Chương Chương 33 · Cassy

. Cassy

“And behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no

comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but

they had no comforter.”—ECCL. 4:1

It took but a short time to familiarize Tom with all that was to be

hoped or feared in his new way of life. He was an expert and efficient

workman in whatever he undertook; and was, both from habit and

principle, prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in his disposition,

he hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from himself at least a

portion of the evils of his condition. He saw enough of abuse and

misery to make him sick and weary; but he determined to toil on, with

religious patience, committing himself to Him that judgeth righteously,

not without hope that some way of escape might yet be opened to him.

Legree took a silent note of Tom’s availability. He rated him as a

first-class hand; and yet he felt a secret dislike to him,—the native

antipathy of bad to good. He saw, plainly, that when, as was often the

case, his violence and brutality fell on the helpless, Tom took notice

of it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make

itself felt, without words; and the opinion even of a slave may annoy a

master. Tom in various ways manifested a tenderness of feeling, a

commiseration for his fellow-sufferers, strange and new to them, which

was watched with a jealous eye by Legree. He had purchased Tom with a

view of eventually making him a sort of overseer, with whom he might,

at times, intrust his affairs, in short absences; and, in his view, the

first, second, and third requisite for that place, was _hardness_.

Legree made up his mind, that, as Tom was not hard to his hand, he

would harden him forthwith; and some few weeks after Tom had been on

the place, he determined to commence the process.

One morning, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom noticed,

with surprise, a new comer among them, whose appearance excited his

attention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed, with remarkably

delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and respectable garments.

By the appearance of her face, she might have been between thirty-five

and forty; and it was a face that, once seen, could never be

forgotten,—one of those that, at a glance, seem to convey to us an idea

of a wild, painful, and romantic history. Her forehead was high, and

her eyebrows marked with beautiful clearness. Her straight, well-formed

nose, her finely-cut mouth, and the graceful contour of her head and

neck, showed that she must once have been beautiful; but her face was

deeply wrinkled with lines of pain, and of proud and bitter endurance.

Her complexion was sallow and unhealthy, her cheeks thin, her features

sharp, and her whole form emaciated. But her eye was the most

remarkable feature,—so large, so heavily black, overshadowed by long

lashes of equal darkness, and so wildly, mournfully despairing. There

was a fierce pride and defiance in every line of her face, in every

curve of the flexible lip, in every motion of her body; but in her eye

was a deep, settled night of anguish,—an expression so hopeless and

unchanging as to contrast fearfully with the scorn and pride expressed

by her whole demeanor.

Where she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first he did

know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray of

the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much

looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation

among the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by whom she was

surrounded.

“Got to come to it, at last,—glad of it!” said one.

“He! he! he!” said another; “you’ll know how good it is, Misse!”

“We’ll see her work!”

“Wonder if she’ll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest of us!”

“I’d be glad to see her down for a flogging, I’ll bound!” said another.

The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same

expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always

lived among refined, and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively,

from her air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or

why she could be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not

tell. The woman neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the

way to the field, she kept close at his side.

Tom was soon busy at his work; but, as the woman was at no great

distance from him, he often glanced an eye to her, at her work. He saw,

at a glance, that a native adroitness and handiness made the task to

her an easier one than it proved to many. She picked very fast and very

clean, and with an air of scorn, as if she despised both the work and

the disgrace and humiliation of the circumstances in which she was

placed.

In the course of the day, Tom was working near the mulatto woman who

had been bought in the same lot with himself. She was evidently in a

condition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her praying, as she

wavered and trembled, and seemed about to fall down. Tom silently as he

came near to her, transferred several handfuls of cotton from his own

sack to hers.

“O, don’t, don’t!” said the woman, looking surprised; “it’ll get you

into trouble.”

Just then Sambo came up. He seemed to have a special spite against this

woman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal, guttural tones,

“What dis yer, Luce,—foolin’ a’” and, with the word, kicking the woman

with his heavy cowhide shoe, he struck Tom across the face with his

whip.

Tom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at the last point

of exhaustion, fainted.

“I’ll bring her to!” said the driver, with a brutal grin. “I’ll give

her something better than camphire!” and, taking a pin from his

coat-sleeve, he buried it to the head in her flesh. The woman groaned,

and half rose. “Get up, you beast, and work, will yer, or I’ll show yer

a trick more!”

The woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an unnatural

strength, and worked with desperate eagerness.

“See that you keep to dat ar,” said the man, “or yer’ll wish yer’s dead

tonight, I reckin!”

“That I do now!” Tom heard her say; and again he heard her say, “O,

Lord, how long! O, Lord, why don’t you help us?”

At the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward again, and

put all the cotton in his sack into the woman’s.

“O, you mustn’t! you donno what they’ll do to ye!” said the woman.

“I can bar it!” said Tom, “better ’n you;” and he was at his place

again. It passed in a moment.

Suddenly, the stranger woman whom we have described, and who had, in

the course of her work, come near enough to hear Tom’s last words,

raised her heavy black eyes, and fixed them, for a second, on him;

then, taking a quantity of cotton from her basket, she placed it in

his.

“You know nothing about this place,” she said, “or you wouldn’t have

done that. When you’ve been here a month, you’ll be done helping

anybody; you’ll find it hard enough to take care of your own skin!”

“The Lord forbid, Missis!” said Tom, using instinctively to his field

companion the respectful form proper to the high bred with whom he had

lived.

“The Lord never visits these parts,” said the woman, bitterly, as she

went nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled

her lips.

But the action of the woman had been seen by the driver, across the

field; and, flourishing his whip, he came up to her.

“What! what!” he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, “You a

foolin’? Go along! yer under me now,—mind yourself, or yer’ll cotch

it!”

A glance like sheet-lightning suddenly flashed from those black eyes;

and, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew

herself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with rage and scorn, on the

driver.

“Dog!” she said, “touch _me_, if you dare! I’ve power enough, yet, to

have you torn by the dogs, burnt alive, cut to inches! I’ve only to say

the word!”

“What de devil you here for, den?” said the man, evidently cowed, and

sullenly retreating a step or two. “Didn’t mean no harm, Misse Cassy!”

“Keep your distance, then!” said the woman. And, in truth, the man

seemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other end of the

field, and started off in quick time.

The woman suddenly turned to her work, and labored with a despatch that

was perfectly astonishing to Tom. She seemed to work by magic. Before

the day was through, her basket was filled, crowded down, and piled,

and she had several times put largely into Tom’s. Long after dusk, the

whole weary train, with their baskets on their heads, defiled up to the

building appropriated to the storing and weighing the cotton. Legree

was there, busily conversing with the two drivers.

“Dat ar Tom’s gwine to make a powerful deal o’ trouble; kept a puttin’

into Lucy’s basket.—One o’ these yer dat will get all der niggers to

feelin’ ’bused, if Masir don’t watch him!” said Sambo.

“Hey-dey! The black cuss!” said Legree. “He’ll have to get a breakin’

in, won’t he, boys?”

Both negroes grinned a horrid grin, at this intimation.

“Ay, ay! Let Mas’r Legree alone, for breakin’ in! De debil heself

couldn’t beat Mas’r at dat!” said Quimbo.

“Wal, boys, the best way is to give him the flogging to do, till he

gets over his notions. Break him in!”

“Lord, Mas’r’ll have hard work to get dat out o’ him!”

“It’ll have to come out of him, though!” said Legree, as he rolled his

tobacco in his mouth.

“Now, dar’s Lucy,—de aggravatinest, ugliest wench on de place!” pursued

Sambo.

“Take care, Sam; I shall begin to think what’s the reason for your

spite agin Lucy.”

“Well, Mas’r knows she sot herself up agin Mas’r, and wouldn’t have me,

when he telled her to.”

“I’d a flogged her into ’t,” said Legree, spitting, “only there’s such

a press o’ work, it don’t seem wuth a while to upset her jist now.

She’s slender; but these yer slender gals will bear half killin’ to get

their own way!”

“Wal, Lucy was real aggravatin’ and lazy, sulkin’ round; wouldn’t do

nothin,—and Tom he stuck up for her.”

“He did, eh! Wal, then, Tom shall have the pleasure of flogging her.

It’ll be a good practice for him, and he won’t put it on to the gal

like you devils, neither.”

“Ho, ho! haw! haw! haw!” laughed both the sooty wretches; and the

diabolical sounds seemed, in truth, a not unapt expression of the

fiendish character which Legree gave them.

“Wal, but, Mas’r, Tom and Misse Cassy, and dey among ’em, filled Lucy’s

basket. I ruther guess der weight ’s in it, Mas’r!”

“_I do the weighing!_” said Legree, emphatically.

Both the drivers again laughed their diabolical laugh.

“So!” he added, “Misse Cassy did her day’s work.”

“She picks like de debil and all his angels!”

“She’s got ’em all in her, I believe!” said Legree; and, growling a

brutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing-room.

Slowly the weary, dispirited creatures, wound their way into the room,

and, with crouching reluctance, presented their baskets to be weighed.

Legree noted on a slate, on the side of which was pasted a list of

names, the amount.

Tom’s basket was weighed and approved; and he looked, with an anxious

glance, for the success of the woman he had befriended.

Tottering with weakness, she came forward, and delivered her basket. It

was of full weight, as Legree well perceived; but, affecting anger, he

said,

“What, you lazy beast! short again! stand aside, you’ll catch it,

pretty soon!”

The woman gave a groan of utter despair, and sat down on a board.

The person who had been called Misse Cassy now came forward, and, with

a haughty, negligent air, delivered her basket. As she delivered it,

Legree looked in her eyes with a sneering yet inquiring glance.

She fixed her black eyes steadily on him, her lips moved slightly, and

she said something in French. What it was, no one knew; but Legree’s

face became perfectly demoniacal in its expression, as she spoke; he

half raised his hand, as if to strike,—a gesture which she regarded

with fierce disdain, as she turned and walked away.

“And now,” said Legree, “come here, you Tom. You see, I telled ye I

didn’t buy ye jest for the common work; I mean to promote ye, and make

a driver of ye; and tonight ye may jest as well begin to get yer hand

in. Now, ye jest take this yer gal and flog her; ye’ve seen enough on’t

to know how.”

“I beg Mas’r’s pardon,” said Tom; “hopes Mas’r won’t set me at that.

It’s what I an’t used to,—never did,—and can’t do, no way possible.”

“Ye’ll larn a pretty smart chance of things ye never did know, before

I’ve done with ye!” said Legree, taking up a cowhide, and striking Tom

a heavy blow cross the cheek, and following up the infliction by a

shower of blows.

“There!” he said, as he stopped to rest; “now, will ye tell me ye can’t

do it?”

“Yes, Mas’r,” said Tom, putting up his hand, to wipe the blood, that

trickled down his face. “I’m willin’ to work, night and day, and work

while there’s life and breath in me; but this yer thing I can’t feel it

right to do;—and, Mas’r, I _never_ shall do it,—_never_!”

Tom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually respectful

manner, that had given Legree an idea that he would be cowardly, and

easily subdued. When he spoke these last words, a thrill of amazement

went through every one; the poor woman clasped her hands, and said, “O

Lord!” and every one involuntarily looked at each other and drew in

their breath, as if to prepare for the storm that was about to burst.

Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth,—“What!

ye blasted black beast! tell _me_ ye don’t think it _right_ to do what

I tell ye! What have any of you cussed cattle to do with thinking

what’s right? I’ll put a stop to it! Why, what do ye think ye are? May

be ye think ye’r a gentleman master, Tom, to be a telling your master

what’s right, and what ain’t! So you pretend it’s wrong to flog the

gal!”

“I think so, Mas’r,” said Tom; “the poor crittur’s sick and feeble; ’t

would be downright cruel, and it’s what I never will do, nor begin to.

Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand

agin any one here, I never shall,—I’ll die first!”

Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be

mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely,

and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some

ferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he

kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence, and

broke out into bitter raillery.

“Well, here’s a pious dog, at last, let down among us sinners!—a saint,

a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins!

Powerful holy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe

to be so pious,—didn’t you never hear, out of yer Bible, ‘Servants,

obey yer masters’? An’t I yer master? Didn’t I pay down twelve hundred

dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t

yer mine, now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with

his heavy boot; “tell me!”

In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression,

this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom’s soul. He

suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while

the tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed,

“No! no! no! my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it,—ye can’t

buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep

it;—no matter, no matter, you can’t harm me!”

“I can’t!” said Legree, with a sneer; “we’ll see,—we’ll see! Here,

Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin’ in as he won’t get over,

this month!”

The two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish

exultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt personification

of powers of darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension, and

all rose, as by a general impulse, while they dragged him unresisting

from the place.