Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Such were the two little specimens of mortality which the town Needmore thought well provided for when they were consigned to Crab Smith and Miss Asphyxia.

  The first day after the funeral of his mother, the boy had been called up before light in the morning, and been off at sunrise to the fields with the men; but he had gone with a heart of manly enterprise, feeling as if he were beginning life on his own account, and meaning, with straightforward simplicity, to do his best.

  He assented to Old Crab’s harsh orders with such obedient submission, and set about the work given him with such a steady, manly patience and good-will, as to win for himself, at the outset, golden opinions from the hired men, and to excite in Old Crab that discontented satisfaction which he felt in an employee in whom he could find nothing to scold. The work of merely picking up the potatoes from the hills which the men opened was so very simple as to give no chance for mistake or failure, and the boy was so cheerful and unintermitting in his work that no fault could be found under that head. He was tired enough, it is true, at night; but, as he rode home in the cart, he solaced himself with the idea that he was beginning to be a man, and that he should work and support his sister, – and he had many things to tell her of the result of his first day’s labor. He wondered that she did not come to meet him as the cart drove up to the house, and his first inquiry, when he saw the friendly old woman, was “Where is Tina?”

  “She ‘s gone to live with his sister,” said Mrs. Smith, in an undertone, pointing to her husband in the back yard. “Asphyxia ‘s took her to raise.”

  “To what?” said the boy, timidly.

  “Why, to fetch her up, – teach her to work,” said the little old woman. “But come, sonny, go wash your hands to the sink. Dear me! why, you ‘ve fairly took the skin off your fingers.”

  “I ‘m not much used to work,” said the boy, “but I don’t mind it.” And he washed carefully the little hands, which, sure enough, had the skin somewhat abraded on the finger-ends.

  “Do ye good,” said Old Crab. “Must n’t mind that. Can’t have no lily-fingered boys workin’ for me.”

  The child had not thought of complaining; but as soon as he was alone with Mrs. Smith, he came to her confidentially and said, “How far is it to where Tina lives?”

  “Well, it ‘s the best part of two miles, I calculate.”

  “Can’t I go over there to-night and see her?”

  “Dear heart! no, you can’t. Why, your little back must ache now, and he ‘ll have you routed up by four o’clock in the morning.”

  “I ‘m not so very tired,” said the boy; “but I want to see Tina. If you ‘ll show me the way, I ‘ll go.”

  “O, well, you see, they won’t let you,” said the old woman confidentially. “They are a ha’sh pair of ‘em, him and Sphyxy are; and they ‘ve settled it that you ain’t to see each other no more, for fear you ‘d get to playin’ and idlin’.”

  The blood flushed into the boy’s face, and he breathed short. Something stirred within him, such as makes slavery bitter, as he said, “But that is n’t right. She ‘s my only sister, and my mother told me to take care of her; and I ought to see her sometimes.”

  “Lordy massy!” said Goody Smith; “when you ‘re with some folks, it don’t make no difference what ‘s right and what ain’t. You ‘ve jest got to do as ye ken. It won’t do to rile him, I tell you. He ‘s awful, once git his back up.” And Goody Smith shook her little old head mysteriously, and hushed the boy, as she heard her husband’s heavy tread coming in from the barn.

  The supper of cold beef and pork, potatoes, turnips, and hard cider, which was now dispensed at the farm-house, was ample for all purposes of satisfying hunger; and the little Harry, tired as he was, ate with a vigorous relish. But his mind was still dwelling on his sister.

  After supper was over he followed Goody Smith into her milk-room. “Please do ask him to let me go and see Tina,” he said, persuasively.

  “Laws a massy, ye poor dear! ye don’t know the critter. If I ask him to do a thing, he ‘s all the more set agin it. I found out that ‘ere years ago. He never does nothin’ I ask him to. But never mind; some of these days, we ‘ll try and contrive it. When he ‘s gone to mill, I ‘ll speak to the men, and tell ’em to let ye slip off. But then the pester on’t is, there ‘s Sphyxy; she ‘s allers wide awake, and would n’t let a boy come near her house no more than ef he was a bulldog.”

  “Why, what harm do boys do?” said the child, to whom this view presented an entirely new idea.

  “O, well, she ‘s an old maid, and kind o’ set in her ways; and it ain’t easy gettin’ round Sphyxy; but I ‘ll try and contrive it. Sometimes I can get round ‘em, and get something done, when they don’t know nothin’ about it; but it ‘s drefful hard gettin’ things done.”

  The view thus presented to the child’s mind of the cowering, deceptive policy in which the poor old woman’s whole married life had been spent gave him much to think of after he had gone to his bedroom.

  He sat down on his little, lonely bed, and began trying to comprehend in his own mind the events of the last few days. He recalled his mother’s last conversation with him. All had happened just as she had said. She was gone, just as she had told him, and left him and little Tina alone in the world. Then he remembered his promise, and, kneeling down by his bedside, repeated the simple litany – psalm, prayer, and hymn – which his mother had left him as her only parting gift. The words soothed his little lonesome heart; and he thought what his mother said, – he recalled the look of her dying eyes as she said it, – “Never doubt that God loves you, whatever happens, and, if you have any trouble, pray to him.” Upon this thought, he added to his prayer these words: “O dear Father! they have taken away Tina; and she ‘s a very little girl, and cannot work as I can. Please do take care of Tina, and make them let me go and see her.”

  CHAPTER X.

  MISS ASPHYXIA’S SYSTEM.

  WHEN Miss Asphyxia shut the door finally on little Tina the child began slowly to gather up her faculties from the stunning, benumbing influence of the change which had come over her life.

  In former days her father had told her stories of little girls that were carried off to giants’ houses, and there maltreated and dominated over in very dreadful ways; and Miss Asphyxia presented herself to her as one of these giants. She was so terribly strong, the child felt instinctively, in every limb, that there was no getting away from her. Her eyes were so keen and searching, her voice so sharp, all her movements so full of a vigor that might be felt, that any chance of getting the better of her by indirect ways seemed hopelessly small. If she should try to run away to find Harry, she was quite sure that Miss Asphyxia could make a long arm that would reach her before she had gone far; and then what she would do to her was a matter that she dared not think of. Even when she was not meaning to be cross to her, but merely seized and swung her into a chair, she had such a grip that it almost gave pain; and what would it be if she seized her in wrath? No; there was evidently no escape; and, as the thought came over the child, she began to cry, – first sobbing, and then, as her agitation increased, screaming audibly.

  Miss Asphyxia opened the door. “Stop that!” she said. “What under the canopy ails ye?”

  “I – want – Harry!” said the child.

  “Well, you can’t have Harry; and I won’t have ye bawling. Now shut up and go to sleep, or I ‘ll whip you!” And, with that, Miss Asphyxia turned down the bedclothes with a resolute hand.

  “I will be good, – I will stop,” said the child, in mortal terror compressing the sobs that seemed to tear her little frame.

  Miss Asphyxia waited a moment, and then, going out, shut the door, and went on making up the child’s stuff gown outside.

  “That ‘ere ‘s goin’ to be a regular limb,” she said; “but I must begin as I ‘m goin’ to go on with her, and mebbe she ‘ll amount to suthin’ by and by. A child ‘s pretty much dead loss the first three or four years; but after that they mo
re ‘n pay, if they ‘re fetched up right.”

  “Mebbe that ‘ere child ‘s lonesome,” said Sol Peters, Miss Asphyxia’s hired man, who sat in the kitchen corner, putting in a new hoe-handle.

  “Lonesome!” said Miss Asphyxia, with a sniff of contempt.

  “All sorts of young critters is,” said Sol, undismayed by this sniff “Puppies is. ‘member how our Spot yelped when I fust got him? Kept me ‘wake the biggest part of one night. And kittens mews when ye take ’em from the cats. Ye see they ‘s used to other critters; and it ‘s sort o’ cold like, bein’ alone is.”

  “Well, she ‘ll have to get used to it, anyhow,” said Miss Asphyxia. “I guess ‘t won’t kill her. Ef a child has enough to eat and drink, and plenty of clothes, and somebody to take care of ‘em, they ain’t very bad off, if they be lonesome.”

  Sol, though a big-fisted, hard-handed fellow, had still rather a soft spot under his jacket in favor of all young, defenceless animals, and the sound of the little girl’s cry had gone right to this spot. So he still revolved the subject, as he leisurely turned and scraped with a bit of broken glass the hoe-handle that he was elaborating. After a considerable pause, he shut up one eye, looked along his hoe-handle at Miss Asphyxia, as if he were taking aim, and remarked, “That ‘ere boy ‘s a nice, stiddy little chap; and mebbe, if he could come down here once and a while after work-hours, ‘t would kind o’ reconcile her.”

  “I tell you what, Solomon Peters,” said Miss Asphyxia, “I ‘d jest as soon have the great red dragon in the Revelations a comin’ down on my house as a boy! Ef I don’t work hard enough now, I ‘d like to know, without havin’ a boy raound raisin’ gineral Cain. Don’t tell me! I ‘ll find work enough to keep that ‘ere child from bein’ lonesome. Lonesome! – there did n’t nobody think of no such things when I was little. I was jest put right along, and no remarks made; and was made to mind when I was spoken to, and to take things as they come. O, I ‘ll find her work enough to keep her mind occupied, I promise ye.”

  Sol did not in the least doubt that, for Miss Asphyxia’s reputation in the region was perfectly established. She was spoken of with applause under such titles as “a staver,” “a pealer,” “a roarer to work”; and Sol himself had an awful sense of responsibility to her in this regard. He had arrived at something of a late era in single life, and had sometimes been sportively jogged by his associates, at the village store, as to his opportunity of becoming master of Miss Asphyxia’s person and property by matrimonial overtures; to all which he summarily responded by declaring that “a hoss might as soon go a courtin’ to the hoss-whip as he court Miss Sphyxy.” As to Miss Asphyxia, when rallied on the same subject, she expressed her views of the matrimonial estate in a sentence more terse and vigorous than elegant, – that “she knew t’ much to put her nose into hot swill.” Queen Elizabeth might have expressed her mind in a more courtly way, but certainly with no more decision.

  The little head and heart in the next room were full of the rudiments of thoughts, desires, feelings, imaginations, and passions which either had never lived in Miss Asphyxia’s nature, or had died so long ago that not a trace or memory of them was left. If she had had even the dawnings of certain traits and properties, she might have doubted of her ability to bring up a child; but she had not.

  Yet Miss Asphyxia’s faults in this respect were not so widely different from the practice of the hard, rustic inhabitants of Needmore as to have prevented her getting employment as a district-school teacher for several terms, when she was about twenty years of age. She was held to be a “smart,” economical teacher, inasmuch as she was able to hold the winter term, and thrash the very biggest boys, and, while she did the duty of a man, received only the wages of a woman, – a recommendation in female qualification which has not ceased to be available in our modern days. Gradually, by incredible industries, by a faculty of pinching, saving, and accumulating hard to conceive of, Miss Asphyxia had laid up money till she had actually come to be the possessor of a small but neat house, and a farm and dairy in excellent condition; and she regarded herself, therefore, and was regarded by others, as a model for imitation. Did she have the least doubt that she was eminently fitted to bring up a girl? I trow not.

  Miss Asphyxia, in her early childhood, had been taken to raise in the same manner that she had taken this child. She had been trained to early rising, and constant, hard, unintermitted work, without thought of respite or amusement. During certain seasons of the year she had been sent to the district school, where, always energetic in whatever she took in hand, she always stood at the head of the school in the few arts of scholarship in those days taught. She could write a good, round hand; she could cipher with quickness and adroitness; she had learned by heart all the rules of Murray’s Grammar, notwithstanding the fact that, from the habits of early childhood, she habitually set at naught every one of them in her daily conversation, – always strengthening all her denials with those good, hearty double negatives which help out French and Italian sentences, and are unjustly denied to the purists in genteel English. How much of the droll quaintness of Yankee dialect comes from the stumbling of human nature into these racy mistakes will never be known.

  Perhaps my readers may have turned over a great, flat stone some time in their rural rambles, and found under it little clovers and tufts of grass pressed to earth, flat, white, and bloodless but still growing, stretching, creeping towards the edges, where their plant instinct tells them there is light and deliverance. The kind of life that the little Tina led, under the care of Miss Asphyxia, resembled that of these poor clovers. It was all shut down and repressed, but growing still. She was roused at the first glimmer of early dawn, dressing herself in the dark, and, coming out, set the table for breakfast. From that time through the day, one task followed another in immediate succession, with the sense of the ever-driving Miss Asphyxia behind her.

  Once, in the course of her labors, she let fall a saucer, while Miss Asphyxia, by good fortune, was out of the room. To tell of her mischance, and expose herself to the awful consequences of her anger, was more than her childish courage was equal to; and, with a quick adroitness, she slipped the broken fragments in a crevice between the kitchen doorstep and the house, and endeavored to look as if nothing had occurred. Alas! she had not counted on Miss Asphyxia’s unsleeping vigilance of hearing. She was down stairs in a trice.

  “What have you been breaking?”

  “Nothing, ma’am,” was the trembling response.

  “Don’t tell me! I heard something fall.”

  “I think it must have been the tongs,” said the little girl, – not over-wise or ingenious in her subterfuge.

  “Tongs!likely story,” said Miss Asphyxia, keenly running her eye over the cups and saucers.

  “One, two, – here ‘s one of the saucers gone. What have you done with it?”

  The child, now desperate with fear, saw no refuge but in persistent denial, till Miss Asphyxia, seizing her, threatened immediate whipping if she did not at once confess.

  “I dropped a saucer,” at last said the frightened child.

  “You did, you little slut?” said Miss Asphyxia, administering a box on her ear. “Where is it? what have you done with the pieces?”

  “I dropped them down by the doorstep,” said the sobbing culprit.

  Miss Asphyxia soon fished them up, and held them up in awful judgment. “You ‘ve been telling me a lie, – a naughty, wicked lie,” she said. “I ‘ll soon cure you of lying. I ‘ll scour your mouth out for you.” And forthwith, taking a rag with some soap and sand, she grasped the child’s head under her arm, and rubbed the harsh mixture through her mouth with a vengeful energy. “There, now, see if you ‘ll tell me another lie,” said she, pushing her from her. “Don’t you know where liars go to, you naughty, wicked girl? ‘All liars shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.’ – that ‘s what the Bible says; and you may thank me for keeping you from going there. Now go and get up the potatoes and
wash ‘em, and don t let me get another lie out of your mouth as long as you live.”

  There was a burning sense of shame – a smothered fury of resentment – in the child’s breast, and, as she took the basket, she felt as if she would have liked to do some mischief to Miss Asphyxia. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she said to herself when she got into the cellar, and fairly out of hearing. “I hate you, and when I get to be a woman, I ‘ll pay you for all this.”

  Miss Asphyxia, however, went on her way, in the testimony of a good conscience. She felt that she had been equal to the emergency, and had met a crisis in the most thorough and effectual manner.

  The teachers of district schools in those days often displayed a singular ingenuity in the invention of punishments by which the different vices of childhood should be repressed; and Miss Asphyxia’s housewifely confidence in soap and sand as a means of purification had suggested to her this expedient in her school teaching days. “You can break any child o’ lying, right off short,” she was wont to say. “Jest scour their mouths out with soap and sand. They never want to try it more ‘n once or twice, I tell you.”

  The intervals which the child had for play were, in Miss Asphyxia’s calendar, few and far between. Sometimes, when she had some domestic responsibility on her mind which made the watching of the child a burden to her, she would say to her, “You may go and play till I call you,” or, “You may play for half an hour; but you must n’t go out of the yard.”

  Then the child, alone, companionless, without playthings, sought to appropriate to herself some little treasures and possessions for the instituting of that fairy world of imagination which belongs to childhood. She sighed for a doll that had once belonged to her in the days when she had a mother, but which Miss Asphyxia had contemptuously tossed aside in making up her bundle.