Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Гарриет Бичер-СтоуЧитать онлайн книгу.
a decided finale.
“Warn’t dat ar what I telled mas’r?” said Sam, with an air of injured innocence. “How does strange gentlemen spect to know more about a country dan de natives born and raised?”
“You rascal!” said Haley, “you knew all about this.”
“Didn’t I tell yer I know’d, and yer wouldn’t believe me? I telled mas’r ’twas all shet up, and fenced up, and I didn’t spect we could get through—Andy heard me.”
It was all too true to be disputed, and the unlucky man had to pocket his wrath with the best grace he was able, and all three faced to the right about, and took up their line of march for the highway.
In consequence of all the various delays, it was about three-quarters of an hour after Eliza had laid her child to sleep in the village tavern that the party came riding into the same place. Eliza was standing by the window, looking out in another direction, when Sam’s quick eye caught a glimpse of her. Haley and Andy were two yards behind. At this crisis Sam contrived to have his hat blown off, and uttered a loud and characteristic ejaculation, which startled her at once; she drew suddenly back; the whole train swept by the window, round to the front door.
A thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment to Eliza. Her room opened by a side door to the river. She caught her child, and sprang down the steps toward it. The trader caught a full glimpse of her, just as she was disappearing down the bank; and throwing himself from his horse, and calling loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her like a hound after a deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water’s edge. Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap she vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap—impossible to anything but madness and despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy instinctively cried out, and lifted up their hands, as she did it.
The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake; stumbling, leaping, slipping; springing upward again! Her shoes are gone—her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.
“Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!” said the man, with an oath.
Eliza recognised the voice and face of a man who owned a farm not far from her old home.
“Oh, Mr. Symmes!—save me—do save me—do hide me!” said Eliza.
“Why, what’s this?” said the man. “Why, if ’tan’t Shelby’s gal!”
“My child!—this boy!—he’d sold him! There is his mas’r,” said she, pointing to the Kentucky shore. “Oh, Mr. Symmes, you’ve got a little boy!”
“So I have,” said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the steep bank. “Besides, you’re a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I see it!”
When they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused. “I’d be glad to do something for ye,” said he; “but then there’s nowhar I could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go thar,” said he, pointing to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main street of the village. “Go thar; they’re kind folks. Thar’s no kind o’ danger but they’ll help you—they’re up to all that sort o’ thing.”
“The Lord bless you!” said Eliza earnestly.
“No ’casion, no ’casion in the world,” said the man. “What I’ve done’s of no ’count.”
“And oh, surely, sir, you won’t tell any one!”
“Go to thunder, gal! What do you take a feller for? In course not,” said the man. “Come, now, go along like a likely, sensible gal, as you are. You’ve arnt your liberty, and you shall have it, for all me.”
The woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked firmly and swiftly away. The man stood and looked after her.
“Shelby, now, mebbe won’t think this yer the most neighbourly thing in the world; but what’s a feller to do? If he catches one of my gals in the same fix, he’s welcome to pay back. Somehow I never could see no kind o’ crittur a-strivin’ and pantin’, and trying to clar theirselves with the dogs arter ’em, and go agin ’em. Besides, I don’t see no kind o’ ’casion for me to be hunter and catcher fer other folks, neither.”
So spoke this poor heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianised manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.
Haley had stood, a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till Eliza had disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, inquiring look on Sam and Andy.
“That ar was a tol’able fair stroke of business,” said Sam.
“The gal’s got seven devils in her, I believe!” said Haley. “How like a wild cat she jumped!”
“Wal, now,” said Sam, scratching his head, “I hope mas’r’ll scuse us tryin’ dat ar road. Don’t think I feel spry enough for dat ar, noway!” and Sam gave a hoarse chuckle.
“You laugh!” said the trader, with a growl.
“Lord bless you, mas’r, I couldn’t help it, now,” said Sam, giving way to the long pent-up delight of his soul. “She looked so curis a leapin’ and a springin’—ice a crackin’—and only to hear her—plump! ker-chunk! ker-splash! Spring! Lord! how she goes it!” and Sam and Andy laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks.
“I’ll make yer laugh t’other side of yer mouths!” said the trader, laying about their heads with his riding-whip.
Both ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were on their horses before he was up.
“Good-evening, mas’r!” said Sam, with much gravity, “I bery much spect missis be anxious ’bout Jerry. Mas’r Haley won’t want us no longer. Missis wouldn’t hear of our ridin’ the critters over Lizy’s bridge to-night;” and with a facetious poke into Andy’s ribs, he started off, followed by the latter, at full speed—their shouts of laughter coming faintly on the wind.
Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her and her pursuer. Haley therefore slowly and discontentedly returned to the little tavern to ponder further what was to be done. The woman opened to him the door of a little parlour, covered with a rag carpet, where stood a table with a very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank, high-backed wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colours on the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly smoking grate; a long hard-wood settle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley sat him down to meditate on the instability of human hopes and happiness in general.
“What did I want with the little cuss, now,” he said to himself, “that I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?” and Haley relieved himself by repeating a not very select litany of imprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible reason to consider them as true, we shall, as a matter of taste, omit.
He was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of a man who was apparently dismounting at the door. He hurried to the window.
“By the land! if this yer an’t the nearest, now, to