Читать книгу Cudjo's Cave - J. T. Trowbridge - Страница 8

Table of Contents

No sooner did the lad feel himself safe from pursuit, than he made his way out of the woods again, and ran with all speed to Mr. Stackridge's house.

To his dismay he learned that that stanch Unionist was absent from home.

"Is he in the willage?" said the breathless Carl.

"I reckon he is," said the farmer's wife; adding in a whisper,—for she guessed the nature of Carl's business,—"inquire for him down to barber Jim's." And she told him what to say to the barber.

Barber Jim was a colored man, who had demonstrated the ability of the African to take care of himself, by purchasing first his own freedom of his mistress, buying his wife and children afterwards, and then accumulating a property as much more valuable than all Silas Ropes and his poor white minions possessed, as his mind was superior to their combined intelligence.

Jim had accomplished this by uniting with industrious habits a natural shrewdness, which enabled him to make the most of his labor and of his means. He owned the most flourishing barber-shop in the place, and kept in connection with it (I am sorry to say) a bar, at which he dealt out to his customers some very bad liquors at very good prices. Had Jim been a white man, he would not, of course, have stooped to make money by any such low business as rum-selling—O, no! but being only a "nigger," what else could you expect of him?

Well, on this very evening Jim's place began to be thronged almost before it was dark. A few came in to be shaved, while many more passed through the shop into the little bar-room beyond. What was curious, some went in who appeared never to come out again; Mr. Stackridge among the number.

It was not to get shaved, nor yet to get tipsy, that this man visited Jim's premises. The moment they were alone together in the bar-room, he gave the proprietor a knowing wink.

"Many there?"

"I reckon about a dozen," said Jim. "Go in?" Stackridge nodded; and with a grin Jim opened a private door communicating with some back stairs, down which his visitor went groping his way in the dark.

Customers came and went; now and then one disappeared similarly down the back stairs; many remained in the barber's shop to smoke, and discuss in loud tones the exciting question of the day—secession; when, lastly, a boy of fifteen came rushing in. His face was flushed with running, and he was quite out of breath.

"What's wanting, Carl?" said the barber. "A shave?"

This was one of Jim's jokes, at which his customers laughed, to the boy's confusion, for his cheeks were as smooth as a peach.

"I vants to find Mishter Stackridge," said the lad.

"He ain't here," said Jim, looking around the room.

"It is something wery partic'lar. One of his pigs have got choked mit a cob, and he must go home and unchoke him."

This was what Carl had been directed by the farmer's wife to say to the barber, in case he should profess ignorance concerning her husband.

"Pity about the pig," said Jim. "Mabby Stackridge'll be in bime-by. Any thing else I can do for ye?"

Carl stepped up to the barber, and said in a hoarse whisper, loud enough to be heard by every body,—

"A mug of peer, if you pleashe."

"I got some that'll make a Dutchman's head hum!" said Jim, leading the way into the little grog room.

"That's Villars's Dutch boy," said one of the smokers in the barber-shop. "Beats all nater, how these Dutch will swill down any thing in the shape of beer!"

This elegant observation may have had a grain of truth in it, as we who have Teutonic friends may have reason to know. However, the man had mistaken the boy this time.

"It is not the peer I vants, it is Mr. Stackridge," whispered Carl, when alone with the proprietor.

Jim regarded him doubtfully a moment, then said, "I reckon I shall have to open a cask in the suller. You jest tend bar for me while I am gone."

He descended the stairs, closing the door after him. Carl, who thought of the schoolmaster in the hands of the mob, felt his heart swell and burn with anxiety at each moment's delay. Jim did not keep him long waiting.

"This way, Carl, if you want some of the right sort," said the negro from the stairs.

Carl went down in the darkness, Jim taking his hand to guide him. They entered a cellar, crowded with casks and boxes, where there was a dim lamp burning; but no human being was visible, until suddenly out of a low, dark passage, between some barrels, a stooping figure emerged, giving Carl a momentary start of alarm.

"What's the trouble, Carl?"

"O! Mishter Stackridge! is it you?" said Carl, as the figure stood erect in the dim light,—sallow, bony, grim, attired in coarse clothes. "The schoolmaster—that is the trouble!" and he hastily related what he had seen.

"Wouldn't take the pistol? the fool!" muttered the farmer. "But I'll see what I can do for him." He grasped the boy's collar, and said in a suppressed but terribly earnest voice, "Swear never to breathe a word of what I'm going to show you!"

"I shwear!" said Carl.

"Come!"

Stackridge took him by the wrist, and drew him after him into the passage. It was utterly dark, and Carl had to stoop in order to avoid hitting his head. As they approached the end of it, he could distinguish the sound of voices,—one louder than the rest giving the word of command.

"Order—arms!"

The farmer knocked on the head of a cask, which rolled aside, and opened the way into a cellar beyond, under an old storehouse, which was likewise a part of Barber Jim's property.

The second cellar was much larger and better lighted than the first, and rendered picturesque by heavy festoons of cobwebs hanging from the dark beams above. The rays of the lamps flashed upon gun-barrels, and cast against the damp and mouldy walls gigantic shadows of groups of men. Some were conversing, others were practising the soldiers' drill.

"Neighbors!" said Stackridge, in a voice which commanded instant attention, and drew around him and Carl an eager group. "It's just as I told you,—Ropes and his gang are lynching Hapgood!"

"It's the fellow's own fault," said a stern, dark man, the same who had been drilling the men. "He should have taken care of himself."

"Young Hapgood's a decent sort of cuss," said another whom Carl knew,—a farmer named Withers,—"and I like him. I believe he means well; but he ain't one of us."

"I've been deceived in him," said a third. "He always minded his own business, and kept so quiet about our institutions, I never suspected he was anti-slavery till I talked with him t'other day about joining us—then he out with it."

"He thinks we're all wrong," said a bigoted pro-slavery man named Deslow. "He says slavery's the cause of the war, and it's absurd in us to go in for the Union and slavery too!" For these men, though loyal to the government, and bitterly opposed to secession, were nearly all slaveholders or believers in slavery.

"May be the fellow ain't far wrong there," said he who had been drilling his comrades. "I think myself slavery's the cause of the war, and that's what puts us in such a hard place. The time may come when we will have to take a different stand—go the whole figure with the free north, or drift with the cotton states. But that time hain't come yet."

"But the time has come," said Stackridge, impatiently, "to do something for Hapgood, if we intend to help him at all. While we are talking, he may be hanging."

"And what can we do?" retorted the other. "We can't make a move for him without showing our hand, and it ain't time for that yet."

"True enough, Captain Grudd," said Stackridge. "But three or four of us, with our revolvers, can happen that way, and take him out of the hands of Ropes and his cowardly crew without much difficulty. I, for one, am going."

"Hapgood don't even believe in fighting!" observed Deslow, with immense disgust; "and blast me if I am going to fight for him!"

Carl was almost driven to despair by the indifference of these men and the time wasted in discussion. He could have hugged the grim and bony Stackridge when he saw him make a decided move at last. Three others volunteered to accompany them. The cask was once more rolled away from the entrance, and one by one they crept quickly through the passage into the first cellar.

Stackridge preceded the rest, to see that the way was clear. There was no one at the bar; the door leading into the shop was closed; and Carl, following the four men, passed out by a long entry communicating with the street, the door of which was thrown open to the public on occasions when there was a great rush to Jim's bar, but which was fastened this night by a latch that could be lifted only from the inside.