Uncle Tom's Cabin
everybody in the place! Ye don’t know! ’Pears like I loves ’em all! I
loves every creature everywhar!—it’s nothing _but_ love! O, Mas’r
George! what a thing ’t is to be a Christian!”
At this moment, Legree sauntered up to the door of the shed, looked in,
with a dogged air of affected carelessness, and turned away.
“The old Satan!” said George, in his indignation. “It’s a comfort to
think the devil will pay _him_ for this, some of these days!”
“O, don’t!—oh, ye mustn’t!” said Tom, grasping his hand; “he’s a poor
mis’able critter! it’s awful to think on ’t! Oh, if he only could
repent, the Lord would forgive him now; but I’m ’feared he never will!”
“I hope he won’t!” said George; “I never want to see _him_ in heaven!”
“Hush, Mas’r George!—it worries me! Don’t feel so! He an’t done me no
real harm,—only opened the gate of the kingdom for me; that’s all!”
At this moment, the sudden flush of strength which the joy of meeting
his young master had infused into the dying man gave way. A sudden
sinking fell upon him; he closed his eyes; and that mysterious and
sublime change passed over his face, that told the approach of other
worlds.
He began to draw his breath with long, deep inspirations; and his broad
chest rose and fell, heavily. The expression of his face was that of a
conqueror.
“Who,—who,—who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” he said, in
a voice that contended with mortal weakness; and, with a smile, he fell
asleep.
George sat fixed with solemn awe. It seemed to him that the place was
holy; and, as he closed the lifeless eyes, and rose up from the dead,
only one thought possessed him,—that expressed by his simple old
friend,—“What a thing it is to be a Christian!”
He turned: Legree was standing, sullenly, behind him.
Something in that dying scene had checked the natural fierceness of
youthful passion. The presence of the man was simply loathsome to
George; and he felt only an impulse to get away from him, with as few
words as possible.
Fixing his keen dark eyes on Legree, he simply said, pointing to the
dead, “You have got all you ever can of him. What shall I pay you for
the body? I will take it away, and bury it decently.”
“I don’t sell dead niggers,” said Legree, doggedly. “You are welcome to
bury him where and when you like.”
“Boys,” said George, in an authoritative tone, to two or three negroes,
who were looking at the body, “help me lift him up, and carry him to my
wagon; and get me a spade.”
One of them ran for a spade; the other two assisted George to carry the
body to the wagon.
George neither spoke to nor looked at Legree, who did not countermand
his orders, but stood, whistling, with an air of forced unconcern. He
sulkily followed them to where the wagon stood at the door.
George spread his cloak in the wagon, and had the body carefully
disposed of in it,—moving the seat, so as to give it room. Then he
turned, fixed his eyes on Legree, and said, with forced composure,
“I have not, as yet, said to you what I think of this most atrocious
affair;—this is not the time and place. But, sir, this innocent blood
shall have justice. I will proclaim this murder. I will go to the very
first magistrate, and expose you.”
“Do!” said Legree, snapping his fingers, scornfully. “I’d like to see
you doing it. Where you going to get witnesses?—how you going to prove
it?—Come, now!”
George saw, at once, the force of this defiance. There was not a white
person on the place; and, in all southern courts, the testimony of
colored blood is nothing. He felt, at that moment, as if he could have
rent the heavens with his heart’s indignant cry for justice; but in
vain.
“After all, what a fuss, for a dead nigger!” said Legree.
The word was as a spark to a powder magazine. Prudence was never a
cardinal virtue of the Kentucky boy. George turned, and, with one
indignant blow, knocked Legree flat upon his face; and, as he stood
over him, blazing with wrath and defiance, he would have formed no bad
personification of his great namesake triumphing over the dragon.
Some men, however, are decidedly bettered by being knocked down. If a
man lays them fairly flat in the dust, they seem immediately to
conceive a respect for him; and Legree was one of this sort. As he
rose, therefore, and brushed the dust from his clothes, he eyed the
slowly-retreating wagon with some evident consideration; nor did he
open his mouth till it was out of sight.
Beyond the boundaries of the plantation, George had noticed a dry,
sandy knoll, shaded by a few trees; there they made the grave.
“Shall we take off the cloak, Mas’r?” said the negroes, when the grave
was ready.
“No, no,—bury it with him! It’s all I can give you, now, poor Tom, and
you shall have it.”
They laid him in; and the men shovelled away, silently. They banked it
up, and laid green turf over it.
“You may go, boys,” said George, slipping a quarter into the hand of
each. They lingered about, however.
“If young Mas’r would please buy us—” said one.
“We’d serve him so faithful!” said the other.
“Hard times here, Mas’r!” said the first. “Do, Mas’r, buy us, please!”
“I can’t!—I can’t!” said George, with difficulty, motioning them off;
“it’s impossible!”
The poor fellows looked dejected, and walked off in silence.
“Witness, eternal God!” said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor
friend; “oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do _what one man
can_ to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!”
There is no monument to mark the last resting-place of our friend. He
needs none! His Lord knows where he lies, and will raise him up,
immortal, to appear with him when he shall appear in his glory.
Pity him not! Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the riches
of omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying,
suffering love! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship
with him, bearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it is
written, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
CHAPTER XLII
An Authentic Ghost Story
For some remarkable reason, ghostly legends were uncommonly rife, about
this time, among the servants on Legree’s place.
It was whisperingly asserted that footsteps, in the dead of night, had
been heard descending the garret stairs, and patrolling the house. In
vain the doors of the upper entry had been locked; the ghost either
carried a duplicate key in its pocket, or availed itself of a ghost’s
immemorial privilege of coming through the keyhole, and promenaded as
before, with a freedom that was alarming.
Authorities were somewhat divided, as to the outward form of the
spirit, owing to a custom quite prevalent among negroes,—and, for aught
we know, among whites, too,—of invariably shutting the eyes, and
covering up heads under blankets, petticoats, or whatever else might
come in use for a shelter, on these occasions. Of course, as everybody
knows, when the bodily eyes are thus out of the lists, the spiritual
eyes are uncommonly vivacious and perspicuous; and, therefore, there
were abundance of full-length portraits of the ghost, abundantly sworn
and testified to, which, as is often the case with portraits, agreed
with each other in no particular, except the common family peculiarity
of the ghost tribe,—the wearing of a _white sheet_. The poor souls were
not versed in ancient history, and did not know that Shakspeare had
authenticated this costume, by telling how
“The _sheeted_ dead
Did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome.”[1]
[1] _Hamlet_, Act I, scene 1, lines 115-116
And, therefore, their all hitting upon this is a striking fact in
pneumatology, which we recommend to the attention of spiritual media
generally.
Be it as it may, we have private reasons for knowing that a tall figure
in a white sheet did walk, at the most approved ghostly hours, around
the Legree premises,—pass out the doors, glide about the
house,—disappear at intervals, and, reappearing, pass up the silent
stairway, into that fatal garret; and that, in the morning, the entry
doors were all found shut and locked as firm as ever.
Legree could not help overhearing this whispering; and it was all the
more exciting to him, from the pains that were taken to conceal it from
him. He drank more brandy than usual; held up his head briskly, and
swore louder than ever in the daytime; but he had bad dreams, and the
visions of his head on his bed were anything but agreeable. The night
after Tom’s body had been carried away, he rode to the next town for a
carouse, and had a high one. Got home late and tired; locked his door,
took out the key, and went to bed.
After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human
soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have.
Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful
perhapses,—those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live
down than it can outlive its own eternity! What a fool is he who locks
his door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he
dares not meet alone,—whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over
with mountains of earthliness, is yet like the forewarning trumpet of
doom!
But Legree locked his door and set a chair against it; he set a
night-lamp at the head of his bed; and put his pistols there. He
examined the catches and fastenings of the windows, and then swore he
“didn’t care for the devil and all his angels,” and went to sleep.
Well, he slept, for he was tired,—slept soundly. But, finally, there
came over his sleep a shadow, a horror, an apprehension of something
dreadful hanging over him. It was his mother’s shroud, he thought; but
Cassy had it, holding it up, and showing it to him. He heard a confused
noise of screams and groanings; and, with it all, he knew he was
asleep, and he struggled to wake himself. He was half awake. He was
sure something was coming into his room. He knew the door was opening,
but he could not stir hand or foot. At last he turned, with a start;
the door _was_ open, and he saw a hand putting out his light.
It was a cloudy, misty moonlight, and there he saw it!—something white,
gliding in! He heard the still rustle of its ghostly garments. It stood
still by his bed;—a cold hand touched his; a voice said, three times,
in a low, fearful whisper, “Come! come! come!” And, while he lay
sweating with terror, he knew not when or how, the thing was gone. He
sprang out of bed, and pulled at the door. It was shut and locked, and
the man fell down in a swoon.
After this, Legree became a harder drinker than ever before. He no
longer drank cautiously, prudently, but imprudently and recklessly.
There were reports around the country, soon after that he was sick and
dying. Excess had brought on that frightful disease that seems to throw
the lurid shadows of a coming retribution back into the present life.
None could bear the horrors of that sick room, when he raved and
screamed, and spoke of sights which almost stopped the blood of those
who heard him; and, at his dying bed, stood a stern, white, inexorable
figure, saying, “Come! come! come!”
By a singular coincidence, on the very night that this vision appeared
to Legree, the house-door was found open in the morning, and some of
the negroes had seen two white figures gliding down the avenue towards
the high-road.
It was near sunrise when Cassy and Emmeline paused, for a moment, in a
little knot of trees near the town.
Cassy was dressed after the manner of the Creole Spanish ladies,—wholly
in black. A small black bonnet on her head, covered by a veil thick
with embroidery, concealed her face. It had been agreed that, in their
escape, she was to personate the character of a Creole lady, and
Emmeline that of her servant.