Uncle Tom's cabin / Хижина дяди Тома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Come,” said he, “ye nigger, ye ’r ready? Servant, ma’am!” said he, taking off his hat, as he saw Mrs. Shelby.

Aunt Chloe shut and corded the box, and, getting up, looked gruffly on the trader, her tears seeming suddenly turned to sparks of fire.

Tom rose up meekly, to follow his new master, and raised up his heavy box on his shoulder. His wife took the baby in her arms to go with him to the wagon, and the children, still crying, trailed on behind.

Mrs. Shelby, walking up to the trader, detained him for a few moments, talking with him in an earnest manner; and while she was thus talking, the whole family party proceeded to a wagon, that stood ready harnessed at the door. A crowd of all the old and young hands on the place stood gathered around it, to bid farewell to their old associate. Tom had been looked up to, both as a head servant and a Christian teacher, by all the place, and there was much honest sympathy and grief about him, particularly among the women.

“Why, Chloe, you bar it better ’n we do!” said one of the women, who had been weeping freely, noticing the gloomy calmness with which Aunt Chloe stood by the wagon.

“I ’s done my tears!” she said, looking grimly at the trader, who was coming up. “I does not feel to cry ’fore dat ar old limb, no how!”

“Get in!” said Haley to Tom, as he strode through the crowd of servants, who looked at him with lowering brows.

Tom got in, and Haley, drawing out from under the wagon seat a heavy pair of shackles, made them fast around each ankle.

A smothered groan of indignation ran through the whole circle, and Mrs. Shelby spoke from the verandah, -

“Mr. Haley, I assure you that precaution is entirely unnecessary.”

“Do’n know, ma’am; I’ve lost one five hundred dollars from this yer place, and I can’t afford to run no more risks.”

“What else could she spect on him?” said Aunt Chloe, indignantly, while the two boys, who now seemed to comprehend at once their father’s destiny, clung to her gown, sobbing and groaning vehemently.

“I ’m sorry,” said Tom, “that Mas’r George happened to be away.”

George had gone to spend two or three days with a companion on a neighboring estate, and having departed early in the morning, before Tom’s misfortune had been made public, had left without hearing of it.

“Give my love to Mas’r George,” he said, earnestly.

Haley whipped up the horse, and, with a steady, mournful look, fixed to the last on the old place, Tom was whirled away.

Mr. Shelby at this time was not at home. He had sold Tom under the spur of a driving necessity, to get out of the power of a man whom he dreaded, – and his first feeling, after the consummation of the bargain, had been that of relief. But his wife’s expostulations awoke his halfslumbering regrets; and Tom’s manly disinterestedness increased the unpleasantness of his feelings. It was in vain that he said to himself that he had a right to do it, – that everybody did it, – and that some did it without even the excuse of necessity; – he could not satisfy his own feelings; and that he might not witness the unpleasant scenes of the consummation, he had gone on a short business tour up the country, hoping that all would be over before he returned.

Tom and Haley rattled on along the dusty road, whirling past every old familiar spot, until the bounds of the estate were fairly passed, and they found themselves out on the open pike. After they had ridden about a mile, Haley suddenly drew up at the door of a blacksmith’s shop, when, taking out with him a pair of handcuffs, he stepped into the shop, to have a little alteration in them.

“These yer ’s a little too small for his build,” said Haley, showing the fetters, and pointing out to Tom.

“Lor! now, if thar an’t Shelby’s Tom. He han’t sold him, now?” said the smith.

“Yes, he has,” said Haley.

“Now, ye don’t! well, reely,” said the smith, “who ’d a thought it! Why, ye need n’t go to fetterin’ him up this yer way. He ’s the faithfullest, best crittur – ”

“Yes, yes,” said Haley; “but your good fellers are just the critturs to want ter run off. Them stupid ones, as does n’t care whar they go, and shifless, drunken ones, as don’t care for nothin’, they ’ll stick by, and like as not be rather pleased to be toted round; but these yer prime fellers, they hates it like sin. No way but to fetter ’em; got legs, – they ’ll use ’em, – no mistake.”

“Well,” said the smith, feeling among his tools, “them plantations down thar, stranger, an’t jest the place a Kentuck nigger wants to go to; they dies thar tol’able fast, don’t they?”

“Wal, yes, tol’able fast, ther dying is; what with the ’climating and one thing and another, they dies so as to keep the market up pretty brisk,” said Haley.

“Wal, now, a feller can’t help thinkin’ it ’s a mighty pity to have a nice, quiet, likely feller, as good un as Tom is, go down to be fairly ground up on one of them ar sugar plantations.”

“Wal, he ’s got a fa’r chance. I promised to do well by him. I’ll get him in house-servant in some good old family, and then, if he stands the fever and ’climating, he ’ll have a berth good as any nigger ought ter ask for.”

“He leaves his wife and chil’en up here, s’pose?”

“Yes; but he ’ll get another thar. Lord, thar ’s women enough everywhar,” said Haley.

Tom was sitting very mournfully on the outside of the shop while this conversation was going on. Suddenly he heard the quick, short click of a horse’s hoof behind him; and, before he could fairly awake from his surprise, young Master George sprang into the wagon, threw his arms tumultuously round his neck, and was sobbing and scolding with energy.

“I declare, it ’s real mean! I don’t care what they say, any of ’em! It ’s a nasty, mean shame! If I was a man, they should n’t do it, – they should not, so!” said George, with a kind of subdued howl.

“O! Mas’r George! this does me good!” said Tom. “I could n’t bar to go off without seein’ ye! It does me real good, ye can’t tell!” Here Tom made some movement of his feet, and George’s eye fell on the fetters.

“What a shame!” he exclaimed, lifting his hands. “I ’ll knock that old fellow down – I will!”

“No you won’t, Mas’r George; and you must not talk so loud. It won’t help me any, to anger him.”

“Well, I won’t, then, for your sake; but only to think of it – is n’t it a shame? They never sent for me, nor sent me any word, and, if it had n’t been for Tom Lincoln, I should n’t have heard it. I tell you, I blew ’em up well, all of ’em, at home!”

“That ar was n’t right, I’m ’feard, Mas’r George.”

“Can’t help it! I say it ’s a shame! Look here, Uncle Tom,” said he, turning his back to the shop, and speaking in a mysterious tone, “I ’ve brought you my dollar!”

“O! I could n’t think o’ takin’ on ’t, Mas’r George, no ways in the world!” said Tom, quite moved.

“But you shall take it!” said George; “look here – I told Aunt Chloe I’d do it, and she advised me just to make a hole in it, and put a string through, so you could hang it round your neck, and keep it out of sight; else this mean scamp would take it away. I tell ye, Tom, I want to blow him up! it would do me good!”

“No, don’t, Mas’r George, for it won’t do me any good.”

“Well, I won’t, for your sake,” said George, busily tying his dollar round Tom’s neck; “but there, now, button your coat tight over it, and keep it, and remember, every time you see it, that I’ll come down after you, and bring you back. Aunt Chloe and I have been talking about it. I told her not to fear; I’ll see to it, and I’ll tease father’s life out, if he don’t do it.”

“O! Mas’r George, ye must n’t talk so ’bout yer father!”

“Lor, Uncle Tom, I don’t mean anything bad.”

“And now, Mas’r George,” said Tom, “ye must be a good boy; ’member how many hearts is sot on ye. Al’ays keep close to yer mother. Don’t be gettin’ into any of them foolish ways boys has of gettin’ too big to mind their mothers. Tell ye what, Mas’r George, the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don’t give ye a mother but once. Ye ’ll never see sich another woman, Mas’r George, if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her, thar ’s my own good boy, – you will now, won’t ye?”

“Yes, I will, Uncle Tom,” said George, seriously.

“And be careful of yer speaking, Mas’r George. Young boys, when they comes to your age, is wilful, sometimes – it ’s natur they should be. But real gentlemen, such as I hopes you ’ll be, never lets fall no words that is n’t ’spectful to thar parents. Ye an’t ’fended, Mas’r George?”

“No, indeed, Uncle Tom; you always did give me good advice.”

“I ’s older, ye know,” said Tom, stroking the boy’s fine, curly head with his large, strong hand, but speaking in a voice as tender as a woman’s, “and I sees all that ’s bound up in you. O, Mas’r George, you has everything, – l’arnin’, privileges, readin’, writin’, – and you ’ll grow up to be a great, learned, good man, and all the people on the place and your mother and father ’ll be so proud on ye! Be a good Mas’r, like yer father; and be a Christian, like yer mother. ’Member yer Creator in the days o’ yer youth, Mas’r George.”

“I ’ll be real good, Uncle Tom, I tell you,” said George. “I ‘m going to be a first-rater; and don’t you be discouraged. I’ll have you back to the place, yet. As I told Aunt Chloe this morning, I’ll build your house all over, and you shall have a room for a parlor with a carpet on it, when I’m a man. O, you ’ll have good times yet!”

Haley now came to the door, with the handcuffs in his hands.

“Look here, now, Mister,” said George, with an air of great superiority, as he got out, “I shall let father and mother know how you treat Uncle Tom!”

“You ’re welcome,” said the trader.

“I should think you ’d be ashamed to spend all your life buying men and women, and chaining them, like cattle! I should think you ’d feel mean!” said George.

“So long as your grand folks wants to buy men and women, I’m as good as they is,” said Haley; “’tan’t any meaner sellin’ on ’em, than ’t is buyin’!”

“I ’ll never do either, when I’m a man,” said George; “I ’m ashamed, this day, that I’m a Kentuckian. I always was proud of it before;” and George sat very straight on his horse, and looked round with an air, as if he expected the state would be impressed with his opinion.

“Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip[41],” said George.

“Good-by, Mas’r George,” said Tom, looking fondly and admiringly at him. “God Almighty bless you! Ah! Kentucky han’t got many like you!” he said, in the fulness of his heart, as the frank, boyish face was lost to his view. Away he went, and Tom looked, till the clatter of his horse’s heels died away, the last sound or sight of his home. But over his heart there seemed to be a warm spot, where those young hands had placed that precious dollar. Tom put up his hand, and held it close to his heart.

“Now, I tell ye what, Tom,” said Haley, as he came up to the wagon, and threw in the handcuffs, “I mean to start fa’r with ye, as I gen’ally do with my niggers; and I’ll tell ye now, to begin with, you treat me fa’r, and I’ll treat you fa’r; I an’t never hard on my niggers. Calculates to do the best for ’em I can. Now, ye see, you ’d better jest settle down comfortable, and not be tryin’ no tricks; because nigger’s tricks of all sorts I’m up to, and it ’s no use. If niggers is quiet, and don’t try to get off, they has good times with me; and if they don’t, why, it ’s thar fault, and not mine.”

Tom assured Haley that he had no present intentions of running off. In fact, the exhortation seemed rather a superfluous one to a man with a great pair of iron fetters on his feet. But Mr. Haley had got in the habit of commencing his relations with his stock with little exhortations of this nature, calculated, as he deemed, to inspire cheerfulness and confidence, and prevent the necessity of any unpleasant scenes.

And here, for the present, we take our leave of Tom, to pursue the fortunes of other characters in our story.

XI

In Which Property Gets into an Improper State of Mind

It was late in a drizzly afternoon that a traveller alighted at the door of a small country hotel, in the village of N-, in Kentucky. In the bar-room he found assembled quite a miscellaneous company, whom stress of weather had driven to harbor, and the place presented the usual scenery of such reunions. Great, tall, raw-boned Kentuckians, attired in hunting-shirts, and trailing their loose joints over a vast extent of territory, with the easy lounge peculiar to the race, – rifles stacked away in the corner, shot-pouches, game-bags, hunting-dogs, and little negroes, all rolled together in the corners, – were the characteristic features in the picture. At each end of the fireplace sat a long-legged gentleman, with his chair tipped back, his hat on his head, and the heels of his muddy boots reposing sublimely on the mantel-piece, – a position, we will inform our readers, decidedly favorable to the turn of reflection incident to western taverns, where travellers exhibit a decided preference for this particular mode of elevating their understandings.

Mine host, who stood behind the bar, like most of his countrymen, was great of stature, good-natured, and loose-jointed, with an enormous shock of hair on his head, and a great tall hat on the top of that.

In fact, everybody in the room bore on his head this characteristic emblem of man’s sovereignty; whether it were felt hat, palm-leaf, greasy beaver, or fine new chapeau, there it reposed with true republican independence. In truth, it appeared to be the characteristic mark of every individual. Some wore them tipped rakishly to one side – these were your men of humor, jolly, free-and-easy dogs; some had them jammed independently down over their noses – these were your hard characters, thorough men, who, when they wore their hats, wanted to wear them, and to wear them just as they had a mind to; there were those who had them set far over back – wide-awake men, who wanted a clear prospect; while careless men, who did not know, or care, how their hats sat, had them shaking about in all directions. The various hats, in fact, were quite a Shakspearean study.

Divers negroes, in very free-and-easy pantaloons, and with no redundancy in the shirt line, were scuttling about, hither and thither, without bringing to pass any very particular results, except expressing a generic willingness to turn over everything in creation generally for the benefit of Mas’r and his guests. Add to this picture a jolly, crackling, rollicking fire, going rejoicingly up a great wide chimney, – the outer door and every window being set wide open, and the calico windowcurtain flopping and snapping in a good stiff breeze of damp raw air, – and you have an idea of the jollities of a Kentucky tavern.

Your Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the doctrine of transmitted instincts and peculiarities. His fathers were mighty hunters, – men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free, open heavens, with the stars to hold their candles; and their descendant to this day always acts as if the house were his camp, – wears his hat at all hours, tumbles himself about, and puts his heels on the tops of chairs or mantel-pieces, just as his father rolled on the green sward, and put his upon trees and logs, – keeps all the windows and doors open, winter and summer, that he may get air enough for his great lungs, – calls everybody ‘stranger,’ with nonchalant bonhommie, and is altogether the frankest, easiest, most jovial creature living.

Into such an assembly of the free and easy our traveller entered. He was a short, thick-set man, carefully dressed, with a round, good-natured countenance, and something rather fussy and particular in his appearance. He was very careful of his valise and umbrella, bringing them in with his own hands, and resisting, pertinaciously, all offers from the various servants to relieve him of them. He looked round the bar-room with rather an anxious air, and, retreating with his valuables to the warmest corner, disposed them under his chair, sat down, and looked rather apprehensively up at the worthy whose heels illustrated the end of the mantel-piece, who was spitting from right to left, with a courage and energy rather alarming to gentlemen of weak nerves and particular habits.

“I say, stranger, how are ye?” said the aforesaid gentleman, firing an honorary salute of tobacco-juice in the direction of the new arrival.

“Well, I reckon,” was the reply of the other, as he dodged, with some alarm, the threatening honor.

“Any news?” said the respondent, taking out a strip of tobacco and a large hunting-knife from his pocket.

“Not that I know of,” said the man.

“Chaw?” said the first speaker, handing the old gentleman a bit of his tobacco, with a decidedly brotherly air.

“No, thank ye – it don’t agree with me,” said the little man, edging off.

“Don’t, eh?” said the other, easily, and stowing away the morsel in his own mouth, in order to keep up the supply of tobacco-juice, for the general benefit of society.

The old gentleman uniformly gave a little start whenever his long-sided brother fired in his direction; and this being observed by his companion, he very good-naturedly turned his artillery to another quarter, and proceeded to storm one of the fire-irons with a degree of military talent fully sufficient to take a city.

“What ’s that?” said the old gentleman, observing some of the company formed in a group around a large handbill.

“Nigger advertised!” said one of the company, briefly.

Mr. Wilson, for that was the old gentleman’s name, rose up, and, after carefully adjusting his valise and umbrella, proceeded deliberately to take out his spectacles and fix them on his nose; and, this operation being performed, read as follows:

“Ran away from the subscriber, my mulatto boy, George. Said George six feet in height, a very light mulatto, brown curly hair; is very intelligent, speaks handsomely, can read and write; will probably try to pass for a white man; is deeply scarred on his back and shoulders; has been branded in his right hand with the letter H.

I will give four hundred dollars for him alive, and the same sum for satisfactory proof that he has been killed.”

The old gentleman read this advertisement from end to end, in a low voice, as if he were studying it.

The long-legged veteran, who had been besieging the fire-iron, as before related, now took down his cumbrous length, and rearing aloft his tall form, walked up to the advertisement, and very deliberately spit a full discharge of tobacco-juice on it.

“There ’s my mind upon that!” said he, briefly, and sat down again.

“Why, now, stranger, what ’s that for?” said mine host.

“I ’d do it all the same to the writer of that ar paper, if he was here,” said the long man, coolly resuming his old employment of cutting tobacco. “Any man that owns a boy like that, and can’t find any better way o’ treating on him, deserves to lose him. Such papers as these is a shame to Kentucky; that ’s my mind right out, if anybody wants to know!”

“Well, now, that ’s a fact,” said mine host, as he made an entry in his book.

“I ’ve got a gang of boys, sir,” said the long man, resuming his attack on the fire-irons, “and I jest tells ’em – ‘Boys,’ says I, – ‘run now! dig! put! jest when ye want to!

I never shall come to look after you!’ That ’s the way I keep mine. Let ’em know they are free to run any time, and it jest breaks up their wanting to. More ’n all, I’ve got free papers for ’em all recorded, in case I gets keeled up[42] any o’ these times, and they knows it; and I tell ye, stranger, there an’t a fellow in our parts gets more out of his niggers than I do. Why, my boys have been to Cincinnati, with five hundred dollars’ worth of colts, and brought me back the money, all straight, time and agin. It stands to reason they should. Treat ’em like dogs, and you ’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ’em like men, and you ’ll have men’s works.” And the honest drover, in his warmth, endorsed this moral sentiment by firing a perfect feu de joie[43]at the fireplace.

“I think you ’re altogether right, friend,” said Mr. Wilson; “and this boy described here is a fine fellow – no mistake about that. He worked for me some half-dozen years in my bagging factory, and he was my best hand, sir. He is an ingenious fellow, too: he invented a machine for the cleaning of hemp – a really valuable affair; it ’s gone into use in several factories. His master holds the patent of it.”

“I ’ll warrant ye,” said the drover, “holds it and makes money out of it, and then turns round and brands the boy in his right hand. If I had a fair chance, I’d mark him, I reckon, so that he ’d carry it one while.”

“These yer knowin’ boys is allers aggravatin’ and sarcy,” said a coarse-looking fellow, from the other side of the room; “that ’s why they gets cut up and marked so. If they behaved themselves, they would n’t.”

“That is to say, the Lord made ’em men, and it ’s a hard squeeze getting ’em down into beasts,” said the drover, dryly.

“Bright niggers is n’t no kind of ’vantage to their masters,” continued the other, well intrenched, in a coarse, unconscious obtuseness, from the contempt of his opponent; “what ’s the use o’ talents and them things, if you can’t get the use on ’em yourself? Why, all the use they make on ’t is to get round you. I’ve had one or two of these fellers, and I jest sold ’em down river. I knew I’d got to lose ’em, first or last, if I did n’t.”

“Better send orders up to the Lord, to make you a set, and leave out their souls entirely,” said the drover.

Here the conversation was interrupted by the approach of a small one-horse buggy to the inn. It had a genteel appearance, and a well-dressed, gentlemanly man sat on the seat, with a colored servant driving.

The whole party examined the new comer with the interest with which a set of loafers in a rainy day usually examine every new comer. He was very tall, with a dark, Spanish complexion, fine, expressive black eyes, and close-curling hair, also of a glossy blackness. His well-formed aquiline nose, straight thin lips, and the admirable contour of his finely-formed limbs, impressed the whole company instantly with the idea of something uncommon. He walked easily in among the company, and with a nod indicated to his waiter where to place his trunk, bowed to the company, and, with his hat in his hand, walked up leisurely to the bar, and gave in his name as Henry Butler, Oaklands, Shelby County. Turning, with an indifferent air, he sauntered up to the advertisement, and read it over.

“Jim,” he said to his man, “seems to me we met a boy something like this, up at Bernan’s, did n’t we?”

“Yes, Mas’r,” said Jim, “only I an’t sure about the hand.”

“Well, I did n’t look, of course,” said the stranger, with a careless yawn. Then, walking up to the landlord, he desired him to furnish him with a private apartment, as he had some writing to do immediately.

The landlord was all obsequious, and a relay of about seven negroes, old and young, male and female, little and big, were soon whizzing about, like a covey of partridges, bustling, hurrying, treading on each other’s toes, and tumbling over each other, in their zeal to get Mas’r’s room ready, while he seated himself easily on a chair in the middle of the room, and entered into conversation with the man who sat next to him.

The manufacturer, Mr. Wilson, from the time of the entrance of the stranger, had regarded him with an air of disturbed and uneasy curiosity. He seemed to himself to have met and been acquainted with him somewhere, but he could not recollect. Every few moments, when the man spoke, or moved, or smiled, he would start and fix his eyes on him, and then suddenly withdraw them, as the bright, dark eyes met his with such unconcerned coolness. At last, a sudden recollection seemed to flash upon him, for he stared at the stranger with such an air of blank amazement and alarm, that he walked up to him.

“Mr. Wilson, I think,” said he, in a tone of recognition, and extending his hand. “I beg your pardon, I did n’t recollect you before. I see you remember me, – Mr. Butler, of Oaklands, Shelby County.”

“Ye – yes – yes, sir,” said Mr. Wilson, like one speaking in a dream.

Just then a negro boy entered, and announced that Mas’r’s room was ready.

“Jim, see to the trunks,” said the gentleman, negligently; then addressing himself to Mr. Wilson, he added – “I should like to have a few moments’ conversation with you on business, in my room, if you please.”