UNCLE TOM.
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BY “SIMON.”
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CHAPTER I.
A strange old man was my Uncle Tom. He was my father’s only and elder brother, and more than all, he was a bachelor; not one of those sour specimens of humanity who are continually railing at everybody and every thing—more especially “the sex”—but a hearty, hale, good-natured gentleman of the old school, straight as a poplar, and his heart had as many green leaves withal. He was still a boy in feeling, though winter had begun to spread its snows over his head. He was far from hating women, though when he talked of them, or thought of them, a look of sadness would sometimes overspread his countenance; and when he saw some fairy phantom that had not yet escaped her “teens,” in the full flush of maiden grace and beauty, old recollections seemed to come over him with a deep and maddening influence.
No one ever told me the cause of this temporary dejection, and Uncle Tom seemed unwilling to be questioned concerning it. There needed no questioning. From our cottage, a smooth-worn path led across the fields to the village church-yard, which lay at about a quarter of a mile distant. Passing through a gap in the wall, it wound among the grass-grown hillocks, and stopped abruptly before a small, gray stone, which stood in the corner nearest the church, and on which this simple epitaph was engraved: Mary, æt. 18. This told his whole story; for the small, gray stone was overgrown with lichens and mosses, and I remember the solitary pathway when but a child.
Uncle Tom was not rich, but he had enough to satisfy all his wants. He had always lived with us since my remembrance, and we all had a mysterious love and veneration for him, which we could but half explain. His little room on the south-west corner of the house we never entered without a special invitation; not because we stood in any fear of him, but because we respected his quiet, half-eccentric manner, and were not willing to disturb his solitary studies and meditations. We were often invited there of an evening, for Uncle Tom liked to have young, happy people around him. He used to say it made him young again, and caused his silver hairs to hide themselves; and he thought a man should always have the heart of a child, no matter how much experience and life-labor had whitened his head.
During our visits to his study, we were at liberty to handle every thing which came within our reach, and the room was generally in a sweet confusion when we left it. Yet this did not trouble him, it rather pleased him the more. In truth he was so good-natured that nothing could vex him; and I remember one evening when he pulled sister Ruth’s doll out of his great horn inkstand, where it stood, heels upward, like a pearl-diver, his only exclamation was, “Just as I used to be—children all over!”
Directly opposite the great arm-chair, where he usually sat during the day, hung a picture; yet it was not for us to see. A plain blue curtain was always drawn over it, which hung as silently, and always in the same folds, as if it had not been withdrawn for many years. I knew it was the portrait of a young girl, and very beautiful; for one evening, when, according to invitation, we were in the study playing the mischief with every thing that came under our hands, a slight breeze from the west window fluttered and raised the curtain, and revealed the picture to me by the dim light of the study-lamp. I, of course, did not know who it was intended to represent, but it was always connected in my mind with the solitary path to the church-yard; and I always thought of her as the Mary of the little gray stone; yet I never spoke of it to any one, not even sister Ruth. It seemed something sacred, something which I ought not to know, and that the knowledge thus accidentally acquired ought not to be divulged by me.