Uncle Tom\'s Cabin

H >> Harriet Beecher Stowe >> Uncle Tom\'s Cabin


On the present occasion, Mrs. Bird rose quickly, with very red cheeks,
which quite improved her general appearance, and walked up to her
husband, with quite a resolute air, and said, in a determined tone,

"Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and
Christian?"

"You won't shoot me, now, Mary, if I say I do!"

"I never could have thought it of you, John; you didn't vote for it?"

"Even so, my fair politician."

"You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures!
It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one,
the first time I get a chance; and I hope I _shall_ have a chance, I do!
Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper
and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and
have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!"

"But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear,
and interesting, and I love you for them; but, then, dear, we mustn't
suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider
it's a matter of private feeling,--there are great public interests
involved,--there is such a state of public agitation rising, that we
must put aside our private feelings."

"Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my
Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow."

"But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil--"

"Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can't. It's always
safest, all round, to _do as He_ bids us.

"Now, listen to me, Mary, and I can state to you a very clear argument,
to show--"

"O, nonsense, John! you can talk all night, but you wouldn't do it.
I put it to you, John,--would _you_ now turn away a poor, shivering,
hungry creature from your door, because he was a runaway? _Would_ you,
now?"

Now, if the truth must be told, our senator had the misfortune to be
a man who had a particularly humane and accessible nature, and turning
away anybody that was in trouble never had been his forte; and what was
worse for him in this particular pinch of the argument was, that
his wife knew it, and, of course was making an assault on rather an
indefensible point. So he had recourse to the usual means of gaining
time for such cases made and provided; he said "ahem," and coughed
several times, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began to wipe his
glasses. Mrs. Bird, seeing the defenceless condition of the enemy's
territory, had no more conscience than to push her advantage.

"I should like to see you doing that, John--I really should! Turning a
woman out of doors in a snowstorm, for instance; or may be you'd take
her up and put her in jail, wouldn't you? You would make a great hand at
that!"

"Of course, it would be a very painful duty," began Mr. Bird, in a
moderate tone.

"Duty, John! don't use that word! You know it isn't a duty--it can't be
a duty! If folks want to keep their slaves from running away, let 'em
treat 'em well,--that's my doctrine. If I had slaves (as I hope I never
shall have), I'd risk their wanting to run away from me, or you either,
John. I tell you folks don't run away when they are happy; and when
they do run, poor creatures! they suffer enough with cold and hunger and
fear, without everybody's turning against them; and, law or no law, I
never will, so help me God!"

"Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you."

"I hate reasoning, John,--especially reasoning on such subjects. There's
a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain
right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to
practice. I know _you_ well enough, John. You don't believe it's right
any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I."

At this critical juncture, old Cudjoe, the black man-of-all-work,
put his head in at the door, and wished "Missis would come into the
kitchen;" and our senator, tolerably relieved, looked after his little
wife with a whimsical mixture of amusement and vexation, and, seating
himself in the arm-chair, began to read the papers.

After a moment, his wife's voice was heard at the door, in a quick,
earnest tone,--"John! John! I do wish you'd come here, a moment."

He laid down his paper, and went into the kitchen, and started, quite
amazed at the sight that presented itself:--A young and slender woman,
with garments torn and frozen, with one shoe gone, and the stocking torn
away from the cut and bleeding foot, was laid back in a deadly swoon
upon two chairs. There was the impress of the despised race on her face,
yet none could help feeling its mournful and pathetic beauty, while its
stony sharpness, its cold, fixed, deathly aspect, struck a solemn chill
over him. He drew his breath short, and stood in silence. His wife,
and their only colored domestic, old Aunt Dinah, were busily engaged in
restorative measures; while old Cudjoe had got the boy on his knee, and
was busy pulling off his shoes and stockings, and chafing his little
cold feet.

"Sure, now, if she an't a sight to behold!" said old Dinah,
compassionately; "'pears like 't was the heat that made her faint.
She was tol'able peart when she cum in, and asked if she couldn't warm
herself here a spell; and I was just a-askin' her where she cum from,
and she fainted right down. Never done much hard work, guess, by the
looks of her hands."

"Poor creature!" said Mrs. Bird, compassionately, as the woman slowly
unclosed her large, dark eyes, and looked vacantly at her. Suddenly an
expression of agony crossed her face, and she sprang up, saying, "O, my
Harry! Have they got him?"

The boy, at this, jumped from Cudjoe's knee, and running to her side put
up his arms. "O, he's here! he's here!" she exclaimed.

"O, ma'am!" said she, wildly, to Mrs. Bird, "do protect us! don't let
them get him!"

"Nobody shall hurt you here, poor woman," said Mrs. Bird, encouragingly.
"You are safe; don't be afraid."

"God bless you!" said the woman, covering her face and sobbing; while
the little boy, seeing her crying, tried to get into her lap.

With many gentle and womanly offices, which none knew better how to
render than Mrs. Bird, the poor woman was, in time, rendered more calm.
A temporary bed was provided for her on the settle, near the fire; and,
after a short time, she fell into a heavy slumber, with the child,
who seemed no less weary, soundly sleeping on her arm; for the mother
resisted, with nervous anxiety, the kindest attempts to take him from
her; and, even in sleep, her arm encircled him with an unrelaxing clasp,
as if she could not even then be beguiled of her vigilant hold.

Mr. and Mrs. Bird had gone back to the parlor, where, strange as it
may appear, no reference was made, on either side, to the preceding
conversation; but Mrs. Bird busied herself with her knitting-work, and
Mr. Bird pretended to be reading the paper.

"I wonder who and what she is!" said Mr. Bird, at last, as he laid it
down.

"When she wakes up and feels a little rested, we will see," said Mrs.
Bird.

"I say, wife!" said Mr. Bird after musing in silence over his newspaper.

"Well, dear!"

"She couldn't wear one of your gowns, could she, by any letting down, or
such matter? She seems to be rather larger than you are."

A quite perceptible smile glimmered on Mrs. Bird's face, as she
answered, "We'll see."

Another pause, and Mr. Bird again broke out,

"I say, wife!"

"Well! What now?"

"Why, there's that old bombazin cloak, that you keep on purpose to
put over me when I take my afternoon's nap; you might as well give her
that,--she needs clothes."

At this instant, Dinah looked in to say that the woman was awake, and
wanted to see Missis.

Mr. and Mrs. Bird went into the kitchen, followed by the two eldest
boys, the smaller fry having, by this time, been safely disposed of in
bed.

The woman was now sitting up on the settle, by the fire. She was looking
steadily into the blaze, with a calm, heart-broken expression, very
different from her former agitated wildness.

"Did you want me?" said Mrs. Bird, in gentle tones. "I hope you feel
better now, poor woman!"

A long-drawn, shivering sigh was the only answer; but she lifted her
dark eyes, and fixed them on her with such a forlorn and imploring
expression, that the tears came into the little woman's eyes.

"You needn't be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman!
Tell me where you came from, and what you want," said she.

"I came from Kentucky," said the woman.

"When?" said Mr. Bird, taking up the interogatory.

"Tonight."

"How did you come?"

"I crossed on the ice."

"Crossed on the ice!" said every one present.

"Yes," said the woman, slowly, "I did. God helping me, I crossed on the
ice; for they were behind me--right behind--and there was no other way!"

"Law, Missis," said Cudjoe, "the ice is all in broken-up blocks, a
swinging and a tetering up and down in the water!"

"I know it was--I know it!" said she, wildly; "but I did it! I wouldn't
have thought I could,--I didn't think I should get over, but I didn't
care! I could but die, if I didn't. The Lord helped me; nobody knows
how much the Lord can help 'em, till they try," said the woman, with a
flashing eye.

"Were you a slave?" said Mr. Bird.

"Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky."

"Was he unkind to you?"

"No, sir; he was a good master."

"And was your mistress unkind to you?"

"No, sir--no! my mistress was always good to me."

"What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and go
through such dangers?"

The woman looked up at Mrs. Bird, with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and
it did not escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.

"Ma'am," she said, suddenly, "have you ever lost a child?"

The question was unexpected, and it was thrust on a new wound; for it
was only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid in
the grave.

Mr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst
into tears; but, recovering her voice, she said,

"Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one."

"Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another,--left
'em buried there when I came away; and I had only this one left. I
never slept a night without him; he was all I had. He was my comfort and
pride, day and night; and, ma'am, they were going to take him away from
me,--to _sell_ him,--sell him down south, ma'am, to go all alone,--a
baby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I couldn't
stand it, ma'am. I knew I never should be good for anything, if they
did; and when I knew the papers the papers were signed, and he was sold,
I took him and came off in the night; and they chased me,--the man that
bought him, and some of Mas'r's folks,--and they were coming down right
behind me, and I heard 'em. I jumped right on to the ice; and how I got
across, I don't know,--but, first I knew, a man was helping me up the
bank."

The woman did not sob nor weep. She had gone to a place where tears
are dry; but every one around her was, in some way characteristic of
themselves, showing signs of hearty sympathy.

The two little boys, after a desperate rummaging in their pockets, in
search of those pocket-handkerchiefs which mothers know are never to
be found there, had thrown themselves disconsolately into the skirts of
their mother's gown, where they were sobbing, and wiping their eyes and
noses, to their hearts' content;--Mrs. Bird had her face fairly hidden
in her pocket-handkerchief; and old Dinah, with tears streaming down her
black, honest face, was ejaculating, "Lord have mercy on us!" with all
the fervor of a camp-meeting;--while old Cudjoe, rubbing his eyes very
hard with his cuffs, and making a most uncommon variety of wry faces,
occasionally responded in the same key, with great fervor. Our senator
was a statesman, and of course could not be expected to cry, like other
mortals; and so he turned his back to the company, and looked out of the
window, and seemed particularly busy in clearing his throat and wiping
his spectacle-glasses, occasionally blowing his nose in a manner that
was calculated to excite suspicion, had any one been in a state to
observe critically.

"How came you to tell me you had a kind master?" he suddenly exclaimed,
gulping down very resolutely some kind of rising in his throat, and
turning suddenly round upon the woman.

"Because he _was_ a kind master; I'll say that of him, any way;--and my
mistress was kind; but they couldn't help themselves. They were owing
money; and there was some way, I can't tell how, that a man had a hold
on them, and they were obliged to give him his will. I listened, and
heard him telling mistress that, and she begging and pleading for
me,--and he told her he couldn't help himself, and that the papers were
all drawn;--and then it was I took him and left my home, and came away.
I knew 't was no use of my trying to live, if they did it; for 't 'pears
like this child is all I have."

"Have you no husband?"

"Yes, but he belongs to another man. His master is real hard to him,
and won't let him come to see me, hardly ever; and he's grown harder and
harder upon us, and he threatens to sell him down south;--it's like I'll
never see _him_ again!"

The quiet tone in which the woman pronounced these words might have led
a superficial observer to think that she was entirely apathetic; but
there was a calm, settled depth of anguish in her large, dark eye, that
spoke of something far otherwise.

"And where do you mean to go, my poor woman?" said Mrs. Bird.

"To Canada, if I only knew where that was. Is it very far off, is
Canada?" said she, looking up, with a simple, confiding air, to Mrs.
Bird's face.

"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Bird, involuntarily.

"Is 't a very great way off, think?" said the woman, earnestly.

"Much further than you think, poor child!" said Mrs. Bird; "but we will
try to think what can be done for you. Here, Dinah, make her up a bed in
your own room, close by the kitchen, and I'll think what to do for her
in the morning. Meanwhile, never fear, poor woman; put your trust in
God; he will protect you."

Mrs. Bird and her husband reentered the parlor. She sat down in her
little rocking-chair before the fire, swaying thoughtfully to and fro.
Mr. Bird strode up and down the room, grumbling to himself, "Pish!
pshaw! confounded awkward business!" At length, striding up to his wife,
he said,

"I say, wife, she'll have to get away from here, this very night. That
fellow will be down on the scent bright and early tomorrow morning: if
't was only the woman, she could lie quiet till it was over; but that
little chap can't be kept still by a troop of horse and foot, I'll
warrant me; he'll bring it all out, popping his head out of some window
or door. A pretty kettle of fish it would be for me, too, to be caught
with them both here, just now! No; they'll have to be got off tonight."

"Tonight! How is it possible?--where to?"

"Well, I know pretty well where to," said the senator, beginning to put
on his boots, with a reflective air; and, stopping when his leg was half
in, he embraced his knee with both hands, and seemed to go off in deep
meditation.

"It's a confounded awkward, ugly business," said he, at last, beginning
to tug at his boot-straps again, "and that's a fact!" After one boot
was fairly on, the senator sat with the other in his hand, profoundly
studying the figure of the carpet. "It will have to be done, though, for
aught I see,--hang it all!" and he drew the other boot anxiously on, and
looked out of the window.

Now, little Mrs. Bird was a discreet woman,--a woman who never in her
life said, "I told you so!" and, on the present occasion, though pretty
well aware of the shape her husband's meditations were taking, she very
prudently forbore to meddle with them, only sat very quietly in her
chair, and looked quite ready to hear her liege lord's intentions, when
he should think proper to utter them.

"You see," he said, "there's my old client, Van Trompe, has come over
from Kentucky, and set all his slaves free; and he has bought a place
seven miles up the creek, here, back in the woods, where nobody goes,
unless they go on purpose; and it's a place that isn't found in a hurry.
There she'd be safe enough; but the plague of the thing is, nobody could
drive a carriage there tonight, but _me_."

"Why not? Cudjoe is an excellent driver."

"Ay, ay, but here it is. The creek has to be crossed twice; and the
second crossing is quite dangerous, unless one knows it as I do. I have
crossed it a hundred times on horseback, and know exactly the turns to
take. And so, you see, there's no help for it. Cudjoe must put in the
horses, as quietly as may be, about twelve o'clock, and I'll take her
over; and then, to give color to the matter, he must carry me on to the
next tavern to take the stage for Columbus, that comes by about three or
four, and so it will look as if I had had the carriage only for that.
I shall get into business bright and early in the morning. But I'm
thinking I shall feel rather cheap there, after all that's been said and
done; but, hang it, I can't help it!"

"Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John," said the
wife, laying her little white hand on his. "Could I ever have loved you,
had I not known you better than you know yourself?" And the little
woman looked so handsome, with the tears sparkling in her eyes, that
the senator thought he must be a decidedly clever fellow, to get such a
pretty creature into such a passionate admiration of him; and so, what
could he do but walk off soberly, to see about the carriage. At the
door, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he said, with
some hesitation.

"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer
full of things--of--of--poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned
quickly on his heel, and shut the door after him.

His wife opened the little bed-room door adjoining her room and, taking
the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small
recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer,
and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy like, had followed
close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at
their mother. And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in
your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you
like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are,
if it has not been so.

Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many a
form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even
a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping
from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a
ball,--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She
sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it, wept
till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly
raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest
and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle.

"Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "you going to
give away _those_ things?"

"My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear, loving
little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do
this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common
person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more
heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his
blessings with them!"

There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into
joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears,
are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate
and the distressed. Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by
the lamp, dropping slow tears, while she prepares the memorials of her
own lost one for the outcast wanderer.

After a while, Mrs. Bird opened a wardrobe, and, taking from thence a
plain, serviceable dress or two, she sat down busily to her work-table,
and, with needle, scissors, and thimble, at hand, quietly commenced the
"letting down" process which her husband had recommended, and continued
busily at it till the old clock in the corner struck twelve, and she
heard the low rattling of wheels at the door.

"Mary," said her husband, coming in, with his overcoat in his hand, "you
must wake her up now; we must be off."

Mrs. Bird hastily deposited the various articles she had collected in a
small plain trunk, and locking it, desired her husband to see it in
the carriage, and then proceeded to call the woman. Soon, arrayed in
a cloak, bonnet, and shawl, that had belonged to her benefactress, she
appeared at the door with her child in her arms. Mr. Bird hurried her
into the carriage, and Mrs. Bird pressed on after her to the carriage
steps. Eliza leaned out of the carriage, and put out her hand,--a hand
as soft and beautiful as was given in return. She fixed her large, dark
eyes, full of earnest meaning, on Mrs. Bird's face, and seemed going
to speak. Her lips moved,--she tried once or twice, but there was no
sound,--and pointing upward, with a look never to be forgotten, she
fell back in the seat, and covered her face. The door was shut, and the
carriage drove on.

What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the
week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more
stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and
abettors!

Our good senator in his native state had not been exceeded by any of his
brethren at Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for them
immortal renown! How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets,
and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare
of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests!

He was as bold as a lion about it, and "mightily convinced" not only
himself, but everybody that heard him;--but then his idea of a fugitive
was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,--or at the most,
the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle
with "Ran away from the subscriber" under it. The magic of the real
presence of distress,--the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling
human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,--these he had never
tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother,
a defenceless child,--like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's
little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or
steel,--as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,--he
was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism. And you
need not exult over him, good brother of the Southern States; for we
have some inklings that many of you, under similar circumstances,
would not do much better. We have reason to know, in Kentucky, as in
Mississippi, are noble and generous hearts, to whom never was tale of
suffering told in vain. Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect
of us services which your own brave, honorable heart would not allow you
to render, were you in our place?

Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in
a fair way to expiate it by his night's penance. There had been a long
continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of Ohio, as
every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud--and the
road was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.

"And pray, what sort of a road may that be?" says some eastern
traveller, who has been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad,
but those of smoothness or speed.

Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the
west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made
of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over
in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to
hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway
essayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time, the rains wash off
all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs hither and thither, in
picturesque positions, up, down and crosswise, with divers chasms and
ruts of black mud intervening.

Over such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making
moral reflections as continuously as under the circumstances could be
expected,--the carriage proceeding along much as follows,--bump! bump!
bump! slush! down in the mud!--the senator, woman and child, reversing
their positions so suddenly as to come, without any very accurate
adjustment, against the windows of the down-hill side. Carriage sticks
fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among
the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as
the senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights
itself with a bounce,--two front wheels go down into another abyss,
and senator, woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the
front seat,--senator's hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite
unceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished;--child
cries, and Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the
horses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining under repeated
cracks of the whip. Carriage springs up, with another bounce,--down go
the hind wheels,--senator, woman, and child, fly over on to the back
seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being jammed
into his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few moments the
"slough" is passed, and the horses stop, panting;--the senator finds
his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet and hushes her child, and they
brace themselves for what is yet to come.