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.