 | CHAPTER XVIII.
MISS OPHELIA'S EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS. Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly |  |
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
MISS OPHELIA'S EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS.
Our friend Tom, in his own simple musings, often compared
his more fortunate lot, in the bondage into which he was
cast, with that of Joseph in Egypt; and, in fact, as time went
on, and he developed more and more under the eye of his
master, the strength of the parallel increased.
St. Clare was indolent and careless of money. Hitherto
the providing and marketing had been principally done by
Adolph, who was, to the full, as careless and extravagant as
his master; and, between them both, they had carried on the
dispersing process with great alacrity. Accustomed, for many
years, to regard his master's property as his own care, Tom
saw, with an uneasiness he could scarcely repress, the wasteful
expenditure of the establishment; and, in the quiet,
indirect way which his class often acquire, would sometimes
make his own suggestions.
St. Clare at first employed him occasionally; but, struck
with his soundness of mind and good business capacity, he
confided in him more and more, till gradually all the marketing
and providing for the family were intrusted to him.
“No, no, Adolph,” he said, one day, as Adolph was deprecating
the passing of power out of his hands; “let Tom alone.
You only understand what you want; Tom understands cost
and come to; and there may be some end to money, bye
and bye if we don't let somebody do that.”
Trusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who
handed him a bill without looking at it, and pocketed the
change without counting it, Tom had every facility and
temptation to dishonesty; and nothing but an impregnable
simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could
have kept him from it. But, to that nature, the very
unbounded trust reposed in him was bond and seal for the
most scrupulous accuracy.
With Adolph the case had been different. Thoughtless
and self-indulgent, and unrestrained by a master who found
it easier to indulge than to regulate, he had fallen into an
absolute confusion as to meum tuum with regard to himself
and his master, which sometimes troubled even St.
Clare. His own good sense taught him that such a training
of his servants was unjust and dangerous. A sort of chronic
remorse went with him everywhere, although not strong
enough to make any decided change in his course; and this
very remorse reäcted again into indulgence. He passed
lightly over the most serious faults, because he told himself
that, if he had done his part, his dependents had not fallen
into them.
Tom regarded his gay, airy, handsome young master with
an odd mixture of fealty, reverence, and fatherly solicitude.
That he never read the Bible; never went to church; that
he jested and made free with any and every thing that came
in the way of his wit; that he spent his Sunday evenings at
the opera or theatre; that he went to wine parties, and clubs,
and suppers, oftener than was at all expedient, — were all
things that Tom could see as plainly as anybody, and on
which he based a conviction that “Mas'r was n't a Christian;”
— a conviction, however, which he would have been
very slow to express to any one else, but on which he founded
himself in his little dormitory. Not that Tom had not his
own way of speaking his mind occasionally, with something
of the tact often observable in his class; as, for example, the
very day after the Sabbath we have described, St. Clare was
invited out to a convivial party of choice spirits, and was
helped home, between one and two o'clock at night, in a condition
when the physical had decidedly attained the upper
hand of the intellectual. Tom and Adolph assisted to get
him composed for the night, the latter in high spirits, evidently
regarding the matter as a good joke, and laughing
heartily at the rusticity of Tom's horror, who really was simple
enough to lie awake most of the rest of the night, praying
for his young master.
“Well, Tom, what are you waiting for?” said St. Clare,
the next day, as he sat in his library, in dressing-gown and
slippers. St. Clare had just been intrusting Tom with some
money, and various commissions. “Is n't all right there,
Tom?” he added, as Tom still stood waiting.
“I 'm 'fraid not, Mas'r,” said Tom, with a grave face.
St. Clare laid down his paper, and set down his coffee-cup,
and looked at Tom.
“Why, Tom, what 's the case? You look as solemn as a
coffin.”
“I feel very bad, Mas'r. I allays have thought that
Mas'r would be good to everybody.”
“Well, Tom, have n't I been? Come, now, what do you
want? There 's something you have n't got, I suppose, and
this is the preface.”
“Mas'r allays been good to me. I have n't nothing to
complain of, on that head. But there is one that Mas'r is n't
good to.”
“Why, Tom, what 's got into you? Speak out; what do
you mean?”
“Last night, between one and two, I thought so. I
studied upon the matter then. Mas'r is n't good to himself.”
Tom said this with his back to his master, and his hand on
the door-knob. St. Clare felt his face flush crimson, but he
laughed.
“O, that 's all, is it?” he said, gayly.
“All!” said Tom, turning suddenly round and falling on
his knees. “O, my dear young Mas'r! I 'm 'fraid it will
be loss of all — all — body and soul. The good Book says,
`it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder!' my
dear Mas'r!”
Tom's voice choked, and the tears ran down his cheeks.
“You poor, silly fool!” said St. Clare, with tears in his
own eyes. “Get up, Tom. I 'm not worth crying over.”
But Tom would n't rise, and looked imploring.
“Well, I won't go to any more of their cursed nonsense,
Tom,” said St. Clare; “on my honor, I won't. I don't
know why I have n't stopped long ago. I 've always
despised it, and myself for it, — so now, Tom, wipe up your
eyes, and go about your errands. Come, come,” he added,
“no blessings. I 'm not so wonderfully good, now,” he said,
as he gently pushed Tom to the door. “There, I 'll pledge
my honor to you, Tom, you don't see me so again,” he said;
and Tom went off, wiping his eyes, with great satisfaction.
“I 'll keep my faith with him, too,” said St. Clare, as he
closed the door.
And St. Clare did so, — for gross sensualism, in any form,
was not the peculiar temptation of his nature.
But, all this time, who shall detail the tribulations manifold
Southern housekeeper?
There is all the difference in the world in the servants of
Southern establishments, according to the character and
capacity of the mistresses who have brought them up.
South as well as north, there are women who have an
extraordinary talent for command, and tact in educating.
Such are enabled, with apparent ease, and without severity,
to subject to their will, and bring into harmonious and systematic
order, the various members of their small estate, — to
regulate their peculiarities, and so balance and compensate
the deficiencies of one by the excess of another, as to produce
a harmonious and orderly system.
Such a housekeeper was Mrs. Shelby, whom we have
already described; and such our readers may remember to
have met with. If they are not common at the South, it is
because they are not common in the world. They are to be
found there as often as anywhere; and, when existing, find in
that peculiar state of society a brilliant opportunity to exhibit
their domestic talent.
Such a housekeeper Marie St. Clare was not, nor her
mother before her. Indolent and childish, unsystematic and
improvident, it was not to be expected that servants trained
under her care should not be so likewise; and she had very
justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion she
would find in the family, though she had not ascribed it to
the proper cause.
The first morning of her regency, Miss Ophelia was up at
four o'clock; and having attended to all the adjustments of
her own chamber, as she had done ever since she came there,
to the great amazement of the chamber-maid, she prepared
establishment of which she had the keys.
The store-room, the linen-presses, the china-closet, the
kitchen and cellar, that day, all went under an awful review.
Hidden things of darkness were brought to light to an extent
that alarmed all the principalities and powers of kitchen and
chamber, and caused many wonderings and murmurings
about “dese yer northern ladies” from the domestic cabinet.
Old Dinah, the head cook, and principal of all rule and
authority in the kitchen department, was filled with wrath at
what she considered an invasion of privilege. No feudal
baron in Magna Charta times could have more thoroughly
resented some incursion of the crown.
Dinah was a character in her own way, and it would be
injustice to her memory not to give the reader a little idea of
her. She was a native and essential cook, as much as Aunt
Chloe, — cooking being an indigenous talent of the African
race; but Chloe was a trained and methodical one, who
moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a
self-taught genius, and, like geniuses in general, was positive,
opinionated and erratic, to the last degree.
Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly
scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always
took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly
impregnable. No possible amount of talent, or authority, or
explanation, could ever make her believe that any other way
was better than her own, or that the course she had pursued
in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This
had been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's
mother; and “Miss Marie,” as Dinah always called her
young mistress, even after her marriage, found it easier to
submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme.
diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner
with the utmost inflexibility as to measure.
Dinah was mistress of the whole art and mystery of
excuse-making, in all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom
with her that the cook can do no wrong; and a cook in a
Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and shoulders on
which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain her
own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a
failure, there were fifty indisputably good reasons for it; and
it was the fault undeniably of fifty other people, whom Dinah
berated with unsparing zeal.
But it was very seldom that there was any failure in
Dinah's last results. Though her mode of doing everything
was peculiarly meandering and circuitous, and without any
sort of calculation as to time and place, — though her kitchen
generally looked as if it had been arranged by a hurricane
blowing through it, and she had about as many places for
each cooking utensil as there were days in the year, — yet, if
one would have patience to wait her own good time, up would
come her dinner in perfect order, and in a style of preparation
with which an epicure could find no fault.
It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner.
Dinah, who required large intervals of reflection and repose,
and was studious of ease in all her arrangements, was seated
on the kitchen floor, smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which
she was much addicted, and which she always kindled up, as
a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of an inspiration
in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking the
domestic Muses.
Seated around her were various members of that rising
race with which a Southorn household abounds, engaged in
fowls, and other preparatory arrangements, — Dinah every
once in a while interrupting her meditations to give a poke,
or a rap on the head, to some of the young operators, with
the pudding-stick that lay by her side. In fact, Dinah ruled
over the woolly heads of the younger members with a rod of
iron, and seemed to consider them born for no earthly purpose
but to “save her steps,” as she phrased it. It was the
spirit of the system under which she had grown up, and she
carried it out to its full extent.
Miss Ophelia, after passing on her reformatory tour through
all the other parts of the establishment, now entered the
kitchen. Dinah had heard, from various sources, what was
going on, and resolved to stand on defensive and conservative
ground, — mentally determined to oppose and ignore every
new measure, without any actual and observable contest.
The kitchen was a large brick-floored apartment, with a
great old-fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of
it, — an arrangement which St. Clare had vainly tried to
persuade Dinah to exchange for the convenience of a modern
cook-stove. Not she. No Puseyite, or conservative of any
school, was ever more inflexibly attached to time-honored
inconveniencies than Dinah.
When St. Clare had first returned from the north, impressed
with the system and order of his uncle's kitchen
arrangements, he had largely provided his own with an array
of cupboards, drawers, and various apparatus, to induce
systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion that it
would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her arrangements.
He might as well have provided them for a squirrel
or a magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the
more hiding-holes could Dinah make for the accommodation
flowers, and other articles of vertu, wherein her soul
delighted.
When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen, Dinah did not
rise, but smoked on in sublime tranquillity, regarding her
movements obliquely out of the corner of her eye, but
apparently intent only on the operations around her.
Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.
“What is this drawer for, Dinah?” she said.
“It 's handy for most anything, Missis,” said Dinah. So
it appeared to be. From the variety it contained, Miss
Ophelia pulled out first a fine damask table-cloth stained
with blood, having evidently been used to envelop some raw
meat.
“What 's this, Dinah? You don't wrap up meat in your
mistress' best table-cloths?”
“O Lor, Missis, no; the towels was all a missin', — so I
jest did it. I laid out to wash that ar, — that 's why I put it
thar.”
“Shif'less!” said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to
tumble over the drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater
and two or three nutmegs, a Methodist hymn-book, a couple
of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn and knitting-work,
a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or two
gilded china-saucers with some pomade in them, one or two
thin old shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing
some small white onions, several damask table-napkins,
some coarse crash towels, some twine and darning-needles,
and several broken papers, from which sundry sweet herbs
were sifting into the drawer.
“Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?” said Miss
Ophelia, with the air of one who prayed for patience.
“Most anywhar, Missis; there 's some in that cracked tea-cup,
up there, and there 's some over in that ar cupboard.”
“Here are some in the grater,” said Miss Ophelia, holding
them up.
“Laws, yes, I put 'em there this morning, — I likes to
keep my things handy,” said Dinah. “You, Jake! what
are you stopping for! You 'll cotch it! Be still, thar!”
she added, with a dive of her stick at the criminal.
“What 's this?” said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer
of pomade.
“Laws, it 's my har grease; — I put it thar to have it
handy.”
“Do you use your mistress' best saucers for that?”
“Law! it was cause I was driv, and in sich a hurry; —
I was gwine to change it this very day.”
“Here are two damask table-napkins.”
“Them table-napkins I put thar, to get 'em washed out,
some day.”
“Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to
be washed?”
“Well, Mas'r St. Clare got dat ar chest, he said, for dat;
but I likes to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some
days, and then it an't handy a liftin' up the lid.”
“Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table,
there?”
“Law, Missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing
and another, der an't no room, noways —”
“But you should wash your dishes, and clear them away.”
“Wash my dishes!” said Dinah, in a high key, as her
wrath began to rise over her habitual respect of manner;
“what does ladies know 'bout work, I want to know?
When 'd Mas'r ever get his dinner, if I was to spend all my
telled me so, nohow.”
“Well, here are these onions.”
“Laws, yes!” said Dinah; “thar is whar I put 'em, now.
I could n't 'member. Them 's particular onions I was a
savin' for dis yer very stew. I 'd forgot they was in dat
ar old flannel.”
Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs.
“I wish Missis would n't touch dem ar. I likes to keep
my things where I knows whar to go to 'em,” said Dinah,
rather decidedly.
“But you don't want these holes in the papers.”
“Them 's handy for siftin' on 't out,” said Dinah.
“But you see it spills all over the drawer.”
“Laws, yes! if Missis will go a tumblin' things all up so,
it will. Missis has spilt lots dat ar way,” said Dinah, coming
uneasily to the drawers. “If Missis only will go up stars
till my clarin' up time comes, I 'll have everything right; but
I can't do nothin' when ladies is round, a henderin'. You,
Sam, don't you gib the baby dat ar sugar-bowl! I 'll crack
ye over, if ye don't mind!”
“I 'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything
in order, once, Dinah; and then I 'll expect you to keep
it so.”
“Lor, now! Miss Phelia; dat ar an't no way for ladies to
do. I never did see ladies doin' no sich; my old Missis nor
Miss Marie never did, and I don't see no kinder need on 't;”
and Dinah stalked indignantly about, while Miss Ophelia
piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of scattering bowls of
sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins, table-cloths, and
towels, for washing; washing, wiping, and arranging with
amazed Dinah.
“Lor, now! if dat ar de way dem northern ladies do, dey
an't ladies, nohow,” she said to some of her satellites, when
at a safe hearing distance. “I has things as straight as
anybody, when my clarin' up time comes; but I don't want
ladies round, a henderin', and getting my things all where I
can't find 'em.”
To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxysms
of reformation and arrangement, which she called “clarin' up
times,” when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every
drawer and closet wrong side outward, on to the floor or
tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded.
Then she would light her pipe, and leisurely go
over her arrangements, looking things over, and discoursing
upon them; making all the young fry scour most vigorously
on the tin things, and keeping up for several hours a most
energetic state of confusion, which she would explain to the
satisfaction of all inquirers, by the remark that she was a
“clarin' up.” “She could n't hev things a gwine on so as
they had been, and she was gwine to make these yer young
ones keep better order;” for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged
the illusion that she, herself, was the soul of order, and it
was only the young uns, and the everybody else in the house,
that were the cause of anything that fell short of perfection
in this respect. When all the tins were scoured, and the tables
scrubbed snowy white, and everything that could offend
tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress
herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant
Madras turban, and tell all marauding “young uns” to keep
out of the kitchen, for she was gwine to have things kept
nice. Indeed, these periodic seasons were often an inconvenience
such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin, as to insist
upon it that it should n't be used again for any possible purpose,
— at least, till the ardor of the “clarin' up” period
abated.
Miss Ophelia, in a few days, thoroughly reformed every
department of the house to a systematic pattern; but her
labors in all departments that depended on the coöperation of
servants were like those of Sisyphus or the Danaides. In
despair, she one day appealed to St. Clare.
“There is no such thing as getting anything like system
in this family!”
“To be sure, there is n't,” said St. Clare.
“Such shiftless management, such waste, such confusion,
I never saw!”
“I dare say you did n't.”
“You would not take it so coolly, if you were housekeeper.”
“My dear cousin, you may as well understand, once for
all, that we masters are divided into two classes, oppressors
and oppressed. We who are good-natured and hate severity
make up our minds to a good deal of inconvenience. If we
will keep a shambling, loose, untaught set in the community,
for our convenience, why, we must take the consequence.
Some rare cases I have seen, of persons, who,
by a peculiar tact, can produce order and system without
severity; but I 'm not one of them, — and so I made up my
mind, long ago, to let things go just as they do. I will not
have the poor devils thrashed and cut to pieces, and they
know it, — and, of course, they know the staff is in their own
hands.”
“But to have no time, no place, no order, — all going on
in this shiftless way!”
“My dear Vermont, you natives up by the North Pole set
an extravagant value on time! What on earth is the use of
time to a fellow who has twice as much of it as he knows
what to do with? As to order and system, where there is
nothing to be done but to lounge on the sofa and read, an
hour sooner or later in breakfast or dinner is n't of much
account. Now, there 's Dinah gets you a capital dinner, —
soup, ragout, roast fowl, dessert, ice-creams and all, — and she
creates it all out of chaos and old night down there, in that
kitchen. I think it really sublime, the way she manages.
But, Heaven bless us! if we are to go down there, and view
all the smoking and squatting about, and hurryscurryation
of the preparatory process, we should never eat more! My
good cousin, absolve yourself from that! It 's more than a
Catholic penance, and does no more good. You 'll only lose
your own temper, and utterly confound Dinah. Let her go
her own way.”
“But, Augustine, you don't know how I found things.”
“Don't I? Don't I know that the rolling-pin is under
her bed, and the nutmeg-grater in her pocket with her
tobacco, — that there are sixty-five different sugar-bowls, one in
every hole in the house, — that she washes dishes with a dinner-napkin
one day, and with a fragment of an old petticoat the
next? But the upshot is, she gets up glorious dinners, makes
superb coffee; and you must judge her as warriors and statesmen
are judged, by her success.”
“But the waste, — the expense!”
“O, well! Lock everything you can, and keep the key.
Give out by driblets, and never inquire for odds and ends,
— it is n't best.”
“That troubles me, Augustine. I can't help feeling as if
these servants were not strictly honest. Are you sure they
can be relied on?”
Augustine laughed immoderately at the grave and anxious
face with which Miss Ophelia propounded the question.
“O, cousin, that 's too good, — honest! — as if that 's a
thing to be expected! Honest! — why, of course, they
arn't. Why should they be? What upon earth is to make
them so?”
“Why don't you instruct?”
“Instruct! O, fiddlestick! What instructing do you
think I should do? I look like it! As to Marie, she has
spirit enough, to be sure, to kill off a whole plantation, if I 'd
let her manage; but she would n't get the cheatery out of
them.”
“Are there no honest ones?”
“Well, now and then one, whom Nature makes so impracticably
simple, truthful and faithful, that the worst possible
influence can't destroy it. But, you see, from the mother's
breast the colored child feels and sees that there are none but
underhand ways open to it. It can get along no other way
with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie play-fellows.
Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable
habits. It is n't fair to expect anything else of him. He
ought not to be punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is
kept in that dependent, semi-childish state, that there is
no making him realize the rights of property, or feel that his
master's goods are not his own, if he can get them. For my
part, I don't see how they can be honest. Such a fellow as
Tom, here, is — is a moral miracle!”
“And what becomes of their souls?” said Miss Ophelia.
“That is n't my affair, as I know of,” said St. Clare; “I
that the whole race are pretty generally understood to be
turned over to the devil, for our benefit, in this world, however
it may turn out in another!”
“This is perfectly horrible!” said Miss Ophelia; “you
ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”
“I don't know as I am. We are in pretty good company,
for all that,” said St. Clare, “as people in the broad road
generally are. Look at the high and the low, all the world
over, and it 's the same story, — the lower class used up,
body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper. It is so in
England; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom
stands aghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do the
thing in a little different shape from what they do it.”
“It is n't so in Vermont.”
“Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you
have the better of us, I grant. But there 's the bell; so,
Cousin, let us for a while lay aside our sectional prejudices,
and come out to dinner.”
As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of
the afternoon, some of the sable children called out, “La,
sakes! thar 's Prue a coming, grunting along like she allers
does.”
A tall, bony colored woman now entered the kitchen,
bearing on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls.
“Ho, Prue! you 've come,” said Dinah.
Prue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance,
and a sullen, grumbling voice. She set down her basket,
squatted herself down, and resting her elbows on her knees
said,
“O Lord! I wish 't I 's dead!”
“Why do you wish you were dead?” said Miss Ophelia.
“I 'd be out o' my misery,” said the woman, gruffly, without
taking her eyes from the floor.
“What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up,
Prue?” said a spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as
she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.
The woman looked at her with a sour, surly glance.
“Maybe you 'll come to it, one of these yer days. I 'd be
glad to see you, I would; then you 'll be glad of a drop, like
me, to forget your misery.”
“Come, Prue,” said Dinah, “let 's look at your rusks.
Here 's Missis will pay for them.”
Miss Ophelia took out a couple of dozen.
“Thar 's some tickets in that ar old cracked jug on the
top shelf,” said Dinah. “You, Jake, climb up and get it
down.”
“Tickets, — what are they for?” said Miss Ophelia.
“We buys tickets of her Mas'r, and she gives us bread for
'em.”
“And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets
home, to see if I 's got the change; and if I han't, they half
kills me.”
“And serves you right,” said Jane, the pert chambermaid,
“if you will take their money to get drunk on. That 's
what she does, Missis.”
“And that 's what I will do, — I can't live no other ways,
— drink and forget my misery.”
“You are very wicked and very foolish,” said Miss
Ophelia, “to steal your master's money to make yourself a
brute with.”
“It 's mighty likely, Missis; but I will do it, — yes, I
will. O Lord! I wish I 's dead, I do, — I wish I 's dead, and
out of my misery!” and slowly and stiffly the old creature
went out, she looked at the quadroon girl, who still stood playing
with her ear-drops.
“Ye think ye 're mighty fine with them ar, a frolickin'
and a tossin' your head, and a lookin' down on everybody.
Well, never mind, — you may live to be a poor, old, cut-up
crittur, like me. Hope to the Lord ye will, I do; then see if
ye won't drink, — drink, — drink, — yerself into torment; and
sarve ye right, too — ugh!” and, with a malignant howl, the
woman left the room.
“Disgusting old beast!” said Adolph, who was getting his
master's shaving-water. “If I was her master, I 'd cut her
up worse than she is.”
“Ye could n't do that ar, no ways,” said Dinah. “Her
back 's a far sight now, — she can't never get a dress together
over it.”
“I think such low creatures ought not to be allowed to go
round to genteel families,” said Miss Jane. “What do you
think, Mr. St. Clare?” she said, coquettishly tossing her
head at Adolph.
It must be observed that, among other appropriations from
his master's stock, Adolph was in the habit of adopting his
name and address; and that the style under which he moved,
among the colored circles of New Orleans, was that of Mr.
St. Clare.
“I 'm certainly of your opinion, Miss Benoir,” said
Adolph.
Benoir was the name of Marie St. Clare's family, and
Jane was one of her servants.
“Pray, Miss Benoir, may I be allowed to ask if those
drops are for the ball, to-morrow night? They are certainly
bewitching!”
“I wonder, now, Mr. St. Clare, what the impudence of
you men will come to!” said Jane, tossing her pretty head till
the ear-drops twinkled again. “I shan't dance with you
for a whole evening, if you go to asking me any more questions.”
“O, you could n't be so cruel, now! I was just dying to
know whether you would appear in your pink tarletane,”
said Adolph.
“What is it?” said Rosa, a bright, piquant little quadroon,
who came skipping down stairs at this moment.
“Why, Mr. St. Clare 's so impudent!”
“On my honor,” said Adolph, “I 'll leave it to Miss
Rosa, now.”
“I know he 's always a saucy creature,” said Rosa, poising
herself on one of her little feet, and looking maliciously
at Adolph. “He 's always getting me so angry with him.”
“O! ladies, ladies, you will certainly break my heart,
between you,” said Adolph. “I shall be found dead in my
bed, some morning, and you 'll have it to answer for.”
“Do hear the horrid creature talk!” said both ladies,
laughing immoderately.
“Come, — clar out, you! I can't have you cluttering up
the kitchen,” said Dinah; “in my way, foolin' round here.”
“Aunt Dinah 's glum, because she can't go to the ball,”
said Rosa.
“Don't want none o' your light-colored balls,” said
Dinah; “cuttin' round, makin' b'lieve you 's white folks.
Arter all, you 's niggers, much as I am.”
“Aunt Dinah greases her wool stiff, every day, to make it
lie straight,” said Jane.
“And it will be wool, after all,” said Rosa, maliciously
shaking down her long, silky curls.
“Well, in the Lord's sight, an't wool as good as har, any
time?” said Dinah. “I 'd like to have Missis say which is
worth the most, — a couple such as you, or one like me.
Get out wid ye, ye trumpery, — I won't have ye round!”
Here the conversation was interrupted in a two-fold manner.
St. Clare's voice was heard at the head of the stairs,
asking Adolph if he meant to stay all night with his shaving-water;
and Miss Ophelia, coming out of the dining-room,
said,
“Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here?
Go in and attend to your muslins.”
Our friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the
conversation with the old rusk-woman, had followed her out
into the street. He saw her go on, giving every once in a
while a suppressed groan. At last she set her basket down
on a door-step, and began arranging the old, faded shawl
which covered her shoulders.
“I 'll carry your basket a piece,” said Tom, compassionately.
“Why should ye?” said the woman. “I don't want no
help.”
“You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin',” said
Tom.
“I an't sick,” said the woman, shortly.
“I wish,” said Tom, looking at her earnestly, — “I wish I
could persuade you to leave off drinking. Don't you know
it will be the ruin of ye, body and soul?”
“I knows I 'm gwine to torment,” said the woman, sullenly.
“Ye don't need to tell me that ar. I 's ugly, —
I 's wicked, — I 's gwine straight to torment. O, Lord! I
wish I 's thar!”
Tom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a
sullen, impassioned earnestness.
“O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han't ye
never heard of Jesus Christ?”
“Jesus Christ, — who 's he?”
“Why, he 's the Lord,” said Tom.
“I think I 've hearn tell o' the Lord, and the judgment
and torment. I 've heard o' that.”
“But did n't anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus,
that loved us poor sinners, and died for us?”
“Don't know nothin' 'bout that,” said the woman; “nobody
han't never loved me, since my old man died.”
“Where was you raised?” said Tom.
“Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil'en for
market, and sold 'em as fast as they got big enough; last of
all, he sold me to a speculator, and my Mas'r got me o'
him.”
“What set you into this bad way of drinkin'?”
“To get shet o' my misery. I had one child after I come
here; and I thought then I 'd have one to raise, cause Mas'r
was n't a speculator. It was de peartest little thing! and
Missis she seemed to think a heap on 't, at first; it never
cried, — it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck sick, and I
tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me,
and the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis would n't
buy milk for it. She would n't hear to me, when I telled
her I had n't milk. She said she knowed I could feed it
on what other folks eat; and the child kinder pined, and
cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got all gone to
skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it, and she said
't wan't nothin' but crossness. She wished it was dead, she
said; and she would n't let me have it o' nights, cause, she
made me sleep in her room; and I had to put it away off in a
little kind o' garret, and thar it cried itself to death, one
night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin', to keep its crying out
of my ears! I did, — and I will drink! I will, if I do go to
torment for it! Mas'r says I shall go to torment, and I tell
him I 've got thar now!”
“O, ye poor crittur!” said Tom, “han't nobody never
telled ye how the Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye?
Han't they telled ye that he 'll help ye, and ye can go to
heaven, and have rest, at last?”
“I looks like gwine to heaven,” said the woman; “an't
thar where white folks is gwine? S'pose they 'd have me
thar? I 'd rather go to torment, and get away from Mas'r
and Missis. I had so,” she said, as, with her usual groan,
she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.
Tom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house.
In the court he met little Eva, — a crown of tuberoses on
her head, and her eyes radiant with delight.
“O, Tom! here you are. I 'm glad I 've found you.
Papa says you may get out the ponies, and take me in my
little new carriage,” she said, catching his hand. “But
what 's the matter, Tom? — you look sober.”
“I feel bad, Miss Eva,” said Tom, sorrowfully. “But
I 'll get the horses for you.”
“But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you
talking to cross old Prue.”
Tom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman's
history. She did not exclaim, or wonder, or weep, as other
children do. Her cheeks grew pale, and a deep, earnest
shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both hands on her
bosom, and sighed heavily.
| CHAPTER XVIII.
MISS OPHELIA'S EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS. Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly | |