Uncle Tom's Cabin
stay all night with his shaving-water; and Miss Ophelia, coming out of
the dining-room, said,
“Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here? Go in and
attend to your muslins.”
Our friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the conversation
with the old rusk-woman, had followed her out into the street. He saw
her go on, giving every once in a while a suppressed groan. At last she
set her basket down on a doorstep, and began arranging the old, faded
shawl which covered her shoulders.
“I’ll carry your basket a piece,” said Tom, compassionately.
“Why should ye?” said the woman. “I don’t want no help.”
“You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin’,” said Tom.
“I an’t sick,” said the woman, shortly.
“I wish,” said Tom, looking at her earnestly,—“I wish I could persuade
you to leave off drinking. Don’t you know it will be the ruin of ye,
body and soul?”
“I knows I’m gwine to torment,” said the woman, sullenly. “Ye don’t
need to tell me that ar. I ’s ugly, I ’s wicked,—I ’s gwine straight to
torment. O, Lord! I wish I ’s thar!”
Tom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a sullen,
impassioned earnestness.
“O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han’t ye never heard of Jesus
Christ?”
“Jesus Christ,—who’s he?”
“Why, he’s _the Lord_,” said Tom.
“I think I’ve hearn tell o’ the Lord, and the judgment and torment.
I’ve heard o’ that.”
“But didn’t anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus, that loved us poor
sinners, and died for us?”
“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” said the woman; “nobody han’t never
loved me, since my old man died.”
“Where was you raised?” said Tom.
“Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil’en for market, and sold ’em
as fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a
speculator, and my Mas’r got me o’ him.”
“What set you into this bad way of drinkin’?”
“To get shet o’ my misery. I had one child after I come here; and I
thought then I’d have one to raise, cause Mas’r wasn’t a speculator. It
was de peartest little thing! and Missis she seemed to think a heap on
’t, at first; it never cried,—it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck
sick, and I tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me,
and the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis wouldn’t buy milk
for it. She wouldn’t hear to me, when I telled her I hadn’t milk. She
said she knowed I could feed it on what other folks eat; and the child
kinder pined, and cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got
all gone to skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it and she said ’t
wan’t nothin’ but crossness. She wished it was dead, she said; and she
wouldn’t let me have it o’ nights, cause, she said, it kept me awake,
and made me good for nothing. She made me sleep in her room; and I had
to put it away off in a little kind o’ garret, and thar it cried itself
to death, one night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin’, to keep its crying
out of my ears! I did,—and I will drink! I will, if I do go to torment
for it! Mas’r says I shall go to torment, and I tell him I’ve got thar
now!”
“O, ye poor crittur!” said Tom, “han’t nobody never telled ye how the
Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han’t they telled ye that he’ll
help ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?”
“I looks like gwine to heaven,” said the woman; “an’t thar where white
folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar? I’d rather go to torment,
and get away from Mas’r and Missis. I had _so_,” she said, as with her
usual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.
Tom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house. In the court he
met little Eva,—a crown of tuberoses on her head, and her eyes radiant
with delight.
“O, Tom! here you are. I’m glad I’ve found you. Papa says you may get
out the ponies, and take me in my little new carriage,” she said,
catching his hand. “But what’s the matter Tom?—you look sober.”
“I feel bad, Miss Eva,” said Tom, sorrowfully. “But I’ll get the horses
for you.”
“But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you talking to cross
old Prue.”
Tom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman’s history. She did
not exclaim or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew
pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both
hands on her bosom, and sighed heavily.
VOLUME II
CHAPTER XIX
Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions Continued
“Tom, you needn’t get me the horses. I don’t want to go,” she said.
“Why not, Miss Eva?”
“These things sink into my heart, Tom,” said Eva,—“they sink into my
heart,” she repeated, earnestly. “I don’t want to go;” and she turned
from Tom, and went into the house.
A few days after, another woman came, in old Prue’s place, to bring the
rusks; Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen.
“Lor!” said Dinah, “what’s got Prue?”
“Prue isn’t coming any more,” said the woman, mysteriously.
“Why not?” said Dinah, “she an’t dead, is she?”
“We doesn’t exactly know. She’s down cellar,” said the woman, glancing
at Miss Ophelia.
After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the
door.
“What _has_ got Prue, any how?” she said.
The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in
low, mysterious tone.
“Well, you mustn’t tell nobody, Prue, she got drunk agin,—and they had
her down cellar,—and thar they left her all day,—and I hearn ’em saying
that the _flies had got to her_,—and _she’s dead_!”
Dinah held up her hands, and, turning, saw close by her side the
spirit-like form of Evangeline, her large, mystic eyes dilated with
horror, and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.
“Lor bless us! Miss Eva’s gwine to faint away! What go us all, to let
her har such talk? Her pa’ll be rail mad.”
“I shan’t faint, Dinah,” said the child, firmly; “and why shouldn’t I
hear it? It an’t so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer
it.”
“_Lor sakes_! it isn’t for sweet, delicate young ladies, like
you,—these yer stories isn’t; it’s enough to kill ’em!”
Eva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.
Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman’s story. Dinah gave a very
garrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he
had drawn from her that morning.
“An abominable business,—perfectly horrible!” she exclaimed, as she
entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.
“Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?” said he.
“What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!” said Miss
Ophelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and
enlarging on its most shocking particulars.
“I thought it would come to that, some time,” said St. Clare, going on
with his paper.
“Thought so!—an’t you going to _do_ anything about it?” said Miss
Ophelia. “Haven’t you got any _selectmen_, or anybody, to interfere and
look after such matters?”
“It’s commonly supposed that the _property_ interest is a sufficient
guard in these cases. If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I
don’t know what’s to be done. It seems the poor creature was a thief
and a drunkard; and so there won’t be much hope to get up sympathy for
her.”
“It is perfectly outrageous,—it is horrid, Augustine! It will certainly
bring down vengeance upon you.”
“My dear cousin, I didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I
could. If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I
to do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots.
There would be no use in interfering; there is no law that amounts to
anything practically, for such a case. The best we can do is to shut
our eyes and ears, and let it alone. It’s the only resource left us.”
“How can you shut your eyes and ears? How can you let such things
alone?”
“My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,—debased,
uneducated, indolent, provoking,—put, without any sort of terms or
conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in
our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control,
who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—for
that’s the case with the largest half of mankind. Of course, in a
community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings
do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can’t buy
every poor wretch I see. I can’t turn knight-errant, and undertake to
redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. The most
I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it.”
St. Clare’s fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said,
“Come, cousin, don’t stand there looking like one of the Fates; you’ve
only seen a peep through the curtain,—a specimen of what is going on,
the world over, in some shape or other. If we are to be prying and
spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to
anything. ’T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah’s
kitchen;” and St. Clare lay back on the sofa, and busied himself with
his paper.
Miss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there
grim with indignation. She knit and knit, but while she mused the fire
burned; at last she broke out—“I tell you, Augustine, I can’t get over
things so, if you can. It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend
such a system,—that’s _my_ mind!”
“What now?” said St. Clare, looking up. “At it again, hey?”
“I say it’s perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!” said
Miss Ophelia, with increasing warmth.
“_I_ defend it, my dear lady? Who ever said I did defend it?” said St.
Clare.
“Of course, you defend it,—you all do,—all you Southerners. What do you
have slaves for, if you don’t?”
“Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever
does what they don’t think is right? Don’t you, or didn’t you ever, do
anything that you did not think quite right?”
“If I do, I repent of it, I hope,” said Miss Ophelia, rattling her
needles with energy.
“So do I,” said St. Clare, peeling his orange; “I’m repenting of it all
the time.”
“What do you keep on doing it for?”
“Didn’t you ever keep on doing wrong, after you’d repented, my good
cousin?”
“Well, only when I’ve been very much tempted,” said Miss Ophelia.
“Well, I’m very much tempted,” said St. Clare; “that’s just my
difficulty.”
“But I always resolve I won’t and I try to break off.”
“Well, I have been resolving I won’t, off and on, these ten years,”
said St. Clare; “but I haven’t, some how, got clear. Have you got clear
of all your sins, cousin?”
“Cousin Augustine,” said Miss Ophelia, seriously, and laying down her
knitting-work, “I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my
short-comings. I know all you say is true enough; nobody else feels
them more than I do; but it does seem to me, after all, there is some
difference between me and you. It seems to me I would cut off my right
hand sooner than keep on, from day to day, doing what I thought was
wrong. But, then, my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession, I
don’t wonder you reprove me.”
“O, now, cousin,” said Augustine, sitting down on the floor, and laying
his head back in her lap, “don’t take on so awfully serious! You know
what a good-for-nothing, saucy boy I always was. I love to poke you
up,—that’s all,—just to see you get earnest. I do think you are
desperately, distressingly good; it tires me to death to think of it.”
“But this is a serious subject, my boy, Auguste,” said Miss Ophelia,
laying her hand on his forehead.
“Dismally so,” said he; “and I—well, I never want to talk seriously in
hot weather. What with mosquitos and all, a fellow can’t get himself up
to any very sublime moral flights; and I believe,” said St. Clare,