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_ Mrs. Shelby had gone on her visit, and Eliza stood in the
verandah, rather dejectedly looking after the retreating carriage,
when a hand was laid on her shoulder. She turned, and a bright
smile lighted up her fine eyes.
"George, is it you? How you frightened me! Well; I am so
glad you 's come! Missis is gone to spend the afternoon; so come
into my little room, and we'll have the time all to ourselves."
Saying this, she drew him into a neat little apartment
opening on the verandah, where she generally sat at her sewing,
within call of her mistress.
"How glad I am!--why don't you smile?--and look at Harry--how
he grows." The boy stood shyly regarding his father through his
curls, holding close to the skirts of his mother's dress.
"Isn't he beautiful?" said Eliza, lifting his long curls and
kissing him.
"I wish he'd never been born!" said George, bitterly. "I wish
I'd never been born myself!"
Surprised and frightened, Eliza sat down, leaned her head
on her husband's shoulder, and burst into tears.
"There now, Eliza, it's too bad for me to make you feel so,
poor girl!" said he, fondly; "it's too bad: O, how I wish you
never had seen me--you might have been happy!"
"George! George! how can you talk so? What dreadful thing has
happened, or is going to happen? I'm sure we've been very happy,
till lately."
"So we have, dear," said George. Then drawing his child on his
knee, he gazed intently on his glorious dark eyes, and passed
his hands through his long curls.
"Just like you, Eliza; and you are the handsomest woman I ever
saw, and the best one I ever wish to see; but, oh, I wish I'd
never seen you, nor you me!"
"O, George, how can you!"
"Yes, Eliza, it's all misery, misery, misery! My life is
bitter as wormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I'm a
poor, miserable, forlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with
me, that's all. What's the use of our trying to do anything, trying
to know anything, trying to be anything? What's the use of living?
I wish I was dead!"
"O, now, dear George, that is really wicked! I know how
you feel about losing your place in the factory, and you have a
hard master; but pray be patient, and perhaps something--"
"Patient!" said he, interrupting her; "haven't I been patient?
Did I say a word when he came and took me away, for no earthly
reason, from the place where everybody was kind to me? I'd paid
him truly every cent of my earnings,--and they all say I worked well."
"Well, it _is_ dreadful," said Eliza; "but, after all, he
is your master, you know."
"My master! and who made him my master? That's what I think
of--what right has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I'm a
better man than he is. I know more about business than he does;
I am a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can;
I can write a better hand,--and I've learned it all myself, and no
thanks to him,--I've learned it in spite of him; and now what right
has he to make a dray-horse of me?--to take me from things I can
do, and do better than he can, and put me to work that any horse
can do? He tries to do it; he says he'll bring me down and humble
me, and he puts me to just the hardest, meanest and dirtiest work,
on purpose!"
"O, George! George! you frighten me! Why, I never heard
you talk so; I'm afraid you'll do something dreadful. I don't
wonder at your feelings, at all; but oh, do be careful--do, do--for
my sake--for Harry's!"
"I have been careful, and I have been patient, but it's
growing worse and worse; flesh and blood can't bear it any
longer;--every chance he can get to insult and torment me, he takes.
I thought I could do my work well, and keep on quiet, and have some
time to read and learn out of work hours; but the more he see I
can do, the more he loads on. He says that though I don't say
anything, he sees I've got the devil in me, and he means to bring
it out; and one of these days it will come out in a way that he
won't like, or I'm mistaken!"
"O dear! what shall we do?" said Eliza, mournfully.
"It was only yesterday," said George, "as I was busy loading
stones into a cart, that young Mas'r Tom stood there, slashing his
whip so near the horse that the creature was frightened. I asked
him to stop, as pleasant as I could,--he just kept right on.
I begged him again, and then he turned on me, and began striking me.
I held his hand, and then he screamed and kicked and ran to his
father, and told him that I was fighting him. He came in a rage,
and said he'd teach me who was my master; and he tied me to a tree,
and cut switches for young master, and told him that he might whip
me till he was tired;--and he did do it! If I don't make him remember
it, some time!" and the brow of the young man grew dark, and his
eyes burned with an expression that made his young wife tremble.
"Who made this man my master? That's what I want to know!" he said.
"Well," said Eliza, mournfully, "I always thought that I
must obey my master and mistress, or I couldn't be a Christian."
"There is some sense in it, in your case; they have brought
you up like a child, fed you, clothed you, indulged you, and
taught you, so that you have a good education; that is some
reason why they should claim you. But I have been kicked and
cuffed and sworn at, and at the best only let alone; and what
do I owe? I've paid for all my keeping a hundred times over.
I _won't_ bear it. No, I _won't_!" he said, clenching his hand
with a fierce frown.
Eliza trembled, and was silent. She had never seen her husband
in this mood before; and her gentle system of ethics seemed
to bend like a reed in the surges of such passions.
"You know poor little Carlo, that you gave me," added George;
"the creature has been about all the comfort that I've had.
He has slept with me nights, and followed me around days, and kind
o' looked at me as if he understood how I felt. Well, the other
day I was just feeding him with a few old scraps I picked up by
the kitchen door, and Mas'r came along, and said I was feeding him
up at his expense, and that he couldn't afford to have every nigger
keeping his dog, and ordered me to tie a stone to his neck and
throw him in the pond."
"O, George, you didn't do it!"
"Do it? not I!--but he did. Mas'r and Tom pelted the poor
drowning creature with stones. Poor thing! he looked at me so
mournful, as if he wondered why I didn't save him. I had to take
a flogging because I wouldn't do it myself. I don't care. Mas'r
will find out that I'm one that whipping won't tame. My day will
come yet, if he don't look out."
"What are you going to do? O, George, don't do anything wicked;
if you only trust in God, and try to do right, he'll deliver you."
"I an't a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart's full of
bitterness; I can't trust in God. Why does he let things be so?"
"O, George, we must have faith. Mistress says that when all
things go wrong to us, we must believe that God is doing
the very best."
"That's easy to say for people that are sitting on their sofas
and riding in their carriages; but let 'em be where I am, I
guess it would come some harder. I wish I could be good; but my
heart burns, and can't be reconciled, anyhow. You couldn't in my
place,--you can't now, if I tell you all I've got to say. You don't
know the whole yet."
"What can be coming now?"
"Well, lately Mas'r has been saying that he was a fool to
let me marry off the place; that he hates Mr. Shelby and all his
tribe, because they are proud, and hold their heads up above him,
and that I've got proud notions from you; and he says he won't let
me come here any more, and that I shall take a wife and settle down
on his place. At first he only scolded and grumbled these things;
but yesterday he told me that I should take Mina for a wife, and
settle down in a cabin with her, or he would sell me down river."
"Why--but you were married to _me_, by the minister, as
much as if you'd been a white man!" said Eliza, simply.
"Don't you know a slave can't be married? There is no law
in this country for that; I can't hold you for my wife, if he
chooses to part us. That's why I wish I'd never seen you,--why I
wish I'd never been born; it would have been better for us both,--it
would have been better for this poor child if he had never been born.
All this may happen to him yet!"
"O, but master is so kind!"
"Yes, but who knows?--he may die--and then he may be sold
to nobody knows who. What pleasure is it that he is handsome,
and smart, and bright? I tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce
through your soul for every good and pleasant thing your child is
or has; it will make him worth too much for you to keep."
The words smote heavily on Eliza's heart; the vision of the
trader came before her eyes, and, as if some one had struck her
a deadly blow, she turned pale and gasped for breath. She looked
nervously out on the verandah, where the boy, tired of the grave
conversation, had retired, and where he was riding triumphantly
up and down on Mr. Shelby's walking-stick. She would have spoken
to tell her husband her fears, but checked herself.
"No, no,--he has enough to bear, poor fellow!" she thought.
"No, I won't tell him; besides, it an't true; Missis never
deceives us."
"So, Eliza, my girl," said the husband, mournfully, "bear
up, now; and good-by, for I'm going."
"Going, George! Going where?"
"To Canada," said he, straightening himself up; and when I'm
there, I'll buy you; that's all the hope that's left us. You have
a kind master, that won't refuse to sell you. I'll buy you and
the boy;--God helping me, I will!"
"O, dreadful! if you should be taken?"
"I won't be taken, Eliza; I'll _die_ first! I'll be free,
or I'll die!"
"You won't kill yourself!"
"No need of that. They will kill me, fast enough; they
never will get me down the river alive!"
"O, George, for my sake, do be careful! Don't do anything
wicked; don't lay hands on yourself, or anybody else! You are
tempted too much--too much; but don't--go you must--but go carefully,
prudently; pray God to help you."
"Well, then, Eliza, hear my plan. Mas'r took it into his
head to send me right by here, with a note to Mr. Symmes, that
lives a mile past. I believe he expected I should come here to
tell you what I have. It would please him, if he thought it would
aggravate `Shelby's folks,' as he calls 'em. I'm going home quite
resigned, you understand, as if all was over. I've got some
preparations made,--and there are those that will help me; and, in
the course of a week or so, I shall be among the missing, some day.
Pray for me, Eliza; perhaps the good Lord will hear _you_."
"O, pray yourself, George, and go trusting in him; then
you won't do anything wicked."
"Well, now, _good-by_," said George, holding Eliza's hands,
and gazing into her eyes, without moving. They stood silent; then
there were last words, and sobs, and bitter weeping,--such parting
as those may make whose hope to meet again is as the spider's
web,--and the husband and wife were parted. _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER IV - An Evening in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Read previous: VOLUME I: CHAPTER II - The Mother
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