DOLORES
Mr. Sewell's letter ran as follows:--
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,--It has always been my intention when you arrived
at years of maturity to acquaint you with some circumstances which have
given me reason to conjecture your true parentage, and to let you know
what steps I have taken to satisfy my own mind in relation to these
conjectures. In order to do this, it will be necessary for me to go back
to the earlier years of my life, and give you the history of some
incidents which are known to none of my most intimate friends. I trust I
may rely on your honor that they will ever remain as secrets with you.
I graduated from Harvard University in ----. At the time I was suffering
somewhat from an affection of the lungs, which occasioned great alarm to
my mother, many of whose family had died of consumption. In order to
allay her uneasiness, and also for the purpose of raising funds for the
pursuit of my professional studies, I accepted a position as tutor in
the family of a wealthy gentleman at St. Augustine, in Florida.
I cannot do justice to myself,--to the motives which actuated me in the
events which took place in this family, without speaking with the most
undisguised freedom of the character of all the parties with whom I was
connected.
Don Jose Mendoza was a Spanish gentleman of large property, who had
emigrated from the Spanish West Indies to Florida, bringing with him an
only daughter, who had been left an orphan by the death of her mother
at a very early age. He brought to this country a large number of
slaves;--and shortly after his arrival, married an American lady: a
widow with three children. By her he had four other children. And thus
it will appear that the family was made up of such a variety of elements
as only the most judicious care could harmonize. But the character of
the father and mother was such that judicious care was a thing not to be
expected of either.
Don Jose was extremely ignorant and proud, and had lived a life of the
grossest dissipation. Habits of absolute authority in the midst of a
community of a very low moral standard had produced in him all the worst
vices of despots. He was cruel, overbearing, and dreadfully passionate.
His wife was a woman who had pretensions to beauty, and at times could
make herself agreeable, and even fascinating, but she was possessed of a
temper quite as violent and ungoverned as his own.
Imagine now two classes of slaves, the one belonging to the mistress,
and the other brought into the country by the master, and each animated
by a party spirit and jealousy;--imagine children of different
marriages, inheriting from their parents violent tempers and stubborn
wills, flattered and fawned on by slaves, and alternately petted or
stormed at, now by this parent and now by that, and you will have some
idea of the task which I undertook in being tutor in this family.
I was young and fearless in those days, as you are now, and the
difficulties of the position, instead of exciting apprehension, only
awakened the spirit of enterprise and adventure.
The whole arrangements of the household, to me fresh from the simplicity
and order of New England, had a singular and wild sort of novelty which
was attractive rather than otherwise. I was well recommended in the
family by an influential and wealthy gentleman of Boston, who
represented my family, as indeed it was, as among the oldest and most
respectable of Boston, and spoke in such terms of me, personally, as I
should not have ventured to use in relation to myself. When I arrived, I
found that two or three tutors, who had endeavored to bear rule in this
tempestuous family, had thrown up the command after a short trial, and
that the parents felt some little apprehension of not being able to
secure the services of another,--a circumstance which I did not fail to
improve in making my preliminary arrangements. I assumed an air of grave
hauteur, was very exacting in all my requisitions and stipulations, and
would give no promise of doing more than to give the situation a
temporary trial. I put on an air of supreme indifference as to my
continuance, and acted in fact rather on the assumption that I should
confer a favor by remaining.
In this way I succeeded in obtaining at the outset a position of more
respect and deference than had been enjoyed by any of my predecessors. I
had a fine apartment, a servant exclusively devoted to me, a horse for
riding, and saw myself treated among the servants as a person of
consideration and distinction.
Don Jose and his wife both had in fact a very strong desire to retain my
services, when after the trial of a week or two, it was found that I
really could make their discordant and turbulent children to some extent
obedient and studious during certain portions of the day; and in fact I
soon acquired in the whole family that ascendancy which a well-bred
person who respects himself, and can keep his temper, must have over
passionate and undisciplined natures.
I became the receptacle of the complaints of all, and a sort of
confidential adviser. Don Jose imparted to me with more frankness than
good taste his chagrins with regard to his wife's indolence,
ill-temper, and bad management, and his wife in turn omitted no
opportunity to vent complaints against her husband for similar reasons.
I endeavored, to the best of my ability, to act a friendly part by both.
It never was in my nature to see anything that needed to be done without
trying to do it, and it was impossible to work at all without becoming
so interested in my work as to do far more than I had agreed to do. I
assisted Don Jose about many of his affairs; brought his neglected
accounts into order; and suggested from time to time arrangements which
relieved the difficulties which had been brought on by disorder and
neglect. In fact, I became, as he said, quite a necessary of life to
him.
In regard to the children, I had a more difficult task. The children of
Don Jose by his present wife had been systematically stimulated by the
negroes into a chronic habit of dislike and jealousy toward her children
by a former husband. On the slightest pretext, they were constantly
running to their father with complaints; and as the mother warmly
espoused the cause of her first children, criminations and
recriminations often convulsed the whole family.
In ill-regulated families in that region, the care of the children is
from the first in the hands of half-barbarized negroes, whose power of
moulding and assimilating childish minds is peculiar, so that the
teacher has to contend constantly with a savage element in the children
which seems to have been drawn in with the mother's milk. It is, in a
modified way, something the same result as if the child had formed its
manners in Dahomey or on the coast of Guinea. In the fierce quarrels
which were carried on between the children of this family, I had
frequent occasion to observe this strange, savage element, which
sometimes led to expressions and actions which would seem incredible in
civilized society.
The three children by Madame Mendoza's former husband were two girls of
sixteen and eighteen and a boy of fourteen. The four children of the
second marriage consisted of three boys and a daughter,--the eldest
being not more than thirteen.
The natural capacity of all the children was good, although, from
self-will and indolence, they had grown up in a degree of ignorance
which could not have been tolerated except in a family living an
isolated plantation life in the midst of barbarized dependents. Savage
and untaught and passionate as they were, the work of teaching them was
not without its interest to me. A power of control was with me a natural
gift; and then that command of temper which is the common attribute of
well-trained persons in the Northern states, was something so singular
in this family as to invest its possessor with a certain awe; and my
calm, energetic voice, and determined manner, often acted as a charm on
their stormy natures.
But there was one member of the family of whom I have not yet
spoken,--and yet all this letter is about her,--the daughter of Don Jose
by his first marriage. Poor Dolores! poor child! God grant she may have
entered into his rest!
I need not describe her. You have seen her picture. And in the wild,
rude, discordant family, she always reminded me of the words, "a lily
among thorns." She was in her nature unlike all the rest, and, I may
say, unlike any one I ever saw. She seemed to live a lonely kind of life
in this disorderly household, often marked out as the object of the
spites and petty tyrannies of both parties. She was regarded with bitter
hatred and jealousy by Madame Mendoza, who was sure to visit her with
unsparing bitterness and cruelty after the occasional demonstrations of
fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite beauty and the
gentle softness of her manners made her such a contrast to her sisters
as constantly excited their ill-will. Unlike them all, she was
fastidiously neat in her personal habits, and orderly in all the little
arrangements of life.
She seemed to me in this family to be like some shy, beautiful pet
creature in the hands of rude, unappreciated owners, hunted from quarter
to quarter, and finding rest only by stealth. Yet she seemed to have no
perception of the harshness and cruelty with which she was treated. She
had grown up with it; it was the habit of her life to study peaceable
methods of averting or avoiding the various inconveniences and
annoyances of her lot, and secure to herself a little quiet.
It not unfrequently happened, amid the cabals and storms which shook the
family, that one party or the other took up and patronized Dolores for a
while, more, as it would appear, out of hatred for the other than any
real love to her. At such times it was really affecting to see with what
warmth the poor child would receive these equivocal demonstrations of
good-will--the nearest approaches to affection which she had ever
known--and the bitterness with which she would mourn when they were
capriciously withdrawn again. With a heart full of affection, she
reminded me of some delicate, climbing plant trying vainly to ascend the
slippery side of an inhospitable wall, and throwing its neglected
tendrils around every weed for support.
Her only fast, unfailing friend was her old negro nurse, or Mammy, as
the children called her. This old creature, with the cunning and
subtlety which had grown up from years of servitude, watched and waited
upon the interests of her little mistress, and contrived to carry many
points for her in the confused household. Her young mistress was her one
thought and purpose in living. She would have gone through fire and
water to serve her; and this faithful, devoted heart, blind and
ignorant though it were, was the only unfailing refuge and solace of the
poor hunted child.
Dolores, of course, became my pupil among the rest. Like the others, she
had suffered by the neglect and interruptions in the education of the
family, but she was intelligent and docile, and learned with a
surprising rapidity. It was not astonishing that she should soon have
formed an enthusiastic attachment to me, as I was the only intelligent,
cultivated person she had ever seen, and treated her with unvarying
consideration and delicacy. The poor thing had been so accustomed to
barbarous words and manners that simple politeness and the usages of
good society seemed to her cause for the most boundless gratitude.
It is due to myself, in view of what follows, to say that I was from the
first aware of the very obvious danger which lay in my path in finding
myself brought into close and daily relations with a young creature so
confiding, so attractive, and so singularly circumstanced. I knew that
it would be in the highest degree dishonorable to make the slightest
advances toward gaining from her that kind of affection which might
interfere with her happiness in such future relations as her father
might arrange for her. According to the European fashion, I know that
Dolores was in her father's hands, to be disposed of for life according
to his pleasure, as absolutely as if she had been one of his slaves. I
had every reason to think that his plans on this subject were matured,
and only waited for a little more teaching and training on my part, and
her fuller development in womanhood, to be announced to her.
In looking back over the past, therefore, I have not to reproach myself
with any dishonest and dishonorable breach of trust; for I was from the
first upon my guard, and so much so that even the jealousy my other
scholars never accused me of partiality. I was not in the habit of
giving very warm praise, and was in my general management anxious
rather to be just than conciliatory, knowing that with the kind of
spirits I had to deal with, firmness and justice went farther than
anything else. If I approved Dolores oftener than the rest, it was seen
to be because she never failed in a duty; if I spent more time with her
lessons, it was because her enthusiasm for study led her to learn longer
ones and study more things; but I am sure there was never a look or a
word toward her that went beyond the proprieties of my position.
But yet I could not so well guard my heart. I was young and full of
feeling. She was beautiful; and more than that, there was something in
her Spanish nature at once so warm and simple, so artless and yet so
unconsciously poetic, that her presence was a continual charm. How well
I remember her now,--all her little ways,--the movements of her pretty
little hands,--the expression of her changeful face as she recited to
me,--the grave, rapt earnestness with which she listened to all my
instructions!
I had not been with her many weeks before I felt conscious that it was
her presence that charmed the whole house, and made the otherwise
perplexing and distasteful details of my situation agreeable. I had a
dim perception that this growing passion was a dangerous thing for
myself; but was it a reason, I asked, why I should relinquish a position
in which I felt that I was useful, and when I could do for this lovely
child what no one else could do? I call her a child,--she always
impressed me as such,--though she was in her sixteenth year and had the
early womanly development of Southern climates. She seemed to me like
something frail and precious, needing to be guarded and cared for; and
when reason told me that I risked my own happiness in holding my
position, love argued on the other hand that I was her only friend, and
that I should be willing to risk something myself for the sake of
protecting and shielding her. For there was no doubt that my presence in
the family was a restraint upon the passions which formerly vented
themselves so recklessly on her, and established a sort of order in
which she found more peace than she had ever known before.
For a long time in our intercourse I was in the habit of looking on
myself as the only party in danger. It did not occur to me that this
heart, so beautiful and so lonely, might, in the want of all natural and
appropriate objects of attachment, fasten itself on me unsolicited, from
the mere necessity of loving. She seemed to me so much too beautiful,
too perfect, to belong to a lot in life like mine, that I could not
suppose it possible this could occur without the most blameworthy
solicitation on my part; and it is the saddest and most affecting proof
to me how this poor child had been starved for sympathy and love, that
she should have repaid such cold services as mine with such an entire
devotion. At first her feelings were expressed openly toward me, with
the dutiful air of a good child. She placed flowers on my desk in the
morning, and made quaint little nosegays in the Spanish fashion, which
she gave me, and busied her leisure with various ingenious little
knick-knacks of fancy work, which she brought me. I treated them all as
the offerings of a child while with her, but I kept them sacredly in my
own room. To tell the truth, I have some of the poor little things now.
But after a while I could not help seeing how she loved me; and then I
felt as if I ought to go; but how could I? The pain to myself I could
have borne; but how could I leave her to all the misery of her bleak,
ungenial position? She, poor thing, was so unconscious of what I
knew,--for I was made clear-sighted by love. I tried the more strictly
to keep to the path I had marked out for myself, but I fear I did not
always do it; in fact, many things seemed to conspire to throw us
together. The sisters, who were sometimes invited out to visit on
neighboring estates, were glad enough to dispense with the presence and
attractions of Dolores, and so she was frequently left at home to study
with me in their absence. As to Don Jose, although he always treated me
with civility, yet he had such an ingrained and deep-rooted idea of his
own superiority of position, that I suppose he would as soon have
imagined the possibility of his daughter's falling in love with one of
his horses. I was a great convenience to him. I had a knack of governing
and carrying points in his family that it had always troubled and
fatigued him to endeavor to arrange,--and that was all. So that my
intercourse with Dolores was as free and unwatched, and gave me as many
opportunities of enjoying her undisturbed society, as heart could
desire.
At last came the crisis, however. After breakfast one morning, Don Jose
called Dolores into his library and announced to her that he had
concluded for her a treaty of marriage, and expected her husband to
arrive in a few days. He expected that this news would be received by
her with the glee with which a young girl hears of a new dress or of a
ball-ticket, and was quite confounded at the grave and mournful silence
in which she received it. She said no word, made no opposition, but went
out from the room and shut herself up in her own apartment, and spent
the day in tears and sobs.
Don Jose, who had rather a greater regard for Dolores than for any
creature living, and who had confidently expected to give great delight
by the news he had imparted, was quite confounded by this turn of
things. If there had been one word of either expostulation or argument,
he would have blazed and stormed in a fury of passion; but as it was,
this broken-hearted submission, though vexatious, was perplexing. He
sent for me, and opened his mind, and begged me to talk with Dolores
and show her the advantages of the alliance, which the poor foolish
child, he said, did not seem to comprehend. The man was immensely rich,
and had a splendid estate in Cuba. It was a most desirable thing.
I ventured to inquire whether his person and manners were such as would
be pleasing to a young girl, and could gather only that he was a man of
about fifty, who had been most of his life in the military service, and
was now desirous of making an establishment for the repose of his latter
days, at the head of which he would place a handsome and tractable
woman, and do well by her.
I represented that it would perhaps be safer to say no more on the
subject until Dolores had seen him, and to this he agreed. Madame
Mendoza was very zealous in the affair, for the sake of getting clear of
the presence of Dolores in the family, and her sisters laughed at her
for her dejected appearance. They only wished, they said, that so much
luck might happen to them. For myself, I endeavored to take as little
notice as possible of the affair, though what I felt may be conjectured.
I knew,--I was perfectly certain,--that Dolores loved me as I loved her.
I knew that she had one of those simple and unworldly natures which
wealth and splendor could not satisfy, and whose life would lie entirely
in her affections. Sometimes I violently debated with myself whether
honor required me to sacrifice her happiness as well as my own, and I
felt the strongest temptation to ask her to be my wife and fly with me
to the Northern states, where I did not doubt my ability to make for her
a humble and happy home.
But the sense of honor is often stronger than all reasoning, and I felt
that such a course would be the betrayal of a trust; and I determined at
least to command myself till I should see the character of the man who
was destined to be her husband.
Meanwhile the whole manner of Dolores was changed. She maintained a
stony, gloomy silence, performed all her duties in a listless way, and
occasionally, when I commented on anything in her lessons or exercises,
would break into little flashes of petulance, most strange and unnatural
in her. Sometimes I could feel that she was looking at me earnestly, but
if I turned my eyes toward her, hers were instantly averted; but there
was in her eyes a peculiar expression at times, such as I have seen in
the eye of a hunted animal when it turned at bay,--a sort of desperate
resistance,--which, taken in connection with her fragile form and lovely
face, produced a mournful impression.
One morning I found Dolores sitting alone in the schoolroom, leaning her
head on her arms. She had on her wrist a bracelet of peculiar
workmanship, which she always wore,--the bracelet which was afterwards
the means of confirming her identity. She sat thus some moments in
silence, and then she raised her head and began turning this bracelet
round and round upon her arm, while she looked fixedly before her. At
last she spoke abruptly, and said,--
"Did I ever tell you that this was _my mother's_ hair? It is my mother's
hair,--and she was the only one that ever loved me; except poor old
Mammy, nobody else loves me,--nobody ever will."
"My dear Miss Dolores," I began.
"Don't call me dear," she said; "you don't care for me,--nobody
does,--papa doesn't, and I always loved him; everybody in the house
wants to get rid of me, whether I like to go or not. I have always tried
to be good and do all you wanted, and I should think _you_ might care
for me a little, but you don't."
"Dolores," I said, "I do care for you more than I do for any one in the
world; I love you more than my own soul."
These were the very words I never meant to say, but somehow they seemed
to utter themselves against my will. She looked at me for a moment as if
she could not believe her hearing, and then the blood flushed her face,
and she laid her head down on her arms.
At this moment Madame Mendoza and the other girls came into the room in
a clamor of admiration about a diamond bracelet which had just arrived
as a present from her future husband. It was a splendid thing, and had
for its clasp his miniature, surrounded by the largest brilliants.
The enthusiasm of the party even at this moment could not say anything
in favor of the beauty of this miniature, which, though painted on
ivory, gave the impression of a coarse-featured man, with a scar across
one eye.
"No matter for the beauty," said one of the girls, "so long as it is set
with such diamonds."
"Come, Dolores," said another, giving her the present, "pull off that
old hair bracelet, and try this on."
Dolores threw the diamond bracelet from her with a vehemence so unlike
her gentle self as to startle every one.
"I shall not take off my mother's bracelet for a gift from a man I never
knew," she said. "I hate diamonds. I wish those who like such things
might have them."
"Was ever anything so odd?" said Madame Mendoza.
"Dolores always was odd," said another of the girls; "nobody ever could
tell what she would like."