Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  The young man who had spoken for the cause of humanity and God before stood with folded arms, looking on this scene. He turned, and Haley was standing at his side. “My friend,” he said, speaking with thick utterance, “how can you, how dare you, carry on a trade like this? Look at those poor creatures! Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am going home to my wife and child; and the same bell which is a signal to carry me onward towards them will part this poor man and his wife forever. Depend upon it, God will bring you into judgment for this.”

  The trader turned away in silence.

  “I say, now,” said the drover, touching his elbow, “there’s differences in parsons, an’t there? ‘Cussed be Canaan’ don’t seem to go down with this ‘un, does it?”

  Haley gave an uneasy growl.

  “And that ar an’t the worst on ‘t,” said John; “mabbee it won’t go down with the Lord, neither, when ye come to settle with Him, one o’ these days, as all on us must, I reckon.”

  Haley walked reflectively to the other end of the boat.

  “If I make pretty handsomely on one or two next gangs,” he thought, “I reckon I’ll stop off this yer; it’s really getting dangerous.” And he took out his pocket-book, and began adding over his accounts, — a process which many gentlemen besides Mr. Haley have found a specific for an uneasy conscience.

  The boat swept proudly away from the shore, and all went on merrily, as before. Men talked, and loafed, and read, and smoked. Women sewed, and children played, and the boat passed on her way.

  One day, when she lay to for a while at a small town in Kentucky, Haley went up into the place on a little matter of business.

  Tom, whose fetters did not prevent his taking a moderate circuit, had drawn near the side of the boat, and stood listlessly gazing over the railing. After a time, he saw the trader returning, with an alert step, in company with a colored woman, bearing in her arms a young child. She was dressed quite respectably, and a colored man followed her, bringing along a small trunk. The woman came cheerfully onward, talking, as she came, with the man who bore her trunk, and so passed up the plank into the boat. The bell rung, the steamer whizzed, the engine groaned and coughed, and away swept the boat down the river.

  The woman walked forward among the boxes and bales of the lower deck, and, sitting down, busied herself with chirruping to her baby.

  Haley made a turn or two about the boat, and then, coming up, seated himself near her, and began saying something to her in an indifferent undertone.

  Tom soon noticed a heavy cloud passing over the woman’s brow; and that she answered rapidly, and with great vehemence.

  “I don’t believe it, — I won’t believe it!” he heard her say. “You’re jist a foolin’ with me.”

  “If you won’t believe it, look here!” said the man, drawing out a paper; “this yer’s the bill of sale, and there’s your master’s name to it; and I paid down good solid cash for it, too, I can tell you, — so, now!”

  “I don’t believe Mas’r would cheat me so; it can’t be true!” said the woman, with increasing agitation.

  “You can ask any of these men here, that can read writing. Here!” he said, to a man that was passing by, “jist read this yer, won’t you! This yer gal won’t believe me, when I tell her what ‘t is.”

  “Why, it’s a bill of sale, signed by John Fosdick,” said the man, “making over to you the girl Lucy and her child. It’s all straight enough, for aught I see.”

  The woman’s passionate exclamations collected a crowd around her, and the trader briefly explained to them the cause of the agitation.

  “He told me that I was going down to Louisville, to hire out as cook to the same tavern where my husband works, — that’s what Mas’r told me, his own self; and I can’t believe he’d lie to me,” said the woman.

  “But he has sold you, my poor woman, there’s no doubt about it,” said a good-natured looking man, who had been examining the papers; “he has done it, and no mistake.”

  “Then it’s no account talking,” said the woman, suddenly growing quite calm; and, clasping her child tighter in her arms, she sat down on her box, turned her back round, and gazed listlessly into the river.

  “Going to take it easy, after all!” said the trader. “Gal’s got grit, I see.”

  The woman looked calm, as the boat went on; and a beautiful soft summer breeze passed like a compassionate spirit over her head, — the gentle breeze, that never inquires whether the brow is dusky or fair that it fans. And she saw sunshine sparkling on the water, in golden ripples, and heard gay voices, full of ease and pleasure, talking around her everywhere; but her heart lay as if a great stone had fallen on it. Her baby raised himself up against her, and stroked her cheeks with his little hands; and, springing up and down, crowing and chatting, seemed determined to arouse her. She strained him suddenly and tightly in her arms, and slowly one tear after another fell on his wondering, unconscious face; and gradually she seemed, and little by little, to grow calmer, and busied herself with tending and nursing him.

  The child, a boy of ten months, was uncommonly large and strong of his age, and very vigorous in his limbs. Never, for a moment, still, he kept his mother constantly busy in holding him, and guarding his springing activity.

  “That’s a fine chap!” said a man, suddenly stopping opposite to him, with his hands in his pockets. “How old is he?”

  “Ten months and a half,” said the mother.

  The man whistled to the boy, and offered him part of a stick of candy, which he eagerly grabbed at, and very soon had it in a baby’s general depository, to wit, his mouth.

  “Rum fellow!” said the man “Knows what’s what!” and he whistled, and walked on. When he had got to the other side of the boat, he came across Haley, who was smoking on top of a pile of boxes.

  The stranger produced a match, and lighted a cigar, saying, as he did so,

  “Decentish kind o’ wench you’ve got round there, stranger.”

  “Why, I reckon she is tol’able fair,” said Haley, blowing the smoke out of his mouth.

  “Taking her down south?” said the man.

  Haley nodded, and smoked on.

  “Plantation hand?” said the man.

  “Wal,” said Haley, “I’m fillin’ out an order for a plantation, and I think I shall put her in. They telled me she was a good cook; and they can use her for that, or set her at the cotton-picking. She’s got the right fingers for that; I looked at ‘em. Sell well, either way;” and Haley resumed his cigar.

  “They won’t want the young ‘un on the plantation,” said the man.

  “I shall sell him, first chance I find,” said Haley, lighting another cigar.

  “S’pose you’d be selling him tol’able cheap,” said the stranger, mounting the pile of boxes, and sitting down comfortably.

  “Don’t know ‘bout that,” said Haley; “he’s a pretty smart young ‘un, straight, fat, strong; flesh as hard as a brick!”

  “Very true, but then there’s the bother and expense of raisin’.”

  “Nonsense!” said Haley; “they is raised as easy as any kind of critter there is going; they an’t a bit more trouble than pups. This yer chap will be running all around, in a month.”

  “I’ve got a good place for raisin’, and I thought of takin’ in a little more stock,” said the man. “One cook lost a young ‘un last week, — got drownded in a washtub, while she was a hangin’ out the clothes, — and I reckon it would be well enough to set her to raisin’ this yer.”

  Haley and the stranger smoked a while in silence, neither seeming willing to broach the test question of the interview. At last the man resumed:

  “You wouldn’t think of wantin’ more than ten dollars for that ar chap, seeing you must get him off yer hand, any how?”

  Haley shook his head, and spit impressively.

  “That won’t do, no ways,” he said, and began his smoking again.

  “Well, stranger, what will you take?”

&nb
sp; “Well, now,” said Haley, “I could raise that ar chap myself, or get him raised; he’s oncommon likely and healthy, and he’d fetch a hundred dollars, six months hence; and, in a year or two, he’d bring two hundred, if I had him in the right spot; I shan’t take a cent less nor fifty for him now.”

  “O, stranger! that’s rediculous, altogether,” said the man.

  “Fact!” said Haley, with a decisive nod of his head.

  “I’ll give thirty for him,” said the stranger, “but not a cent more.”

  “Now, I’ll tell ye what I will do,” said Haley, spitting again, with renewed decision. “I’ll split the difference, and say forty-five; and that’s the most I will do.”

  “Well, agreed!” said the man, after an interval.

  “Done!” said Haley. “Where do you land?”

  “At Louisville,” said the man.

  “Louisville,” said Haley. “Very fair, we get there about dusk. Chap will be asleep, — all fair, — get him off quietly, and no screaming, — happens beautiful, — I like to do everything quietly, — I hates all kind of agitation and fluster.” And so, after a transfer of certain bills had passed from the man’s pocket-book to the trader’s, he resumed his cigar.

  It was a bright, tranquil evening when the boat stopped at the wharf at Louisville. The woman had been sitting with her baby in her arms, now wrapped in a heavy sleep. When she heard the name of the place called out, she hastily laid the child down in a little cradle formed by the hollow among the boxes, first carefully spreading under it her cloak; and then she sprung to the side of the boat, in hopes that, among the various hotel-waiters who thronged the wharf, she might see her husband. In this hope, she pressed forward to the front rails, and, stretching far over them, strained her eyes intently on the moving heads on the shore, and the crowd pressed in between her and the child.

  “Now’s your time,” said Haley, taking the sleeping child up, and handing him to the stranger. “Don’t wake him up, and set him to crying, now; it would make a devil of a fuss with the gal.” The man took the bundle carefully, and was soon lost in the crowd that went up the wharf.

  When the boat, creaking, and groaning, and puffing, had loosed from the wharf, and was beginning slowly to strain herself along, the woman returned to her old seat. The trader was sitting there, — the child was gone!

  “Why, why, — where?” she began, in bewildered surprise.

  “Lucy,” said the trader, “your child’s gone; you may as well know it first as last. You see, I know’d you couldn’t take him down south; and I got a chance to sell him to a first-rate family, that’ll raise him better than you can.”

  The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians of the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane weakness and prejudice. His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation. The wild look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have disturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union. So the trader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those dark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as necessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was going to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat; for, like other supporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked agitation.

  But the woman did not scream. The shot had passed too straight and direct through the heart, for cry or tear.

  Dizzily she sat down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her bewildered ear; and the poor, dumb-stricken heart had neither cry not tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.

  The trader, who, considering his advantages, was almost as humane as some of our politicians, seemed to feel called on to administer such consolation as the case admitted of.

  “I know this yer comes kinder hard, at first, Lucy,” said he; “but such a smart, sensible gal as you are, won’t give way to it. You see it’s necessary, and can’t be helped!”

  “O! don’t, Mas’r, don’t!” said the woman, with a voice like one that is smothering.

  “You’re a smart wench, Lucy,” he persisted; “I mean to do well by ye, and get ye a nice place down river; and you’ll soon get another husband, — such a likely gal as you—”

  “O! Mas’r, if you only won’t talk to me now,” said the woman, in a voice of such quick and living anguish that the trader felt that there was something at present in the case beyond his style of operation. He got up, and the woman turned away, and buried her head in her cloak.

  The trader walked up and down for a time, and occasionally stopped and looked at her.

  “Takes it hard, rather,” he soliloquized, “but quiet, tho’; — let her sweat a while; she’ll come right, by and by!”

  Tom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a perfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade; a trade which is the vital support of an institution which an American divine* tells us has “no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life.” But Tom, as we see, being a poor, ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined entirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with views like these. His very soul bled within him for what seemed to him the wrongs of the poor suffering thing that lay like a crushed reed on the boxes; the feeling, living, bleeding, yet immortal thing, which American state law coolly classes with the bundles, and bales, and boxes, among which she is lying.

  * Dr. Joel Parker of Philadelphia. [Mrs. Stowe’s note.]

  Presbyterian clergyman (1799-1873), a friend of the Beecher

  family. Mrs. Stowe attempted unsuccessfully to have this

  identifying note removed from the stereotype-plate of the

  first edition.

  Tom drew near, and tried to say something; but she only groaned. Honestly, and with tears running down his own cheeks, he spoke of a heart of love in the skies, of a pitying Jesus, and an eternal home; but the ear was deaf with anguish, and the palsied heart could not feel.

  Night came on, — night calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down with her innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent. There was no speech nor language, no pitying voice or helping hand, from that distant sky. One after another, the voices of business or pleasure died away; all on the boat were sleeping, and the ripples at the prow were plainly heard. Tom stretched himself out on a box, and there, as he lay, he heard, ever and anon, a smothered sob or cry from the prostrate creature,—”O! what shall I do? O Lord! O good Lord, do help me!” and so, ever and anon, until the murmur died away in silence.

  At midnight, Tom waked, with a sudden start. Something black passed quickly by him to the side of the boat, and he heard a splash in the water. No one else saw or heard anything. He raised his head, — the woman’s place was vacant! He got up, and sought about him in vain. The poor bleeding heart was still, at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above it.

  Patience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like these. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. In his patient, generous bosom he bears the anguish of a world. Bear thou, like him, in patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, “the year of his redeemed sh
all come.”

  The trader waked up bright and early, and came out to see to his live stock. It was now his turn to look about in perplexity.

  “Where alive is that gal?” he said to Tom.

  Tom, who had learned the wisdom of keeping counsel, did not feel called upon to state his observations and suspicions, but said he did not know.

  “She surely couldn’t have got off in the night at any of the landings, for I was awake, and on the lookout, whenever the boat stopped. I never trust these yer things to other folks.”

  This speech was addressed to Tom quite confidentially, as if it was something that would be specially interesting to him. Tom made no answer.

  The trader searched the boat from stem to stern, among boxes, bales and barrels, around the machinery, by the chimneys, in vain.

  “Now, I say, Tom, be fair about this yer,” he said, when, after a fruitless search, he came where Tom was standing. “You know something about it, now. Don’t tell me, — I know you do. I saw the gal stretched out here about ten o’clock, and ag’in at twelve, and ag’in between one and two; and then at four she was gone, and you was a sleeping right there all the time. Now, you know something, — you can’t help it.”

  “Well, Mas’r,” said Tom, “towards morning something brushed by me, and I kinder half woke; and then I hearn a great splash, and then I clare woke up, and the gal was gone. That’s all I know on ‘t.”

  The trader was not shocked nor amazed; because, as we said before, he was used to a great many things that you are not used to. Even the awful presence of Death struck no solemn chill upon him. He had seen Death many times, — met him in the way of trade, and got acquainted with him, — and he only thought of him as a hard customer, that embarrassed his property operations very unfairly; and so he only swore that the gal was a baggage, and that he was devilish unlucky, and that, if things went on in this way, he should not make a cent on the trip. In short, he seemed to consider himself an ill-used man, decidedly; but there was no help for it, as the woman had escaped into a state which never will give up a fugitive, — not even at the demand of the whole glorious Union. The trader, therefore, sat discontentedly down, with his little account-book, and put down the missing body and soul under the head of losses!