Uncle Tom's Cabin
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