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Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin
Or, Life Among the Lowly

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 3

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4

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CHAPTER XX

Topsy


One morning, while Miss Ophelia was busy in some of her domestic cares,
St. Clare's voice was heard, calling her at the foot of the stairs.

"Come down here, Cousin, I've something to show you."

"What is it?" said Miss Ophelia, coming down, with her sewing in her
hand.

"I've made a purchase for your department,--see here," said St. Clare;
and, with the word, he pulled along a little negro girl, about eight or
nine years of age.

She was one of the blackest of her race; and her round shining eyes,
glittering as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances over
everything in the room. Her mouth, half open with astonishment at the
wonders of the new Mas'r's parlor, displayed a white and brilliant set
of teeth. Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails, which
stuck out in every direction. The expression of her face was an odd
mixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly drawn, like a
kind of veil, an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity.
She was dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and
stood with her hands demurely folded before her. Altogether, there was
something odd and goblin-like about her appearance,--something, as Miss
Ophelia afterwards said, "so heathenish," as to inspire that good lady
with utter dismay; and turning to St. Clare, she said,

"Augustine, what in the world have you brought that thing here for?"

"For you to educate, to be sure, and train in the way she should go.
I thought she was rather a funny specimen in the Jim Crow line. Here,
Topsy," he added, giving a whistle, as a man would to call the attention
of a dog, "give us a song, now, and show us some of your dancing."

The black, glassy eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and the
thing struck up, in a clear shrill voice, an odd negro melody, to which
she kept time with her hands and feet, spinning round, clapping her
hands, knocking her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of
time, and producing in her throat all those odd guttural sounds which
distinguish the native music of her race; and finally, turning a
summerset or two, and giving a prolonged closing note, as odd and
unearthly as that of a steam-whistle, she came suddenly down on the
carpet, and stood with her hands folded, and a most sanctimonious
expression of meekness and solemnity over her face, only broken by the
cunning glances which she shot askance from the corners of her eyes.

Miss Ophelia stood silent, perfectly paralyzed with amazement. St.
Clare, like a mischievous fellow as he was, appeared to enjoy her
astonishment; and, addressing the child again, said,

"Topsy, this is your new mistress. I'm going to give you up to her; see
now that you behave yourself."

"Yes, Mas'r," said Topsy, with sanctimonious gravity, her wicked eyes
twinkling as she spoke.

"You're going to be good, Topsy, you understand," said St. Clare.

"O yes, Mas'r," said Topsy, with another twinkle, her hands still
devoutly folded.

"Now, Augustine, what upon earth is this for?" said Miss Ophelia. "Your
house is so full of these little plagues, now, that a body can't set
down their foot without treading on 'em. I get up in the morning, and
find one asleep behind the door, and see one black head poking out from
under the table, one lying on the door-mat,--and they are mopping and
mowing and grinning between all the railings, and tumbling over the
kitchen floor! What on earth did you want to bring this one for?"

"For you to educate--didn't I tell you? You're always preaching about
educating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught
specimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way
she should go."

"‘I’ don't want her, I am sure;--I have more to do with 'em now than I
want to."

"That's you Christians, all over!--you'll get up a society, and get some
poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let
me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take
the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that,
they are dirty and disagreeable, and it's too much care, and so on."

"Augustine, you know I didn't think of it in that light," said Miss
Ophelia, evidently softening. "Well, it might be a real missionary
work," said she, looking rather more favorably on the child.

St. Clare had touched the right string. Miss Ophelia's conscientiousness
was ever on the alert. "But," she added, "I really didn't see the need
of buying this one;--there are enough now, in your house, to take all my
time and skill."

"Well, then, Cousin," said St. Clare, drawing her aside, "I ought to
beg your pardon for my good-for-nothing speeches. You are so good,
after all, that there's no sense in them. Why, the fact is, this concern
belonged to a couple of drunken creatures that keep a low restaurant
that I have to pass by every day, and I was tired of hearing her
screaming, and them beating and swearing at her. She looked bright and
funny, too, as if something might be made of her;--so I bought her, and
I'll give her to you. Try, now, and give her a good orthodox New England
bringing up, and see what it'll make of her. You know I haven't any gift
that way; but I'd like you to try."

"Well, I'll do what I can," said Miss Ophelia; and she approached her
new subject very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black
spider, supposing them to have benevolent designs toward it.

"She's dreadfully dirty, and half naked," she said.

"Well, take her down stairs, and make some of them clean and clothe her
up."

Miss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions.

"Don't see what Mas'r St. Clare wants of 'nother nigger!" said Dinah,
surveying the new arrival with no friendly air. "Won't have her around
under ‘my’ feet, ‘I’ know!"

"Pah!" said Rosa and Jane, with supreme disgust; "let her keep out of
our way! What in the world Mas'r wanted another of these low niggers
for, I can't see!"

"You go long! No more nigger dan you be, Miss Rosa," said Dinah,
who felt this last remark a reflection on herself. "You seem to tink
yourself white folks. You an't nerry one, black ‘nor’ white, I'd like to
be one or turrer."

Miss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that would undertake
to oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new arrival; and so she
was forced to do it herself, with some very ungracious and reluctant
assistance from Jane.

It is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of
a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world, multitudes must live
and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of
their fellow-mortals even to hear described. Miss Ophelia had a good,
strong, practical deal of resolution; and she went through all the
disgusting details with heroic thoroughness, though, it must be
confessed, with no very gracious air,--for endurance was the utmost
to which her principles could bring her. When she saw, on the back and
shoulders of the child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable
marks of the system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart
became pitiful within her.

"See there!" said Jane, pointing to the marks, "don't that show she's
a limb? We'll have fine works with her, I reckon. I hate these nigger
young uns! so disgusting! I wonder that Mas'r would buy her!"

The "young un" alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and
doleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and
furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in
her ears. When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole
clothing, her hair cropped short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some
satisfaction, said she looked more Christian-like than she did, and in
her own mind began to mature some plans for her instruction.

Sitting down before her, she began to question her.

"How old are you, Topsy?"

"Dun no, Missis," said the image, with a grin that showed all her teeth.

"Don't know how old you are? Didn't anybody ever tell you? Who was your
mother?"

"Never had none!" said the child, with another grin.

"Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?"

"Never was born!" persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so
goblin-like, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might
have fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land
of Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was not nervous, but plain and
business-like, and she said, with some sternness,

"You mustn't answer me in that way, child; I'm not playing with you.
Tell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were."

"Never was born," reiterated the creature, more emphatically; "never had
no father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with
lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us."

The child was evidently sincere, and Jane, breaking into a short laugh,
said,

"Laws, Missis, there's heaps of 'em. Speculators buys 'em up cheap, when
they's little, and gets 'em raised for market."

"How long have you lived with your master and mistress?"

"Dun no, Missis."

"Is it a year, or more, or less?"

"Dun no, Missis."

"Laws, Missis, those low negroes,--they can't tell; they don't know
anything about time," said Jane; "they don't know what a year is; they
don't know their own ages.

"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?"

The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.

"Do you know who made you?"

"Nobody, as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh.

The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and
she added,

"I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me."

"Do you know how to sew?" said Miss Ophelia, who thought she would turn
her inquiries to something more tangible.

"No, Missis."

"What can you do?--what did you do for your master and mistress?"

"Fetch water, and wash dishes, and rub knives, and wait on folks."

"Were they good to you?"

"Spect they was," said the child, scanning Miss Ophelia cunningly.

Miss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy; St. Clare was leaning
over the back of her chair.

"You find virgin soil there, Cousin; put in your own ideas,--you won't
find many to pull up."

Miss Ophelia's ideas of education, like all her other ideas, were
very set and definite; and of the kind that prevailed in New England
a century ago, and which are still preserved in some very retired and
unsophisticated parts, where there are no railroads. As nearly as could
be expressed, they could be comprised in very few words: to teach them
to mind when they were spoken to; to teach them the catechism, sewing,
and reading; and to whip them if they told lies. And though, of course,
in the flood of light that is now poured on education, these are left
far away in the rear, yet it is an undisputed fact that our grandmothers
raised some tolerably fair men and women under this regime, as many of
us can remember and testify. At all events, Miss Ophelia knew of nothing
else to do; and, therefore, applied her mind to her heathen with the
best diligence she could command.

The child was announced and considered in the family as Miss Ophelia's
girl; and, as she was looked upon with no gracious eye in the kitchen,
Miss Ophelia resolved to confine her sphere of operation and instruction
chiefly to her own chamber. With a self-sacrifice which some of our
readers will appreciate, she resolved, instead of comfortably making her
own bed, sweeping and dusting her own chamber,--which she had hitherto
done, in utter scorn of all offers of help from the chambermaid of the
establishment,--to condemn herself to the martyrdom of instructing Topsy
to perform these operations,--ah, woe the day! Did any of our readers
ever do the same, they will appreciate the amount of her self-sacrifice.

Miss Ophelia began with Topsy by taking her into her chamber, the first
morning, and solemnly commencing a course of instruction in the art and
mystery of bed-making.

Behold, then, Topsy, washed and shorn of all the little braided
tails wherein her heart had delighted, arrayed in a clean gown, with
well-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia, with an
expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral.

"Now, Topsy, I'm going to show you just how my bed is to be made. I am
very particular about my bed. You must learn exactly how to do it."

"Yes, ma'am," says Topsy, with a deep sigh, and a face of woful
earnestness.

"Now, Topsy, look here;--this is the hem of the sheet,--this is the
right side of the sheet, and this is the wrong;--will you remember?"

"Yes, ma'am," says Topsy, with another sigh.

"Well, now, the under sheet you must bring over the bolster,--so--and
tuck it clear down under the mattress nice and smooth,--so,--do you
see?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Topsy, with profound attention.

"But the upper sheet," said Miss Ophelia, "must be brought down in this
way, and tucked under firm and smooth at the foot,--so,--the narrow hem
at the foot."

"Yes, ma'am," said Topsy, as before;--but we will add, what Miss Ophelia
did not see, that, during the time when the good lady's back was turned
in the zeal of her manipulations, the young disciple had contrived to
snatch a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which she had adroitly slipped
into her sleeves, and stood with her hands dutifully folded, as before.

"Now, Topsy, let's see ‘you’ do this," said Miss Ophelia, pulling off
the clothes, and seating herself.

Topsy, with great gravity and adroitness, went through the exercise
completely to Miss Ophelia's satisfaction; smoothing the sheets, patting
out every wrinkle, and exhibiting, through the whole process, a gravity
and seriousness with which her instructress was greatly edified. By an
unlucky slip, however, a fluttering fragment of the ribbon hung out of
one of her sleeves, just as she was finishing, and caught Miss Ophelia's
attention. Instantly, she pounced upon it. "What's this? You naughty,
wicked child,--you've been stealing this!"

The ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve, yet was she not in
the least disconcerted; she only looked at it with an air of the most
surprised and unconscious innocence.

"Laws! why, that ar's Miss Feely's ribbon, an't it? How could it a got
caught in my sleeve?

"Topsy, you naughty girl, don't you tell me a lie,--you stole that
ribbon!"

"Missis, I declar for 't, I didn't;--never seed it till dis yer blessed
minnit."

"Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "don't you now it's wicked to tell lies?"

"I never tell no lies, Miss Feely," said Topsy, with virtuous gravity;
"it's jist the truth I've been a tellin now, and an't nothin else."

"Topsy, I shall have to whip you, if you tell lies so."

"Laws, Missis, if you's to whip all day, couldn't say no other way,"
said Topsy, beginning to blubber. "I never seed dat ar,--it must a got
caught in my sleeve. Miss Feeley must have left it on the bed, and it
got caught in the clothes, and so got in my sleeve."

Miss Ophelia was so indignant at the barefaced lie, that she caught the
child and shook her.

"Don't you tell me that again!"

The shake brought the glove on to the floor, from the other sleeve.

"There, you!" said Miss Ophelia, "will you tell me now, you didn't steal
the ribbon?"

Topsy now confessed to the gloves, but still persisted in denying the
ribbon.

"Now, Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "if you'll confess all about it, I
won't whip you this time." Thus adjured, Topsy confessed to the ribbon
and gloves, with woful protestations of penitence.

"Well, now, tell me. I know you must have taken other things since you
have been in the house, for I let you run about all day yesterday. Now,
tell me if you took anything, and I shan't whip you."

"Laws, Missis! I took Miss Eva's red thing she wars on her neck."

"You did, you naughty child!--Well, what else?"

"I took Rosa's yer-rings,--them red ones."

"Go bring them to me this minute, both of 'em."

"Laws, Missis! I can't,--they 's burnt up!"

"Burnt up!--what a story! Go get 'em, or I'll whip you."

Topsy, with loud protestations, and tears, and groans, declared that she
‘could’ not. "They 's burnt up,--they was."

"What did you burn 'em for?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Cause I 's wicked,--I is. I 's mighty wicked, any how. I can't help
it."

Just at this moment, Eva came innocently into the room, with the
identical coral necklace on her neck.

"Why, Eva, where did you get your necklace?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Get it? Why, I've had it on all day," said Eva.

"Did you have it on yesterday?"

"Yes; and what is funny, Aunty, I had it on all night. I forgot to take
it off when I went to bed."

Miss Ophelia looked perfectly bewildered; the more so, as Rosa, at that
instant, came into the room, with a basket of newly-ironed linen poised
on her head, and the coral ear-drops shaking in her ears!

"I'm sure I can't tell anything what to do with such a child!" she said,
in despair. "What in the world did you tell me you took those things
for, Topsy?"

"Why, Missis said I must 'fess; and I couldn't think of nothin' else to
'fess," said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.

"But, of course, I didn't want you to confess things you didn't do,"
said Miss Ophelia; "that's telling a lie, just as much as the other."

"Laws, now, is it?" said Topsy, with an air of innocent wonder.

"La, there an't any such thing as truth in that limb," said Rosa,
looking indignantly at Topsy. "If I was Mas'r St. Clare, I'd whip her
till the blood run. I would,--I'd let her catch it!"

"No, no Rosa," said Eva, with an air of command, which the child could
assume at times; "you mustn't talk so, Rosa. I can't bear to hear it."

"La sakes! Miss Eva, you 's so good, you don't know nothing how to get
along with niggers. There's no way but to cut 'em well up, I tell ye."

"Rosa!" said Eva, "hush! Don't you say another word of that sort!" and
the eye of the child flashed, and her cheek deepened its color.

Rosa was cowed in a moment.

"Miss Eva has got the St. Clare blood in her, that's plain. She can
speak, for all the world, just like her papa," she said, as she passed
out of the room.

Eva stood looking at Topsy.

There stood the two children representatives of the two extremes of
society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes,
her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her
black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor. They stood the
representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation,
command, education, physical and moral eminence; the Afric, born of ages
of oppression, submission, ignorance, toil and vice!

Something, perhaps, of such thoughts struggled through Eva's mind. But a
child's thoughts are rather dim, undefined instincts; and in Eva's noble
nature many such were yearning and working, for which she had no power
of utterance. When Miss Ophelia expatiated on Topsy's naughty, wicked
conduct, the child looked perplexed and sorrowful, but said, sweetly.

"Poor Topsy, why need you steal? You're going to be taken good care of
now. I'm sure I'd rather give you anything of mine, than have you steal
it."

It was the first word of kindness the child had ever heard in her life;
and the sweet tone and manner struck strangely on the wild, rude
heart, and a sparkle of something like a tear shone in the keen, round,
glittering eye; but it was followed by the short laugh and habitual
grin. No! the ear that has never heard anything but abuse is strangely
incredulous of anything so heavenly as kindness; and Topsy only thought
Eva's speech something funny and inexplicable,--she did not believe it.

But what was to be done with Topsy? Miss Ophelia found the case a
puzzler; her rules for bringing up didn't seem to apply. She thought she
would take time to think of it; and, by the way of gaining time, and in
hopes of some indefinite moral virtues supposed to be inherent in dark
closets, Miss Ophelia shut Topsy up in one till she had arranged her
ideas further on the subject.

"I don't see," said Miss Ophelia to St. Clare, "how I'm going to manage
that child, without whipping her."

"Well, whip her, then, to your heart's content; I'll give you full power
to do what you like."

"Children always have to be whipped," said Miss Ophelia; "I never heard
of bringing them up without."

"O, well, certainly," said St. Clare; "do as you think best. Only I'll
make one suggestion: I've seen this child whipped with a poker, knocked
down with the shovel or tongs, whichever came handiest, &c.; and, seeing
that she is used to that style of operation, I think your whippings will
have to be pretty energetic, to make much impression."

"What is to be done with her, then?" said Miss Ophelia.

"You have started a serious question," said St. Clare; "I wish you'd
answer it. What is to be done with a human being that can be governed
only by the lash,--’that’ fails,--it's a very common state of things
down here!"

"I'm sure I don't know; I never saw such a child as this."

"Such children are very common among us, and such men and women, too.
How are they to be governed?" said St. Clare.

"I'm sure it's more than I can say," said Miss Ophelia.

"Or I either," said St. Clare. "The horrid cruelties and outrages that
once and a while find their way into the papers,--such cases as Prue's,
for example,--what do they come from? In many cases, it is a gradual
hardening process on both sides,--the owner growing more and more
cruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like
laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
I saw this very early when I became an owner; and I resolved never to
begin, because I did not know when I should stop,--and I resolved,
at least, to protect my own moral nature. The consequence is, that my
servants act like spoiled children; but I think that better than for us
both to be brutalized together. You have talked a great deal about our
responsibilities in educating, Cousin. I really wanted you to ‘try’ with
one child, who is a specimen of thousands among us."

"It is your system makes such children," said Miss Ophelia.

"I know it; but they are ‘made’,--they exist,--and what ‘is’ to be done
with them?"

"Well, I can't say I thank you for the experiment. But, then, as it
appears to be a duty, I shall persevere and try, and do the best I
can," said Miss Ophelia; and Miss Ophelia, after this, did labor, with
a commendable degree of zeal and energy, on her new subject. She
instituted regular hours and employments for her, and undertook to teach
her to read and sew.

In the former art, the child was quick enough. She learned her letters
as if by magic, and was very soon able to read plain reading; but the
sewing was a more difficult matter. The creature was as lithe as a
cat, and as active as a monkey, and the confinement of sewing was her
abomination; so she broke her needles, threw them slyly out of the
window, or down in chinks of the walls; she tangled, broke, and
dirtied her thread, or, with a sly movement, would throw a spool away
altogether. Her motions were almost as quick as those of a practised
conjurer, and her command of her face quite as great; and though Miss
Ophelia could not help feeling that so many accidents could not possibly
happen in succession, yet she could not, without a watchfulness which
would leave her no time for anything else, detect her.

Topsy was soon a noted character in the establishment. Her talent for
every species of drollery, grimace, and mimicry,--for dancing, tumbling,
climbing, singing, whistling, imitating every sound that hit her
fancy,--seemed inexhaustible. In her play-hours, she invariably had
every child in the establishment at her heels, open-mouthed with
admiration and wonder,--not excepting Miss Eva, who appeared to be
fascinated by her wild diablerie, as a dove is sometimes charmed by
a glittering serpent. Miss Ophelia was uneasy that Eva should fancy
Topsy's society so much, and implored St. Clare to forbid it.

"Poh! let the child alone," said St. Clare. "Topsy will do her good."

"But so depraved a child,--are you not afraid she will teach her some
mischief?"

"She can't teach her mischief; she might teach it to some children, but
evil rolls off Eva's mind like dew off a cabbage-leaf,--not a drop sinks
in."

"Don't be too sure," said Miss Ophelia. "I know I'd never let a child of
mine play with Topsy."

"Well, your children needn't," said St. Clare, "but mine may; if Eva
could have been spoiled, it would have been done years ago."

Topsy was at first despised and contemned by the upper servants. They
soon found reason to alter their opinion. It was very soon discovered
that whoever cast an indignity on Topsy was sure to meet with some
inconvenient accident shortly after;--either a pair of ear-rings or
some cherished trinket would be missing, or an article of dress would
be suddenly found utterly ruined, or the person would stumble
accidently into a pail of hot water, or a libation of dirty slop would
unaccountably deluge them from above when in full gala dress;-and on all
these occasions, when investigation was made, there was nobody found to
stand sponsor for the indignity. Topsy was cited, and had up before
all the domestic judicatories, time and again; but always sustained her
examinations with most edifying innocence and gravity of appearance.
Nobody in the world ever doubted who did the things; but not a scrap of
any direct evidence could be found to establish the suppositions, and
Miss Ophelia was too just to feel at liberty to proceed to any length
without it.

The mischiefs done were always so nicely timed, also, as further to
shelter the aggressor. Thus, the times for revenge on Rosa and Jane,
the two chamber maids, were always chosen in those seasons when (as not
unfrequently happened) they were in disgrace with their mistress, when
any complaint from them would of course meet with no sympathy. In short,
Topsy soon made the household understand the propriety of letting her
alone; and she was let alone, accordingly.

Topsy was smart and energetic in all manual operations, learning
everything that was taught her with surprising quickness. With a few
lessons, she had learned to do the proprieties of Miss Ophelia's chamber
in a way with which even that particular lady could find no fault.
Mortal hands could not lay spread smoother, adjust pillows more
accurately, sweep and dust and arrange more perfectly, than Topsy, when
she chose,--but she didn't very often choose. If Miss Ophelia, after
three or four days of careful patient supervision, was so sanguine as
to suppose that Topsy had at last fallen into her way, could do without
over-looking, and so go off and busy herself about something else, Topsy
would hold a perfect carnival of confusion, for some one or two hours.
Instead of making the bed, she would amuse herself with pulling off the
pillowcases, butting her woolly head among the pillows, till it would
sometimes be grotesquely ornamented with feathers sticking out in
various directions; she would climb the posts, and hang head downward
from the tops; flourish the sheets and spreads all over the apartment;
dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's night-clothes, and enact various
performances with that,--singing and whistling, and making grimaces
at herself in the looking-glass; in short, as Miss Ophelia phrased it,
"raising Cain" generally.

On one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best scarlet
India Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a turban, going on
with her rehearsals before the glass in great style,--Miss Ophelia
having, with carelessness most unheard-of in her, left the key for once
in her drawer.

"Topsy!" she would say, when at the end of all patience, "what does make
you act so?"

"Dunno, Missis,--I spects cause I 's so wicked!"

"I don't know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy."

"Law, Missis, you must whip me; my old Missis allers whipped me. I an't
used to workin' unless I gets whipped."

"Why, Topsy, I don't want to whip you. You can do well, if you've a mind
to; what is the reason you won't?"

"Laws, Missis, I 's used to whippin'; I spects it's good for me."

Miss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a terrible
commotion, screaming, groaning and imploring, though half an hour
afterwards, when roosted on some projection of the balcony, and
surrounded by a flock of admiring "young uns," she would express the
utmost contempt of the whole affair.

"Law, Miss Feely whip!--wouldn't kill a skeeter, her whippins. Oughter
see how old Mas'r made the flesh fly; old Mas'r know'd how!"

Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enormities,
evidently considering them as something peculiarly distinguishing.

"Law, you niggers," she would say to some of her auditors, "does you
know you 's all sinners? Well, you is--everybody is. White folks is
sinners too,--Miss Feely says so; but I spects niggers is the biggest
ones; but lor! ye an't any on ye up to me. I 's so awful wicked there
can't nobody do nothin' with me. I used to keep old Missis a swarin' at
me half de time. I spects I 's the wickedest critter in the world;"
and Topsy would cut a summerset, and come up brisk and shining on to a
higher perch, and evidently plume herself on the distinction.

Miss Ophelia busied herself very earnestly on Sundays, teaching Topsy
the catechism. Topsy had an uncommon verbal memory, and committed with a
fluency that greatly encouraged her instructress.

"What good do you expect it is going to do her?" said St. Clare.

"Why, it always has done children good. It's what children always have
to learn, you know," said Miss Ophelia.

"Understand it or not," said St. Clare.

"O, children never understand it at the time; but, after they are grown
up, it'll come to them."

"Mine hasn't come to me yet," said St. Clare, "though I'll bear
testimony that you put it into me pretty thoroughly when I was a boy."'

"Ah, you were always good at learning, Augustine. I used to have great
hopes of you," said Miss Ophelia.

"Well, haven't you now?" said St. Clare.

"I wish you were as good as you were when you were a boy, Augustine."

"So do I, that's a fact, Cousin," said St. Clare. "Well, go ahead and
catechize Topsy; may be you'll make out something yet."

Topsy, who had stood like a black statue during this discussion, with
hands decently folded, now, at a signal from Miss Ophelia, went on:

"Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell
from the state wherein they were created."

Topsy's eyes twinkled, and she looked inquiringly.

"What is it, Topsy?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Please, Missis, was dat ar state Kintuck?"

"What state, Topsy?"

"Dat state dey fell out of. I used to hear Mas'r tell how we came down
from Kintuck."

St. Clare laughed.

"You'll have to give her a meaning, or she'll make one," said he. "There
seems to be a theory of emigration suggested there."

"O! Augustine, be still," said Miss Ophelia; "how can I do anything, if
you will be laughing?"

"Well, I won't disturb the exercises again, on my honor;" and St. Clare
took his paper into the parlor, and sat down, till Topsy had finished
her recitations. They were all very well, only that now and then she
would oddly transpose some important words, and persist in the mistake,
in spite of every effort to the contrary; and St. Clare, after all his
promises of goodness, took a wicked pleasure in these mistakes, calling
Topsy to him whenever he had a mind to amuse himself, and getting her to
repeat the offending passages, in spite of Miss Ophelia's remonstrances.

"How do you think I can do anything with the child, if you will go on
so, Augustine?" she would say.

"Well, it is too bad,--I won't again; but I do like to hear the droll
little image stumble over those big words!"

"But you confirm her in the wrong way."

"What's the odds? One word is as good as another to her."

"You wanted me to bring her up right; and you ought to remember she is a
reasonable creature, and be careful of your influence over her."

"O, dismal! so I ought; but, as Topsy herself says, 'I 's so wicked!'"

In very much this way Topsy's training proceeded, for a year or
two,--Miss Ophelia worrying herself, from day to day, with her, as a
kind of chronic plague, to whose inflictions she became, in time, as
accustomed, as persons sometimes do to the neuralgia or sick headache.

St. Clare took the same kind of amusement in the child that a man might
in the tricks of a parrot or a pointer. Topsy, whenever her sins brought
her into disgrace in other quarters, always took refuge behind his
chair; and St. Clare, in one way or other, would make peace for her.
From him she got many a stray picayune, which she laid out in nuts and
candies, and distributed, with careless generosity, to all the children
in the family; for Topsy, to do her justice, was good-natured and
liberal, and only spiteful in self-defence. She is fairly introduced
into our ‘corps be ballet’, and will figure, from time to time, in her
turn, with other performers.



CHAPTER XXI

Kentuck


Our readers may not be unwilling to glance back, for a brief interval,
at Uncle Tom's Cabin, on the Kentucky farm, and see what has been
transpiring among those whom he had left behind.

It was late in the summer afternoon, and the doors and windows of the
large parlor all stood open, to invite any stray breeze, that might feel
in a good humor, to enter. Mr. Shelby sat in a large hall opening
into the room, and running through the whole length of the house, to
a balcony on either end. Leisurely tipped back on one chair, with his
heels in another, he was enjoying his after-dinner cigar. Mrs. Shelby
sat in the door, busy about some fine sewing; she seemed like one who
had something on her mind, which she was seeking an opportunity to
introduce.

"Do you know," she said, "that Chloe has had a letter from Tom?"

"Ah! has she? Tom 's got some friend there, it seems. How is the old
boy?"

"He has been bought by a very fine family, I should think," said Mrs.
Shelby,--"is kindly treated, and has not much to do."

"Ah! well, I'm glad of it,--very glad," said Mr. Shelby, heartily. "Tom,
I suppose, will get reconciled to a Southern residence;--hardly want to
come up here again."

"On the contrary he inquires very anxiously," said Mrs. Shelby, "when
the money for his redemption is to be raised."

"I'm sure ‘I’ don't know," said Mr. Shelby. "Once get business running
wrong, there does seem to be no end to it. It's like jumping from one
bog to another, all through a swamp; borrow of one to pay another, and
then borrow of another to pay one,--and these confounded notes falling
due before a man has time to smoke a cigar and turn round,--dunning
letters and dunning messages,--all scamper and hurry-scurry."

"It does seem to me, my dear, that something might be done to straighten
matters. Suppose we sell off all the horses, and sell one of your farms,
and pay up square?"

"O, ridiculous, Emily! You are the finest woman in Kentucky; but still
you haven't sense to know that you don't understand business;--women
never do, and never can.

"But, at least," said Mrs. Shelby, "could not you give me some little
insight into yours; a list of all your debts, at least, and of all
that is owed to you, and let me try and see if I can't help you to
economize."

"O, bother! don't plague me, Emily!--I can't tell exactly. I know
somewhere about what things are likely to be; but there's no trimming
and squaring my affairs, as Chloe trims crust off her pies. You don't
know anything about business, I tell you."

And Mr. Shelby, not knowing any other way of enforcing his ideas, raised
his voice,--a mode of arguing very convenient and convincing, when a
gentleman is discussing matters of business with his wife.

Mrs. Shelby ceased talking, with something of a sigh. The fact was,
that though her husband had stated she was a woman, she had a clear,
energetic, practical mind, and a force of character every way superior
to that of her husband; so that it would not have been so very absurd
a supposition, to have allowed her capable of managing, as Mr. Shelby
supposed. Her heart was set on performing her promise to Tom and Aunt
Chloe, and she sighed as discouragements thickened around her.

"Don't you think we might in some way contrive to raise that money? Poor
Aunt Chloe! her heart is so set on it!"

"I'm sorry, if it is. I think I was premature in promising. I'm not
sure, now, but it's the best way to tell Chloe, and let her make up
her mind to it. Tom'll have another wife, in a year or two; and she had
better take up with somebody else."

"Mr. Shelby, I have taught my people that their marriages are as sacred
as ours. I never could think of giving Chloe such advice."

"It's a pity, wife, that you have burdened them with a morality above
their condition and prospects. I always thought so."

"It's only the morality of the Bible, Mr. Shelby."

"Well, well, Emily, I don't pretend to interfere with your religious
notions; only they seem extremely unfitted for people in that
condition."

"They are, indeed," said Mrs. Shelby, "and that is why, from my soul,
I hate the whole thing. I tell you, my dear, ‘I’ cannot absolve myself
from the promises I make to these helpless creatures. If I can get the
money no other way I will take music-scholars;--I could get enough, I
know, and earn the money myself."

"You wouldn't degrade yourself that way, Emily? I never could consent to
it."

"Degrade! would it degrade me as much as to break my faith with the
helpless? No, indeed!"

"Well, you are always heroic and transcendental," said Mr. Shelby,
"but I think you had better think before you undertake such a piece of
Quixotism."

Here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Aunt Chloe,
at the end of the verandah.

"If you please, Missis," said she.

"Well, Chloe, what is it?" said her mistress, rising, and going to the
end of the balcony.

"If Missis would come and look at dis yer lot o' poetry."

Chloe had a particular fancy for calling poultry poetry,--an application
of language in which she always persisted, notwithstanding frequent
corrections and advisings from the young members of the family.

"La sakes!" she would say, "I can't see; one jis good as turry,--poetry
suthin good, any how;" and so poetry Chloe continued to call it.

Mrs. Shelby smiled as she saw a prostrate lot of chickens and ducks,
over which Chloe stood, with a very grave face of consideration.

"I'm a thinkin whether Missis would be a havin a chicken pie o' dese
yer."

"Really, Aunt Chloe, I don't much care;--serve them any way you like."

Chloe stood handling them over abstractedly; it was quite evident that
the chickens were not what she was thinking of. At last, with the short
laugh with which her tribe often introduce a doubtful proposal, she
said,

"Laws me, Missis! what should Mas'r and Missis be a troublin theirselves
'bout de money, and not a usin what's right in der hands?" and Chloe
laughed again.

"I don't understand you, Chloe," said Mrs. Shelby, nothing doubting,
from her knowledge of Chloe's manner, that she had heard every word of
the conversation that had passed between her and her husband.

"Why, laws me, Missis!" said Chloe, laughing again, "other folks hires
out der niggers and makes money on 'em! Don't keep sich a tribe eatin
'em out of house and home."

"Well, Chloe, who do you propose that we should hire out?"

"Laws! I an't a proposin nothin; only Sam he said der was one of dese
yer ‘perfectioners’, dey calls 'em, in Louisville, said he wanted a good
hand at cake and pastry; and said he'd give four dollars a week to one,
he did."

"Well, Chloe."

"Well, laws, I 's a thinkin, Missis, it's time Sally was put along to
be doin' something. Sally 's been under my care, now, dis some time, and
she does most as well as me, considerin; and if Missis would only let
me go, I would help fetch up de money. I an't afraid to put my cake, nor
pies nother, 'long side no ‘perfectioner's’.

"Confectioner's, Chloe."

"Law sakes, Missis! 'tan't no odds;--words is so curis, can't never get
'em right!"

"But, Chloe, do you want to leave your children?"

"Laws, Missis! de boys is big enough to do day's works; dey does well
enough; and Sally, she'll take de baby,--she's such a peart young un,
she won't take no lookin arter."

"Louisville is a good way off."

"Law sakes! who's afeard?--it's down river, somer near my old man,
perhaps?" said Chloe, speaking the last in the tone of a question, and
looking at Mrs. Shelby.

"No, Chloe; it's many a hundred miles off," said Mrs. Shelby.

Chloe's countenance fell.

"Never mind; your going there shall bring you nearer, Chloe. Yes, you
may go; and your wages shall every cent of them be laid aside for your
husband's redemption."

As when a bright sunbeam turns a dark cloud to silver, so Chloe's dark
face brightened immediately,--it really shone.

"Laws! if Missis isn't too good! I was thinking of dat ar very thing;
cause I shouldn't need no clothes, nor shoes, nor nothin,--I could save
every cent. How many weeks is der in a year, Missis?"

"Fifty-two," said Mrs. Shelby.

"Laws! now, dere is? and four dollars for each on em. Why, how much 'd
dat ar be?"

"Two hundred and eight dollars," said Mrs. Shelby.

"Why-e!" said Chloe, with an accent of surprise and delight; "and how
long would it take me to work it out, Missis?"

"Some four or five years, Chloe; but, then, you needn't do it all,--I
shall add something to it."

"I wouldn't hear to Missis' givin lessons nor nothin. Mas'r's quite
right in dat ar;--'t wouldn't do, no ways. I hope none our family ever
be brought to dat ar, while I 's got hands."

"Don't fear, Chloe; I'll take care of the honor of the family," said
Mrs. Shelby, smiling. "But when do you expect to go?"

"Well, I want spectin nothin; only Sam, he's a gwine to de river with
some colts, and he said I could go long with him; so I jes put my things
together. If Missis was willin, I'd go with Sam tomorrow morning, if
Missis would write my pass, and write me a commendation."

"Well, Chloe, I'll attend to it, if Mr. Shelby has no objections. I must
speak to him."

Mrs. Shelby went up stairs, and Aunt Chloe, delighted, went out to her
cabin, to make her preparation.

"Law sakes, Mas'r George! ye didn't know I 's a gwine to Louisville
tomorrow!" she said to George, as entering her cabin, he found her busy
in sorting over her baby's clothes. "I thought I'd jis look over sis's
things, and get 'em straightened up. But I'm gwine, Mas'r George,--gwine
to have four dollars a week; and Missis is gwine to lay it all up, to
buy back my old man agin!"

"Whew!" said George, "here's a stroke of business, to be sure! How are
you going?"

"Tomorrow, wid Sam. And now, Mas'r George, I knows you'll jis sit down
and write to my old man, and tell him all about it,--won't ye?"

"To be sure," said George; "Uncle Tom'll be right glad to hear from us.
I'll go right in the house, for paper and ink; and then, you know, Aunt
Chloe, I can tell about the new colts and all."

"Sartin, sartin, Mas'r George; you go 'long, and I'll get ye up a bit o'
chicken, or some sich; ye won't have many more suppers wid yer poor old
aunty."



CHAPTER XXII

"The Grass Withereth--the Flower Fadeth"


Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend
Tom, till two years were gone. Though parted from all his soul held
dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never
positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human
feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can
wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review
appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that
each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so
that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.

Tom read, in his only literary cabinet, of one who had "learned in
whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content." It seemed to him
good and reasonable doctrine, and accorded well with the settled and
thoughtful habit which he had acquired from the reading of that same
book.

His letter homeward, as we related in the last chapter, was in due time
answered by Master George, in a good, round, school-boy hand, that
Tom said might be read "most acrost the room." It contained various
refreshing items of home intelligence, with which our reader is fully
acquainted: stated how Aunt Chloe had been hired out to a confectioner
in Louisville, where her skill in the pastry line was gaining wonderful
sums of money, all of which, Tom was informed, was to be laid up to go
to make up the sum of his redemption money; Mose and Pete were thriving,
and the baby was trotting all about the house, under the care of Sally
and the family generally.

Tom's cabin was shut up for the present; but George expatiated
brilliantly on ornaments and additions to be made to it when Tom came
back.

The rest of this letter gave a list of George's school studies, each
one headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new
colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the
same connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the
letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most
wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He
was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on
the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing but
the difficulty of arranging it so that both sides of the page would show
at once stood in the way of this undertaking.

The friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child's growth. It
would be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart
of her faithful attendant. He loved her as something frail and earthly,
yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine. He gazed on
her as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,--with a
mixture of reverence and tenderness; and to humor her graceful fancies,
and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like
a many-colored rainbow, was Tom's chief delight. In the market, at
morning, his eyes were always on the flower-stalls for rare bouquets
for her, and the choicest peach or orange was slipped into his pocket to
give to her when he came back; and the sight that pleased him most was
her sunny head looking out the gate for his distant approach, and her
childish questions,--"Well, Uncle Tom, what have you got for me today?"

Nor was Eva less zealous in kind offices, in return. Though a child, she
was a beautiful reader;--a fine musical ear, a quick poetic fancy, and
an instinctive sympathy with what's grand and noble, made her such a
reader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard. At first, she read to
please her humble friend; but soon her own earnest nature threw out its
tendrils, and wound itself around the majestic book; and Eva loved it,
because it woke in her strange yearnings, and strong, dim emotions, such
as impassioned, imaginative children love to feel.

The parts that pleased her most were the Revelations and the
Prophecies,--parts whose dim and wondrous imagery, and fervent
language, impressed her the more, that she questioned vainly of their
meaning;--and she and her simple friend, the old child and the young
one, felt just alike about it. All that they knew was, that they spoke
of a glory to be revealed,--a wondrous something yet to come, wherein
their soul rejoiced, yet knew not why; and though it be not so in the
physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not
always profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between
two dim eternities,--the eternal past, the eternal future. The light
shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn
towards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to
her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and
answers in her own expecting nature. Its mystic imagery are so many
talismans and gems inscribed with unknown hieroglyphics; she folds them
in her bosom, and expects to read them when she passes beyond the veil.

At this time in our story, the whole St. Clare establishment is, for the
time being, removed to their villa on Lake Pontchartrain. The heats of
summer had driven all who were able to leave the sultry and unhealthy
city, to seek the shores of the lake, and its cool sea-breezes.

St. Clare's villa was an East Indian cottage, surrounded by light
verandahs of bamboo-work, and opening on all sides into gardens and
pleasure-grounds. The common sitting-room opened on to a large garden,
fragrant with every picturesque plant and flower of the tropics, where
winding paths ran down to the very shores of the lake, whose silvery
sheet of water lay there, rising and falling in the sunbeams,--a picture
never for an hour the same, yet every hour more beautiful.

It is now one of those intensely golden sunsets which kindles the whole
horizon into one blaze of glory, and makes the water another sky. The
lake lay in rosy or golden streaks, save where white-winged vessels
glided hither and thither, like so many spirits, and little golden
stars twinkled through the glow, and looked down at themselves as they
trembled in the water.

Tom and Eva were seated on a little mossy seat, in an arbor, at the foot
of the garden. It was Sunday evening, and Eva's Bible lay open on her
knee. She read,--"And I saw a sea of glass, mingled with fire."

"Tom," said Eva, suddenly stopping, and pointing to the lake, "there 't
is."

"What, Miss Eva?"

"Don't you see,--there?" said the child, pointing to the glassy water,
which, as it rose and fell, reflected the golden glow of the sky.
"There's a 'sea of glass, mingled with fire.'"

"True enough, Miss Eva," said Tom; and Tom sang--

"O, had I the wings of the morning,
I'd fly away to Canaan's shore;
Bright angels should convey me home,
To the new Jerusalem."

"Where do you suppose new Jerusalem is, Uncle Tom?" said Eva.

"O, up in the clouds, Miss Eva."

"Then I think I see it," said Eva. "Look in those clouds!--they look
like great gates of pearl; and you can see beyond them--far, far
off--it's all gold. Tom, sing about 'spirits bright.'"

Tom sung the words of a well-known Methodist hymn,

"I see a band of spirits bright,
That taste the glories there;
They all are robed in spotless white,
And conquering palms they bear."

"Uncle Tom, I've seen ‘them’," said Eva.

Tom had no doubt of it at all; it did not surprise him in the least.
If Eva had told him she had been to heaven, he would have thought it
entirely probable.

"They come to me sometimes in my sleep, those spirits;" and Eva's eyes
grew dreamy, and she hummed, in a low voice,

"They are all robed in spotless white,
And conquering palms they bear."

"Uncle Tom," said Eva, "I'm going there."

"Where, Miss Eva?"

The child rose, and pointed her little hand to the sky; the glow of
evening lit her golden hair and flushed cheek with a kind of unearthly
radiance, and her eyes were bent earnestly on the skies.

"I'm going ‘there’," she said, "to the spirits bright, Tom; ‘I'm going,
before long’."

The faithful old heart felt a sudden thrust; and Tom thought how often
he had noticed, within six months, that Eva's little hands had grown
thinner, and her skin more transparent, and her breath shorter; and how,
when she ran or played in the garden, as she once could for hours, she
became soon so tired and languid. He had heard Miss Ophelia speak often
of a cough, that all her medicaments could not cure; and even now that
fervent cheek and little hand were burning with hectic fever; and yet
the thought that Eva's words suggested had never come to him till now.

Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their
names are always on grave-stones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly
eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of
yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all
the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms
of one who ‘is not’. It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels,
whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the
wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in
their homeward flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the
eye,--when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser
than the ordinary words of children,--hope not to retain that child; for
the seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from
its eyes.

Even so, beloved Eva! fair star of thy dwelling! Thou are passing away;
but they that love thee dearest know it not.

The colloquy between Tom and Eva was interrupted by a hasty call from
Miss Ophelia.

"Eva--Eva!--why, child, the dew is falling; you mustn't be out there!"

Eva and Tom hastened in.

Miss Ophelia was old, and skilled in the tactics of nursing. She was
from New England, and knew well the first guileful footsteps of that
soft, insidious disease, which sweeps away so many of the fairest
and loveliest, and, before one fibre of life seems broken, seals them
irrevocably for death.

She had noted the slight, dry cough, the daily brightening cheek;
nor could the lustre of the eye, and the airy buoyancy born of fever,
deceive her.

She tried to communicate her fears to St. Clare; but he threw back
her suggestions with a restless petulance, unlike his usual careless
good-humor.

"Don't be croaking, Cousin,--I hate it!" he would say; "don't you see
that the child is only growing. Children always lose strength when they
grow fast."

"But she has that cough!"

"O! nonsense of that cough!--it is not anything. She has taken a little
cold, perhaps."

"Well, that was just the way Eliza Jane was taken, and Ellen and Maria
Sanders."

"O! stop these hobgoblin' nurse legends. You old hands got so wise, that
a child cannot cough, or sneeze, but you see desperation and ruin at
hand. Only take care of the child, keep her from the night air, and
don't let her play too hard, and she'll do well enough."

So St. Clare said; but he grew nervous and restless. He watched Eva
feverishly day by day, as might be told by the frequency with which
he repeated over that "the child was quite well"--that there wasn't
anything in that cough,--it was only some little stomach affection, such
as children often had. But he kept by her more than before, took her
oftener to ride with him, brought home every few days some receipt or
strengthening mixture,--"not," he said, "that the child ‘needed’ it, but
then it would not do her any harm."

If it must be told, the thing that struck a deeper pang to his heart
than anything else was the daily increasing maturity of the child's mind
and feelings. While still retaining all a child's fanciful graces, yet
she often dropped, unconsciously, words of such a reach of thought, and
strange unworldly wisdom, that they seemed to be an inspiration. At such
times, St. Clare would feel a sudden thrill, and clasp her in his arms,
as if that fond clasp could save her; and his heart rose up with wild
determination to keep her, never to let her go.

The child's whole heart and soul seemed absorbed in works of love and
kindness. Impulsively generous she had always been; but there was
a touching and womanly thoughtfulness about her now, that every one
noticed. She still loved to play with Topsy, and the various colored
children; but she now seemed rather a spectator than an actor of their
plays, and she would sit for half an hour at a time, laughing at the odd
tricks of Topsy,--and then a shadow would seem to pass across her face,
her eyes grew misty, and her thoughts were afar.

"Mamma," she said, suddenly, to her mother, one day, "why don't we teach
our servants to read?"

"What a question child! People never do."

"Why don't they?" said Eva.

"Because it is no use for them to read. It don't help them to work any
better, and they are not made for anything else."

"But they ought to read the Bible, mamma, to learn God's will."

"O! they can get that read to them all ‘they’ need."

"It seems to me, mamma, the Bible is for every one to read themselves.
They need it a great many times when there is nobody to read it."

"Eva, you are an odd child," said her mother.

"Miss Ophelia has taught Topsy to read," continued Eva.

"Yes, and you see how much good it does. Topsy is the worst creature I
ever saw!"

"Here's poor Mammy!" said Eva. "She does love the Bible so much, and
wishes so she could read! And what will she do when I can't read to
her?"

Marie was busy, turning over the contents of a drawer, as she answered,

"Well, of course, by and by, Eva, you will have other things to think
of besides reading the Bible round to servants. Not but that is very
proper; I've done it myself, when I had health. But when you come to
be dressing and going into company, you won't have time. See here!" she
added, "these jewels I'm going to give you when you come out. I wore
them to my first ball. I can tell you, Eva, I made a sensation."

Eva took the jewel-case, and lifted from it a diamond necklace. Her
large, thoughtful eyes rested on them, but it was plain her thoughts
were elsewhere.

"How sober you look child!" said Marie.

"Are these worth a great deal of money, mamma?"

"To be sure, they are. Father sent to France for them. They are worth a
small fortune."

"I wish I had them," said Eva, "to do what I pleased with!"

"What would you do with them?"

"I'd sell them, and buy a place in the free states, and take all our
people there, and hire teachers, to teach them to read and write."

Eva was cut short by her mother's laughing.

"Set up a boarding-school! Wouldn't you teach them to play on the piano,
and paint on velvet?"

"I'd teach them to read their own Bible, and write their own letters,
and read letters that are written to them," said Eva, steadily. "I know,
mamma, it does come very hard on them that they can't do these things.
Tom feels it--Mammy does,--a great many of them do. I think it's wrong."

"Come, come, Eva; you are only a child! You don't know anything about
these things," said Marie; "besides, your talking makes my head ache."

Marie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not
exactly suit her.

Eva stole away; but after that, she assiduously gave Mammy reading
lessons.



CHAPTER XXIII

Henrique


About this time, St. Clare's brother Alfred, with his eldest son, a boy
of twelve, spent a day or two with the family at the lake.

No sight could be more singular and beautiful than that of these twin
brothers. Nature, instead of instituting resemblances between them, had
made them opposites on every point; yet a mysterious tie seemed to unite
them in a closer friendship than ordinary.

They used to saunter, arm in arm, up and down the alleys and walks
of the garden. Augustine, with his blue eyes and golden hair, his
ethereally flexible form and vivacious features; and Alfred, dark-eyed,
with haughty Roman profile, firmly-knit limbs, and decided bearing. They
were always abusing each other's opinions and practices, and yet never
a whit the less absorbed in each other's society; in fact, the very
contrariety seemed to unite them, like the attraction between opposite
poles of the magnet.

Henrique, the eldest son of Alfred, was a noble, dark-eyed, princely
boy, full of vivacity and spirit; and, from the first moment of
introduction, seemed to be perfectly fascinated by the spirituelle
graces of his cousin Evangeline.

Eva had a little pet pony, of a snowy whiteness. It was easy as a
cradle, and as gentle as its little mistress; and this pony was now
brought up to the back verandah by Tom, while a little mulatto boy of
about thirteen led along a small black Arabian, which had just been
imported, at a great expense, for Henrique.

Henrique had a boy's pride in his new possession; and, as he advanced
and took the reins out of the hands of his little groom, he looked
carefully over him, and his brow darkened.

"What's this, Dodo, you little lazy dog! you haven't rubbed my horse
down, this morning."

"Yes, Mas'r," said Dodo, submissively; "he got that dust on his own
self."

"You rascal, shut your mouth!" said Henrique, violently raising his
riding-whip. "How dare you speak?"

The boy was a handsome, bright-eyed mulatto, of just Henrique's size,
and his curling hair hung round a high, bold forehead. He had white
blood in his veins, as could be seen by the quick flush in his cheek,
and the sparkle of his eye, as he eagerly tried to speak.

"Mas'r Henrique!--" he began.

Henrique struck him across the face with his riding-whip, and, seizing
one of his arms, forced him on to his knees, and beat him till he was
out of breath.

"There, you impudent dog! Now will you learn not to answer back when I
speak to you? Take the horse back, and clean him properly. I'll teach
you your place!"

"Young Mas'r," said Tom, "I specs what he was gwine to say was, that the
horse would roll when he was bringing him up from the stable; he's so
full of spirits,--that's the way he got that dirt on him; I looked to
his cleaning."

"You hold your tongue till you're asked to speak!" said Henrique,
turning on his heel, and walking up the steps to speak to Eva, who stood
in her riding-dress.

"Dear Cousin, I'm sorry this stupid fellow has kept you waiting," he
said. "Let's sit down here, on this seat till they come. What's the
matter, Cousin?--you look sober."

"How could you be so cruel and wicked to poor Dodo?" asked Eva.

"Cruel,--wicked!" said the boy, with unaffected surprise. "What do you
mean, dear Eva?"

"I don't want you to call me dear Eva, when you do so," said Eva.

"Dear Cousin, you don't know Dodo; it's the only way to manage him,
he's so full of lies and excuses. The only way is to put him down at
once,--not let him open his mouth; that's the way papa manages."

"But Uncle Tom said it was an accident, and he never tells what isn't
true."

"He's an uncommon old nigger, then!" said Henrique. "Dodo will lie as
fast as he can speak."

"You frighten him into deceiving, if you treat him so."

"Why, Eva, you've really taken such a fancy to Dodo, that I shall be
jealous."

"But you beat him,--and he didn't deserve it."

"O, well, it may go for some time when he does, and don't get it. A few
cuts never come amiss with Dodo,--he's a regular spirit, I can tell you;
but I won't beat him again before you, if it troubles you."

Eva was not satisfied, but found it in vain to try to make her handsome
cousin understand her feelings.

Dodo soon appeared, with the horses.

"Well, Dodo, you've done pretty well, this time," said his young master,
with a more gracious air. "Come, now, and hold Miss Eva's horse while I
put her on to the saddle."

Dodo came and stood by Eva's pony. His face was troubled; his eyes
looked as if he had been crying.

Henrique, who valued himself on his gentlemanly adroitness in all
matters of gallantry, soon had his fair cousin in the saddle, and,
gathering the reins, placed them in her hands.

But Eva bent to the other side of the horse, where Dodo was standing,
and said, as he relinquished the reins,--"That's a good boy,
Dodo;--thank you!"

Dodo looked up in amazement into the sweet young face; the blood rushed
to his cheeks, and the tears to his eyes.

"Here, Dodo," said his master, imperiously.

Dodo sprang and held the horse, while his master mounted.

"There's a picayune for you to buy candy with, Dodo," said Henrique; "go
get some."

And Henrique cantered down the walk after Eva. Dodo stood looking after
the two children. One had given him money; and one had given him what he
wanted far more,--a kind word, kindly spoken. Dodo had been only a
few months away from his mother. His master had bought him at a slave
warehouse, for his handsome face, to be a match to the handsome pony;
and he was now getting his breaking in, at the hands of his young
master.

The scene of the beating had been witnessed by the two brothers St.
Clare, from another part of the garden.

Augustine's cheek flushed; but he only observed, with his usual
sarcastic carelessness.

"I suppose that's what we may call republican education, Alfred?"

"Henrique is a devil of a fellow, when his blood's up," said Alfred,
carelessly.

"I suppose you consider this an instructive practice for him," said
Augustine, drily.

"I couldn't help it, if I didn't. Henrique is a regular little
tempest;--his mother and I have given him up, long ago. But, then, that
Dodo is a perfect sprite,--no amount of whipping can hurt him."

"And this by way of teaching Henrique the first verse of a republican's
catechism, 'All men are born free and equal!'"

"Poh!" said Alfred; "one of Tom Jefferson's pieces of French sentiment
and humbug. It's perfectly ridiculous to have that going the rounds
among us, to this day."

"I think it is," said St. Clare, significantly.

"Because," said Alfred, "we can see plainly enough that all men are
‘not’ born free, nor born equal; they are born anything else. For
my part, I think half this republican talk sheer humbug. It is the
educated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have
equal rights and not the canaille."

"If you can keep the canaille of that opinion," said Augustine. "They
took ‘their’ turn once, in France."

"Of course, they must be ‘kept down’, consistently, steadily, as
I ‘should’," said Alfred, setting his foot hard down as if he were
standing on somebody.

"It makes a terrible slip when they get up," said Augustine,--"in St.
Domingo, for instance."

"Poh!" said Alfred, "we'll take care of that, in this country. We must
set our face against all this educating, elevating talk, that is getting
about now; the lower class must not be educated."

"That is past praying for," said Augustine; "educated they will be, and
we have only to say how. Our system is educating them in barbarism and
brutality. We are breaking all humanizing ties, and making them brute
beasts; and, if they get the upper hand, such we shall find them."

"They shall never get the upper hand!" said Alfred.

"That's right," said St. Clare; "put on the steam, fasten down the
escape-valve, and sit on it, and see where you'll land."

"Well," said Alfred, "we ‘will’ see. I'm not afraid to sit on the
escape-valve, as long as the boilers are strong, and the machinery works
well."

"The nobles in Louis XVI.'s time thought just so; and Austria and Pius
IX. think so now; and, some pleasant morning, you may all be caught up
to meet each other in the air, ‘when the boilers burst’."

"‘Dies declarabit’," said Alfred, laughing.

"I tell you," said Augustine, "if there is anything that is revealed
with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses
are to rise, and the under class become the upper one."

"That's one of your red republican humbugs, Augustine! Why didn't you
ever take to the stump;--you'd make a famous stump orator! Well, I hope
I shall be dead before this millennium of your greasy masses comes on."

"Greasy or not greasy, they will govern ‘you’, when their time comes,"
said Augustine; "and they will be just such rulers as you make them. The
French noblesse chose to have the people '‘sans culottes’,' and they
had '‘sans culotte’' governors to their hearts' content. The people of
Hayti--"

"O, come, Augustine! as if we hadn't had enough of that abominable,
contemptible Hayti!* The Haytiens were not Anglo Saxons; if they
had been there would have been another story. The Anglo Saxon is the
dominant race of the world, and ‘is to be so’."

* In August 1791, as a consequence of the French Revolution,
the black slaves and mulattoes on Haiti rose in revolt
against the whites, and in the period of turmoil that
followed enormous cruelties were practised by both sides.
The "Emperor" Dessalines, come to power in 1804, massacred
all the whites on the island. Haitian bloodshed became an
argument to show the barbarous nature of the Negro, a
doctrine Wendell Phillips sought to combat in his celebrated
lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture.

"Well, there is a pretty fair infusion of Anglo Saxon blood among our
slaves, now," said Augustine. "There are plenty among them who have only
enough of the African to give a sort of tropical warmth and fervor to
our calculating firmness and foresight. If ever the San Domingo hour
comes, Anglo Saxon blood will lead on the day. Sons of white fathers,
with all our haughty feelings burning in their veins, will not always
be bought and sold and traded. They will rise, and raise with them their
mother's race."

"Stuff!--nonsense!"

"Well," said Augustine, "there goes an old saying to this effect, 'As
it was in the days of Noah so shall it be;--they ate, they drank, they
planted, they builded, and knew not till the flood came and took them.'"

"On the whole, Augustine, I think your talents might do for a circuit
rider," said Alfred, laughing. "Never you fear for us; possession is our
nine points. We've got the power. This subject race," said he, stamping
firmly, "is down and shall ‘stay’ down! We have energy enough to manage
our own powder."

"Sons trained like your Henrique will be grand guardians of your
powder-magazines," said Augustine,--"so cool and self-possessed!
The proverb says, 'They that cannot govern themselves cannot govern
others.'"

"There is a trouble there" said Alfred, thoughtfully; "there's no doubt
that our system is a difficult one to train children under. It gives too
free scope to the passions, altogether, which, in our climate, are
hot enough. I find trouble with Henrique. The boy is generous and
warm-hearted, but a perfect fire-cracker when excited. I believe I shall
send him North for his education, where obedience is more fashionable,
and where he will associate more with equals, and less with dependents."

"Since training children is the staple work of the human race," said
Augustine, "I should think it something of a consideration that our
system does not work well there."

"It does not for some things," said Alfred; "for others, again, it does.
It makes boys manly and courageous; and the very vices of an abject race
tend to strengthen in them the opposite virtues. I think Henrique,
now, has a keener sense of the beauty of truth, from seeing lying and
deception the universal badge of slavery."

"A Christian-like view of the subject, certainly!" said Augustine.

"It's true, Christian-like or not; and is about as Christian-like as
most other things in the world," said Alfred.

"That may be," said St. Clare.

"Well, there's no use in talking, Augustine. I believe we've been round
and round this old track five hundred times, more or less. What do you
say to a game of backgammon?"

The two brothers ran up the verandah steps, and were soon seated at a
light bamboo stand, with the backgammon-board between them. As they were
setting their men, Alfred said,

"I tell you, Augustine, if I thought as you do, I should do something."

"I dare say you would,--you are one of the doing sort,--but what?"

"Why, elevate your own servants, for a specimen," said Alfred, with a
half-scornful smile.

"You might as well set Mount AEtna on them flat, and tell them to
stand up under it, as tell me to elevate my servants under all the
superincumbent mass of society upon them. One man can do nothing,
against the whole action of a community. Education, to do anything, must
be a state education; or there must be enough agreed in it to make a
current."

"You take the first throw," said Alfred; and the brothers were soon lost
in the game, and heard no more till the scraping of horses' feet was
heard under the verandah.

"There come the children," said Augustine, rising. "Look here, Alf! Did
you ever see anything so beautiful?" And, in truth, it ‘was’ a beautiful
sight. Henrique, with his bold brow, and dark, glossy curls, and glowing
cheek, was laughing gayly as he bent towards his fair cousin, as they
came on. She was dressed in a blue riding dress, with a cap of the same
color. Exercise had given a brilliant hue to her cheeks, and heightened
the effect of her singularly transparent skin, and golden hair.

"Good heavens! what perfectly dazzling beauty!" said Alfred. "I tell
you, Auguste, won't she make some hearts ache, one of these days?"

"She will, too truly,--God knows I'm afraid so!" said St. Clare, in a
tone of sudden bitterness, as he hurried down to take her off her horse.

"Eva darling! you're not much tired?" he said, as he clasped her in his
arms.

"No, papa," said the child; but her short, hard breathing alarmed her
father.

"How could you ride so fast, dear?--you know it's bad for you."

"I felt so well, papa, and liked it so much, I forgot."

St. Clare carried her in his arms into the parlor, and laid her on the
sofa.

"Henrique, you must be careful of Eva," said he; "you mustn't ride fast
with her."

"I'll take her under my care," said Henrique, seating himself by the
sofa, and taking Eva's hand.

Eva soon found herself much better. Her father and uncle resumed their
game, and the children were left together.

"Do you know, Eva, I'm sorry papa is only going to stay two days here,
and then I shan't see you again for ever so long! If I stay with you,
I'd try to be good, and not be cross to Dodo, and so on. I don't mean
to treat Dodo ill; but, you know, I've got such a quick temper. I'm not
really bad to him, though. I give him a picayune, now and then; and you
see he dresses well. I think, on the whole, Dodo 's pretty well off."

"Would you think you were well off, if there were not one creature in
the world near you to love you?"

"I?--Well, of course not."

"And you have taken Dodo away from all the friends he ever had, and now
he has not a creature to love him;--nobody can be good that way."

"Well, I can't help it, as I know of. I can't get his mother and I can't
love him myself, nor anybody else, as I know of."

"Why can't you?" said Eva.

"‘Love’ Dodo! Why, Eva, you wouldn't have me! I may ‘like’ him well
enough; but you don't ‘love’ your servants."

"I do, indeed."

"How odd!"

"Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?"

"O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many such things; but, then,
nobody ever thinks of doing them,--you know, Eva, nobody does."

Eva did not speak; her eyes were fixed and thoughtful for a few moments.

"At any rate," she said, "dear Cousin, do love poor Dodo, and be kind to
him, for my sake!"

"I could love anything, for your sake, dear Cousin; for I really think
you are the loveliest creature that I ever saw!" And Henrique spoke
with an earnestness that flushed his handsome face. Eva received it with
perfect simplicity, without even a change of feature; merely saying,
"I'm glad you feel so, dear Henrique! I hope you will remember."

The dinner-bell put an end to the interview.



CHAPTER XXIV

Foreshadowings


Two days after this, Alfred St. Clare and Augustine parted; and Eva, who
had been stimulated, by the society of her young cousin, to exertions
beyond her strength, began to fail rapidly. St. Clare was at last
willing to call in medical advice,--a thing from which he had always
shrunk, because it was the admission of an unwelcome truth.

But, for a day or two, Eva was so unwell as to be confined to the house;
and the doctor was called.

Marie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child's gradually decaying
health and strength, because she was completely absorbed in studying out
two or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself was
a victim. It was the first principle of Marie's belief that nobody ever
was or could be so great a sufferer as ‘herself’; and, therefore, she
always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her
could be sick. She was always sure, in such a case, that it was nothing
but laziness, or want of energy; and that, if they had had the suffering
‘she’ had, they would soon know the difference.

Miss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal fears about
Eva; but to no avail.

"I don't see as anything ails the child," she would say; "she runs
about, and plays."

"But she has a cough."

"Cough! you don't need to tell ‘me’ about a cough. I've always been
subject to a cough, all my days. When I was of Eva's age, they thought
I was in a consumption. Night after night, Mammy used to sit up with me.
O! Eva's cough is not anything."

"But she gets weak, and is short-breathed."

"Law! I've had that, years and years; it's only a nervous affection."

"But she sweats so, nights!"

"Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after night, my
clothes will be wringing wet. There won't be a dry thread in my
night-clothes and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up
to dry! Eva doesn't sweat anything like that!"

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now that Eva was fairly
and visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie, all on a sudden,
took a new turn.

"She knew it," she said; "she always felt it, that she was destined
to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her wretched
health, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her
eyes;"--and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded,
with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new misery.

"My dear Marie, don't talk so!" said St. Clare. "You ought not to give up
the case so, at once."

"You have not a mother's feelings, St. Clare! You never could understand
me!--you don't now."

"But don't talk so, as if it were a gone case!"

"I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If ‘you’ don't
feel when your only child is in this alarming state, I do. It's a blow
too much for me, with all I was bearing before."

"It's true," said St. Clare, "that Eva is very delicate, ‘that’ I always
knew; and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust her strength; and
that her situation is critical. But just now she is only prostrated by
the heat of the weather, and by the excitement of her cousin's visit,
and the exertions she made. The physician says there is room for hope."

"Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side, pray do; it's a
mercy if people haven't sensitive feelings, in this world. I am sure I
wish I didn't feel as I do; it only makes me completely wretched! I wish
I ‘could’ be as easy as the rest of you!"

And the "rest of them" had good reason to breathe the same prayer, for
Marie paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts
of inflictions on every one about her. Every word that was spoken by
anybody, everything that was done or was not done everywhere, was only
a new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted, insensible beings,
who were unmindful of her peculiar sorrows. Poor Eva heard some of these
speeches; and nearly cried her little eyes out, in pity for her mamma,
and in sorrow that she should make her so much distress.

In a week or two, there was a great improvement of symptoms,--one of
those deceitful lulls, by which her inexorable disease so often beguiles
the anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave. Eva's step was again
in the garden,--in the balconies; she played and laughed again,--and
her father, in a transport, declared that they should soon have her
as hearty as anybody. Miss Ophelia and the physician alone felt no
encouragement from this illusive truce. There was one other heart, too,
that felt the same certainty, and that was the little heart of Eva. What
is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its
earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or
the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be it what it may,
it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty
that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright
stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by
sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

For the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was unfolding
before her with every brightness that love and wealth could give, had no
regret for herself in dying.

In that book which she and her simple old friend had read so much
together, she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one who
loved the little child; and, as she gazed and mused, He had ceased to
be an image and a picture of the distant past, and come to be a living,
all-surrounding reality. His love enfolded her childish heart with more
than mortal tenderness; and it was to Him, she said, she was going, and
to his home.

But her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave
behind. Her father most,--for Eva, though she never distinctly thought
so, had an instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than
any other. She loved her mother because she was so loving a creature,
and all the selfishness that she had seen in her only saddened and
perplexed her; for she had a child's implicit trust that her mother
could not do wrong. There was something about her that Eva never could
make out; and she always smoothed it over with thinking that, after all,
it was mamma, and she loved her very dearly indeed.

She felt, too, for those fond, faithful servants, to whom she was as
daylight and sunshine. Children do not usually generalize; but Eva was
an uncommonly mature child, and the things that she had witnessed of the
evils of the system under which they were living had fallen, one by
one, into the depths of her thoughtful, pondering heart. She had vague
longings to do something for them,--to bless and save not only them,
but all in their condition,--longings that contrasted sadly with the
feebleness of her little frame.

"Uncle Tom," she said, one day, when she was reading to her friend, "I
can understand why Jesus ‘wanted’ to die for us."

"Why, Miss Eva?"

"Because I've felt so, too."

"What is it Miss Eva?--I don't understand."

"I can't tell you; but, when I saw those poor creatures on the boat,
you know, when you came up and I,--some had lost their mothers, and some
their husbands, and some mothers cried for their little children--and
when I heard about poor Prue,--oh, wasn't that dreadful!--and a great
many other times, I've felt that I would be glad to die, if my dying
could stop all this misery. ‘I would’ die for them, Tom, if I could,"
said the child, earnestly, laying her little thin hand on his.

Tom looked at the child with awe; and when she, hearing her father's
voice, glided away, he wiped his eyes many times, as he looked after
her.

"It's jest no use tryin' to keep Miss Eva here," he said to Mammy, whom
he met a moment after. "She's got the Lord's mark in her forehead."

"Ah, yes, yes," said Mammy, raising her hands; "I've allers said so.
She wasn't never like a child that's to live--there was allers something
deep in her eyes. I've told Missis so, many the time; it's a comin'
true,--we all sees it,--dear, little, blessed lamb!"

Eva came tripping up the verandah steps to her father. It was late in
the afternoon, and the rays of the sun formed a kind of glory behind
her, as she came forward in her white dress, with her golden hair and
glowing cheeks, her eyes unnaturally bright with the slow fever that
burned in her veins.

St. Clare had called her to show a statuette that he had been buying
for her; but her appearance, as she came on, impressed him suddenly and
painfully. There is a kind of beauty so intense, yet so fragile, that we
cannot bear to look at it. Her father folded her suddenly in his arms,
and almost forgot what he was going to tell her.

"Eva, dear, you are better now-a-days,--are you not?"

"Papa," said Eva, with sudden firmness "I've had things I wanted to say
to you, a great while. I want to say them now, before I get weaker."

St. Clare trembled as Eva seated herself in his lap. She laid her head
on his bosom, and said,

"It's all no use, papa, to keep it to myself any longer. The time is
coming that I am going to leave you. I am going, and never to come
back!" and Eva sobbed.

"O, now, my dear little Eva!" said St. Clare, trembling as he spoke, but
speaking cheerfully, "you've got nervous and low-spirited; you mustn't
indulge such gloomy thoughts. See here, I've bought a statuette for
you!"

"No, papa," said Eva, putting it gently away, "don't deceive
yourself!--I am ‘not’ any better, I know it perfectly well,--and I am
going, before long. I am not nervous,--I am not low-spirited. If it were
not for you, papa, and my friends, I should be perfectly happy. I want
to go,--I long to go!"

"Why, dear child, what has made your poor little heart so sad? You have
had everything, to make you happy, that could be given you."

"I had rather be in heaven; though, only for my friends' sake, I would
be willing to live. There are a great many things here that make me sad,
that seem dreadful to me; I had rather be there; but I don't want to
leave you,--it almost breaks my heart!"

"What makes you sad, and seems dreadful, Eva?"

"O, things that are done, and done all the time. I feel sad for our poor
people; they love me dearly, and they are all good and kind to me. I
wish, papa, they were all ‘free’."

"Why, Eva, child, don't you think they are well enough off now?"

"O, but, papa, if anything should happen to you, what would become of
them? There are very few men like you, papa. Uncle Alfred isn't like
you, and mamma isn't; and then, think of poor old Prue's owners! What
horrid things people do, and can do!" and Eva shuddered.

"My dear child, you are too sensitive. I'm sorry I ever let you hear
such stories."

"O, that's what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and
never to have any pain,--never suffer anything,--not even hear a sad
story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, an
their lives;--it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to
feel about them! Such things always sunk into my heart; they went down
deep; I've thought and thought about them. Papa, isn't there any way to
have all slaves made free?"

"That's a difficult question, dearest. There's no doubt that this way
is a very bad one; a great many people think so; I do myself I heartily
wish that there were not a slave in the land; but, then, I don't know
what is to be done about it!"

"Papa, you are such a good man, and so noble, and kind, and you always
have a way of saying things that is so pleasant, couldn't you go all
round and try to persuade people to do right about this? When I am dead,
papa, then you will think of me, and do it for my sake. I would do it,
if I could."

"When you are dead, Eva," said St. Clare, passionately. "O, child, don't
talk to me so! You are all I have on earth."

"Poor old Prue's child was all that she had,--and yet she had to hear it
crying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their
children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor
Mammy loves her children; I've seen her cry when she talked about them.
And Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things
are happening, all the time!"

"There, there, darling," said St. Clare, soothingly; "only don't
distress yourself, don't talk of dying, and I will do anything you
wish."

"And promise me, dear father, that Tom shall have his freedom as soon
as"--she stopped, and said, in a hesitating tone--"I am gone!"

"Yes, dear, I will do anything in the world,--anything you could ask me
to."

"Dear papa," said the child, laying her burning cheek against his, "how
I wish we could go together!"

"Where, dearest?" said St. Clare.

"To our Saviour's home; it's so sweet and peaceful there--it is all so
loving there!" The child spoke unconsciously, as of a place where she
had often been. "Don't you want to go, papa?" she said.

St. Clare drew her closer to him, but was silent.

"You will come to me," said the child, speaking in a voice of calm
certainty which she often used unconsciously.

"I shall come after you. I shall not forget you."

The shadows of the solemn evening closed round them deeper and deeper,
as St. Clare sat silently holding the little frail form to his bosom.
He saw no more the deep eyes, but the voice came over him as a spirit
voice, and, as in a sort of judgment vision, his whole past life rose in
a moment before his eyes: his mother's prayers and hymns; his own early
yearnings and aspirings for good; and, between them and this hour, years
of worldliness and scepticism, and what man calls respectable living.
We can think ‘much’, very much, in a moment. St. Clare saw and felt many
things, but spoke nothing; and, as it grew darker, he took his child
to her bed-room; and, when she was prepared for rest; he sent away the
attendants, and rocked her in his arms, and sung to her till she was
asleep.



CHAPTER XXV

The Little Evangelist

It was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was stretched on a bamboo lounge in
the verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. Marie lay reclined on a
sofa, opposite the window opening on the verandah, closely secluded,
under an awning of transparent gauze, from the outrages of the
mosquitos, and languidly holding in her hand an elegantly bound
prayer-book. She was holding it because it was Sunday, and she imagined
she had been reading it,--though, in fact, she had been only taking a
succession of short naps, with it open in her hand.

Miss Ophelia, who, after some rummaging, had hunted up a small Methodist
meeting within riding distance, had gone out, with Tom as driver, to
attend it; and Eva had accompanied them.

"I say, Augustine," said Marie after dozing a while, "I must send to the
city after my old Doctor Posey; I'm sure I've got the complaint of the
heart."

"Well; why need you send for him? This doctor that attends Eva seems
skilful."

"I would not trust him in a critical case," said Marie; "and I think
I may say mine is becoming so! I've been thinking of it, these two
or three nights past; I have such distressing pains, and such strange
feelings."

"O, Marie, you are blue; I don't believe it's heart complaint."

"I dare say ‘you’ don't," said Marie; "I was prepared to expect ‘that’.
You can be alarmed enough, if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the
matter with her; but you never think of me."

"If it's particularly agreeable to you to have heart disease, why, I'll
try and maintain you have it," said St. Clare; "I didn't know it was."

"Well, I only hope you won't be sorry for this, when it's too late!"
said Marie; "but, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the
exertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have
long suspected."

What the ‘exertions’ were which Marie referred to, it would have been
difficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself,
and went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was,
till a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia
alighted.

Miss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, to put away her bonnet
and shawl, as was always her manner, before she spoke a word on any
subject; while Eva came, at St: Clare's call, and was sitting on his
knee, giving him an account of the services they had heard.

They soon heard loud exclamations from Miss Ophelia's room, which,
like the one in which they were sitting, opened on to the verandah and
violent reproof addressed to somebody.

"What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?" asked St. Clare. "That
commotion is of her raising, I'll be bound!"

And, in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high indignation, came dragging
the culprit along.

"Come out here, now!" she said. "I ‘will’ tell your master!"

"What's the case now?" asked Augustine.

"The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this child, any longer! It's
past all bearing; flesh and blood cannot endure it! Here, I locked her
up, and gave her a hymn to study; and what does she do, but spy
out where I put my key, and has gone to my bureau, and got a
bonnet-trimming, and cut it all to pieces to make dolls' jackets! I never
saw anything like it, in my life!"

"I told you, Cousin," said Marie, "that you'd find out that these
creatures can't be brought up without severity. If I had ‘my’ way, now,"
she said, looking reproachfully at St. Clare, "I'd send that child out,
and have her thoroughly whipped; I'd have her whipped till she couldn't
stand!"

"I don't doubt it," said St. Clare. "Tell me of the lovely rule of
woman! I never saw above a dozen women that wouldn't half kill a horse,
or a servant, either, if they had their own way with them!--let alone a
man."

"There is no use in this shilly-shally way of yours, St. Clare!" said
Marie. "Cousin is a woman of sense, and she sees it now, as plain as I
do."

Miss Ophelia had just the capability of indignation that belongs to the
thorough-paced housekeeper, and this had been pretty actively roused
by the artifice and wastefulness of the child; in fact, many of my
lady readers must own that they should have felt just so in her
circumstances; but Marie's words went beyond her, and she felt less
heat.

"I wouldn't have the child treated so, for the world," she said; "but,
I am sure, Augustine, I don't know what to do. I've taught and taught;
I've talked till I'm tired; I've whipped her; I've punished her in every
way I can think of, and she's just what she was at first."

"Come here, Tops, you monkey!" said St. Clare, calling the child up to
him.

Topsy came up; her round, hard eyes glittering and blinking with a
mixture of apprehensiveness and their usual odd drollery.

"What makes you behave so?" said St. Clare, who could not help being
amused with the child's expression.

"Spects it's my wicked heart," said Topsy, demurely; "Miss Feely says
so."

"Don't you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says she has
done everything she can think of."

"Lor, yes, Mas'r! old Missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a heap
harder, and used to pull my har, and knock my head agin the door; but
it didn't do me no good! I spects, if they 's to pull every spire o' har
out o' my head, it wouldn't do no good, neither,--I 's so wicked! Laws!
I 's nothin but a nigger, no ways!"

"Well, I shall have to give her up," said Miss Ophelia; "I can't have
that trouble any longer."

"Well, I'd just like to ask one question," said St. Clare.

"What is it?"

"Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child,
that you can have at home here, all to yourself, what's the use of
sending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands of just
such? I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what thousands of
your heathen are."

Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood a
silent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to
follow her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the verandah,
which St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy
disappeared into this place.

"What's Eva going about, now?" said St. Clare; "I mean to see."

And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the
glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips,
he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat the
two children on the floor, with their side faces towards them. Topsy,
with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but, opposite to
her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large
eyes.

"What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won't you try and be good? Don't
you love ‘anybody’, Topsy?"

"Donno nothing 'bout love; I loves candy and sich, that's all," said
Topsy.

"But you love your father and mother?"

"Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva."

"O, I know," said Eva, sadly; "but hadn't you any brother, or sister, or
aunt, or--"

"No, none on 'em,--never had nothing nor nobody."

"But, Topsy, if you'd only try to be good, you might--"

"Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good," said
Topsy. "If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then."

"But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would
love you, if you were good."

Topsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of expressing
incredulity.

"Don't you think so?" said Eva.

"No; she can't bar me, 'cause I'm a nigger!--she'd 's soon have a
toad touch her! There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do
nothin'! ‘I’ don't care," said Topsy, beginning to whistle.

"O, Topsy, poor child, ‘I’ love you!" said Eva, with a sudden burst of
feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder;
"I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or
friends;--because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I
want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live
a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I
wish you would try to be good, for my sake;--it's only a little while I
shall be with you."

The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with
tears;--large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on
the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray
of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She
laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,--while the
beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some
bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

"Poor Topsy!" said Eva, "don't you know that Jesus loves all alike? He
is just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do,--only
more, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go
to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you
were white. Only think of it, Topsy!--’you’ can be one of those spirits
bright, Uncle Tom sings about."

"O, dear Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva!" said the child; "I will try, I will
try; I never did care nothin' about it before."

St. Clare, at this instant, dropped the curtain. "It puts me in mind of
mother," he said to Miss Ophelia. "It is true what she told me; if we
want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ
did,--call them to us, and ‘put our hands on them’."

"I've always had a prejudice against negroes," said Miss Ophelia, "and
it's a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I
don't think she knew it."

"Trust any child to find that out," said St. Clare; "there's no keeping
it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit
a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never
excite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance
remains in the heart;--it's a queer kind of a fact,--but so it is."

"I don't know how I can help it," said Miss Ophelia; "they ‘are’
disagreeable to me,--this child in particular,--how can I help feeling
so?"

"Eva does, it seems."

"Well, she's so loving! After all, though, she's no more than
Christ-like," said Miss Ophelia; "I wish I were like her. She might
teach me a lesson."

"It wouldn't be the first time a little child had been used to instruct
an old disciple, if it ‘were’ so," said St. Clare.



CHAPTER XXVI

Death

Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
In life's early morning, hath hid from our eyes.*


* "Weep Not for Those," a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

Eva's bed-room was a spacious apartment, which, like all the other
robins in the house, opened on to the broad verandah. The room
communicated, on one side, with her father and mother's apartment;
on the other, with that appropriated to Miss Ophelia. St. Clare had
gratified his own eye and taste, in furnishing this room in a style
that had a peculiar keeping with the character of her for whom it was
intended. The windows were hung with curtains of rose-colored and white
muslin, the floor was spread with a matting which had been ordered
in Paris, to a pattern of his own device, having round it a border of
rose-buds and leaves, and a centre-piece with full-flown roses. The
bedstead, chairs, and lounges, were of bamboo, wrought in peculiarly
graceful and fanciful patterns. Over the head of the bed was an
alabaster bracket, on which a beautiful sculptured angel stood,
with drooping wings, holding out a crown of myrtle-leaves. From this
depended, over the bed, light curtains of rose-colored gauze, striped
with silver, supplying that protection from mosquitos which is an
indispensable addition to all sleeping accommodation in that climate.
The graceful bamboo lounges were amply supplied with cushions of
rose-colored damask, while over them, depending from the hands of
sculptured figures, were gauze curtains similar to those of the bed. A
light, fanciful bamboo table stood in the middle of the room, where a
Parian vase, wrought in the shape of a white lily, with its buds, stood,
ever filled with flowers. On this table lay Eva's books and little
trinkets, with an elegantly wrought alabaster writing-stand, which her
father had supplied to her when he saw her trying to improve herself
in writing. There was a fireplace in the room, and on the marble mantle
above stood a beautifully wrought statuette of Jesus receiving little
children, and on either side marble vases, for which it was Tom's pride
and delight to offer bouquets every morning. Two or three exquisite
paintings of children, in various attitudes, embellished the wall. In
short, the eye could turn nowhere without meeting images of childhood,
of beauty, and of peace. Those little eyes never opened, in the morning
light, without falling on something which suggested to the heart
soothing and beautiful thoughts.

The deceitful strength which had buoyed Eva up for a little while was
fast passing away; seldom and more seldom her light footstep was heard
in the verandah, and oftener and oftener she was found reclined on a
little lounge by the open window, her large, deep eyes fixed on the
rising and falling waters of the lake.

It was towards the middle of the afternoon, as she was so
reclining,--her Bible half open, her little transparent fingers lying
listlessly between the leaves,--suddenly she heard her mother's voice,
in sharp tones, in the verandah.

"What now, you baggage!--what new piece of mischief! You've been picking
the flowers, hey?" and Eva heard the sound of a smart slap.

"Law, Missis! they 's for Miss Eva," she heard a voice say, which she
knew belonged to Topsy.

"Miss Eva! A pretty excuse!--you suppose she wants ‘your’ flowers, you
good-for-nothing nigger! Get along off with you!"

In a moment, Eva was off from her lounge, and in the verandah.

"O, don't, mother! I should like the flowers; do give them to me; I want
them!"

"Why, Eva, your room is full now."

"I can't have too many," said Eva. "Topsy, do bring them here."

Topsy, who had stood sullenly, holding down her head, now came up
and offered her flowers. She did it with a look of hesitation and
bashfulness, quite unlike the eldrich boldness and brightness which was
usual with her.

"It's a beautiful bouquet!" said Eva, looking at it.

It was rather a singular one,--a brilliant scarlet geranium, and one
single white japonica, with its glossy leaves. It was tied up with an
evident eye to the contrast of color, and the arrangement of every leaf
had carefully been studied.

Topsy looked pleased, as Eva said,--"Topsy, you arrange flowers very
prettily. Here," she said, "is this vase I haven't any flowers for. I
wish you'd arrange something every day for it."

"Well, that's odd!" said Marie. "What in the world do you want that
for?"

"Never mind, mamma; you'd as lief as not Topsy should do it,--had you
not?"

"Of course, anything you please, dear! Topsy, you hear your young
mistress;--see that you mind."

Topsy made a short courtesy, and looked down; and, as she turned away,
Eva saw a tear roll down her dark cheek.

"You see, mamma, I knew poor Topsy wanted to do something for me," said
Eva to her mother.

"O, nonsense! it's only because she likes to do mischief. She knows she
mustn't pick flowers,--so she does it; that's all there is to it. But,
if you fancy to have her pluck them, so be it."

"Mamma, I