These sounds were, from time to time, heard by the servants, and revived in full force the memory of the old ghost legend. A superstitious creeping horror seemed to fill the house; and though no one dared to breathe it to Legree, he found himself encompassed by it, as by an atmosphere.
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. The Christian is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order; but to the man who has dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of the Hebrew poet, “a land of darkness and the shadow of death,” without any order, where the light is as darkness. Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.
Legree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused by his encounters with Tom—roused, only to be resisted by the determinate force of evil; but still there was a thrill and commotion of the dark, inner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or hymn, that reacted in superstitious dread.
The influence of Cassy over him was of a strange and singular kind. He was her owner, her tyrant and tormentor. She was, as he knew, wholly, and without any possibility of help or redress, in his hands; and yet so it is, that the most brutal man cannot live in constant association with a strong female influence, and not be greatly controlled by it. When he first bought her, she was, as she said, a woman delicately bred; and then he crushed her, without scruple, beneath the foot of his brutality. But, as time, and debasing influences, and despair, hardened womanhood within her, and waked the fires of fiercer passions, she had become in a measure his mistress, and he alternately tyrannized over and dreaded her.
This influence had become more harassing and decided, since partial insanity had given a strange, weird, unsettled cast to all her words and language.
A night or two after this, Legree was sitting in the old sitting-room, by the side of a flickering wood fire, that threw uncertain glances round the room. It was a stormy, windy night, such as raises whole squadrons of nondescript noises in rickety old houses. Windows were rattling, shutters flapping, and wind carousing, rumbling, and tumbling down the chimney, and, every once in a while, puffing out smoke and ashes, as if a legion of spirits were coming after them. Legree had been casting up accounts and reading newspapers for some hours, while Cassy sat in the corner; sullenly looking into the fire. Legree laid down his paper, and seeing an old book lying on the table, which he had noticed Cassy reading, the first part of the evening, took it up, and began to turn it over. It was one of those collections of stories of bloody murders, ghostly legends, and supernatural visitations, which, coarsely got up and illustrated, have a strange fascination for one who once begins to read them.
Legree poohed and pished, but read, turning page after page, till, finally, after reading some way, he threw down the book, with an oath.
“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Cass?” said he, taking the tongs and settling the fire. “I thought you’d more sense than to let noises scare you.”
“No matter what I believe,” said Cassy, sullenly.
“Fellows used to try to frighten me with their yarns at sea,” said Legree. “Never come it round me that way. I’m too tough for any such trash, tell ye.”
Cassy sat looking intensely at him in the shadow of the corner. There was that strange light in her eyes that always impressed Legree with uneasiness.
“Them noises was nothing but rats and the wind,” said Legree. “Rats will make a devil of a noise. I used to hear ’em sometimes down in the hold of the ship; and wind—Lord’s sake! ye can make anything out o’ wind.”
Cassy knew Legree was uneasy under her eyes, and, therefore, she made no answer, but sat fixing them on him, with that strange, unearthly expression, as before.
“Come, speak out, woman—don’t you think so?” said Legree.
“Can rats walk downstairs, and come walking through the entry, and open a door when you’ve locked it and set a chair against it?” said Cassy; “and come walk, walk, walking right up to your bed, and put out their hand, so?”
Cassy kept her glittering eyes fixed on Legree, as she spoke, and he stared at her like a man in the nightmare, till, when she finished by laying her hand, icy cold, on his, he sprung back, with an oath.
“Woman! what do you mean? Nobody did?”
“O, no—of course not—did I say they did?” said Cassy, with a smile of chilling derision.
“But—did—have you really seen?—Come, Cass, what is it, now—speak out!”
“You may sleep there, yourself,” said Cassy, “if you want to know.”
“Did it come from the garret, Cassy?”
“It—what?” said Cassy.
“Why, what you told of—”
“I didn’t tell you anything,” said Cassy, with dogged sullenness.
Legree walked up and down the room, uneasily.
“I’ll have this yer thing examined. I’ll look into it, this very night. I’ll take my pistols—”
“Do,” said Cassy; “sleep in that room. I’d like to see you doing it. Fire your pistols—do!”
Legree stamped his foot, and swore violently.
“Don’t swear,” said Cassy; “nobody knows who may be hearing you. Hark! What was that?”
“What?” said Legree, starting.
A heavy old Dutch clock, that stood in the corner of the room, began, and slowly struck twelve.
For some reason or other, Legree neither spoke nor moved; a vague horror fell on him; while Cassy, with a keen, sneering glitter in her eyes, stood looking at him, counting the strokes.
“Twelve o’clock; well now we’ll see,” said she, turning, and opening the door into the passageway, and standing as if listening.
“Hark! What’s that?” said she, raising her finger.
“It’s only
