UNCLE JOHN.
About four miles east of Canema lay the plantation of Nina's uncle,
whither Harry had been sent on the morning which we have mentioned. The
young man went upon his errand in no very enviable mood of mind. Uncle
Jack, as Nina always called him, was the nominal guardian of the estate,
and a more friendly and indulgent one Harry could not have desired. He
was one of those joyous, easy souls, whose leading desire seemed to be
that everybody in the world should make himself as happy as possible,
without fatiguing him with consultations as to particulars. His
confidence in Harry was unbounded; and he esteemed it a good fortune
that it was so, as he was wont to say, laughingly, that his own place
was more than he could manage. Like all gentlemen who make the study of
their own ease a primary consideration, Uncle Jack found the whole
course of nature dead-set against him. For, as all creation is evidently
organized with a view to making people work, it follows that no one has
so much care as the man who resolves not to take any. Uncle Jack was
systematically, and as a matter of course, cheated and fleeced, by his
overseers, by his negroes, and the poor whites of his vicinity; and,
worst of all, continually hectored and lectured by his wife therefor.
Nature, or destiny, or whoever the lady may be that deals the
matrimonial cards, with her usual thoughtfulness in balancing opposites,
had arranged that jovial, easy, care-hating Uncle John should have been
united to a most undaunted and ever-active spirit of enterprise and
resolution, who never left anything quiet in his vicinity. She it was
who continually disturbed his repose, by constantly ferreting out, and
bringing before his view, all the plots, treasons, and conspiracies,
with which plantation-life is ever abounding; bringing down on his
devoted head the necessity of discriminations, decisions, and
settlements, most abhorrent to an easy man.
The fact was, that responsibility, aggravated by her husband's
negligence, had transformed the worthy woman into a sort of domestic
dragon of the Hesperides; and her good helpmeet declared that he
believed she never slept, nor meant anybody else should. It was all very
well, he would observe. He wouldn't quarrel with her for walking the
whole night long, or sleeping with her head out of the window, watching
the smoke-house; for stealing out after one o'clock to convict Pompey,
or circumvent Cuff, if she only wouldn't bother him with it. Suppose the
half of the hams were carried off, between two and three, and sold to
Abijah Skinflint for rum?--He must have his sleep; and, if he had to pay
for it in ham, why, he'd pay for it in ham; but sleep he must, and
would. And, supposing he really believed, in his own soul, that Cuffy,
who came in the morning, with a long face, to announce the theft, and to
propose measures of discovery, was in fact the main conspirator--what
then? He couldn't prove it on him. Cuff had gone astray from the womb,
speaking lies ever since he was born; and what would be the use of his
fretting and sweating himself to death to get truth out of Cuff? No, no!
Mrs. G., as he commonly called his helpmeet, might do that sort of
thing, but she mustn't bother him about it. Not that Uncle Jack was
invariable in his temper; human nature has its limits, and a personage
who finds "mischief still for idle hands to do" often seems to take a
malicious pleasure in upsetting the temper of idle gentlemen. So, Uncle
Jack, though confessedly the best fellow in the world, was occasionally
subject to a tropical whirlwind of passion, in which he would stamp,
tear, and swear, with most astounding energy; and in those ignited
moments all the pent-up sorrows of his soul would fly about him, like
red-hot shot, in every direction. And then he would curse the negroes,
curse the overseers, curse the plantation, curse Cuff and Pomp and
Dinah, curse the poor white folks round, curse Mr. Abijah Skinflint, and
declare that he would send them and the niggers all severally to a
department which politeness forbids us to mention. He would pour out
awful threats of cutting up, skinning alive, and selling to Georgia. To
all which commotion and bluster the negroes would listen, rolling the
whites of their eyes, and sticking their tongues in their cheeks, with
an air of great satisfaction and amusement; because experience had
sufficiently proved to them that nobody had ever been cut up, skinned
alive, or sent to Georgia, as the result of any of these outpourings.
So, when Uncle Jack had one of these fits, they treated it as hens do an
approaching thunderstorm,--ran under cover, and waited for it to blow
over.
As to Madam Gordon, her wrath was another affair. And her threats they
had learned to know generally meant something; though it very often
happened that, in the dispensation of most needed justice, Uncle Jack,
if in an extra good humor, would rush between the culprit and his
mistress, and bear him off in triumph, at the risk of most serious
consequences to himself afterwards. Our readers are not to infer from
this that Madam Gordon was really and naturally an ill-natured woman.
She was only one of that denomination of vehement housekeepers who are
to be found the world over--women to whom is appointed the hard mission
of combating, single-handed, for the principles of order and exactness,
against a whole world in arms. Had she had the good fortune to have been
born in Vermont or Massachusetts, she would have been known through the
whole village as a woman who couldn't be cheated half a cent on a pound
in meat, and had an instinctive knowledge whether a cord of wood was too
short, or a pound of butter too light. Put such a woman at the head of
the disorderly rabble of a plantation, with a cheating overseer,
surrounded by thieving poor whites, to whom the very organization of
society leaves no resource but thieving, with a never-mind husband, with
land that has seen its best days, and is fast running to barrenness, and
you must not too severely question her temper, if it should not be at
all times in perfect subjection. In fact, Madam Gordon's cap habitually
bristled with horror, and she was rarely known to sit down.
Occasionally, it is true, she alighted upon a chair; but was in a moment
up again, to pursue some of her household train, or shout, at the top of
her lungs, some caution toward the kitchen.
When Harry reined up his horse before the plantation, the gate was
thrown open for him by old Pomp, a superannuated negro, who reserved
this function as his peculiar sinecure.
"Lord bress you, Harry, dat you? Bress you, you ought fur to see mas'r!
Such a gale up to de house!"
"What's the matter, Pomp?"
"Why, mas'r, he done got one of he fits! Tarin' round dar, fit to
split!--stompin' up and down de 'randy, swarin' like mad! Lord, if he
an't! He done got Jake tied up, dar!--swars he's goin' to cut him to
pieces! He! he! he! Has so! Got Jake tied up dar! Ho! ho! ho! Real
curus! And he's blowin' hisself out dere mighty hard, I tell you! So, if
you want to get word wid him, you can't do it till he done got through
wid dis yer!" And the old man ducked his pepper-and-salt-colored head,
and chuckled with a lively satisfaction.
As Harry rode slowly up the avenue to the house, he caught sight of the
portly figure of its master, stamping up and down the veranda,
vociferating and gesticulating in the most violent manner. He was a
corpulent man, of middle age, with a round, high forehead, set off with
grizzled hair. His blue eyes, fair, rosy, fat face, his mouth adorned
with brilliant teeth, gave him, when in good-humor, the air of a
handsome and agreeable man. At present his countenance was flushed
almost to purple, as he stood storming, from his rostrum, at a saucy,
ragged negro, who, tied to the horse-post, stood the picture of
unconcern; while a crowd of negro men, women, and children, were looking
on.
"I'll teach you!" he vociferated, shaking his fist. "I won't--won't bear
it of you, you dog, you! You won't take my orders, won't you? I'll
_kill_ you--that I will! I'll cut you up into inch-pieces!"
"No, you won't, and you know you won't!" interposed Mrs. Gordon, who sat
at the window behind him. "You won't, and you know you won't! and _they_
know you won't, too! It will all end in smoke, as it always does. I only
wish you wouldn't talk and threaten, because it makes you ridiculous!"
"Hold your tongue, too! I'll be master in my own house, I say! Infernal
dog!--I say, Cuff, cut him up!--Why don't you go at him?--Give it to
him!--What you waiting for?"
"If mas'r pleases!" said Cuff, rolling up his eyes, and making a
deprecating gesture.
"If I please! Well, blast you, I _do_ please! Go at him!--thrash away!
Stay, I'll come myself." And, seizing a cow-hide, which lay near him,
he turned up his cuffs, and ran down the steps; but, missing his footing
in his zeal, came head-first against the very post where the criminal
was tied.
"There! I hope, now, you are satisfied! You have killed me!--you have
broke my head, you have! I shall be laid up a month, all for you, you
ungrateful dog!"
Cuffy and Sambo came to the rescue, raised him up carefully, and began
brushing the dust off his clothes, smothering the laughter with which
they seemed ready to explode, while the culprit at the post seemed to
consider this an excellent opportunity to put in his submission.
"Please, mas'r, do forgive me! I tole 'em to go out, and dey said dey
wouldn't. I didn't mean no harm when I said 'Mas'r had better go
hisself;' 'cause I thinks so now. Mas'r _had_ better go! Dem folks is
curus, and dey won't go for none of us. Dey just acts ridiculous, dey
does! And I didn't mean fur to be sarcy, nor nothin.' I say 'gin, if
mas'r'll take his horse and go over dar, mas'r drive dose folks out; and
nobody else can't do it! We done can't do it--dey jest sarce us. Now,
for my Heavenly Master, all dis yere is de truth I've been telling. De
Lord, de Master, knows it is; and, if mas'r'll take his horse, and ride
down dere, he'd see so; so dere, just as I've been telling mas'r. I
didn't mean no harm at all, I didn't!"
The quarrel, it must be told, related to the ejecting of a poor white
family which had _squatted_, as the phrase is, in a deserted cabin, on a
distant part of the Gordon plantation. Mrs. Gordon's untiring assiduity
having discovered this fact, she had left her husband no peace till
something was undertaken in the way of ejectment. He accordingly
commissioned Jake, a stout negro, on the morning of the present day, to
go over and turn them off. Now, Jake, who inherited to the full the
lofty contempt with which the plantation negro regards the poor white
folks, started upon his errand, nothing loth, and whistled his way in
high feather, with two large dogs at his heels. But, when he found a
miserable, poor, sick woman, surrounded by four starving children,
Jake's mother's milk came back to him; and, instead of turning them out,
he actually pitched a dish of cold potatoes in among them, which he
picked up in a neighboring cabin, with about the same air of
contemptuous pity with which one throws scraps to a dog. And then,
meandering his way back to the house, informed his master that "He
couldn't turn de white trash out; and, if he wanted them turned out, he
would have to go hisself."
Now, we all know that a fit of temper has very often nothing to do with
the thing which appears to give rise to it. When a cloud is full charged
with electricity, it makes no difference which bit of wire is put in.
The flash and the thunder come one way as well as another. Mr. Gordon
had received troublesome letters on business, a troublesome lecture from
his wife, his corn-cake had been over-done at breakfast, and his coffee
burned bitter; besides which, he had a cold in his head coming on, and
there was a settlement brewing with the overseer. In consequence of all
which things, though Jake's mode of delivering himself wasn't a whit
more saucy than ordinary, the storm broke upon him then and there, and
raged as we have described. The heaviest part of it, however, being now
spent, Mr. Gordon consented to pardon the culprit on condition that he
would bring him up his horse immediately, when he would ride over and
see if he couldn't turn out the offending party. He pressed Harry, who
was rather a favorite of his, into the service; and, in the course of a
quarter of an hour, they were riding off in the direction of the
squatter's cabin.
"It's perfectly insufferable, what we proprietors have to bear from this
tribe of creatures!" he said. "There ought to be hunting-parties got up
to chase them down, and exterminate 'em, just as we do rats. It would be
a kindness to them; the only thing you can do for them is to kill them.
As for charity, or that kind of thing, you might as well throw victuals
into the hollow logs as to try to feed 'em. The government ought to pass
laws,--we will have laws, somehow or other,--and get them out of the
state."
And, so discoursing, the good man at length arrived before the door of a
miserable, decaying log-cabin, out of whose glassless windows dark
emptiness looked, as out of the eye-holes of a skull. Two scared,
cowering children disappeared round the corner as he approached. He
kicked open the door, and entered. Crouched on a pile of dirty straw,
sat a miserable, haggard woman, with large, wild eyes, sunken cheeks,
dishevelled, matted hair, and long, lean hands, like bird's-claws. At
her skinny breast an emaciated infant was hanging, pushing, with its
little skeleton hands, as if to force the nourishment which nature no
longer gave; and two scared-looking children, with features wasted and
pinched blue with famine, were clinging to her gown. The whole group
huddled together, drawing as far as possible away from the new-comer,
looked up with large, frightened eyes, like hunted wild animals.
"What you here for?" was the first question of Mr. Gordon, put in no
very decided tone; for, if the truth must be told, his combativeness was
oozing out.
The woman did not answer, and, after a pause, the youngest child piped
up, in a shrill voice,--
"An't got nowhere else to be!"
"Yes," said the woman, "we camped on Mr. Durant's place, and
Bobfield--him is the overseer--pulled down the cabin right over our
head. 'Pears like we couldn't get nowhere."
"Where is your husband?"
"Gone looking for work. 'Pears like he couldn't get none nowhere. 'Pears
like nobody wants us. But we have got to be somewhere, though!" said the
woman, in a melancholy, apologetic tone. "We can't die, as I see!--wish
we could!"
Mr. Gordon's eye fell upon two or three cold potatoes in a piece of
broken crock, over which the woman appeared keeping jealous guard.
"What you doing with those potatoes?"
"Saving them for the children's dinner."
"And is that all you've got to eat, I want to know?" said Mr. Gordon, in
a high, sharp tone, as if he were getting angry very fast.
"Yes," said the woman.
"What did you have to eat yesterday?"
"Nothing!" said the woman.
"And what did you eat the day before?"
"Found some old bones round the nigger houses; and some on 'em give us
some corn-cake."
"Why the devil didn't you send up to _my_ house, and get some bacon?
Picking up bones, slop, and swill, round the nigger huts? Why didn't you
send up for some ham, and some meal? Lord bless you, you don't think
Madam Gordon is a dog to bite you, do you? Wait here till I send you
down something fit to eat. Just end in my having to take care of you, I
see! And, if you are going to stay here, there will be something to be
done to keep the rain out!"
"There, now," he said to Harry, as he was mounting his horse, "just see
what 'tis to be made with hooks in one's back, like me! Everybody hangs
on to me, of course! Now, there's Durant turns off these folks; there's
Peters turns them off! Well, what's the consequence? They come and
litter down on me, just because I am an easy, soft-hearted old fool!
It's too devilish bad! They breed like rabbits! What God Almighty makes
such people for, I don't know! I suppose He does. But there's these
poor, miserable trash have children like sixty; and there's folks living
in splendid houses, dying for children, and can't have any. If they
manage one or two, the scarlet-fever or whooping-cough makes off with
'em. Lord bless me, things go on in a terrible mixed-up way in this
world! And, then, what upon earth I'm to say to Mrs. G.! I know what
she'll say to me. She'll tell me she told me so--that's what she always
says. I wish she'd go and see them herself--I do so! Mrs. G. is the
nicest kind of a woman--no mistake about that; but she has an awful deal
of energy, that woman! It's dreadful fatiguing to a quiet man, like
me--dreadful! But I'm sure I don't know what I should do without her.
She'll be down upon me about this woman; but the woman must have some
ham, that's flat! Cold potatoes and old bones! Pretty story! Such people
have no business to live at all; but, if they will live, they ought to
eat Christian things! There goes Jake. Why couldn't he turn 'em off
before I saw 'em? It would have saved me all this plague! Dog knew what
he was about, when he got me down here! Jake! Oh, Jake, Jake! come
here!"
Jake came shambling along up to his master, with an external appearance
of the deepest humility, under which was too plainly seen to lurk a
facetious air of waggish satisfaction.
"Here, you, Jake; you get a basket"--
"Yes, mas'r!" said Jake, with an air of provoking intelligence.
"Be still saying 'Yes, mas'r,' and hear what I've got to say! Mind
yourself!"
Jake gave a side glance of inexpressible drollery at Harry, and then
stood like an ebony statue of submission.
"You go to your missis, and ask her for the key of the smoke-house, and
bring it to me."
"Yes, sir."
"And you tell your missis to send me a peck of meal. Stay--a loaf of
bread, or some biscuit, or corn-cake, or anything else which may happen
to be baked up. Tell her I want them sent out right away."
Jake bowed and disappeared.
"Now we may as well ride down this path, while he is gone for the
things. Mrs. G. will blow off on him first, so that rather less of it
will come upon me. I wish I could get her to see them herself. Lord
bless her, she is a kind-hearted woman enough! but she thinks there's no
use doing,--and there an't. She is right enough about it. But, then, as
the woman says, there must be some place for them to _be_ in the world.
The world is wide enough, I'm sure! Plague take it! why can't we pass a
law to take them all in with our niggers, and then they'd have some one
to take care of them! Then we'd do something for them, and there'd be
some hope of keeping 'em comfortable."
Harry felt in no wise inclined to reply to any of this conversation,
because he knew that, though nominally addressed to him, the good
gentleman was talking merely for the sake of easing his mind, and that
he would have opened his heart just as freely to the next hickory-bush,
if he had not happened to be present. So he let him expend himself,
waiting for an opportunity to introduce subjects which lay nearer his
heart.
In a convenient pause, he found opportunity to say,--
"Miss Nina sent me over here, this morning."
"Ah, Nin! my pretty little Nin! Bless the child! She did? Why couldn't
she come over herself, and comfort an old fellow's heart? Nin is the
prettiest girl in the county! I tell you that, Harry!"
"Miss Nina is in a good deal of trouble. Master Tom came home last night
drunk, and to-day he is so cross and contrary she can't do anything with
him."
"Drunk? Oh, what a sad dog! Tom gets drunk too often! Carries that too
far, altogether! Told him that, the last time I talked to him. Says I,
'Tom, it does very well for a young man to have a spree once in one or
two months. I did it myself, when I was young. But,' says I, 'Tom, to
spree _all_ the time, won't do, Tom!' says I. 'Nobody minds a fellow
being drunk _occasionally_; but he ought to be moderate about it, and
know where to stop,' says I; 'because, when it comes to that, that he is
drunk every day, or every other day, why, it's my opinion that he may
consider the devil's got him!' I talked to Tom just so, right out
square; because, you see, I'm in a father's place to him. But, Lord, it
don't seem to have done him a bit of good! Good Lord! they tell me he is
drunk one half his time, and acts like a crazy creature! Goes too far,
Tom does, altogether. Mrs. G. an't got any patience with him. She blasts
at him every time he comes here, and he blasts at her; so it an't very
comfortable having him here. Good woman at heart, Mrs. Gordon, but a
little strong in her ways, you know; and Tom is strong, too. So it's
fire fight fire when they get together. It's no ways comfortable to a
man wanting to have everybody happy around him. Lord bless me! I wish
Nin were my daughter! Why can't she come over here, and live with me?
She hasn't got any more spirit in her than just what I like. Just enough
fizz in her to keep one from flatting out. What about those beaux of
hers? Is she going to be married? Hey?"
"There's two gentlemen there, attending upon Miss Nina. One is Mr.
Carson, of New York"--
"Hang it all! she isn't going to marry a d----d Yankee! Why, brother
would turn over in his grave!"
"I don't think it will be necessary to put himself to that trouble,"
said Harry, "for I rather think it's Mr. Clayton who is to be the
favored one."
"Clayton! good blood!--like that! Seems to be a gentlemanly good fellow,
doesn't he?"
"Yes, sir. He owns a plantation, I'm told, in South Carolina."
"Ah! ah! that's well! But I hate to spare Nin! I never half liked
sending her off to New York. Don't believe in boarding-schools. I've
seen as fine girls grown on plantations as any man need want. What do we
want to send our girls there, to get fipenny-bit ideas? I thank the
Lord, I never was in New York, and I never mean to be! Carolina born and
raised, I am; and my wife is Virginia--pure breed! No boarding-school
about her! And, when I stood up to be married to her, there wasn't a
girl in Virginia could stand up with her. Her cheeks were like damask
roses! A tall, straight, lively girl, she was! Knew her own mind, and
had a good notion of speaking it, too. And there isn't a woman, now,
that can get through the business she can, and have her eyes always on
everything. If it does make me uncomfortable, every now and then, I
ought to take it, and thank the Lord for it. For, if it wan't for her,
what with the overseer, and the niggers, and the poor white trash, we
should all go to the devil in a heap!"
"Miss Nina sent me over here to be out of Master Tom's way," said Harry,
after a pause. "He is bent upon hectoring me, as usual. You know, sir,
that he always had a spite against me, and it seems to grow more and
more bitter. He quarrels with her about the management of everything on
the place; and you know, sir, that I try to do my very best, and you and
Mrs. Gordon have always been pleased to say that I did well."
"So we did, Harry, my boy! So we did! Stay here as long as you like.
Just suit yourself about that. Maybe you'd like to go out shooting with
me."
"I'm worried," said Harry, "to be obliged to be away just at the time of
putting in the seed. Everything depends upon my overseeing."
"Why don't you go back, then? Tom's ugliness is nothing but because he
is drunk. There's where it is! I see through it! You see, when a fellow
has had a drunken spree, why, the day after it he is all at loose ends
and cross--nerves all ravelled out, like an old stocking. Then fellows
are sulky and surly like. I've heard of their having temperance
societies up in those northern states, and I think something of that
sort would be good for our young men. They get drunk too often. Full a
third of them, I should reckon, get the delirium tremens before they are
fifty. If we could have a society like them, and that sort of thing, and
agree to be moderate! Nobody expects young men to be old before their
time; but, if they'd agree not to blow out more than once a month, or
something in that way!"
"I'm afraid," said Harry, "Master Tom's too far gone for that."
"Oh, ay! yes! Pity, pity! Suppose it is so. Why, when a fellow gets so
far, he's like a nigger's old patched coat--you can't tell where the
real cloth is. Now, Tom; I suppose he never is himself--always up on a
wave, or down in the trough! Heigho! I'm sorry!"
"It's very hard on Miss Nina," said Harry. "He interferes, and I have no
power to stand for her. And, yesterday, he began talking to my wife in a
way I can't bear, nor won't! He _must_ let her alone!"
"Sho! sho!" said Mr. Gordon. "See what a boy that is, now! That an't in
the least worth while--that an't! I shall tell Tom so. And, Harry, mind
your temper! Remember, young men will be young; and, if a fellow will
treat himself to a pretty wife, he must expect trials. But Tom ought not
to do so. I shall tell him. High! there comes Jake, with the basket and
the smoke-house key. Now for something to send down to those poor
hobgoblins. If people are going to starve, they mustn't come on to my
place to do it. I don't mind what I don't see--I wouldn't mind if the
whole litter of 'em was drowned to-morrow; but, hang it, I can't stand
it if I know it! So, here, Jake, take this ham and bread, and look 'em
up an old skillet, and see if you can't tinker up the house a bit. I'd
set the fellow to work, when he comes back; only we have two hands to
every turn, now, and the niggers always plague 'em. Harry, you go home,
and tell Nin Mrs. G. and I will be over to dinner."