Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (74 page)

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Authors: Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Page 436
that!
I burnt
that
up, I know I did! It would be a joke, if hair could rise from the dead!"
Ah, Legree! that golden tress
was
charmed; each hair had in it a spell of terror and remorse for thee, and was used by a mightier power to bind thy cruel hands from inflicting uttermost evil on the helpless!
"I say," said Legree, stamping and whistling to the dogs, "wake up, some of you, and keep me company!" but the dogs only opened one eye at him, sleepily, and closed it again.
"I'll have Sambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and dance one of their hell dances, and keep off these horrid notions," said Legree; and, putting on his hat, he went on to the verandah, and blew a horn, with which he commonly summoned his two sable drivers.
Legree was often wont, when in a gracious humor, to get these two worthies into his sitting-room, and, after warming them up with whiskey, amuse himself by setting them to singing, dancing or fighting, as the humor took him.
It was between one and two o'clock at night, as Cassy was returning from her ministrations to poor Tom, that she heard the sound of wild shrieking, whooping, halloing, and singing, from the sitting-room, mingled with the barking of dogs, and other symptoms of general uproar.
She came up on the verandah steps, and looked in. Legree and both the drivers, in a state of furious intoxication, were singing, whooping, upsetting chairs, and making all manner of ludicrous and horrid grimaces at each other.
She rested her small, slender hand on the window-blind, and looked fixedly at them;there was a world of anguish, scorn, and fierce bitterness, in her black eyes, as she did so. "Would it be a sin to rid the world of such a wretch?" she said to herself.
She turned hurriedly away, and, passing round to a back door, glided up stairs, and tapped at Emmeline's door.

 

Page 437
XXXVI.
Emmeline and Cassy
Cassy entered the room, and found Emmeline sitting, pale with fear, in the furthest corner of it. As she came in, the girl started up nervously; but, on seeing who it was, rushed forward, and catching her arm, said, "O, Cassy, is it you? I'm so glad you've come! I was afraid it was. O, you don't know what a horrid noise there has been, down stairs, all this evening!"
"I ought to know," said Cassy, dryly. "I've heard it often enough."
"O Cassy! do tell me,could n't we get away from this place? I don't care where,into the swamp among the snakes,anywhere!
Could n't
we get
somewhere
away from here?"
"Nowhere, but into our graves," said Cassy.
"Did you ever try?"
"I've seen enough of trying, and what comes of it," said Cassy.
"I'd be willing to live in the swamps, and gnaw the bark from trees. I an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me than him," said Emmeline, eagerly.
"There have been a good many here of your opinion," said Cassy; "but you could n't stay in the swamps,you'd be tracked by the dogs, and brought back, and thenthen"
"What would he do?" said the girl, looking, with breathless interest, into her face.
"What
would n't
he do, you'd better ask," said Cassy. "He's learned his trade well, among the pirates in the West Indies. You would n't sleep much, if I should tell you things I've seen,things that he tells of, sometimes, for good jokes. I've heard screams here that I have n't been able to get out of my head for weeks and weeks. There's a place way out down by the quarters, where you can see a black, blasted tree, and the ground all covered with black ashes. Ask any one what was done there, and see if they will dare to tell you."

 

Page 438
"O! what do you mean?"
"I won't tell you. I hate to think of it. And I tell you, the Lord only knows what we may see tomorrow, if that poor fellow holds out as he's begun."
"Horrid!" said Emmeline, every drop of blood receding from her cheeks. "O, Cassy, do tell me what I shall do!"
"What I've done. Do the best you can,do what you must,and make it up in hating and cursing."
"He wanted to make me drink some of his hateful brandy," said Emmeline;"and I hate it so"
"You'd better drink," said Cassy. "I hated it, too; and now I can't live without it. One must have something;things don't look so dreadful, when you take that."
"Mother used to tell me never to touch any such thing," said Emmeline.
"
Mother
told you!" said Cassy, with a thrilling and bitter emphasis on the word mother. "What use is it for mothers to say anything? You are all to be bought and paid for, and your souls belong to whoever gets you. That's the way it goes. I say,
drink
brandy; drink all you can, and it'll make things come easier."
"O, Cassy! do pity me!"
"Pity you!don't I? Have n't I a daughter,Lord knows where she is, and whose she is, now,going the way her mother went, before her, I suppose, and that her children must go, after her! There's no end to the curseforever!"
"I wish I'd never been born!" said Emmeline, wringing her hands.
"That's an old wish with me," said Cassy. "I've got used to wishing that. I'd die, if I dared to," she said, looking out into the darkness, with that still, fixed despair which was the habitual expression of her face when at rest.
"It would be wicked to kill one's self," said Emmeline.
"I don't know why,no wickeder than things we live and do, day after day. But the sisters told me things, when I was in the convent, that make me afraid to die. If it would only be the end of us, why, then"
Emmeline turned away, and hid her face in her hands.
While this conversation was passing in the chamber, Legree, overcome with his carouse, had sank to sleep in the

 

Page 439
room below. Legree was not an habitual drunkard. His coarse, strong nature craved, and could endure, a continual stimulation, that would have utterly wrecked and crazed a finer one. But a deep, underlying spirit of cautiousness prevented his often yielding to appetite in such measure as to lose control of himself.
This night, however, in his feverish efforts to banish from his mind those fearful elements of woe and remorse which woke within him, he had indulged more than common; so that, when he had discharged his sable attendants, he fell heavily on a settle in the room, and was sound asleep.
O! how dares the bad soul to enter the shadowy world of sleep?that land whose dim outlines lie so fearfully near to the mystic scene of retribution! Legree dreamed. In his heavy and feverish sleep, a veiled form stood beside him, and laid a cold, soft hand upon him. He thought he knew who it was; and shuddered, with creeping horror, though the face was veiled. Then he thought he felt
that hair
twining round his fingers; and then, that it slid smoothly round his neck, and tightened and tightened, and he could not draw his breath; and then he thought voices
whispered
to him,whispers that chilled him with horror. Then it seemed to him he was on the edge of a frightful abyss, holding on and struggling in mortal fear, while dark hands stretched up, and were pulling him over; and Cassy came behind him laughing, and pushed him. And then rose up that solemn veiled figure, and drew aside the veil. It was his mother; and she turned away from him, and he fell down, down, down, amid a confused noise of shrieks, and groans, and shouts of demon laughter,and Legree awoke.
Calmly the rosy hue of dawn was stealinginto the room. The morning star stood, with its solemn, holy eye of light, looking down on the man of sin, from out the brightening sky. O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, "Behold! thou hast one more chance!
Strive
for immortal glory!" There is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but the bold, bad man heard it not. He woke with an oath and a curse. What to him was the gold and purple, the daily miracle of morning! What to him the sanctity of that star which the

 

Page 440
Son of God has hallowed as his own emblem? Brute-like, he saw without perceiving; and, stumbling forward, poured out a tumbler of brandy, and drank half of it.
"I've had a hl of a night!" he said to Cassy, who just then entered from an opposite door.
"You'll get plenty of the same sort, by and by," said she, dryly.
"What do you mean, you minx?"
"You'll find out, one of these days," returned Cassy, in the same tone. "Now, Simon, I've one piece of advice to give you."
"The devil, you have!"
"My advice is," said Cassy, steadily, as she began adjusting some things about the room, "that you let Tom alone."
"What business is't of yours?"
"What? To be sure, I don't know what it should be. If you want to pay twelve hundred for a fellow, and use him right up in the press of the season, just to serve your own spite, it's no business of mine. I've done what I could for him."
"You have? What business have you meddling in my matters?"
"None, to be sure. I've saved you some thousands of dollars, at different times, by taking care of your hands,that's all the thanks I get. If your crop comes shorter into market than any of theirs, you won't lose your bet, I suppose? Tompkins won't lord it over you, I suppose,and you'll pay down your money like a lady, won't you? I think I see you doing it!"
Legree, like many other planters, had but one form of ambition,to have in the heaviest crop of the season,and he had several bets on this very present season pending in the next town. Cassy, therefore, with woman's tact, touched the only string that could be made to vibrate.
"Well, I'll let him off at what he's got," said Legree; "but he shall beg my pardon, and promise better fashions."
"That he won't do," said Cassy.
"Won't,eh?"
"No, he won't, said Cassy.
"I'd like to know
why,
Mistress," said Legree, in the extreme of scorn.

 

Page 441
"Because he's done right, and he knows it, and won't say he's done wrong."
"Who a cuss cares what he knows? The nigger shall say what I please, or"
"Or, you'll lose your bet on the cotton crop, by keeping him out of the field, just at this very press."
"But he
will
give up,course, he will; don't I know what niggers is? He'll beg like a dog, this morning."
"He won't, Simon; you don't know this kind. You may kill him by inches,you won't get the first word of confession out of him."
"We'll see;where is he?" said Legree, going out.
"In the waste-room of the gin-house," said Cassy.
Legree, though he talked so stoutly to Cassy, still sallied forth from the house with a degree of misgiving which was not common with him. His dreams of the past night, mingled with Cassy's prudential suggestions, considerably affected his mind. He resolved that nobody should be witness of his encounter with Tom; and determined, if he could not subdue him by bullying, to defer his vengeance, to be wreaked in a more convenient season.
The solemn light of dawnthe angelic glory of the morning-starhad looked in through the rude window of the shed where Tom was lying; and, as if descending on that star-beam, came the solemn words, "I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." The mysterious warnings and intimations of Cassy, so far from discouraging his soul, in the end had roused it as with a heavenly call. He did not know but that the day of his death was dawning in the sky; and his heart throbbed with solemn throes of joy and desire, as he thought that the wondrous
all,
of which he had often pondered,the great white throne, with its ever radiant rainbow; the white-robed multitude, with voices as many waters; the crowns, the palms, the harps,might all break upon his vision before that sun should set again. And, therefore, without shuddering or trembling, he heard the voice of his persecutor, as he drew near.
"Well, my boy," said Legree, with a contemptuous kick, "how do you find yourself? Did n't I tell yer I could larn yer a thing or two? How do yer like it,eh? How did yer whal-

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