Once again they met,
And then they saw, each in the other’s heart,
And the black falsehood that had sever’d them
Rose palpable and hideous to the thought.
Hot tears were shed—sad blessings mutely given!
They met, and parted—he went to meet his death,
And she to weep o’er bitter memories!
Zulima made her home in the South, and there also, after years of
wandering, came Daniel Clark—weary with excitement, and unhappy with a
sense of bitter loneliness. In the first moments of his anger against
Zulima, he had made his will, giving all his vast possessions to an aged
relative, and making the false friends who had caused his misery
executors of that will. And this was the deep game for which these men
had staked their souls—these possessions and the control over them. No
matter though the fair wife was crushed to the earth; no matter though
that beautiful child, in all her infant unconsciousness, was despoiled
of her just inheritance. It was for this they had toiled in darkness; it
was for this they had heaped falsehood upon falsehood, wrong upon wrong.
But Clark had returned to New Orleans, not to pass a week and away
again, as before, but to control his own business—and in New Orleans was
Zulima. They might meet, still it was unlikely, for she was proud and
sensitive as ever, and lived in the bosom of a new family, and was
girded around by new and powerful affections. Looking upon Clark as a
heart-traitor, one who had betrayed her unprotected state, and trifled
alike with her reputation and her love, she shrank from a thought of the
past. The wrong that she believed to have been practiced upon her was so
terrible, that she shuddered at the retrospection. Without one shadow of
hate or hope of revenge, to perpetuate the struggle that had been so
heartrending at first, the only effort that she made was to obtain
forgetfulness.
Zulima knew not that Clark had arrived at New Orleans, but a strange
inquietude came over her. Thoughts of the sweet and bitter past made her
restless day and night; she was haunted by a constant desire to see her
child—the child of Daniel Clark; from this innocent creature, wrong and
absence in the father had failed to alienate her love.
A little out from New Orleans was a pretty country-house, surrounded by
ornamental grounds and embowered in tropical trees. It was a small
dwelling, secluded and beautiful as a bower; works of art, rare books,
and light furniture, befitting the climate, gave an air of refinement
and grace within; passion-flowers, briery roses, and other clinging
vines draped the cottage without. An avenue of orange and lime trees led
to the front door, and behind was a small garden, cooled by the rain
that fell perpetually from a fountain near the center, and glowing with
tea-roses, lilies, and a world of those blossoms that grow most thrifty
and fragrant in the warm South.
Among these beautiful grounds little Myra Clark had been at play since
the breakfast-hour. She had chased the humming-birds from their swarming
places in the arbors and rose-hedges; she had gathered golden-edged
violets from the borders, and leaping up with a laugh to the
orange-boughs that drooped over the gravel-walk, had torn down the white
blossoms and mellow fruit to crowd with the flowery spoil that she had
gathered in the skirt of her muslin dress. And now with her lap full of
broken flowers, fruit, torn grass, and pebble-stones, the child cast
herself on the rich turf that swelled up to the brink of the fountain,
and pressing her dimpled hands and warm cheek upon the marble, lay in
smiling idleness, watching the gold-fish, as they darted up and down the
limpid waters, her soft brown eyes sparkling with each new flash of gold
or crimson that the restless little creatures imparted to the waters.
Now she would cast a broken rose-bud or a tuft of grass into the
fountain, and her laugh rang out wild and clear above the bell-like
dropping of the water in the marble basin, if she could detect some fish
darting up like a golden arrow to meet her pretty decoy. Thus lay the
child; thus fell the bright water-drops around; and thus, a little way
off, drooped the fruit and flower laden boughs, when the sweet
tranquillity was disturbed by a footstep. Down one of the gravel-walks
came a man, bearing upon his noble features an air of proud sadness, his
very step denoting habitual depression, as he moved quietly and at a
slow pace toward the fountain. It was not a look of ill-health that
stamped so forcibly the air and demeanor of this man. His frame was
still strongly knit, his step firm as iron, but upon his brow was that
deep-settled shadow which a troubled heart casts up to the face, and the
locks that shaded it were sprinkled with the premature snow which falls
early over a brain tortured with unspoken regrets. Thus sorrowful, but
still unbowed in his spirit, appeared Daniel Clark, as he moved quietly
toward the fountain where his child was at play.
Myra was busy with her gold-fish, laughing and coquetting with them
through the waves. She saw nothing but their golden flash, she heard
nothing but the light drops, that dimpled and clouded the water around
them. Thus for several minutes the proud and saddened man stood gazing
upon his daughter.
She saw him at last; and then with a faint cry the little creature cast
away the contents of her frock, and sprang up. Half in joy, half in
timid surprise, she stood gazing upon his face. The pupils of her eyes
dilated till they were almost black, her white arms seemed trembling
with restraint, as if the suddenness of his appearance had checked the
first quick impulse. She was only waiting for one smile to spring like a
bird to his bosom.
“Myra!”
The firm voice of Daniel Clark gave way as he uttered the name of his
child. His eyes grew dim with tears, and he reached forth his trembling
arms. She sprang with a single bound to his embrace, she wreathed his
neck strongly with her arms, and pressed upon his lips, his cheeks, and
his moist eyes, kisses that, from the lips of a beautiful child, seem
like the pouring of dew and sunshine from the cup of a flower.
“Oh, you are come again!” she said, placing her warm hands on each side
his face, and looking with the smiling confidence of childhood into his
eyes. “They told me that you would not come to see us any more for a
long, long time.”
“And are you glad to see me, darling?” said Mr. Clark, drawing his hand
caressingly down the disheveled brightness of her hair. “You seem glad,
my little Myra?”
“Seem—why—I am glad—so very, _very_ glad, my own, own—” the child
hesitated.
“Papa—will you not call me papa, this once?” said the agitated father,
and upon his pale cheek there came a flush, as he said this to the
child.
“Oh, but they tell me that you are my godfather, and that is not a papa,
you know,” said the child, shaking her head with an air of pretty
thoughtfulness.
“Perhaps it is as well,” murmured the father, and his look grew sad.
Myra bent down and looked into his eyes, smiling.
“Don’t look so sorry,” she said; “I will call you papa, if you like.
Papa! dear papa! there, now!”
But even the childish caress, accompanied as it was by a voice and look
of the most winning sweetness, failed to dispel the sadness that had
fallen upon the father’s heart. Perhaps the very loveliness of the child
did but deepen that sadness, by reminding him of its mother. Let this be
as it may, Mr. Clark sat down by the fountain with the little girl in
his arms, but he remained silent, thus chilling the little creature
whose arms were about his neck, and she too became hushed, as it were,
by the gloom into which he fell. During several minutes the father and
child remained thus wrapped in silence. At last he spoke in a low and
troubled voice, kissing the forehead of the child:
“Myra, do you love me?”
“Indeed, indeed I do,” said the little girl, laying her cheek to his.
“Better almost than anybody else in the wide world, if you _are_ only my
godfather.”
“And whom—” here Mr. Clark’s voice faltered—“and whom can you love
better, Myra?”
“Oh,” said the child, shaking her head with a pretty mysterious air,
“there is somebody that I love _so_ much, a pretty, beautiful lady, who
comes to me so often, and so strangely, just like one of the fairies
nurse tells me about. Sometimes she will be a long, long time, and not
come at all. Then, while I am playing among the trees, she will be close
to me before I think of it. She kisses me just as you do, and once—that,
too, was so like—” the child paused, and seemed pondering over something
in her mind.
“What was so like, Myra?” said Mr. Clark, in a faint voice, for his
heart misgave him.
“Why, I was just thinking,” said the child thoughtfully; “this pretty
lady wanted me to call her mamma, just as you wanted me to call you
papa, you know, only in fun.”
“And did you call her that?”
“Yes, but I never will again—no, never in the world; for, do you think,
she began to cry like any thing the moment I put my arms round her neck
and said ‘Mamma!’ You can’t think how she did cry, and after asking me,
too.”
Mr. Clark turned away his head; the child’s earnest look troubled him.
“She knew well enough that it was all fun,” persisted the child, “and
yet she kept on crying all I could do.”
“Oh, such words are bitter, bitter fun,” muttered Mr. Clark, tortured by
the innocent prattle of the child.
“I did not mean any harm; the lady asked me to call her ‘Mamma,’ but I
never will again,” said Myra, drooping under what seemed to her the
displeasure of her best friend.
“Oh yes, Myra, you must love this lady; you must call her any thing she
pleases,” said Mr. Clark, with a burst of emotion that startled the
little girl. “Be good to her; be gentle and loving as if—as if it was
not fun when you call her ‘Mamma.’ You will be good to her; promise me,
my darling, that you will.”
“But she will not ask me again. It is a long, long time since the lady
has been here,” answered the child thoughtfully. “Perhaps she will not
come any more.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Clark, with a voice and look of painful abstraction.
A slight noise in a distant part of the garden drew the child’s
attention. She started, and bending eagerly forward looked down a
winding path sheltered by the orange-trees.
“See!” cried the child, pointing down the path with her finger, while
her eyes sparkled like diamonds; “didn’t I say that she always came like
a fairy? Didn’t I tell you so?”
Clark followed the child’s finger with his eyes, and there, coming up
the path rapidly, and with eager haste in her look and manner, he saw
Zulima, the wife of his bosom, the mother of his child. For the world,
that proud man could not have risen to his feet; his strength utterly
forsook him; he attempted to remove Myra’s arm from his neck, but even
that he failed to accomplish, so profound was his astonishment, so
overpowering was his agitation.
A tree stood close by the fountain, overrun and shadowed by the
convolutions of a passion-flower vine, that fell like a curtain around
it, concealing the father and child as Zulima came up. Thus it happened
that without any preparation, the wronged wife and the deceived husband
stood face to face, breathless and pale as statues in a graveyard. The
child clung to her father’s neck. Her large eyes dilated, and her face
grew crimson with fear. She was frightened by the terrible pallor of
Zulima’s face.
Mr. Clark arose pale as death; and trembling in every limb, he placed
the child gently on the grass, and approaching Zulima held forth his
hand.
She took it, but her fingers were like marble; and like marble was the
cold smile that went in a spasm of pain across her lips.
“Zulima, will you not speak to me?”
Oh, what a flood of bitter waters did that gentle voice unlock in
Zulima’s heart. Her limbs began to shake, her hands quivered like aspen
leaves, and a look of unutterable distress fell upon her face.
“To what end should I speak?” she said, in a low and husky voice. “I
have no wish to reproach you, and what but reproaches can you expect
from me.”
A bitter smile disturbed the pallor of Daniel Clark’s face, and a bitter
intonation was blended with the mournful cadence of his voice.
“Reproaches, Zulima, are for slight wrongs; but slight or deep, I
deserve none at your hands. While you—oh, woman, woman, how have you
betrayed the deep love, the honor which I gave you in holy trust.
Neither will _I_ reproach; but when I look upon your face, still young,
full of beauty, and bearing the old look of innocence, it forces me to
think of the vows you have broken, the mockery you have cast upon our
marriage.”
“Our marriage,” repeated Zulima. Again her lips were distorted with a
smile mournful and bitter, and clasping her hands she wrung them
nervously together.
“Why do you smile thus? Why do you repeat thus bitterly the words that I
have spoken?” said Clark, regarding her wild agitation with wonder.
“When I speak of our marriage, you do not shrink or tremble as one who
has profaned a holy rite, but your eye is full of scorn, your lips curl
with bitter smiles. Zulima, are you indeed so lost that the mention of
ties that bound us once, and that legally bind us yet, ties that you,
unhappy woman, have broken and dishonored, can only awake a smile of
scorn?”
Zulima stood motionless, her hands clasped, her eyes dilating; the truth
was struggling to her heart.
“Speak to me, speak to me again,” she cried, extending her locked hands
imploringly. “That marriage, you know, you know well, it was all false,
all a deception. I never was your wife!”
Mr. Clark drew back—he breathed with difficulty: the truth was breaking
upon his soul also—the cruel, terrible truth.
“Speak to me, speak to me,” cried Zulima, in a voice of thrilling
anguish; “I never was your wife!”
“The God of heaven, at whose altar we were united, can answer that you
were my lawfully wedded wife, that you are so now!”
A sharp cry broke from Zulima, she staggered forward a pace, and sat
down upon the grass close by her child; covering her face with both
hands, she bent it down to her knees, and remained thus motionless and
absolutely without breath.
Clark stood gazing upon her, every nerve in his body quivering; the
horror that her face had exhibited, that sharp cry, the utter
prostration of her energies, all these things were fast unsealing his
eyes. He sat down by the unhappy woman and attempted to remove one of
the pale hands clasped over her eyes, but she resisted him with a faint
shudder, and then through those lashed fringes gushed a flood of tears.
“Zulima, try and compose yourself, make one effort; for, on earth, I
feel that this must be our last interview. Shrink not thus! I have never
wronged you, or if it prove so, not knowingly or wilfully.”
Zulima shook her head, and sobbed aloud. “There has been wrong, deep,
black wrong, somewhere,” she said; “I was told that you also had
deceived me by a false marriage, that the ceremony we went through was a
fraud, and I your victim, not a wife.”
“And who told you this infamous falsehood?” said Clark, clasping his
hands till the blood left them, in the agony of his impatience.
“Ross hinted it; Smith told me so in Philadelphia and in Baltimore. They
told me, also, that you were about to marry another; I saw you together
with my own eyes. You refused to see me; but for that I had never
believed them!”
“And Smith told you this; Ross hinted it,” cried Clark, locking his
teeth with terrible anger. “These two men whom I have fed, whom—” he
paused; the violence of his emotion was too great for words.
But why should we further describe the harrowing scene? It was long
before these two unhappy beings could speak with calmness, but at length
all was told—the fraud that had kept back their mutual letters, the slow
and subtle poison that had been instilled so assiduously into each proud
and passionate nature—all. For the first time, Clark learned the
sufferings, the passionate love, that had sent his young wife in search
of him, her struggles, her despair. Then his own haughty reserve gave
way; he laid open his whole heart before her, its history and its
anguish. He told her of his wanderings, of the deep and harrowing love;
which not even a belief in her faithlessness could wring from his heart;
he told her all, and then these proud beings sat again, side by side,
looking in each other’s faces, and yet separated, oh, how irrevocably!
Then came the time for parting. Zulima must go back to her home, and
he—where could he seek shelter from the grief of that terrible moment?
They both arose, and face to face, stood gazing on each other for the
last time; neither of them doubted that it was for the last time, on
this side the grave. A look of mournful despondency was on their
features, their hands were clasped for an instant, and then Zulima
turned away, and tottering feebly in her walk, passed from the garden.
He stood watching her till the last flutter of her garments disappeared
under the orange-boughs, then he turned away and went forth, a
broken-hearted man. Mother and father both went away, leaving the child
alone. Terrified by the scene of anguish passing before her, the little
creature had neither moved nor spoken, and in the agony of that last
parting she was forgotten. She had no heart for play then. The fish
turned up their golden sides in vain, the humming-birds flashed by her
quite unheeded; she was gazing after her father, and her eyes were full
of tears. All at once, she saw him coming back, walking rapidly; tears
were in his eyes also, and, taking her to his bosom, he kissed her
forehead, her hair, and her little hands. Myra began to sob piteously.
She could feel the swelling of his heart against her form; the hot fever
of his lips as they touched her forehead, made her tremble, and cling
closer to him; it seemed as if the little creature knew that this was
the last time that noble heart would ever beat against hers—as if she
felt in her whole being that he was her father. Thus, after a brief
struggle, the parent and child parted, and forever.
That night Daniel Clark spent under the roof of his friend, Ross, the
very roof that had sheltered his bridal life with Zulima and the birth
of her child. He met his false friend calmly, and without any outbreak
of the terrible sense of wrong that ached at his heart. He said truly,
that reproaches are for slight wrongs, only his were too mighty for
words. He never once hinted to the traitor that he was aware of his
treachery. Perhaps the footsteps of coming death were pressing too
heavily upon him, even then, for he whispered to his heart more than
once that day, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.”
There was no vengeance in Daniel Clark’s thoughts; for death was there
already, and he felt that the little time given him on earth would
scarcely be sufficient to right the wronged.
In the very chamber where Zulima had sat, amid the storm, writing her
last soul-touching letter to her husband, was that husband at midnight,
writing eagerly as she had been. His face was deathly pale one minute,
and the next there spread over it a warm red hue, that seemed burning
hotly through the flesh. He wrote on, sheet after sheet, linking the
pages together as he completed them, with a black ribbon; and,
notwithstanding the anguish that shook, and the fever that burned him,
the writing, as it flowed from his pen, was firm and even as print.
Toward daylight the document was finished. Two black seals were placed
at the last page, then the whole was folded up and carefully sealed.
Weary and haggard was Daniel Clark, as he arose from his task; the bed
stood in a corner of the chamber, cool and inviting, but he approached
it not. With a heavy and wavering step, he reached the open window, and
folding his arms upon the sill, turned his face to the soft night air,
with a faint groan, and thus he remained till morning.
The next day, Daniel Clark rode into the city, and was closeted with
several of his old and intimate friends. In the house of one of these
friends the others met by appointment, and there Daniel Clark read his
last will and testament, making his child, Myra Clark, the heiress to
his vast possessions, and there he solemnly declared his marriage with
Zulima, that child’s mother. After this he sat down in the presence of
his friends and chosen executors, and placed his signature to the will
that his own hands had written.
When Mr. Clark left them that day, his friends observed that the hand
with which he clasped theirs was burning, and that his eyes looked heavy
and swollen. They remarked, too, that he had never once smiled during
the whole interview; but the occasion was a solemn one, and so they
merely gave these things a passing thought, deeming them but the result
of some undue excitement.
At nightfall Mr. Clark reached the dwelling of Ross. It had been
Zulima’s residence, and he yearned to lie down in the room that she had
occupied, and to press the same pillow that she had wept upon. All the
deep tenderness of his early love for that wronged woman came back to
him with a knowledge of her blamelessness. Pride, the great sin of his
nature, had been prostrated with the knowledge that he, with all his
haughty self-reliance, all his splendor of intellect, had been
influenced by base and ungrateful men to wrong the being dearest to him
in life. All the manifestation of displeasure that he displayed toward
Ross was a desire to avoid his presence, but even that awoke the
ever-vigilant suspicion of the man. He had placed menial spies on the
steps of Zulima, but in hunting down the sterner game Ross played the
spy himself. The plantation which Ross occupied was the property of his
patron, and in the dwelling Mr. Clark had always kept his own separate
apartments. On returning home that night he entered a little library
belonging to these apartments, and opening an escritoir had taken from
thence an ebony box, in which were his most valuable papers. After
placing the will therein he had carefully locked the escritoir and the
room before retiring to his chamber for the night.
At two o’clock the next morning there shone in this library a faint
light. By the escritoir stood Ross softly trying a key in the lock, and
behind him upon a table rested a dark lantern, so placed that all its
rays fell in one direction, leaving most of the room in darkness.
Noiselessly the key was turned, and without a sound was the escritoir
opened, and the ebony box dragged forth.
The will was the first paper that presented itself on opening the box.
Ross took it up, seated himself in Mr. Clark’s easy chair, and began to
read; nervously glancing over the pages, and starting from time to time
if the slightest sound reached his ear.
“As I thought!” he said, in a stern, low voice, dashing his hand against
the paper till the sheets rustled loud enough to make him start. “Thus
has one day undone the work of years. I knew that something had warped
his heart against me!”
Thoughtfully, and with a frowning brow, Ross folded up the will, laid it
in its depository, and secured it as before. At first he was tempted to
take the light from his lantern, and consume it at once, but the rash
thought was abandoned after a moment’s reflection, for there was danger
at any hour that Mr. Clark might detect the fraud and place another will
beyond his reach. With his duplicate key and ready access to all the
apartments, there was little to dread while the will remained under that
roof.
The moment every thing was safe, Ross closed his lantern, and sat for
more than an hour musing in the darkness. When he came forth, there was
a deep and gloomy cloud upon his brow; the pale moonbeams fell upon it
through the windows, as he passed to his own room, but the moonbeams
failed to reveal the black thought that lay hidden beneath that frown.
There was more than fraud in that hideous thought.
Mr. Clark slept in Zulima’s chamber, upon the couch her delicate limbs
had pressed, and upon the pillow where her head had found its sweetest
slumbers. Perhaps the fever-spirit grew riotous and strong on the memory
which these objects aroused, or it might have been that, without all
these reminiscences, the illness that came upon him that night would
have proved more painful still. The morning found the heart-stricken man
faint and strengthless as a child. A vague dreaminess hung about him,
which did not quite amount to delirium, and yet it could not have been
said that he was quite conscious of passing events. He talked in a low
voice of his wife and child: there was something sad and broken-hearted
in every word that he uttered, totally at variance with his usual proud
and lofty reserve. He seemed to take little interest in those about him,
but murmured gently to himself, and always of _them_. If this was
delirium—and it must have been, so totally was it at variance with his
previous manner—there was something exceedingly touching and mournful in
it, for the death-bed of that noble and strong man seemed marked by a
degree of solemn tenderness that might have befitted the death-pillow of
a loving woman.
At first the disease seemed scarcely more than an attack of nervous
fever, such as often follows violent excitement. The spirits of heaven
who guarded that death-bed alone can tell if neglect or irritation, or
deeper and darker causes combined to terminate that slight illness in
death. Ross was his attendant; constant and unceasing was the assiduity
of his watch. No physician, no friend entered the sick-room, and for
three days that noble man lay struggling with death, in the presence of
his bitterest enemy, and one faithful old body-servant, who could only
watch and weep over the master who was to him almost more than mortal.
Then came the third night, and still the failing man was alone with that
one old negro, who would not be sent away; and over him bent the
household viper, whose sting had been worse than death. A dim lamp was
in the room, and through the open windows came the night air, in soft,
sweet gushes, making the muslin drapery tremble in the flaring
lamplight.
Daniel Clark turned upon his pillow; his eyes opened wide, and he moved
his hands in the air, as if seeking to grasp at something. Ross bent
over and spoke to him, but the dying man closed his eyes and motioned
the traitor away with his hand. The old negro came up, choking back the
tears, and bent his gray head gently over his master. Again Clark opened
his eyes; a sudden light came into them, and a smile stole over the
whole face.
“Bend down,” he whispered, “bend close to me, my old servant, for I am
dying.”
The old man bent his head still lower, holding his breath, and checking
the tears that swelled his faithful heart. “Dear master, I listen.”
Clark lifted his hand, and grasped that of the old man with a feeble
hold.
“My wife—my child! See that no wrong is done them.”
The old man looked down upon that ashen face with surprise. “This must
be delirium,” he thought, “for my poor master had neither wife nor
child.”
The eyes of the dying man were misty, but he saw the doubt in his
servant’s face. A look of distress passed over his own, and he made a
vain effort to collect the power of speech. But he could only say, “The
will—that must tell you—it is below, take it into your own hands the
moment I am dead; and take it to—to—”
“To Master Ross?” said the old man, observing that his master’s voice
was sinking.
“No! no!” These words broke from the dying man with his last breath; he
fell back upon the pillow; his hands wandered upward for an instant, and
then fell heavily upon the bed. Still his eyes were open—still they were
fixed with mournful intensity on the old man’s face.
“He is gone!” murmured Ross, bending his ashen face over the ashen face
of the dead.
“He is gone!” cried the poor old servant, wringing his hands and sobbing
aloud; “he is gone, and without taking the old man with him!” Then the
faithful old creature cast himself upon his knees, and taking the pale
hand of the dead between his ebony palms, lifted up his voice and wept.
While the voice of his grief filled the room, while his faithful heart
seemed pouring itself out in tears, Ross turned softly and stole from
the room.
A few brief minutes the old negro gave to his sorrow. Then amid his
tears he remembered the last words of the dead. He did but pause to
close, with reverent hands, the eyes that still seemed regarding him
with earnest command. He did but compose the lifeless limbs, and draw
the sheet over those loved features, before he went down to obey the
last behest of the dead. The poor old man went forth from the
deathchamber, guided by the gray dawn. His tread was slow and mournful.
You could scarcely hear him as he passed along, for it seemed to him
that the faintest sound might disturb his master.
He reached the library; his hand was upon the latch; he turned it with a
cautious regard to sound, not with premeditation, but because the
death-scene he had witnessed made the least noise appear to him like
sacrilege. But the door remained firm. It was evidently locked within,
for through the keyhole streamed a faint light, and with the light came
an indistinct sound of rustling papers and the cautious tread of a
footstep. The old man bent his eye to the keyhole and looked in.
Directly within the range of his vision stood Mr. Clark’s escritoir wide
open, and by it was Ross searching among the papers in an ebony box,
which the old man knew as the repository of his master’s most valuable
documents. Ross took from this box a voluminous parcel, thrust it in his
bosom, and carefully locking the escritoir, held up the light and looked
timidly around as if fearful of the very silence. Then, with a quick,
noiseless tread, he passed across the room. His face was deathly pale,
and the old negro saw that the lamp shook and swaled in his hand. There
was a fireplace in the room, but the door commanded no view of it, and
the old man strained his sight in vain to secure further knowledge of
what was passing within the library. But if his eye was baffled his ear
remained keen, and that was directly startled by the sharp rustle of
papers apparently torn apart in haste; then the whole room was filled
with a glare of light. There was a sudden and faint crackle as of some
hastily kindled flame passing up the chimney. Then all was dark and
hushed once more. The lamp seemed extinguished; a little smoke, a faint
smell of burnt paper, and that was all the poor old negro ever saw of
his master’s will.
The old man went back to the chamber, knowing too well that his mission
was at an end. He knelt down by that death-couch trembling like a
culprit, and heart-sick from a consciousness of his own impotence. “Oh,
master, master! forgive me—forgive me!” cried the gray-headed old
servant, bending his wrinkled forehead to the hands he had clasped upon
the death-couch. “Forgive me that I stayed to cry when I should have
obeyed the last order you can ever give the old man. I have seen, I have
heard—but who will believe me, master? Am I not a slave?”
“A slave? Yes; go hence, and forever!” cried a stern voice in the room;
“you who have no more discretion than thus to talk with the dead.”
The old man arose and stood up; his keen eyes dwelt firmly upon Ross,
and with his right hand he drew the covering from the dead. There was
something noble in the look and attitude of that old gray-headed negro
as he confronted the false friend, the household traitor, who might yet
have almost the power of life and death over him.
“He is my master; I will not leave him,” said the old man firmly. “You
may whip me, you may kill me, but I will never leave him till he is
buried. I rocked him in his cradle, I will lay him in his grave. Then
sell me, if you like; no matter what becomes of the old man when his
master is in the grave.” And turning away with a look of unutterable
woe, the old servant cast himself by the death-couch, crying out, “My
master! oh, my master!”
A few weeks after, the old man was sold and sent away to a far-off
plantation, for he was a part of the property which Daniel Clark had
left, and according to the old will, the only one ever found, Ross was
the executor of the estate, and had a right to sell the poor old man.