MY STRANGE ACQUAINTANCE.
I still possessed Jupiter, my beautiful black pony, and frequently rode
him to the parsonage, taking a canter over the park before returning
home. Greenhurst remained unoccupied, except by a servant or two, and my
freedom in this respect was unchecked, because Turner supposed it to be
without danger of any kind.
One day—I think this was a month after I entered upon my twelfth year—I
took a fine free gallop toward a portion of the park which has been
mentioned as commanding a view of Marston Court.
I checked my pony on a ridge of upland, and was looking toward this
house which, from the first, had contained a mysterious interest to me,
when a man came suddenly from behind a clump of trees at my right, and
walking up to Jupiter, threw his arm over the animal’s neck.
I was not terrified, but this abrupt movement filled me with surprise,
and, without speaking a word, I bent my gaze searchingly on his face and
figure.
He was a man of middle age, spare and muscular, of swarthy complexion,
and with eyes so black and burning in their glance, that mine sunk under
them as if they had come in sudden contact with fire.
“What is your name?” he said, still keeping those fierce eyes on my
face.
“Take your arm off Jupiter’s neck,” I answered, “he is not used to
strangers.”
He laughed, revealing a row of firm, white teeth, that gave a ferocious
expression to his whole countenance.
“I am almost answered,” he said, with a low chuckle, “the blood spoke
out there!”
His language was broken, and his appearance strange. I was sure that he
came from foreign parts, and looked at him with curiosity unmixed with
fear.
“Take your arm away,” I repeated, angrily, “you shall not hurt my
horse!”
He removed his arm with another laugh, and then said, in a tone that
gave me a sensation nearer affright than I had yet known—
“Well, my little queen, I have taken my arm away; now tell me your
name.”
“Why do you wish to know it?” I demanded.
“Perhaps I have a reason—perhaps not—only tell me, if it is no secret.”
“My name is Zana,” I answered, reddening, for somehow the subject had
become painful to me.
“In England, people have two names,” he replied.
“But I have only one.”
“And that is Zana—nothing more, ha?”
“I have told you.”
“That should be enough,” he muttered, “but it is well to be certain.
Where do you live?” he added.
“Down yonder,” I replied, pointing with my whip in the direction of my
home.
“In a stone house, cut up with galleries, notched with balconies, buried
in trees and smothered in flowers?” he demanded.
“That is my home,” I replied, astonished at the accuracy of his
description.
“And how long have you lived there?”
“I do not know why you ask, but it is no secret. I have lived there six
years.”
“That is, since about the time that Lady Clare died,” he observed, as if
making a calculation.
“I believe it is,” was my answer.
He hesitated a moment, and then said, in a courteous voice,
“Who is your father?”
I had learned to blush at my incapacity to answer this question, and
when it was thus abruptly put, the temper burned in my cheek. Rising up
haughtily in my stirrup, I gave the bridle an abrupt pull, and poor
Jupiter a lash that set him off like an arrow. He almost knocked the man
down. I looked back to learn if he was harmed. He called after me in a
language that I had never heard spoken before, at least that I could
remember, but I understood it. The man was showering curses upon me or
my horse.
After the appearance of this singular man, the monotony of my life broke
up. I became restless and self-centred, speaking of his presence in the
park to no one, but thinking of it with continued wonder. Some
mysterious sympathy, wild and painful, but oh, how intense, drew me
toward this strange being. I feared, yet longed for his presence—longed
to hear again that language at once so strange and so familiar, that had
fallen as yet only in curses on my ear, but still carrying a fierce sort
of fascination with it.
I rode to the portion of the park where I had seen him, again and again,
and sitting on my pony, searched every dingle and group of trees,
expecting each moment to see him start, brigand-like, from the leafy
gloom. But he did not come, and, filled with restless disappointment, I
at length sunk into the ordinary occupations of life, but with an
unsettled feeling that had never possessed me before.
By this time I knew that some mystery was attached to my life—that I was
nameless, motherless, fatherless. In short, that like a wild hare or a
wounded bird, I had been picked up in charity by the wayside, and in
charity nurtured by that unique Spanish woman and old Turner. I felt
this keenly. As ignorance was swept from my mind, the painful mystery
that clung around me darkened my soul with a feeling of unspeakable
desolation. I had learned what shame was, and felt it to my heart’s core
every time my want of name or connections was alluded to. Still the
entire force of this isolation, the effect it might have upon my after
life and character, could not be felt in all its poignancy, as it was in
later times. But its mistiness, the indefinite form which every thing
regarding my past history took, made myself a subject of perpetual
thought. Upon my memory there was a constant, but unavailing strain.
There seemed to be a dark curtain in my mind, hiding all that my soul
panted to know, but which I had lost all power to lift or disturb. Thus
time wore heavily—heavily months and months—still I saw no more of the
man whose memory hung about me like a superstition, which I had neither
power nor wish to throw off.