University of Virginia Library

SCENE III

A Rough Chamber. Enter Legree. Sits.

LEGREE:

Plague on that Sambo, to kick up this yer row between Tom and the new
hands. (Cassy steals on and stands behind him.)
The fellow won't be fit to work
for a week now, right in the press of the season.

CASSY:

Yes, just like you.

LEGREE:

Hah! you she-devil! you've come back, have you? (Rises)

CASSY:

Yes, I have; come to have my own way, too.

LEGREE:

You lie, you jade! I'll be up to my word. Either behave yourself
or stay down in the quarters and fare and work with the rest.

CASSY:

I'd rather, ten thousand times, live in the dirtiest hole at the
quarters, than be under your hoof!

LEGREE:

But you are under my hoof, for all that, that's one comfort; so sit
down here and listen to reason. (Grasps her wrist.)

CASSY:

Simon Legree, take care! (Legree lets go his hold.)
You're afraid of me,
Simon, and you've reason to be; for I've got the Devil in me!

LEGREE:

I believe to my soul you have. After all, Cassy, why can't you be
friends with me, as you used to?

CASSY:

(Bitterly.)
Used to!

LEGREE:

I wish, Cassy, you'd behave yourself decently.

CASSY:

You talk about behaving decently! and what have you been doing?
You haven't even sense enough to keep from spoiling one of your best hands,
right in the most pressing season, just for your devilish temper.

LEGREE:

I was a fool, it's fact, to let any such brangle come up. Now when
Tom set up his will he had to be broke in.

CASSY:

You'll never break him in.

LEGREE:

Won't I? I'd like to know if I won't? He'd be the first nigger that
ever come it round me! I'll break every bone in his body but he shall give up.
(Enter Sambo, with a paper in his hand, stands bowing.)
What's that, you dog?

SAMBO:

It's a witch thing, mas'r.

LEGREE:

A what?

SAMBO:

Something that niggers gits from witches. Keep 'em from feeling
when they's flogged. He had it tied round his neck with a black string.

(Legree takes the paper and opens it. A silver dollar drops on the stage, and a long
curl of light hair twines around his finger.)

LEGREE:

Damnation. (Stamping and writhing, as if the hair burned him.)
Where
did this come from? Take it off! burn it up! (Throws the curl away.)

What did you bring it to me for?

SAMBO:

(Trembling.)
I beg pardon, mas'r; I thought you would like to see um.

LEGREE:

Don't you bring me any more of your devilish things. (Shakes his
fist at Sambo who runs off. Legree kicks the dollar after him.)
Blast it! where

did he get that? If it didn't look just like—whoo! I thought I'd forgot that. Curse
me if I think there's any such thing as forgetting anything, any how.

CASSY:

What is the matter with you, Legree? What is there in a simple curl
of fair hair to appall a man like you—you who are familiar with every form of
cruetly.

LEGREE:

Cassy, to-night the past has been recalled to me—the past that I
have so long and vainly striven to forget.

CASSY:

Has aught on this earth power to move a soul like thine?

LEGREE:

Yes, for hard and reprobate as I now seem, there has been a time
when I have been rocked on the bosom of a mother, cradled with prayers and
pious hymns, my now seared brow bedewed with the waters of holy baptism.

CASSY:

(Aside.)
What sweet memories of childhood can thus soften down
that heart of iron?

LEGREE:

In early childhood a fair-haired woman has led me, at the sound
of Sabbath bells, to worship and to pray. Born of a hard-tempered sire, on
whom that gentle woman had wasted a world of unvalued love, I followed in
the steps of my fgather. Boisterous, unruly and tyrannical, I despised all her
counsel, and would have none of her reproof, and, at an early age, broke from
her to seek my fortunes on the sea. I never came home but once after that; and
then my mother, with the yearning of a heart that must love something, and
had nothing else to love, clung to me, and sought with passionate prayers and
entreaties to win me from a life of sin.

CASSY:

That was your day of grace, Legree; then good angels called you,
and mercy held you by the hand.

LEGREE:

My heart inly relented; there was a conflict, but sin got the victory,
and I set all the force of my rough nature against the conviction of my cons-
cience. I drank and swore, was wilder and more brutal than ever. And one
night, when my mother, in the last agony of her despair, knelt at my feet, I
spurned her from me, threw her senseless on the floor, and with brutal curses fl-
ed to my ship.

CASSY:

Then the fiend took thee for his own.

LEGREE:

The next I heard of my mother was one night while I was carous-
ing among drunken companions. A letter was put in my hands. I opened it, and
a lock of long, curling hair fell from it, and twined about my fingers, even as
that lock twined but now. The letter told me that my mother was dead, and that
dying she blest and forgave me! (Buries his face in his hands.)

CASSY:

Why did you not even then renounce your evil ways?

LEGREE:

There is a dread, unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turns
things sweetest and holiest to phantoms of horror and afright. That pale, loving
mother,—her dying prayers, her forgiving love,—wrought in my demoniac
heart of sin only as a damning sentence, bringing with it a fearful looking for of
judgment and fiery indignation.

CASSY:

And yet you would not strive to avert the doom that threatened you.

LEGREE:

I burned the lock of hair and I burned the letter; and when I saw
them hissing and crackling in the flame, inly shuddered as I thought of
everlasting fires! I tried to drink and revel, and swear away the memory; but
often in the deep night, whose solemn stillness arraings the soul in forced com-
munion with itself, I have seen that pale mother rising by my bed-side, and felt
the soft twining of that hair around my fingers, 'till the cold sweat would roll
down my face, and I would spring from my bed in horror—horror! (Falls in

chair—After a pause.)
What the devil ails me? Large drops of sweat stand on
my forehead, and my heart beats heavy and thick with fear. I thought I saw
something white rising and glimmering in the gloom before me, and it seemed
to bear my mother's face! I know one thing; I'll let that fellow Tom alone, after
this. What did I want with his cussed paper? I believe I am bewitched sure
enough! I've been shivering and sweating ever since! Where did he get that hair?
It couldn't have been that! I burn'd that up, I know I did! It would be a joke if
hair could rise from the dead! I'll have Sambo and Quimbo up here to sing and
dance one of their dances, and keep off these horrid notions. Here, Sambo!
Quimbo! (Exit.)

CASSY:

Yes, 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! (Exit.)