35.2-CHAPTER XXXV The Tokens part2-mt

CHAPTER XXXV

The Tokens part2

That was Legree'sday of grace; then good angels called him; then he was almost persuaded, andmercy held him by the hand. His heart inly relented,—there was a conflict,—but sin got the victory, and he set all the force of his roughnature against the conviction of his conscience. He drank and swore,—was wilder and more brutal than ever. And, one night, when hismother, in the last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet, he spurned herfrom him,—threw her senseless on the floor, and, withbrutal curses, fled to his ship. The next Legree heard of his mother was, when,one night, as he was carousing among drunken companions, a letter was put intohis hand. He opened it, and a lock of long, curling hair fell from it, andtwined about his fingers. The letter told him his mother was dead, and that,dying, she blest and forgave him.

There is a dread,unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turns things sweetest and holiest tophantoms of horror and affright. That pale, loving mother,—her dying prayers, herforgiving love,—wrought in that demoniac heart of sinonly as a damning sentence, bringing with it a fearful looking for of judgmentand fiery indignation. Legree burned the hair, and burned the letter; and whenhe saw them hissing and crackling in the flame, inly shuddered as he thought ofeverlasting fires. He tried to drink, and revel, and swear away the memory; butoften, in the deep night, whose solemn stillness arraigns the bad soul inforced communion with herself, he had seen that pale mother rising by his bedside,and felt the soft twining of that hair around his fingers, till the cold sweatwould roll down his face, and he would spring from his bed in horror. Ye whohave wondered to hear, in the same evangel, that God is love, and that God is aconsuming fire, see ye not how, to the soul resolved in evil, perfect love isthe most fearful torture, the seal and sentence of the direst despair?

"Blastit!" said Legree to himself, as he sipped his liquor; "where did heget that? If it didn't look just like—whoo! I thought I'd forgot that. Curse me, if I thinkthere's any such thing as forgetting anything, any how,—hang it! I'm lonesome! I mean to call Em. She hates me—the monkey! I don't care,—I'll make hercome!"

Legree stepped outinto a large entry, which went up stairs, by what had formerly been a superbwinding staircase; but the passage-way was dirty and dreary, encumbered withboxes and unsightly litter. The stairs, uncarpeted, seemed winding up, in thegloom, to nobody knew where! The pale moonlight streamed through a shatteredfanlight over the door; the air was unwholesome and chilly, like that of avault.

Legree stopped atthe foot of the stairs, and heard a voice singing. It seemed strange andghostlike in that dreary old house, perhaps because of the already tremulousstate of his nerves. Hark! what is it?

A wild, patheticvoice, chants a hymn common among the slaves:

"O there'll bemourning, mourning, mourning,
O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!"

"Blast thegirl!" said Legree. "I'll choke her.—Em! Em!" he called, harshly; butonly a mocking echo from the walls answered him. The sweet voice still sung on:

"Parents andchildren there shall part!
Parents and children there shall part!
Shall part to meet no more!"

And clear and loudswelled through the empty halls the refrain,

"O there'll bemourning, mourning, mourning,
O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!"

Legree stopped. Hewould have been ashamed to tell of it, but large drops of sweat stood on hisforehead, his heart beat heavy and thick with fear; he even thought he sawsomething white rising and glimmering in the gloom before him, and shuddered tothink what if the form of his dead mother should suddenly appear to him.

"I know onething," he said to himself, as he stumbled back in the sitting-room, andsat down; "I'll let that fellow alone, after this! What did I want of hiscussed paper? I b'lieve I am bewitched, sure enough! I've been shivering andsweating, ever since! Where did he get that hair? It couldn't have been that! Iburnt that up, I know I did! It would be a joke, if hair couldrise from the dead!"

Ah, Legree! thatgolden tress was charmed; each hair had in it a spell ofterror and remorse for thee, and was used by a mightier power to bind thy cruelhands 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 haveSambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and dance one of their hell dances, and keepoff these horrid notions," said Legree; and, putting on his hat, he wenton to the verandah, and blew a horn, with which he commonly summoned his twosable drivers.

Legree was oftenwont, when in a gracious humor, to get these two worthies into hissitting-room, and, after warming them up with whiskey, amuse himself by settingthem to singing, dancing or fighting, as the humor took him.

It was between oneand two o'clock at night, as Cassy was returning from her ministrations to poorTom, that she heard the sound of wild shrieking, whooping, halloing, andsinging, from the sitting-room, mingled with the barking of dogs, and othersymptoms of general uproar.

She came up on theverandah steps, and looked in. Legree and both the drivers, in a state offurious intoxication, were singing, whooping, upsetting chairs, and making allmanner of ludicrous and horrid grimaces at each other.

She rested hersmall, slender hand on the window-blind, and looked fixedly at them;—there was a world ofanguish, 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 toherself.

She turnedhurriedly away, and, passing round to a back door, glided up stairs, and tappedat Emmeline's door.