University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
DARK PLACES.

Trailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder
road, Tom and his associates faced onward.

In the wagon was seated Simon Legree; and the two
women, still fettered together, were stowed away with some
baggage in the back part of it, and the whole company were
seeking Legree's plantation, which lay a good distance off.

It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary
pine barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully, and now
over log causeways, through long cypress swamps, the
doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy ground, hung
with long wreaths of funereal black moss, while ever and
anon the loathsome form of the moccasin snake might be seen
sliding among broken stumps and shattered branches that lay
here and there, rotting in the water.

It is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger, who,
with well-filled pocket and well-appointed horse, threads the
lonely way on some errand of business; but wilder, drearier,
to the man enthralled, whom every weary step bears further
from all that man loves and prays for.

So one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken
and dejected expression on those dark faces; the wistful,
patient weariness with which those sad eyes rested on object
after object that passed them in their sad journey.

Simon rode on, however, apparently well pleased, occasionally
pulling away at a flask of spirit, which he kept in his
pocket.

“I say, you!” he said, as he turned back and caught a
glance at the dispirited faces behind him! “Strike up a
song, boys, — come!”

The men looked at each other, and the “come” was
repeated, with a smart crack of the whip which the driver
carried in his hands. Tom began a Methodist hymn,

“Shut up, you black cuss!” roared Legree; “did ye think
I wanted any o' yer infernal old Methodism? I say, tune
up, now, something real rowdy, — quick!”

One of the other men struck up one of those unmeaning
songs, common among the slaves.

The singer appeared to make up the song to his own
pleasure, generally hitting on rhyme, without much attempt
at reason; and all the party took up the chorus, at intervals,

It was sung very boisterously, and with a forced attempt
at merriment; but no wail of despair, no words of impassioned
prayer, could have had such a depth of woe in them
as the wild notes of the chorus. As if the poor, dumb heart,
threatened, — prisoned, — took refuge in that inarticulate sanctuary
of music, and found there a language in which to
breathe its prayer to God! There was a prayer in it, which
Simon could not hear. He only heard the boys singing
noisily, and was well pleased; he was making them “keep
up their spirits.”

“Well, my little dear,” said he, turning to Emmeline, and
laying his hand on her shoulder, “we 're almost home!”

When Legree scolded and stormed, Emmeline was terrified;
but when he laid his hand on her, and spoke as he now
did, she felt as if she had rather he would strike her. The
expression of his eyes made her soul sick, and her flesh creep.
Involuntarily she clung closer to the mulatto woman by her
side, as if she were her mother.

“You did n't ever wear ear-rings,” he said, taking hold
of her small ear with his coarse fingers.

“No, Mas'r!” said Emmeline, trembling and looking
down.

“Well, I'll give you a pair, when we get home, if you 're
a good girl. You need n't be so frightened; I don't mean to
make you work very hard. You 'll have fine times with me,
and live like a lady, — only be a good girl.”

Legree had been drinking to that degree that he was
inclining to be very gracious; and it was about this time that
the enclosures of the plantation rose to view. The estate had
formerly belonged to a gentleman of opulence and taste, who
had bestowed some considerable attention to the adornment
of his grounds. Having died insolvent, it had been purchased,
at a bargain, by Legree, who used it, as he did everything
else, merely as an implement for money-making. The
place had that ragged, forlorn appearance, which is always
produced by the evidence that the care of the former owner
has been left to go to utter decay.

What was once a smooth-shaven lawn before the house,
dotted here and there with ornamental shrubs, was now
covered with frowsy tangled grass, with horse-posts set up,
here and there, in it, where the turf was stamped away, and the
ground littered with broken pails, cobs of corn, and other slovenly
remains. Here and there, a mildewed jessamine or honeysuckle
hung raggedly from some ornamental support, which
had been pushed to one side by being used as a horse-post.
What once was a large garden was now all grown over with
weeds, through which, here and there, some solitary exotic
reared its forsaken head. What had been a conservatory
had now no window-sashes, and on the mouldering shelves
stood some dry, forsaken flower-pots, with sticks in them,
whose dried leaves showed they had once been plants.

The wagon rolled up a weedy gravel walk, under a noble
avenue of China trees, whose graceful forms and ever-springing
foliage seemed to be the only things there that
neglect could not daunt or alter, — like noble spirits, so deeply
rooted in goodness, as to flourish and grow stronger amid
discouragement and decay.

The house had been large and handsome. It was built in

a manner common at the South; a wide verandah of two
stories running round every part of the house, into which
every outer door opened, the lower tier being supported by
brick pillars.

But the place looked desolate and uncomfortable; some
windows stopped up with boards, some with shattered panes,
and shutters hanging by a single hinge, — all telling of coarse
neglect and discomfort.

Bits of board, straw, old decayed barrels and boxes, garnished
the ground in all directions; and three or four ferocious-looking
dogs, roused by the sound of the wagon-wheels,
came tearing out, and were with difficulty restrained from
laying hold of Tom and his companions, by the effort of the
ragged servants who came after them.

“Ye see what ye 'd get!” said Legree, caressing the dogs
with grim satisfaction, and turning to Tom and his companions.
“Ye see what ye 'd get, if ye try to run off. These yer
dogs has been raised to track niggers; and they 'd jest as
soon chaw one on ye up as eat their supper. So, mind yerself!
How now, Sambo!” he said, to a ragged fellow, without
any brim to his hat, who was officious in his attentions.
“How have things been going?”

“Fust rate, Mas'r.”

“Quimbo,” said Legree to another, who was making zealous
demonstrations to attract his attention, “ye minded what
I telled ye?”

“Guess I did, did n't I?”

These two colored men were the two principal hands on
the plantation. Legree had trained them in savageness and
brutality as systematically as he had his bull-dogs; and, by
long practice in hardness and cruelty, brought their whole
nature to about the same range of capacities. It is a common

remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly
against the character of the race, that the negro overseer is
always more tyrannical and cruel than the white one. This
is simply saying that the negro mind has been more crushed
and debased than the white. It is no more true of this race
than of every oppressed race, the world over. The slave is
always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.

Legree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed
his plantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and
Quimbo cordially hated each other; the plantation hands, one
and all, cordially hated them; and, by playing off one against
another, he was pretty sure, through one or the other of the
three parties, to get informed of whatever was on foot in the
place.

Nobody can live entirely without social intercourse; and
Legree encouraged his two black satellites to a kind of coarse
familiarity with him, — a familiarity, however, at any
moment liable to get one or the other of them into trouble;
for, on the slightest provocation, one of them always stood
ready, at a nod, to be a minister of his vengeance on the other.

As they stood there now by Legree, they seemed an apt
illustration of the fact that brutal men are lower even than
animals. Their coarse, dark, heavy features; their great eyes,
rolling enviously on each other; their barbarous, guttural,
half-brute intonation; their dilapidated garments fluttering in
the wind, — were all in admirable keeping with the vile and
unwholesome character of everything about the place.

“Here, you Sambo,” said Legree, “take these yer boys
down to the quarters; and here 's a gal I 've got for you,”
said he, as he separated the mulatto woman from Emmeline,
and pushed her towards him; — “I promised to bring you one,
you know.”

The woman gave a sudden start, and, drawing back, said,
suddenly,

“O, Mas'r! I left my old man in New Orleans.”

“What of that, you —; won't you want one here?
None o' your words, — go long!” said Legree, raising his
whip.

“Come, mistress,” he said to Emmeline, “you go in here
with me.”

A dark, wild face was seen, for a moment, to glance at
the window of the house; and, as Legree opened the door, a
female voice said something, in a quick, imperative tone.
Tom, who was looking, with anxious interest, after Emmeline,
as she went in, noticed this, and heard Legree answer,
angrily, “You may hold your tongue! I 'll do as I please,
for all you!”

Tom heard no more; for he was soon following Sambo to
the quarters. The quarters was a little sort of street of rude
shanties, in a row, in a part of the plantation, far off from the
house. They had a forlorn, brutal, forsaken air. Tom's heart
sunk when he saw them. He had been comforting himself
with the thought of a cottage, rude, indeed, but one which
he might make neat and quiet, and where he might have a
shelf for his Bible, and a place to be alone out of his laboring
hours. He looked into several; they were mere rude shells,
destitute of any species of furniture, except a heap of straw,
foul with dirt, spread confusedly over the floor, which was
merely the bare ground, trodden hard by the tramping of
innumerable feet.

“Which of these will be mine?” said he, to Sambo, submissively.

“Dunno; ken turn in here, I spose,” said Sambo;
“spects thar 's room for another thar; thar 's a pretty smart

heap o' niggers to each on 'em, now; sure, I dunno what I 's
to do with more.”

It was late in the evening when the weary occupants of
the shanties came flocking home, — men and women, in soiled
and tattered garments, surly and uncomfortable, and in no
mood to look pleasantly on new-comers. The small village
was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices contending
at the hand-mills where their morsel of hard corn
was yet to be ground into meal, to fit it for the cake that
was to constitute their only supper. From the earliest dawn
of the day, they had been in the fields, pressed to work under
the driving lash of the overseers; for it was now in the very
heat and hurry of the season, and no means was left untried to
press every one up to the top of their capabilities. “True,”
says the negligent lounger; “picking cotton is n't hard work.”
Is n't it? And it is n't much inconvenience, either, to
have one drop of water fall on your head; yet the worst
torture of the inquisition is produced by drop after drop, drop
after drop, falling moment after moment, with monotonous
succession, on the same spot; and work, in itself not hard,
becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying,
unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of freewill
to take from its tediousness. Tom looked in vain among
the gang, as they poured along, for companionable faces. He
saw only sullen, scowling, imbruted men, and feeble, discouraged
women, or women that were not women, — the
strong pushing away the weak, — the gross, unrestricted animal
selfishness of human beings, of whom nothing good was
expected and desired; and who, treated in every way like
brutes, had sunk as nearly to their level as it was possible for
human beings to do. To a late hour in the night the sound

of the grinding was protracted; for the mills were few in
number compared with the grinders, and the weary and
feeble ones were driven back by the strong, and came on last
in their turn.

“Ho yo!” said Sambo, coming to the mulatto woman,
and throwing down a bag of corn before her; “what a cuss
yo name?”

“Lucy,” said the woman.

“Wal, Lucy, yo my woman now. Yo grind dis yer corn,
and get my supper baked, ye har?”

“I an't your woman, and I won't be!” said the woman,
with the sharp, sudden courage of despair; “you go long!”

“I 'll kick yo, then!” said Sambo, raising his foot threateningly.

“Ye may kill me, if ye choose, — the sooner the better!
Wish't I was dead!” said she.

“I say, Sambo, you go to spilin' the hands, I 'll tell Mas'r
o' you,” said Quimbo, who was busy at the mill, from which
he had viciously driven two or three tired women, who were
waiting to grind their corn.

“And I 'll tell him ye won't let the women come to the
mills, yo old nigger!” said Sambo. “Yo jes keep to yo own
row.”

Tom was hungry with his day's journey, and almost faint
for want of food.

“Thar, yo!” said Quimbo, throwing down a coarse bag,
which contained a peck of corn; “thar, nigger, grab, take car
on 't, — yo won't get no more, dis yer week.”

Tom waited till a late hour, to get a place at the mills; and
then, moved by the utter weariness of two women, whom he
saw trying to grind their corn there, he ground for them, put
together the decaying brands of the fire, where many had

baked cakes before them, and then went about getting his
own supper. It was a new kind of work there, — a deed of
charity, small as it was; but it woke an answering touch in
their hearts, — an expression of womanly kindness came over
their hard faces; they mixed his cake for him, and tended its
baking; and Tom sat down by the light of the fire, and drew
out his Bible, — for he had need of comfort.

“What 's that?” said one of the women.

“A Bible,” said Tom.

“Good Lord! han't seen un since I was in Kentuck.”

“Was you raised in Kentuck?” said Tom, with interest.

“Yes, and well raised, too; never 'spected to come to dis
yer!” said the woman, sighing.

“What 's dat ar book, any way?” said the other woman.

“Why, the Bible.”

“Laws a me! what 's dat?” said the woman.

“Do tell! you never hearn on 't?” said the other woman.
“I used to har Missis a readin' on't, sometimes, in Kentuck;
but, laws o' me! we don't har nothin' here but crackin' and
swarin'.”

“Read a piece, anyways!” said the first woman, curiously,
seeing Tom attentively poring over it.

Tom read, — “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Them 's good words, enough,” said the woman; “who
says 'em?”

“The Lord,” said Tom.

“I jest wish I know'd whar to find Him,” said the woman.
“I would go; 'pears like I never should get rested agin.
My flesh is fairly sore, and I tremble all over, every day, and
Sambo 's allers a jawin' at me, 'cause I does n't pick faster;
and nights it 's most midnight 'fore I can get my supper; and

den 'pears like I don't turn over and shut my eyes, 'fore I
hear de horn blow to get up, and at it agin in de mornin'.
If I knew whar de Lor was, I 'd tell him.”

“He 's here, he 's everywhere,” said Tom.

“Lor, you an't gwine to make me believe dat ar! I know
de Lord an't here,” said the woman; “'t an't no use talking,
though. I 's jest gwine to camp down, and sleep while I
ken.”

The women went off to their cabins, and Tom sat alone, by
the smouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.

The silver, fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and
looked down, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of
misery and oppression, — looked calmly on the lone black
man, as he sat, with his arms folded, and his Bible on his knee.

“Is God HERE?” Ah, how is it possible for the untaught
heart to keep its faith, unswerving, in the face of dire misrule,
and palpable, unrebuked injustice? In that simple heart
waged a fierce conflict: the crushing sense of wrong, the foreshadowing
of a whole life of future misery, the wreck of all
past hopes, mournfully tossing in the soul's sight, like dead
corpses of wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark
wave, and surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner!
Ah, was it easy here to believe and hold fast the great password
of Christian faith, that “God IS, and is the REWARDER
of them that diligently seek Him”?

Tom rose, disconsolate, and stumbled into the cabin that
had been allotted to him. The floor was already strewn with
weary sleepers, and the foul air of the place almost repelled
him; but the heavy night-dews were chill, and his limbs
weary, and, wrapping about him a tattered blanket, which
formed his only bed-clothing, he stretched himself in the
straw and fell asleep.

In dreams, a gentle voice came over his ear; he was sitting
on the mossy seat in the garden by Lake Pontchartrain, and
Eva, with her serious eyes bent downward, was reading to
him from the Bible; and he heard her read,

“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with
thee, and the rivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou
walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither
shall the flame kindle upon thee; for I am the Lord thy God,
the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.”

Gradually the words seemed to melt and fade, as in a
divine music; the child raised her deep eyes, and fixed them
lovingly on him, and rays of warmth and comfort seemed to
go from them to his heart; and, as if wafted on the music,
she seemed to rise on shining wings, from which flakes and
spangles of gold fell off like stars, and she was gone.

Tom woke. Was it a dream? Let it pass for one. But
who shall say that that sweet young spirit, which in life so
yearned to comfort and console the distressed, was forbidden
of God to assume this ministry after death?