such a thought never entered my head.”
He sighed and groaned an hour or more away. Then “Chambers” came humbly
in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. “Tom” blushed scarlet to
see this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger,
and call him “Young Marster.” He said roughly:
“Get out of my sight!” and when the youth was gone, he muttered,
“He has done me no harm, poor wrench, but he is an eyesore to me now,
for he is Driscoll, the young gentleman, and I am a–oh, I wish I was dead!”
A gigantic eruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago,
with the accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of
volcanic dust, changes the face of the surrounding landscape
beyond recognition, bringing down the high lands, elevating the low,
making fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green
prairies had smiled before. The tremendous catastrophe which had
befallen Tom had changed his moral landscape in much the same way.
Some of his low places he found lifted to ideals, some of his ideas
had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the sackcloth and ashes
of pumice stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.
For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking–
trying to get his bearings. It was new work. If he met a friend,
he found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished–
his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake.
It was the “nigger” in him asserting its humility, and he blushed
and was abashed. And the “nigger” in him was surprised when the white
friend put out his hand for a shake with him. He found the “nigger”
in him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk,
to a white rowdy and loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew,
the idol of his secret worship, invited him in, the “nigger” in him made
an embarrassed excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread
white folks on equal terms. The “nigger” in him went shrinking
and skulking here and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and
maybe detection in all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and
uncharacteristic was Tom’s conduct that people noticed it,
and turned to look after him when he passed on; and when he
glanced back–as he could not help doing, in spite of his best
resistance–and caught that puzzled expression in a person’s face,
it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of view as quickly
as he could. He presently came to have a hunted sense and a hunted look,
and then he fled away to the hilltops and the solitudes.
He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him.
He dreaded his meals; the “nigger” in him was ashamed to sit at the
white folk’s table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when Judge
Driscoll said, “What’s the matter with you? You look as meek as
a nigger,” he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when
the accuser says, “Thou art the man!” Tom said he was not well,
and left the table.
His ostensible “aunt’s” solicitudes and endearments were become
a terror to him, and he avoided them.
And all the time, hatred of his ostensible “uncle” was steadily growing
in his heart; for he said to himself, “He is white; and I am
his chattel, his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as
he could his dog.”
For as much as a week after this, Tom imagined that his character had
undergone a pretty radical change. But that was because he did
not know himself.
In several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go
back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character
was not changed, and could not be changed. One or two very important
features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this,
if opportunity offered–effects of a quite serious nature, too.
Under the influence of a great mental and moral upheaval, his character
and his habits had taken on the appearance of complete change,