THE SEPARATION
"In many ways does the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal;
But in far more the estranged heart lets know
The absence of the love, which yet it fain would show."
AT length the news of the approaching marriage of Horatio met the
ear of Clotel. Her head grew dizzy, and her heart fainted within
her; but, with a strong effort at composure, she inquired all the
particulars, and her pure mind at once took its resolution.
Horatio came that evening, and though she would fain have met him
as usual, her heart was too full not to throw a deep sadness over
her looks and tones. She had never complained of his decreasing
tenderness, or of her own lonely hours; but he felt that the mute
appeal of her heart-broken looks was more terrible than words. He
kissed the hand she offered, and with a countenance almost as sad
as her own, led her to a window in the recess shadowed by a
luxuriant passion flower. It was the same seat where they had
spent the first evening in this beautiful cottage, consecrated to
their first loves. The same calm, clear moonlight looked in
through the trellis. The vine then planted had now a luxuriant
growth; and many a time had Horatio fondly twined its sacred
blossoms with the glossy ringlets of her raven hair. The rush of
memory almost overpowered poor Clotel; and Horatio felt too much
oppressed and ashamed to break the long deep silence. At length,
in words scarcely audible, Clotel said: "Tell me, dear
Horatio, are you to be married next week?" He dropped her hand as
if a rifle ball had struck him; and it was not until after long
hesitation, that he began to make some reply about the necessity
of circumstances. Mildly but earnestly the poor girl begged him
to spare apologies. It was enough that he no longer loved her, and
that they must bid farewell. Trusting to the yielding tenderness
of her character, he ventured, in the most soothing accents, to
suggest that as he still loved her better than all the world, she
would ever be his real wife, and they might see each other
frequently. He was not prepared for the storm of indignant
emotion his words excited. True, she was his slave; her bones,
and sinews had been purchased by his gold, yet she had the heart
of a true woman, and hers was a passion too deep and absorbing to
admit of partnership, and her spirit was too pure to form a
selfish league with crime.
At length this painful interview came to an end. They stood
together by the Gothic gate, where they had so often met and
parted in the moonlight. Old remembrances melted their souls.
"Farewell, dearest Horatio," said Clotel. "Give me a parting
kiss." Her voice was choked for utterance, and the tears flowed
freely, as she bent her lips toward him. He folded her
convulsively in his arms, and imprinted a long impassioned kiss on
that mouth, which had never spoken to him but in love and
blessing. With efforts like a death-pang she at length raised her
head from his heaving bosom, and turning from him with bitter
sobs, "It is our last. To meet thus is henceforth crime. God
bless you. I would not have you so miserable as I am. Farewell.
A last farewell." "The last?" exclaimed he, with a wild shriek.
"Oh God, Clotel, do not say that"; and covering his face with his
hands, he wept like a child. Recovering from his
emotion, he found himself alone. The moon looked down upon him
mild, but very sorrowfully; as the Madonna seems to gaze upon her
worshipping children, bowed down with consciousness of sin. At
that moment he would have given worlds to have disengaged himself
from Gertrude, but he had gone so far, that blame, disgrace, and
duels with angry relatives would now attend any effort to obtain
his freedom. Oh, how the moonlight oppressed him with its
friendly sadness! It was like the plaintive eye of his forsaken
one, like the music of sorrow echoed from an unseen world. Long
and earnestly he gazed at that cottage, where he had so long
known earth's purest foretaste of heavenly bliss. Slowly he
walked away; then turned again to look on that charmed spot, the
nestling-place of his early affections. He caught a glimpse of
Clotel, weeping beside a magnolia, which commanded a long view of
the path leading to the public road. He would have sprung toward
her but she darted from him, and entered the cottage. That
graceful figure, weeping in the moonlight, haunted him for years.
It stood before his closing eyes, and greeted him with the
morning dawn. Poor Gertrude, had she known all, what a dreary lot
would hers have been; but fortunately she could not miss the
impassioned tenderness she never experienced; and Horatio was the
more careful in his kindness, because he was deficient in love.
After Clotel had been separated from her mother and sister, she
turned her attention to the subject of Christianity, and received
that consolation from her Bible that is never denied to the
children of God. Although it was against the laws of Virginia,
for a slave to be taught to read, Currer had employed an old free
Negro, who lived near her, to teach her two daughters to read and
write. She felt that the step she had taken in resolving
never to meet Horatio again would no doubt expose her to his
wrath, and probably cause her to be sold, yet her heart was too
guileless for her to commit a crime, and therefore she had ten
times rather have been sold as a slave than do wrong. Some months
after the marriage of Horatio and Gertrude their barouche rolled
along a winding road that skirted the forest near Clotel's
cottage, when the attention of Gertrude was suddenly attracted by
two figures among the trees by the wayside; and touching Horatio's
arm, she exclaimed, "Do look at that beautiful child." He turned
and saw Clotel and Mary. His lips quivered, and his face became
deadly pale. His young wife looked at him intently, but said
nothing. In returning home, he took another road; but his wife
seeing this, expressed a wish to go back the way they had come.
He objected, and suspicion was awakened in her heart, and she
soon after learned that the mother of that lovely child bore the
name of Clotel, a name which she had often heard Horatio murmur in
uneasy slumbers. From gossiping tongues she soon learned more
than she wished to know. She wept, but not as poor Clotel had
done; for she never had loved, and been beloved like her, and her
nature was more proud: henceforth a change came over her feelings
and her manners, and Horatio had no further occasion to assume a
tenderness in return for hers. Changed as he was by ambition, he
felt the wintry chill of her polite propriety, and sometimes, in
agony of heart, compared it with the gushing love of her who was
indeed his wife. But these and all his emotions were a sealed
book to Clotel, of which she could only guess the contents. With
remittances for her and her child's support, there sometimes came
earnest pleadings that she would consent to see him again; but
these she never answered, though her heart yearned to do so.
She pitied his young bride, and would not be tempted to
bring sorrow into her household by any fault of hers. Her earnest
prayer was, that she might not know of her existence. She had not
looked on Horatio since she watched him under the shadow of the
magnolia, until his barouche passed her in her rambles some months
after. She saw the deadly paleness of his countenance, and had he
dared to look back, he would have seen her tottering with
faintness. Mary brought water from a rivulet, and sprinkled her
face. When she revived, she clasped the beloved child to her
heart with a vehemence that made her scream. Soothingly she
kissed away her fears, and gazed into her beautiful eyes with a
deep, deep sadness of expression, which poor Mary never forgot.
Wild were the thoughts that passed round her aching heart, and
almost maddened her poor brain; thoughts which had almost driven
her to suicide the night of that last farewell. For her child's
sake she had conquered the fierce temptation then; and for her
sake, she struggled with it now. But the gloomy atmosphere of
their once happy home overclouded the morning of Mary's life.
Clotel perceived this, and it gave her unutterable pain.
"Tis ever thus with woman's love,
True till life's storms have passed;
And, like the vine around the tree,
It braves them to the last."