THE QUADROON'S HOME
"How sweetly on the hill-side sleeps
The sunlight with its quickening rays!
The verdant trees that crown the steeps,
Grow greener in its quivering blaze."
ABOUT three miles from Richmond is a pleasant plain, with here and
there a beautiful cottage surrounded by trees so as scarcely to
be seen. Among them was one far retired from the public roads,
and almost hidden among the trees. It was a perfect model of rural
beauty. The piazzas that surrounded it were covered with clematis
and passion flower. The pride of China mixed its oriental looking
foliage with the majestic magnolia, and the air was redolent with
the fragrance of flowers, peeping out of every nook and nodding
upon you with a most unexpected welcome. The tasteful hand of art
had not learned to imitate the lavish beauty and harmonious
disorder of nature, but they lived together in loving amity, and
spoke in accordant tones. The gateway rose in a gothic arch, with
graceful tracery in iron work, surmounted by a cross, round which
fluttered and played the mountain fringe, that lightest and most
fragile of vines. This cottage was hired by Horatio Green for
Clotel, and the quadroon girl soon found herself in her new home.
The tenderness of Clotel's conscience, together with the care her
mother had with her and the high value she placed upon virtue,
required an outward marriage; though she well knew that a union
with her proscribed race was unrecognised by law, and
therefore the ceremony would give her no legal hold on Horatio's
constancy. But her high poetic nature regarded reality rather
than the semblance of things; and when he playfully asked how she
could keep him if he wished to run away, she replied, "If the
mutual love we have for each other, and the dictates of your own
conscience do not cause you to remain my husband, and your
affections fall from me, I would not, if I could, hold you by a
single fetter." It was indeed a marriage sanctioned by heaven,
although unrecognised on earth. There the young couple lived
secluded from the world, and passed their time as happily as
circumstances would permit. It was Clotel's wish that Horatio
should purchase her mother and sister, but the young man pleaded
that he was unable, owing to the fact that he had not come into
possession of his share of property, yet he promised that when he
did, he would seek them out and purchase them. Their first-born
was named Mary, and her complexion was still lighter than her
mother. Indeed she was not darker than other white children.
As the child grew older, it more and more resembled its mother.
The iris of her large dark eye had the melting mezzotints, which
remains the last vestige of African ancestry, and gives that
plaintive expression, so often observed, and so appropriate to
that docile and injured race. Clotel was still happier after the
birth of her dear child; for Horatio, as might have been
expected, was often absent day and night with his friends in the
city, and the edicts of society had built up a wall of separation
between the quadroon and them. Happy as Clotel was in Horatio's
love, and surrounded by an outward environment of beauty, so well
adapted to her poetic spirit, she felt these incidents with
inexpressible pain. For herself she cared but little; for
she had found a sheltered home in Horatio's heart, which the world
might ridicule, but had no power to profane. But when she looked
at her beloved Mary, and reflected upon the unavoidable and
dangerous position which the tyranny of society had awarded her,
her soul was filled with anguish. The rare loveliness of the
child increased daily, and was evidently ripening into most
marvellous beauty. The father seemed to rejoice in it with
unmingled pride; but in the deep tenderness of the mother's eye,
there was an indwelling sadness that spoke of anxious thoughts and
fearful foreboding. Clotel now urged Horatio to remove to France
or England, where both her [sic] and her child would be free, and
where colour was not a crime. This request excited but little
opposition, and was so attractive to his imagination, that he
might have overcome all intervening obstacles, had not "a change
come over the spirit of his dreams." He still loved Clotel; but
he was now becoming engaged in political and other affairs which
kept him oftener and longer from the young mother; and ambition
to become a statesman was slowly gaining the ascendancy over him.
Among those on whom Horatio's political success most depended was
a very popular and wealthy man, who had an only daughter. His
visits to the house were at first purely of a political nature;
but the young lady was pleasing, and he fancied he discovered in
her a sort of timid preference for himself. This excited his
vanity, and awakened thoughts of the great worldly advantages
connected with a union. Reminiscences of his first love kept
these vague ideas in check for several months; for with it was
associated the idea of restraint. Moreover, Gertrude, though
inferior in beauty, was yet a pretty contrast to her rival. Her
light hair fell in silken ringlets down her shoulders, her blue
eyes were gentle though inexpressive, and her healthy cheeks were
like opening rosebuds. He had already become accustomed to the
dangerous experiment of resisting his own inward convictions; and
this new impulse to ambition, combined with the strong temptation
of variety in love, met the ardent young man weakened in moral
principle, and unfettered by laws of the land. The change wrought
upon him was soon noticed by Clotel.