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Title: Myra: the child of adoption : A romance of real life
Author: Stephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Myra: the child of adoption : A romance of real life" ***
ADOPTION ***
Published Semi-Monthly
128 Pages.]
[Complete.
BEADLE’S
[Illustration: DIME NOVELS No. 3.]
The Choicest Works of the Most Popular Authors.
MYRA
THE
CHILD OF ADOPTION.
BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
New York:
IRWIN P. BEADLE & CO., 141 WILLIAM ST.
Ross & Tousey, General Agents.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1860,
by IRWIN P. BEADLE & CO., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of
the United States for the Southern District of New York.
BEADLE’S DIME NOVELS, No. 9.
[Illustration:
THE SLAVE SCULPTOR;
OR, THE PROPHETESS OF THE SECRET CHAMBERS.
]
[Illustration: MYRA MEETING HER MOTHER.]
MYRA:
THE
CHILD OF ADOPTION.
A
ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.
BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
NEW YORK:
IRWIN P. BEADLE AND COMPANY,
141 WILLIAM ST., CORNER OF FULTON.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1860, by
IRWIN P. BEADLE & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
PUDNEY & RUSSELL, Printers,
_79 John Street, N. Y._
MYRA,
THE
CHILD OF ADOPTION.
CHAPTER I.
MOTHER AND CHILD.
“One look upon thy face ere thou depart!
My daughter! it is soon to let thee go!
My daughter! with thy birth has gushed a spring
I knew not of—filling my heart with tears,
And turning with strange tenderness to thee—
A love, O God! it seems so—that must flow
Far as thou fleest, and wrap my soul and thee.
Henceforth thy love must be a yearning charm
Drawing me after thee. And so farewell!”—WILLIS.
The windows were all open, but shaded fold after fold with muslin
transparent as dew drops, and snowy as the drifts of a summer cloud. The
floor was spread with East India matting, and in a corner of a chamber
stood a couch shaded with clouds of delicate lace and clad in snow white
even to the floor—a great easy chair, covered with chaste dimity, stood
close by the bed, and further off a miniature couch, snow white also,
save where the soft rose tints of an inner curtain, light and silken,
broke through the waves of snowy gossamer that flowed over it. Upon the
pillow of this pretty couch lay a bouquet of flowers tied loosely by an
azure-colored ribbon, and more beautiful still a sleeping infant, with
one tiny hand resting like a torn peach-blossom, on its little bosom and
its sweet lips parted smilingly, as a bud uncloses to the warm sunbeam.
There, in its snowy nest, with the fragrant flowers sending their breath
in and out through the misty draperies, and half smothered in delicate
lace, lay the beautiful infant; and a little way off, upon the larger
couch reposed another being in the first bud and bloom of womanly
beauty, not asleep, but with her large eyes wandering tenderly toward
the infant, and from that to a bouquet of orange-blossoms and moss-roses
that, feebly clasped in her delicate fingers, was yet falling apart and
dropping its blossoms over the counterpane.
An air of gentle languor lay upon this young creature, and there was
something more than that affectionate tenderness with which a mother
regards her young child, in the look that she, from time to time, cast
upon the slumbering infant—a shade of sadness, that but for her feeble
state, might have taken the strength of passionate regret, seemed ready
to break from her eyes in a flood of tears, whenever they dwelt longer
than usual upon the babe. But when her grief was ready to break forth,
she would allow her eyes to droop toward the flowers that seemed to have
some pleasant association connected with their fragrance, and a sweet
smile—not the less sweet that there was sadness in it—would part her
lips while a faint sigh floated through them.
All at once the infant began to nestle in its crib, and opening its
large brown eyes, turned them upon the recumbent female. As if her tears
lay so near the surface as to require only this motion to set them
flowing, the young mother, as she encountered the infantile glance,
shuddered faintly, and large drops gathered in her eyes, and fell one by
one over her full but pale cheeks.
“I must not look at it, I must not learn to love it so,” she murmured,
turning her head away, and shading her tearful eyes with one hand. “Ah!
why should I, a mother so young, and with a husband like _him_, always
find every feeling, every impulse shackled as it springs from my heart?
Why was there no one to shield my youth from the blight, that I feel,
too surely, will cling around me to the end?”
The infant began to cry, and there came into the room a colored woman,
tall and with that superb luxuriance of form that so frequently
characterizes the dusky-hued woman of the South. She approached the crib
and took the child in her arms, hushing it with a sort of cajoling
attempt at tenderness, that seemed to annoy the young mother not a
little.
“Give the babe to me!” she said, feebly reaching forth her arms.
“Better not, better not, missus,” replied the woman, pressing her full
lips upon the velvet cheek resting on her bosom—a most unnatural pillow,
as the unhappy mother felt all too keenly. “Nurse said last night that
young missus must be kept quiet, and the baby not left to fret her so
much.”
“Fret me! my child fret me! Give it to me, I say,” cried the young
mother so passionately that the color broke over her pale cheek, like
the abrupt opening of a rose-bud. “It is cruel, it is unkind, thus to
keep a babe from its mother’s bosom. _He_ never ordered it. I know well
enough it is not his wish that I should be tortured in this manner.”
“Take the child to its mother. Why do you hesitate in obeying your
mistress?” cried a firm and manly voice from the door; and with his
lofty step somewhat subdued, a gentleman entered the chamber, whose air
of authority awed the negress at once. He approached the young female,
who had started eagerly up from her pillow, with every manifestation of
deep tenderness in her voice and manner.
“Have you been waiting for me, Zulima?” he said, bending down to kiss
the fair forehead of his wife. “I was kept longer than usual at the
counting-house this morning.”
“Oh! I knew that you would be here soon,” replied the young wife, taking
his hand between both hers, and kissing it with a degree of passionate
tenderness that thrilled through her feeble frame, till, in her weak
state, excess of feeling became almost painful.
“What! because I scattered my path to your bedside with the flowers you
have been wasting?” was the smiling reply.
“They were welcome and very sweet, for they told me that you were soon
to follow,” said the young wife, gathering the scattered flowers
together with her hand. “See! your little daughter has kept hers in
better condition. She is not old enough to tear her flowers to pieces
the moment they come within reach!”
“Like her mother, ha! Zulima!” said the gentleman, shaking his head, but
smiling fondly all the time. “She must have more patience and less pride
than her mother, this pretty child—or she will be”—
“As unfortunate and as unhappy as her mother has been,” said the young
wife, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I only hope she will be as lovely and as innocent, whatever her lot may
prove, and as truly beloved, Zulima,” he added, after a moment’s pause;
and with an expression of deep feeling, mingled with a shade of sadness,
the proud husband gazed upon his wife and child till the tears clouded
his own fine eyes.
For a moment there was silence between the husband and wife. Both were
gazing upon the infant, and both were occupied with thoughts where pain
and tenderness were almost equally blended. Pride, stern and lofty
pride, tinged the sweet current of his reflections, and she—impulsive
young creature—thought of nothing but her sufferings, her passionate
love for him, and of the beautiful child she was sheltering upon her
bosom with one fairy arm, from which she had impatiently flung back the
loose sleeve of her night-dress, as if detesting the delicate lawn for
coming between her and that little form.
“You will not send her away!” said the young creature, lifting her eyes
to the face of her husband, which was becoming more and more thoughtful
each moment. “Ah! if you knew how much I love her!”
“I know—I know, Zulima,” said the husband, interrupting the beautiful
pleader with an accent which, though not unkind, told how the slightest
opposition chafed his proud nature. “It is natural. You must love the
child; who could help it? but do you not love me better?—do you not love
its future fame? its father’s fame?—your own reputation, well enough to
relinquish her for a time?”
“I have thought of it all—I know what the world will say of me—but I
cannot give her up—indeed, indeed I cannot.” The young mother rose in
the bed, and with her child folded to her bosom with one arm, cast the
other round the proud man’s neck, and drew his face down till it touched
the infant, as she covered his forehead with kisses. “You will keep us
both—you will not take our child from me!”
“Zulima, it must be,” said the husband, drawing gently back, and freeing
himself from her fond embrace, while his fine features bespoke the
terrible pain which it cost him to be firm. “While the man who has once
claimed you for his wife remains unpunished, I cannot acknowledge you
mine, legally, innocently mine, as in the sight of Heaven you are.”
“I do not ask it. Let the world think of me as it likes. I will submit
to reproach—to suspicion—any thing—but leave my child—never!”
“Zulima!” was the firm and almost reproachful reply; “do you think that
your reputation is separate from mine? Shall I cast a stain upon my wife
which no after time can efface, and then produce her, wronged and
sullied, to society? Listen to me, Zulima; cease weeping and listen! The
man is yet alive who has called you wife”—
“I know—I know!” cried the poor young creature, shuddering from head to
foot, and burying her face in the pillows; “Oh say no more! I will give
up the child—but spare me that subject!”
“No, Zulima. Let us speak of it this once, and then it shall be banished
our lips forever. Think you that it is not painful to me as to you?”
How painful it was might be guessed by the colorless cheeks and the
quivering of that proud man’s lips while he was speaking.
“While a mere child you became the dupe and victim of this vile man, De
Grainges. He wronged your confidence, wronged your love”—
“No, no! I did not love him—I was a child—I knew not what love was!”
broke in passionate murmurs from the pillow where Zulima’s face was
buried. “Do not say I loved that man!”
“My poor wife! I know that you did not love him. I know quite as well
that you do love me. Look up, sweet child! I would give worlds that I
could speak of all this without distressing you thus. Bear with me only
a minute longer. My only wish is to reconcile you, if possible, to the
inevitable.”
“I will listen,” replied the tortured young mother.
“I know, Zulima, that you were deceived by this bad man—that he wedded
you while his wife was living, and that you fled from his home the
moment this truth was made known. Of all this I was thoroughly convinced
before you became my wife; but until this man is convicted in open court
and before the whole world, how can I convince society of that which to
me is a sacred truth? how, before the fact of his previous marriage is
thus publicly substantiated, can I proclaim the union which has made me
more than happy? Zulima, I am a proud man—sensitive to public
opinion—careful of my standing in the world. Were a breath of suspicion
to rest upon the fame of my wife, I should never be happy again. You are
young—supposed to be unmarried—living here under the roof of my dearest
friend, who, with one exception, is alone in my confidence. In a few
months this man, now in prison, will receive the punishment of his
crime. Do you not see the peril of keeping this child with you till
after that event enables me to claim my wife before the world? Zulima!
look up—say that you forgive me the pain I am causing—say, that, for my
sake, you will submit to have this little one sent from you for a
season—only for a season.”
Subdued and touched to the heart by the depth of feeling with which this
appeal was made, Zulima arose from the pillow where she had been
striving to subdue her grief, and taking the infant in her trembling
arms, motioned her husband to receive it. The moment she was relieved
from the sweet burden, the young creature fell back, and closing her
eyes, tried to check the grief that, however suppressed, still clamored
at her heart. It was all in vain: the tears gushed like shattered
diamonds though the thick and silky lashes, and she grasped the
counterpane nervously with one hand, in a terrible strife to force back
the agony that was choking her. Poor young mother! she felt with that
keen intuition, which is like a prophecy, that she was not parting from
her child for a season, but forever.
“You consent, Zulima? You will give up our little one with no anger, and
without all this bitter grief?” cried the strong man, pale as death, and
bending over the young mother, with the child pressed to his bosom.
“I will, I do,” burst from those pale and trembling lips.
The husband turned away; his limbs trembled, his eyes were blinded with
moisture, and the weight of that little babe seemed to bend and sway his
strong frame, as if he had been a reed. He looked back upon the mother.
There she lay, the wet eyelids closed and quivering—her white lips
pressed together, and so pale, that but for the agitation of her
features she might have seemed stricken dead in the midst of her
anguish. He returned to the couch.
“Zulima, would you kiss the babe before it goes!”
“I dare not—I dare not,” broke from those pale lips; then Zulima held
back her sobs, for his footsteps were departing—a door closed—husband
and child both were gone. Then the mother’s anguish broke forth, her
arms were flung upward, her quivering hands clasped wildly together—a
moment and they fell heavily upon the orange flowers that still littered
the bed, crushing them in her utter insensibility.
Then, while the young wife lay so pale and deathly there stole toward
the bed that negro woman, who bent down till the bright Madras ’kerchief
turbaning her forehead mingled with the chestnut tresses that lay
scattered over the shoulder and bosom of the sufferer. She listened a
moment, as if to make herself quite certain that what seemed so deathly
was not death itself, and then glided from the chamber.
The negress stole softly through the open hall, and into a spacious
garden; a row of small white buildings stood at the farther extremity,
gleaming in snowy patches through the vines and trees that embowered
that portion of the garden. These were the slave-dwellings belonging to
a rich plantation some three miles from New Orleans—belonging to the
husband of Zulima, and occupied for a season by his bosom friend that
the infancy of his child might be honorably sheltered. And here in a
little whitewashed room of the slave dwelling this bosom friend was
impatiently watching the approach of the female slave whom he had
placed—a dark spy—in the bed-chamber of that helpless young wife. With
his face close to one of the four panes of glass that admitted light to
the humble room, he watched the fiery colors of the Madras turban, which
the woman always wore, as it glided like some gorgeous bird through the
thick foliage, nearer and nearer to the den where he had for two hours
been waiting for news from the sick-chamber. The slave entered her
dwelling, and sat down before her master, full of that consequential
assumption that a little power is certain to call forth in one of her
ignorant and degraded class.
“Well, Louisa,” said the master, with a show of careless indifference,
for he was of a cool and subtle temperament, with passions slow and
calculating, but all the more grasping for the deliberation, with which,
like well-trained hounds, they were let free from the leash of his
strong will; “Well, Louisa, how is the lady this morning?”
“Oh, she am about de same, Massa Ross—no danger of her going off dis
bout anyhow,” replied the negress, turning her head on one side and
moving a palm-leaf fan before her face, with an air of self-conceit that
made her auditor smile, spite of his preoccupation.
“She just had a little fainting spell when I come out, but it won’t last
long—no danger!”
“Has she had any visitors this morning—has _he_ been there, Louisa?”
“Dar, now, you ask me dat, Massa Ross, just as if he didn’t come ebery
morning of him life.”
“Then he has been there,” rejoined the man, “and left her fainting. Tell
me, Louisa,—oh here is the Napoleon that I promised.”
“There, that am something like Massa Ross,” and the negress tied the
gold in a corner of her handkerchief, and thrust it into her bosom.
“Yes, he was there a long time.”
“Well,” interrupted Ross, evidently getting impatient, “tell me all that
passed, word for word; do not forget a look or a syllable—and another
gold piece is ready when you have done.”
And the negress, thus stimulated, told him all. That scene of tender
anguish—the struggle of love and pride which she had witnessed in the
sick chamber—all was related; and oh! how its exquisite pathos, its
touching dignity was desecrated by the vulgar mind and coarse speech of
that slave woman!
Ross listened to it all, his face changing with every sentence; for,
with only that coarse witness, he did not think it necessary to control
his features with the dissimulation that had become a habit. He
listened, and as he felt, thus the evil man looked. When the woman
ceased speaking the exultation of a fiend was in the smile that curled
his lip.
“And he was determined—spite of her caresses, spite of her tears. I knew
that it would be so. He is not a man to waver, having once taken a
resolution—but the child, Louisa? I have recommended a woman up the
river to take charge of it, but you, my good Louisa, must still be its
nurse. It seems a feeble little thing; do you not think so, Louisa?”
“Feeble! Lor a massa! No; it’s the best-natured, healthy little thing I
ever see,” was the reply, and Louisa agitated her palm-leaf fan with
considerable violence.
“But away from you, Louisa, with some one less kind, it may become
sickly in a very little time, you know.”
“Sure enough!” and Louisa half suspended the action of her fan, as she
fell into a fit of profound contemplation.
“With you to give it medicine and superintend, if it were ill, I should
feel quite safe,” said Ross, and a strange, fiendish smile crept over
his lips. “Of course, I should come and see you very often.”
“Oh! you would. Well, den, I haven’t nothing to say against going with
the baby.”
“Wherever I send you, Louisa?”
“Well, yes, I don’t care, if it isn’t so far off that you can’t come
once a week or so to see us, Massa Ross; but I won’t go far, now I tell
you.”
“Well, now, go to your charge. I will see you again to-morrow.”
The negress arose, and with an insolent twist of her head to the left
shoulder, stood in the door-way fanning herself.
“Well,” said Ross, impatiently, “well, what are you waiting for now!”
“Dis piece of gold in my bosom, Massa Ross,” and the negress placed a
plump ebony hand upon her heart. “It is ’gun beginning to feel
lonesome.”
“Oh! I had forgotten; here, here.”
Louisa drew forth the pocket handkerchief, which, from its embroidery
and exquisite lace, must have been purloined from her mistress, and a
second Napoleon was nested in her bosom.
“Stop,” said Ross, as she was going out; “You said that the lady was
fainting—that _he_ took the child forth in his arms. Where is it now?”
“How should I know? I s’pose he took the baby to your wife. She was in
the back parlor, and he turned that way.”
“There he is now. Go back into the room, Louisa, go back!” Ross seized
his hat as he spoke, and leaving the slave-house, wound through a grove
of fruit trees that sheltered him from sight, and taking a serpentine
path, came leisurely forth into that part of the garden, where he had
seen Mr. Clark. The proud man was walking hurriedly forward, his arms
folded, and one white aristocratic hand thrust into the bosom of his
black dress. He was very pale, and his finely cut features bore traces
of great internal anguish. He saw Ross, and turned quickly toward him.
“It is over, my friend; it is all over,” he said, grasping the hand
which Ross extended, and wringing it hard. A smile, full of proud
anguish, broke the firm and classical beauty of his mouth, and his eyes
spoke volumes of suffering.
“What is over? what has happened?” inquired Ross, startled and turning
almost as white as his friend.
“My wife! my child!”
“What of them? what has happened to them, my friend?”
“Nothing but that which was inevitable. But Zulima, my poor, poor wife!
It would wring your heart to see how she suffers from the separation
from her child.”
“But the child; is it yet with her?”
“Hark!” said the other, lifting his hand. “Do you not hear?”
It was the sound of a carriage driving rapidly from the house. Mr. Clark
seemed listening to the sound as if his life was departing with
it—fainter and fainter from his bosom. There was something in his
countenance which Ross dared not disturb, though his soul was burning
with curiosity to know why the common sound of carriage-wheels grinding
through the gravelly soil should so profoundly agitate his benefactor.
The sound grew distant, and died away before another word was spoken,
then Mr. Clark turned toward his false friend, his nerves hitherto drawn
to their most rigid tension relaxed, and his eye met the gaze with which
Ross was curiously regarding him with an appeal for sympathy, that would
have touched a heart for stone.
“It is gone!” he said, in a broken voice. “My child is gone!”
“Your child gone? when, where?” cried Ross, fearfully excited. “Surely
you have not sent the infant from its mother so abruptly—and—and without
consulting—I mean without informing your best friend.”
“That carriage—you heard it—bore away Zulima’s child!” said the unhappy
father, mournfully.
“But where has it gone? With whom is it placed?”
“It is placed with one whom I have long known, the noble and childless
wife of an old and dear friend. Myra will be to them as an own child,
till I claim her again.”
“And may I not know the people, and the place?” inquired the false
friend. “The child of my benefactor is dear to me as my own.”
“I have pledged myself to secrecy in this. It was the desire of my
friend,” repeated Mr. Clark; “but for that you should know every thing.
All this concealment will soon be over; a few weeks and this man must be
sentenced. Then wife and child shall take possession of their home
before the world. In this you can help me. I can not well appear in
person to press forward this man’s conviction, but you, my friend, will
use every effort to relieve me from this painful position. My poor wife
scarcely suffers more than I do!”
“I will do every thing that you desire. Indeed, the commonest gratitude
should insure that,” said Ross, pressing his patron’s hand, but with
restless and nervous haste in his manner. “Shall I set out for the city
at once?”
“No, no; seek your wife first; tell her to comfort my poor Zulima. I can
not see her now; without wishing to reproach me, she could not help it.
I tell you, Ross, I would rather encounter a squadron of armed men, than
the look of those soft eyes, as they followed her child this morning,
when I took it from her. It was the glance of a wounded fawn, as we have
often seen it, turned upon the hunter.”
“I will see my wife at once,” replied Ross, unable with all his
duplicity to conquer the disappointment that was consuming him; “then I
will depart for the city, and make a strong effort to bring De Grainges
to his trial.”
“It is strange,” said Mr. Clark; “but some influence that I can not
fathom seems to keep back this man’s sentence. The court, as if it were
trifling with his case only to perpetuate my troubles, keeps putting off
his sentence from day to day with cruel pertinacity. But now I am
resolved that it shall be more prompt; this hidden influence must and
shall be revealed.”
Ross listened to the first portion of this speech with a cold and crafty
smile playing and deepening about his mouth, but at the close this smile
died away, and with it every vestige of color—his eyes wandered rapidly
from object to object, avoiding the face of his benefactor, and when Mr.
Clark would have spoken again, he forgot all the habitual deference of
his manner and interrupted him.
“Have no trouble about this man, De Grainges; I will attend to him at
once. The cause of this unaccountable delay in the court shall be
ascertained and remedied. Now that I see how deeply your happiness is
involved, no effort shall be wanting on my part to bring the trial to an
issue. To this end, I must start for the city at once.”
Ross held out his hand, and grasped that of his patron.
“Accomplish this for me, Ross, and no being ever lived more grateful
than I shall be,” said the generous man. “I depend on you.”
“You may, most positively,” was the emphatic reply; and wringing the
hand he held, Ross left the garden. He met a servant in the hall, and
accosted him with the sharp command to have a horse saddled. Then,
passing into the inner room, he spoke a few hasty words, not to his
wife, but to the black woman, Louisa, and then hurried to the stable.
With the sluggish habits of his race, the negro was lazily dragging
forth a saddle from its repository, when his master came up booted, and
with a riding whip in his hand.
“Walk quick, you scoundrel!” he said, laying the whip over the sleek
negro with a force that made the old fellow start into something
resembling haste; but even this unheardof activity did not satisfy the
master; he snatched the saddle, flung it over the horse, and set his
teeth firmly together, as he buckled the girth. Sharply ordering the man
out of his way, he sprang upon the horse and dashed toward the city, at
first in a light canter; but the moment he was out of sight, the
high-spirited animal was put to the top of his speed, and horse and man
flew like lightning along the road.
At each turn of the road, Ross would lean forward on his saddle and take
a new survey of the distance, muttering his disappointment in
half-gasped sentences, as he sped along.
“Oh, if I could but overtake the carriage before it reaches the city! A
single glimpse of it might be enough—nothing should take me from the
track; nothing, nothing. Ha! that is it—no, only a sugar-cart. Why did I
let him keep me? I must, I will know who these people are—no, no, I am
foiled at last!”
This exclamation was followed by a sharp check to the horse, who was
still bounding forward at the top of his speed. The city lay before him;
but along the winding highway, over which his eye ran like lightning,
there was no carriage at all resembling the one that Louisa had
described to him as that which had borne her young charge away.
At a slow pace, but with his horse reeking with the effects of his
former hot speed, Ross rode into the city. He took a circuitous route,
to his own counting-house, and held a long consultation with a young man
whom he found there. This lasted several hours; and then the two walked
arm-in-arm toward the city prison.
Through the gloomy labyrinths of this prison the two men made their way,
conversing together in low voices; a turnkey went before them, humming a
tune to himself, and sometimes raising an accompaniment by playfully
dashing a huge iron key, which he held in one hand, against the door of
some prisoner’s cell, smiling grimly as he heard the poor inmate spring
forward, in the vain hope that some friend had come to break the gloom
of his bondage. From time to time, the two visitors seemed to study this
man’s face with close scrutiny; and as some new manifestation of
character broke forth in his manner or his song, they would exchange
glances that were full of meaning.
“Offer him gold!” whispered Ross to his companion; “say that is for his
trouble; we can judge something by the manner in which he receives it.”
“True,” was the emphatic but whispered reply, “it will be a sure test.”
The officer paused at the entrance of a cell, and placed his key in the
lock. “This is De Grainges’ cell, gentlemen; how long will you wish to
stay with him?”
“We may wish to remain so long that you will suffer some inconvenience,”
said Ross’s companion, dropping his hand into a pocket with that easy
grace which renders the most singular acts of some men perfectly natural
in their seeming. “Here is something to repay the trouble we may
occasion.”
The turnkey reached forth his hand eagerly for the silver coin which he
supposed the stranger was about to offer him, but when he saw a bright
piece of gold glittering in his palm, the sudden joy of his heart broke
with a sort of gloating ferocity over his face, and with a low chuckle
he folded his other hand over the gold, and began to rub the palms
together, with the coin between them in a warm clasp, as if he thought
thus to infuse some portion of the precious metal into his own person.
Ross and his companion had stepped within the cell, and thus, clouded
with semi-darkness themselves, watched the man, whose face was fully
revealed in the broadly-lighted corridor.
“It will do,” whispered Ross, smiling, “it will do.”
“Yes,” said the other thoughtfully; “he is one of those who would sell
his soul for money.”
The man said this with the air of one who reflected sadly upon the
infirmities of human nature, and really felt shocked at the gross
cupidity that himself had tempted; and so it was. He did not reflect
that he himself was there for no purpose on earth, but to barter _his
own_ soul for the very yellow dross, only in a larger amount; that he
was ready to yield to this man’s bartered treachery; that all the
difference between himself and the man he tempted, lay in the price
which each set upon his integrity. But the great villain despised the
lesser sincerely, and sighed that human nature could be so degraded. So
it is all over the world. Those who shroud their crimes in purple and
fine linen, ever do and ever will look down with benign contempt on
those who fold lesser crimes scantily in poverty and rags; so scantily
that the world sees them as they are, coarse, rude, and glaring.
Thus, shaking their heads and sighing over the degeneracy of the human
heart, these two arch-villains entered the cell of De Grainges, the
bigamist, leaving the officer without to gloat over his piece of gold.
A tall man, pale from confinement, and yet possessed of a certain air of
languid elegance, sat within the cell writing. He looked up, as the two
visitors entered, and regarded them with an expression of nervous
surprise, but observing that they were gentlemen in appearance, arose
courteously, and placed the chair, in which he had been sitting, for
Ross. The cell contained but two seats, and the prisoner stood up with
his arms folded, and leaning in a position that had much grace in it
against the wall.
“You have come, gentlemen,” said the prisoner, in a low, sad voice—“you
have doubtless come to tell me that the time of my sentence has
arrived?”
“No,” said Ross; “that would be a painful task, and one from which we
are happily saved. We come, as friends, to ask some questions regarding
this singular case. Perhaps we may have the power—we certainly have the
will—to serve you.”
“It is too late,” replied the prisoner, sadly. “My trial is over. Why
they have not sentenced me before this is incomprehensible.”
“To you, perhaps, but not to us. You have strong friends outside; those
who have done something in keeping back the sentence, and may do
more—obtain, for instance, a new trial.”
“To what end?” questioned the prisoner. “I am guilty. I have confessed
it. In the wild delirium of a passion that was never equaled in the
heart of man, I married the most confiding and lovely creature that ever
lived. The fraud was detected. My wife—my living wife forced herself
into the home where I had sheltered my falsely-won bride. Zulima would
not love the villain who had wronged her. She left me; and without her I
care very little whether it is to a prison or a grave.”
“But what if Zulima loved you yet? What if she only desired that in this
trial your right to her could be established?”
The prisoner shook his head.
“I only say,” continued Ross, “if this were the case; if a new trial
were granted, if there was no lack of funds to pave the way through
court, would you not, having a new trial, suppress the proofs of this
former marriage? Might not your wife herself be persuaded to aid in
clearing you?”
“No,” replied the prisoner, firmly. “It could not be. My wife pursues me
with that strong hate which is born of baffled passion. Zulima ceased to
love me.”
“Because she believed her marriage unlawful,” said Ross.
“It was unlawful. I have acknowledged it again and again. Zulima had
nothing left—nothing but her freedom from the man that had wronged her
to hope for. I would not deprive her of that.”
“And if the means were before you? If you could obtain a new trial, this
first marriage, you are certain, would be proven against you?”
“I am very certain,” replied the prisoner.
“Remember, if they fail to prove the first marriage, you are free
forever, and Zulima is your lawful wife. Is not this worth an effort?”
The unhappy man clasped his hands, and for a moment there broke through
his sad eyes a luster that was perfectly dazzling.
“Worth an effort!” he said. “Oh, heavens! I would die but to see her
look upon me again with love for a single moment.”
“Then why not make the effort?”
“Because I know that Zulima has ceased to love me. She is young,
beautiful. I feel that she has brought me here, not for revenge, but
that herself may attain honorable freedom. I would not raise my hand to
thwart her in the just object.”
The two men looked anxiously at each other. They were astounded by the
strange magnanimity of the prisoner.
“I tell you,” said Ross, earnestly “this thing can be brought about.
Your counsel have seen the witnesses. Gold is a potent agent. Even your
wife yields; she will not appear. You can be cleared of this charge; you
can claim Zulima as your lawful wife. We pledge ourselves to accomplish
all that we have proposed.”
“Gentlemen, you seem kind, and I thank you; but I _know_ that the wrong
which I inflicted on that young girl has been followed by her aversion;
she has told me so. She is not my lawful wife; without her love—her
firm, earnest love, I would not claim her if she were. All that she
desires is freedom; that she shall have, though it cost my life instead
of a few years’ imprisonment.”
Ross arose and went into the corridor, where he conversed in a low voice
and very earnestly with the turnkey. Meantime the prisoner sat down in
the empty chair, and burying his face in his hands, seemed to be lost in
bitter thought. When Ross returned he arose and stood up, but his face
was haggard, and he seemed to suffer much from the struggle that had
been aroused in his breast.
“Then you are determined not to claim a new trial?”
“I am,” was the reply.
“Perhaps it is as well; but we are the friends of Zulima. She suffers,
she shrinks from the thought of your imprisonment. This new appeal may
be impossible, but there is another way. Your trial has done all for
Zulima that can be accomplished; it sets her free. Now she would give
that to you, which your self devotion will secure to her—freedom.
To-night, De Grainges, the means of escape will be provided; at
daybreak, to-morrow, a vessel sails for Europe; you must become one of
her passengers.”
“And does _she_ desire this?” asked the prisoner, aroused all at once
from the stubborn resolve of self-sacrifice that had possessed him.
“She does; we are her messengers.”
“To-night—this is sudden! and she desires it? She deems the trial that
has taken place sufficient for her emancipation from the hateful bonds
that made her mine. You are certain of this?”
“Most certain.”
“And the means of escape?”
“Leave that to us. The time, midnight; be ready. That is all we desire
of you.”
“I will be ready,” said the young man, falling into the chair which Ross
had just left, and overcome with a sudden sense of freedom—freedom given
by the woman whom he had so deeply wronged. His nerves, hitherto so
firm, began to tremble, and covering his face with both hands, he burst
into tears. When he looked up the two strangers had left the cell.
The next morning, when Ross entered his counting-room, he found the
turnkey talking with his partner. Just then Mr. Clark entered also, but
with a harassed and anxious expression of countenance.
“My friend,” said Ross, advancing toward him, “you have come at the
right moment to hear this man’s news from his own lips. I fear it will
give you pain. No, I had better tell it myself; he is a stranger, and
knows nothing of your interest in the mother. Step this way, sir.”
“What is this? For what would you prepare me? Zulima—”
“Is well, and becoming reconciled to her loss; but De Grainges—”
“What of him, sir? what of that unhappy man?” inquired Mr. Clark,
sternly.
“He has broken prison; he escaped last night.”
Mr. Clark staggered. The color left his lip, and he leaned heavily on
the back of a chair. “My poor, poor wife! will her trials never have an
end?” he exclaimed with deep feeling, and, turning hastily, he left the
counting-room.
“It will be some time before he acknowledges her now,” said Ross, in a
low voice, to his partner. “See how his step wavers.”
“That may waver, but his pride never will,” was the low reply.
“Never!” said Campbell.
And he was right. Poor, poor Zulima!
CHAPTER II.
Trifles, light as air,
Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.—OTHELLO.
It was spring-time in the South—that rich, bright season more luxurious
in foliage and profuse in fragrance than our warm and mellow summers
ever are. The orange-trees were all in flower; carnations blushed warm
and glowing upon the garden banks; the grass was mottled with tiny
blossoms, gorgeous and sweet as the air they breathed. All around the
house which Zulima occupied was hedged in with honeysuckles and
prairie-roses, that sheltered the grounds and leaped up here and there
among the magnolia-trees, lacing them together in festoons and arcades
of fantastic beauty.
Poor, poor Zulima! With this beautiful paradise to wander in, with the
sweet air, the warm sky, and all that world of flowers, how unhappy she
was! Alone—utterly alone!—her child slept in the bosom of another; her
husband had been months away in the far North; an unacknowledged wife, a
bereaved parent, how could she choose but weep? Weeks had gone by and no
letter reached her; at first her husband had written every day; and with
his letters, eloquent of love, lying against her heart, she could not be
wholly miserable; thinking of him she sometimes forgot to mourn for her
child. At first she had been greatly distressed by the impediments which
the flight of De Grainges had multiplied against the acknowledgment of
her marriage, but this event had in no degree shaken the holy trust
which that young heart placed in the object of its love. Singularly
unambitious in her desires, but impetuous in feeling, she only felt the
continued secrecy maintained regarding her marriage, because it
separated her from the babe she had learned to love so intensely. True,
it served as a restraint upon her husband, and frequently deprived her
of his presence, but with her imaginative nature, the slight romance of
this privacy only served to keep her affections more vivid and her fancy
more restless. She was all impulse, all feeling, and sometimes, like a
caged bird, she grew wild and restive under the restraints that
necessity had placed upon her.
Weeks went by, one after another, and now Zulima grew wild with vague
fears. Why was he silent? where could he be wandering thus to forget her
so completely? Her nights were sleepless; her eyes grew bright and wild
with feverish anxiety. That young heart was in every way prepared for
the poison which was to be poured into it drop by drop, till jealousy,
that most fierce and bitter of all the passions, should break forth in
its might and change her whole being.
Zulima had gone forth alone, not into the garden to sigh among its
wilderness of blossoms, but away, with an aching heart and pale
forehead, to suffer among the wild nooks of the neighboring hollows.
Here nature started to life in harsher beauty, and sent forth her sweets
with a sort of rude waywardness, forming a contrast to the voluptuous
air and over cultivation that closed in her home, as it were, from the
rough and true things of the world.
Another day was to be passed in that agony of impatience which none but
those of a highly imaginative nature can ever dream of—a weary night had
been spent, the morning had come—surely, surely that day _must_ bring a
letter from the absent one.
The air of her chamber—that chamber where her child had slept in her
bosom, where _he_ had been so often—she would not wait there; all the
associations were so vivid, they goaded her on to keener impatience. She
could not draw a deep breath in that room, thinking of _him_ and _it_.
So, as I have said, Zulima stole forth and wandered away where all was
wild as her own feelings, and a thousand times more tranquil. Ross had
promised her to return very early from the city that day, when he
hoped—the villain could not look into her eyes as he said it—when he
hoped to bring a letter that would make his sweet guest smile again.
Zulima knew a place near the highway which led to the city, and yet
sheltered from any traveler that might pass, by the broken banks of a
rivulet. Thick trees fell over it, and in some places the water was
completely embowered by their branches. She could hear the tread of a
horse from the spot, should one pass up from the city; and so, with a
cheek that kindled and a heart that leaped to each sound, the young
creature sat down to wait. To wait! oh, how hard a task for her untamed
spirit, her eager wishes! Never till her marriage with Mr. Clark had
Zulima’s vivid nature been fully aroused; never before had she been
capable of the exquisite joy, the intense suffering that marked every
stage of her attachment to that lofty and singular man. As she sat then
by the lonely brook, the young creature gave herself up to a reverie
that embraced all her life, for life with her seemed to have commenced
only since she had met him. She drew forth his letters and read them
again and again; tears blinded her sometimes, but she swept them away
with her fingers, and read on, kissing here and there a line that spoke
most eloquently to her heart. She came to the last letter; that was more
ardent in its language, and warmer in its expression of love, than any
of the others had been. Why was this the last? What had happened to
check a pen so eloquent, to chill a heart so warm? Was he dead? This was
Zulima’s thought; she never doubted his faith or distrusted his honor
for a single moment. When the serpent jealousy reaches a heart like
hers, it comes with a fling, striking his fang suddenly and at once.
Zulima was not jealous, but that fierce pain lay coiled close by her
heart, ready to make a leap that should envenom her whole being. More
than once Zulima had started from her seat at some slight sound, which
proved to be only a bird rising from the overhanging bank, or a rabbit
leaping across the thick sward, and thus, between hope and despondency,
dreams and thoughts of the stern real, the time crept by till noon. A
wooden bridge scarcely lifted above the water, spanned the brook only a
few yards from where Zulima was sitting. Here the bank fell abruptly,
giving descent to a pretty cascade half swept by a sheet of pendant
willow-branches. Their delicate shadows, broken with long gleams of
sunshine falling aslant the water, told Zulima that the time of Ross’s
return was fast drawing near. Now she became cruelly restless. Like some
bright spirit sent down to trouble the waters at her feet, she wandered
along the broken bank, gathered quantities of wild-flowers but to cast
them away at the least noise, and frightening the ground-birds from
their nests with reckless inattention to their cries, always listening,
and half the time holding her breath with impatient longing for
something to break the entire solitude that encompassed her.
It came at last—the distant tread of a horse—more than one—Zulima’s
quick ear detected that in an instant. Still she could not be mistaken
in the hoof-tread; she had heard it a hundred times when her heart was
beating tumultuously as then, but without the sharp anxiety that now
sent the blood from her cheek and lips while she listened. Ross had
ridden her husband’s horse to the city that day, and she would have been
sure of his approach though a troop of cavalry had blended its tramp
with the well-known tread.
Zulima started from her motionless attitude, and springing up the bank,
stood sheltered by the willow-branches, waiting for Ross to pass the
bridge, when she would demand her letter. There she stood, trembling
with keen impatience, eager and yet afraid of the sharp disappointment
that might follow.
How leisurely those two horsemen rode toward the bridge! They were
conversing earnestly, and the animals they rode moved close together, as
if the riders were intent on some subject to which they feared giving
full voice even in that profound solitude. They crossed the bridge at a
walk, and without seeming quite conscious how it happened, the two men
checked their horses close by the willows, and continued their
conversation.
With one foot strained back and the other just lifted from the turf,
ready to spring forward, Zulima had watched them coming, but somehow her
heart sunk as they drew near, and without knowing it, she allowed that
eager foot to sink heavily on the turf again, and shrinking timidly
within her shelter, she waited with a beating heart for the conversation
to be checked, that she might come forward without intrusion.
“Zulima!” they had used that name once, twice, before her agitation
permitted the fact to convey any impression to her mind. But with that
name was coupled another that would almost have aroused her heart from
the apathy of death itself.
“We must convey it to her gradually; she must be subdued by degrees,”
said Ross, smoothing the mane of his horse with one hand.
“Yes,” replied the other—the same man who had accompanied Ross on his
visit to De Grainges’ cell—“with her inexperience and impetuous temper,
there is no judging what extravagance she might enact. She might even
start off in search of him, and then—”
Here a sensation of faintness came over Zulima, and she lost a few
words. When the mist cleared from her brain, Ross was speaking.
“He would not see her. You do not know the man—see!”
Ross took a letter from his pocket, and the two held it between them,
while Ross once or twice pointed out a paragraph with his finger and
commented on it in a voice so low that Zulima could only gather what he
said from the expression of his face.
The first words that she could distinguish were:
“This silence has already driven her wild; you will have a fine time of
it when she hears this gossip about a rival.”
“It may not reach her; indeed, how can it?”
“These things always reach head-quarters sooner or later,” was the
reply, so far as it reached Zulima, for that moment the horse which Ross
rode became tired of inaction and shied around suddenly; his rider with
difficulty secured the letter, which was crushed in his hand, as he
hastened to draw the curb, while an envelope, which had contained it,
fluttered to the ground.
“Let it go, let it go. I have all that is important,” cried Ross,
checking his companion, who was about to dismount, and reining in his
impatient steed with difficulty.
The next instant they were both out of sight.
Scarcely had they gone, when Zulima sprang from her covert and seized
the envelope. It was her husband’s writing, addressed to Ross, the
post-mark Philadelphia—a letter from her husband and not to her! Zulima
held her breath; she looked wildly around, as if in search of something
that could explain this mystery; then her eyes fell to the writing
again. Tears, that seemed half fire, flashed down upon the paper; her
lips began to quiver, she covered the fragment of paper with passionate
kisses, and then cast it from her, exclaiming wildly, “Not to me—not to
me!”
Zulima returned home that day as she had never done before. The slow,
creeping pace, so eloquent of depression and baffled hope, that had
previously marked her return home, was exchanged for a hurried tread and
excited demeanor. She was fully aroused to a sense of wrong, to a
knowledge that some mystery existed which involved her own future. All
her suspicions were vague and wildly combined with such facts as lay
before her, but not the less powerful and engrossing.
She found Ross in the hall, standing by the back-door, which opened to
the garden, and talking to his traveling companion. The conference was
checked as she came up, and she heard Ross say, quickly, “Hush! hush!
she is here!” Then the two stepped out and sauntered slowly along the
garden-walk. Zulima followed their footsteps, and with the wild fire of
excitement burning in her cheeks and eyes.
Ross turned to meet her. His look was calm, his voice compassionate.
“We have heard nothing. There was no letter,” he said, interpreting the
question that hung on her lips.
“No letter to any one?”
Ross looked at her keenly. It was a strange question, and startled him.
Could the young creature suspect that he was in correspondence with her
husband? She might conjecture, but could not know. With this thought he
answered her:
“He seems to have forgotten all his friends, for even upon business Mr.
Clark communicates with no one.”
Zulima parted her lips to answer, but checking herself, she turned away
and went to her room. Her previous distrust of Ross was fully confirmed
by the false answer that he had given; henceforth she resolved to act
for herself.
There was a storm that night; the orange-trees and the thick lime-groves
were swept by a hurricane that rocked the old mansion house like a
cradle. The rain came down in torrents, dashing against the windows, and
sweeping out with the wind in waves of dusky silver. All night long the
lightning and the winds wrangled and caroused around the house, kindling
up the chamber of Zulima every other moment with a torrent of white
flame. She was writing—always writing, or with impatient hands tearing
up that which she had done, dissatisfied that language could not be made
more eloquent. She lifted her pale face as the lightning came in,
sweeping over her loosened hair and her long white robe, and longed to
dip her pen in the flame, that it might burn the feelings that were
heaving her bosom upon the paper, and kindle like feelings in the soul
of her husband. Sometimes the lightning found tears upon her cheek,
trickling down from her long eyelashes and raining over her paper in
torrents that would have quenched the fiery words she so longed to
write; sometimes it found a smile parting her lips, and a gleam of
ineffable affection glowing in her eyes. Changeful as the storm was that
beautiful face, where the tumult of her feelings was written plainly as
the tempest could be traced upon the sky.
At last Zulima became wholly absorbed in that which she was writing. Her
pen flew across the paper, her eyes grew luminous with ardent light. She
no longer startled at some new outbreak of the storm; when the lightning
flashed over her, she only wrote the faster, as if inspired by the
flame. A great magnolia-tree near the window, with all its garniture of
leaves, its massive branches and broad white blossoms, was uprooted and
hurled down upon the house, shaking it furiously in every timber. That
instant Zulima was placing her name to the letter, which in all this
whirl of the elements she had written to her husband. She dropped the
pen with a scream, and darted toward the window. The sash was broken and
choked up by a great branch of the magnolia, through whose dark leaves
and white blossoms, crushed and broken together, the lightning shot like
a storm of lurid arrows. The broken glass, the rent foliage, white and
green, fell around Zulima as she thrust aside the massive bough with
both hands, and looked forth. It was completely uptorn, that fine old
tree! The fresh earth, matted to its roots, rose high in the air,
dripping with rain, and its great trunk crushed the wicker garden-seat
into atoms, where she and her husband had sat together the evening
before his departure. Heart-sick and faint, Zulima drew back. The letter
to her husband lay upon the table, and near it the taper flared,
throwing a jet of flame over the delicate writing.
Pale and trembling, for the fall of that old magnolia had terrified her
like a prophecy, Zulima folded the paper and directed it. But how her
hand shook; the name of her husband was blurred as she wrote it, and
with a deep sigh she took up the sealing-wax and held it in the
half-extinguished light. Her hand was very unsteady, and a drop or two
of the hot wax fell upon her palm and wrist, burning into the delicate
flesh like a blood-spot. Still, in her sad preoccupation, Zulima felt
nothing of the pain, but sealed her letter just as her light flared out,
and sat down in the gloom to wait for morning.
Two weary hours she spent in that dark stillness, for the hurricane
having done its work, passed off as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving
the night hushed and still, like a giant lying down to rest after a hard
fight.
When the morning came, with its sweet breath and rosy light, Zulima
arose. Hastily binding up her hair, and changing her dress, she took up
her letter and left the house. All around the old mansion was littered
with vestiges of the storm. She was obliged to make her way through
branches heavy with drenched blossoms and young fruit; fragments of
lusty vines that had cast their grateful shade around the dwelling but a
day before; oak boughs wrenched away from the neighboring groves, and
masses of torn foliage that lay heaped upon the door-step and along the
walk, she was compelled to traverse on her passage to the highway.
Scarcely heeding the ruin around her, Zulima walked on toward the city;
her delicate slippers were speedily saturated with wet, and at another
time that tenderly-nurtured frame must have yielded to the discomfort
and fatigue of her unusual exertion. But she had an object to attain—an
object which depended wholly upon herself; and when a woman’s heart and
soul is in an effort, when was her strength known to give way? The old
cathedral clock was striking six when Zulima entered New Orleans; a few
negroes were abroad, going to or from the markets, and around the
wharves arose a confused sound as of a hive of bees preparing to swarm.
At another time Zulima might have been startled at finding herself the
only white female abroad in a great city, but now she only drew the
folds of black lace more closely over her bonnet and walked on. With her
own hands she mailed the letter which conveyed, as it were, her soul to
the husband who seemed to have forgotten her. A sigh broke up from her
heart as the folded paper slid from her hand into the yawning mail-bag,
and then, with a feeling of relief born of her own exertions, she turned
away.
“I have trusted no one; he will get my letter now,” she murmured over
and over again during her rapid walk home, and with that vivid reaction
so common to imaginative natures, she became almost happy in the sweet
hopes that this reflection aroused to life again. Oh, it is so difficult
for the young to feel absolute despair or absolute resignation; both are
the fruit of good or evil old age.
Unmolested, as she had left it, Zulima stole back to her chamber. Weary,
and yet with a heart more free than it had been for weeks, she flung off
her damp garments, and lying down, slept sweetly for an hour. Zulima
dreamed that she was sitting with her husband beneath the great
magnolia-tree; her babe lay upon the turf laughing gleefully, and, with
its little hands in the air, grasping after the summer insects as they
flashed overhead. All at once a whirlwind rushed out, as it were, from
the depths of the sky, overwhelming her with its violence. She strove to
reach her child, but fell upon her face to the earth, shrieking wildly
to her husband to save her and it. Then fell upon her one of those dark,
fantastic clouds that make our dreams so fragmentary. She felt the
magnolia upheave under her, and scatter down the fresh earth from its
roots till she was half buried. Husband and child both were gone,
leaving her prostrate and almost dead, to battle her way through the
storm alone—alone! Zulima awoke with these words upon her lips.
It was but a dream. Louisa had entered the chamber and was examining the
wet garments that her mistress had flung off, muttering suspiciously to
herself as she saw the soiled slippers and other evidences of an early
walk.
“What am de meaning ob all dis? What can de missus be about?” she
muttered, casting down the raiment that had excited her distrust. The
candle almost burned out, the drops of wax on the table, torn fragments
of paper on the floor, were new objects of comment. The torn paper was
all written upon, and had been gathered up in a grasp and wrenched
asunder. The pieces were large, and might be easily combined. The
negress could not read, but, with the quick cunning of her race, she saw
that something unusual had happened, with which these fragments were
connected, so gathering the papers in her apron, she bore them to her
master, whose spy she was.
It was the noise that Louisa made going out which aroused Zulima from
her wretched vision. The young creature started up, thanking God that it
was but a dream. In moving about the room, she approached a window
opening upon the garden just in time to see Ross follow her woman,
Louisa, into the little slave-dwelling which we described in our last
chapter.
Zulima lingered by the window. It was half an hour before Ross came
forth again; he was followed by the slave woman, and stood conversing
with her some time in one of the retired walks. Soon after, the young
man who had been Ross’s companion from the city the previous day came
up, and Louisa seemed to be dismissed. Still the two men conversed
earnestly together, and, after a time, slowly retired into the
slave-dwelling.
Since the previous day Zulima had grown suspicious, and she remarked all
these movements with keen interest. Well she might, for that day and
hour, in the low slave-dwelling, was written a letter destined to cast
black trouble upon her whole life. There, two fiends, fashioned like
men, sat down and concocted a foul slander against that innocent young
woman which was to cling around her for years, and which her full
strength might struggle against in vain. The very mail which carried out
Zulima’s passionate and tender epistle to her husband, bore also a
wicked slander framed by these two base men. The pleading words, the
endearing expressions, that she had folded up fresh from her innermost
soul, that he might know how truly she loved him, went jostling side by
side with the fiendish assertion that she, Zulima Clark, had been
unfaithful to his love.
And these two letters reached the husband in one package lying close to
each other. _He read the slander first._
Zulima waited, but no answer ever came to her letter. Week after week
she lived upon that painful hope which hangs upon the morrow, and still
hope mocked her. Then she grew desperate. One day, when Ross came back
from the city empty-handed as usual, Zulima had left his house with the
avowed intention of seeking her husband in the North.
“Let her go,” said the fiend, coolly folding the letter she had left
behind. “The mail travels faster than she can; my pretty bird shall find
all things prepared for her coming.”
Again Ross sat down and wrote to the husband of Zulima, telling him that
she fled from his house at night to escape the vigilant watch which had
been placed upon her actions. The letter reached its destination and
performed its evil work.
* * * * *
Zulima had taken passage for the North, but the brig must lie at its
wharf a few hours, and the unhappy young creature was far too restless
for confinement in the close cabin. A yearning desire possessed her to
go and search for her infant. Though enjoined to caution and strict
secresy, the place of her child’s residence had been intrusted to her,
and she had found means to see it unsuspected, from time to time, before
her husband’s departure. Now, when she was going in agony of spirit to
seek the father, she could not depart without embracing his child once
more, and, with its little hands around her neck, praying God to bless
her mission. Urged by these keen desires, Zulima threw a scarf around
her, and drawing down her vail, entered the streets of New Orleans. The
house where her child lived was in the suburbs, and she was obliged to
cross the city. With a quick step she threaded the streets, heedless of
observation and only desirous of reaching her child before the brig was
ready to sail.
Was it fate, or was it that sublime intuition that belongs to the higher
order of feelings, which led poor Zulima by one of those large Catholic
burial-places in New Orleans which seem to open the way to eternity
through a paradise of flowers? It must have been the spiritual essence
in her nature, for as the young mother passed this beautiful place of
death, she looked eagerly through the gates, and something impelled her
to enter. A wilderness of tombs, draped and garmented with vines all in
blossom, and shrubs that exhaled perfume from every leaf, lay before
her, and at that moment death looked so pleasant to poor Zulima that she
longed to lie down and let her heart stop beating where so many had
found quiet rest. These reflections brought tears to her eyes; she felt
them dropping fast beneath her vail, and entered the inclosure that no
one might witness her grief. Slowly and sadly she wandered on, forgetful
of her purpose and possessed of a vague idea that her errand led no
farther. A strange and dreamy sensation crept over her, the vigor of her
limbs gave way, and sweeping the purple clusters of a passion flower
from one of the marble slabs, she sat down. Zulima put aside her vail,
and began to read the inscription upon the tomb while listlessly passing
her finger through the deeply-cut letters.
It was an infant’s tomb. A child eighteen months old lay beneath the
marble. Eighteen months—that was the age of her child, little Myra. She
started up. It seemed as if her weight upon the marble could injure the
little sleeper. Carefully drawing the passion-vine over the stone again,
she turned away and was about to depart. But that instant there came
bounding along the vista of a neighboring walk a young child, evidently
rejoicing over its escape from some person who might have controlled its
actions. In and out through the flowery labyrinth it darted, its
chestnut curls floating on the wind, and its blue sash, loose at one
end, sweeping the tombs at every turn. The child, at last, felt
evidently quite secure from pursuit, for, leaning forward upon one tiny
foot, she peered roguishly through the branches and burst into a clear
ringing laugh that sounded amid the stillness like the sudden gush of a
fountain.
Through and through Zulima’s heart rang that silvery shout; eye, lip,
and cheek lighted up to the sound; she reached forth her arms—“Myra!
Myra!”
The child heard her name and turned like a startled fawn, still
laughing, but afraid that the black nurse had found her. When she saw
only a beautiful woman with eyes brimful of tears, and outstretched
hands, the laugh fled from her lips, and fixing her large brown eyes
wonderingly on the strange face for a moment, she drew timidly toward
the tomb by which Zulima stood.
“My child! my own dear child!” broke from the lips of that young mother,
and sinking upon her knees, she snatched the little girl to her bosom,
covering her lips and forehead with kisses.
“Do you love me? Myra, do you love me?” she cried, holding back the face
of the infant between both her trembling hands, and gazing fondly on it
through her tears; “Do you love me, Myra?”
At first the little girl was startled by the passionate tenderness of
her mother, and she struggled to get away from the bosom that heaved so
tumultuously against her form; but, as this touching cry for affection
broke from Zulima’s lips, the child ceased to struggle, and lifting her
clear eyes with a look of wondering pity, she clasped her little hands
over her mother’s neck, and to her trembling lips pressed that little
rosy mouth.
“Don’t cry so, I do love you!” lisped the child, in its sweet imperfect
language.
These pretty words unlocked a flood of tender grief in the mother’s
heart. She arose, with the child in her arms, and sat down upon the
tomb. Smiles now broke through her tears, and during fifteen minutes it
seemed to Zulima as if she had passed through that place of tombs into
paradise, so sweet was the love that flooded her heart with every
lisping tone of her child. But for the poor mother there was no lasting
happiness. While her bosom was full of these sweet maternal feelings,
there came tearing through the shrubbery a negro woman, panting with
haste, and shouting in a coarse voice the name of little Myra.
“We must part, my child!” murmured Zulima, turning pale as the woman
caught sight of her charge from a tomb which she had mounted to command
a view of the grounds, and with a degree of self-command that was
wonderful even to herself, she arose and led the little girl forward.
“Oh, Miss Myra, Miss Myra!” cried the negress, snatching up the little
girl and kissing her with a degree of eagerness that made poor Zulima
shudder; “what should I have done if you had been lost in earnest?”
Myra struggled to get away, and held out her arms to Zulima. How pale
the poor mother was! Her eyes sparkled though at this proof of fondness
in the child, and taking her from the woman, she kissed her forehead,
and leading her a little way off, bent down with a hand upon those
bright ringlets, and called down a blessing from God upon her daughter.
Ah! these blessings, what holy things they are! The sunshine they pour
forth, how certain it is to flow back to the source and fill it with
brightness! If “curses are like chickens that always come home to
roost,” are not blessings like the ringdoves that coo most tenderly in
the nest that shelters their birth? For many a day, while tossed upon
the waters, Zulima was the happier for having seen and blessed her
child.
CHAPTER III.
Oh, she was like a fawn, chased to the plain,
Half blind with grief and mad with sudden pain
That plunges wildly in its first despair,
To any copse that offers shelter there.
It was near midsummer when one of the city postmen of Philadelphia
entered a large warehouse in the business part of that city. He
approached the principal desk with a bundle of papers and letters on one
arm, from which he drew a single letter bearing the New Orleans
post-mark. A young man who stood at the desk writing what appeared to be
business notes, of which a pile, damp with ink, lay at his elbow, took
the letter, and thrusting his pen back of one ear, prepared to open it.
There was an appearance of great and even slovenly haste about this
letter. The paper was folded unevenly. The wax had been dropped upon it
in a rude mass, and was roughly stamped with a blurred impression which
it would have been difficult to make out. The address was blotted, and
every thing about it bore marks of rough haste. The young merchant broke
open the seal with some trepidation, for the singular appearance of the
letter surprised him not a little. He read half a dozen of the first
lines, then looking over his shoulder as if afraid some one might see
that which he had read, he turned his back to the desk and was soon
wholly absorbed in the contents of the epistle. As he turned over the
page, you would have seen the color gradually deepen upon his cheeks,
and even flush up to the forehead, as if there was something in the
epistle which did not altogether please him. After a little he folded
the letter, compressing his lips the while, and fell into deep thought.
The service which this letter required of him was one against which
every honest feeling of his heart revolted; but his worldly prospects,
his hopes of advancement in life, all depended upon the writer. Ross had
been his friend; had placed him in the Philadelphia branch of a great
commercial house; and to thwart one of his wishes might prove absolute
ruin.
Ross had omitted in that epistle nothing that could persuade or reason
into wrong. It was doubtful, he said, even if Clark ever had been
married to Zulima; or, being so, if he would not deem it a good service
in his friends to relieve him of the obligations imposed by that union.
Bitter and cruel were the accusations urged against that poor young
wife; and with his interests all with her enemies, joined to a lively
desire to think ill of her, in order to justify his conduct to his own
heart, this weak and cruel man yielded himself to become the tool of a
deeper and far more unprincipled villain than himself. Again and again
he perused that letter, and at length put it carefully away in his
breast-pocket, close to a heart which its evil folds were doomed to
harden against the secret whisperings of a conscience that would not be
entirely hushed.
Perhaps, had James Smith been given time for after reflection, he might
have become shocked with the part that he was called upon to perform;
but the letter which opened this wicked scheme to him had been delayed
and carried in a wrong direction by the mail, and nearly two weeks had
been thus lost after the time when it should have reached him.
Smith had scarcely turned from his desk with the evil letter in his
bosom, when another man entered the warehouse and placed a little
rose-tinted note in his hand. A vague idea that this note had some
connection with the slovenly epistle that he had just read took
possession of him, before he broke the drop of pale-green wax that
sealed it.
The conjecture proved real—Zulima had written that note. She was in
Philadelphia, and hoped through her husband’s _protege_ to hear some
news of him. Smith had no time for reflection; he was called upon to act
at once. He went to the hotel where Zulima was staying. Smith entered
the hotel hurriedly, as one who has a painful task to accomplish and
wishes it over. He was not villain enough to act with deliberation, or
with that crafty coldness which fitted Ross so singularly for a domestic
conspirator. When he found himself in the presence of this helpless
young mother; when he gazed upon her beauty, dimmed—it is true, by all
that she had suffered, but obtaining thereby a soft melancholy that was
far more touching than the glow of youth in its full joy can ever
be,—his heart smote him for the wrong it had meditated against her. He
sat down by her side, trembling and almost as anxious as she was.
“My husband,” said Zulima, turning her eloquent eyes upon his downcast
face; “you know him, sir—he is your friend; tell me where he is to be
found.”
“Your husband, madam! of whom do you speak?”
“Of Mr. Clark—Daniel Clark—your benefactor and my husband,” said Zulima.
“Daniel Clark, lady?”
“I wish to see him—I _must_ see him—tell me where he is to be found.”
Zulima was breathless with impatience; her large eyes brightened, her
cheeks took a faint color. She was determined that nothing should keep
her from the presence of her husband.
“And you—you are the young lady that went South with him the last time
he was here?” said Smith, bending his eyes to the floor and faltering in
his speech.
“Yes, I went with him—I was his wife!”
Smith shook his head; a faint smile crept over his mouth; he seemed to
doubt her assertion.
Zulima saw it, and her face kindled with indignant passion. “I _am_ his
wife!” she said.
“The marriage—was it not secret? was it not almost without witness?”
“Secret? yes; but not entirely without witnesses. I can prove my
marriage.”
“You can prove that some ceremony took place; but can you prove that it
was a real marriage ceremony? Indeed, have you never had reason to doubt
that it was such?”
“Never, sir,” replied Zulima, turning pale, “never!”
“You were very young, very confiding,” replied Smith. “Yet you had some
experience in the perfidy of man: this should have made you cautious.”
“Oh, my experience! it had been bitter—terrible!” murmured Zulima,
clasping her hands, and gazing on the face of her visitor with a look of
wild excitement.
“And yet you trusted again!”
Zulima stood up; her face grew white as death. “Do you mean to say, sir,
that my husband—that Daniel Clark deceived me like the other?”
“I mean to say nothing,” replied Smith; “nothing, save that from my
heart I pity you, sweet lady. So much beauty, so trusting; who could
help pitying you?”
“You pity me? Oh, Father of mercies!” cried the excited young creature,
bending like a reed and raising her locked hands to her eyes; “if this
thing should be true!” She fell upon a chair; her slight figure waved to
and fro in the agony of her doubts.
“Has he written—did he send for you?” questioned Smith, steeling himself
against her grief.
“No, no!”
“Is he aware of your coming?”
“No; I shall surprise him; I wished to surprise him!” cried the wretched
young creature, dropping her hands.
“I am afraid you _will_ surprise him, and unpleasantly, too!” said
Smith.
Zulima turned her dry eyes upon him; her lips parted, but she had no
power to utter the questions that arose in her heart. A thousand black
doubts possessed her. “Why—why—?” It was all she could say.
Smith hesitated; he was reluctant to consummate the last act of villainy
required of him. It seemed like striking down a lamb, while its soft,
trusting eyes were fixed upon his. But he had gone too far, he could not
recede now.
“It is rumored,” he said—“it is rumored that Mr. Clark is soon to be
married!”
A sort of spasmodic smile parted Zulima’s pale lips, till her white
teeth shone through. She did not attempt to speak, but sat perfectly
still gazing upon her visitor.
“Had your marriage been real, Mr. Clark would not thus openly commit
himself.”
“Where _is_ Mr. Clark?” said Zulima, sharply, and starting, as if from a
dream.
“He is in Baltimore now.”
“And—and the lady?”
“She, too, is in Baltimore.”
“And I—I will go there also!”
“You! and after that which you know?”
“If these things are true, I will have them from the lips of my—of
Daniel Clark. If they are not true—Oh, Father of heaven! then will his
wife lie down and die at his feet—die of sorrow that she has ever
doubted him.”
Smith was startled; he had not anticipated this resolute strength in a
creature so young and child-like. Did she see Daniel Clark, he knew that
all was lost to those whose interest it was to keep the husband and wife
asunder. He attempted to dissuade Zulima from her plan, but this he saw
only excited her suspicion without in the slightest degree changing her.
All the answer that she made to his arguments was, “I will see my
husband; I must have proof of these things!”
Smith would have urged his objections further, but they were
interrupted. The room in which they sat was a parlor to which others
might claim admission. Just then the door opened, and a young gentleman
entered with the easy and confidential air of an old acquaintance. He
cast a glance at Zulima, seemed surprised by the terrible agitation so
visible in her face, and then fixed his penetrating eyes searchingly
upon Smith.
“You do not seem well,” he said, approaching Zulima, and Smith could
detect that in his voice which ought to have startled Zulima long
before. “Has any thing gone amiss?” and he cast a stern look on Smith.
“I am not well!” said Zulima, and tears came into her eyes.
“But you seem worse than ill—you look troubled.”
Zulima lifted her eyes up with a painful smile, but made no answer.
The young man looked distressed; he stood a moment before Zulima, and
then walking toward a window, began to drum on the panes with his
fingers, now and then casting furtive glances toward the sofa where
Zulima and Smith were sitting.
Smith arose to go. A new gleam of light had broken upon him—he saw and
understood more than that fated young creature had even guessed at.
“Then you are determined to undertake this journey?” he said, in a low
voice.
“Yes!”
“When will you set out?”
“To-morrow!”
“Alone?”
Zulima unconsciously glanced toward the young man; he had been very kind
to her, and it seemed hard to start off utterly alone.
“I don’t know,” she faltered; “yes, I shall take the journey alone.”
“Your health seems delicate, you are so young,” urged Smith, reading her
thoughts and hoping that she would be guided by the first imprudent
impulse.
“I am young—I am not well—but I shall go alone,” she answered, with
gentle firmness.
The young man at the window seemed restless. He walked toward a table,
and taking up two or three books, cast them back again with an air of
impatience. Smith observed this, and smiled quietly within himself, as
he went out. Zulima saw nothing: she only knew that she was very, very
wretched, and casting her arms over the back of the sofa, buried her
face upon them and groaned in bitter anguish.
Zulima was so lost in the agony of her feelings, that she did not know
when the young man placed himself by her side. She was quite unconscious
of his approach till her hand was in his, and his voice uttered her name
in tones that made her nerves thrill from head to foot. Tenderness had
given to that voice an intonation startlingly like the low tones of
Daniel Clark when love most softened his proud nature.
She started and looked wildly at the young man, her hand trembling in
his—her lips parted in a half smile—the delusion had not quite left her.
“Zulima, what is it that troubles you? Oh, if you only knew, if you
could but guess, how—how it wrings my heart to see you thus! What has
the man been saying to wound you?”
“To wound me?” repeated Zulima, recovering from the sort of dream into
which his voice had cast her, and drawing her hand away. “Oh, everybody
says things to wound me, I think!”
“But I never have.”
“No, I believe not,” replied Zulima, listlessly; “I believe not.”
“And never will,” urged the young man, regarding her with a look of deep
tenderness.
“I don’t know,” was the faint reply, and Zulima’s face fell back on her
folded arms again.
The young man arose and began to pace up and down the room; many a
change passed over his features meanwhile, and he cast his eye from time
to time upon the motionless figure of Zulima, with an expression that
revealed all the hidden love, the wild devotion with which he regarded
her. He sat down again and took her passive hand. She did not attempt to
withdraw it. She did not even seem to know that it was in his.
“Do you know how I love you—how, with my whole life and strength, I
worship you, Zulima?” he said. “There is nothing on earth that I would
not do, could it give you a moment’s happiness.”
Zulima slowly unfolded her arms, and lifting her head, looked earnestly
in his face with her eyes. She did not seem to understand him.
“Oh, you must have seen how I love you,” he said passionately.
Zulima smiled—oh, what a mocking smile! how full of wild anguish it was!
“Another!” she said; “so now another loves me.”
“No human being ever loved as I love you, Zulima,” said the young man,
in that pure, sweet voice, which had so affected her before.
“That is a marvel,” said Zulima, with a bitter smile. “Others have loved
me so well. You do not know how others have loved me.”
“I do not wish to know any thing except how I can make you happier than
you are, Zulima.”
“If you wish to make me happy, do not even mention love to me again. The
very word makes me faint,” said Zulima. “I am ill—I suffer. Do not, I
pray you, talk this way to me. I can not bear it.”
“I will say nothing that can distress you,” replied the young man
gently, but with a look of grief.
Zulima reached forth her hand. It was cold and trembling. “Farewell!”
she said, very kindly; “I shall go away to-morrow. Farewell!”
He would not release her hand.
“You are not going far—you will return in a few days? Promise me that
you are not saying farewell forever.”
“I do not know—the Father in heaven only knows what will become of me;
but you have been kind to me—very. You have respected my unprotected
lot. You did not know how wrong it was to love me. I can not blame you.
When I say farewell thus, I much fear that it is to the only true friend
that I have in the world. You could not wish me to feel more regret than
I do. Is it not casting away all the unselfish kindness—all the real
friendship that I have known for a long, long time?”
“But this love—this idolatry, rather?” persisted the young man; “must it
be forever hopeless? Shall I never see you again?”
“It is wrong, therefore should be hopeless,” replied Zulima. “You do not
know what trouble it would bring upon you.”
“Why wrong?—why should it bring trouble upon me?”
“Should we ever meet again, you will know. Everybody will know why it is
wrong for you to love me. Now I must go.”
Zulima drew away her hand, using a little gentle force; and while the
young man was striving to fathom the meaning of her words, she opened
the door and disappeared.
Every way was poor Zulima beset. The false position in which the
concealment of her marriage had placed her, made itself cruelly felt at
all times. She had taken a long journey, alone and entirely unprotected.
Young and beautiful—to all appearance single—she was naturally exposed
to all those attentions that a creature so lovely and unprotected was
sure to receive, even against her will. In the young man whom she had
just left, those attentions gradually took a degree of tender interest
which, but for her state of anxious preoccupation, she must have
observed long before, as others less interested had not failed to do.
But she had literally given the devotion, so apparent to others, no
thought. Knowing herself to be bound by the most solemn ties to the man
who seemed to have forgotten her, she never reflected that others knew
nothing of this, or that she might become the object of affectionate,
nay, passionate regard, such as the man had just declared.
Now it only served to add another pang to the bitterness of her grief;
heart-wounded, neglected as she had been, it was not in human nature to
be otherwise than flattered and very grateful for devotion which soothed
her pride, and which in its possessor was innocent and honorable. But
even these feelings gained but a momentary hold upon her; they were
followed by regret and that shrinking dread which every new source of
excitement is sure to occasion where the heart has been long and deeply
agitated. She went away then with a new cause of grief added to those
that had so fatally oppressed her.
* * * * *
Zulima reached Baltimore in the night. Weary with travel and faint with
anxiety, she took a coach at the stage-house and went in search of the
hotel where she learned that her husband was lodged. As she drove up to
the hotel a private carriage stood at the entrance; a negro in livery
was in the seat, and another stood with the carriage door in his hand,
watching for some one to come down the steps; the door opened, and by
the light that streamed through, Zulima saw her husband richly dressed
as if for some assembly. One white glove was held loose in his hand with
an embroidered opera-cap, which he put upon his head as he came quickly
down the steps.
Zulima was breathless; she leaned from the window of her hackney-coach,
and would have called to him aloud, but her tongue clove to her mouth;
she could only gaze wildly on him, as just touching the step of his
carriage with one foot he sprung lightly in. The door closed with a
noise that went through Zulima’s heart like an arrow. She saw the negro
spring up behind the carriage; the lamps flashed by her eyes, and while
every thing reeled before her, the coachman of her own humble hack had
opened the door.
“No, no, I do not wish to get out,” she said, pointing toward the
receding lamps with her finger. “Mount again and follow that carriage.”
The man hastily closed the door, and mounting his seat, drove rapidly
after Mr. Clark’s carriage. Zulima was now wild with excitement; the
blood seemed to leap through her heart—her cheeks burned like fire. She
gasped for breath, when a turn in the streets took those carriage-lamps
an instant from her sight.
They came in sight of a fine old mansion house, standing back from the
street and surrounded by tall trees; an aristocratic and noble dwelling
it was, with the lights gleaming through its windows, and those rare old
trees curtaining its walls with their black branches, now gilded and
glowing with the golden flashes of light that came through all the
windows. The house was evidently illuminated for a party—one of those
pleasant summer-parties that are half given in the open air. A few lamps
hung like stars along the thick branches that curtained the house, and
glowed here and there through a honeysuckle arbor, or in a clump of
bushes, just lightly enough to reveal the dewy green of the foliage,
without breaking up the quiet evening shadows that lay around them. Mr.
Clark’s carriage stopped before this noble mansion, and Zulima saw him
pass lightly into the deep old-fashioned portico while her vehicle was
yet half a block off.
“Do you wish to get out here?” said the coachman, going again to the
door; “the carriage that you ordered me to follow does not seem to be
going any farther.”
“I know, I see,” said Zulima; “not now, I will wait. Draw off to the
opposite side of the street, and then we shall be in nobody’s way.”
The man expressed no surprise at her strange orders, but drove back to
the shadowy side of the street and waited, standing by the door a
moment, to learn if she had any further directions to give. Zulima bent
from the window; she was terribly agitated and her voice trembled.
“Whose house is this?” she said, hurriedly.
The man told the owner’s name. It was one celebrated in the history of
our country; and Zulima remembered with a pang that the daughters of
that house were among the most lovely and beautiful women of America.
Smith had told her that her husband was about to be married. Was it in
that stately old mansion house that she must search for a rival? How her
cheek burned, how her lip trembled, as she asked herself the question!
“Did you know,” she said, addressing the man; “did you know the
gentleman who just went in yonder?”
“Oh yes, everybody here knows Mr. Clark,” said the man. “I guessed well
enough where his carriage was driving to, when it started from the
hotel. He is going to marry one of the young ladies; at least the papers
say so.”
Zulima drew back into the carriage; it seemed as if she would never
breathe again; she sat like a famished bird, gazing on the house without
the wish or power to move.
There seemed to be a large party assembled; gayly-dressed people were
constantly gliding before the window, and she could see the gleam of
rich wines and trays of fruit, as they were borne to and fro by the
attendants. Sometimes a couple would saunter out into the deep old
portico, where she could see more distinctly by the wreath of colored
lamps, festooned with trumpet-flowers, roses, and honeysuckles that fell
like a curtain overhead. Zulima saw one couple after another glide into
the flowery recess, and away again, as if the music that came pouring
through doors and windows were too exciting for a prolonged
_tête-à-tête_. Still she kept her eyes fixed upon the spot; she was
certain that Mr. Clark would be among those who haunted that flower
nook, so like a cloud of butterflies. She knew his tastes well. Sure
enough, while her eyes were fixed on the open doors, through which the
background of the portico was flooded with golden light, she saw Mr.
Clark come slowly down the hall, not alone—oh, how she had hoped for
that—but with a beautiful woman leaning on his arm—leaning heavily with
that air of languid dependence which so often marks the first
development of passion. His head was bent, and he seemed to be
addressing her in a low voice; and though he smiled while speaking,
Zulima could see that in repose his face was grave, almost sad. It only
lighted up when those large blue eyes were lifted toward him. They sat
down in the portico, and seemed to converse earnestly—ten minutes—half
an hour, and hours—thus long did the two sit side by side under that
canopy of lighted blossoms, and then Zulima could watch them no longer;
a heavy faintness crept over her, and in a dull, low voice she asked the
coachman to drive her back to the hotel.
Poor Zulima! she hoped to see her husband alone in that portico, if it
was only for one minute. How long, how patiently had she waited, and
that beautiful woman never left his side for a moment. It was very
cruel.
When Zulima left her room early the next morning, she found Mr. Smith,
who seemed to have just left the stage-coach. She knew him at once, and
he recognized her with great cordiality.
“I have come,” he said, in a low, friendly voice—“I have come in hopes
of seeing you with Mr. Clark. He is in the hotel, I hear.”
“He is,” said Zulima. “I saw him last night!”
Mr. Smith turned pale; but there was a deep depression in Zulima’s voice
and manner, that re-assured him the interview could not have been a
happy one, to leave that cheek so hueless, the eyes so heavy—he was not
yet too late.
“I saw him,” said Zulima, “but he did not know it; to-day, within
another hour, I shall know why he has treated me thus; tell me how I can
get a message conveyed to him.”
“I will convey it; I will urge your cause.”
“Only tell him I am here; I want no one to plead for me with _him_. Only
do that, and I will thank you much.”
“I will do that, and more,” said Smith, bowing.
What influence was it that kept Mr. Clark so wakeful on the night when
Zulima, his young wife, slept beneath the same roof with himself? He
knew nothing of her presence—he felt not the bitter tears that almost
blistered her pale cheek, as she tried to stop thinking of him—the sobs
that shook her frame till the bed trembled under it—none of them reached
his ear. It was not any remembrance of the lovely young being who had
hung upon his arm, and sat beside him in that flower-lit portico but a
short time before: her beauty had pleased him, her conversation had
wiled away a little of that time which was often spent in bitter
thoughts, since he had begun to receive the letters of Ross and to yield
credence to the reports regularly sent him of the estrangement and
faithlessness of his young wife.
She had fled now—fled from his friend’s roof, and come northward no
doubt to obtain greater freedom, and escape the vigilance of those he
had placed about her. Thus ran the last letter that Clark had received
from his friend.
Clark read the letter over, after he returned home that night, for
something seemed constantly whispering of Zulima; he could not drive her
from his mind. It seemed to him as if some great mistake had arisen, as
if he had not read the letters of his friend aright. No; when he perused
this letter again, it was clearly written; nothing ambiguous was there,
nothing hinted; his wife had ceased to love him; she had fled. Still
there was something at his heart that would not be thus appeased; the
mysterious presence of this young creature seemed to haunt his room,
haunt the innermost chambers of his heart; he thought of the letter she
had written him, and which he had burned while under the terrible
influence of his friend’s epistle. He began to regret now, to wish that
he had at least seen the contents of that letter; still his friend was
dispassionate, just—why should this calm report be doubted? a report
evidently wrung from him by a strong sense of duty.
Mr. Clark slept little that night; his better angel was abroad. Zulima,
too, was weeping beneath the same roof; he knew it not, but still he
could not sleep!
In the morning Smith came to the chamber where Mr. Clark was sitting at
breakfast. His face was sad; he seemed ill at ease.
“I thought it best to come and bring this news to you first; it might
save you from great embarrassment.”
“What news?—what embarrassment?” said Clark, who had no idea that Smith
knew any thing of Zulima, or her connection with him. “Surely nothing
has gone wrong in the business?”
“No; but the young lady who says she knew you in New Orleans—that she
has claims upon you!”
Mr. Clark turned deathly white; this sudden mention of his wife unnerved
him.
“And is she in Philadelphia?—where is she?—how came she to find you
out?”
“I do not know; she sent me a note, and I went to her hotel.”
“Was she alone—was she alone?” questioned Mr. Clark, starting up.
“No, not quite alone,” replied Mr. Smith, with a meaning smile; “I saw
only one person with her, a young and remarkably handsome man.”
Mr. Clark sunk to his chair as if a bullet had passed through his heart.
“Go on,” he said, after a moment; “go on, I am listening.”
“This lady, sir, seemed determined to see you; she came on here—she is
now in Baltimore.”
“And her companion?” said Mr. Clark, with a ghastly smile.
“No,” replied Smith; “I think she would not do that. She wishes to see
you; I do not know what her object is,”
“I will not see her; I will never see her again,” said Mr. Clark, and
his face looked like marble. “If she needs any thing, supply her; she
is, sir, the mother of my child; she is—but I will not talk of it; let
her want for nothing—she is my wife.”
“You will not see her then?”
“No, it is enough.” Mr. Clark rang the bell—a man entered. “Have my
carriage brought up at once; I shall set out for Washington. Mr. Smith,
you know how to act. Save me from a repetition of this: you see how it
tortures me. I loved that young creature—I thought, fool, madman, that I
was—but she seemed to love me.”
Mr. Clark went into another room; he could not endure that other eyes
should witness his emotion. The coachman now came up; his proud master
understood that every thing was ready, and without speaking a word, left
his apartments. He stepped into his carriage; he was gone—gone without
hearing the wild shriek that broke from the lips of that poor young
wife, who had caught one glimpse of him from her window. She shook the
sash—she strove to call after him; but her arms trembled—her voice was
choked; with all her effort she made but little noise; those in the next
room heard nothing of it, till she fell heavily on the floor. Mr. Smith
found her there, lying like a corpse rigid and insensible. Then his
heart smote him—then would he have given worlds that the falsehoods
which brought all this misery had not been uttered. He had tried to
think ill of his victim, to believe that between her and her husband
there was neither love nor sympathy; how had the last hour undeceived
him. Maddened by doubt and jealousy, his benefactor had not even
attempted to conceal the anguish occasioned by what he deemed the
perfidy of his wife; and she—was she not there, cold as marble, white as
death, prostrate at his feet?
But he could not go back—his evil work must be fully accomplished; now
to shrink or waver, would be to expose himself; that he could not
contemplate for a moment. Zulima became sensible, at last. It was a long
time, but finally she opened her eyes and sat up. “He is gone,” she said
lifting her heavy eyes to Smith, “he is gone without a word of
explanation.”
“What could he explain, but that which he would not wish to say face to
face with his victim? He has deceived you with a mock marriage. I knew
that it would prove so. You are free, you are wealthy, if you choose. Be
resigned; there is no redress.”
“No redress!” Zulima repeated the word over and over again. “No redress!
I thought myself his wife; I am the mother of his child; O God! Myra,
Myra, my poor, poor child—” * * * *
They were parted—Zulima solemnly believed that she had never been the
wife of Daniel Clark, that she was free—oh, how cruelly free—and another
loved her. Wounded in her pride, broken in spirit, outraged, humiliated,
utterly alone; was it strange that the poor torn heart of that young
creature at length became grateful for the affection that her grief and
her desolation had excited? She told him all, and still that young man
loved her, still he besought her to become his wife; and she, unhappy
woman—consented.
There was to be no secresy—no private marriage now; in the full blaze of
day—robed in satin, glossy and white as the leaves of a magnolia, her
magnificent tresses bound with white roses, her bridal vail looped to
the curls upon her temple with a snowy blossom, and falling over her,
wave after wave, like a cloud of summer mist. Thus went Zulima Clark
forth to her last bridal. It was a mournful sight; that young girl so
beautiful, so fated, standing before the altar, her large eyes
surcharged with sorrowful remembrances of the past, and her poor heart
heaving with a wild presentiment of coming evil, till the rose upon her
bosom, and the pearls upon her throat, trembled as if a wind were
passing over them. It was a mournful, mournful wedding; for there,
Zulima, the wife of Daniel Clark, sealed the perfidy of her enemies.
Beautiful bride, innocent woman, thine was a hard destiny!
CHAPTER IV.
Once again they met,
And then they saw, each in the other’s heart,
And the black falsehood that had sever’d them
Rose palpable and hideous to the thought.
Hot tears were shed—sad blessings mutely given!
They met, and parted—he went to meet his death,
And she to weep o’er bitter memories!
Zulima made her home in the South, and there also, after years of
wandering, came Daniel Clark—weary with excitement, and unhappy with a
sense of bitter loneliness. In the first moments of his anger against
Zulima, he had made his will, giving all his vast possessions to an aged
relative, and making the false friends who had caused his misery
executors of that will. And this was the deep game for which these men
had staked their souls—these possessions and the control over them. No
matter though the fair wife was crushed to the earth; no matter though
that beautiful child, in all her infant unconsciousness, was despoiled
of her just inheritance. It was for this they had toiled in darkness; it
was for this they had heaped falsehood upon falsehood, wrong upon wrong.
But Clark had returned to New Orleans, not to pass a week and away
again, as before, but to control his own business—and in New Orleans was
Zulima. They might meet, still it was unlikely, for she was proud and
sensitive as ever, and lived in the bosom of a new family, and was
girded around by new and powerful affections. Looking upon Clark as a
heart-traitor, one who had betrayed her unprotected state, and trifled
alike with her reputation and her love, she shrank from a thought of the
past. The wrong that she believed to have been practiced upon her was so
terrible, that she shuddered at the retrospection. Without one shadow of
hate or hope of revenge, to perpetuate the struggle that had been so
heartrending at first, the only effort that she made was to obtain
forgetfulness.
Zulima knew not that Clark had arrived at New Orleans, but a strange
inquietude came over her. Thoughts of the sweet and bitter past made her
restless day and night; she was haunted by a constant desire to see her
child—the child of Daniel Clark; from this innocent creature, wrong and
absence in the father had failed to alienate her love.
A little out from New Orleans was a pretty country-house, surrounded by
ornamental grounds and embowered in tropical trees. It was a small
dwelling, secluded and beautiful as a bower; works of art, rare books,
and light furniture, befitting the climate, gave an air of refinement
and grace within; passion-flowers, briery roses, and other clinging
vines draped the cottage without. An avenue of orange and lime trees led
to the front door, and behind was a small garden, cooled by the rain
that fell perpetually from a fountain near the center, and glowing with
tea-roses, lilies, and a world of those blossoms that grow most thrifty
and fragrant in the warm South.
Among these beautiful grounds little Myra Clark had been at play since
the breakfast-hour. She had chased the humming-birds from their swarming
places in the arbors and rose-hedges; she had gathered golden-edged
violets from the borders, and leaping up with a laugh to the
orange-boughs that drooped over the gravel-walk, had torn down the white
blossoms and mellow fruit to crowd with the flowery spoil that she had
gathered in the skirt of her muslin dress. And now with her lap full of
broken flowers, fruit, torn grass, and pebble-stones, the child cast
herself on the rich turf that swelled up to the brink of the fountain,
and pressing her dimpled hands and warm cheek upon the marble, lay in
smiling idleness, watching the gold-fish, as they darted up and down the
limpid waters, her soft brown eyes sparkling with each new flash of gold
or crimson that the restless little creatures imparted to the waters.
Now she would cast a broken rose-bud or a tuft of grass into the
fountain, and her laugh rang out wild and clear above the bell-like
dropping of the water in the marble basin, if she could detect some fish
darting up like a golden arrow to meet her pretty decoy. Thus lay the
child; thus fell the bright water-drops around; and thus, a little way
off, drooped the fruit and flower laden boughs, when the sweet
tranquillity was disturbed by a footstep. Down one of the gravel-walks
came a man, bearing upon his noble features an air of proud sadness, his
very step denoting habitual depression, as he moved quietly and at a
slow pace toward the fountain. It was not a look of ill-health that
stamped so forcibly the air and demeanor of this man. His frame was
still strongly knit, his step firm as iron, but upon his brow was that
deep-settled shadow which a troubled heart casts up to the face, and the
locks that shaded it were sprinkled with the premature snow which falls
early over a brain tortured with unspoken regrets. Thus sorrowful, but
still unbowed in his spirit, appeared Daniel Clark, as he moved quietly
toward the fountain where his child was at play.
Myra was busy with her gold-fish, laughing and coquetting with them
through the waves. She saw nothing but their golden flash, she heard
nothing but the light drops, that dimpled and clouded the water around
them. Thus for several minutes the proud and saddened man stood gazing
upon his daughter.
She saw him at last; and then with a faint cry the little creature cast
away the contents of her frock, and sprang up. Half in joy, half in
timid surprise, she stood gazing upon his face. The pupils of her eyes
dilated till they were almost black, her white arms seemed trembling
with restraint, as if the suddenness of his appearance had checked the
first quick impulse. She was only waiting for one smile to spring like a
bird to his bosom.
“Myra!”
The firm voice of Daniel Clark gave way as he uttered the name of his
child. His eyes grew dim with tears, and he reached forth his trembling
arms. She sprang with a single bound to his embrace, she wreathed his
neck strongly with her arms, and pressed upon his lips, his cheeks, and
his moist eyes, kisses that, from the lips of a beautiful child, seem
like the pouring of dew and sunshine from the cup of a flower.
“Oh, you are come again!” she said, placing her warm hands on each side
his face, and looking with the smiling confidence of childhood into his
eyes. “They told me that you would not come to see us any more for a
long, long time.”
“And are you glad to see me, darling?” said Mr. Clark, drawing his hand
caressingly down the disheveled brightness of her hair. “You seem glad,
my little Myra?”
“Seem—why—I am glad—so very, _very_ glad, my own, own—” the child
hesitated.
“Papa—will you not call me papa, this once?” said the agitated father,
and upon his pale cheek there came a flush, as he said this to the
child.
“Oh, but they tell me that you are my godfather, and that is not a papa,
you know,” said the child, shaking her head with an air of pretty
thoughtfulness.
“Perhaps it is as well,” murmured the father, and his look grew sad.
Myra bent down and looked into his eyes, smiling.
“Don’t look so sorry,” she said; “I will call you papa, if you like.
Papa! dear papa! there, now!”
But even the childish caress, accompanied as it was by a voice and look
of the most winning sweetness, failed to dispel the sadness that had
fallen upon the father’s heart. Perhaps the very loveliness of the child
did but deepen that sadness, by reminding him of its mother. Let this be
as it may, Mr. Clark sat down by the fountain with the little girl in
his arms, but he remained silent, thus chilling the little creature
whose arms were about his neck, and she too became hushed, as it were,
by the gloom into which he fell. During several minutes the father and
child remained thus wrapped in silence. At last he spoke in a low and
troubled voice, kissing the forehead of the child:
“Myra, do you love me?”
“Indeed, indeed I do,” said the little girl, laying her cheek to his.
“Better almost than anybody else in the wide world, if you _are_ only my
godfather.”
“And whom—” here Mr. Clark’s voice faltered—“and whom can you love
better, Myra?”
“Oh,” said the child, shaking her head with a pretty mysterious air,
“there is somebody that I love _so_ much, a pretty, beautiful lady, who
comes to me so often, and so strangely, just like one of the fairies
nurse tells me about. Sometimes she will be a long, long time, and not
come at all. Then, while I am playing among the trees, she will be close
to me before I think of it. She kisses me just as you do, and once—that,
too, was so like—” the child paused, and seemed pondering over something
in her mind.
“What was so like, Myra?” said Mr. Clark, in a faint voice, for his
heart misgave him.
“Why, I was just thinking,” said the child thoughtfully; “this pretty
lady wanted me to call her mamma, just as you wanted me to call you
papa, you know, only in fun.”
“And did you call her that?”
“Yes, but I never will again—no, never in the world; for, do you think,
she began to cry like any thing the moment I put my arms round her neck
and said ‘Mamma!’ You can’t think how she did cry, and after asking me,
too.”
Mr. Clark turned away his head; the child’s earnest look troubled him.
“She knew well enough that it was all fun,” persisted the child, “and
yet she kept on crying all I could do.”
“Oh, such words are bitter, bitter fun,” muttered Mr. Clark, tortured by
the innocent prattle of the child.
“I did not mean any harm; the lady asked me to call her ‘Mamma,’ but I
never will again,” said Myra, drooping under what seemed to her the
displeasure of her best friend.
“Oh yes, Myra, you must love this lady; you must call her any thing she
pleases,” said Mr. Clark, with a burst of emotion that startled the
little girl. “Be good to her; be gentle and loving as if—as if it was
not fun when you call her ‘Mamma.’ You will be good to her; promise me,
my darling, that you will.”
“But she will not ask me again. It is a long, long time since the lady
has been here,” answered the child thoughtfully. “Perhaps she will not
come any more.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Clark, with a voice and look of painful abstraction.
A slight noise in a distant part of the garden drew the child’s
attention. She started, and bending eagerly forward looked down a
winding path sheltered by the orange-trees.
“See!” cried the child, pointing down the path with her finger, while
her eyes sparkled like diamonds; “didn’t I say that she always came like
a fairy? Didn’t I tell you so?”
Clark followed the child’s finger with his eyes, and there, coming up
the path rapidly, and with eager haste in her look and manner, he saw
Zulima, the wife of his bosom, the mother of his child. For the world,
that proud man could not have risen to his feet; his strength utterly
forsook him; he attempted to remove Myra’s arm from his neck, but even
that he failed to accomplish, so profound was his astonishment, so
overpowering was his agitation.
A tree stood close by the fountain, overrun and shadowed by the
convolutions of a passion-flower vine, that fell like a curtain around
it, concealing the father and child as Zulima came up. Thus it happened
that without any preparation, the wronged wife and the deceived husband
stood face to face, breathless and pale as statues in a graveyard. The
child clung to her father’s neck. Her large eyes dilated, and her face
grew crimson with fear. She was frightened by the terrible pallor of
Zulima’s face.
Mr. Clark arose pale as death; and trembling in every limb, he placed
the child gently on the grass, and approaching Zulima held forth his
hand.
She took it, but her fingers were like marble; and like marble was the
cold smile that went in a spasm of pain across her lips.
“Zulima, will you not speak to me?”
Oh, what a flood of bitter waters did that gentle voice unlock in
Zulima’s heart. Her limbs began to shake, her hands quivered like aspen
leaves, and a look of unutterable distress fell upon her face.
“To what end should I speak?” she said, in a low and husky voice. “I
have no wish to reproach you, and what but reproaches can you expect
from me.”
A bitter smile disturbed the pallor of Daniel Clark’s face, and a bitter
intonation was blended with the mournful cadence of his voice.
“Reproaches, Zulima, are for slight wrongs; but slight or deep, I
deserve none at your hands. While you—oh, woman, woman, how have you
betrayed the deep love, the honor which I gave you in holy trust.
Neither will _I_ reproach; but when I look upon your face, still young,
full of beauty, and bearing the old look of innocence, it forces me to
think of the vows you have broken, the mockery you have cast upon our
marriage.”
“Our marriage,” repeated Zulima. Again her lips were distorted with a
smile mournful and bitter, and clasping her hands she wrung them
nervously together.
“Why do you smile thus? Why do you repeat thus bitterly the words that I
have spoken?” said Clark, regarding her wild agitation with wonder.
“When I speak of our marriage, you do not shrink or tremble as one who
has profaned a holy rite, but your eye is full of scorn, your lips curl
with bitter smiles. Zulima, are you indeed so lost that the mention of
ties that bound us once, and that legally bind us yet, ties that you,
unhappy woman, have broken and dishonored, can only awake a smile of
scorn?”
Zulima stood motionless, her hands clasped, her eyes dilating; the truth
was struggling to her heart.
“Speak to me, speak to me again,” she cried, extending her locked hands
imploringly. “That marriage, you know, you know well, it was all false,
all a deception. I never was your wife!”
Mr. Clark drew back—he breathed with difficulty: the truth was breaking
upon his soul also—the cruel, terrible truth.
“Speak to me, speak to me,” cried Zulima, in a voice of thrilling
anguish; “I never was your wife!”
“The God of heaven, at whose altar we were united, can answer that you
were my lawfully wedded wife, that you are so now!”
A sharp cry broke from Zulima, she staggered forward a pace, and sat
down upon the grass close by her child; covering her face with both
hands, she bent it down to her knees, and remained thus motionless and
absolutely without breath.
Clark stood gazing upon her, every nerve in his body quivering; the
horror that her face had exhibited, that sharp cry, the utter
prostration of her energies, all these things were fast unsealing his
eyes. He sat down by the unhappy woman and attempted to remove one of
the pale hands clasped over her eyes, but she resisted him with a faint
shudder, and then through those lashed fringes gushed a flood of tears.
“Zulima, try and compose yourself, make one effort; for, on earth, I
feel that this must be our last interview. Shrink not thus! I have never
wronged you, or if it prove so, not knowingly or wilfully.”
Zulima shook her head, and sobbed aloud. “There has been wrong, deep,
black wrong, somewhere,” she said; “I was told that you also had
deceived me by a false marriage, that the ceremony we went through was a
fraud, and I your victim, not a wife.”
“And who told you this infamous falsehood?” said Clark, clasping his
hands till the blood left them, in the agony of his impatience.
“Ross hinted it; Smith told me so in Philadelphia and in Baltimore. They
told me, also, that you were about to marry another; I saw you together
with my own eyes. You refused to see me; but for that I had never
believed them!”
“And Smith told you this; Ross hinted it,” cried Clark, locking his
teeth with terrible anger. “These two men whom I have fed, whom—” he
paused; the violence of his emotion was too great for words.
But why should we further describe the harrowing scene? It was long
before these two unhappy beings could speak with calmness, but at length
all was told—the fraud that had kept back their mutual letters, the slow
and subtle poison that had been instilled so assiduously into each proud
and passionate nature—all. For the first time, Clark learned the
sufferings, the passionate love, that had sent his young wife in search
of him, her struggles, her despair. Then his own haughty reserve gave
way; he laid open his whole heart before her, its history and its
anguish. He told her of his wanderings, of the deep and harrowing love;
which not even a belief in her faithlessness could wring from his heart;
he told her all, and then these proud beings sat again, side by side,
looking in each other’s faces, and yet separated, oh, how irrevocably!
Then came the time for parting. Zulima must go back to her home, and
he—where could he seek shelter from the grief of that terrible moment?
They both arose, and face to face, stood gazing on each other for the
last time; neither of them doubted that it was for the last time, on
this side the grave. A look of mournful despondency was on their
features, their hands were clasped for an instant, and then Zulima
turned away, and tottering feebly in her walk, passed from the garden.
He stood watching her till the last flutter of her garments disappeared
under the orange-boughs, then he turned away and went forth, a
broken-hearted man. Mother and father both went away, leaving the child
alone. Terrified by the scene of anguish passing before her, the little
creature had neither moved nor spoken, and in the agony of that last
parting she was forgotten. She had no heart for play then. The fish
turned up their golden sides in vain, the humming-birds flashed by her
quite unheeded; she was gazing after her father, and her eyes were full
of tears. All at once, she saw him coming back, walking rapidly; tears
were in his eyes also, and, taking her to his bosom, he kissed her
forehead, her hair, and her little hands. Myra began to sob piteously.
She could feel the swelling of his heart against her form; the hot fever
of his lips as they touched her forehead, made her tremble, and cling
closer to him; it seemed as if the little creature knew that this was
the last time that noble heart would ever beat against hers—as if she
felt in her whole being that he was her father. Thus, after a brief
struggle, the parent and child parted, and forever.
That night Daniel Clark spent under the roof of his friend, Ross, the
very roof that had sheltered his bridal life with Zulima and the birth
of her child. He met his false friend calmly, and without any outbreak
of the terrible sense of wrong that ached at his heart. He said truly,
that reproaches are for slight wrongs, only his were too mighty for
words. He never once hinted to the traitor that he was aware of his
treachery. Perhaps the footsteps of coming death were pressing too
heavily upon him, even then, for he whispered to his heart more than
once that day, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.”
There was no vengeance in Daniel Clark’s thoughts; for death was there
already, and he felt that the little time given him on earth would
scarcely be sufficient to right the wronged.
In the very chamber where Zulima had sat, amid the storm, writing her
last soul-touching letter to her husband, was that husband at midnight,
writing eagerly as she had been. His face was deathly pale one minute,
and the next there spread over it a warm red hue, that seemed burning
hotly through the flesh. He wrote on, sheet after sheet, linking the
pages together as he completed them, with a black ribbon; and,
notwithstanding the anguish that shook, and the fever that burned him,
the writing, as it flowed from his pen, was firm and even as print.
Toward daylight the document was finished. Two black seals were placed
at the last page, then the whole was folded up and carefully sealed.
Weary and haggard was Daniel Clark, as he arose from his task; the bed
stood in a corner of the chamber, cool and inviting, but he approached
it not. With a heavy and wavering step, he reached the open window, and
folding his arms upon the sill, turned his face to the soft night air,
with a faint groan, and thus he remained till morning.
The next day, Daniel Clark rode into the city, and was closeted with
several of his old and intimate friends. In the house of one of these
friends the others met by appointment, and there Daniel Clark read his
last will and testament, making his child, Myra Clark, the heiress to
his vast possessions, and there he solemnly declared his marriage with
Zulima, that child’s mother. After this he sat down in the presence of
his friends and chosen executors, and placed his signature to the will
that his own hands had written.
When Mr. Clark left them that day, his friends observed that the hand
with which he clasped theirs was burning, and that his eyes looked heavy
and swollen. They remarked, too, that he had never once smiled during
the whole interview; but the occasion was a solemn one, and so they
merely gave these things a passing thought, deeming them but the result
of some undue excitement.
At nightfall Mr. Clark reached the dwelling of Ross. It had been
Zulima’s residence, and he yearned to lie down in the room that she had
occupied, and to press the same pillow that she had wept upon. All the
deep tenderness of his early love for that wronged woman came back to
him with a knowledge of her blamelessness. Pride, the great sin of his
nature, had been prostrated with the knowledge that he, with all his
haughty self-reliance, all his splendor of intellect, had been
influenced by base and ungrateful men to wrong the being dearest to him
in life. All the manifestation of displeasure that he displayed toward
Ross was a desire to avoid his presence, but even that awoke the
ever-vigilant suspicion of the man. He had placed menial spies on the
steps of Zulima, but in hunting down the sterner game Ross played the
spy himself. The plantation which Ross occupied was the property of his
patron, and in the dwelling Mr. Clark had always kept his own separate
apartments. On returning home that night he entered a little library
belonging to these apartments, and opening an escritoir had taken from
thence an ebony box, in which were his most valuable papers. After
placing the will therein he had carefully locked the escritoir and the
room before retiring to his chamber for the night.
At two o’clock the next morning there shone in this library a faint
light. By the escritoir stood Ross softly trying a key in the lock, and
behind him upon a table rested a dark lantern, so placed that all its
rays fell in one direction, leaving most of the room in darkness.
Noiselessly the key was turned, and without a sound was the escritoir
opened, and the ebony box dragged forth.
The will was the first paper that presented itself on opening the box.
Ross took it up, seated himself in Mr. Clark’s easy chair, and began to
read; nervously glancing over the pages, and starting from time to time
if the slightest sound reached his ear.
“As I thought!” he said, in a stern, low voice, dashing his hand against
the paper till the sheets rustled loud enough to make him start. “Thus
has one day undone the work of years. I knew that something had warped
his heart against me!”
Thoughtfully, and with a frowning brow, Ross folded up the will, laid it
in its depository, and secured it as before. At first he was tempted to
take the light from his lantern, and consume it at once, but the rash
thought was abandoned after a moment’s reflection, for there was danger
at any hour that Mr. Clark might detect the fraud and place another will
beyond his reach. With his duplicate key and ready access to all the
apartments, there was little to dread while the will remained under that
roof.
The moment every thing was safe, Ross closed his lantern, and sat for
more than an hour musing in the darkness. When he came forth, there was
a deep and gloomy cloud upon his brow; the pale moonbeams fell upon it
through the windows, as he passed to his own room, but the moonbeams
failed to reveal the black thought that lay hidden beneath that frown.
There was more than fraud in that hideous thought.
Mr. Clark slept in Zulima’s chamber, upon the couch her delicate limbs
had pressed, and upon the pillow where her head had found its sweetest
slumbers. Perhaps the fever-spirit grew riotous and strong on the memory
which these objects aroused, or it might have been that, without all
these reminiscences, the illness that came upon him that night would
have proved more painful still. The morning found the heart-stricken man
faint and strengthless as a child. A vague dreaminess hung about him,
which did not quite amount to delirium, and yet it could not have been
said that he was quite conscious of passing events. He talked in a low
voice of his wife and child: there was something sad and broken-hearted
in every word that he uttered, totally at variance with his usual proud
and lofty reserve. He seemed to take little interest in those about him,
but murmured gently to himself, and always of _them_. If this was
delirium—and it must have been, so totally was it at variance with his
previous manner—there was something exceedingly touching and mournful in
it, for the death-bed of that noble and strong man seemed marked by a
degree of solemn tenderness that might have befitted the death-pillow of
a loving woman.
At first the disease seemed scarcely more than an attack of nervous
fever, such as often follows violent excitement. The spirits of heaven
who guarded that death-bed alone can tell if neglect or irritation, or
deeper and darker causes combined to terminate that slight illness in
death. Ross was his attendant; constant and unceasing was the assiduity
of his watch. No physician, no friend entered the sick-room, and for
three days that noble man lay struggling with death, in the presence of
his bitterest enemy, and one faithful old body-servant, who could only
watch and weep over the master who was to him almost more than mortal.
Then came the third night, and still the failing man was alone with that
one old negro, who would not be sent away; and over him bent the
household viper, whose sting had been worse than death. A dim lamp was
in the room, and through the open windows came the night air, in soft,
sweet gushes, making the muslin drapery tremble in the flaring
lamplight.
Daniel Clark turned upon his pillow; his eyes opened wide, and he moved
his hands in the air, as if seeking to grasp at something. Ross bent
over and spoke to him, but the dying man closed his eyes and motioned
the traitor away with his hand. The old negro came up, choking back the
tears, and bent his gray head gently over his master. Again Clark opened
his eyes; a sudden light came into them, and a smile stole over the
whole face.
“Bend down,” he whispered, “bend close to me, my old servant, for I am
dying.”
The old man bent his head still lower, holding his breath, and checking
the tears that swelled his faithful heart. “Dear master, I listen.”
Clark lifted his hand, and grasped that of the old man with a feeble
hold.
“My wife—my child! See that no wrong is done them.”
The old man looked down upon that ashen face with surprise. “This must
be delirium,” he thought, “for my poor master had neither wife nor
child.”
The eyes of the dying man were misty, but he saw the doubt in his
servant’s face. A look of distress passed over his own, and he made a
vain effort to collect the power of speech. But he could only say, “The
will—that must tell you—it is below, take it into your own hands the
moment I am dead; and take it to—to—”
“To Master Ross?” said the old man, observing that his master’s voice
was sinking.
“No! no!” These words broke from the dying man with his last breath; he
fell back upon the pillow; his hands wandered upward for an instant, and
then fell heavily upon the bed. Still his eyes were open—still they were
fixed with mournful intensity on the old man’s face.
“He is gone!” murmured Ross, bending his ashen face over the ashen face
of the dead.
“He is gone!” cried the poor old servant, wringing his hands and sobbing
aloud; “he is gone, and without taking the old man with him!” Then the
faithful old creature cast himself upon his knees, and taking the pale
hand of the dead between his ebony palms, lifted up his voice and wept.
While the voice of his grief filled the room, while his faithful heart
seemed pouring itself out in tears, Ross turned softly and stole from
the room.
A few brief minutes the old negro gave to his sorrow. Then amid his
tears he remembered the last words of the dead. He did but pause to
close, with reverent hands, the eyes that still seemed regarding him
with earnest command. He did but compose the lifeless limbs, and draw
the sheet over those loved features, before he went down to obey the
last behest of the dead. The poor old man went forth from the
deathchamber, guided by the gray dawn. His tread was slow and mournful.
You could scarcely hear him as he passed along, for it seemed to him
that the faintest sound might disturb his master.
He reached the library; his hand was upon the latch; he turned it with a
cautious regard to sound, not with premeditation, but because the
death-scene he had witnessed made the least noise appear to him like
sacrilege. But the door remained firm. It was evidently locked within,
for through the keyhole streamed a faint light, and with the light came
an indistinct sound of rustling papers and the cautious tread of a
footstep. The old man bent his eye to the keyhole and looked in.
Directly within the range of his vision stood Mr. Clark’s escritoir wide
open, and by it was Ross searching among the papers in an ebony box,
which the old man knew as the repository of his master’s most valuable
documents. Ross took from this box a voluminous parcel, thrust it in his
bosom, and carefully locking the escritoir, held up the light and looked
timidly around as if fearful of the very silence. Then, with a quick,
noiseless tread, he passed across the room. His face was deathly pale,
and the old negro saw that the lamp shook and swaled in his hand. There
was a fireplace in the room, but the door commanded no view of it, and
the old man strained his sight in vain to secure further knowledge of
what was passing within the library. But if his eye was baffled his ear
remained keen, and that was directly startled by the sharp rustle of
papers apparently torn apart in haste; then the whole room was filled
with a glare of light. There was a sudden and faint crackle as of some
hastily kindled flame passing up the chimney. Then all was dark and
hushed once more. The lamp seemed extinguished; a little smoke, a faint
smell of burnt paper, and that was all the poor old negro ever saw of
his master’s will.
The old man went back to the chamber, knowing too well that his mission
was at an end. He knelt down by that death-couch trembling like a
culprit, and heart-sick from a consciousness of his own impotence. “Oh,
master, master! forgive me—forgive me!” cried the gray-headed old
servant, bending his wrinkled forehead to the hands he had clasped upon
the death-couch. “Forgive me that I stayed to cry when I should have
obeyed the last order you can ever give the old man. I have seen, I have
heard—but who will believe me, master? Am I not a slave?”
“A slave? Yes; go hence, and forever!” cried a stern voice in the room;
“you who have no more discretion than thus to talk with the dead.”
The old man arose and stood up; his keen eyes dwelt firmly upon Ross,
and with his right hand he drew the covering from the dead. There was
something noble in the look and attitude of that old gray-headed negro
as he confronted the false friend, the household traitor, who might yet
have almost the power of life and death over him.
“He is my master; I will not leave him,” said the old man firmly. “You
may whip me, you may kill me, but I will never leave him till he is
buried. I rocked him in his cradle, I will lay him in his grave. Then
sell me, if you like; no matter what becomes of the old man when his
master is in the grave.” And turning away with a look of unutterable
woe, the old servant cast himself by the death-couch, crying out, “My
master! oh, my master!”
A few weeks after, the old man was sold and sent away to a far-off
plantation, for he was a part of the property which Daniel Clark had
left, and according to the old will, the only one ever found, Ross was
the executor of the estate, and had a right to sell the poor old man.
CHAPTER V.
A being of beauty she fell to her dreaming—
Thought flitted in gleamings of light through her brain,
In the depths of her eye it was constantly gleaming,
Still lighting her soul with soft visions again.
The will of Daniel Clark was never found, and the vast inheritance that
should have been his child’s, became the spoil of those who had crept
like vipers along his life-path, poisoning every pure blossom that
sprang up to bless him on his way to the grave. His wife was bereft of
every thing but her sorrowful memories. His child had not even these. To
her, father, mother, all was a dream—an idea that had floated through
her infant memory and was gone.
Years went by—many years—and then in one of the most splendid mansions
of Philadelphia, lay a fair young girl, half arrayed in her morning
costume, and but partially aroused from one of those sweet dreams that
of late had made her sleep a vision of love. While lifting the wealth of
her brown hair between both her small hands in dressing before her
mirror that morning, she had been taken with one of those rich gleams of
thought that are the poetry of youth, and allowing the tresses to fall
over her slight person again, where, in their wonderful and bright
abundance, they fell almost to her feet, she had stolen thoughtfully to
a couch in her boudoir and cast herself upon the crimson cushions.
There, with some loose drapery gathered around her, one fair cheek
resting in the palm of her hand, and the white arm half vailed by those
loosened tresses, pressed deep in the silken cushions, the young girl
fell into a reverie. Perhaps the dream from which she had just been
aroused still haunted her mind, but it would have been difficult for
Myra herself to have said what were the strange and sweet fancies that
floated through her mind at that moment; for her own thoughts were a
mystery, her feelings vague as they were pure. These sort of day-dreams,
when they come to our first youth, have much of heaven in them; if they
could only endure through life always bright, always enveloped in the
same rosy mist,
“Man might forget to dream of heaven,
And yet have the sweet sin forgiven.”
Myra was aroused from her day-dream, not rudely as some of our sweetest
fancies are broken, but by a light footfall, and a soft voice that
called her name from the inner room. The young girl started up—
“Mother—mother, is it you—am I very late this morning?”
“Oh, you are here, daughter,” said a middle-aged and gentle lady as she
entered the boudoir. “No, not very late, but do you know that your
father has just arrived and is inquiring for you?”
“My father here, and I not half ready to go down!” cried Myra, eagerly
gathering up her hair, while, with the wonderful mobility natural to her
features, the whole tone of her face changed. The dreamy, almost languid
expression vanished in an instant. The warm glow of her affectionate
nature broke through every feature like flame hidden in the heart of a
pearl. Her cheek, her mouth, her white forehead were full of animation;
her brown eyes sparkled with delight. With her whole being she loved the
man whom she believed to be her father, and for the gentle woman who
stood gazing upon her with so much affection as her toilet was
completed, Myra’s devotion was almost more than the natural love of a
child for its mother. Scarcely a minute elapsed before the young girl
was ready to go down. Another minute and she was in the arms of a fine
and noble-looking man who stood by the breakfast-room door eagerly
watching for her. During many weeks he had been absent from his home,
and he could not feel thoroughly welcomed back again while Myra was not
by to greet him.
It was a joyous family party that gathered around the breakfast-table
that morning. The eyes of that gentle wife wandered, with a look of
grateful affection, from the noble face of her husband to meet the
sparkling glance of her child; for Myra was more than a child to her.
Rejoiced to be once more in the bosom of his family, Mr. D. was more
than usually animated and agreeable. There was not a hidden thought or a
disunited feeling in the little family group.
“And whom have you had to visit you since I went away, Myra? What new
conquest have you made? Tell me all about it, child,” said Mr. D.,
smiling, as he received the coffee-cup of Sevres china from the hands of
his wife.
Myra laughed—a clear, ringing laugh, that had more of hearty glee in it
than any thing you ever heard.
“Oh, we have had crowds of visitors, gallants without number. Ladies
like a swarm of humming-birds, and—and—oh, yes; we had one very singular
and romantic person, a namesake and intimate friend of yours, papa. I
wrote you about him, but you never mentioned him at all in your reply.”
“Oh, yes; I remember,” said Mr. D.; “a grave, gentlemanly old man, with
just gray hairs enough to make him interesting, and the most winning
manners. He carried a little Bible with a gold clasp in his bosom—I
remember the description well. What of him, Myra? You lost your heart,
of that the letter told me;—but who was this mysterious person? Pray,
enlighten me.”
Myra and her mother exchanged glances. A faint crimson broke over the
elder lady’s face, and the young girl looked a little puzzled.
“Why, papa, how strangely you talk. This gentleman knows you well; he is
a member of the legislature, and his seat is close by yours in the
house,” said Myra.
“Nonsense, child; there is but one man of my name in the house, and he
has not been absent from Harrisburg a day during the session; besides,
he has not a white hair in his head, and never carries small Bibles with
gold clasps to exhibit to young ladies. You have had some impostor here.
What did the interesting gentleman want?”
“He had lost a portmanteau that contained his money and clothes,”
faltered Myra.
“All but the little Bible!” cried her father with a laugh.
“And so,” continued the young girl, blushing, “as he was a friend of
yours and out of money, he only desired mamma to advance him a small
sum.”
“And she did it—I’ll be sworn she did it!” cried Mr. D., enjoying the
blushes of his wife. “The scoundrel carried off my wife’s purse and my
daughter’s heart at one fell swoop.”
“It was not much, only twenty-four dollars,” said the lady struggling to
bear up against her husband’s raillery.
“But I—I told him he could have fifty just as well,” said Myra, joining
in her father’s laugh; “who could suspect him with his gentle manners—”
“And little Bible?” interrupted Mr. D.
“And gray hairs? Indeed, papa, it was worth the money to be cheated so
gracefully. You have no idea with what an air the man took his leave—the
tears absolutely stood in his eyes.”
“The fellow was a fool not to take your fifty dollars, Myra, that is all
I have to say about him—so now on with your list. What other interesting
stranger have you entertained in my absence?”
Myra hesitated, her eyes drooped for an instant, and the damask of her
cheek deepened to crimson. For the first time in her life she felt
embarrassed in the presence of her father. What if papa should pronounce
_him_ an impostor also? she thought; and her heart was in a glow at the
very idea. She felt that the eyes of her father were fixed on her
inquiringly, and this deepened her confusion.
“We have received one other stranger here,” she said at length, making
an effort to look up; “a very talented and agreeable gentleman, whom I
met by accident when out on an excursion.”
“Indeed; and who is he?” inquired Mr. D. in a grave tone, and casting a
glance at his wife that had a shade of displeasure in it.
“He seems a most estimable young man, full of talent and generous
feeling,” said Mrs. D., anxious to save her child from the embarrassment
of an answer.
“He _seems_—who is he?” demanded the husband; his voice was stern and
his look suspicious. “Myra, who is this man?”
“His name is Whitney,” replied the young girl, resuming something of her
natural courage. “I have made no further inquiries; but he is no
impostor, papa, I am very sure of that.”
Mr. D. arose from the table, evidently much annoyed. Myra’s heart beat
quick. Why should she tremble, why should every nerve in her slight
frame thrill so, if the stranger were no more to her than a hundred
others had been? Why was it that the laugh died on her lip, and all her
courage fled, when she saw the displeasure so strongly marked in her
father’s face? Was the young girl awaking from her dream? did she begin
to feel how truly, how ardently she loved? or was the rosy vail but half
lifted from her heart? She cast a supplicating glance at her mother, and
her look was answered by one of sweet and undisturbed affection. That
feminine and lovely woman could sympathize far better with the sweet,
wild feelings that broke so eloquently, that moment, through the
troubled eyes of her child, than with the stern displeasure of her
husband. She arose from the breakfast-table and glided from the room,
making a sign for her daughter to follow.
“Stay,” said the master of the house, addressing Myra, as she was
turning toward her own room. “I would ask a single question, and then
let us have done with this impostor, for, doubtless, he is such.”
“No, father, no; I would pledge my life for his honor; he is no
impostor,” exclaimed Myra, as her father led the way to a little study
that opened from the breakfast-room.
“As you would have done for the gentlemanly old man with the Bible, I
dare say,” was the half-humorous, half-ironical rejoinder. “But answer
my question, Myra: has this young man ever presumed to lift his eyes to
you as an equal? has he ever uttered a word that might lead you to
suppose that he thinks of you save as a stranger?”
“Indeed, papa, he never has—far, far from it. When other young men have
overwhelmed me with flatteries; when, as your heiress, homage of every
kind has been lavished upon me, he alone has been silent. Always
respectful, always kind, he has never, for one moment, taken the
attitude often assumed by other young men who could not boast a tithe of
his merit. He has seldom spoken to me of himself—never has the word love
passed between us.”
“You are eloquent, Myra, alike in the praise and in the defence of this
stranger.”
“I speak but the truth, papa”
“Well, I am glad of it. The whole affair can be more readily dismissed
than I supposed. Now go to your chamber and think no more about it.”
“Think no more about it;” truly it was a request easily made, but how
impossible to obey. Why, the very thought of that stranger youth had
henceforth the power of an angel spirit which might steal down and
trouble the still waters of her heart forever. Myra knew not even yet
that this spirit took the form of love. She entered her boudoir again
and flung herself upon the couch, but how changed were her feelings—the
sweet dream, so tranquil, so full of rosy content, was swept away like a
cloud. Her heart was in a tumult, her cheek burned, her eyes filled with
tears. She felt indignant that her father should, for one moment, hold a
doubt of the being in whom she put such perfect trust.
Thus musing with herself, the young girl spent an hour of disquiet, when
her reverie was disturbed by a servant, who informed her that Mr.
Whitney was in the drawing-room. Her first sensation was a thrill of
joy, such as had long, unconsciously, followed his approach. The next
was a feeling of reserve, a shy, half distrustful sensation, such as had
never possessed her warm, frank nature before. She went down, not, as
had been her wont, with the step of a gazelle, and with a glad smile
sparkling in her eyes and on her lip, but with a lingering tread and
eyes vailed by their snowy lids and dark lashes. She entered the
drawing-room so gently that its occupant did not at first observe her.
He stood by a marble table, near the window, turning over some books
that lay upon it. The light which fell over him was subdued by many a
glowing fold of damask that swept over the windows, thus giving the dim
look of marble to features so perfectly classical in their outline, that
but for the thick waving hair, and the glow of life that pervaded them,
the head might have been taken for that of some antique statue. To these
manly attractions were added a figure, tall beyond the ordinary
standard, sinewy, athletic, and yet full of subtle grace.
While he thought himself alone a look of tranquil repose lay upon young
Whitney’s features, but the moment he lifted his head and saw the fair
girl who stood hesitating by the door, the whole character of his face
changed; a glow of animation lighted up his face, and he came forward
with all the eager cordiality that her previous frank bearing had always
warranted.
Myra hesitated before she reached forth her hand, and when she did place
it in his, it quivered like an aspen. The young man looked earnestly in
her changing face, and then led her to a seat, himself a prey to all the
quick apprehension that her unusual restraint was calculated to inspire.
A few commonplace words were spoken, then both became silent and
preoccupied. At length Myra observed that her father had returned home
that morning, but she blushed while saying it, as if the young man could
have guessed at the conversation that had given so much pain to herself.
A vague idea of the truth did evidently flash across the young man’s
mind, for he turned another long and earnest look upon her face, which
was now glowing crimson to her temples, and when he turned his eyes
away, the faintest possible smile stole over his lips.
“It is,” he said, with a faint sigh—“it is now more than two months
since I arrived in Philadelphia. All that time your kind mamma has
received me as a guest. Perhaps I should not have accepted this
hospitality without first convincing her that I was not unworthy of it;
but I found it so sweet to be taken on trust, so flattering to be valued
for myself alone, that I had almost forgotten the reasonable demands of
society. I ought long since to have convinced her that it was no
impostor to whom her kindness had been extended.”
“Impostor!” exclaimed Myra, with a smile that told how impossible she
thought it that even suspicion should be attached to him.
“What if I were to be suspected as such?” added Whitney with an
answering smile.
“I would not believe it—I would believe no wrong of you, though your own
lips asserted it!” was the generous reply.
The color swept over young Whitney’s face, and there was something in
his eyes that deepened the crimson on Myra’s cheek; but he only answered
in a low and earnest voice:
“I thank you; with my whole heart I thank you for this confidence.”
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he took from his pocket several
letters which, with a hand that trembled somewhat, he presented to the
young girl. She took them to the window, and, half shaded by the
curtains, began to read, rejoicing in the obscurity, for she felt a
terror that the quick beating of her heart might become visible.
The letters were from several of the first men in America-men whose
autographs had become familiar to Myra upon the public records of the
land. Nothing could have been more ample than the testimonials that
these men gave of the high worth, talent, and position sustained by
young Whitney.
Myra read these letters with a feeling of proud triumph. Her trust in
him was sustained; she had never distrusted his worth, and in her hand
she held the proud power of crushing every doubt that her father might
have had. Merit to which the highest and purest in the land bore such
testimony could never again become subject of dispute. She returned to
Mr. Whitney. The generous enthusiasm that wholly possessed her beamed in
every lineament of a face lovely in itself, but most remarkable for a
quick and brilliant expression seldom equaled in the human countenance.
“Mr. Whitney, may I retain these only a short time? My father—he will be
pleased to see them.”
Myra was petite and slight in her person, almost as a fairy. As she
stood clasping the letters between her hands, and with her eyes uplifted
toward him, those eyes, so brilliant with every feeling of the heart, a
prettier contrast with his tall and stately form could not well be
imagined.
“Certainly; do with them as you please,” he said; “but you must not
allow your father to suppose that I exhibit them from ostentation.”
“Oh, he will not think that!” cried Myra, extending her hand, for her
guest was about to take his leave. “He will never think any thing that
is not noble and good of you, I am sure.”
“To-morrow, then—to-morrow I will call for the letters.”
“Yes, to-morrow,” replied Myra; and while a servant opened the door for
her guest, she entered her father’s study.
Mr. D. was seated by his escritoir, reading some papers. He looked up as
Myra entered, and smiled kindly upon her.
“What visitor have you had?” he inquired, folding up the paper in his
hand. “Did I not hear some one go out a moment since?”
“Yes, sir; it was Mr. Whitney.”
Mr. D. tossed the paper he held upon the escritoir, and his brow
contracted.
“Mr. Whitney again! Have I not told you, Myra, that no man of whose
character I am not well informed, shall visit my house? How can you thus
receive a person of whom you know nothing?”
“But, papa, I do know all about him, now, and so may you; only read
these letters, and you will find that his family is as good as ours; his
character irreproachable; his position every thing that can warrant the
acquaintance he has sought.”
Mr. D. took the letters very coldly, and without another word proceeded
to read them. Myra watched his countenance with a palpitating heart. The
frown remained immovable on his forehead, and his mouth relaxed nothing
of its stern expression. Coldly and deliberately he read the letters
through; laid them down one by one, and then placing his hand upon the
parcel, turned to his daughter.
“What proof have we that these are not forgeries?” he said.
Myra’s heart swelled indignantly. She could hardly force herself to
answer. It seemed as if her father had determined to receive no evidence
in favor of the man, against whom he had taken a prejudice that, to her
warm nature, seemed most unjust and causeless.
“The handwriting, the autographs, are they not genuine? are they not
sufficient?”
Mr. D. took up one of the letters and examined it closely. “The letters
may be genuine; but what proof have we that this young man came by them
honorably—in short, that his name is Whitney, or that he is at all the
person for whom he represents himself?”
“Oh, papa, this is too much! Only see this young gentleman yourself, and
then judge if he can be suspected of obtaining those letters by
dishonorable means!”
Myra grew pale, and tears started to her eyes as she spoke. Mr. D.
regarded her for a moment, then placing the letters in his escritoir, he
turned the key. Myra waited for some answer to her appeal, but he coldly
took up the paper that he had been reading as she came in, and seemed to
cast the subject of conversation from his mind. Myra went to her chamber
with a heavy heart; she felt chilled and hurt by her father’s coldness:
perhaps, too, there was in her heart a feeling of disappointment
regarding Whitney also. In the slight mystery that had, up to that day,
enveloped him, her ardent fancy had found something for the imagination
to dwell upon. In the generosity of her youth she had rather hoped that
he might prove one of those rare geniuses that struggle from an obscure
origin and through poverty, to the intellectual and moral eminence which
alone she prized, and which she was certain he had attained. Perhaps
some vague fancy of relieving his poverty by the wealth which, as her
father’s heiress, she must one day possess, had formed part of the
day-dreams which of late had haunted her. Certain it is that a sensation
of regret mingled with the sadness that her father’s settled
disapprobation had cast upon her spirits. She felt almost grieved by the
proof that, even as a friend—for she had not allowed her thoughts to
range beyond that gentle character—Whitney, from his worldly position,
would never require a sacrifice from her.
The next day Whitney called again—called to take leave. He was about
returning to his native State, and had only a moment in which to utter
thanks and farewell to the friends whose kindness he should never cease
to remember with gratitude. In a few months—it might be weeks—he would
again visit Philadelphia, and to renew the acquaintance he had made
would be one of his sweetest hopes till then.
Myra heard all this with that quiet and gentle dignity which no surprise
could wholly conquer. She saw that her guest was agitated, that he was
not taking leave of her with the indifference of a common acquaintance;
and with that deep trust which true affection gives to the heart, her
thoughts turned to the future. A few broken sentences passed between
them, and then Myra went to her father for the letters that he had
locked in his escritoir the day before.
“I will bring the letters myself,” was the cold reply which was given to
her request, and Myra returned to the drawing-room pale and agitated,
for there was something in her father’s manner that filled her with
vague apprehension.
A few moments elapsed, and then measured footsteps in the hall made the
young girl’s heart beat quick as she listened. They approached the
drawing-room door; it was opened, and with a cold and stately politeness
Mr. D. entered, holding the letters in his hand. He approached Mr.
Whitney, who had risen to receive him, and now resumed his seat. “Sir,”
he said, gravely drawing a chair and seating himself opposite to the
young man, “there are the letters with which you have honored me; they
are perfectly satisfactory.”
There was something so chill and cutting in the measured tones and
unbending courtesy with which this was said, that it had all the effect
of an insult without yielding an excuse for resentment.
Whitney took the letters, and the color mounted to his temples. “I
trust,” he said, “that there was nothing in the letters, or in the
manner of presenting them, that could give offence?”
Before answering, Mr. D. turned his eyes upon Myra, who sat pale and
dismayed in a corner of the sofa, and made a motion of the head that she
should leave the room.
The young girl arose trembling in every limb, and left the room; but
while she stood upon the threshold struggling for strength to move on,
her father spoke. “May I ask you, sir, why those letters were presented
to my daughter?”
Whitney’s voice was low but firm, as he answered:
“I have received much kindness from your family, sir, within the last
two months, and could not leave the city, as I am about to do, without
giving Mrs. D. and your daughter all the proof in my power that their
hospitality had not been unworthily bestowed.”
“And was this your only motive, sir?”
“It was my only motive.”
“And have you not presumed to place yourself on an equality with my
daughter? Have you not taken advantage of her youth and my absence to
ingratiate yourself in her favor? In short, sir, have you not presumed
upon the hospitality awarded by my wife, and offered address to my
child, every way distasteful to her family?”
“No, sir, no, I have not thus presumed.”
Myra heard no more—a sharp sense of humiliation, a thousand confused
thoughts flashed through her brain, and with a pang at her heart such as
she had never dreamed of before, she darted up the stairs. White and
gasping for breath, she paused at the top, made a grasp at the baluster
for support, and, for the first time in her life, fainted upon the
floor.
Humiliating and bitter, indeed, were the thoughts that flowed through
the young girl’s mind, when she awoke from her swoon and found the sweet
face of her mother bending over her; proud and keenly sensitive, she
felt as if the dignity of her self-respect had been irretrievably
outraged. Never in his life had young Whitney spoken to her of love, and
in all her thoughts of him, the idea of passion had never once mingled.
But now she felt in her innermost heart that something stronger and more
powerful than mere friendship had driven the blood from her heart when
she heard him so cruelly arraigned for feelings and hopes that he had
never breathed, perhaps had never felt. This knowledge of her own heart,
thrust so rudely on the young girl, was but another pang added to her
outraged pride, and for days not even the sweet and soothing care of her
mother had power to console her.
In this state of feeling, Mr. D. left his child and returned to his
legislative duties. The very day after his departure from home, there
came a letter for Myra—a letter from the man who now occupied her every
thought. She broke the seal in the presence of her mother, and read such
words as made her heart thrill and her pale cheek glow again.
“Nothing but the harsh words of your father would have given me
confidence to address you so,” the letter said; “but there was something
in those words, cruel and cold as they were, that gave me the first
gleam of hope I have dared to entertain—hope that the great love I feel
for you might be returned. Say only that this hope—it is faint and
humble—will not be thought presumptuous, and surely some means can be
found by which the prejudice which your father exhibits against me will
be removed.”
She loved, she was beloved. The weight that had bowed down her pride was
swept away by that letter, like mists before a glowing sun. A hopeful
and joyous creature was Myra, and her light heart shook off the trouble
that had oppressed it as a wild blossom casts the dew from its petals.
She answered the letter. Modestly and with sensitive reserve, she vailed
the affection that thrilled at her heart as she wrote to him for the
first time, but still Myra answered her lover’s first letter, and in all
this her confident was that loving and gentle mother.
“Let us hope for the best, my child,” the fond woman would say. “When
your father knows his worth as we do, and is satisfied that you love him
truly, then he will relent. We have but to wait.”
They did wait, and in the mean time letter after letter came and went,
thus linking those two young hearts more and more firmly together.
Mr. D. came home at length, and now the true reason of his dislike to
Whitney became manifest. Myra was intended for another. Wealth and
station, every thing that could win the sanction of a proud man, was in
favor of her father’s choice, and on the very day of his return he
explained his intentions and his wishes to the young girl.
“You shall have a noble fortune, my child,” he said. “Few ladies in
America shall give so fine a property to a husband.”
“Father!” answered Myra, and it was wonderful how mild and firm the
young girl remained, knowing, as she did, how powerful were the
interests she opposed, with her fragile strength—“Father, I can not
marry this man. I do not love him, and will never commit the sin of
wedding without affection.”
The young girl was very pale, but there was a mild firmness in her eye
that revealed all the pure strength that sustained her. She paused, drew
a deep breath, and while her father stood gazing upon her, dumb with
astonishment, she added:
“I will never marry any man but Mr. Whitney, for while he lives I can
never love another.”
And now that it was over, Myra began to tremble; for there was something
terrible in the fierce and pallid rage that held her father for a time
mute and motionless before her. At length his lips parted, and his eyes
flashed.
“Whitney! the ingrate, the impostor, you love!—you would marry him
against my consent?”
“No, I will never marry any man against your consent, papa,” replied
Myra, bursting into tears; for her strength had been taxed to the
utmost, and she was not one to brave a parent’s wrath unmoved. “I can
remain single, and will, if you desire it; but with the feelings that I
have for Mr. Whitney, it would be a sin should I give one thought to
another.”
Mr. D. gazed on the pale, earnest face of his child as she spoke, but
there was no relenting in his face. Anger, scorn, a thousand wrathful
passions broke through its pallor, and he answered in a voice of cutting
scorn:
“And this man, you told me, had never breathed a word of love to you in
his life.”
Myra was about to acknowledge the letters that had passed between
Whitney and herself, for there was a seeming justice in the proud man’s
taunt that cut her to the heart; but she thought of her mother, of the
self-sacrificing mother who had so generously risked the displeasure of
her husband in sanctioning the letters her child had received, and she
only answered, “I can never love another, papa.”
Mr. D. turned away, and began to pace the room. His lips were pressed
forcibly together, and uncontrollable passion seemed burning in every
vein of his body.
“Thank God!” he muttered, turning furiously upon the terrified
girl—“Thank God, no drop of _my_ blood runs in your veins.”
“Papa! O papa! this is terrible. Why, in your anger against me, say
things that are as cruel as they are without foundation?” cried Myra,
starting to her feet, and approaching her father.
“Without foundation! It is true, girl, I say it is true. You are not my
child!”
She did not believe him. How could she, poor girl; with the household
links of many a happy year clinging about her heart? One word could not
tear them away so readily, but the very thought made her pale as a
corpse, and every nerve of her delicate frame trembled. A reproachful
smile quivered over her lips, and she laid her hand upon the stern man’s
arm.
“O father! I know that you are only angry; but this is too much. It
would kill me to hear you say that again.”
Mr. D. turned. Anger was fierce within him still, and he took no pity on
that pale and tortured girl.
“As there is a heaven above, you are not my child! I can prove it—have
papers in the house that you shall see.”
A faint cry burst from Myra’s lips. She staggered back and fell upon a
chair, her eyes distended, and fixed wildly upon the stern man, as if
she searched in those angry features for a contradiction of the words he
had spoken. She saw nothing there to relieve the doubt that ached at her
heart.
“Not my father? mamma not my mother?” she murmured, and the tears began
to rain over her white cheeks. She suddenly clasped her hands and stood
up.
“Then whose child am I?”
Mr. D. sat down; the angry fire was fast going out from his heart, and
it could sustain him no longer. Regret, keen and self-accusing, took
possession of him then. Love, pity, every tender feeling that had so
long enlinked that young girl to his heart, all came back like birds to
a ravaged nest. He would have given worlds for the power to annihilate
those ten minutes of his life, when one fierce gleam of anger had
unlocked the hoarded secret of years. He turned his eyes almost
imploringly on the trembling girl. His proud lip quivered, his hand
shook as he rested it on his knee. Myra crept toward him, heart-broken
and wretched, beyond all her previous ideas of wretchedness. She laid
her hand upon his shoulder, and bent her face to his as she had done
many a time in her childhood, when some small trouble oppressed her. But
oh, how unlike her sweet childhood were those agonized features!
“Father—father!” she said, and her voice bespoke in its low and
thrilling tones all the anguish he had inflicted—“Father, tell me, whose
child am I?”
“To-morrow, to-morrow!” said Mr. D.; “I can go through no more to-day.”
“But is it true that I am not your child?” said Myra, still hoping
against hope.
“It is true!” he answered; and rising from his seat with an unsteady
step he entered his study.
A moment after, Mrs. D. met Myra on the stairs. One glance in her face
was enough. “Myra, daughter!” she exclaimed; “what is this? You are
white as death—you tremble.”
“Mother—mother!” burst from the lips of the young girl, almost with a
shriek; “they tell me that I am not your child!”
Mrs. D. was struck motionless. Marble could not have been more coldly
white than her face and hands.
“And who—who has told you this?” she faltered.
“He told me himself—papa—he has the proofs. Mother, mother, say in mercy
that he is only angry—that it is not so!”
With a wild gesture, and a burst of passionate tears, the unhappy girl
cast herself into her mother’s arms. The poor lady trembled beneath the
weight of that fragile form. She wove her arms around it; she pressed
kiss after kiss upon that forehead with her cold and quivering lips. She
strove, by the warmth and passion of her maternal love, to charm away
the pain and the truth from her daughter’s heart, but she said not in
words, “Myra, you are my child,” and the young girl arose from her bosom
utterly desolate.
The morrow came, and Myra stood by her father in his study, for he was
still a father to her. The escritoir was open before them, and a large
pocket-book, with the seal wrenched apart, lay upon the lid. Mr. D. sat
with his head bent and shading his troubled forehead with one hand. Myra
held a letter in her shaking grasp—a letter addressed to the man whom
she had always deemed her parent, and signed by Daniel Clark. She could
not read; the words swam before her eyes, but she laid her finger on the
signature and said in a low and husky voice, “This name—Daniel Clark—he
was my godfather.”
“He was your father!” replied Mr. D. “Read, read for yourself.”
Myra forced her nerves to be still. With desperate resolution she kept
her eyes upon the writing. Every word of that letter contained proof
that went to her heart. She was the daughter of Daniel Clark.
CHAPTER VI.
She left the parent roof, and left in grief,
Not from an idle passion vain and light,
But in her heart there lived a firm belief,
That duty call’d and honor urged her flight.
Little by little, as her shattered nerves could bear it, the truth was
revealed to Myra. It was a sad, sad trial, the uprooting of her pure
domestic faith, the tearing asunder of those thousand delicate fibers
that had so long woven, and clung, and rooted themselves around the
parents who had adopted her. Love them she did, now, as it seemed, more
intensely than ever, but there was excitement in her heart, a sort of
wild, unsettled feeling, that destroyed all the sweet faith and
tranquillity of affection. It was no longer the quiet and serene love
which had clung around her from infancy, naturally and without effort,
as wild blossoms bud upon a bank where the sunshine sleeps longest—but
something of unrest and pain mingled with it all. In the history of her
parents she found much to excite her imagination, her deep and sorrowful
interest. It opened upon her with all the vividness of a romance, that
kindled her fancy, while it pained her to the soul. Then came other
thoughts and more thrilling anxieties. The beloved one, the man of her
choice, whom she had dreamed of endowing with riches, from which she now
seemed legally dispossessed—how would he receive the news of her
orphanage—of her dependent state? Alas, how were all her proud and
generous visions swept away! And yet, did she doubt his love or his pure
disinterestedness? Never for a moment. Loyal, lofty, and unselfish as
her own pure heart, she knew the beloved of that heart to be. She felt
assured that his faith to the dowerless orphan would be kept more sacred
than his pledge to the heiress. Full of this high trust, she wrote to
Whitney and told him the whole.
“You sought me,” said the letter, “and loved me as the heiress of great
wealth, as the only daughter of a proud and rich man. All at once, as if
a flash of lightning had swept across the horizon of my life, revealing
the truth with a single fiery gleam, I find myself the orphan of a great
and good man, whom I remember only as the shade of a vision—and of a
woman, lovely as she has been unfortunate—alive still, but kept from her
child by bonds that have yet proved too strong, even for the yearnings
of maternal love. I know that Daniel Clark, my father, was supposed to
possess great wealth, but I am told that he died insolvent, and that in
his will neither wife nor child was mentioned. Therefore am I an orphan,
dependent upon those who are strangers to me in blood for the love that
shelters me, for the wealth that has hedged me in with comforts from my
cradle up. * * * * I am not the person whom you loved—not the person
whom, two short days ago, I believed myself to be. Should Myra Clark,
orphaned and without inheritance—her very birth loaded with doubt, and
her hold on any living thing uncertain—still claim the faith pledged to
Myra D., the heiress? No; like the rest, I resign this last and most
precious hold on the past. You are free—honorably free, from all
responsibility arising from the faith you plighted. Of all my past life,
I have nothing left but the simple name of Myra.”
This is but an extract of Myra’s letter to Mr. Whitney, but it was
enough to satisfy her delicate sense of honor. It set him free. It
relinquished all claim upon his faith or his honor. Much there was in
the letter to melt and touch a heart like his, for with a great secret
swelling in her breast, she found consolation in pouring out the
feelings that oppressed her, where she was certain of sympathy.
And Whitney answered the letter. He had not loved the heiress or the
lofty name—but Myra, the noble-minded, the lovely, the beautiful. If she
was an orphan, so much the better; he would be family, wealth, the world
to her. He grieved for her sorrow, but seemed to revel and rejoice in
the idea of having her all to himself. This was the tenor of Whitney’s
reply, and Myra felt no longer alone—her elastic nature gathered up its
strength again. She became proud of the pure and holy love, which only
grew brighter with adversity, and this beautiful pride rekindled all her
energies.
Among the fine scenery which lies upon the upper portions of the
Delaware Bay, there is a splendid old mansion house, large, massive, and
bearing deeper marks of antiquity and aristocratic ownership, than are
usually found in a country where dwellings that have withstood the
ravages of a hundred years are seldom to be found. It was a superb
countryplace, uplifted above the bay, and commanding one of the finest
prospects in the whole country. Picturesque and broken scenery lay all
around. Portions of this scenery were wild, and even rude, in their
thrifty luxuriance, while close around the dwelling reigned the most
perfect cultivation. Park-like groves, lawns fringed with choice
shrubberies, and glowing with a profusion of flowers, might be seen from
every window of the dwelling. The stables, lodges, and other buildings,
all in excellent repair, bespoke a degree of prosperous wealth, and a
luxurious taste, seldom found in our primitive land. A spacious veranda
that ran along the front, commanded a beautiful view of the distant bay
and all the broken shore, for miles and miles on either hand. In the
whole State of Delaware could not have been found, at that day, a
gentleman’s residence more perfect in itself, or more luxurious in its
appointments. To this house Mr. D. took his family to spend the summer
months, and Myra entered it, for the first time in her life, with a
feeling of profound loneliness. This noble mansion was to have been her
inheritance; she had spent all her girlhood in the shadows of its walks;
she had learned to love every tree and flower and shady nook that
surrounded it—to love them as the home of her parents, the home that
should hereafter shelter her and her children. Now she entered it sadly,
and with a feeling of cold desolation. Transient, certainly, but very
painful were these natural regrets.
But amid all the shadows that hung around her path, there was one gleam
of golden sunshine. _His_ love was left to her—_his_ faith still
remained firm and perfect.
With the visitors who came with Mr. D. to his country dwelling, was a
distant relation of the family, his wife, and two lovely children. To
these persons the secret of Myra’s birth was made known, and to the
lady, young and apparently amiable, Myra sometimes fled for counsel and
sympathy. But to these persons the secret of Myra’s parentage opened new
and selfish hopes that forbade all genuine friendship for the confiding
girl. Myra, severed by all ties of blood from the family that had
adopted her, now seemed only an obstacle in the way of their own
interests. The excessive love still expressed for her both by Mr. D. and
his angelic wife, seemed so much defrauded from the rights of their own
offspring, and those who had flattered and fawned abjectly on the
daughter and the heiress, now returned the touching confidence of the
orphan with treachery and dislike.
Thus surrounded by secret enemies and those sad regrets which hopes so
suddenly crushed could not fail to excite, the young girl yielded her
whole being up to the one sweet hope still left to her, undimmed and
brightening each day—a lone star in the clouded sky of her life. The
love, that under other circumstances might have been diversified by many
worldly fancies, now concentrated itself around her whole being, and in
its pure intensity became almost sublime.
Mr. D. in revealing the secret of Myra’s birth had, as it were, thrown
off all claims to her filial obedience, but the generous girl took no
advantage of this most painful freedom; her great desire was still to
win his consent to her union with the man she loved, her penniless
union, for Myra neither hoped nor wished for any thing more than the
love of those who had protected her infancy to carry as a marriage dower
to her husband. Under the sanction of her gentle mother—for such Mrs. D.
was ever to Myra—the young girl had still carried on a correspondence
with Mr. Whitney, and it was decided that he should write to Mr. D. and
again request permission to visit the young creature, who, without a
daughter’s right, had no desire to evade a daughter’s obedience.
Believing the acquaintance between Myra and her lover broken off by his
own firm opposition, Mr. D. had not given up her union with another,
which had for many years been a favorite object with him. His
astonishment and indignation may, therefore, be imagined, when the mild
and respectful letter of Mr. Whitney reached him at D. Place, some few
weeks after the retirement of his family to their country mansion. It
was early in the morning when this letter came, and Mr. D. was alone
with his relative and guest when he broke the seal. The anger that shook
the proud man’s nerves, the sharp exclamation that sprang from his lips,
were heard by Mrs. D. as she passed into the breakfast-parlor. She saw
the handwriting crushed angrily between the fingers of her husband, and
filled with dread that Myra’s private correspondence had been betrayed,
she left the room and hastened to her daughter’s chamber.
“O Myra! I fear—I fear that your papa has in some way obtained one of
Mr. Whitney’s letters,” cried the generous lady, with a face that
bespoke all the anxiety that preyed upon her.
Myra turned a little more pallid than usual, for her father’s anger was
a terrible thing to brave,—of that she was well aware; but, after a
moment, her natural courage returned, and she answered with some degree
of firmness:
“Dear mamma, do not look so terrified. Let his anger fall on me; sit
down. That pale face must not tell him that you have ever known of these
letters.”
Mrs. D. sank to a seat, striving to regain some degree of composure, and
Myra went down-stairs, very pale, but making an effort to sustain with
dignity the reproaches that she felt to be prepared for her.
“Here, young lady!” said Mr. D. as Myra entered the room; “here is a
letter from that Whitney again—a letter to me—asking permission to visit
you.”
Myra drew a deep breath; in her agitation she had forgotten that this
letter might be expected, and so long as her father’s anger had only
this source, she could withstand it.
“Well, papa, and you will answer it?” said the young girl, gently, but
still with some tremor of the voice.
“I will!” was the angry reply; “I will answer it as such presumption
deserves!”
“Surely—surely, papa, you will not forget that Mr. Whitney is a
gentleman, and deserving of courteous treatment?”
“I forget nothing!” was the curt reply; and without further argument Mr.
D. left the room, and in half an hour after an old colored man was
galloping toward Wilmington, with a letter, directed to Mr. Whitney, in
his pocket. What that letter contained might have been guessed from the
hasty and blotted address, had it not been written black as night on the
angry forehead of Mr. D. when he sat down to breakfast that morning.
A few days went by—days of keen anxiety to poor Myra and her gentle
mother; then was the young girl summoned once more to the presence of
Mr. D. She found him white with rage—deeper and more terrible rage than
his fine features had ever exhibited before; a letter was clenched
tightly in his hand; his fingers worked convulsively around the crushed
paper as he addressed the trembling girl.
“Twice—twice in my life have I been insulted, girl! By your father
once—by your lover now. He is coming here! He will be in Wilmington in a
few days, will he! Let him come; but as I live—as I live, girl, he shall
never leave that place alive! This insult shall be atoned then and
there.”
“O father!” was all poor Myra could say.
“If he is a gentleman, he shall answer this _as_ a gentleman. If he is
what I suppose, then I will chastise this insolence as I would a menial.
When once we meet, one or the other will never return alive.”
Myra shuddered, her pale lips refused to utter the words that sprang to
them, and she stood before the angry man with her hands clasped, but
motionless as a statue. At length she gathered strength to utter a
single sentence.
“Father, you will not challenge Mr. Whitney? It would be terrible; it
would kill me.”
“If he comes within my reach, if he dares to intrude his presence even
into the neighborhood, he shall answer it with his life or mine!” was
the stern reply.
Myra turned away trembling and heart-sick; she knew that this was no
idle threat, no mere burst of vivid passion that would die within the
hour. Her lover would be in Wilmington in a few days; it was a firm but
courteous announcement to this effect that had so exasperated the man
whom she had just left.
“Mother—mother, he will not do this thing—he will not meet Mr. Whitney
with a challenge!” cried the harassed young creature, throwing herself
into the arms of Mrs. D., who stood in the chamber of her child, where
she had retired from the angry storm below.
“I fear it, alas! he deems himself braved and insulted,” said the good
lady, weeping bitterly. “O Myra! why did we permit Whitney to write—why
consent to his coming to the neighborhood?”
“Why, why, indeed! if it is but to meet his death?” cried the poor girl,
wringing her hands. “But, mother, this can not be; my father will
relent!”
Mrs. D. shook her head. “Not where he deems his honor or authority
contemned, my poor child!”
“Oh, what can we do—what can we do?”
“His anger is so terrible—if you could but give up all thoughts of the
man; if you only could, my child.”
Myra withdrew from her mother’s arms, her slight form seemed to dilate
and nerve itself for some great effort. The tears hung unshed upon her
eyelashes, and her lips were pressed firmly together. The thoughts that
swept across her sweet face were quick and painful; she scarcely seemed
to breathe, so intense was the struggle within that motionless bosom.
“Mother,” she said, in a low and husky voice, so low that it was almost
a whisper—“mother, I will give him up. It is to save his life or the
life of your husband; I will give him up!”
While the unhappy lady stood wondering at the strange calmness with
which these words were spoken, Myra passed down-stairs once more, and
stood in her father’s presence, calm, resolute, but very sorrowful.
“Father, I love the man whom you would challenge, whom you would force
to the extremities of life or death. How dearly, how wholly I love him,
you can never believe, or this agony would have been spared me. Father,
you know of his coming; he is already on the way; thus it is out of my
power to prevent that which so offends you. Let him come; let him depart
in peace, and here I solemnly promise never to speak to him again.
Father, I give him up, but it is to save his life or yours!”
The young girl ceased speaking; the words she had uttered were
pronounced hurriedly and with firmness, but the white lips, the heavy
trouble that clouded her eyes with something more touching than tears,
revealed all the heroism of her sacrifice. You could see that to save a
human life, she had given up all that made her own life valuable. It was
strange to see so much heroism in a form so gentle and so frail; it was
strange that this beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice should prove
powerless to curb the wrathful spirit that possessed the proud man
before whom she pleaded, but his answer was relentless.
“No!” he replied. “That which I have said is immutable! If this man
comes so near my house as the next town, he shall answer for the
presumption with his life, or I will sacrifice mine!”
Myra stood for a moment looking in that frowning face, and as she gazed
her own became painfully calm.
“My father, once again—once again reflect, it is more than life that I
offer you for this!” she said, and her voice grew softer, as if tears
were swelling in its tones once more.
“That which I have said I abide by!” was the stern reply.
Myra pleaded no longer, but turned gently and left the room. In the
upper hall she met her mother.
“Does he relent—will he accept the sacrifice of your offer?” questioned
the anxious lady.
“No, mother, he refuses; he seems athirst for the life of this noble
young man; but I will save him, I will save them both.”
“How, my child? how can you, so frail and so helpless, struggle against
the strong will of your father?”
“I will leave the house. I will no longer remain where innocent and
honorable love leads to scenes like this.”
“What, leave your mother—your own fond, too fond mother? Myra, my child,
my child!”
“Hush! mother; dear, dear mother; these tears, they make me weak as an
infant. If you weep and cling to me thus, mother, my strength may fail;
and do you not know that death may follow—death to your husband or to
mine, for is he not my husband before God, do you think, sweet mother?”
But Mrs. D. only wept, and clung more fondly to her daughter. Myra
withdrew herself gently from that warm clasp, and went away. On the
morrow Mr. Whitney would be in Wilmington, and before then the young
girl had much to accomplish—much to suffer.
All that day Myra avoided the family, above all the gentle mother, whose
tears she feared far more than the anger of her proud father. She had
formed a resolution that required all her courage, and more strength
than seemed to animate that slender form. She shrunk, therefore, from
encountering the tears of that sweet and loving woman.
There was an old servant in the family, with whom Myra from her
childhood had been a sort of idol. Indeed, in all that large household
there was not a dependant who did not reverence and love the young
creature. This man, early in the afternoon, might have been seen riding
toward Wilmington at a brisk trot, and with some little anxiety in his
manner. When he reached the town the old man entered a dwelling where he
was received by two bright and joyous-looking young ladies, who greeted
him eagerly, and inquired for news of his young mistress, while the old
negro was searching in his pockets for a hastily folded billet, which
he, at length, produced with no little mysterious importance. One of the
young ladies tore open the billet, and began to read.
“Sit up for me to-night, dear girls,” thus the billet commenced, “sit
up till morning, unless I come before; you will certainly see me
during the night; then I will explain this hasty message. It may
storm; no matter, I shall surely be with you.
MYRA.”
The young ladies looked at each other, wholly at a loss to guess the
reason of this singular message, but Myra had promised to explain all,
and so they allowed the old man to depart unquestioned.
Long before the faithful messenger returned, Myra was standing in the
humble dwelling of an out-door dependent in whom she could trust.
“And you are determined, Miss Myra,” was the man’s question as he stood,
hat in hand, by the door.
“Yes; obey my directions exactly as they are given, that is all I
require of you.”
“We would do any thing—any thing on earth for you,” said the wife of
this man, coming forward; “you know we would, Miss Myra, even though it
may be our ruin should your father know that we aided you against his
will!”
“But he never can know; nothing shall tempt me to inform him, and the
secret will rest with us alone,” was the prompt reply.
“We will be punctual, never fear,” said the man; “but it looks like a
storm.”
“Well,” said Myra, casting her eyes toward the heavens, which did indeed
bear indications of a mustering tempest, “it does not matter, be ready
all the same. Remember to come by the old carriage route, not along the
new road—you might meet company there.”
“I will be cautious, dear young lady; I will be cautious as you could
wish.”
“I am sure of it,” was the mild and grateful reply; and with a beating
heart Myra went back to the house which was soon to be her home no
longer.
The relation whom we have mentioned was still at D. Place, and his wife,
with her two beautiful children, occupied a room near that appropriated
to Myra, and to this room the young girl betook herself after returning
from the visit to her humble friends. A spirit of unrest was upon her;
she longed for action, for sympathy, for some being to whom she could
pour forth the anguish which beat like a fever in every vein of her
delicate body.
Myra found her father’s guest in an easy chair near the window. She was
a quiet, tranquil woman, devoid of strong passions, but selfish in the
extreme, and possessing a sort of gentle craft that from its very want
of active spirit was calculated to deceive. She knew that discontent and
disunion were active in the dwelling, and after her usual inert manner
was waiting for some result that might prove beneficial to herself and
her children. When she saw Myra enter her room with a glow upon her
cheek, but pale as death about the mouth and temples, this woman drooped
her eyelids to conceal all expression of the joy this agitation kindled
in her bosom, but her look was tranquil, her voice was full of sympathy
as she addressed the young girl.
“You look anxious, nay, ill, my sweet friend,” she said, taking Myra’s
hand, which fell over the back of her chair.
“You know,” answered Myra, in a sad voice, “you know what has passed
to-day in this house; tell me—for much depends on your answer, and I can
hold counsel with no one else beneath this roof—tell me, do you believe
that if Mr. Whitney should arrive in Wilmington to-morrow, my father
would find him out and put his cruel threat into execution.”
“You know Mr. D. Is he not determined; did he ever swerve from a
resolution once formed?” was the mild and sinister reply.
“Then you honestly believe that he would challenge Mr. Whitney?” was the
anxious rejoinder.
“Has he not said it, Myra?”
“Then if you think so—you who always look on events so still and
passionless—I have but to go on,” said Myra, in accents that bespoke all
the grief this conviction fastened on her young heart.
“What do you mean, Myra—what is it you contemplate?” said the confidant,
with a gleam of satisfaction in her downcast eyes.
“I am going from this house to-night. Before Mr. Whitney reaches
Wilmington, I will see him and prevent this meeting.”
“You, Myra! you—what will your father say? What will the world think?”
“It is to save life!” answered Myra. “My own soul tells me that I am
right.”
The wily confidant dropped her head upon her hand, when she fell into a
moment’s thought. With all her apparent apathy, she knew well how to
excite the resolution of a generous and ardent nature like Myra’s, while
seeming to oppose it. The arguments that she used appealed entirely to
those selfish considerations which were sure to be cast away with
disdain by the young creature on whom they were urged, and Myra went out
from the interview more impressed than ever with the necessity of
putting her project into immediate operation.
The storm that had been threatening all day, came on at nightfall with
all the rush and violence of a tempest, but this scene suited well with
the excitement and wild wish for action which swelled in the young
girl’s heart, even as the elements heaved and struggled without. She sat
by the window, gazing upon the storm; the trees tossing their branches
to and fro like giants reveling in the wind; the rain sweeping downward
in wreaths and sheets of silvery water whenever the lightning glared
over it; and afar off the distant bay, heaving into sight, as it were,
from the very bosom of darkness, and sinking back again when the
lightning withdrew the sweep of its fiery wing.
Mr. D., full of unrest as the elements, was pacing the veranda—his face
was unnaturally pale in the gleams of lightning, and he paced up and
down, unconscious or heedless of the water-drifts that now and then
swept over him. Poor Myra sat watching him; the storm within her own
breast and the tempest without, imparted to her spirit a wild and
reckless courage. She stepped out on the veranda; the rain beat in her
pale face, the lightning glared across her eyes, already more than
brilliant; she met her father in his walk, and touched his arm with her
cold hand.
“Father, father! you have reflected. Oh, say that you will not provoke
Mr. Whitney into this death-strife when he comes.”
Mr. D. paused for one moment, a shade of irresolution swept across his
features, but it left them more pale, more resolute than before; he
turned away without a word of answer, and Myra disappeared.
That night, close upon the hour of twelve, two people, a man and a
woman, stood near a back entrance of Mr. D.’s dwelling. The female held
an umbrella, dripping and drenched with rain; the man stood with his ear
bent to the door, listening.
At last, amid the storm, he heard a key turn and a bolt withdrawn; then
the door swung open, and Myra appeared, wrapped in a large shawl, and
standing by a little trunk which the slender girl had dragged step by
step down the lofty staircase.
“Carry it carefully; there is neither lock nor key; it was the only one
I could reach,” she whispered, dragging her humble burden toward the
man, who swung it to his shoulders and disappeared in the darkness.
Myra drew close to the woman, and sheltered by the dripping umbrella,
followed after. A walk of some distance brought them to a carriage which
stood waiting back of the stables; the steps were down, the horses and
vehicle all drenched with rain, and furiously shaken by the wind, stood
ready to receive her. She sprang, pale and breathless, into the frail
shelter. Her faithful friend was about to mount the seat.
“One word,” said Myra, bending her white face into the storm; “the
turnpike gate—you may be known there if the man sees you. The storm
rages so fiercely he may not be aroused, but if he is, make no answer;
your voice, my good friend, would betray you, and this kindness to me
might be your ruin with my father. If this man calls, do not speak; the
gate is old, the horses good, the carriage strong; be resolute, and
drive on as if nothing were in the way. Do you understand? trample the
old gate down, and that without a word. It will open your way back
again.”
“I will drive through the gate; never fear,” was the prompt reply, and
the man sprang to his seat.
One grateful shake of the hand, a smothered “God bless you, Miss Myra,”
from the good woman who had risked so much for her, and Myra fell back
in the carriage.
The man was obliged to drive very slowly, for the night was intensely
dark, and he only kept the road by the gleams of lightning that ever and
anon flashed over it. At length they came to the turnpike gate that
stretched its sodden timbers in a dark line across the road. The tempest
was high, and every precaution was made to avoid the least noise, but
the old toll-gatherer had a well-trained and most acute ear. Just as the
driver was dismounting to try the lock of his gate, out came the old
man, half-dressed, and with a candle in his hand that flared out the
moment it felt a breath of the tempest.
“Halloa! who goes there?” shouted the old fellow.
Myra leaned from the carriage: “Not a word—use the whip—down with the
gate—but not a single word.”
A firm sweep of the whip followed—a plunge—a crash—and then over the
broken boards and through the black storm, the carriage was swept away.
Along the dark road it toiled, pelted with rain, half-overturned every
instant by a sweep of the wind, that kept rising stronger and higher,
till on every hand rose the black, gaunt shadow of many a darkened
dwelling, and in their midst a single light gleamed like a star.
“They are up—they are waiting!” exclaimed Myra, with a burst of grateful
joy, as she saw this light. “Now, my friend—my good, kind friend—you
must go no farther; even they must not see you. Stop here; set my trunk
on the walk; I will find the way myself, now!”
The man would have protested against this, but Myra was firm, and there
in that wild storm she stood till the carriage was out of sight. Then
she seized the trunk by the handle, and straining every nerve in her
delicate frame by the effort, dragged it toward a window where she saw
two fair, young, beautiful faces peering anxiously out, as if they were
searching for some loved object in the darkness.
All at once those faces disappeared, a sound of glad welcome came toward
the door, and the next instant Myra, panting with fatigue, white as
death, and drenched through and through, till the rain dripped like a
rivulet from her garments, was folded in the arms of those noble-hearted
girls.
CHAPTER VII.
Like a bird in the air,
Like a boat on the sea,
Like a fawn from its lair,
The maiden must flee.
While Myra was exchanging her drenched garments, and partaking of those
refreshments which her late and comfortless ride rendered so necessary,
she related to her young friends the cause of this sudden abandonment of
her home; and they, with all the warm enthusiasm and vivid romance of
youth, entered into her feelings and plans. There was no sleep for any
of the pretty group that night, but closeted in a little bedroom, with a
bright fire flashing and glowing over their lovely and eager faces, the
young girls plotted and held council together, sometimes laughing at the
miserable plight in which Myra had presented herself at the door;
sometimes listening with a start, as if amid the rush and pause of the
storm, they yet feared to detect the tread of some person in pursuit of
the beautiful fugitive.
“And now,” said Myra, after all had been told, “let us deliberate on the
best step. At daylight I must start for New Castle, and thence to
Baltimore in time to prevent Mr. Whitney taking the boat. He must not
approach Wilmington. Who will go with me? Where can I rest for a few
hours in secresy?”
“Who will go with you? why, father, of course,” exclaimed one of the
young girls, entering heart and soul into the interests of her friend.
“Where can you rest? Have we not a brother married and settled at New
Castle, who knows and loves you, even as we do? His wife will receive
you, and joyfully enough.”
Myra arose, her sweet face animated and sparkling with gratitude; she
threw her arms around the young girl and kissed her.
“Oh, what friends you are; how I love you,” she said, in her own frank,
joyous way, turning to the other sister and pressing her forehead with
lips that glowed with generous feeling. “It is worth while having a
little trouble, if it were only to prove such hearts as yours. I shall
never forget this night; never to my dying day.”
“Oh, it is quite like a romance, Myra,” exclaimed the younger of the
girls, shaking back her ringlets, with a light laugh. “Here we had been
for hours and hours watching at the window, with the rain beating and
pelting on the glass close to our faces, and exactly like two characters
in a novel. Then, between the flashes of lightning and the rain that
absolutely came down in sheets—I never saw any thing like it in my
life—you come toiling up to the door, like some poor little fairy shut
out in the storm—your face so wet and pale, and your eyes floating like
diamonds, and your black curls all dripping with rain. Upon my word,
Myra, there was something unearthly about it all.”
“Perhaps it was best,” said Myra, smiling at the vivid fancy of her
young friend. “Had the night been calm and every thing quiet, I should
have felt it more. The storm gave me courage. It seemed as if the very
rushing and outbreak of the elements excited a sort of heroism in my
heart. Had it been a soft moonlight evening, when I could have seen the
old trees, the flowers, and all those sweet objects that poor mamma and
I have loved to look upon so often when the moonlight was on them, I
could hardly have found strength to leave them all. Poor, poor mamma,
how she will grieve; it will be a sad morning for her.”
Myra bowed her head as she spoke, and her dark eyes filled with tears.
The young girls gazed upon her with saddened countenances. This sorrow,
so natural, so true, it was something to chill all their light ideas of
romance.
Myra still sat with her face bowed down, lost in painful thought. Her
heart was once more in its old home. She thought of the mother, the
kind, gentle woman, who had taken her, like a young bird from the parent
nest, and up to that very day had warmed her as it were with the pulses
of her own heart into life and happiness. She thought of the proud old
man, proud but full of strong affections; self-willed but generous; who
was dignified and grand even in his errors—of the old man who had loved
her so long and so well. She thought of him, too, and the tears rolled
fast and heavily down her cheeks. It was a terrible romance to her, poor
thing. Nothing but a firm sense of right could have induced her to
proceed a step further in it. She was no young heroine, but a noble,
strong-minded woman, suffering keenly, but firm because she believed
herself to be in the right. There was silence for a time, for the young
girls respected the grief of their friend, then the eldest arose and
leaning over Myra’s chair, began with gentle delicacy to smooth and
arrange the light tresses that had been so completely disordered by the
storm.
“And when you have found Mr. Whitney, Myra, when you have prevented the
meeting, how will it all end? In a wedding, and a reconciliation at the
great house, no doubt,” said the sweet girl, anxious to draw her friend
from the painful reverie into which she had fallen.
“No,” answered Myra, brushing the tears from her eyes, “I expect nothing
like a reconciliation. When I abandoned D. Place last night, it was with
no thoughts of return. I gave up every thing then.”
“Every thing but love; every thing but the man who loves you,” whispered
her friend.
“Even love—even him—I gave up all. Do you think that I have a dream of
marrying him now? That I intend to surround myself with the vulgar
_eclat_ of a ‘runaway match?’ It was to save his life that I left my
home. I will meet him on the way, warn him of my father’s hatred, and
free him of all the engagements that have existed between us.”
“And where will you go then, dear friend?”
“I have relatives in the West Indies, as I have been told, and I had
resolved to seek their protection before leaving home.”
“Then there will be no wedding after all, and we shall lose you
altogether,” cried the young girl, half in tears at the thoughts of this
abrupt separation.
“Not forever; I am sure we shall meet again,” answered Myra, casting an
anxious glance through the window, for the conversation was arousing old
feelings too keenly within her. “But it will soon be daylight.”
“I have just aroused father, and told him all; he will go with you to
New Castle,” said the younger girl, who had been absent from the room.
“The stage starts by daybreak.”
Daybreak! The gray of morning was in the sky even then. Instantly there
was a bustle of preparation in that little bedroom. Myra’s garments,
that had been drying by the fire, were hastily crowded into the trunk; a
fathom or two was cut from the bed-cord, that her ill-secured luggage
might have the best protection their means afforded, and at the
appointed time all was ready for Myra’s departure. Amid tears and
affectionate embraces Myra parted with her young friends, and before the
deep blue of night had fairly left the sky, she was on her route to New
Castle.
The stage had no passengers except Myra and her kind attendant, so in
the stillness of the morning she had nothing to distract her thoughts
from the mournful channel into which they naturally turned. The storm
had swept over the earth, leaving only freshness and beauty behind. The
trees that bent over the road were vivid with moisture, over which the
rising sun fell with sparkling and genial warmth. Every spire of grass
bent as if with the weight of a diamond at its point. The vines and
creeping shrubs that grew along the fences seemed blossoming with gems,
so thick were the water-drops among their leaves; so bright were the
sunbeams that kindled them into beauty. The atmosphere was full of cool,
rich fragrance, and every gush of air, as it swept through the ponderous
vehicle that bore Myra from her home, was delicious to breathe.
Ever and anon, as the stage followed the windings of the highway, Myra
could obtain a view of her former home; silent, stately, and refreshed,
as it were, by the night storm, it rose before her tearful eyes. The
proud old mansion, lifted on a terrace of hills above the level on which
she traveled, could be seen for miles and miles around, and thus at
every turn the noble features of all that she had given up were spread
out before her gaze as if to mock her loneliness, or with their grandeur
tempt her return.
But Myra scarcely thought of the stately old mansion. Her affectionate
heart penetrated beyond its walls; she saw, as in a vision, one pale and
gentle head asleep on its pillow, dreaming of scenes that would never be
again. It was a memory of the slumbering household abandoned in its
unconsciousness, that filled the eyes of poor Myra with tears. She felt
no regret for the noble property that she had rendered up without a
sigh. But the household links that she had broken still quivered about
her heart, and Myra, as she cast her eyes back on her stately old home,
could not choose but weep.
Our young traveler found her friends at New Castle willing to aid her,
as the generous girls in Wilmington had been. It was arranged that an
old gentleman, father of the lady whose roof had given shelter to the
young girl, should proceed with her to Baltimore, and with this most
unexceptionable escort Myra set forth. With the gentleman whose house
she had left, she intrusted a note which was to be delivered to Mr.
Whitney, should he by chance have taken passage in the boat expected in
a few hours from Baltimore.
Anxious, hurried, and half ill with excitement, Myra and her companion
reached Baltimore just in time to learn that a gentleman bearing the
name of Whitney had taken passage in a boat which had passed them on
their way.
Agitated by fresh fears, and wild with dread that the meeting between
her father and her lover might take place in spite of all her efforts,
the poor girl had no resource but to return with her companion, in the
wild hope that her note might reach Mr. Whitney at New Castle, and thus
prevent his proceeding on his route. By the return boat they reached the
home of their generous friends once more, and there to her astonishment
and dismay Myra found that a person of like name, but not the Mr.
Whitney whom she sought to preserve from periling his life, had passed
through New Castle.
It was now beyond the day appointed for her lover’s arrival, and,
without any knowledge of the time when he would pass through Baltimore,
Myra had no better means of meeting him on the way than by remaining
quietly with her friends till he should reach New Castle. The kind
clergyman, who had so kindly given his protection to the adventurous
girl, arranged that a strict watch should be kept at the landing. Thus
day after day passed by, during which poor Myra suffered all the irksome
pains of suspense, hoping, yet dreading the appearance of her lover, and
haunted with a fear that her incensed parent might find out her place of
shelter, and thus render all her efforts to prevent mischief of no
avail. But thus harassed and worn out, she had only one resource. To
wait—wait. To a nature ardent and impetuous as hers, this was a weary
trial. So long as she had any thing to do, the excitement of action kept
up her courage, but this life of inactive expectation wore upon her
nerves, and she began to droop like a bird fettered in its cage. Thus
she had lingered three days, imprisoned by her own free will, in the
solitude of her chamber, when the event which she had most feared
brought new agitation to her already overtaxed spirit. After days of
vain and anxious search her parents had found out the place of her
retreat.
It often happens that persons of strong and powerful organization become
the slaves of their own will, and act in opposition to their best
feelings and cool judgment, merely because that will has been expressed.
Pride, stern, commanding pride, such as must have been the
characteristic of a man like Mr. D., shrinks from the confession of
fallibility, which a change of purpose too surely acknowledges.
Imperious from nature and from that right of command which is so readily
yielded to the rich even in our republican country, he had expressed his
dislike and opposition to Mr. Whitney, and maintained it, not that he
believed his suspicions of unworthiness just, but because they had been
once expressed; and he, though generous, noble, affectionate, and filled
with love for his adopted child, was the slave of his own will—that
which he had said must be.
Upon the night of the storm this man had walked hours upon the veranda
in front of his house, with the thunder booming and clashing overhead,
and with the fierce lightning glaring across his pale face—and why? Not
that he did not feel his heart tremble with every roar of the thunder,
not that each blaze of lightning did not take away his breath. He was
afraid of lightning, and for that very reason chose to brave it. Even
the fear that was constitutional, that had grown and strengthened with
him from childhood must yield to his will.
After that night of storm, when the strong man had wrestled with his
better feelings as he had wrestled with his fear, to conquer both, he
awoke to find his daughter gone. Like the lightning, she had
disappeared, leaving him nothing to contend against. At first he would
not believe the truth; even the wild anguish of his wife, who had lost
her child, and refused to be comforted, seemed groundless. He would not
believe in the effect of his own violence; but when the day passed by,
when messenger after messenger returned, bearing no tidings of his
daughter, the anguish which he endured could no longer be held under
control. Strong as his pride of authority, deep and earnest as his
nature, was his love for the young girl just driven from beneath his
roof. Why had she been forced to go? Even to his own heart he could give
no answer, save that he had willed her to love according to his wishes,
and found her unable to wrestle with her affections as he had wrestled
with the lightning. And now all the injustice of this obstinate adhesion
to his own will became palpable to him, as it had long been to those who
had suffered by it. With the impulse of a heart really capable of great
magnanimity, he longed to make reparation to his child. The half of his
great possessions he would have given for the privilege of holding her
once more to his bosom, without the painful necessity of explanation.
But a sleepless night was again followed by search and disappointment.
It was strange how lonely and desolate that spacious house seemed when
Myra was away. He missed the silvery ring of her laugh as he passed from
room to room. Her empty seat at the table seemed to reproach him. He
missed her light tread at night when she no longer came like a child, as
she still was at heart, to ask for the good-night kiss. The tears and
pale sorrow of his wife distressed him more keenly even than the void
which Myra had left in that lordly dwelling. Altogether it was a
mournful family—mournful as if a funeral had just passed from its midst.
Thus day followed day, and at length the suspense, which had become
terrible to bear, was relieved: Myra’s retreat at New Castle was made
known to Mr. D.
It seems a matter of astonishment that high-minded and strong men should
so often become dupes and victims to persons every way inferior,
intellectually and morally; but when we reflect that the wise and
generous are not only incapable of the low cunning and low motives which
belong to the low of heart and mind, we can not marvel so much that they
are incapable, also, of believing in the existence of these things, and
thus from an unbelief in evil, leave themselves unguarded to the
insidious meanness they can not recognize as a portion of humanity.
We have said, that in the house of Mr. D. there was a relative and
guest, to whom the departure of Myra from her home opened hopes of
influence and ultimate gain, which were strong enough to arouse all the
cupidity of his nature. This man had, with insidious meekness,
reanimated the disquiet of the household, and with his soft words and
silky manner, poured oil on the wrath of Mr. D., when he saw it yielding
to the generous dictates of affection. He had excited the fears which
drove Myra from her home, through the soft duplicity of his wife, and
now it was his great desire to prevent an interview, or the least chance
of reconciliation between the young girl and her parents. This man had
found little difficulty in tracing Myra from the first, but his
knowledge was kept secret until he found that Mr. D. was certain to hear
of her movements from other sources; then he openly claimed the merit of
great exertions in finding out her place of shelter, and volunteered,
with the most disinterested air imaginable, his influence in persuading
the young girl to return home.
Glad to save himself the humiliation and pain of entreaties, from which
his proud nature revolted, Mr. D. was well pleased to accept the
friendly offer, and it was this man’s arrival at New Castle, that
startled Myra from the little repose she had been enabled to obtain. Mr.
D. had authorized his messenger to induce Myra’s return by gentle
persuasion, by frank and generous promises that all should be forgiven,
all forgotten. He made no stipulation, no reserve. All that he desired
was the love and confidence of his child. To this was added many an
affectionate message from the mother, whom Myra loved so fondly, and
these were more than enough to have won the warm-hearted girl back to
the bosom of her family.
Myra saw this man, and he gave Mr. D.’s message faithfully, even the
caressing words of Mrs. D. were not withheld; but when he saw tears
swell up and fill the fine eyes which Myra turned upon him as he gave
the message—when he saw a gush of passionate tenderness sweep across her
face, the man changed gradually in his manner. His eye, his downcast
look, the compression of his mouth, all told that something had been
kept back. He seemed struggling with himself and Myra saw that all was
not as it should be. The young girl had no doubt of this man’s
sincerity—she had always believed him to be her friend. How then was she
to reconcile this restless manner, this sort of caution that gleamed in
his eyes and spoke in every feature of his face, with the frank message
of which he was the bearer?
After much anxious questioning the man consented to speak, but it was
only out of the deepest and most self-sacrificing friendship to her. It
was periling the favor of Mr. D. forever, but still he would speak. He
would not urge a creature so young and lovely to rush blindfold into the
power of a man exasperated as Mr. D. was against her. True, all these
promises had been sent; but in reality, the hate of her father had only
been aggravated against Mr. Whitney by her flight. Mr. D. was implacable
as ever, and instead of receiving his child with kindness, his sole
desire was to win her by false protestations into his power again, and
then punish her with all his haughty strength.
All this was repeated with the most perfect appearance of sincerity. The
truth seemed to have been wrested from this man’s heart, only by the
solemn obligations of friendship. Myra was very grateful for this
friendly warning, and the traitor left her strengthened in her purpose,
but with an aching and desolate heart.
Not an hour after this interview, Mr. Whitney arrived at New Castle.
Various reasons for delay had kept him behind his appointment, but
Myra’s agent had been vigilant, and her note reached him as he left the
boat. He came directly to the residence of her friend, ignorant of all
that had transpired to drive Myra from the protection of her own home.
Mr. Whitney had left the young girl gay, blooming, and brilliant, with
joyous anticipations—she met him now pale and drooping, her eyes heavy
with tears, her form swayed by the weight of her grief, like the stalk
of a flower on which the dew has fallen too heavily.
“And now,” he said, when she had told him all, “there is but one course
for us to pursue, and that, thank Heaven, is one to secure our
happiness. This man is not your father, and has no legal authority over
you. I will not speak of his injustice to me—of his harshness to you—for
in former years I know that he has been kind.”
Myra’s eyes filled with grateful tears. There was something in this
gentle forbearance that touched her deeply.
“Let us be united now, Myra; no one has authority over you. I am, in all
things, independent!”
It was hard to resist that pleading voice, those eyes so full of hopeful
tenderness, but Myra drew away her hand with an air of gentle dignity,
and a painful smile parted her lips.
“No,” she said, “no; I am here of my own will, unsolicited, unexpected.
It must not be said that your wife ran away from her father’s roof only
to be married.”
The proud delicacy with which this was spoken—so earnest in its
simplicity—left no room for a doubt. Mr. Whitney did not plead with her,
though greatly disappointed; he merely took her hand, with a smile, and
said:
“But this seems like rejecting me altogether. Surely there is too much
of pride here. Would you suffer thus to save a life, and then render
that life valueless, Myra?”
The color came and went upon Myra’s pale cheek. Now that he was by her
side, her hand in his, those eyes upon her face, the poor girl felt how
impossible it was to part from him forever.
“I have friends—relatives in the West Indies,” she said; “let me go to
them. Come to me there, with the frank and full consent of your parents
to our union, and I will be your wife.”
“No, not there, not so far. In Philadelphia—let me place you under the
protection of your friends there. I will visit my parents—their presence
and full consent shall sanction our marriage. Will not this arrangement
satisfy even your delicacy, beloved?”
Again the warm rose tinge came and went on Myra’s cheek, and the tears
that still swam in her eyes grew bright as diamonds with the smile that
broke through them.
“Yes,” she said, “this is enough.”
Three hours from that time Myra and her lover were on their way to
Philadelphia, but the good clergyman and his wife went with them from
New Castle, and left their sweet charge with her friends, while Mr.
Whitney proceeded to the home of his parents.
And now, when the necessity for resistance was gone, the reaction of all
this wild excitement swept over and prostrated her. Like a plant that
keeps green so long as the frost is in its leaves, but withers and
droops with the first glow of sunshine, her strength gave way, and there
was a time when her very life seemed in jeopardy.
Thus weak and feeble, poor Myra lay upon her couch in the quiet gloom of
her sick-chamber, and shrinking from the slightest sound, with that
sensitive dread which was itself a pain, she heard a noise upon the
stairs. It seemed like the hesitating tread of a man, blended with the
eager and suppressed remonstrance of some person who desired to check
his progress. Myra began to tremble, for even this was enough to shake
every nerve of her slight frame. She lifted her pale hand, put back the
tresses from her temple, and made a faint effort to lift her head from
the pillow, but in vain.
“My child—my child refuse to see her father? I will not believe it!”
“Father! father!” broke from the lips of that pale girl, and she sank on
her pillow gasping for breath.
All was hushed then, the door opened softly, and through the gloom which
hung around her couch, Myra saw the stately form of the old man who had
so long been her father. His face was pale, and tears stood upon his
cheek, as he bent down and kissed her forehead. Myra smiled, and drawing
a deep breath closed her eyes, and then opened them with a look of
touching love.
“Father!”
“My child!”
The old man sat down with her hand in his, and began smoothing the
slender fingers with his other palm, as he had done so often in her
childhood. This little act brought a world of pleasant old memories back
to Myra’s heart, one after another, like drops of cool dew upon a
half-blighted flower. She turned gently, and placed her other hand in
the old man’s palm.
He bent down and kissed the two little hands he clasped in his.
“And mamma!” whispered Myra.
“Your mamma has been pining for her child, Myra, and I am here to take
you home again.”
“But you hate him—you—you—” The poor girl broke off with a shudder.
“No, I will like him for your sake, love!” was the kind reply.
Myra closed her eyes, and tears broke through the dark lashes.
The old man now smiled, as he saw the tremulous joy his words had
brought to that pale face.
“We will have the wedding at D. Place, and when you go away again, Myra,
it must not be without a blessing.”
“Oh, papa, I am so happy,” whispered the poor girl, drawing a deep
breath. She did not unclose her eyes again, but a sweet placidity stole
over her face, and she fell into a calm sleep, the first that had
visited her eyelids in many a long day and night.
Never had D. Place looked more beautiful than it appeared on the day
when Myra returned to it, with her happy father. The fine old building,
with all its surrounding trees, was bathed in a flood of sunshine, that
hung over the whole landscape like the mist of a bridal vail. The
servants were all out to receive their young mistress as she alighted
from the carriage; even the hunting dogs came whining and yelping from
their kennels, riotous with joy, as so many politicians the day after an
election. Myra had smiles for all; but as her eyes fell upon the gentle
mother, who had loved her so devotedly, the young girl broke away, her
cheeks glowing, her eyes full of tears, and threw herself into the arms
that were joyously opened to receive her.
“Oh, mamma, I never expected to be so happy again!” she cried, shaking
back her curls, and gazing upon the face of her mother with a look of
thrilling affection. “But you are pale, mamma!”
“No, not now; but I am very, very happy, Myra.”
“But I have only brought her home that she may leave us again,” said Mr.
D., with a frank smile, as his wife held out one hand to welcome him,
while the other still clung to her child.
“I know, I know; but that is quite a different thing,” answered the
happy mother, drawing Myra into the house.
As Myra passed up to her old room she met the household traitor, who had
so deliberately misrepresented his friend. The man held out his hand.
“No,” said Myra, drawing back with quiet contempt; “for your children’s
sake I have not exposed your baseness, but there can be no friendship
between us in future.”
“So because your father has changed, I am to be censured for
misrepresentation,” answered the man with consummate self-possession.
“But this is the usual reward of an honest endeavor to serve.”
Myra passed on, without reply.
Mr. D. was not a man to make partial atonement for an error. A prompt
and urgent request was forwarded to Mr. Whitney and his parents, that
they should make D. Place, and not Philadelphia, the destination of
their journey. Meantime every arrangement was commenced for the wedding,
and thus Myra’s path of life lay among blossoms and in the sunshine
again. It was a pleasant thing to wait then, for a world of happiness
seemed dawning for her in the future.
Mr. Whitney came at last, and with him the revered parent, whose consent
to his son’s marriage had been frankly given. After all their trials and
adventures, the young couple were to be married quietly at last under
the shelter of home, surrounded by those who knew and loved them best.
You should have seen Myra Clark as she came down the massive staircase
in her bridal dress that wedding-night. Her _petite_ figure, graceful as
a sylph, was rendered still more ethereal by the misty floating of her
bridal vail. The fragrance of a few white blossoms floated through her
ringlets, and her small foot, clad in its slipper of snowy satin,
scarcely seemed to touch the stairs as she descended.
Whitney stood by the open door ready to receive his bride. With her own
peculiar and feminine grace she met him; the glow upon her cheek took a
deeper rose-tint as she laid her small hand in his. She trembled a
little, just enough to give a flower-like tremor to the folds of her
vail, and for one instant the shadow of deep thought swept over her
face.
The bridegroom was very tall, and this gave to Myra a look still more
feminine and child-like, as she stood by his side.
“Are you ready, dearest?” he said, bending gently over her.
She gave a faint start, and lifted her large brown eyes to his with a
smile of such deep love and holy trust, as seldom looks up from a soul
merely human. That smile was answer enough. The next moment they stood
within the broad light that flooded the drawing-room. A few words—a few
murmured blessings—perchance a few tears—for the tears of affectionate
regret are sometimes the brightest jewels that can be cast at the feet
of a bride—and then Myra Clark became a wife.
CHAPTER VIII.
“Pain! pain! art thou wrestling here with man,
For the broken gold of his wasted span?
Art thou straining thy rock on his tortured nerve,
Till his firmest hopes from their anchor swerve,
Till the burning tears from his eyeballs flow,
And his manhood yields in a cry of woe?
“Death! death! do I see thee with weapon dread—
Art thou laying thy hand on his noble head?
Lo! the wife is here, with her sleepless eye,
To dispute each step of thy victory.
She doth fold that form in her soul’s embrace,
And her prayer swells high from its resting-place.”
In a quiet village of New York, Myra Whitney made her home with the man
who had won her against so much opposition and amid so many trials. She
had cast off the splendor of her old life, and, sharing the fortunes of
her husband, began a new and still more noble existence; but directly
came one to the little Eden with news that would henceforth and forever
more drive quiet away from her home.
A man who was well acquainted with the frauds that had been practiced on
the infant heiress, sought out the young bride and told her of the vast
wealth illegally withheld from her by the executors of Daniel Clark’s
estate—told her of that which stirred the proud blood in her veins more
warmly than any idea of wealth could have done—the doubt that had been
craftily thrown on her own legitimacy, and thus on the fair fame of her
mother.
From that day all hope of repose fled from her happy home. A stern duty
was before her—that of retrieving the wrongs heaped on her mother, and
of wresting the honorable name of a father, whom she worshiped even in
his memory, from the odium that had been fastened upon his actions.
Joined to all this, was the natural ambition of a high-spirited and
proud young woman to claim her true position in the world, and to endow
the man of her choice with wealth justly her own, but of which he had
been all unconscious at the time of their marriage; and now commenced
that stern strife between justice and fraud which has for more than
twenty years made the romance of our courts. With her young husband Myra
went to New Orleans, and there gathered up those threads of evidence
which laid the iniquity, which had darkened her whole life, bare before
the world. There she found Madame De Gordette, her mother, the Zulima of
our true story, and there, for the first time, she learned all the
domestic romance of her own history. The anguish that had followed her
mother, the remorse and solemn restitution that had marked the closing
hours of her father’s life.
To a being ambitious and imaginative as Myra, this interview with her
mother was calculated to make a painful and solemn impression. The one
great idea of her life became a firm resolve; to that she was ready to
sacrifice domestic peace and all those feminine aims which spring from
highly cultivated tastes. Still womanly in all her acts, she took upon
herself the research and duties of a man, not alone, but hand in hand
with the husband whose happiness and aggrandizement would be secured by
these exertions.
But the vast property of Daniel Clark had been scattered far and wide by
the men who had taken it in trust. The personal property had melted away
first, then tract after tract of land, block upon block of real estate
had followed, till the claimants, most of them innocent purchasers,
might be counted by hundreds. But the greater the obstacles that
presented themselves, the more resolute became this young creature in
the advocacy of her own just cause. All necessary evidence of the
existence of a last will and of its destruction was secured; witnesses
of Zulima’s marriage with Daniel Clark in Philadelphia still existed.
The mother herself, though shrinking from the cruel publicity of her
wrongs, gave such aid as her naturally shrinking nature, now rendered
almost timid by suffering, would permit. Men of influence, struck by the
sublime spectacle of a fair young creature, with scarcely the physical
strength of a child, entering courageously on a battle where such
fearful odds prevailed against her, came generously to her support. The
great fight of her life opened hopefully; victory might be distant, but
she would not doubt that it would come at last.
But in the midst of her first struggle she had forgotten to be prudent,
indeed precaution was scarcely natural to that early period of her life.
By adoption she had become a child of the North, but the warm genial
glow of her blood still sympathized with the sunny climate to which she
had moved, fearlessly, with her little children at the most dangerous
season of the year.
But her husband was a northern man by birth, and he did not assimilate
readily to the hot, moist climate of New Orleans. The excitement into
which he was thrown doubtless added to the causes which oppressed him;
in the midst of his struggles, in the full bloom and force of his manly
youth, Whitney was stricken down among the first victims that the yellow
fever seized upon that year.
They were living at an hotel in the heart of the city, with no home
comforts around them, and surrounded by a crowd of enemies—such as
spring from hotly-contested law-suits where many persons are interested
in the defence. To all those persons who had in any way attained a claim
on the property of Daniel Clark, his daughter was, of course, held as an
aggressive enemy,—a woman who had come with her ambition and her
doubtful claims to disturb the tranquillity of a great city. Many of
these persons, having bought the property they possessed in good faith,
really felt her action to be a great wrong—they had no means of knowing
the facts of a case over which so many legal minds have struggled, and
naturally sided with their own visible interests against the fair
claimant. Thus the yellow fever that struck her husband down in a single
hour, found Myra in the midst of enemies such as few women have ever
encountered.
All day Myra had been lonely and sad, her children felt the heavy
effects of the climate, and her own bright energies seemed yielding
themselves to the enervating influences that surrounded them. Sometimes
in the great struggle that she had commenced so bravely, Myra felt the
painful reaction which springs from a long strain upon the energies.
That day she had been thinking of her pretty home in the North, of its
quietude, its cool thickets, and the great forest-trees that
overshadowed it. Near the house was a spring of water—one of those
natural outgushes of crystal waves which children love to play near, and
whose flow is remembered as the sweetest music in the world afterward.
In the heat and closeness of her room, Myra’s thoughts had been
constantly going back to this spring. The children also had prattled
about it between themselves, and once had joined in a pretty petition to
the languid mother that they might go back again and play out-of-doors.
Myra felt the tears come to her eyes as she answered them; there was no
real cause for this depression, but it had fallen heavily upon her all
day; she felt like snatching up her little ones and fleeing with them to
the northward, where they might all breathe and laugh freely.
While the young wife was in this strange mood, the door opened and her
husband came in. She glanced up in his face smiling a welcome, but his
eyes were heavy, and a hot crimson burning on either cheek startled her.
She put the children aside, and seizing his hand gave another terrified
look in his face. He tried to smile, but instantly lifted a hand to his
forehead and groaned aloud.
“What is this, my husband—are you ill, or have you been walking in the
hot sun?”
He withdrew his hot hand from her clasp, and sharply ordered the
children back as they came laughing toward him. The little ones began to
cry, but Myra would not be repulsed, she was no child to shrink away
from a sharp word, though it was the first she had ever known him give
her darlings.
“Ah! now I am sure you must be ill,” she said, hushing the children;
“who ever saw you cross before, my Whitney, above all things, to them?”
“They must not come near me—send them away, and go yourself,” he said,
huskily.
“What! I—I go away?” cried the young wife, with a groan of indignation
breaking up through her terror; “what can you think of me, Whitney?”
“For their sake—for your own, Myra,” he said, pushing her away;
“child—child, it is the fever that is upon me.”
She looked at him eagerly, almost wildly; her pale lips fell apart and
her cheek grew cold as snow.
“Take the children away,” she said, motioning backward with her hand to
a mulatto girl who stood looking on. “Take them quite away into your own
room, Agnes, and be still.”
The little ones went reluctantly and with tears standing in their wild
eyes. It was so strange for them to be sent away when papa came in—then
he looked so odd and stood so unsteadily on the floor, besides mamma was
beginning to cry—they would go back and ask her what it was all about.
But no, the firm little maid held them tight and forced them,
struggling, through the door. She knew what those symptoms foreboded,
and a sudden dread seized upon her. Yes, she would save the little
ones—that was all she could hope for—and away she dragged them into her
own little room which was distant from the infected chamber.
Myra forgot her children, forgot every thing in the frightful symptoms
that burned on her husband’s face, and shot fire into the hands she
clasped and wrung in her own.
“O husband! my husband, it is not that—not the fever, God help us! You
have been in the heat—you are tired out; a glass of ice-water and a
little rest will drive this headache away.”
“Oh, it is terrible, Myra, my temples seem splitting with the pain,” he
murmured, holding his head between both hands and reeling to and fro.
“But it is the heat—it is the heat!” she persisted, determined to
believe herself.
“It is death!—O Myra! I fear it is death!”
She began to tremble in all her limbs, a wild terror broke into her
brown eyes, giving them an unearthly brightness.
“Oh, don’t—don’t! the bare idea kills me,” she pleaded, flinging her
arms around him.
He struggled and tried to force her away, but the fire of disease and
the power of her great love was stronger than his confused will. She
drew him toward the bed and forced him down to the pillows, praying him
to be quiet and to try and sleep.
While he lay moaning on the pillows, she ran for ice-water and gave it
to his hot lips, bound his forehead with wet napkins, and strove, in her
sweet feminine way, to assuage the pain which had seized so fiercely
upon him. To have seen that slight creature acting as a nurse to the
being she most loved, you would hardly have believed it possible that
she possessed sufficient energy to take a controlling lead in one of the
most important law-cases that ever astonished our country—that she had
breasted difficulties and outlived discouragements, before which strong
men might have retreated, without a forfeiture of courage. In that
sick-room she was gentle as childhood, but quick as lightning to seize
upon any means of mitigating the pain that held that young man as in the
embrace of a fiend.
Hour after hour she watched in that sick-chamber. The doctor came,
ordered the usual remedies, and went away again, with a heart that felt
little and a face that told nothing at all. His course of practice was
unvaried—the same medicines in almost every case—copious bleeding—vague,
wild hopes in the loving hearts that ached around the bed—then the last
fatal symptom and death—thus it went day after day.
Poor Myra! how she searched that man’s leaden eyes for some little gleam
of hope when he came into that sick-chamber! how eagerly she strove to
read features that never changed to a thought or a feeling, even when
death stood close by! Still she would not despair; had not every
obstacle given way to the force of her own will so far in her life,—was
she to be baffled and conquered now? To her warm heart it seemed
impossible that death could strike a form so full of manly strength, or
that she could live an hour after him if the great calamity did come.
Alas! with all her experience and force, Myra was yet to learn how
difficult it is for a human heart to break of grief, or exhaust itself
with trouble. If a wish to die could induce the dark destroyer to
strike, many a breathing—nay, blooming form would be lying low, which is
now doomed to run its course to the end.
One day, it was less than a week after the first attack, Myra was called
to the bedside of her husband. A great and terrible change had come upon
that splendid form; the flesh had seemed to melt away from his limbs
like mist from the uplands; his eyes were hollow; the skin upon his
forehead a yellowish brown.
“Myra, my poor wife.”
She bent down and kissed the fever-stained forehead.
“My husband! you are better; there, the brightness is coming back to
your eyes.”
“No, Myra, no; I feel strangely but not better.”
A movement of impotent sorrow revealed the struggle with which the poor
woman strove to disprove this truth to her heart.
“Don’t say that—you don’t understand; wait till the doctor comes, he
will tell you that I am right.”
The sick man moved his hand feebly on the pillow, and a moan broke from
his lips.
Just then the doctor came in from his rounds in the infested city. The
young wife appealed to him, with her mournful eyes trembling with an
awful dread as his fingers touched the pulse.
“O doctor! is he better?”
“Yes, undoubtedly.”
Myra burst into tears; the invalid brightened a little, then turned his
face on the pillow, and great tears rolled down his cheeks.
“No, doctor,” he murmured, “no!”
“It is my opinion we have every thing to hope here, madam. Let us take a
little more blood, and all will go on well.”
Bandages were brought; the sharp lancet bit its way a third time into
those hot veins, and directly a servant bore out a great white
toilet-bowl frothing over with the red life drawn from a frame already
exhausted with its battle against the fever.
“There, madam,” said the doctor, laying the wounded arm of his patient
tenderly on the counterpane. “He will do well now, have no fear; I will
drop in this evening; follow the old directions and keep him quiet.”
“O doctor! I can not speak my thankfulness, my heart is so full.”
“There is no necessity of words,” said the doctor, complacently; “or for
gratitude either, so far as I am concerned.”
Myra followed the man, whom she looked upon as something more than
human, into the hall.
“Ah, doctor, are you sure that he is better—it was not done to cheer him
up?” she cried, while her poor lips began to quiver with the fear that
crept over her.
“Nothing of the sort, dear lady. He is doing well enough; but take care
of yourself.”
Myra smiled on him through her tears. “God bless you for this comfort,”
she said, leaning over the baluster.
After he was gone, Myra ran into the room where her children were kept
safe from contagion, and gathering them to her bosom, lavished rapturous
caresses on their smiling faces.
“He is better—he is better, my darlings; he, your blessed, blessed papa.
Kiss me a thousand times, and when I am gone go down on your knees so,
with these angel faces lifted to heaven, and thank God—do you
understand, children?—thank God, that papa is better and will live.”
The children obeyed her, and dropping on their knees, lifted their
pretty faces heavenward, like the cherubs we see in Raphael’s pictures,
looking the prayers they had no language to utter.
Then Myra, having subdued her great joy, went back to the sick-room
again. How still and deathly he lay under the white cloud of sunshine
that brooded over the bed! Myra held her breath, and listened for some
sign of improvement. His eyes were closed, and his lips shrunk together
and closed motionless in their golden pallor. How the heart of that fond
woman cheated itself. His languid stillness was a good sign to her.
“Yes,” she whispered, sitting down by the bed, and softly clasping his
feeble hand. “There is no pain now; he rests sweetly.”
He heard her and clasped her fingers with feeble recognition, but did
not speak or attempt to utter a word. Still the great tears rolled down
his face, and she knew he was conscious.
Thus two or three hours passed and then the fever grew rampant again,
and fell upon that weak form like a vampyre, drinking up all the life
that the lancet had left. Myra began to be frightened, and hoped
impatiently for the doctor to come. There was something in the case that
she could not understand; doubtless, it was all right, but the look of
that haggard face was appalling.
At last the physician came slowly, and with that slow method which is so
irksome to an impatient heart. He came to the bed, felt of the patient’s
pulse, laid the hand gently down, and turned away muttering that she
might go on as before, there were no fresh directions to give.
Now the patient opened his eyes, and fixed them with mournful reproach
on the doctor’s face; he did not attempt to speak, but the great tears
gathered slowly in his eyes, and the dark lashes closed again.
As usual Myra followed the doctor out of the room.
“Tell me,” she said; “he is no worse—he is getting well; there is no
danger now.”
The doctor drew on his glove, smoothing it to the hand, while she was
speaking.
“There is no hope, my dear madam; not a gleam. He must die before
morning; did you not observe the black on his lips.”
“Die before morning—my husband. Oh, no! you want to see if I have all
the courage people talk about; but you see, doctor, I am a poor little
coward. One does not fight with death. Don’t you see how I tremble?
Don’t, don’t carry this any further. I’m not very strong, and—and—oh, my
God! my God! why don’t you speak to me?”
“Indeed, my poor lady, I have nothing more to say; it would give me
great satisfaction to give you hope if I had any myself. But the last
fatal symptom has come, no skill on earth can save him; it is but a
question of time now—hardly that, in fact.”
The doctor was going down-stairs as he spoke, for he would gladly have
avoided the anguish that came like a storm into that white face, but
Myra sprang after him, seizing hold of his arm.
“O doctor! O doctor!” she cried, gasping for breath; “is this true?”
“Indeed, I regret to say it, but nothing could be more certain.”
Her hand dropped from his arm, her whole being grew cold till the icy
chill penetrated to her heart. She watched him, as he glided down the
stairs, with a strained and wild look. Then she turned and went into the
chamber where her husband lay dying.
When Myra came forth again she was a widow. In one of those cemeteries
hemmed in by moss-grown walls and filled with gloomy verdure, they laid
the young husband down to his long rest. A pale little woman with two
fair children wondering at their black crape dresses, stood by silent
and filled with a dreary wonder that it took so little time to render a
human life desolate. There was no noisy grief in that solemn inclosure;
the little children held their breath in vague awe. The mother looked on
as if those strange men were burying her heart which she could never
rescue back from the grave.
Years went by—life made its inevitable claims, and the great battle of
the law went on, which Myra fought out in behalf of the parents who were
dead and the children of her husband. In the course of this struggle, a
brave old man, one who had served his country well and stood at the head
of its armies, laid his heart and his well-earned fame at Myra’s feet,
and she became his wife. A few years and he, in the very city which had
proved so fatal to her first love, lay down amid his ripe honors, and
died, blessing her with his last word on earth. And now she
still—indomitable still—untiring fights the great battle alone, and
another year will prove that the life-struggle of Myra Clark Gaines has
not been without its victory, and that energy, even in a delicate woman,
can at last overtake justice.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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