Uncle Tom's Cabin
he can, and put me to work that any horse can do? He tries to do it; he
says he’ll bring me down and humble me, and he puts me to just the
hardest, meanest and dirtiest work, on purpose!”
“O, George! George! you frighten me! Why, I never heard you talk so;
I’m afraid you’ll do something dreadful. I don’t wonder at your
feelings, at all; but oh, do be careful—do, do—for my sake—for
Harry’s!”
“I have been careful, and I have been patient, but it’s growing worse
and worse; flesh and blood can’t bear it any longer;—every chance he
can get to insult and torment me, he takes. I thought I could do my
work well, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out
of work hours; but the more he sees I can do, the more he loads on. He
says that though I don’t say anything, he sees I’ve got the devil in
me, and he means to bring it out; and one of these days it will come
out in a way that he won’t like, or I’m mistaken!”
“O dear! what shall we do?” said Eliza, mournfully.
“It was only yesterday,” said George, “as I was busy loading stones
into a cart, that young Mas’r Tom stood there, slashing his whip so
near the horse that the creature was frightened. I asked him to stop,
as pleasant as I could,—he just kept right on. I begged him again, and
then he turned on me, and began striking me. I held his hand, and then
he screamed and kicked and ran to his father, and told him that I was
fighting him. He came in a rage, and said he’d teach me who was my
master; and he tied me to a tree, and cut switches for young master,
and told him that he might whip me till he was tired;—and he did do it!
If I don’t make him remember it, some time!” and the brow of the young
man grew dark, and his eyes burned with an expression that made his
young wife tremble. “Who made this man my master? That’s what I want to
know!” he said.
“Well,” said Eliza, mournfully, “I always thought that I must obey my
master and mistress, or I couldn’t be a Christian.”
“There is some sense in it, in your case; they have brought you up like
a child, fed you, clothed you, indulged you, and taught you, so that
you have a good education; that is some reason why they should claim
you. But I have been kicked and cuffed and sworn at, and at the best
only let alone; and what do I owe? I’ve paid for all my keeping a
hundred times over. I _won’t_ bear it. No, I _won’t_!” he said,
clenching his hand with a fierce frown.
Eliza trembled, and was silent. She had never seen her husband in this
mood before; and her gentle system of ethics seemed to bend like a reed
in the surges of such passions.
“You know poor little Carlo, that you gave me,” added George; “the
creature has been about all the comfort that I’ve had. He has slept
with me nights, and followed me around days, and kind o’ looked at me
as if he understood how I felt. Well, the other day I was just feeding
him with a few old scraps I picked up by the kitchen door, and Mas’r
came along, and said I was feeding him up at his expense, and that he
couldn’t afford to have every nigger keeping his dog, and ordered me to
tie a stone to his neck and throw him in the pond.”
“O, George, you didn’t do it!”
“Do it? not I!—but he did. Mas’r and Tom pelted the poor drowning
creature with stones. Poor thing! he looked at me so mournful, as if he
wondered why I didn’t save him. I had to take a flogging because I
wouldn’t do it myself. I don’t care. Mas’r will find out that I’m one
that whipping won’t tame. My day will come yet, if he don’t look out.”
“What are you going to do? O, George, don’t do anything wicked; if you
only trust in God, and try to do right, he’ll deliver you.”
“I an’t a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart’s full of bitterness; I
can’t trust in God. Why does he let things be so?”
“O, George, we must have faith. Mistress says that when all things go
wrong to us, we must believe that God is doing the very best.”
“That’s easy to say for people that are sitting on their sofas and
riding in their carriages; but let ’em be where I am, I guess it would
come some harder. I wish I could be good; but my heart burns, and can’t
be reconciled, anyhow. You couldn’t in my place,—you can’t now, if I
tell you all I’ve got to say. You don’t know the whole yet.”
“What can be coming now?”
“Well, lately Mas’r has been saying that he was a fool to let me marry
off the place; that he hates Mr. Shelby and all his tribe, because they
are proud, and hold their heads up above him, and that I’ve got proud
notions from you; and he says he won’t let me come here any more, and
that I shall take a wife and settle down on his place. At first he only
scolded and grumbled these things; but yesterday he told me that I
should take Mina for a wife, and settle down in a cabin with her, or he
would sell me down river.”
“Why—but you were married to _me_, by the minister, as much as if you’d
been a white man!” said Eliza, simply.
“Don’t you know a slave can’t be married? There is no law in this
country for that; I can’t hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part
us. That’s why I wish I’d never seen you,—why I wish I’d never been
born; it would have been better for us both,—it would have been better
for this poor child if he had never been born. All this may happen to
him yet!”
“O, but master is so kind!”
“Yes, but who knows?—he may die—and then he may be sold to nobody knows
who. What pleasure is it that he is handsome, and smart, and bright? I
tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce through your soul for every
good and pleasant thing your child is or has; it will make him worth
too much for you to keep.”
The words smote heavily on Eliza’s heart; the vision of the trader came
before her eyes, and, as if some one had struck her a deadly blow, she
turned pale and gasped for breath. She looked nervously out on the
verandah, where the boy, tired of the grave conversation, had retired,
and where he was riding triumphantly up and down on Mr. Shelby’s
walking-stick. She would have spoken to tell her husband her fears, but
checked herself.
“No, no,—he has enough to bear, poor fellow!” she thought. “No, I won’t
tell him; besides, it an’t true; Missis never deceives us.”
“So, Eliza, my girl,” said the husband, mournfully, “bear up, now; and
good-by, for I’m going.”
“Going, George! Going where?”
“To Canada,” said he, straightening himself up; “and when I’m there,
I’ll buy you; that’s all the hope that’s left us. You have a kind
master, that won’t refuse to sell you. I’ll buy you and the boy;—God
helping me, I will!”
“O, dreadful! if you should be taken?”
“I won’t be taken, Eliza; I’ll _die_ first! I’ll be free, or I’ll die!”
“You won’t kill yourself!”
“No need of that. They will kill me, fast enough; they never will get
me down the river alive!”
“O, George, for my sake, do be careful! Don’t do anything wicked; don’t
lay hands on yourself, or anybody else! You are tempted too much—too
much; but don’t—go you must—but go carefully, prudently; pray God to
help you.”
“Well, then, Eliza, hear my plan. Mas’r took it into his head to send
me right by here, with a note to Mr. Symmes, that lives a mile past. I
believe he expected I should come here to tell you what I have. It
would please him, if he thought it would aggravate ‘Shelby’s folks,’ as
he calls ’em. I’m going home quite resigned, you understand, as if all
was over. I’ve got some preparations made,—and there are those that
will help me; and, in the course of a week or so, I shall be among the
missing, some day. Pray for me, Eliza; perhaps the good Lord will hear
_you_.”
“O, pray yourself, George, and go trusting in him; then you won’t do
anything wicked.”
“Well, now, _good-by_,” said George, holding Eliza’s hands, and gazing
into her eyes, without moving. They stood silent; then there were last
words, and sobs, and bitter weeping,—such parting as those may make
whose hope to meet again is as the spider’s web,—and the husband and
wife were parted.
CHAPTER IV
An Evening in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The cabin of Uncle Tom was a small log building, close adjoining to
“the house,” as the negro _par excellence_ designates his master’s
dwelling. In front it had a neat garden-patch, where, every summer,
strawberries, raspberries, and a variety of fruits and vegetables,
flourished under careful tending. The whole front of it was covered by
a large scarlet bignonia and a native multiflora rose, which,
entwisting and interlacing, left scarce a vestige of the rough logs to
be seen. Here, also, in summer, various brilliant annuals, such as
marigolds, petunias, four-o’clocks, found an indulgent corner in which
to unfold their splendors, and were the delight and pride of Aunt
Chloe’s heart.
Let us enter the dwelling. The evening meal at the house is over, and
Aunt Chloe, who presided over its preparation as head cook, has left to
inferior officers in the kitchen the business of clearing away and
washing dishes, and come out into her own snug territories, to “get her
ole man’s supper”; therefore, doubt not that it is her you see by the
fire, presiding with anxious interest over certain frizzling items in a
stew-pan, and anon with grave consideration lifting the cover of a
bake-kettle, from whence steam forth indubitable intimations of
“something good.” A round, black, shining face is hers, so glossy as to
suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with white of
eggs, like one of her own tea rusks. Her whole plump countenance beams
with satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched checked
turban, bearing on it, however, if we must confess it, a little of that
tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the
neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to
be.
A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not
a chicken or turkey or duck in the barn-yard but looked grave when they
saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their
latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on
trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to
inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. Her corn-cake, in all its
varieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins, and other species too numerous
to mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders;
and she would shake her fat sides with honest pride and merriment, as
she would narrate the fruitless efforts that one and another of her
compeers had made to attain to her elevation.
The arrival of company at the house, the arranging of dinners and
suppers “in style,” awoke all the energies of her soul; and no sight
was more welcome to her than a pile of travelling trunks launched on
the verandah, for then she foresaw fresh efforts and fresh triumphs.
Just at present, however, Aunt Chloe is looking into the bake-pan; in
which congenial operation we shall leave her till we finish our picture
of the cottage.
In one corner of it stood a bed, covered neatly with a snowy spread;
and by the side of it was a piece of carpeting, of some considerable
size. On this piece of carpeting Aunt Chloe took her stand, as being
decidedly in the upper walks of life; and it and the bed by which it
lay, and the whole corner, in fact, were treated with distinguished
consideration, and made, so far as possible, sacred from the marauding
inroads and desecrations of little folks. In fact, that corner was the
_drawing-room_ of the establishment. In the other corner was a bed of
much humbler pretensions, and evidently designed for _use_. The wall
over the fireplace was adorned with some very brilliant scriptural
prints, and a portrait of General Washington, drawn and colored in a
manner which would certainly have astonished that hero, if ever he
had happened to meet with its like.