Uncle Tom's Cabin
whipped more than once or twice in her whole life. She has her strong
coffee or her tea every day, with white sugar in it. It’s abominable,
to be sure; but St. Clare will have high life below-stairs, and they
every one of them live just as they please. The fact is, our servants
are over-indulged. I suppose it is partly our fault that they are
selfish, and act like spoiled children; but I’ve talked to St. Clare
till I am tired.”
“And I, too,” said St. Clare, taking up the morning paper.
Eva, the beautiful Eva, had stood listening to her mother, with that
expression of deep and mystic earnestness which was peculiar to her.
She walked softly round to her mother’s chair, and put her arms round
her neck.
“Well, Eva, what now?” said Marie.
“Mamma, couldn’t I take care of you one night—just one? I know I
shouldn’t make you nervous, and I shouldn’t sleep. I often lie awake
nights, thinking—”
“O, nonsense, child—nonsense!” said Marie; “you are such a strange
child!”
“But may I, mamma? I think,” she said, timidly, “that Mammy isn’t well.
She told me her head ached all the time, lately.”
“O, that’s just one of Mammy’s fidgets! Mammy is just like all the rest
of them—makes such a fuss about every little headache or finger-ache;
it’ll never do to encourage it—never! I’m principled about this
matter,” said she, turning to Miss Ophelia; “you’ll find the necessity
of it. If you encourage servants in giving way to every little
disagreeable feeling, and complaining of every little ailment, you’ll
have your hands full. I never complain myself—nobody knows what I
endure. I feel it a duty to bear it quietly, and I do.”
Miss Ophelia’s round eyes expressed an undisguised amazement at this
peroration, which struck St. Clare as so supremely ludicrous, that he
burst into a loud laugh.
“St. Clare always laughs when I make the least allusion to my ill
health,” said Marie, with the voice of a suffering martyr. “I only hope
the day won’t come when he’ll remember it!” and Marie put her
handkerchief to her eyes.
Of course, there was rather a foolish silence. Finally, St. Clare got
up, looked at his watch, and said he had an engagement down street. Eva
tripped away after him, and Miss Ophelia and Marie remained at the
table alone.
“Now, that’s just like St. Clare!” said the latter, withdrawing her
handkerchief with somewhat of a spirited flourish when the criminal to
be affected by it was no longer in sight. “He never realizes, never
can, never will, what I suffer, and have, for years. If I was one of
the complaining sort, or ever made any fuss about my ailments, there
would be some reason for it. Men do get tired, naturally, of a
complaining wife. But I’ve kept things to myself, and borne, and borne,
till St. Clare has got in the way of thinking I can bear anything.”
Miss Ophelia did not exactly know what she was expected to answer to
this.
While she was thinking what to say, Marie gradually wiped away her
tears, and smoothed her plumage in a general sort of way, as a dove
might be supposed to make toilet after a shower, and began a
housewifely chat with Miss Ophelia, concerning cupboards, closets,
linen-presses, store-rooms, and other matters, of which the latter was,
by common understanding, to assume the direction,—giving her so many
cautious directions and charges, that a head less systematic and
business-like than Miss Ophelia’s would have been utterly dizzied and
confounded.
“And now,” said Marie, “I believe I’ve told you everything; so that,
when my next sick turn comes on, you’ll be able to go forward entirely,
without consulting me;—only about Eva,—she requires watching.”
“She seems to be a good child, very,” said Miss Ophelia; “I never saw a
better child.”
“Eva’s peculiar,” said her mother, “very. There are things about her so
singular; she isn’t like me, now, a particle;” and Marie sighed, as if
this was a truly melancholy consideration.
Miss Ophelia in her own heart said, “I hope she isn’t,” but had
prudence enough to keep it down.
“Eva always was disposed to be with servants; and I think that well
enough with some children. Now, I always played with father’s little
negroes—it never did me any harm. But Eva somehow always seems to put
herself on an equality with every creature that comes near her. It’s a
strange thing about the child. I never have been able to break her of
it. St. Clare, I believe, encourages her in it. The fact is, St. Clare
indulges every creature under this roof but his own wife.”
Again Miss Ophelia sat in blank silence.
“Now, there’s no way with servants,” said Marie, “but to _put them
down_, and keep them down. It was always natural to me, from a child.
Eva is enough to spoil a whole house-full. What she will do when she
comes to keep house herself, I’m sure I don’t know. I hold to being
_kind_ to servants—I always am; but you must make ’em _know their
place_. Eva never does; there’s no getting into the child’s head the
first beginning of an idea what a servant’s place is! You heard her
offering to take care of me nights, to let Mammy sleep! That’s just a
specimen of the way the child would be doing all the time, if she was
left to herself.”
“Why,” said Miss Ophelia, bluntly, “I suppose you think your servants
are human creatures, and ought to have some rest when they are tired.”
“Certainly, of course. I’m very particular in letting them have
everything that comes convenient,—anything that doesn’t put one at all
out of the way, you know. Mammy can make up her sleep, some time or
other; there’s no difficulty about that. She’s the sleepiest concern
that ever I saw; sewing, standing, or sitting, that creature will go to
sleep, and sleep anywhere and everywhere. No danger but Mammy gets
sleep enough. But this treating servants as if they were exotic
flowers, or china vases, is really ridiculous,” said Marie, as she
plunged languidly into the depths of a voluminous and pillowy lounge,
and drew towards her an elegant cut-glass vinaigrette.
“You see,” she continued, in a faint and lady-like voice, like the last
dying breath of an Arabian jessamine, or something equally ethereal,
“you see, Cousin Ophelia, I don’t often speak of myself. It isn’t my
_habit_; ’t isn’t agreeable to me. In fact, I haven’t strength to do
it. But there are points where St. Clare and I differ. St. Clare never
understood me, never appreciated me. I think it lies at the root of all
my ill health. St. Clare means well, I am bound to believe; but men are
constitutionally selfish and inconsiderate to woman. That, at least, is
my impression.”
Miss Ophelia, who had not a small share of the genuine New England
caution, and a very particular horror of being drawn into family
difficulties, now began to foresee something of this kind impending;
so, composing her face into a grim neutrality, and drawing out of her
pocket about a yard and a quarter of stocking, which she kept as a
specific against what Dr. Watts asserts to be a personal habit of Satan
when people have idle hands, she proceeded to knit most energetically,
shutting her lips together in a way that said, as plain as words could,
“You needn’t try to make me speak. I don’t want anything to do with
your affairs,”—in fact, she looked about as sympathizing as a stone
lion. But Marie didn’t care for that. She had got somebody to talk to,
and she felt it her duty to talk, and that was enough; and reinforcing
herself by smelling again at her vinaigrette, she went on.
“You see, I brought my own property and servants into the connection,
when I married St. Clare, and I am legally entitled to manage them my
own way. St. Clare had his fortune and his servants, and I’m well
enough content he should manage them his way; but St. Clare will be
interfering. He has wild, extravagant notions about things,
particularly about the treatment of servants. He really does act as if
he set his servants before me, and before himself, too; for he lets
them make him all sorts of trouble, and never lifts a finger. Now,
about some things, St. Clare is really frightful—he frightens
me—good-natured as he looks, in general. Now, he has set down his foot
that, come what will, there shall not be a blow struck in this house,
except what he or I strike; and he does it in a way that I really dare
not cross him. Well, you may see what that leads to; for St. Clare
wouldn’t raise his hand, if every one of them walked over him, and
I—you see how cruel it would be to require me to make the exertion.
Now, you know these servants are nothing but grown-up children.”
“I don’t know anything about it, and I thank the Lord that I don’t!”
said Miss Ophelia, shortly.
“Well, but you will have to know something, and know it to your cost,
if you stay here. You don’t know what a provoking, stupid, careless,
unreasonable, childish, ungrateful set of wretches they are.”
Marie seemed wonderfully supported, always, when she got upon this
topic; and she now opened her eyes, and seemed quite to forget her
languor.
“You don’t know, and you can’t, the daily, hourly trials that beset a
housekeeper from them, everywhere and every way. But it’s no use to
complain to St. Clare. He talks the strangest stuff. He says we have
made them what they are, and ought to bear with them. He says their
faults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the
fault and punish it too. He says we shouldn’t do any better, in their
place; just as if one could reason from them to us, you know.”
“Don’t you believe that the Lord made them of one blood with us?” said
Miss Ophelia, shortly.
“No, indeed not I! A pretty story, truly! They are a degraded race.”
“Don’t you think they’ve got immortal souls?” said Miss Ophelia, with
increasing indignation.
“O, well,” said Marie, yawning, “that, of course—nobody doubts that.
But as to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, as if
we could be compared, why, it’s impossible! Now, St. Clare really has
talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me
from mine. There’s no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn’t have the
feelings that I should. It’s a different thing altogether,—of course,
it is,—and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy
could love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! Yet St. Clare once
really and soberly tried to persuade me that it was my duty, with my
weak health, and all I suffer, to let Mammy go back, and take somebody
else in her place. That was a little too much even for _me_ to bear. I
don’t often show my feelings, I make it a principle to endure
everything in silence; it’s a wife’s hard lot, and I bear it. But I did
break out, that time; so that he has never alluded to the subject
since. But I know by his looks, and little things that he says, that he
thinks so as much as ever; and it’s so trying, so provoking!”
Miss Ophelia looked very much as if she was afraid she should say
something; but she rattled away with her needles in a way that had
volumes of meaning in it, if Marie could only have understood it.
“So, you just see,” she continued, “what you’ve got to manage. A
household without any rule; where servants have it all their own way,
do what they please, and have what they please, except so far as I,
with my feeble health, have kept up government. I keep my cowhide
about, and sometimes I do lay it on; but the exertion is always too
much for me. If St. Clare would only have this thing done as others
do—”
“And how’s that?”
“Why, send them to the calaboose, or some of the other places to be
flogged. That’s the only way. If I wasn’t such a poor, feeble piece, I
believe I should manage with twice the energy that St. Clare does.”
“And how does St. Clare contrive to manage?” said Miss Ophelia. “You
say he never strikes a blow.”