Bab Bab 3 · The Husband and Father

. The Husband and Father

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 sees 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.