tom."

"The Lord's will be done!" said Tom, folding his arms and sighing
heavily.

"We'll never get another such a master," said Adolph, apprehensively;
"but I'd rather be sold than take my chance under Missis."

Tom turned away; his heart was full. The hope of liberty, the thought
of distant wife and children, rose up before his patient soul, as to the
mariner shipwrecked almost in port rises the vision of the church-spire
and loving roofs of his native village, seen over the top of some black
wave only for one last farewell. He drew his arms tightly over his
bosom, and choked back the bitter tears, and tried to pray. The poor old
soul had such a singular, unaccountable prejudice in favor of liberty,
that it was a hard wrench for him; and the more he said, "Thy will be
done," the worse he felt.

He sought Miss Ophelia, who, ever since Eva's death, had treated him
with marked and respectful kindness.

"Miss Feely," he said, "Mas'r St. Clare promised me my freedom. He told
me that he had begun to take it out for me; and now, perhaps, if Miss
Feely would be good enough to speak bout it to Missis, she would feel
like goin' on with it, was it as Mas'r St. Clare's wish."

"I'll speak for you, Tom, and do my best," said Miss Ophelia; "but, if
it depends on Mrs. St. Clare, I can't hope much for you;--nevertheless,
I will try."

This incident occurred a few days after that of Rosa, while Miss Ophelia
was busied in preparations to return north.

Seriously reflecting within herself, she considered that perhaps she had
shown too hasty a warmth of language in her former interview with Marie;
and she resolved that she would now endeavor to moderate her zeal, and
to be as conciliatory as possible. So the good soul gathered herself
up, and, taking her knitting, resolved to go into Marie's room, be as
agreeable as possible, and negotiate Tom's case with all the diplomatic
skill of which she was mistress.

She found Marie reclining at length upon a lounge, supporting herself
on one elbow by pillows, while Jane, who had been out shopping, was
displaying before her certain samples of thin black stuffs.

"That will do," said Marie, selecting one; "only I'm not sure about its
being properly mourning."

"Laws, Missis," said Jane, volubly, "Mrs. General Derbennon wore just
this very thing, after the General died, last summer; it makes up
lovely!"

"What do you think?" said Marie to Miss Ophelia.

"It's a matter of custom, I suppose," said Miss Ophelia. "You can judge
about it better than I."

"The fact is," said Marie, "that I haven't a dress in the world that I
can wear; and, as I am going to break up the establishment, and go off,
next week, I must decide upon something."

"Are you going so soon?"

"Yes. St. Clare's brother has written, and he and the lawyer think that
the servants and furniture had better be put up at auction, and the
place left with our lawyer."

"There's one thing I wanted to speak with you about," said Miss Ophelia.
"Augustine promised Tom his liberty, and began the legal forms necessary
to it. I hope you will use your influence to have it perfected."

"Indeed, I shall do no such thing!" said Marie, sharply. "Tom is one of
the most valuable servants on the place,--it couldn't be afforded, any
way. Besides, what does he want of liberty? He's a great deal better off
as he is."

"But he does desire it, very earnestly, and his master promised it,"
said Miss Ophelia.

"I dare say he does want it," said Marie; "they all want it, just
because they are a discontented set,--always wanting what they haven't
got. Now, I'm principled against emancipating, in any case. Keep a negro
under the care of a master, and he does well enough, and is respectable;
but set them free, and they get lazy, and won't work, and take to
drinking, and go all down to be mean, worthless fellows, I've seen it
tried, hundreds of times. It's no favor to set them free."

"But Tom is so steady, industrious, and pious."

"O, you needn't tell me! I've see a hundred like him. He'll do very
well, as long as he's taken care of,--that's all."

"But, then, consider," said Miss Ophelia, "when you set him up for sale,
the chances of his getting a bad master."

"O, that's all humbug!" said Marie; "it isn't one time in a hundred that
a good fellow gets a bad master; most masters are good, for all the talk
that is made. I've lived and grown up here, in the South, and I
never yet was acquainted with a master that didn't treat his servants
well,--quite as well as is worth while. I don't feel any fears on that
head."

"Well," said Miss Ophelia, energetically, "I know it was one of the last
wishes of your husband that Tom should have his liberty; it was one of
the promises that he made to dear little Eva on her death-bed, and I
should not think you would feel at liberty to disregard it."

Marie had her face covered with her handkerchief at this appeal, and
began sobbing and using her smelting-bottle, with great vehemence.

"Everybody goes against me!" she said. "Everybody is so inconsiderate! I
shouldn't have expected that ‘you’ would bring up all these remembrances
of my troubles to me,--it's so inconsiderate! But nobody ever does
consider,--my trials are so peculiar! It's so hard, that when I had only
one daughter, she should have been taken!--and when I had a husband that
just exactly suited me,--and I'm so hard to be suited!--he should be
taken! And you seem to have so little feeling for me, and keep bringing
it up to me so carelessly,--when you know how it overcomes me! I suppose
you mean well; but it is very inconsiderate,--very!" And Marie sobbed,
and gasped for breath, and called Mammy to open the window, and to bring
her the camphor-bottle, and to bathe her head, and unhook her dress.
And, in the general confusion that ensued, Miss Ophelia made her escape
to her apartment.

She saw, at once, that it would do no good to say anything more; for
Marie had an indefinite capacity for hysteric fits; and, after this,
whenever her husband's or Eva's wishes with regard to the servants were
alluded to, she always found it convenient to set one in operation.
Miss Ophelia, therefore, did the next best thing she could for Tom,--she
wrote a letter to Mrs. Shelby for him, stating his troubles, and urging
them to send to his relief.

The next day, Tom and Adolph, and some half a dozen other servants,
were marched down to a slave-warehouse, to await the convenience of the
trader, who was going to make up a lot for auction.



CHAPTER XXX

The Slave Warehouse

A slave warehouse! Perhaps some of my readers conjure up horrible
visions of such a place. They fancy some foul, obscure den, some
horrible ‘Tartarus "informis, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."‘ But no,
innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning
expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of
respectable society. Human property is high in the market; and is,
therefore, well fed, well cleaned, tended, and looked after, that it may
come to sale sleek, and strong, and shining. A slave-warehouse in New
Orleans is a house externally not much unlike many others, kept with
neatness; and where every day you may see arranged, under a sort of shed
along the outside, rows of men and women, who stand there as a sign of
the property sold within.

Then you shall be courteously entreated to call and examine, and shall
find an abundance of husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, fathers,
mothers, and young children, to be "sold separately, or in lots to suit
the convenience of the purchaser;" and that soul immortal, once bought
with blood and anguish by the Son of God, when the earth shook, and the
rocks rent, and the graves were opened, can be sold, leased, mortgaged,
exchanged for groceries or dry goods, to suit the phases of trade, or
the fancy of the purchaser.

It was a day or two after the conversation between Marie and Miss
Ophelia, that Tom, Adolph, and about half a dozen others of the St.
Clare estate, were turned over to the loving kindness of Mr. Skeggs, the
keeper of a depot on ---- street, to await the auction, next day.

Tom had with him quite a sizable trunk full of clothing, as had most
others of them. They were ushered, for the night, into a long room,
where many other men, of all ages, sizes, and shades of complexion, were
assembled, and from which roars of laughter and unthinking merriment
were proceeding.

"Ah, ha! that's right. Go it, boys,--go it!" said Mr. Skeggs, the
keeper. "My people are always so merry! Sambo, I see!" he said,
speaking approvingly to a burly negro who was performing tricks of low
buffoonery, which occasioned the shouts which Tom had heard.

As might be imagined, Tom was in no humor to join these proceedings;
and, therefore, setting his trunk as far as possible from the noisy
group, he sat down on it, and leaned his face against the wall.

The dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts
to promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of drowning reflection,
and rendering them insensible to their condition. The whole object of
the training to which the negro is put, from the time he is sold in
the northern market till he arrives south, is systematically directed
towards making him callous, unthinking, and brutal. The slave-dealer
collects his gang in Virginia or Kentucky, and drives them to some
convenient, healthy place,--often a watering place,--to be fattened.
Here they are fed full daily; and, because some incline to pine, a
fiddle is kept commonly going among them, and they are made to dance
daily; and he who refuses to be merry--in whose soul thoughts of wife,
or child, or home, are too strong for him to be gay--is marked as sullen
and dangerous, and subjected to all the evils which the ill will of an
utterly irresponsible and hardened man can inflict upon him. Briskness,
alertness, and cheerfulness of appearance, especially before observers,
are constantly enforced upon them, both by the hope of thereby getting a
good master, and the fear of all that the driver may bring upon them if
they prove unsalable.

"What dat ar nigger doin here?" said Sambo, coming up to Tom, after Mr.
Skeggs had left the room. Sambo was a full black, of great size, very
lively, voluble, and full of trick and grimace.

"What you doin here?" said Sambo, coming up to Tom, and poking him
facetiously in the side. "Meditatin', eh?"

"I am to be sold at the auction, tomorrow!" said Tom, quietly.

"Sold at auction,--haw! haw! boys, an't this yer fun? I wish't I was
gwine that ar way!--tell ye, wouldn't I make em laugh? But how is
it,--dis yer whole lot gwine tomorrow?" said Sambo, laying his hand
freely on Adolph's shoulder.

"Please to let me alone!" said Adolph, fiercely, straightening himself
up, with extreme disgust.

"Law, now, boys! dis yer's one o' yer white niggers,--kind o' cream
color, ye know, scented!" said he, coming up to Adolph and snuffing. "O
Lor! he'd do for a tobaccer-shop; they could keep him to scent snuff!
Lor, he'd keep a whole shope agwine,--he would!"

"I say, keep off, can't you?" said Adolph, enraged.

"Lor, now, how touchy we is,--we white niggers! Look at us now!" and
Sambo gave a ludicrous imitation of Adolph's manner; "here's de airs and
graces. We's been in a good family, I specs."

"Yes," said Adolph; "I had a master that could have bought you all for
old truck!"

"Laws, now, only think," said Sambo, "the gentlemens that we is!"

"I belonged to the St. Clare family," said Adolph, proudly.

"Lor, you did! Be hanged if they ar'n't lucky to get shet of ye. Spects
they's gwine to trade ye off with a lot o' cracked tea-pots and sich
like!" said Sambo, with a provoking grin.

Adolph, enraged at this taunt, flew furiously at his adversary, swearing
and striking on every side of him. The rest laughed and shouted, and the
uproar brought the keeper to the door.

"What now, boys? Order,--order!" he said, coming in and flourishing a
large whip.

All fled in different directions, except Sambo, who, presuming on the
favor which the keeper had to him as a licensed wag, stood his ground,
ducking his head with a facetious grin, whenever the master made a dive
at him.

"Lor, Mas'r, 'tan't us,--we 's reglar stiddy,--it's these yer new hands;
they 's real aggravatin',--kinder pickin' at us, all time!"

The keeper, at this, turned upon Tom and Adolph, and distributing a few
kicks and cuffs without much inquiry, and leaving general orders for all
to be good boys and go to sleep, left the apartment.

While this scene was going on in the men's sleeping-room, the reader may
be curious to take a peep at the corresponding apartment allotted to
the women. Stretched out in various attitudes over the floor, he may see
numberless sleeping forms of every shade of complexion, from the purest
ebony to white, and of all years, from childhood to old age, lying now
asleep. Here is a fine bright girl, of ten years, whose mother was sold
out yesterday, and who tonight cried herself to sleep when nobody was
looking at her. Here, a worn old negress, whose thin arms and callous
fingers tell of hard toil, waiting to be sold tomorrow, as a cast-off
article, for what can be got for her; and some forty or fifty others,
with heads variously enveloped in blankets or articles of clothing, lie
stretched around them. But, in a corner, sitting apart from the rest,
are two females of a more interesting appearance than common. One of
these is a respectably-dressed mulatto woman between forty and fifty,
with soft eyes and a gentle and pleasing physiognomy. She has on her
head a high-raised turban, made of a gay red Madras handkerchief, of the
first quality, her dress is neatly fitted, and of good material, showing
that she has been provided for with a careful hand. By her side, and
nestling closely to her, is a young girl of fifteen,--her daughter. She
is a quadroon, as may be seen from her fairer complexion, though her
likeness to her mother is quite discernible. She has the same soft, dark
eye, with longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown.
She also is dressed with great neatness, and her white, delicate hands
betray very little acquaintance with servile toil. These two are to
be sold tomorrow, in the same lot with the St. Clare servants; and the
gentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for their sale is
to be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church in New York, who
will receive the money, and go thereafter to the sacrament of his Lord
and theirs, and think no more of it.

These two, whom we shall call Susan and Emmeline, had been the personal
attendants of an amiable and pious lady of New Orleans, by whom they had
been carefully and piously instructed and trained. They had been taught
to read and write, diligently instructed in the truths of religion, and
their lot had been as happy an one as in their condition it was possible
to be. But the only son of their protectress had the management of her
property; and, by carelessness and extravagance involved it to a
large amount, and at last failed. One of the largest creditors was
the respectable firm of B. & Co., in New York. B. & Co. wrote to their
lawyer in New Orleans, who attached the real estate (these two articles
and a lot of plantation hands formed the most valuable part of it), and
wrote word to that effect to New York. Brother B., being, as we have
said, a Christian man, and a resident in a free State, felt some
uneasiness on the subject. He didn't like trading in slaves and souls
of men,--of course, he didn't; but, then, there were thirty thousand
dollars in the case, and that was rather too much money to be lost for a
principle; and so, after much considering, and asking advice from those
that he knew would advise to suit him, Brother B. wrote to his lawyer to
dispose of the business in the way that seemed to him the most suitable,
and remit the proceeds.

The day after the letter arrived in New Orleans, Susan and Emmeline
were attached, and sent to the depot to await a general auction on the
following morning; and as they glimmer faintly upon us in the moonlight
which steals through the grated window, we may listen to their
conversation. Both are weeping, but each quietly, that the other may not
hear.

"Mother, just lay your head on my lap, and see if you can't sleep a
little," says the girl, trying to appear calm.

"I haven't any heart to sleep, Em; I can't; it's the last night we may
be together!"

"O, mother, don't say so! perhaps we shall get sold together,--who
knows?"

"If 't was anybody's else case, I should say so, too, Em," said the
woman; "but I'm so feard of losin' you that I don't see anything but the
danger."

"Why, mother, the man said we were both likely, and would sell well."

Susan remembered the man's looks and words. With a deadly sickness at
her heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline's hands, and
lifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate article. Susan
had been trained as a Christian, brought up in the daily reading of the
Bible, and had the same horror of her child's being sold to a life
of shame that any other Christian mother might have; but she had no
hope,--no protection.

"Mother, I think we might do first rate, if you could get a place as
cook, and I as chambermaid or seamstress, in some family. I dare say we
shall. Let's both look as bright and lively as we can, and tell all we
can do, and perhaps we shall," said Emmeline.

"I want you to brush your hair all back straight, tomorrow," said Susan.

"What for, mother? I don't look near so well, that way."

"Yes, but you'll sell better so."

"I don't see why!" said the child.

"Respectable families would be more apt to buy you, if they saw you
looked plain and decent, as if you wasn't trying to look handsome. I
know their ways better 'n you do," said Susan.

"Well, mother, then I will."

"And, Emmeline, if we shouldn't ever see each other again, after
tomorrow,--if I'm sold way up on a plantation somewhere, and you
somewhere else,--always remember how you've been brought up, and all
Missis has told you; take your Bible with you, and your hymn-book; and
if you're faithful to the Lord, he'll be faithful to you."

So speaks the poor soul, in sore discouragement; for she knows
that tomorrow any man, however vile and brutal, however godless and
merciless, if he only has money to pay for her, may become owner of her
daughter, body and soul; and then, how is the child to be faithful? She
thinks of all this, as she holds her daughter in her arms, and
wishes that she were not handsome and attractive. It seems almost an
aggravation to her to remember how purely and piously, how much above
the ordinary lot, she has been brought up. But she has no resort but to
‘pray’; and many such prayers to God have gone up from those same trim,
neatly-arranged, respectable slave-prisons,--prayers which God has not
forgotten, as a coming day shall show; for it is written, "Who causeth
one of these little ones to offend, it were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the
depths of the sea."

The soft, earnest, quiet moonbeam looks in fixedly, marking the bars
of the grated windows on the prostrate, sleeping forms. The mother and
daughter are singing together a wild and melancholy dirge, common as a
funeral hymn among the slaves:

"O, where is weeping Mary?
O, where is weeping Mary?
'Rived in the goodly land.
She is dead and gone to Heaven;
She is dead and gone to Heaven;
'Rived in the goodly land."

These words, sung by voices of a peculiar and melancholy sweetness, in
an air which seemed like the sighing of earthy despair after heavenly
hope, floated through the dark prison rooms with a pathetic cadence, as
verse after verse was breathed out:

"O, where are Paul and Silas?
O, where are Paul and Silas?
Gone to the goodly land.
They are dead and gone to Heaven;
They are dead and gone to Heaven;
'Rived in the goodly land."

Sing on poor souls! The night is short, and the morning will part you
forever!

But now it is morning, and everybody is astir; and the worthy Mr. Skeggs
is busy and bright, for a lot of goods is to be fitted out for auction.
There is a brisk lookout on the toilet; injunctions passed around
to every one to put on their best face and be spry; and now all are
arranged in a circle for a last review, before they are marched up to
the Bourse.

Mr. Skeggs, with his palmetto on and his cigar in his mouth, walks
around to put farewell touches on his wares.

"How's this?" he said, stepping in front of Susan and Emmeline. "Where's
your curls, gal?"

The girl looked timidly at her mother, who, with the smooth adroitness
common among her class, answers,

"I was telling her, last night, to put up her hair smooth and neat, and
not havin' it flying about in curls; looks more respectable so."

"Bother!" said the man, peremptorily, turning to the girl; "you go right
along, and curl yourself real smart!" He added, giving a crack to a
rattan he held in his hand, "And be back in quick time, too!"

"You go and help her," he added, to the mother. "Them curls may make a
hundred dollars difference in the sale of her."


Beneath a splendid dome were men of all nations, moving to and fro,
over the marble pave. On every side of the circular area were little
tribunes, or stations, for the use of speakers and auctioneers. Two of
these, on opposite sides of the area, were now occupied by brilliant and
talented gentlemen, enthusiastically forcing up, in English and French
commingled, the bids of connoisseurs in their various wares. A third
one, on the other side, still unoccupied, was surrounded by a group,
waiting the moment of sale to begin. And here we may recognize the St.
Clare servants,--Tom, Adolph, and others; and there, too, Susan and
Emmeline, awaiting their turn with anxious and dejected faces. Various
spectators, intending to purchase, or not intending, examining, and
commenting on their various points and faces with the same freedom that
a set of jockeys discuss the merits of a horse.

"Hulloa, Alf! what brings you here?" said a young exquisite, slapping
the shoulder of a sprucely-dressed young man, who was examining Adolph
through an eye-glass.

"Well! I was wanting a valet, and I heard that St. Clare's lot was
going. I thought I'd just look at his--"

"Catch me ever buying any of St. Clare's people! Spoilt niggers, every
one. Impudent as the devil!" said the other.

"Never fear that!" said the first. "If I get 'em, I'll soon have their
airs out of them; they'll soon find that they've another kind of master
to deal with than Monsieur St. Clare. 'Pon my word, I'll buy that
fellow. I like the shape of him."

"You'll find it'll take all you've got to keep him. He's deucedly
extravagant!"

"Yes, but my lord will find that he ‘can't’ be extravagant with ‘me’.
Just let him be sent to the calaboose a few times, and thoroughly
dressed down! I'll tell you if it don't bring him to a sense of his
ways! O, I'll reform him, up hill and down,--you'll see. I buy him,
that's flat!"

Tom had been standing wistfully examining the multitude of faces
thronging around him, for one whom he would wish to call master. And if
you should ever be under the necessity, sir, of selecting, out of two
hundred men, one who was to become your absolute owner and disposer, you
would, perhaps, realize, just as Tom did, how few there were that you
would feel at all comfortable in being made over to. Tom saw abundance
of men,--great, burly, gruff men; little, chirping, dried men;
long-favored, lank, hard men; and every variety of stubbed-looking,
commonplace men, who pick up their fellow-men as one picks up chips,
putting them into the fire or a basket with equal unconcern, according
to their convenience; but he saw no St. Clare.

A little before the sale commenced, a short, broad, muscular man, in a
checked shirt considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons much the
worse for dirt and wear, elbowed his way through the crowd, like one who
is going actively into a business; and, coming up to the group, began
to examine them systematically. From the moment that Tom saw him
approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at him, that
increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic
strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their
shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather
unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth
was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he
ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands
were immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and
garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition. This man proceeded
to a very free personal examination of the lot. He seized Tom by the
jaw, and pulled open his mouth to inspect his teeth; made him strip
up his sleeve, to show his muscle; turned him round, made him jump and
spring, to show his paces.

"Where was you raised?" he added, briefly, to these investigations.

"In Kintuck, Mas'r," said Tom, looking about, as if for deliverance.

"What have you done?"

"Had care of Mas'r's farm," said Tom.

"Likely story!" said the other, shortly, as he passed on. He paused a
moment before Dolph; then spitting a discharge of tobacco-juice on his
well-blacked boots, and giving a contemptuous umph, he walked on. Again
he stopped before Susan and Emmeline. He put out his heavy, dirty hand,
and drew the girl towards him; passed it over her neck and bust, felt
her arms, looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her
mother, whose patient face showed the suffering she had been going
through at every motion of the hideous stranger.

The girl was frightened, and began to cry.

"Stop that, you minx!" said the salesman; "no whimpering here,--the sale
is going to begin." And accordingly the sale begun.

Adolph was knocked off, at a good sum, to the young gentlemen who had
previously stated his intention of buying him; and the other servants of
the St. Clare lot went to various bidders.

"Now, up with you, boy! d'ye hear?" said the auctioneer to Tom.

Tom stepped upon the block, gave a few anxious looks round; all seemed
mingled in a common, indistinct noise,--the clatter of the salesman
crying off his qualifications in French and English, the quick fire of
French and English bids; and almost in a moment came the final thump
of the hammer, and the clear ring on the last syllable of the word
‘"dollars,"‘ as the auctioneer announced his price, and Tom was made
over.--He had a master!

He was pushed from the block;--the short, bullet-headed man seizing
him roughly by the shoulder, pushed him to one side, saying, in a harsh
voice, "Stand there, ‘you!’"

Tom hardly realized anything; but still the bidding went on,--ratting,
clattering, now French, now English. Down goes the hammer again,--Susan
is sold! She goes down from the block, stops, looks wistfully back,--her
daughter stretches her hands towards her. She looks with agony in the
face of the man who has bought her,--a respectable middle-aged man, of
benevolent countenance.

"O, Mas'r, please do buy my daughter!"

"I'd like to, but I'm afraid I can't afford it!" said the gentleman,
looking, with painful interest, as the young girl mounted the block, and
looked around her with a frightened and timid glance.

The blood flushes painfully in her otherwise colorless cheek, her eye
has a feverish fire, and her mother groans to see that she looks
more beautiful than she ever saw her before. The auctioneer sees his
advantage, and expatiates volubly in mingled French and English, and
bids rise in rapid succession.

"I'll do anything in reason," said the benevolent-looking gentleman,
pressing in and joining with the bids. In a few moments they have run
beyond his purse. He is silent; the auctioneer grows warmer; but bids
gradually drop off. It lies now between an aristocratic old citizen
and our bullet-headed acquaintance. The citizen bids for a few turns,
contemptuously measuring his opponent; but the bullet-head has the
advantage over him, both in obstinacy and concealed length of purse, and
the controversy lasts but a moment; the hammer falls,--he has got the
girl, body and soul, unless God help her!

Her master is Mr. Legree, who owns a cotton plantation on the Red river.
She is pushed along into the same lot with Tom and two other men, and
goes off, weeping as she goes.

The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every
day! One sees girls and mothers crying, at these sales, ‘always!’ it
can't be helped, &c.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in another
direction.

Two days after, the lawyer of the Christian firm of B. & Co., New York,
send on their money to them. On the reverse of that draft, so obtained,
let them write these words of the great Paymaster, to whom they shall
make up their account in a future day: ‘"When he maketh inquisition for
blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble!"‘



CHAPTER XXXI

The Middle Passage

"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon
iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously,
and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more
righteous than he?"--HAB. 1: 13.


On the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red river, Tom
sat,--chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight heavier
than chains lay on his heart. All had faded from his sky,--moon and
star; all had passed by him, as the trees and banks were now passing,
to return no more. Kentucky home, with wife and children, and indulgent
owners; St. Clare home, with all its refinements and splendors; the
golden head of Eva, with its saint-like eyes; the proud, gay, handsome,
seemingly careless, yet ever-kind St. Clare; hours of ease and indulgent
leisure,--all gone! and in place thereof, ‘what’ remains?

It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that
the negro, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined
family, the tastes and feelings which form the atmosphere of such a
place, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest
and most brutal,--just as a chair or table, which once decorated the
superb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom of
some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great
difference is, that the table and chair cannot feel, and the ‘man’ can;
for even a legal enactment that he shall be "taken, reputed, adjudged in
law, to be a chattel personal," cannot blot out his soul, with its own
private little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires.

Mr. Simon Legree, Tom's master, had purchased slaves at one place
and another, in New Orleans, to the number of eight, and driven them,
handcuffed, in couples of two and two, down to the good steamer Pirate,
which lay at the levee, ready for a trip up the Red river.

Having got them fairly on board, and the boat being off, he came round,
with that air of efficiency which ever characterized him, to take a
review of them. Stopping opposite to Tom, who had been attired for sale
in his best broadcloth suit, with well-starched linen and shining boots,
he briefly expressed himself as follows:

"Stand up."

Tom stood up.

"Take off that stock!" and, as Tom, encumbered by his fetters, proceeded
to do it, he assisted him, by pulling it, with no gentle hand, from his
neck, and putting it in his pocket.

Legree now turned to Tom's trunk, which, previous to this, he had been
ransacking, and, taking from it a pair of old pantaloons and dilapidated
coat, which Tom had been wont to put on about his stable-work, he said,
liberating Tom's hands from the handcuffs, and pointing to a recess in
among the boxes,

"You go there, and put these on."

Tom obeyed, and in a few moments returned.

"Take off your boots," said Mr. Legree.

Tom did so.

"There," said the former, throwing him a pair of coarse, stout shoes,
such as were common among the slaves, "put these on."

In Tom's hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer his
cherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr. Legree,
having refitted Tom's handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to investigate
the contents of his pockets. He drew out a silk handkerchief, and put
it into his own pocket. Several little trifles, which Tom had treasured,
chiefly because they had amused Eva, he looked upon with a contemptuous
grunt, and tossed them over his shoulder into the river.

Tom's Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten, he now
held up and turned over.

Humph! pious, to be sure. So, what's yer name,--you belong to the
church, eh?"

"Yes, Mas'r," said Tom, firmly.

"Well, I'll soon have ‘that’ out of you. I have none o' yer bawling,
praying, singing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself,"
he said, with a stamp and a fierce glance of his gray eye, directed at
Tom, "‘I'm’ your church now! You understand,--you've got to be as ‘I’
say."

Something within the silent black man answered ‘No!’ and, as if repeated
by an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic scroll, as Eva
had often read them to him,--"Fear not! for I have redeemed thee. I have
called thee by name. Thou art MINE!"

But Simon Legree heard no voice. That voice is one he never shall hear.
He only glared for a moment on the downcast face of Tom, and walked off.
He took Tom's trunk, which contained a very neat and abundant wardrobe,
to the forecastle, where it was soon surrounded by various hands of
the boat. With much laughing, at the expense of niggers who tried to be
gentlemen, the articles very readily were sold to one and another, and
the empty trunk finally put up at auction. It was a good joke, they all
thought, especially to see how Tom looked after his things, as they were
going this way and that; and then the auction of the trunk, that was
funnier than all, and occasioned abundant witticisms.

This little affair being over, Simon sauntered up again to his property.

"Now, Tom, I've relieved you of any extra baggage, you see. Take mighty
good care of them clothes. It'll be long enough 'fore you get more. I
go in for making niggers careful; one suit has to do for one year, on my
place."

Simon next walked up to the place where Emmeline was sitting, chained to
another woman.

"Well, my dear," he said, chucking her under the chin, "keep up your
spirits."

The involuntary look of horror, fright and aversion, with which the girl
regarded him, did not escape his eye. He frowned fiercely.

"None o' your shines, gal! you's got to keep a pleasant face, when I
speak to ye,--d'ye hear? And you, you old yellow poco moonshine!" he
said, giving a shove to the mulatto woman to whom Emmeline was chained,
"don't you carry that sort of face! You's got to look chipper, I tell
ye!"

"I say, all on ye," he said retreating a pace or two back, "look at
me,--look at me,--look me right in the eye,--’straight’, now!" said he,
stamping his foot at every pause.

As by a fascination, every eye was now directed to the glaring
greenish-gray eye of Simon.

"Now," said he, doubling his great, heavy fist into something resembling
a blacksmith's hammer, "d'ye see this fist? Heft it!" he said, bringing
it down on Tom's hand. "Look at these yer bones! Well, I tell ye this
yer fist has got as hard as iron ‘knocking down niggers’. I never
see the nigger, yet, I couldn't bring down with one crack," said he,
bringing his fist down so near to the face of Tom that he winked and
drew back. "I don't keep none o' yer cussed overseers; I does my own
overseeing; and I tell you things ‘is’ seen to. You's every one on ye
got to toe the mark, I tell ye; quick,--straight,--the moment I speak.
That's the way to keep in with me. Ye won't find no soft spot in me,
nowhere. So, now, mind yerselves; for I don't show no mercy!"

The women involuntarily drew in their breath, and the whole gang sat
with downcast, dejected faces. Meanwhile, Simon turned on his heel, and
marched up to the bar of the boat for a dram.

"That's the way I begin with my niggers," he said, to a gentlemanly
man, who had stood by him during his speech. "It's my system to begin
strong,--just let 'em know what to expect."

"Indeed!" said the stranger, looking upon him with the curiosity of a
naturalist studying some out-of-the-way specimen.

"Yes, indeed. I'm none o' yer gentlemen planters, with lily fingers, to
slop round and be cheated by some old cuss of an overseer! Just feel
of my knuckles, now; look at my fist. Tell ye, sir, the flesh on 't has
come jest like a stone, practising on nigger--feel on it."

The stranger applied his fingers to the implement in question, and
simply said,

"'T is hard enough; and, I suppose," he added, "practice has made your
heart just like it."

"Why, yes, I may say so," said Simon, with a hearty laugh. "I reckon
there's as little soft in me as in any one going. Tell you, nobody comes
it over me! Niggers never gets round me, neither with squalling nor soft
soap,--that's a fact."

"You have a fine lot there."

"Real," said Simon. "There's that Tom, they telled me he was suthin'
uncommon. I paid a little high for him, tendin' him for a driver and a
managing chap; only get the notions out that he's larnt by bein' treated
as niggers never ought to be, he'll do prime! The yellow woman I got
took in on. I rayther think she's sickly, but I shall put her through
for what she's worth; she may last a year or two. I don't go for savin'
niggers. Use up, and buy more, 's my way;-makes you less trouble, and
I'm quite sure it comes cheaper in the end;" and Simon sipped his glass.

"And how long do they generally last?" said the stranger.

"Well, donno; 'cordin' as their constitution is. Stout fellers last six
or seven years; trashy ones gets worked up in two or three. I used to,
when I fust begun, have considerable trouble fussin' with 'em and trying
to make 'em hold out,--doctorin' on 'em up when they's sick, and givin'
on 'em clothes and blankets, and what not, tryin' to keep 'em all sort
o' decent and comfortable. Law, 't wasn't no sort o' use; I lost money
on 'em, and 't was heaps o' trouble. Now, you see, I just put 'em
straight through, sick or well. When one nigger's dead, I buy another;
and I find it comes cheaper and easier, every way."

The stranger turned away, and seated himself beside a gentleman, who had
been listening to the conversation with repressed uneasiness.

"You must not take that fellow to be any specimen of Southern planters,"
said he.

"I should hope not," said the young gentleman, with emphasis.

"He is a mean, low, brutal fellow!" said the other.

"And yet your laws allow him to hold any number of human beings subject
to his absolute will, without even a shadow of protection; and, low as
he is, you cannot say that there are not many such."

"Well," said the other, "there are also many considerate and humane men
among planters."

"Granted," said the young man; "but, in my opinion, it is you
considerate, humane men, that are responsible for all the brutality
and outrage wrought by these wretches; because, if it were not for your
sanction and influence, the whole system could not keep foothold for
an hour. If there were no planters except such as that one," said he,
pointing with his finger to Legree, who stood with his back to
them, "the whole thing would go down like a millstone. It is your
respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality."

"You certainly have a high opinion of my good nature," said the planter,
smiling, "but I advise you not to talk quite so loud, as there are
people on board the boat who might not be quite so tolerant to opinion
as I am. You had better wait till I get up to my plantation, and there
you may abuse us all, quite at your leisure."

The young gentleman colored and smiled, and the two were soon busy in a
game of backgammon. Meanwhile, another conversation was going on in the
lower part of the boat, between Emmeline and the mulatto woman with whom
she was confined. As was natural, they were exchanging with each other
some particulars of their history.

"Who did you belong to?" said Emmeline.

"Well, my Mas'r was Mr. Ellis,--lived on Levee-street. P'raps you've
seen the house."

"Was he good to you?" said Emmeline.

"Mostly, till he tuk sick. He's lain sick, off and on, more than six
months, and been orful oneasy. 'Pears like he warnt willin' to have
nobody rest, day or night; and got so curous, there couldn't nobody suit
him. 'Pears like he just grew crosser, every day; kep me up nights till
I got farly beat out, and couldn't keep awake no longer; and cause I got
to sleep, one night, Lors, he talk so orful to me, and he tell me he'd
sell me to just the hardest master he could find; and he'd promised me
my freedom, too, when he died."

"Had you any friends?" said Emmeline.

"Yes, my husband,--he's a blacksmith. Mas'r gen'ly hired him out. They
took me off so quick, I didn't even have time to see him; and I's got
four children. O, dear me!" said the woman, covering her face with her
hands.

It is a natural impulse, in every one, when they hear a tale of
distress, to think of something to say by way of consolation. Emmeline
wanted to say something, but she could not think of anything to say.
What was there to be said? As by a common consent, they both avoided,
with fear and dread, all mention of the horrible man who was now their
master.

True, there is religious trust for even the darkest hour. The mulatto
woman was a member of the Methodist church, and had an unenlightened
but very sincere spirit of piety. Emmeline had been educated much more
intelligently,--taught to read and write, and diligently instructed in
the Bible, by the care of a faithful and pious mistress; yet, would
it not try the faith of the firmest Christian, to find themselves
abandoned, apparently, of God, in the grasp of ruthless violence? How
much more must it shake the faith of Christ's poor little ones, weak in
knowledge and tender in years!

The boat moved on,--freighted with its weight of sorrow,--up the red,
muddy, turbid current, through the abrupt tortuous windings of the Red
river; and sad eyes gazed wearily on the steep red-clay banks, as they
glided by in dreary sameness. At last the boat stopped at a small town,
and Legree, with his party, disembarked.



CHAPTER XXXII

Dark Places


"The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations Of cruelty."*

* Ps. 74:20.

Trailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder road, Tom and his
associates faced onward.

In the wagon was seated Simon Legree and the two women, still fettered
together, were stowed away with some baggage in the back part of it,
and the whole company were seeking Legree's plantation, which lay a good
distance off.

It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens,
where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, through
long cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy
ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever and
anon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen sliding
among broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there,
rotting in the water.

It is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger, who, with
well-filled pocket and well-appointed horse, threads the lonely way on
some errand of business; but wilder, drearier, to the man enthralled,
whom every weary step bears further from all that man loves and prays
for.

So one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken and dejected
expression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient weariness with
which those sad eyes rested on object after object that passed them in
their sad journey.

Simon rode on, however, apparently well pleased, occasionally pulling
away at a flask of spirit, which he kept in his pocket.

"I say, ‘you!’" he said, as he turned back and caught a glance at the
dispirited faces behind him. "Strike up a song, boys,--come!"

The men looked at each other, and the "‘come’" was repeated, with a
smart crack of the whip which the driver carried in his hands. Tom began
a Methodist hymn.

"Jerusalem, my happy home,
Name ever dear to me!
When shall my sorrows have an end,
Thy joys when shall--"*

* "‘Jerusalem, my happy home’," anonymous hymn dating from
the latter part of the sixteenth century, sung to the tune
of "St. Stephen." Words derive from St. Augustine's
‘Meditations’.

"Shut up, you black cuss!" roared Legree; "did ye think I wanted any
o' yer infernal old Methodism? I say, tune up, now, something real
rowdy,--quick!"

One of the other men struck up one of those unmeaning songs, common
among the slaves.

"Mas'r see'd me cotch a coon,
High boys, high!
He laughed to split,--d'ye see the moon,
Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho!
Ho! yo! hi--e! ‘oh!"‘

The singer appeared to make up the song to his own pleasure, generally
hitting on rhyme, without much attempt at reason; and the party took up
the chorus, at intervals,

"Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho!
High--e--oh! high--e--oh!"

It was sung very boisterouly, and with a forced attempt at merriment;
but no wail of despair, no words of impassioned prayer, could have had
such a depth of woe in them as the wild notes of the chorus. As if
the poor, dumb heart, threatened,--prisoned,--took refuge in that
inarticulate sanctuary of music, and found there a language in which to
breathe its prayer to God! There was a prayer in it, which Simon could
not hear. He only heard the boys singing noisily, and was well pleased;
he was making them "keep up their spirits."

"Well, my little dear," said he, turning to Emmeline, and laying his
hand on her shoulder, "we're almost home!"

When Legree scolded and stormed, Emmeline was terrified; but when he
laid his hand on her, and spoke as he now did, she felt as if she had
rather he would strike her. The expression of his eyes made her soul
sick, and her flesh creep. Involuntarily she clung closer to the mulatto
woman by her side, as if she were her mother.

"You didn't ever wear ear-rings," he said, taking hold of her small ear
with his coarse fingers.

"No, Mas'r!" said Emmeline, trembling and looking down.

"Well, I'll give you a pair, when we get home, if you're a good girl.
You needn't be so frightened; I don't mean to make you work very hard.
You'll have fine times with me, and live like a lady,--only be a good
girl."

Legree had been drinking to that degree that he was inclining to be
very gracious; and it was about this time that the enclosures of the
plantation rose to view. The estate had formerly belonged to a gentleman
of opulence and taste, who had bestowed some considerable attention
to the adornment of his grounds. Having died insolvent, it had been
purchased, at a bargain, by Legree, who used it, as he did everything
else, merely as an implement for money-making. The place had that
ragged, forlorn appearance, which is always produced by the evidence
that the care of the former owner has been left to go to utter decay.

What was once a smooth-shaven lawn before the house, dotted here and
there with ornamental shrubs, was now covered with frowsy tangled
grass, with horseposts set up, here and there, in it, where the turf was
stamped away, and the ground littered with broken pails, cobs of corn,
and other slovenly remains. Here and there, a mildewed jessamine or
honeysuckle hung raggedly from some ornamental support, which had been
pushed to one side by being used as a horse-post. What once was a large
garden was now all grown over with weeds, through which, here and
there, some solitary exotic reared its forsaken head. What had been a
conservatory had now no window-shades, and on the mouldering shelves
stood some dry, forsaken flower-pots, with sticks in them, whose dried
leaves showed they had once been plants.

The wagon rolled up a weedy gravel walk, under a noble avenue of China
trees, whose graceful forms and ever-springing foliage seemed to be the
only things there that neglect could not daunt or alter,--like noble
spirits, so deeply rooted in goodness, as to flourish and grow stronger
amid discouragement and decay.

The house had been large and handsome. It was built in a manner common
at the South; a wide verandah of two stories running round every part
of the house, into which every outer door opened, the lower tier being
supported by brick pillars.

But the place looked desolate and uncomfortable; some windows stopped up
with boards, some with shattered panes, and shutters hanging by a single
hinge,--all telling of coarse neglect and discomfort.

Bits of board, straw, old decayed barrels and boxes, garnished the
ground in all directions; and three or four ferocious-looking dogs,
roused by the sound of the wagon-wheels, came tearing out, and were with
difficulty restrained from laying hold of Tom and his companions, by the
effort of the ragged servants who came after them.

"Ye see what ye'd get!" said Legree, caressing the dogs with grim
satisfaction, and turning to Tom and his companions. "Ye see what ye'd
get, if ye try to run off. These yer dogs has been raised to track
niggers; and they'd jest as soon chaw one on ye up as eat their supper.
So, mind yerself! How now, Sambo!" he said, to a ragged fellow, without
any brim to his hat, who was officious in his attentions. "How have
things been going?"

"Fust rate, Mas'r."

"Quimbo," said Legree to another, who was making zealous demonstrations
to attract his attention, "ye minded what I telled ye?"

"Guess I did, didn't I?"

These two colored men were the two principal hands on the plantation.
Legree had trained them in savageness and brutality as systematically
as he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty,
brought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities. It is
a common remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly against
the character of the race, that the negro overseer is always more
tyrannical and cruel than the white one. This is simply saying that the
negro mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. It is no
more true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. The
slave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.

Legree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed his
plantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and Quimbo cordially
hated each other; the plantation hands, one and all, cordially hated
them; and, by playing off one against another, he was pretty sure,
through one or the other of the three parties, to get informed of
whatever was on foot in the place.

Nobody can live entirely without social intercourse; and Legree
encouraged his two black satellites to a kind of coarse familiarity with
him,--a familiarity, however, at any moment liable to get one or the
other of them into trouble; for, on the slightest provocation, one of
them always stood ready, at a nod, to be a minister of his vengeance on
the other.

As they stood there now by Legree, they seemed an apt illustration of
the fact that brutal men are lower even than animals. Their coarse,
dark, heavy features; their great eyes, rolling enviously on each other;
their barbarous, guttural, half-brute intonation; their dilapidated
garments fluttering in the wind,--were all in admirable keeping with the
vile and unwholesome character of everything about the place.

"Here, you Sambo," said Legree, "take these yer boys down to the
quarters; and here's a gal I've got for ‘you’," said he, as he separated
the mulatto woman from Emmeline, and pushed her towards him;--"I
promised to bring you one, you know."

The woman gave a start, and drawing back, said, suddenly,

"O, Mas'r! I left my old man in New Orleans."

"What of that, you--; won't you want one here? None o' your words,--go
long!" said Legree, raising his whip.

"Come, mistress," he said to Emmeline, "you go in here with me."

A dark, wild face was seen, for a moment, to glance at the window of the
house; and, as Legree opened the door, a female voice said something, in
a quick, imperative tone. Tom, who was looking, with anxious interest,
after Emmeline, as she went in, noticed this, and heard Legree answer,
angrily, "You may hold your tongue! I'll do as I please, for all you!"

Tom heard no more; for he was soon following Sambo to the quarters. The
quarters was a little sort of street of rude shanties, in a row, in
a part of the plantation, far off from the house. They had a forlorn,
brutal, forsaken air. Tom's heart sunk when he saw them. He had been
comforting himself with the thought of a cottage, rude, indeed, but one
which he might make neat and quiet, and where he might have a shelf for
his Bible, and a place to be alone out of his laboring hours. He looked
into several; they were mere rude shells, destitute of any species of
furniture, except a heap of straw, foul with dirt, spread confusedly
over the floor, which was merely the bare ground, trodden hard by the
tramping of innumerable feet.

"Which of these will be mine?" said he, to Sambo, submissively.

"Dunno; ken turn in here, I spose," said Sambo; "spects thar's room for
another thar; thar's a pretty smart heap o' niggers to each on 'em, now;
sure, I dunno what I 's to do with more."


It was late in the evening when the weary occupants of the shanties came
flocking home,--men and women, in soiled and tattered garments, surly
and uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly on new-comers. The
small village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices
contending at the hand-mills where their morsel of hard corn was yet to
be ground into meal, to fit it for the cake that was to constitute their
only supper. From the earliest dawn of the day, they had been in the
fields, pressed to work under the driving lash of the overseers; for it
was now in the very heat and hurry of the season, and no means was left
untried to press every one up to the top of their capabilities. "True,"
says the negligent lounger; "picking cotton isn't hard work." Isn't it?
And it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water fall
on your head; yet the worst torture of the inquisition is produced by
drop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after moment, with
monotonous succession, on the same spot; and work, in itself not
hard, becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying,
unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of free-will to
take from its tediousness. Tom looked in vain among the gang, as they
poured along, for companionable faces. He saw only sullen, scowling,
imbruted men, and feeble, discouraged women, or women that were not
women,--the strong pushing away the weak,--the gross, unrestricted
animal selfishness of human beings, of whom nothing good was expected
and desired; and who, treated in every way like brutes, had sunk as
nearly to their level as it was possible for human beings to do. To a
late hour in the night the sound of the grinding was protracted; for the
mills were few in number compared with the grinders, and the weary and
feeble ones were driven back by the strong, and came on last in their
turn.

"Ho yo!" said Sambo, coming to the mulatto woman, and throwing down a
bag of corn before her; "what a cuss yo name?"

"Lucy," said the woman.

"Wal, Lucy, yo my woman now. Yo grind dis yer corn, and get ‘my’ supper
baked, ye har?"

"I an't your woman, and I won't be!" said the woman, with the sharp,
sudden courage of despair; "you go long!"

"I'll kick yo, then!" said Sambo, raising his foot threateningly.

"Ye may kill me, if ye choose,--the sooner the better! Wish't I was
dead!" said she.

"I say, Sambo, you go to spilin' the hands, I'll tell Mas'r o' you,"
said Quimbo, who was busy at the mill, from which he had viciously
driven two or three tired women, who were waiting to grind their corn.

"And, I'll tell him ye won't let the women come to the mills, yo old
nigger!" said Sambo. "Yo jes keep to yo own row."

Tom was hungry with his day's journey, and almost faint for want of
food.

"Thar, yo!" said Quimbo, throwing down a coarse bag, which contained
a peck of corn; "thar, nigger, grab, take car on 't,--yo won't get no
more, ‘dis’ yer week."

Tom waited till a late hour, to get a place at the mills; and then,
moved by the utter weariness of two women, whom he saw trying to grind
their corn there, he ground for them, put together the decaying brands
of the fire, where many had baked cakes before them, and then went about
getting his own supper. It was a new kind of work there,--a deed of
charity, small as it was; but it woke an answering touch in their
hearts,--an expression of womanly kindness came over their hard faces;
they mixed his cake for him, and tended its baking; and Tom sat down
by the light of the fire, and drew out his Bible,--for he had need for
comfort.

"What's that?" said one of the woman.

"A Bible," said Tom.

"Good Lord! han't seen un since I was in Kentuck."

"Was you raised in Kentuck?" said Tom, with interest.

"Yes, and well raised, too; never 'spected to come to dis yer!" said the
woman, sighing.

"What's dat ar book, any way?" said the other woman.

"Why, the Bible."

"Laws a me! what's dat?" said the woman.

"Do tell! you never hearn on 't?" said the other woman. "I used to har
Missis a readin' on 't, sometimes, in Kentuck; but, laws o' me! we don't
har nothin' here but crackin' and swarin'."

"Read a piece, anyways!" said the first woman, curiously, seeing Tom
attentively poring over it.

Tom read,--"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest."

"Them's good words, enough," said the woman; "who says 'em?"

"The Lord," said Tom.

"I jest wish I know'd whar to find Him," said the woman. "I would go;
'pears like I never should get rested again. My flesh is fairly sore,
and I tremble all over, every day, and Sambo's allers a jawin' at me,
'cause I doesn't pick faster; and nights it's most midnight 'fore I can
get my supper; and den 'pears like I don't turn over and shut my eyes,
'fore I hear de horn blow to get up, and at it agin in de mornin'. If I
knew whar de Lor was, I'd tell him."

"He's here, he's everywhere," said Tom.

"Lor, you an't gwine to make me believe dat ar! I know de Lord an't
here," said the woman; "'tan't no use talking, though. I's jest gwine to
camp down, and sleep while I ken."

The women went off to their cabins, and Tom sat alone, by the
smouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.

The silver, fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and looked
down, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of misery and
oppression,--looked calmly on the lone black man, as he sat, with his
arms folded, and his Bible on his knee.

"Is God HERE?" Ah, how is it possible for the untaught heart to keep its
faith, unswerving, in the face of dire misrule, and palpable, unrebuked
injustice? In that simple heart waged a fierce conflict; the crushing
sense of wrong, the foreshadowing, of a whole life of future misery, the
wreck of all past hopes, mournfully tossing in the soul's sight, like
dead corpses of wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark wave,
and surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner! Ah, was it easy
‘here’ to believe and hold fast the great password of Christian faith,
that "God IS, and is the REWARDER of them that diligently seek Him"?

Tom rose, disconsolate, and stumbled into the cabin that had been
allotted to him. The floor was already strewn with weary sleepers, and
the foul air of the place almost repelled him; but the heavy night-dews
were chill, and his limbs weary, and, wrapping about him a tattered
blanket, which formed his only bed-clothing, he stretched himself in the
straw and fell asleep.

In dreams, a gentle voice came over his ear; he was sitting on the mossy
seat in the garden by Lake Pontchartrain, and Eva, with her serious eyes
bent downward, was reading to him from the Bible; and he heard her read.

"When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and the
rivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire,
thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee; for
I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour."

Gradually the words seemed to melt and fade, as in a divine music; the
child raised her deep eyes, and fixed them lovingly on him, and rays
of warmth and comfort seemed to go from them to his heart; and, as if
wafted on the music, she seemed to rise on shining wings, from which
flakes and spangles of gold fell off like stars, and she was gone.

Tom woke. Was it a dream? Let it pass for one. But who shall say that
that sweet young spirit, which in life so yearned to comfort and console
the distressed, was forbidden of God to assume this ministry after
death?

It is a beautiful belief,
That ever round our head
Are hovering, on angel wings,
The spirits of the dead.



CHAPTER XXXIII

Cassy


"And behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no
comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they
had no comforter."--ECCL. 4:1

It took but a short time to familiarize Tom with all that was to be
hoped or feared in his new way of life. He was an expert and efficient
workman in whatever he undertook; and was, both from habit and
principle, prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in his disposition,
he hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from himself at least a
portion of the evils of his condition. He saw enough of abuse and misery
to make him sick and weary; but he determined to toil on, with religious
patience, committing himself to Him that judgeth righteously, not
without hope that some way of escape might yet be opened to him.

Legree took a silent note of Tom's availability. He rated him as a
first-class hand; and yet he felt a secret dislike to him,--the native
antipathy of bad to good. He saw, plainly, that when, as was often the
case, his violence and brutality fell on the helpless, Tom took notice
of it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make
itself felt, without words; and the opinion even of a slave may annoy
a master. Tom in various ways manifested a tenderness of feeling, a
commiseration for his fellow-sufferers, strange and new to them, which
was watched with a jealous eye by Legree. He had purchased Tom with a
view of eventually making him a sort of overseer, with whom he might,
at times, intrust his affairs, in short absences; and, in his view,
the first, second, and third requisite for that place, was ‘hardness’.
Legree made up his mind, that, as Tom was not hard to his hand, he
would harden him forthwith; and some few weeks after Tom had been on the
place, he determined to commence the process.

One morning, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom noticed,
with surprise, a new comer among them, whose appearance excited his
attention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed, with remarkably
delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and respectable garments.
By the appearance of her face, she might have been between thirty-five
and forty; and it was a face that, once seen, could never be
forgotten,--one of those that, at a glance, seem to convey to us an idea
of a wild, painful, and romantic history. Her forehead was high, and
her eyebrows marked with beautiful clearness. Her straight, well-formed
nose, her finely-cut mouth, and the graceful contour of her head and
neck, showed that she must once have been beautiful; but her face was
deeply wrinkled with lines of pain, and of proud and bitter endurance.
Her complexion was sallow and unhealthy, her cheeks thin, her features
sharp, and her whole form emaciated. But her eye was the most remarkable
feature,--so large, so heavily black, overshadowed by long lashes of
equal darkness, and so wildly, mournfully despairing. There was a fierce
pride and defiance in every line of her face, in every curve of the
flexible lip, in every motion of her body; but in her eye was a deep,
settled night of anguish,--an expression so hopeless and unchanging as
to contrast fearfully with the scorn and pride expressed by her whole
demeanor.

Where she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first he did
know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray
of the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much
looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation
among the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by whom she was
surrounded.

"Got to come to it, at last,--grad of it!" said one.

"He! he! he!" said another; "you'll know how good it is, Misse!"

"We'll see her work!"

"Wonder if she'll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest of us!"

"I'd be glad to see her down for a flogging, I'll bound!" said another.

The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same
expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always lived
among refined, and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her
air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she
could be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not tell. The
women neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the
field, she kept close at his side.

Tom was soon busy at his work; but, as the woman was at no great
distance from him, he often glanced an eye to her, at her work. He saw,
at a glance, that a native adroitness and handiness made the task to
her an easier one than it proved to many. She picked very fast and very
clean, and with an air of scorn, as if she despised both the work and
the disgrace and humiliation of the circumstances in which she was
placed.

In the course of the day, Tom was working near the mulatto woman who
had been bought in the same lot with himself. She was evidently in a
condition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her praying, as she
wavered and trembled, and seemed about to fall down. Tom silently as he
came near to her, transferred several handfuls of cotton from his own
sack to hers.

"O, don't, don't!" said the woman, looking surprised; "it'll get you
into trouble."

Just then Sambo came up. He seemed to have a special spite against this
woman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal, guttural tones, "What
dis yer, Luce,--foolin' a'" and, with the word, kicking the woman with
his heavy cowhide shoe, he struck Tom across the face with his whip.

Tom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at the last point
of exhaustion, fainted.

"I'll bring her to!" said the driver, with a brutal grin. "I'll give her
something better than camphire!" and, taking a pin from his coat-sleeve,
he buried it to the head in her flesh. The woman groaned, and half rose.
"Get up, you beast, and work, will yer, or I'll show yer a trick more!"

The woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an unnatural
strength, and worked with desperate eagerness.

"See that you keep to dat ar," said the man, "or yer'll wish yer's dead
tonight, I reckin!"

"That I do now!" Tom heard her say; and again he heard her say, "O,
Lord, how long! O, Lord, why don't you help us?"

At the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward again, and put
all the cotton in his sack into the woman's.

"O, you mustn't! you donno what they'll do to ye!" said the woman.

"I can bar it!" said Tom, "better 'n you;" and he was at his place
again. It passed in a moment.

Suddenly, the stranger woman whom we have described, and who had, in the
course of her work, come near enough to hear Tom's last words, raised
her heavy black eyes, and fixed them, for a second, on him; then, taking
a quantity of cotton from her basket, she placed it in his.

"You know nothing about this place," she said, "or you wouldn't have
done that. When you've been here a month, you'll be done helping
anybody; you'll find it hard enough to take care of your own skin!"

"The Lord forbid, Missis!" said Tom, using instinctively to his field
companion the respectful form proper to the high bred with whom he had
lived.

"The Lord never visits these parts," said the woman, bitterly, as she
went nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled
her lips.

But the action of the woman had been seen by the driver, across the
field; and, flourishing his whip, he came up to her.

"What! what!" he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, "You a
foolin'? Go along! yer under me now,--mind yourself, or yer'll cotch
it!"

A glance like sheet-lightning suddenly flashed from those black eyes;
and, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew
herself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with rage and scorn, on the
driver.

"Dog!" she said, "touch ‘me’, if you dare! I've power enough, yet, to
have you torn by the dogs, burnt alive, cut to inches! I've only to say
the word!"

"What de devil you here for, den?" said the man, evidently cowed, and
sullenly retreating a step or two. "Didn't mean no harm, Misse Cassy!"

"Keep your distance, then!" said the woman. And, in truth, the man
seemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other end of the
field, and started off in quick time.

The woman suddenly turned to her work, and labored with a despatch that
was perfectly astonishing to Tom. She seemed to work by magic. Before
the day was through, her basket was filled, crowded down, and piled, and
she had several times put largely into Tom's. Long after dusk, the
whole weary train, with their baskets on their heads, defiled up to the
building appropriated to the storing and weighing the cotton. Legree was
there, busily conversing with the two drivers.

"Dat ar Tom's gwine to make a powerful deal o' trouble; kept a puttin'
into Lucy's basket.--One o' these yer dat will get all der niggers to
feelin' bused, if Masir don't watch him!" said Sambo.

"Hey-dey! The black cuss!" said Legree. "He'll have to get a breakin'
in, won't he, boys?"

Both negroes grinned a horrid grin, at this intimation.

"Ay, ay! Let Mas'r Legree alone, for breakin' in! De debil heself
couldn't beat Mas'r at dat!" said Quimbo.

"Wal, boys, the best way is to give him the flogging to do, till he gets
over his notions. Break him in!"

"Lord, Mas'r'll have hard work to get dat out o' him!"

"It'll have to come out of him, though!" said Legree, as he rolled his
tobacco in his mouth.

"Now, dar's Lucy,--de aggravatinest, ugliest wench on de place!" pursued
Sambo.

"Take care, Sam; I shall begin to think what's the reason for your spite
agin Lucy."

"Well, Mas'r knows she sot herself up agin Mas'r, and wouldn't have me,
when he telled her to."

"I'd a flogged her into 't," said Legree, spitting, "only there's such a
press o' work, it don't seem wuth a while to upset her jist now. She's
slender; but these yer slender gals will bear half killin' to get their
own way!"

"Wal, Lucy was real aggravatin' and lazy, sulkin' round; wouldn't do
nothin,--and Tom he stuck up for her."

"He did, eh! Wal, then, Tom shall have the pleasure of flogging her.
It'll be a good practice for him, and he won't put it on to the gal like
you devils, neither."

"Ho, ho! haw! haw! haw!" laughed both the sooty wretches; and the
diabolical sounds seemed, in truth, a not unapt expression of the
fiendish character which Legree gave them.

"Wal, but, Mas'r, Tom and Misse Cassy, and dey among 'em, filled Lucy's
basket. I ruther guess der weight 's in it, Mas'r!"

"‘I do the weighing!’" said Legree, emphatically.

Both the drivers again laughed their diabolical laugh.

"So!" he added, "Misse Cassy did her day's work."

"She picks like de debil and all his angels!"

"She's got 'em all in her, I believe!" said Legree; and, growling a
brutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing-room.


Slowly the weary, dispirited creatures, wound their way into the room,
and, with crouching reluctance, presented their baskets to be weighed.

Legree noted on a slate, on the side of which was pasted a list of
names, the amount.

Tom's basket was weighed and approved; and he looked, with an anxious
glance, for the success of the woman he had befriended.

Tottering with weakness, she came forward, and delivered her basket. It
was of full weight, as Legree well perceived; but, affecting anger, he
said,

"What, you lazy beast! short again! stand aside, you'll catch it, pretty
soon!"

The woman gave a groan of utter despair, and sat down on a board.

The person who had been called Misse Cassy now came forward, and, with
a haughty, negligent air, delivered her basket. As she delivered it,
Legree looked in her eyes with a sneering yet inquiring glance.

She fixed her black eyes steadily on him, her lips moved slightly, and
she said something in French. What it was, no one knew; but Legree's
face became perfectly demoniacal in its expression, as she spoke; he
half raised his hand, as if to strike,--a gesture which she regarded
with fierce disdain, as she turned and walked away.

"And now," said Legree, "come here, you Tom. You see, I telled ye I
didn't buy ye jest for the common work; I mean to promote ye, and make a
driver of ye; and tonight ye may jest as well begin to get yer hand in.
Now, ye jest take this yer gal and flog her; ye've seen enough on't to
know how."

"I beg Mas'r's pardon," said Tom; "hopes Mas'r won't set me at that. It's
what I an't used to,--never did,--and can't do, no way possible."

"Ye'll larn a pretty smart chance of things ye never did know, before
I've done with ye!" said Legree, taking up a cowhide, and striking Tom a
heavy blow cross the cheek, and following up the infliction by a shower
of blows.

"There!" he said, as he stopped to rest; "now, will ye tell me ye can't
do it?"

"Yes, Mas'r," said Tom, putting up his hand, to wipe the blood, that
trickled down his face. "I'm willin' to work, night and day, and work
while there's life and breath in me; but this yer thing I can't feel it
right to do;--and, Mas'r, I ‘never’ shall do it,--’never’!"

Tom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually respectful
manner, that had given Legree an idea that he would be cowardly, and
easily subdued. When he spoke these last words, a thrill of amazement
went through every one; the poor woman clasped her hands, and said,
"O Lord!" and every one involuntarily looked at each other and drew in
their breath, as if to prepare for the storm that was about to burst.

Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth,--"What!
ye blasted black beast! tell ‘me’ ye don't think it ‘right’ to do what
I tell ye! What have any of you cussed cattle to do with thinking what's
right? I'll put a stop to it! Why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye
think ye'r a gentleman master, Tom, to be a telling your master what's
right, and what ain't! So you pretend it's wrong to flog the gal!"

"I think so, Mas'r," said Tom; "the poor crittur's sick and feeble; 't
would be downright cruel, and it's what I never will do, nor begin to.
Mas'r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand
agin any one here, I never shall,--I'll die first!"

Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be
mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely,
and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some
ferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he
kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence, and broke
out into bitter raillery.

"Well, here's a pious dog, at last, let down among us sinners!--a saint,
a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins! Powerful
holy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so
pious,--didn't you never hear, out of yer Bible, 'Servants, obey yer
masters'? An't I yer master? Didn't I pay down twelve hundred dollars,
cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An't yer mine,
now, body and soul?" he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy
boot; "tell me!"

In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression,
this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom's soul. He
suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while
the tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed,

"No! no! no! my soul an't yours, Mas'r! You haven't bought it,--ye
can't buy it! It's been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep
it;--no matter, no matter, you can't harm me!"

"I can't!" said Legree, with a sneer; "we'll see,--we'll see! Here,
Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin' in as he won't get over,
this month!"

The two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish
exultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt personification of
powers of darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension, and all
rose, as by a general impulse, while they dragged him unresisting from
the place.

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web zeitschrift.co.uk

We believe the following organizations are making a difference for the better in this world and encourage you to consider supporting them.


Oxfam International

Red Cross International

World Vision International

Page Design Copyright 2008 International Zeitschrift