TOM GORDON'S PLANS.
Tom Gordon, in the mean while, had commenced ruling his paternal
plantation in a manner very different from the former indulgent system.
His habits of reckless and boundless extravagance, and utter
heedlessness, caused his cravings for money to be absolutely insatiable;
and, within legal limits, he had as little care how it was come by as a
highway robber. It is to be remarked that Tom Gordon was a worse
slave-holder and master from the very facts of certain desirable
qualities in his mental constitution; for, as good wine makes the
strongest vinegar, so fine natures perverted make the worse vice. Tom
had naturally a perfectly clear, perceptive mind, and an energetic,
prompt temperament. It was impossible for him, as many do, to
sophisticate and delude himself with false views. He marched up to evil
boldly, and with his eyes open. He had very little regard for public
opinion, particularly the opinion of conscientious and scrupulous
people. So he carried his purposes, it was very little matter to him
what any one thought of them or him; they might complain till they were
tired.
After Clayton had left the place, he often pondered the dying words of
Nina, "that he should care for her people; that he should tell Tom to be
kind to them." There was such an impassable gulf between the two
characters, that it seemed impossible that any peaceable communication
should pass between them. Clayton thought within himself that it was
utterly hopeless to expect any good arising from the sending of Nina's
last message. But the subject haunted him. Had he any right to withhold
it? Was it not his duty to try every measure, however apparently
hopeless?
Under the impulse of this feeling, he one day sat down and wrote to Tom
Gordon an account, worded with the utmost simplicity, of the last hours
of his sister's life, hoping that he might read it, and thus, if nothing
more, his own conscience be absolved.
Death and the grave, it is true, have sacred prerogatives, and it is
often in their power to awaken a love which did not appear in life.
There are few so hard as not to be touched by the record of the last
hours of those with whom they have stood in intimate relations. A great
moralist says, "There are few things not purely evil of which we can
say, without emotion, this is the last."
The letter was brought to Tom Gordon one evening when, for a wonder, he
was by himself; his associates being off on an excursion, while he was
detained at home by a temporary illness. He read it over, therefore,
with some attention. He was of too positive a character, however, too
keenly percipient, not to feel immediate pain in view of it. A man of
another nature might have melted in tears over it, indulged in the
luxury of sentimental grief, and derived some comfort, from the
exercise, to go on in ways of sin. Not so with Tom Gordon. He could not
afford to indulge in anything that roused his moral nature. He was doing
wrong of set purpose, with defiant energy; and his only way of keeping
his conscience quiet was to maintain about him such a constant tumult of
excitement as should drown reflection. He could not afford a
_tête-à-tête_ conversation with his conscience;--having resolved, once
for all, to go on in his own wicked way, serving the flesh and the
devil, he had to watch against anything that might occasion
uncomfortable conflict in his mind. He knew very well, lost man as he
was, that there was something sweet and pure, high and noble, against
which he was contending; and the letter was only like a torch, which a
fair angel might hold up, shining into the filthy lair of a demon. He
could not bear the light; and he had no sooner read the note than he
cast it into the fire, and rang violently for a hot brandy-toddy, and a
fresh case of cigars. The devil's last, best artifice to rivet the
fetters of his captives is the opportunity which these stimulants give
them to command insanity at will.
Tom Gordon was taken to bed drunk; and, if a sorrowful guardian spirit
hovered over him as he read the letter, he did not hear the dejected
rustle of its retreating wings. The next day nothing was left, only a
more decided antipathy to Clayton, for having occasioned him so
disagreeable a sensation.
Tom Gordon, on the whole, was not unpopular in his vicinity. He
determined to rule them all, and he did. All that uncertain,
uninstructed, vagrant population, which abound in slave states, were at
his nod and beck. They were his tools--prompt to aid him in any of his
purposes, and convenient to execute vengeance on his adversaries. Tom
was a determined slave-holder. He had ability enough to see the whole
bearings of that subject, from the beginning to the end; and he was
determined that, while he lived, the first stone should never be pulled
from the edifice in his state. He was a formidable adversary, because
what he wanted in cultivation he made up in unscrupulous energy; and,
where he might have failed in argument, he could conquer by the cudgel
and the bludgeon. He was, as Frank Russel had supposed, the author of
the paragraph which had appeared in the _Trumpet of Freedom_, which had
already had its effect in awakening public suspicion.
But what stung him to frenzy, when he thought of it, was, that every
effort which he had hitherto made to recover possession of Harry had
failed. In vain he had sent out hunters and dogs. The swamp had been
tracked in vain. He boiled and burned with fierce tides of passion, as
he thought of him in his security defying his power.
Some vague rumors had fallen upon his ear of the existence, in the
swamp, of a negro conspirator, of great energy and power, whose lair had
never yet been discovered; and he determined that he would raise heaven
and earth to find him. He began to suspect that there was, somehow,
understanding and communication between Harry and those who were left on
the plantation, and he determined to detect it. This led to the scene of
cruelty and tyranny to which we made allusion in a former chapter. The
mangled body was buried, and Tom felt neither remorse nor shame. Why
should he, protected by the express words of legal decision? He had only
met with an accident in the exercise of his lawful power on a slave in
the act of rebellion.
"The fact is, Kite," he said, to his boon-companion, Theophilus Kite, as
they were one day sitting together, "I'm bound to have that fellow. I'm
going to publish a proclamation of outlawry, and offer a reward for his
head. That will bring it in, I'm thinking. I'll put it up to a handsome
figure, for that will be better than nothing."
"Pity you couldn't catch him alive," said Kite, "and make an example of
him!"
"I know it," said Tom. "I'd take him the long way round, that I would!
That fellow has been an eye-sore to me ever since I was a boy. I believe
all the devils that are in me are up about him."
"Tom," said Kite, "you've got the devil in you--no mistake!"
"To be sure I have," said Tom. "I only want a chance to express him. I
wish I could get hold of the fellow's wife! I could make him wince
there, I guess. I'll get her, too, one of these days! But, now, Kite,
I'll tell you, the fact is, somebody round here is in league with him.
They know about him, I know they do. There's that squeaky, leathery,
long-nosed Skinflint, trades with the niggers in the swamp--I know he
does! But he is a double and twisted liar, and you can't get anything
out of him. One of these days I'll burn up that old den of his, and
shoot him, if he don't look out! Jim Stokes told me that he slept down
there, one night, when he was tracking, and that he heard Skinflint
talking with somebody between twelve and one o'clock; and he looked out,
and saw him selling powder to a nigger."
"Oh, that couldn't be Harry," said Kite.
"No, but it's one of the gang that he is in with. And, then, there's
that Hark. Jim says that he saw him talking,--giving a letter, that he
got out of the post-office, to a man that rode off towards the woods. I
thought we'd have the truth out of his old hide! But he didn't hold out
as I thought he would."
"Hokum don't understand his business," said Kite. "He shouldn't have
used him up so fast."
"Hokum is a bother," said Tom, "like all the rest of those fellows! Hark
was a desperately-resolute fellow, and it's well enough he is dead,
because he was getting sullen, and making the others rebellious. Hokum,
you see, had taken a fancy to his wife, and Hark was jealous."
"Quite a romance!" said Kite, laughing.
"And now I'll tell you another thing," said Tom, "that I'm bound to
reform. There's a canting, sneaking, dribbling, whining old priest,
that's ravaging these parts and getting up a muss among people about the
abuses of the slaves; and I'm not going to have it. I'm going to shut up
his mouth. I shall inform him, pretty succinctly, that, if he does much
more in this region, he'll be illustrated with a coat of
tar-and-feathers."
"Good for you!" said Kite.
"Now," said Tom, "I understand that to-night he is going to have a
general snivelling season in the old log church, out on the cross run,
and they are going to form a church on anti-slavery principles.
Contemptible whelps! Not a copper to bless themselves with! Dirty,
sweaty, greasy mechanics, with their spawn of children! Think of the
impudence of their getting together and passing anti-slavery
resolutions, and resolving they won't admit slave-holders to the
communion! I have a great mind to let them try the dodge, once! By
George, if I wouldn't walk up and take their bread and wine, and pitch
it to thunder!"
"Are they really going to form such a church?"
"That's the talk," said Tom. "But they'll find they have reckoned
without their host, I fancy! You see, I just tipped Jim Stokes the wink.
Says I, 'Jim, don't you think they'll want you to help the music there,
to-night?' Jim took at once; and he said he would be on the ground with
a dog or two, and some old tin pans. Oh, we shall get them up an
orchestra, I promise you! And some of our set are going over to see the
fun. There's Bill Akers, and Bob Story, and Sim Dexter, will be over
here to dinner, and towards evening we'll ride over."