Mrs. Tom

“ He went to Tom’s miniature and stood looking at it; then began to talk again with eagerness and enthusiasm about my scheme of following my sweetheart.
‘And why shouldn’t you go?’ said he, pacing the room. ‘You’re alone in the world, and Tom’s first and everything to you. Father and mother won’t like your going, and you’ll be sorry to leave them, but they’re not your parents. Tom’s all in all. If I loved a girl as you love Tom she’d be all in all to me, and I’d follow her whilst a stick lasted, till the plank grew as thin as a sailor’s shirt. ”

“ I wonder if you like me, if you care for me—it would make everything so easy. I love you—more than anything in the world, and you always seem happy enough with me. Do you think you could stand it always. Cut the theatre, you know, and all that at once, and marry me?"
"Oh, Tom!" she said, and without any rhyme or reason she burst into tears and sat down on the little sofa, for it seemed as if the floodgates of heaven had opened and poured its happiness into her heart—just as it had seemed to her mother once in the best parlor at Woodside Farm. ”

“ Tom was a brown faced, black-eyed, keen-looking, wide-awake, gossiping little woman, of four feet high, with a tongue that could, and did, say sharp things sometimes; but with a heart so warm and large that it is a wonder how it ever found room in so small a body. ”

“ As she touched the door-handle, she checked herself in humming some song, growing colorless as she thought what it was,—an old ditty with which she used to lull little Tom to sleep, but never had sung since then. But in a moment a curious smile came on her lips. "That is all right," she said, opening the door. From that moment her little boy and poor Tom, dead in the city graveyard yonder, were as one to the mother: she nursed them in her heart together. ”

“ It was a clear winter night, and the moon went climbing over the fleecy white clouds in a way that made beauty even in Russell Square. Elizabeth looked up at the sky, and thought how Tom would have enjoyed it, and wished he were beside her, and was so glad to think he would soon be beside her always, with all his humors and weaknesses, all his little cross-selfishness, and complainings; she could put up with all, and be happy through all, if only she had him with her and loving her. ”

“ Seeing it was Mas'r St. Clare's wish, she might.'
'I'll speak for you, Tom, and do my best,' said Miss Ophelia. 'I haven't much hope, but I will try.'
So Miss Ophelia asked Mrs. St. Clare to set Tom free.
'Indeed, I shall do no such thing,' she replied. 'Tom is worth more than any of the other slaves. I couldn't afford to lose so much money. Besides, what does he want with his freedom? He is a great deal better off as he is.'
'But he does want it very much,' replied Miss Ophelia. 'And his master promised it to him.'
'I dare say he does want it,' replied Mrs. St. Clare. 'They all want it. ”

“ I held her honest hand, rough with household toil, in mine, and honouring with all my heart this true wife and mother, I said to her, "How much worse might things have been, if you had acted like that young woman in her mad passion? If you had taunted and aggravated your Tom, he would not have stayed in his downward course. He has never struck you, or given you bitter words and oaths. He has never come in and made you cower and tremble before him, and his terrified children run to hide themselves." ”

“ Guy was her theme, and the letter which went "too late, too late." Then she would beg of Tom to go for Guy, to bring him to her, and tell him how much she loved him and how good she would be if he would only take her back.
"Father wants me to marry Tom," she said in a whisper, and Tom's heart almost stood still as he listened; "and Tom wanted me, too, but I couldn't, you know, even if he were worth his weight in gold. I could not love him. Why, he's got red hair, and such great freckles on his face, and big feet and hands with frecks on them. Do you know Tom?" ”

“ You are all I have on earth."
"Poor old Prue's child was all that she had,—and yet she had to hear it crying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor Mammy loves her children; I've seen her cry when she talked about them. And Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things are happening, all the time!"
"There, there, darling," said St. Clare, soothingly; "only don't distress yourself, don't talk of dying, and I will do anything you wish." ”

“ On Tuesday she saw his trunks go out of the hotel marked for New York. A letter to one of his friends among the men conveyed the intelligence that he was called away by the illness of a relative.
It turned out to be no solution at all. He dealt his victim a cruel blow, but did not awaken her from her dream. In that one week Mrs. Tom had heard more about flirtations and jiltings and transfers of affection generally than she had heard in all her previous life. She had even met one ingenuous Southern maid who was habitually engaged to three gentlemen at once. ”

“ Tom, he'll outgrow that. The best thing you can do is to let me take him to sea with me the next time I go, and that will cure him of his laziness, if anything will. In the meantime, I have a patient for you to take care of, if you have no objection. He can't last much longer, poor fellow, and you are a better nurse than Sibyl. What do you say, Mrs. Tom? ”

“ Never was man more truly loved than was Tom. My aunt particularly noticed the change in me, and said that Tom’s courtship had done me a very great deal of good.
‘You no longer roll your eyes,’ said she, ‘when you argue, and redden and strut and heave up your breast when I venture to object to your views. You have become thoroughly genteel, my dear, in your tastes and habits. Your captain will have a treasure in you. ”

“ Tom had stood, during this speech, with his hands raised, and his eyes dilated, like a man in a dream. Slowly and gradually, as its meaning came over him, he collapsed, rather than seated himself, on his old chair, and sunk his head down upon his knees.
"The good Lord have pity on us!" said Aunt Chloe. "O! it don't seem as if it was true! What has he done, that Mas'r should sell him?"
"He hasn't done anything,—it isn't for that. Master don't want to sell, and Missis she's always good. ”

“ Isn't that it?"
"Well, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, "there may be some truth in this."
"What would the poor and lowly do, without children?" said St. Clare, leaning on the railing, and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading Tom with her. "Your little child is your only true democrat. Tom, now is a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes, his songs and Methodist hymns are better than an opera, and the traps and little bits of trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the most wonderful Tom that ever wore a black skin. ”

“ The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always lived among refined and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she could be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not tell. The woman neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the field, she kept close at his side.
Tom was soon busy at his work; but, as the woman was at no great distance from him, he often glanced an eye to her, at her work. ”

“ A thousand times a day rough voices blessed her, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces, as she passed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough, sooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her, and smooth her path.
Tom, who had the soft, impressible nature of his kindly race, ever yearning toward the simple and childlike, watched the little creature with daily increasing interest. ”

“ He hastened to undo it; and, with smothered voices and heavy tread, came several men, bringing a body, wrapped in a cloak, and lying on a shutter. The light of the lamp fell full on the face; and Tom gave a wild cry of amazement and despair, that rung through all the galleries, as the men advanced, with their burden, to the open parlor door, where Miss Ophelia still sat knitting. ”

“ No mother could have more wisely directed her child than Tom governed me.
‘You are a rich garden,’ he would say, ‘but overrun; the sweets are too crowded, Marian, and here and there, my love, is a bit of snake-like habit that needs to be uncoiled from the beautiful plant it has got foul of.’
I well remember, soon after he returned from Liverpool, that he saw me to my house. It was six o’clock in the evening. I asked him to walk in.
‘No, dear,’ said he.
‘“No, dear!” Why not, Tom? You are tired and I am alone. ”

“ Tom! Oh, Mr. Tom! I knew you would come! Cousin Deborah, it's Mr. Tom!' and she flew into his arms, and clung with an ecstasy of joy, unknowing the why or how, but with a sense that light had shone, and that her troubles were over. ”

“ The epithet was lost in a scream, Tom, for she went off in strong hysterics; so I just rang the bell for Mary Anne, and slipped quietly away to my own room. I trust it is a good conscience does it for me, but I find that I can almost always sleep soundly when I go to bed; and it is a great blessing, Tom,—for let me tell you, that after five or six and fifty, one's waking hours have more annoyances than pleasures about them; but the world is just like a man's mistress: he cares most for it when it is least fond of him! ”

“ Tom laughed, and said that with reference to this particular case he had no doubt at all of finding a disciple in Merry. ‘For you women,’ said Tom, ‘you women, my dear, are so kind, and in your kindness have such nice perception; you know so well how to be affectionate and full of solicitude without appearing to be; your gentleness of feeling is like your touch so light and easy, that the one enables you to deal with wounds of the mind as tenderly as the other enables you to deal with wounds of the body. You are such—’
‘My goodness, Tom!’ his sister interposed. ”

“ Then the face of the woman who had sat in her office flashed back to her—the unshapely black hands in their wrinkled gloves, the strange, sad face—and she knew that Tom's cynical disbelief in her ability to succeed where he had failed, was only a surface ripple on the deep-flowing purpose of her resolve to help the woman who had come to her in trouble. ”

“ Tom’s mode of commencing the conversation being rather unusual, not to say startling; the fact of his never having set eyes upon her before the previous night, being taken into consideration. ‘Lor, sir!’
“‘I scorn to flatter, my dear ma’am,’ said Tom Smart. ‘You deserve a very admirable husband, and whoever he is, he’ll be a very lucky man.’ As Tom said this his eye involuntarily wandered from the widow’s face, to the comforts around him.
“The widow looked more puzzled than ever, and made an effort to rise. Tom gently pressed her hand, as if to detain her, and she kept her seat. ”

“ Hence, Tom’s distrust of women, his devotion to Cornelia, the frenzied scatter of his forces in objective life. During Tom’s boyhood, he was almost a woman in his attitude toward women: in each of them he fought his mother, fought her betrayal of him—as of herself—to his dominant father. ”

“ Silly fellow! But he means it all. There are no empty pretences about Tom. To him there is one perfect being in the world, and that's his wife. It comforted me to feel that I was appreciated in one quarter, whatever I might be in others, and the mention of the baby made me forget everything but my longing to have him in my arms.
"I will go at once," I said, "and you must come too, dearest. You must support me against the Juke faction. You must see that your child's mother has her rights."
"Oh, rights be blowed!" he replied, rather rudely. "There's nobody will dream of disputing them. ”

“ Tom saw abundance of men,—great, burly, gruff men; little, chirping, dried men; long-favored, lank, hard men; and every variety of stubbed-looking, commonplace men, who pick up their fellow-men as one picks up chips, putting them into the fire or a basket with equal unconcern, according to their convenience; but he saw no St. Clare.
A little before the sale commenced, a short, broad, muscular man, in a checked shirt considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons much the worse for dirt and wear, elbowed his way through the crowd, like one who is going actively into a business ”

“ But come, Eva," he said; and taking the hand of his daughter, he stepped across the boat, and carelessly putting the tip of his finger under Tom's chin, said, good-humoredly, "Look up, Tom, and see how you like your new master."
Tom looked up. It was not in nature to look into that gay, young, handsome face, without a feeling of pleasure; and Tom felt the tears start in his eyes as he said, heartily, "God bless you, Mas'r!"
"Well, I hope he will. What's your name? Tom? Quite as likely to do it for your asking as mine, from all accounts. Can you drive horses, Tom?" ”

“ Tom promised to be careful, and he was shown into a room where he found his mother sitting up in bed, a fine Indian shawl of Lady Elton's thrown round her shoulders. She did not look ill—in fact, there was a brighter colour than usual on her face, while the only sign of the excitement of which Grace had spoken was in her eyes, which shone curiously.
'Why, mother,' said Tom, stooping to kiss her. 'I don't believe you are any worse for the shock.'
'No, I don't think I am,' she answered, looking at him fondly. 'It is such a relief that we are all safe. ”