Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 24

by Harriet Beecher Stowe


  Was this what Marie St. Clare was thinking of, as she stood, gorgeously dressed, on the verandah, on Sunday morning, clasping a diamond bracelet on her slender wrist? Most likely it was. Or, if it wasn’t that, it was something else; for Marie patronized good things, and she was going now, in full force, — diamonds, silk, and lace, and jewels, and all, — to a fashionable church, to be very religious. Marie always made a point to be very pious on Sundays. There she stood, so slender, so elegant, so airy and undulating in all her motions, her lace scarf enveloping her like a mist. She looked a graceful creature, and she felt very good and very elegant indeed. Miss Ophelia stood at her side, a perfect contrast. It was not that she had not as handsome a silk dress and shawl, and as fine a pocket-handkerchief; but stiffness and squareness, and bolt-uprightness, enveloped her with as indefinite yet appreciable a presence as did grace her elegant neighbor; not the grace of God, however, — that is quite another thing!

  “Where’s Eva?” said Marie.

  “The child stopped on the stairs, to say something to Mammy.”

  And what was Eva saying to Mammy on the stairs? Listen, reader, and you will hear, though Marie does not.

  “Dear Mammy, I know your head is aching dreadfully.”

  “Lord bless you, Miss Eva! my head allers aches lately. You don’t need to worry.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re going out; and here,” — and the little girl threw her arms around her,—”Mammy, you shall take my vinaigrette.”

  “What! your beautiful gold thing, thar, with them diamonds! Lor, Miss, ‘t wouldn’t be proper, no ways.”

  “Why not? You need it, and I don’t. Mamma always uses it for headache, and it’ll make you feel better. No, you shall take it, to please me, now.”

  “Do hear the darlin talk!” said Mammy, as Eva thrust it into her bosom, and kissing her, ran down stairs to her mother.

  “What were you stopping for?”

  “I was just stopping to give Mammy my vinaigrette, to take to church with her.”

  “Eva” said Marie, stamping impatiently,—”your gold vinaigrette to Mammy! When will you learn what’s proper? Go right and take it back this moment!”

  Eva looked downcast and aggrieved, and turned slowly.

  “I say, Marie, let the child alone; she shall do as she pleases,” said St. Clare.

  “St. Clare, how will she ever get along in the world?” said Marie.

  “The Lord knows,” said St. Clare, “but she’ll get along in heaven better than you or I.”

  “O, papa, don’t,” said Eva, softly touching his elbow; “it troubles mother.”

  “Well, cousin, are you ready to go to meeting?” said Miss Ophelia, turning square about on St. Clare.

  “I’m not going, thank you.”

  “I do wish St. Clare ever would go to church,” said Marie; “but he hasn’t a particle of religion about him. It really isn’t respectable.”

  “I know it,” said St. Clare. “You ladies go to church to learn how to get along in the world, I suppose, and your piety sheds respectability on us. If I did go at all, I would go where Mammy goes; there’s something to keep a fellow awake there, at least.”

  “What! those shouting Methodists? Horrible!” said Marie.

  “Anything but the dead sea of your respectable churches, Marie. Positively, it’s too much to ask of a man. Eva, do you like to go? Come, stay at home and play with me.”

  “Thank you, papa; but I’d rather go to church.”

  “Isn’t it dreadful tiresome?” said St. Clare.

  “I think it is tiresome, some,” said Eva, “and I am sleepy, too, but I try to keep awake.”

  “What do you go for, then?”

  “Why, you know, papa,” she said, in a whisper, “cousin told me that God wants to have us; and he gives us everything, you know; and it isn’t much to do it, if he wants us to. It isn’t so very tiresome after all.”

  “You sweet, little obliging soul!” said St. Clare, kissing her; “go along, that’s a good girl, and pray for me.”

  “Certainly, I always do,” said the child, as she sprang after her mother into the carriage.

  St. Clare stood on the steps and kissed his hand to her, as the carriage drove away; large tears were in his eyes.

  “O, Evangeline! rightly named,” he said; “hath not God made thee an evangel to me?”

  So he felt a moment; and then he smoked a cigar, and read the Picayune, and forgot his little gospel. Was he much unlike other folks?

  “You see, Evangeline,” said her mother, “it’s always right and proper to be kind to servants, but it isn’t proper to treat them just as we would our relations, or people in our own class of life. Now, if Mammy was sick, you wouldn’t want to put her in your own bed.”

  “I should feel just like it, mamma,” said Eva, “because then it would be handier to take care of her, and because, you know, my bed is better than hers.”

  Marie was in utter despair at the entire want of moral perception evinced in this reply.

  “What can I do to make this child understand me?” she said.

  “Nothing,” said Miss Ophelia, significantly.

  Eva looked sorry and disconcerted for a moment; but children, luckily, do not keep to one impression long, and in a few moments she was merrily laughing at various things which she saw from the coach-windows, as it rattled along.

  “Well, ladies,” said St. Clare, as they were comfortably seated at the dinner-table, “and what was the bill of fare at church today?”

  “O, Dr. G —— preached a splendid sermon,” said Marie. “It was just such a sermon as you ought to hear; it expressed all my views exactly.”

  “It must have been very improving,” said St. Clare. “The subject must have been an extensive one.”

  “Well, I mean all my views about society, and such things,” said Marie. “The text was, ‘He hath made everything beautiful in its season;’ and he showed how all the orders and distinctions in society came from God; and that it was so appropriate, you know, and beautiful, that some should be high and some low, and that some were born to rule and some to serve, and all that, you know; and he applied it so well to all this ridiculous fuss that is made about slavery, and he proved distinctly that the Bible was on our side, and supported all our institutions so convincingly. I only wish you’d heard him.”

  “O, I didn’t need it,” said St. Clare. “I can learn what does me as much good as that from the Picayune, any time, and smoke a cigar besides; which I can’t do, you know, in a church.”

  “Why,” said Miss Ophelia, “don’t you believe in these views?”

  “Who, — I? You know I’m such a graceless dog that these religious aspects of such subjects don’t edify me much. If I was to say anything on this slavery matter, I would say out, fair and square, ‘We’re in for it; we’ve got ‘em, and mean to keep ‘em, — it’s for our convenience and our interest;’ for that’s the long and short of it, — that’s just the whole of what all this sanctified stuff amounts to, after all; and I think that it will be intelligible to everybody, everywhere.”

  “I do think, Augustine, you are so irreverent!” said Marie. “I think it’s shocking to hear you talk.”

  “Shocking! it’s the truth. This religious talk on such matters, — why don’t they carry it a little further, and show the beauty, in its season, of a fellow’s taking a glass too much, and sitting a little too late over his cards, and various providential arrangements of that sort, which are pretty frequent among us young men; — we’d like to hear that those are right and godly, too.”

  “Well,” said Miss Ophelia, “do you think slavery right or wrong?”

  “I’m not going to have any of your horrid New England directness, cousin,” said St. Clare, gayly. “If I answer that question, I know you’ll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I’m not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I ne
ver mean to put up one for them to stone.”

  “That’s just the way he’s always talking,” said Marie; “you can’t get any satisfaction out of him. I believe it’s just because he don’t like religion, that he’s always running out in this way he’s been doing.”

  “Religion!” said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at him. “Religion! Is what you hear at church, religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”

  “Then you don’t believe that the Bible justifies slavery,” said Miss Ophelia.

  “The Bible was my mother’s book,” said St. Clare. “By it she lived and died, and I would be very sorry to think it did. I’d as soon desire to have it proved that my mother could drink brandy, chew tobacco, and swear, by way of satisfying me that I did right in doing the same. It wouldn’t make me at all more satisfied with these things in myself, and it would take from me the comfort of respecting her; and it really is a comfort, in this world, to have anything one can respect. In short, you see,” said he, suddenly resuming his gay tone, “all I want is that different things be kept in different boxes. The whole frame-work of society, both in Europe and America, is made up of various things which will not stand the scrutiny of any very ideal standard of morality. It’s pretty generally understood that men don’t aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world. Now, when any one speaks up, like a man, and says slavery is necessary to us, we can’t get along without it, we should be beggared if we give it up, and, of course, we mean to hold on to it, — this is strong, clear, well-defined language; it has the respectability of truth to it; and, if we may judge by their practice, the majority of the world will bear us out in it. But when he begins to put on a long face, and snuffle, and quote Scripture, I incline to think he isn’t much better than he should be.”

  “You are very uncharitable,” said Marie.

  “Well,” said St. Clare, “suppose that something should bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don’t you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the church, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that everything in the Bible and reason went the other way!”

  “Well, at any rate,” said Marie, as she reclined herself on a lounge, “I’m thankful I’m born where slavery exists; and I believe it’s right, — indeed, I feel it must be; and, at any rate, I’m sure I couldn’t get along without it.”

  “I say, what do you think, Pussy?” said her father to Eva, who came in at this moment, with a flower in her hand.

  “What about, papa?”

  “Why, which do you like the best, — to live as they do at your uncle’s, up in Vermont, or to have a house-full of servants, as we do?”

  “O, of course, our way is the pleasantest,” said Eva.

  “Why so?” said St. Clare, stroking her head.

  “Why, it makes so many more round you to love, you know,” said Eva, looking up earnestly.

  “Now, that’s just like Eva,” said Marie; “just one of her odd speeches.”

  “Is it an odd speech, papa?” said Eva, whisperingly, as she got upon his knee.

  “Rather, as this world goes, Pussy,” said St. Clare. “But where has my little Eva been, all dinner-time?”

  “O, I’ve been up in Tom’s room, hearing him sing, and Aunt Dinah gave me my dinner.”

  “Hearing Tom sing, hey?”

  “O, yes! he sings such beautiful things about the New Jerusalem, and bright angels, and the land of Canaan.”

  “I dare say; it’s better than the opera, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and he’s going to teach them to me.”

  “Singing lessons, hey? — you are coming on.”

  “Yes, he sings for me, and I read to him in my Bible; and he explains what it means, you know.”

  “On my word,” said Marie, laughing, “that is the latest joke of the season.”

  “Tom isn’t a bad hand, now, at explaining Scripture, I’ll dare swear,” said St. Clare. “Tom has a natural genius for religion. I wanted the horses out early, this morning, and I stole up to Tom’s cubiculum there, over the stables, and there I heard him holding a meeting by himself; and, in fact, I haven’t heard anything quite so savory as Tom’s prayer, this some time. He put in for me, with a zeal that was quite apostolic.”

  “Perhaps he guessed you were listening. I’ve heard of that trick before.”

  “If he did, he wasn’t very polite; for he gave the Lord his opinion of me, pretty freely. Tom seemed to think there was decidedly room for improvement in me, and seemed very earnest that I should be converted.”

  “I hope you’ll lay it to heart,” said Miss Ophelia.

  “I suppose you are much of the same opinion,” said St. Clare. “Well, we shall see, — shan’t we, Eva?”

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Freeman’s Defence

  There was a gentle bustle at the Quaker house, as the afternoon drew to a close. Rachel Halliday moved quietly to and fro, collecting from her household stores such needments as could be arranged in the smallest compass, for the wanderers who were to go forth that night. The afternoon shadows stretched eastward, and the round red sun stood thoughtfully on the horizon, and his beams shone yellow and calm into the little bed-room where George and his wife were sitting. He was sitting with his child on his knee, and his wife’s hand in his. Both looked thoughtful and serious and traces of tears were on their cheeks.

  “Yes, Eliza,” said George, “I know all you say is true. You are a good child, — a great deal better than I am; and I will try to do as you say. I’ll try to act worthy of a free man. I’ll try to feel like a Christian. God Almighty knows that I’ve meant to do well, — tried hard to do well, — when everything has been against me; and now I’ll forget all the past, and put away every hard and bitter feeling, and read my Bible, and learn to be a good man.”

  “And when we get to Canada,” said Eliza, “I can help you. I can do dress-making very well; and I understand fine washing and ironing; and between us we can find something to live on.”

  “Yes, Eliza, so long as we have each other and our boy. O! Eliza, if these people only knew what a blessing it is for a man to feel that his wife and child belong to him! I’ve often wondered to see men that could call their wives and children their own fretting and worrying about anything else. Why, I feel rich and strong, though we have nothing but our bare hands. I feel as if I could scarcely ask God for any more. Yes, though I’ve worked hard every day, till I am twenty-five years old, and have not a cent of money, nor a roof to cover me, nor a spot of land to call my own, yet, if they will only let me alone now, I will be satisfied, — thankful; I will work, and send back the money for you and my boy. As to my old master, he has been paid five times over for all he ever spent for me. I don’t owe him anything.”

  “But yet we are not quite out of danger,” said Eliza; “we are not yet in Canada.”

  “True,” said George, “but it seems as if I smelt the free air, and it makes me strong.”

  At this moment, voices were heard in the outer apartment, in earnest conversation, and very soon a rap was heard on the door. Eliza started and opened it.

  Simeon Halliday was there, and with him a Quaker brother, whom he introduced as Phineas Fletcher. Phineas was tall and lathy, red-haired, with an expression of great acuteness and shrewdness in his face. He had not the placid, quiet, unworldly air of Simeon Halliday; on the contrary, a particularly wide-awake and au fait appearance, like a man who rather prides himself on knowing what he is about, and keeping a bright lookout ahead; peculiarities which sorted rather oddly with h
is broad brim and formal phraseology.

  “Our friend Phineas hath discovered something of importance to the interests of thee and thy party, George,” said Simeon; “it were well for thee to hear it.”

  “That I have,” said Phineas, “and it shows the use of a man’s always sleeping with one ear open, in certain places, as I’ve always said. Last night I stopped at a little lone tavern, back on the road. Thee remembers the place, Simeon, where we sold some apples, last year, to that fat woman, with the great ear-rings. Well, I was tired with hard driving; and, after my supper I stretched myself down on a pile of bags in the corner, and pulled a buffalo over me, to wait till my bed was ready; and what does I do, but get fast asleep.”

  “With one ear open, Phineas?” said Simeon, quietly.

  “No; I slept, ears and all, for an hour or two, for I was pretty well tired; but when I came to myself a little, I found that there were some men in the room, sitting round a table, drinking and talking; and I thought, before I made much muster, I’d just see what they were up to, especially as I heard them say something about the Quakers. ‘So,’ says one, ‘they are up in the Quaker settlement, no doubt,’ says he. Then I listened with both ears, and I found that they were talking about this very party. So I lay and heard them lay off all their plans. This young man, they said, was to be sent back to Kentucky, to his master, who was going to make an example of him, to keep all niggers from running away; and his wife two of them were going to run down to New Orleans to sell, on their own account, and they calculated to get sixteen or eighteen hundred dollars for her; and the child, they said, was going to a trader, who had bought him; and then there was the boy, Jim, and his mother, they were to go back to their masters in Kentucky. They said that there were two constables, in a town a little piece ahead, who would go in with ’em to get ’em taken up, and the young woman was to be taken before a judge; and one of the fellows, who is small and smooth-spoken, was to swear to her for his property, and get her delivered over to him to take south. They’ve got a right notion of the track we are going tonight; and they’ll be down after us, six or eight strong. So now, what’s to be done?”

 

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