_THE SECRET CELLAR._
No sooner did the lad feel himself safe from pursuit, than he made his
way out of the woods again, and ran with all speed to Mr. Stackridge's
house.
To his dismay he learned that that stanch Unionist was absent from home.
"Is he in the willage?" said the breathless Carl.
"I reckon he is," said the farmer's wife; adding in a whisper,--for she
guessed the nature of Carl's business,--"inquire for him down to barber
Jim's." And she told him what to say to the barber.
Barber Jim was a colored man, who had demonstrated the ability of the
African to take care of himself, by purchasing first his own freedom of
his mistress, buying his wife and children afterwards, and then
accumulating a property as much more valuable than all Silas Ropes and
his poor white minions possessed, as his mind was superior to their
combined intelligence.
Jim had accomplished this by uniting with industrious habits a natural
shrewdness, which enabled him to make the most of his labor and of his
means. He owned the most flourishing barber-shop in the place, and kept
in connection with it (I am sorry to say) a bar, at which he dealt out
to his customers some very bad liquors at very good prices. Had Jim been
a white man, he would not, of course, have stooped to make money by any
such low business as rum-selling--O, no! but being only a "nigger," what
else could you expect of him?
Well, on this very evening Jim's place began to be thronged almost
before it was dark. A few came in to be shaved, while many more passed
through the shop into the little bar-room beyond. What was curious, some
went in who appeared never to come out again; Mr. Stackridge among the
number.
It was not to get shaved, nor yet to get tipsy, that this man visited
Jim's premises. The moment they were alone together in the bar-room, he
gave the proprietor a knowing wink.
"Many there?"
"I reckon about a dozen," said Jim. "Go in?" Stackridge nodded; and with
a grin Jim opened a private door communicating with some back stairs,
down which his visitor went groping his way in the dark.
Customers came and went; now and then one disappeared similarly down the
back stairs; many remained in the barber's shop to smoke, and discuss in
loud tones the exciting question of the day--secession; when, lastly, a
boy of fifteen came rushing in. His face was flushed with running, and
he was quite out of breath.
"What's wanting, Carl?" said the barber. "A shave?"
This was one of Jim's jokes, at which his customers laughed, to the
boy's confusion, for his cheeks were as smooth as a peach.
"I vants to find Mishter Stackridge," said the lad.
"He ain't here," said Jim, looking around the room.
"It is something wery partic'lar. One of his pigs have got choked mit a
cob, and he must go home and unchoke him."
This was what Carl had been directed by the farmer's wife to say to the
barber, in case he should profess ignorance concerning her husband.
"Pity about the pig," said Jim. "Mabby Stackridge'll be in bime-by. Any
thing else I can do for ye?"
Carl stepped up to the barber, and said in a hoarse whisper, loud enough
to be heard by every body,--
"A mug of peer, if you pleashe."
"I got some that'll make a Dutchman's head hum!" said Jim, leading the
way into the little grog room.
"That's Villars's Dutch boy," said one of the smokers in the
barber-shop. "Beats all nater, how these Dutch will swill down any thing
in the shape of beer!"
This elegant observation may have had a grain of truth in it, as we who
have Teutonic friends may have reason to know. However, the man had
mistaken the boy this time.
"It is not the peer I vants, it is Mr. Stackridge," whispered Carl, when
alone with the proprietor.
Jim regarded him doubtfully a moment, then said, "I reckon I shall have
to open a cask in the suller. You jest tend bar for me while I am gone."
He descended the stairs, closing the door after him. Carl, who thought
of the schoolmaster in the hands of the mob, felt his heart swell and
burn with anxiety at each moment's delay. Jim did not keep him long
waiting.
"This way, Carl, if you want some of the right sort," said the negro
from the stairs.
Carl went down in the darkness, Jim taking his hand to guide him. They
entered a cellar, crowded with casks and boxes, where there was a dim
lamp burning; but no human being was visible, until suddenly out of a
low, dark passage, between some barrels, a stooping figure emerged,
giving Carl a momentary start of alarm.
"What's the trouble, Carl?"
"O! Mishter Stackridge! is it you?" said Carl, as the figure stood erect
in the dim light,--sallow, bony, grim, attired in coarse clothes. "The
schoolmaster--that is the trouble!" and he hastily related what he had
seen.
"Wouldn't take the pistol? the fool!" muttered the farmer. "But I'll see
what I can do for him." He grasped the boy's collar, and said in a
suppressed but terribly earnest voice, "Swear never to breathe a word of
what I'm going to show you!"
"I shwear!" said Carl.
"Come!"
Stackridge took him by the wrist, and drew him after him into the
passage. It was utterly dark, and Carl had to stoop in order to avoid
hitting his head. As they approached the end of it, he could distinguish
the sound of voices,--one louder than the rest giving the word of
command.
"_Order--arms!_"
The farmer knocked on the head of a cask, which rolled aside, and opened
the way into a cellar beyond, under an old storehouse, which was
likewise a part of Barber Jim's property.
The second cellar was much larger and better lighted than the first, and
rendered picturesque by heavy festoons of cobwebs hanging from the dark
beams above. The rays of the lamps flashed upon gun-barrels, and cast
against the damp and mouldy walls gigantic shadows of groups of men.
Some were conversing, others were practising the soldiers' drill.
"Neighbors!" said Stackridge, in a voice which commanded instant
attention, and drew around him and Carl an eager group. "It's just as I
told you,--Ropes and his gang are lynching Hapgood!"
"It's the fellow's own fault," said a stern, dark man, the same who had
been drilling the men. "He should have taken care of himself."
"Young Hapgood's a decent sort of cuss," said another whom Carl knew,--a
farmer named Withers,--"and I like him. I believe he means well; but he
ain't one of us."
"I've been deceived in him," said a third. "He always minded his own
business, and kept so quiet about our institutions, I never suspected he
was anti-slavery till I talked with him t'other day about joining
us--then he out with it."
"He thinks we're all wrong," said a bigoted pro-slavery man named
Deslow. "He says slavery's the cause of the war, and it's absurd in us
to go in for the Union and slavery too!" For these men, though loyal to
the government, and bitterly opposed to secession, were nearly all
slaveholders or believers in slavery.
"May be the fellow ain't far wrong there," said he who had been drilling
his comrades. "I think myself slavery's the cause of the war, and that's
what puts us in such a hard place. The time may come when we will have
to take a different stand--go the whole figure with the free north, or
drift with the cotton states. But that time hain't come yet."
"But the time _has_ come," said Stackridge, impatiently, "to do
something for Hapgood, if we intend to help him at all. While we are
talking, he may be hanging."
"And what can we do?" retorted the other. "We can't make a move for him
without showing our hand, and it ain't time for that yet."
"True enough, Captain Grudd," said Stackridge. "But three or four of us,
with our revolvers, can happen that way, and take him out of the hands
of Ropes and his cowardly crew without much difficulty. I, for one, am
going."
"Hapgood don't even believe in fighting!" observed Deslow, with immense
disgust; "and blast me if I am going to fight _for_ him!"
Carl was almost driven to despair by the indifference of these men and
the time wasted in discussion. He could have hugged the grim and bony
Stackridge when he saw him make a decided move at last. Three others
volunteered to accompany them. The cask was once more rolled away from
the entrance, and one by one they crept quickly through the passage into
the first cellar.
Stackridge preceded the rest, to see that the way was clear. There was
no one at the bar; the door leading into the shop was closed; and Carl,
following the four men, passed out by a long entry communicating with
the street, the door of which was thrown open to the public on occasions
when there was a great rush to Jim's bar, but which was fastened this
night by a latch that could be lifted only from the inside.