Uncle Tom's Cabin
“D—n you!” said Legree, as with one blow of his fist he felled Tom to
the earth.
A cold soft hand fell on Legree’s at this moment. He turned,—it was
Cassy’s; but the cold soft touch recalled his dream of the night
before, and, flashing through the chambers of his brain, came all the
fearful images of the night-watches, with a portion of the horror that
accompanied them.
“Will you be a fool?” said Cassy, in French. “Let him go! Let me alone
to get him fit to be in the field again. Isn’t it just as I told you?”
They say the alligator, the rhinoceros, though enclosed in bullet-proof
mail, have each a spot where they are vulnerable; and fierce, reckless,
unbelieving reprobates, have commonly this point in superstitious
dread.
Legree turned away, determined to let the point go for the time.
“Well, have it your own way,” he said, doggedly, to Cassy.
“Hark, ye!” he said to Tom; “I won’t deal with ye now, because the
business is pressing, and I want all my hands; but I _never_ forget.
I’ll score it against ye, and sometime I’ll have my pay out o’ yer old
black hide,—mind ye!”
Legree turned, and went out.
“There you go,” said Cassy, looking darkly after him; “your reckoning’s
to come, yet!—My poor fellow, how are you?”
“The Lord God hath sent his angel, and shut the lion’s mouth, for this
time,” said Tom.
“For this time, to be sure,” said Cassy; “but now you’ve got his ill
will upon you, to follow you day in, day out, hanging like a dog on
your throat,—sucking your blood, bleeding away your life, drop by drop.
I know the man.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
Liberty
“No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the
altar of slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the
altar and the God sink together in the dust, and he stands redeemed,
regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal
emancipation.”—_Curran_.[1]
[1] John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), Irish orator and judge who worked
for Catholic emancipation.
A while we must leave Tom in the hands of his persecutors, while we
turn to pursue the fortunes of George and his wife, whom we left in
friendly hands, in a farmhouse on the road-side.
Tom Loker we left groaning and touzling in a most immaculately clean
Quaker bed, under the motherly supervision of Aunt Dorcas, who found
him to the full as tractable a patient as a sick bison.
Imagine a tall, dignified, spiritual woman, whose clear muslin cap
shades waves of silvery hair, parted on a broad, clear forehead, which
overarches thoughtful gray eyes. A snowy handkerchief of lisse crape is
folded neatly across her bosom; her glossy brown silk dress rustles
peacefully, as she glides up and down the chamber.
“The devil!” says Tom Loker, giving a great throw to the bedclothes.
“I must request thee, Thomas, not to use such language,” says Aunt
Dorcas, as she quietly rearranged the bed.
“Well, I won’t, granny, if I can help it,” says Tom; “but it is enough
to make a fellow swear,—so cursedly hot!”
Dorcas removed a comforter from the bed, straightened the clothes
again, and tucked them in till Tom looked something like a chrysalis;
remarking, as she did so,
“I wish, friend, thee would leave off cursing and swearing, and think
upon thy ways.”
“What the devil,” said Tom, “should I think of _them_ for? Last thing
ever _I_ want to think of—hang it all!” And Tom flounced over,
untucking and disarranging everything, in a manner frightful to behold.
“That fellow and gal are here, I s’pose,” said he, sullenly, after a
pause.
“They are so,” said Dorcas.
“They’d better be off up to the lake,” said Tom; “the quicker the
better.”
“Probably they will do so,” said Aunt Dorcas, knitting peacefully.
“And hark ye,” said Tom; “we’ve got correspondents in Sandusky, that
watch the boats for us. I don’t care if I tell, now. I hope they _will_
get away, just to spite Marks,—the cursed puppy!—d—n him!”
“Thomas!” said Dorcas.
“I tell you, granny, if you bottle a fellow up too tight, I shall
split,” said Tom. “But about the gal,—tell ’em to dress her up some
way, so’s to alter her. Her description’s out in Sandusky.”
“We will attend to that matter,” said Dorcas, with characteristic
composure.
As we at this place take leave of Tom Loker, we may as well say, that,
having lain three weeks at the Quaker dwelling, sick with a rheumatic
fever, which set in, in company with his other afflictions, Tom arose
from his bed a somewhat sadder and wiser man; and, in place of
slave-catching, betook himself to life in one of the new settlements,
where his talents developed themselves more happily in trapping bears,
wolves, and other inhabitants of the forest, in which he made himself
quite a name in the land. Tom always spoke reverently of the Quakers.
“Nice people,” he would say; “wanted to convert me, but couldn’t come
it, exactly. But, tell ye what, stranger, they do fix up a sick fellow
first rate,—no mistake. Make jist the tallest kind o’ broth and
knicknacks.”
As Tom had informed them that their party would be looked for in
Sandusky, it was thought prudent to divide them. Jim, with his old
mother, was forwarded separately; and a night or two after, George and
Eliza, with their child, were driven privately into Sandusky, and
lodged beneath a hospital roof, preparatory to taking their last
passage on the lake.
Their night was now far spent, and the morning star of liberty rose
fair before them!—electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in
it than a name—a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America,
does your heart’s blood thrill at that word, for which your fathers
bled, and your braver mothers were willing that their noblest and best
should die?
Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not
also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but
freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man,
who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of
African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eyes,—what is freedom
to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to
be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a
brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect
her from lawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child;
the right to have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character
of his own, unsubject to the will of another. All these thoughts were
rolling and seething in George’s breast, as he was pensively leaning
his head on his hand, watching his wife, as she was adapting to her
slender and pretty form the articles of man’s attire, in which it was
deemed safest she should make her escape.
“Now for it,” said she, as she stood before the glass, and shook down
her silky abundance of black curly hair. “I say, George, it’s almost a
pity, isn’t it,” she said, as she held up some of it, playfully,—“pity
it’s all got to come off?”
George smiled sadly, and made no answer.
Eliza turned to the glass, and the scissors glittered as one long lock
after another was detached from her head.
“There, now, that’ll do,” she said, taking up a hair-brush; “now for a
few fancy touches.”
“There, an’t I a pretty young fellow?” she said, turning around to her
husband, laughing and blushing at the same time.
“You always will be pretty, do what you will,” said George.
“What does make you so sober?” said Eliza, kneeling on one knee, and
laying her hand on his. “We are only within twenty-four hours of
Canada, they say. Only a day and a night on the lake, and then—oh,
then!—”
“O, Eliza!” said George, drawing her towards him; “that is it! Now my
fate is all narrowing down to a point. To come so near, to be almost in
sight, and then lose all. I should never live under it, Eliza.”
“Don’t fear,” said his wife, hopefully. “The good Lord would not have
brought us so far, if he didn’t mean to carry us through. I seem to
feel him with us, George.”
“You are a blessed woman, Eliza!” said George, clasping her with a
convulsive grasp. “But,—oh, tell me! can this great mercy be for us?
Will these years and years of misery come to an end?—shall we be free?
“I am sure of it, George,” said Eliza, looking upward, while tears of
hope and enthusiasm shone on her long, dark lashes. “I feel it in me,
that God is going to bring us out of bondage, this very day.”
“I will believe you, Eliza,” said George, rising suddenly up, “I will
believe,—come let’s be off. Well, indeed,” said he, holding her off at
arm’s length, and looking admiringly at her, “you _are_ a pretty little
fellow. That crop of little, short curls, is quite becoming. Put on
your cap. So—a little to one side. I never saw you look quite so
pretty. But, it’s almost time for the carriage;—I wonder if Mrs. Smyth
has got Harry rigged?”
The door opened, and a respectable, middle-aged woman entered, leading
little Harry, dressed in girl’s clothes.
“What a pretty girl he makes,” said Eliza, turning him round. “We call
him Harriet, you see;—don’t the name come nicely?”
The child stood gravely regarding his mother in her new and strange
attire, observing a profound silence, and occasionally drawing deep
sighs, and peeping at her from under his dark curls.
“Does Harry know mamma?” said Eliza, stretching her hands toward him.
The child clung shyly to the woman.
“Come Eliza, why do you try to coax him, when you know that he has got
to be kept away from you?”
“I know it’s foolish,” said Eliza; “yet, I can’t bear to have him turn
away from me. But come,—where’s my cloak? Here,—how is it men put on
cloaks, George?”
“You must wear it so,” said her husband, throwing it over his
shoulders.
“So, then,” said Eliza, imitating the motion,—“and I must stamp, and
take long steps, and try to look saucy.”
“Don’t exert yourself,” said George. “There is, now and then, a modest
young man; and I think it would be easier for you to act that
character.”
“And these gloves! mercy upon us!” said Eliza; “why, my hands are lost
in them.”
“I advise you to keep them on pretty strictly,” said George. “Your
slender paw might bring us all out. Now, Mrs. Smyth, you are to go
under our charge, and be our aunty,—you mind.”
“I’ve heard,” said Mrs. Smyth, “that there have been men down, warning
all the packet captains against a man and woman, with a little boy.”
“They have!” said George. “Well, if we see any such people, we can tell
them.”
A hack now drove to the door, and the friendly family who had received
the fugitives crowded around them with farewell greetings.
The disguises the party had assumed were in accordance with the hints
of Tom Loker. Mrs. Smyth, a respectable woman from the settlement in
Canada, whither they were fleeing, being fortunately about crossing the
lake to return thither, had consented to appear as the aunt of little
Harry; and, in order to attach him to her, he had been allowed to
remain, the two last days, under her sole charge; and an extra amount
of petting, jointed to an indefinite amount of seed-cakes and candy,
had cemented a very close attachment on the part of the young
gentleman.
The hack drove to the wharf. The two young men, as they appeared,
walked up the plank into the boat, Eliza gallantly giving her arm to
Mrs. Smyth, and George attending to their baggage.
George was standing at the captain’s office, settling for his party,
when he overheard two men talking by his side.
“I’ve watched every one that came on board,” said one, “and I know
they’re not on this boat.”
The voice was that of the clerk of the boat. The speaker whom he
addressed was our sometime friend Marks, who, with that valuable
perseverance which characterized him, had come on to Sandusky, seeking