Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу

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       CHAPTER 8 Eliza’s Escape

      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 what I’ve heard folks call Providence,” said Haley. “I do b’lieve that ar’s Tom Loker.”

      Haley hastened out. Standing by the bar, in the corner of the room, was a brawny, muscular man, full six feet in height, and broad in proportion. He was dressed in a coat of buffalo skin, made with the hair outward, which gave him a shaggy and fierce appearance, perfectly in keeping with the whole air of his physiognomy. In the head and face every organ and lineament expressive of brutal and unhesitating violence was in a state of the highest possible development. Indeed, could our readers fancy a bull-dog come unto man’s estate, and walking about in a hat and coat, they would have no unapt idea of the general style and effect of his physique. He was accompanied by a travelling companion, in many respects an exact contrast to himself. He was short and slender, lithe and catlike in his motions, and had a peering, mousing expression about his keen black eyes, with which every feature of his face seemed sharpened into sympathy; his thin, long nose ran out as if it was eager to bore into the nature of things in general; his sleek, thin black hair was stuck eagerly forward, and all his motions and evolutions expressed a dry, cautious acuteness. The great big man poured out a big tumbler half full of raw spirits, and gulped it down without a word. The little man stood tip-toe, and putting his head first to one side and then to the other, and snuffing considerately in the directions of the various bottles, ordered at last a mint julep in a thin and quivering voice, and with an air of great circumspection. When poured out, he took it and looked at it with a sharp, complacent air, like a man who thinks he has done about the right thing and hit the nail on the head, and proceeded to dispose of it in short and well-advised sips.

      “Wal, now, who’d a thought this yer luck ’ad come to me? Why, Loker, how are ye?” said Haley, coming forward and extending his hand to the big man.

      “The devil!” was the civil reply. “What brought you here, Haley?”

      The mousing man, who bore the name of Marks, instantly stopped his sipping, and, poking his head forward, looked shrewdly on the new acquaintance, as a cat sometimes looks at a moving dry leaf, or some other possible object of pursuit.

      “I say, Tom, this yer’s the luckiest thing in the world. I’m in a devil of a hobble, and you must help me out.”

      “Ugh! aw! like enough!” grunted his complacent acquaintance. “A body may be pretty sure of that, when you’re glad to see ’em; something to be made of ’em. What’s the blow now?”

      “You’ve got a friend here?” said Haley, looking doubtfully at Marks; “partner, perhaps?”

      “Yes, I have. Here, Marks! here’s that ar feller that I was in with in Natchez.”

      “Shall be pleased with his acquaintance,” said Marks, thrusting out a long, thin hand, like a raven’s claw. “Mr. Haley, I believe?”

      “The same, sir,” said Haley. “And now, gentlemen, seein’ as we’ve met so happily, I think I’ll stand up to a small matter of a treat in this here parlour. So, now, old coon,” said he to the man at the bar, “get us hot water, and sugar, and cigars, and plenty of the real stuff, and we’ll have a blow-out.”

      Behold, then, the candles lighted, the fire stimulated to the burning point in the grate, and our three worthies seated round a table, well spread with all the accessories to good-fellowship enumerated before.

      Haley began a pathetic recital of his peculiar troubles. Loker shut up his mouth, and listened to him with gruff and surly attention. Marks, who was anxiously and with much fidgeting compounding a tumbler of punch to his own peculiar taste, occasionally looked up from his employment, and, poking his sharp nose and chin almost into Haley’s face, gave the most earnest heed to the whole narrative. The conclusion of it appeared to amuse him extremely, for he shook his shoulders and sides in silence, and perked up his thin lips with an air of great internal enjoyment.

      “So, then, ye’re fairly sewed up, an’t ye?” he said. “He! he! he! It’s neatly done, too.”

      “This yer young-un business makes lots of trouble in the trade,” said Haley dolefully.

      “If we could get a breed of gals that didn’t care, now, for their young uns,” said Marks; “tell ye, I think ’twould be ’bout the greatest mod’rn improvement СКАЧАТЬ