“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 sunk to sleep in the 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 stealing into 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 the star which the 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 h—l 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.
“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
