exchanging a few words of further arrangement, Haley, with visible reluctance, handed over the fifty dollars to Tom, and the worthy trio separated for the night.
If any of our refined and Christian readers object to the society into which this scene introduces them, let us beg them to begin and conquer their prejudices in time. The catching business, we beg to remind them, is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive tendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be among the aristocracy.
While this scene was going on at the tavern, Sam and Andy, in a state of high felicitation, pursued their way home.
Sam was in the highest possible feather, and expressed his exultation by all sorts of supernatural howls and ejaculations, by divers odd motions and contortions of his whole system. Sometimes he would sit backward, with his face to the horse’s tail and sides, and then, with a whoop and a somerset, come right side up in his place again, and drawing on a grave face, begin to lecture Andy in high-sounding tones for laughing and playing the fool. Anon, slapping his sides with his arms, he would burst forth in peals of laughter that made the old woods ring as they passed. With all these evolutions he contrived to keep the horses up to the top of their speed, until, between ten and eleven, their heels resounded on the gravel at the end of the balcony. Mrs. Shelby flew to the railings.
“Is that you, Sam? Where are they?”
“Mas’r Haley’s a-restin’ at the tavern; he’s drefful fatigued, missis.”
“And Eliza, Sam?”
“Wal, she’s clar ’cross Jordan. As a body may say, in the land o’ Canaan.”
“Why, Sam, what do you mean?” said Mrs. Shelby, breathless, and almost faint, as the possible meaning of these words came over her.
“Wal, missis, de Lord He presarves His own. Lizy’s done gone over the river into ’Hio, as ’markably as if de Lord took her over in a charrit of fire and two hosses.”
Sam’s vein of piety was always uncommonly fervent in his mistress’s presence; and he made great capital of Scriptural figures and images.
“Come up here, Sam,” said Mr. Shelby, who had followed on to the verandah, “and tell your mistress what she wants.—Come, come, Emily,” said he, passing his arm round her, “you are cold and all in a shiver; you allow yourself to feel too much.”
“Feel too much! Am I not a woman—a mother? Are we not both responsible to God for this poor girl? My God! lay not this sin to our charge.”
“What sin, Emily? You see yourself that we have only done what we were obliged to.”
“There’s an awful feeling of guilt about it, though,” said Mrs. Shelby. “I can’t reason it away.”
“Here, Andy, you nigger, be alive!” called Sam, under the verandah; “take these yer hosses to de barn; don’t ye hear mas’r a callin’!” and Sam soon appeared, palm-leaf in hand, at the parlour door.
“Now, Sam, tell us distinctly how the matter was,” said Mr. Shelby. “Where is Eliza, if you know?”
“Wal, mas’r, I saw her, with my own eyes, a crossin’ on the floatin’ ice. She crossed most ‘markably; it wasn’t no less nor a miracle; and I saw a man help her up the ‘Hio side, and then she was lost in the dusk.”
“Sam, I think this rather apocryphal—this miracle. Crossing on floating ice isn’t so easily done,” said Mr. Shelby.
“Easy! couldn’t nobody a done it, without de Lord. Why, now,” said Sam, “’twas jist dis yer way. Mas’r Haley, and me, and Andy, we comes up to de little tavern by the river, and I rides a little ahead—I’s so zealous to be a cotchin’ Lizy that I couldn’t hold in, noway—and when I comes by the tavern winder, sure enough there she was, right in plain sight, and dey diggin’ on behind. Wal, I loses off my hat, and sings out nuff to raise the dead. Course Lizy she hars, and she dodges back, when Mas’r Haley he goes past the door; and then, I tell ye, she clared out de side door; she went down de river bank; Mas’r Haley he seed her, and yelled out, and him, and me, and Andy, we took arter. Down she come to the river, and thar was the current running ten feet wide by the shore, and over t’other side ice a sawin’ and a jiggling up and down, kinder as ’twer a great island. We come right behind her, and I thought, my soul! he’d got her sure enough—when she gin sich a screech as I never hearn, and thar she was, clar over t’other side the current, on the ice, and then on she went, a screeching and a jumpin’—the ice went crack!—c’wallop! cracking! chunk! and she a boundin’ like a buck! Lord, the spring that ar gal’s got in her an’t common, I’m o’ ’pinion.”
Mrs. Shelby sat perfectly silent, pale with excitement, while Sam told his story.
“God be praised, she isn’t dead!” she said; “but where is the poor child now?”
“De Lord will pervide,” said Sam, rolling up his eyes piously. “As I’ve been a sayin’, dis yer’s a providence and no mistake, as missis has allers been a instructin’ on us. Thar’s allers instruments ris up to de Lord’s will. Now if’t hadn’t been for me to-day, she’d a been took a dozen times. Warn’t it I started off de hosses, dis yer mornin’, and kept ’em chasin’ till nigh dinner-time? And didn’t I car’ Mas’r Haley nigh five miles out of de road, dis evening, or else he’d a come up with Lizy as easy as a dog arter a coon? These yer’s all providences.”
“They are a kind of providences that you’ll have to be pretty sparing of, Master Sam. I allow no such practices with gentlemen on my place,” said Mr. Shelby, with as much sternness as he could command, under the circumstances.
Now, there is no more use in making believe be angry with a negro than with a child; both instinctively see the true state of the case, through all attempts to affect the contrary; and Sam was in no wise disheartened by this rebuke, though he assumed an air of doleful gravity, and stood with the corners of his mouth lowered in most penitential style.
“Mas’r’s quite right—quite; it was ugly on me—there’s no disputin’ that ar; and of course mas’r and missis wouldn’t encourage no such works. I’m sensible of dat ar; but a poor nigger like me’s ‘mazin’ tempted to act ugly sometimes, when fellers will cut up such shines as dat ar Mas’r Haley; he an’t no gen’l’man noway; anybody’s been raised as I’ve been can’t help a seein’ dat ar.”
“Well, Sam,” said Mrs. Shelby, “as you appear to have a proper sense of your errors, you may go now and tell Aunt Chloe she may get you some of that cold ham that was left of dinner to-day. You and Andy must be hungry.”
“Missis is a heap too good for us,” said Sam, making his bow with alacrity, and departing.
It will be perceived, as has been before intimated, that Master Sam had a native talent that might, undoubtedly, have raised him to eminence in political life—a talent of making capital out of everything that turned up, to be invested for his own especial praise and glory; and having done up his piety and humility, as he trusted, to the satisfaction of the parlour, he clapped his palm-leaf on his head with a sort of rakish, free-and-easy air, and proceeded to the dominions of Aunt Chloe, with the intention of flourishing largely in the kitchen.
“I’ll speechify these yer niggers,” said Sam to himself,
