Uncle Tom's Cabin
be _thy_ victory; by this shalt thou reign with Christ when his kingdom
shall come on earth.
The deep fervor of Tom’s feelings, the softness of his voice, his
tears, fell like dew on the wild, unsettled spirit of the poor woman. A
softness gathered over the lurid fires of her eye; she looked down, and
Tom could feel the relaxing muscles of her hands, as she said,
“Didn’t I tell you that evil spirits followed me? O! Father Tom, I
can’t pray,—I wish I could. I never have prayed since my children were
sold! What you say must be right, I know it must; but when I try to
pray, I can only hate and curse. I can’t pray!”
“Poor soul!” said Tom, compassionately. “Satan desires to have ye, and
sift ye as wheat. I pray the Lord for ye. O! Misse Cassy, turn to the
dear Lord Jesus. He came to bind up the broken-hearted, and comfort all
that mourn.”
Cassy stood silent, while large, heavy tears dropped from her downcast
eyes.
“Misse Cassy,” said Tom, in a hesitating tone, after surveying her in
silence, “if ye only could get away from here,—if the thing was
possible,—I’d ’vise ye and Emmeline to do it; that is, if ye could go
without blood-guiltiness,—not otherwise.”
“Would you try it with us, Father Tom?”
“No,” said Tom; “time was when I would; but the Lord’s given me a work
among these yer poor souls, and I’ll stay with ’em and bear my cross
with ’em till the end. It’s different with you; it’s a snare to
you,—it’s more’n you can stand,—and you’d better go, if you can.”
“I know no way but through the grave,” said Cassy. “There’s no beast or
bird but can find a home some where; even the snakes and the alligators
have their places to lie down and be quiet; but there’s no place for
us. Down in the darkest swamps, their dogs will hunt us out, and find
us. Everybody and everything is against us; even the very beasts side
against us,—and where shall we go?”
Tom stood silent; at length he said,
“Him that saved Daniel in the den of lions,—that saved the children in
the fiery furnace,—Him that walked on the sea, and bade the winds be
still,—He’s alive yet; and I’ve faith to believe he can deliver you.
Try it, and I’ll pray, with all my might, for you.”
By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and
trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new
light, as a discovered diamond?
Cassy had often revolved, for hours, all possible or probable schemes
of escape, and dismissed them all, as hopeless and impracticable; but
at this moment there flashed through her mind a plan, so simple and
feasible in all its details, as to awaken an instant hope.
“Father Tom, I’ll try it!” she said, suddenly.
“Amen!” said Tom; “the Lord help ye!”
CHAPTER XXXIX
The Stratagem
“The way of the wicked is as darkness; he knoweth not at what he
stumbleth.”[1]
[1] Prov. 4:19.
The garret of the house that Legree occupied, like most other garrets,
was a great, desolate space, dusty, hung with cobwebs, and littered
with cast-off lumber. The opulent family that had inhabited the house
in the days of its splendor had imported a great deal of splendid
furniture, some of which they had taken away with them, while some
remained standing desolate in mouldering, unoccupied rooms, or stored
away in this place. One or two immense packing-boxes, in which this
furniture was brought, stood against the sides of the garret. There was
a small window there, which let in, through its dingy, dusty panes, a
scanty, uncertain light on the tall, high-backed chairs and dusty
tables, that had once seen better days. Altogether, it was a weird and
ghostly place; but, ghostly as it was, it wanted not in legends among
the superstitious negroes, to increase its terrors. Some few years
before, a negro woman, who had incurred Legree’s displeasure, was
confined there for several weeks. What passed there, we do not say; the
negroes used to whisper darkly to each other; but it was known that the
body of the unfortunate creature was one day taken down from there, and
buried; and, after that, it was said that oaths and cursings, and the
sound of violent blows, used to ring through that old garret, and
mingled with wailings and groans of despair. Once, when Legree chanced
to overhear something of this kind, he flew into a violent passion, and
swore that the next one that told stories about that garret should have
an opportunity of knowing what was there, for he would chain them up
there for a week. This hint was enough to repress talking, though, of
course, it did not disturb the credit of the story in the least.
Gradually, the staircase that led to the garret, and even the
passage-way to the staircase, were avoided by every one in the house,
from every one fearing to speak of it, and the legend was gradually
falling into desuetude. It had suddenly occurred to Cassy to make use
of the superstitious excitability, which was so great in Legree, for
the purpose of her liberation, and that of her fellow-sufferer.
The sleeping-room of Cassy was directly under the garret. One day,
without consulting Legree, she suddenly took it upon her, with some
considerable ostentation, to change all the furniture and appurtenances
of the room to one at some considerable distance. The under-servants,
who were called on to effect this movement, were running and bustling
about with great zeal and confusion, when Legree returned from a ride.
“Hallo! you Cass!” said Legree, “what’s in the wind now?”
“Nothing; only I choose to have another room,” said Cassy, doggedly.
“And what for, pray?” said Legree.
“I choose to,” said Cassy.
“The devil you do! and what for?”
“I’d like to get some sleep, now and then.”
“Sleep! well, what hinders your sleeping?”
“I could tell, I suppose, if you want to hear,” said Cassy, dryly.
“Speak out, you minx!” said Legree.
“O! nothing. I suppose it wouldn’t disturb _you!_ Only groans, and
people scuffing, and rolling round on the garret floor, half the night,
from twelve to morning!”
“People up garret!” said Legree, uneasily, but forcing a laugh; “who
are they, Cassy?”
Cassy raised her sharp, black eyes, and looked in the face of Legree,
with an expression that went through his bones, as she said, “To be
sure, Simon, who are they? I’d like to have _you_ tell me. You don’t
know, I suppose!”
With an oath, Legree struck at her with his riding-whip; but she glided
to one side, and passed through the door, and looking back, said, “If
you’ll sleep in that room, you’ll know all about it. Perhaps you’d
better try it!” and then immediately she shut and locked the door.
Legree blustered and swore, and threatened to break down the door; but
apparently thought better of it, and walked uneasily into the
sitting-room. Cassy perceived that her shaft had struck home; and, from
that hour, with the most exquisite address, she never ceased to
continue the train of influences she had begun.
In a knot-hole of the garret, that had opened, she had inserted the
neck of an old bottle, in such a manner that when there was the least
wind, most doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds proceeded from it,
which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to
credulous and superstitious ears might easily seem to be that of horror
and despair.
These sounds were, from time to time, heard by the servants, and
revived in full force the memory of the old ghost legend. A
superstitious creeping horror seemed to fill the house; and though no
one dared to breathe it to Legree, he found himself encompassed by it,
as by an atmosphere.
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. The Christian
is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence
fills the void unknown with light and order; but to the man who has
dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of the Hebrew
poet, “a land of darkness and the shadow of death,” without any order,
where the light is as darkness. Life and death to him are haunted
grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.
Legree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused by his
encounters with Tom,—roused, only to be resisted by the determinate
force of evil; but still there was a thrill and commotion of the dark,
inner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or hymn, that reacted
in superstitious dread.
The influence of Cassy over him was of a strange and singular kind. He
was her owner, her tyrant and tormentor. She was, as he knew, wholly,
and without any possibility of help or redress, in his hands; and yet
so it is, that the most brutal man cannot live in constant association
with a strong female influence, and not be greatly controlled by it.
When he first bought her, she was, as she said, a woman delicately
bred; and then he crushed her, without scruple, beneath the foot of his
brutality. But, as time, and debasing influences, and despair, hardened
womanhood within her, and waked the fires of fiercer passions, she had
become in a measure his mistress, and he alternately tyrannized over
and dreaded her.
This influence had become more harassing and decided, since partial
insanity had given a strange, weird, unsettled cast to all her words
and language.
A night or two after this, Legree was sitting in the old sitting-room,
by the side of a flickering wood fire, that threw uncertain glances
round the room. It was a stormy, windy night, such as raises whole
squadrons of nondescript noises in rickety old houses. Windows were
rattling, shutters flapping, and wind carousing, rumbling, and tumbling
down the chimney, and, every once in a while, puffing out smoke and
ashes, as if a legion of spirits were coming after them. Legree had
been casting up accounts and reading newspapers for some hours, while
Cassy sat in the corner; sullenly looking into the fire. Legree laid
down his paper, and seeing an old book lying on the table, which he had
noticed Cassy reading, the first part of the evening, took it up, and
began to turn it over. It was one of those collections of stories of
bloody murders, ghostly legends, and supernatural visitations, which,
coarsely got up and illustrated, have a strange fascination for one who
once begins to read them.
Legree poohed and pished, but read, turning page after page, till,
finally, after reading some way, he threw down the book, with an oath.
“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Cass?” said he, taking the tongs
and settling the fire. “I thought you’d more sense than to let noises
scare _you_.”
“No matter what I believe,” said Cassy, sullenly.
“Fellows used to try to frighten me with their yarns at sea,” said
Legree. “Never come it round me that way. I’m too tough for any such
trash, tell ye.”
Cassy sat looking intensely at him in the shadow of the corner. There
was that strange light in her eyes that always impressed Legree with
uneasiness.
“Them noises was nothing but rats and the wind,” said Legree. “Rats
will make a devil of a noise. I used to hear ’em sometimes down in the
hold of the ship; and wind,—Lord’s sake! ye can make anything out o’
wind.”
Cassy knew Legree was uneasy under her eyes, and, therefore, she made
no answer, but sat fixing them on him, with that strange, unearthly
expression, as before.
“Come, speak out, woman,—don’t you think so?” said Legree.
“Can rats walk down stairs, and come walking through the entry, and
open a door when you’ve locked it and set a chair against it?” said
Cassy; “and come walk, walk, walking right up to your bed, and put out
their hand, so?”
Cassy kept her glittering eyes fixed on Legree, as she spoke, and he
stared at her like a man in the nightmare, till, when she finished by
laying her hand, icy cold, on his, he sprung back, with an oath.
“Woman! what do you mean? Nobody did?”