Uncle Tom's Cabin
as soft and beautiful as was given in return. She fixed her large, dark
eyes, full of earnest meaning, on Mrs. Bird’s face, and seemed going to
speak. Her lips moved,—she tried once or twice, but there was no
sound,—and pointing upward, with a look never to be forgotten, she fell
back in the seat, and covered her face. The door was shut, and the
carriage drove on.
What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the
week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass
more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers
and abettors!
Our good senator in his native state had not been exceeded by any of
his brethren at Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for
them immortal renown! How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his
pockets, and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put
the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests!
He was as bold as a lion about it, and “mightily convinced” not only
himself, but everybody that heard him;—but then his idea of a fugitive
was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,—or at the most,
the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and
bundle with “Ran away from the subscriber” under it. The magic of the
real presence of distress,—the imploring human eye, the frail,
trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,—these he
had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a
hapless mother, a defenceless child,—like that one which was now
wearing his lost boy’s little well-known cap; and so, as our poor
senator was not stone or steel,—as he was a man, and a downright
noble-hearted one, too,—he was, as everybody must see, in a sad case
for his patriotism. And you need not exult over him, good brother of
the Southern States; for we have some inklings that many of you, under
similar circumstances, would not do much better. We have reason to
know, in Kentucky, as in Mississippi, are noble and generous hearts, to
whom never was tale of suffering told in vain. Ah, good brother! is it
fair for you to expect of us services which your own brave, honorable
heart would not allow you to render, were you in our place?
Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was
in a fair way to expiate it by his night’s penance. There had been a
long continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of
Ohio, as every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of
mud—and the road was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.
“And pray, what sort of a road may that be?” says some eastern
traveller, who has been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad,
but those of smoothness or speed.
Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the
west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are
made of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and
coated over in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and
whatsoever may come to hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a
road, and straightway essayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time,
the rains wash off all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs
hither and thither, in picturesque positions, up, down and crosswise,
with divers chasms and ruts of black mud intervening.
Over such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making moral
reflections as continuously as under the circumstances could be
expected,—the carriage proceeding along much as follows,—bump! bump!
bump! slush! down in the mud!—the senator, woman and child, reversing
their positions so suddenly as to come, without any very accurate
adjustment, against the windows of the down-hill side. Carriage sticks
fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among
the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as
the senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights itself
with a bounce,—two front wheels go down into another abyss, and
senator, woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the front
seat,—senator’s hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite
unceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished;—child
cries, and Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the
horses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining under repeated
cracks of the whip. Carriage springs up, with another bounce,—down go
the hind wheels,—senator, woman, and child, fly over on to the back
seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being
jammed into his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few
moments the “slough” is passed, and the horses stop, panting;—the
senator finds his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet and hushes her
child, and they brace themselves for what is yet to come.
For a while only the continuous bump! bump! intermingled, just by way
of variety, with divers side plunges and compound shakes; and they
begin to flatter themselves that they are not so badly off, after all.
At last, with a square plunge, which puts all on to their feet and then
down into their seats with incredible quickness, the carriage
stops,—and, after much outside commotion, Cudjoe appears at the door.
“Please, sir, it’s powerful bad spot, this’ yer. I don’t know how we’s
to get clar out. I’m a thinkin’ we’ll have to be a gettin’ rails.”
The senator despairingly steps out, picking gingerly for some firm
foothold; down goes one foot an immeasurable depth,—he tries to pull it
up, loses his balance, and tumbles over into the mud, and is fished
out, in a very despairing condition, by Cudjoe.
But we forbear, out of sympathy to our readers’ bones. Western
travellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting
process of pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud
holes, will have a respectful and mournful sympathy with our
unfortunate hero. We beg them to drop a silent tear, and pass on.
It was full late in the night when the carriage emerged, dripping and
bespattered, out of the creek, and stood at the door of a large
farmhouse.
It took no inconsiderable perseverance to arouse the inmates; but at
last the respectable proprietor appeared, and undid the door. He was a
great, tall, bristling Orson of a fellow, full six feet and some inches
in his stockings, and arrayed in a red flannel hunting-shirt. A very
heavy mat of sandy hair, in a decidedly tousled condition, and a beard
of some days’ growth, gave the worthy man an appearance, to say the
least, not particularly prepossessing. He stood for a few minutes
holding the candle aloft, and blinking on our travellers with a dismal
and mystified expression that was truly ludicrous. It cost some effort
of our senator to induce him to comprehend the case fully; and while he
is doing his best at that, we shall give him a little introduction to
our readers.
Honest old John Van Trompe was once quite a considerable land-owner and
slave-owner in the State of Kentucky. Having “nothing of the bear about
him but the skin,” and being gifted by nature with a great, honest,
just heart, quite equal to his gigantic frame, he had been for some
years witnessing with repressed uneasiness the workings of a system
equally bad for oppressor and oppressed. At last, one day, John’s great
heart had swelled altogether too big to wear his bonds any longer; so
he just took his pocket-book out of his desk, and went over into Ohio,
and bought a quarter of a township of good, rich land, made out free
papers for all his people,—men, women, and children,—packed them up in
wagons, and sent them off to settle down; and then honest John turned
his face up the creek, and sat quietly down on a snug, retired farm, to
enjoy his conscience and his reflections.
“Are you the man that will shelter a poor woman and child from
slave-catchers?” said the senator, explicitly.
“I rather think I am,” said honest John, with some considerable
emphasis.
“I thought so,” said the senator.
“If there’s anybody comes,” said the good man, stretching his tall,
muscular form upward, “why here I’m ready for him: and I’ve got seven
sons, each six foot high, and they’ll be ready for ’em. Give our
respects to ’em,” said John; “tell ’em it’s no matter how soon they
call,—make no kinder difference to us,” said John, running his fingers
through the shock of hair that thatched his head, and bursting out into
a great laugh.
Weary, jaded, and spiritless, Eliza dragged herself up to the door,
with her child lying in a heavy sleep on her arm. The rough man held
the candle to her face, and uttering a kind of compassionate grunt,
opened the door of a small bed-room adjoining to the large kitchen
where they were standing, and motioned her to go in. He took down a
candle, and lighting it, set it upon the table, and then addressed
himself to Eliza.
“Now, I say, gal, you needn’t be a bit afeard, let who will come here.
I’m up to all that sort o’ thing,” said he, pointing to two or three
goodly rifles over the mantel-piece; “and most people that know me know
that ’t wouldn’t be healthy to try to get anybody out o’ my house when
I’m agin it. So _now_ you jist go to sleep now, as quiet as if yer
mother was a rockin’ ye,” said he, as he shut the door.
“Why, this is an uncommon handsome un,” he said to the senator. “Ah,
well; handsome uns has the greatest cause to run, sometimes, if they
has any kind o’ feelin, such as decent women should. I know all about
that.”
The senator, in a few words, briefly explained Eliza’s history.
“O! ou! aw! now, I want to know?” said the good man, pitifully; “sho!
now sho! That’s natur now, poor crittur! hunted down now like a
deer,—hunted down, jest for havin’ natural feelin’s, and doin’ what no
kind o’ mother could help a doin’! I tell ye what, these yer things
make me come the nighest to swearin’, now, o’ most anything,” said
honest John, as he wiped his eyes with the back of a great, freckled,
yellow hand. “I tell yer what, stranger, it was years and years before
I’d jine the church, ’cause the ministers round in our parts used to
preach that the Bible went in for these ere cuttings up,—and I couldn’t
be up to ’em with their Greek and Hebrew, and so I took up agin ’em,
Bible and all. I never jined the church till I found a minister that
was up to ’em all in Greek and all that, and he said right the
contrary; and then I took right hold, and jined the church,—I did now,
fact,” said John, who had been all this time uncorking some very frisky
bottled cider, which at this juncture he presented.
“Ye’d better jest put up here, now, till daylight,” said he, heartily,
“and I’ll call up the old woman, and have a bed got ready for you in no
time.”
“Thank you, my good friend,” said the senator, “I must be along, to
take the night stage for Columbus.”
“Ah! well, then, if you must, I’ll go a piece with you, and show you a
cross road that will take you there better than the road you came on.
That road’s mighty bad.”
John equipped himself, and, with a lantern in hand, was soon seen
guiding the senator’s carriage towards a road that ran down in a
hollow, back of his dwelling. When they parted, the senator put into
his hand a ten-dollar bill.
“It’s for her,” he said, briefly.
“Ay, ay,” said John, with equal conciseness.
They shook hands, and parted.
CHAPTER X
The Property Is Carried Off
The February morning looked gray and drizzling through the window of
Uncle Tom’s cabin. It looked on downcast faces, the images of mournful
hearts. The little table stood out before the fire, covered with an
ironing-cloth; a coarse but clean shirt or two, fresh from the iron,
hung on the back of a chair by the fire, and Aunt Chloe had another