Uncle Tom's Cabin
about his neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare
raised his head, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face,—she
struggled for breath, and threw up her little hands.
“O, God, this is dreadful!” he said, turning away in agony, and
wringing Tom’s hand, scarce conscious what he was doing. “O, Tom, my
boy, it is killing me!”
Tom had his master’s hands between his own; and, with tears streaming
down his dark cheeks, looked up for help where he had always been used
to look.
“Pray that this may be cut short!” said St. Clare,—“this wrings my
heart.”
“O, bless the Lord! it’s over,—it’s over, dear Master!” said Tom; “look
at her.”
The child lay panting on her pillows, as one exhausted,—the large clear
eyes rolled up and fixed. Ah, what said those eyes, that spoke so much
of heaven! Earth was past,—and earthly pain; but so solemn, so
mysterious, was the triumphant brightness of that face, that it checked
even the sobs of sorrow. They pressed around her, in breathless
stillness.
“Eva,” said St. Clare, gently.
She did not hear.
“O, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?” said her father.
A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said,
brokenly,—“O! love,—joy,—peace!” gave one sigh and passed from death
unto life!
“Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after
thee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. O, woe for them who watched
thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold
gray sky of daily life, and thou gone forever!”
CHAPTER XXVII
“This Is the Last of Earth”[1]
[1] “This is the last of Earth! I am content,” last words of John
Quincy Adams, uttered February 21, 1848.
The statuettes and pictures in Eva’s room were shrouded in white
napkins, and only hushed breathings and muffled footfalls were heard
there, and the light stole in solemnly through windows partially
darkened by closed blinds.
The bed was draped in white; and there, beneath the drooping
angel-figure, lay a little sleeping form,—sleeping never to waken!
There she lay, robed in one of the simple white dresses she had been
wont to wear when living; the rose-colored light through the curtains
cast over the icy coldness of death a warm glow. The heavy eyelashes
drooped softly on the pure cheek; the head was turned a little to one
side, as if in natural sleep, but there was diffused over every
lineament of the face that high celestial expression, that mingling of
rapture and repose, which showed it was no earthly or temporary sleep,
but the long, sacred rest which “He giveth to his beloved.”
There is no death to such as thou, dear Eva! neither darkness nor
shadow of death; only such a bright fading as when the morning star
fades in the golden dawn. Thine is the victory without the battle,—the
crown without the conflict.
So did St. Clare think, as, with folded arms, he stood there gazing.
Ah! who shall say what he did think? for, from the hour that voices had
said, in the dying chamber, “she is gone,” it had been all a dreary
mist, a heavy “dimness of anguish.” He had heard voices around him; he
had had questions asked, and answered them; they had asked him when he
would have the funeral, and where they should lay her; and he had
answered, impatiently, that he cared not.
Adolph and Rosa had arranged the chamber; volatile, fickle and
childish, as they generally were, they were soft-hearted and full of
feeling; and, while Miss Ophelia presided over the general details of
order and neatness, it was their hands that added those soft, poetic
touches to the arrangements, that took from the death-room the grim and
ghastly air which too often marks a New England funeral.
There were still flowers on the shelves,—all white, delicate and
fragrant, with graceful, drooping leaves. Eva’s little table, covered
with white, bore on it her favorite vase, with a single white moss
rose-bud in it. The folds of the drapery, the fall of the curtains, had
been arranged and rearranged, by Adolph and Rosa, with that nicety of
eye which characterizes their race. Even now, while St. Clare stood
there thinking, little Rosa tripped softly into the chamber with a
basket of white flowers. She stepped back when she saw St. Clare, and
stopped respectfully; but, seeing that he did not observe her, she came
forward to place them around the dead. St. Clare saw her as in a dream,
while she placed in the small hands a fair cape jessamine, and, with
admirable taste, disposed other flowers around the couch.
The door opened again, and Topsy, her eyes swelled with crying,
appeared, holding something under her apron. Rosa made a quick
forbidding gesture; but she took a step into the room.
“You must go out,” said Rosa, in a sharp, positive whisper; “_you_
haven’t any business here!”
“O, do let me! I brought a flower,—such a pretty one!” said Topsy,
holding up a half-blown tea rose-bud. “Do let me put just one there.”
“Get along!” said Rosa, more decidedly.
“Let her stay!” said St. Clare, suddenly stamping his foot. “She shall
come.”
Rosa suddenly retreated, and Topsy came forward and laid her offering
at the feet of the corpse; then suddenly, with a wild and bitter cry,
she threw herself on the floor alongside the bed, and wept, and moaned
aloud.
Miss Ophelia hastened into the room, and tried to raise and silence
her; but in vain.
“O, Miss Eva! oh, Miss Eva! I wish I ’s dead, too,—I do!”
There was a piercing wildness in the cry; the blood flushed into St.
Clare’s white, marble-like face, and the first tears he had shed since
Eva died stood in his eyes.
“Get up, child,” said Miss Ophelia, in a softened voice; “don’t cry so.
Miss Eva is gone to heaven; she is an angel.”
“But I can’t see her!” said Topsy. “I never shall see her!” and she
sobbed again.
They all stood a moment in silence.
“_She_ said she _loved_ me,” said Topsy,—“she did! O, dear! oh, dear!
there an’t _nobody_ left now,—there an’t!”
“That’s true enough” said St. Clare; “but do,” he said to Miss Ophelia,
“see if you can’t comfort the poor creature.”
“I jist wish I hadn’t never been born,” said Topsy. “I didn’t want to
be born, no ways; and I don’t see no use on ’t.”
Miss Ophelia raised her gently, but firmly, and took her from the room;
but, as she did so, some tears fell from her eyes.
“Topsy, you poor child,” she said, as she led her into her room, “don’t
give up! _I_ can love you, though I am not like that dear little child.
I hope I’ve learnt something of the love of Christ from her. I can love
you; I do, and I’ll try to help you to grow up a good Christian girl.”
Miss Ophelia’s voice was more than her words, and more than that were
the honest tears that fell down her face. From that hour, she acquired
an influence over the mind of the destitute child that she never lost.
“O, my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much of good,” thought
St. Clare, “what account have I to give for my long years?”
There were, for a while, soft whisperings and footfalls in the chamber,
as one after another stole in, to look at the dead; and then came the
little coffin; and then there was a funeral, and carriages drove to the
door, and strangers came and were seated; and there were white scarfs
and ribbons, and crape bands, and mourners dressed in black crape; and
there were words read from the Bible, and prayers offered; and St.
Clare lived, and walked, and moved, as one who has shed every tear;—to
the last he saw only one thing, that golden head in the coffin; but
then he saw the cloth spread over it, the lid of the coffin closed; and
he walked, when he was put beside the others, down to a little place at
the bottom of the garden, and there, by the mossy seat where she and
Tom had talked, and sung, and read so often, was the little grave. St.
Clare stood beside it,—looked vacantly down; he saw them lower the
little coffin; he heard, dimly, the solemn words, “I am the
resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live;” and, as the earth was cast in and filled up
the little grave, he could not realize that it was his Eva that they
were hiding from his sight.
Nor was it!—not Eva, but only the frail seed of that bright, immortal
form with which she shall yet come forth, in the day of the Lord Jesus!
And then all were gone, and the mourners went back to the place which
should know her no more; and Marie’s room was darkened, and she lay on
the bed, sobbing and moaning in uncontrollable grief, and calling every
moment for the attentions of all her servants. Of course, they had no
time to cry,—why should they? the grief was _her_ grief, and she was
fully convinced that nobody on earth did, could, or would feel it as
she did.
“St. Clare did not shed a tear,” she said; “he didn’t sympathize with
her; it was perfectly wonderful to think how hard-hearted and unfeeling
he was, when he must know how she suffered.”
So much are people the slave of their eye and ear, that many of the
servants really thought that Missis was the principal sufferer in the
case, especially as Marie began to have hysterical spasms, and sent for
the doctor, and at last declared herself dying; and, in the running and
scampering, and bringing up hot bottles, and heating of flannels, and
chafing, and fussing, that ensued, there was quite a diversion.
Tom, however, had a feeling at his own heart, that drew him to his
master. He followed him wherever he walked, wistfully and sadly; and
when he saw him sitting, so pale and quiet, in Eva’s room, holding
before his eyes her little open Bible, though seeing no letter or word
of what was in it, there was more sorrow to Tom in that still, fixed,
tearless eye, than in all Marie’s moans and lamentations.
In a few days the St. Clare family were back again in the city;
Augustine, with the restlessness of grief, longing for another scene,
to change the current of his thoughts. So they left the house and
garden, with its little grave, and came back to New Orleans; and St.
Clare walked the streets busily, and strove to fill up the chasm in his
heart with hurry and bustle, and change of place; and people who saw
him in the street, or met him at the cafe, knew of his loss only by the
weed on his hat; for there he was, smiling and talking, and reading the
newspaper, and speculating on politics, and attending to business
matters; and who could see that all this smiling outside was but a
hollowed shell over a heart that was a dark and silent sepulchre?
“Mr. St. Clare is a singular man,” said Marie to Miss Ophelia, in a
complaining tone. “I used to think, if there was anything in the world
he did love, it was our dear little Eva; but he seems to be forgetting
her very easily. I cannot ever get him to talk about her. I really did
think he would show more feeling!”
“Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me,” said Miss Ophelia,
oracularly.
“O, I don’t believe in such things; it’s all talk. If people have
feeling, they will show it,—they can’t help it; but, then, it’s a great
misfortune to have feeling. I’d rather have been made like St. Clare.
My feelings prey upon me so!”
“Sure, Missis, Mas’r St. Clare is gettin’ thin as a shader. They say,
he don’t never eat nothin’,” said Mammy. “I know he don’t forget Miss
Eva; I know there couldn’t nobody,—dear, little, blessed cretur!” she
added, wiping her eyes.
“Well, at all events, he has no consideration for me,” said Marie; “he
hasn’t spoken one word of sympathy, and he must know how much more a
mother feels than any man can.”
“The heart knoweth its own bitterness,” said Miss Ophelia, gravely.
“That’s just what I think. I know just what I feel,—nobody else seems
to. Eva used to, but she is gone!” and Marie lay back on her lounge,