colour once more mounted to her brow--"I am confused and ashamed because
I have deceived you. Spanish," she began, and paused--"Spanish is of
course my native tongue," she resumed, as though suddenly taking
courage; "and this should certainly put the highest value on your
thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me? And how
shall I confess to you the truth--the humiliating truth--that I cannot
read?"
As Harry's eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban seemed
to shrink before his gaze. "Read?" repeated Harry. "You!"
She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble
gesture. "Enter, Senor," said she. "The time has come to which I have
long looked forward, not without alarm; when I must either fear to lose
your friendship, or tell you without disguise the story of my life."
It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion that Harry passed the
window. A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had presided over
the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself. It was
filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues,
and set with elegant and curious trifles--fans on the mantelshelf, an
antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of
cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels. The fair Cuban, herself a gem
of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to
a seat, and, sinking herself into another, thus began her history.
STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN
I am not what I seem. My father drew his descent, on the one hand, from
grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal line, from the
patriot Bruce. My mother, too, was the descendant of a line of kings;
but, alas! these kings were African. She was fair as the day: fairer
than I, for I inherited a darker stain of blood from the veins of my
European father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and
accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her neighbours and
surrounded by the most considerate affection and respect, I grew up to
adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh upon my lips,
still ignorant that she was a slave and alas! my father's mistress. Her
death, which befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had
known: it left our home bereaved of its attractions, cast a shade of
melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and durable
change. Months went by: with the elasticity of my years, I regained some
of the simple mirth that had before distinguished me; the plantation
smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the estate had already forgotten
my mother and transferred their simple obedience to myself; but still
the cloud only darkened on the brows of Senor Valdevia. His absences
from home had been frequent even in the old days, for he did business in
precious gems in the city of Havana; they now became almost continuous;
and when he returned, it was but for the night and with the manner of a
man crushed down by adverse fortune.
The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in the
Caribbean Sea, some half-hour's rowing from the coasts of Cuba. It was
steep, rugged, and, except for my father's family and plantation,
uninhabited and left to nature. The house, a low building surrounded by
spacious verandahs, stood upon a rise of ground and looked across the
sea to Cuba. The breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned us as we lay
swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs and flowers of
the magnolia. Behind and to the left, the quarter of the negroes and the
waving fields of the plantation covered an eighth part of the surface of
the isle. On the right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast
and deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, dotted
with profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters, man-eating
crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes. Into the recesses of that
jungle none could penetrate but those of African descent; an invisible,
unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the European; and the air was
death.
One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous
misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in that warm climate
all are early risers, and found not a servant to attend upon my wants. I
made the circuit of the house, still calling; and my surprise had almost
changed into alarm, when, coming at last into a large verandahed court,
I found it thronged with negroes. Even then, even when I was amongst
them, not one turned or paid the least regard to my arrival. They had
eyes and ears for but one person: a woman, richly and tastefully
attired; of elegant carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old in
years, as worn and marred by self-indulgence: her face, which was still
attractive, stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye burning with
the greed of evil. It was not from her appearance, I believe, but from
some emanation of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting
terror; as we hear of plants that blight and snakes that fascinate, the
woman shocked and daunted me. But I was of a brave nature; trod the
weakness down; and forcing my way through the slaves, who fell back
before me in embarrassment, as though in the presence of rival
mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones: "Who is this person?"
A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have a
care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.
In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes,
studied me with insolent particularity from head to foot.
"Young woman," said she at last, "I have had a great experience in
refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them. You really tempt
me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more importance, on my
hand, I should certainly buy you at your father's sale."
"Madam----" I began, but my voice failed me.
"Is it possible that you do not know your position?" she returned, with
a hateful laugh. "How comical! Positively, I must buy her.
Accomplishments, I suppose?" she added, turning to the servants.
Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up like
any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.
"She would do very well for my place of business in Havana," said Senora
Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses; "and I should
take a pleasure," she pursued, more directly addressing myself, "in
bringing you acquainted with a whip." And she smiled at me with a
savoury lust of cruelty upon her face.
At this, I found expression. Calling by name upon the servants, I bade
them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat, and set her
back upon the mainland. But with one voice they protested that they
durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be
more wise; and when I insisted, rising higher in passion and speaking of
this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me
as from one who had blasphemed. A superstitious reverence plainly
encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and
in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces;
and their fear perhaps reacted on myself. I looked again at Madam
Mendizabal. She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through her
glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured
superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage,
fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.
I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach. As I went, my head
whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults. Who was
she? what, in Heaven's name, the power she wielded over my obedient
negroes? Why had she addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father's
sale? To all these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and, in
the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except the hateful, leering
image of the woman.
I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father
coming to meet me from the landing-place; and, with a cry that I
thought would have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a
passion of sobs and tears upon his bosom. He made me sit down below a
tall palmetto that grew not far off; comforted me, but with some
abstraction in his voice; and, as soon as I regained the least command
upon my feelings, asked me, not without harshness, what this grief
betokened. I was surprised by his tone into a still greater measure of
composure; and in firm tones, though still interrupted by sobs, I told
him there was a stranger in the island, at which I thought he started
and turned pale; that the servants would not obey me; that the
stranger's name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that, he seemed to me both
troubled and relieved; that she had insulted me, treated me as a slave
(and here my father's brow began to darken), threatened to buy me at a
sale, and questioned my own servants before my face; and that, at last,
finding myself quite helpless and exposed to these intolerable
liberties, I had fled from the house in terror, indignation, and
amazement.
"Teresa," said my father, with singular gravity of voice, "I must make
to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much
that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman
by her spirit. As for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to
tell you what she is? Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves;
to-day she is what you see her--prematurely old, disgraced by the
practice of every vice and every nefarious industry, but free, rich,
married, they say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and
exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as
unbounded as its reason is mysterious. Horrible rites, it is supposed,
cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo. Be that as it may, I would have
you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her
that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise,
you shall never fall."
"Father!" I cried. "Fall? Was there any truth, then, in her words? Am
I--O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense."
"I will tell you," he replied, "with merciful bluntness. Your mother was
a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail
to the free land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her:
a design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment,
intervened. You will now understand the heaviness with which your
mother's memory hangs about my neck."
I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and, in seeking to console
the survivor, I forgot myself.
"It matters not," resumed my father. "What I have left undone can never
be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse. But, Teresa,
with so cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once
to do what was still possible: to liberate yourself."
I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre
roughness.
"Your mother's illness," he resumed, "had engaged too great a portion of
my time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of
ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the
more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the
darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby and tell at a glance in what
quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred--all these had been too long
absent from the conduct of affairs. Teresa, I was insolvent."
"What matters that?" I cried. "What matters poverty, if we be left
together with our love and sacred memories?"
"You do not comprehend," he said gloomily. "Slave as you are,
young--alas! scarce more than child!--accomplished, beautiful with the
most touching beauty, innocent as an angel--all these qualities that
should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those
to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell. You are a
chattel; a marketable thing; and worth--heavens, that I should say such
words!--worth money. Do you begin to see? If I were to give you freedom,
I should defraud my creditors; the manumission would be certainly
annulled; you would be still a slave, and I a criminal."
I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for myself, in
sympathy for my father.
"How I have toiled," he continued, "how I have dared and striven to
repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember. Its blessing was
denied to my endeavours, or, as I please myself by thinking, but delayed
to descend upon my daughter's head. At length, all hope was at an end; I
was ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the morrow, which
I could not meet; I should be declared a bankrupt, and my goods, my
lands, my jewels that I so much loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and
rendered happy, and oh! tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would
be sold and pass into the hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers. Too
long, I saw, had I accepted and profited by this great crime of slavery;
but was my daughter, my innocent, unsullied daughter, was _she_ to pay
the price? I cried out--no!--I took Heaven to witness my temptation; I
caught up this bag and fled. Close upon my track are the pursuers;
perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow, they will land upon this isle,
sacred to the memory of the dear soul that bore you, to consign your
father to an ignominious prison, and yourself to slavery and dishonour.
We have not many hours before us. Off the north coast of our isle, by
strange good fortune, an English yacht has for some days been hovering.
It belongs to Sir George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now
I have rendered unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our
escape. Or if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the power
to force him. For what does it mean my child--what means this
Englishman, who hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and returns
from every trip with new and valuable gems?"
"He may have found a mine," I hazarded.
"So he declares," returned my father; "but the strange gift I have
received from nature easily transpierced the fable. He brought me
diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in innocence; at a second
glance, I started; for of these stones, my child, some had first seen
the day in Africa, some in Brazil; while others, from their peculiar
water and rude workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient
temples. Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries: Oh, he is cunning,
but I was cunninger than he. He visited, I found, the shop of every
jeweller in town; to one he came with rubies, to one with emeralds, to
one with precious beryl; to all, with this same story of the mine. But
in what mine, what rich epitome of the earth's surface, were there
conjoined the rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel, and the
diamonds of Golconda? No, child, that man, for all his yacht and title,
that man must fear and must obey me. To-night, then, as soon as it is
dark, we must take our way through the swamp by the path which I shall
presently show you; thence, across the highlands of the isle, a track is
blazed, which shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and close by
the yacht is riding. Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I
look to see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man attends
on the mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold, if it be dark,
the redness of a fire--if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on the opposing
headland; and thus warned, we shall have time to put the swamp between
ourselves and danger. Meantime, I would conceal this bag; I would,
before all things, be seen to arrive at the house with empty hands; a
babbling slave might else undo us. For see!" he added; and holding up
the bag, which he had already shown me, he poured into my lap a shower
of unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every size and colour,
and catching, as they fell, upon a million dainty facets, the ardour of
the sun.
I could not restrain a cry of admiration.
"Even in your ignorant eyes," pursued my father, "they command respect.
Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to the tool, cold as death?
Ingrate!" he cried. "Each one of these--miracles of nature's patience,
conceived out of the dust in centuries of microscopical activity, each
one is, for you and me, a year of life, liberty, and mutual affection.
How, then, should I cherish them! and why do I delay to place them
beyond reach! Teresa, follow me."
He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great jungle,
where they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky foliage, the
declivity of the hill on which my father's house stood planted. For some
while he skirted, with attentive eyes, the margin of the thicket. Then,
seeming to recognise some mark, for his countenance became immediately
lightened of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me. "Here," said
he, "is the entrance of the secret path that I have mentioned, and here
you shall await me. I but pass some hundreds of yards into the swamp to
bury my poor treasure; as soon as that is safe I will return." It was in
vain that I sought to dissuade him, urging the dangers of the place; in
vain that I begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the black blood
that I now knew to circulate in my veins: to all my appeals he turned a
deaf ear, and, bending back a portion of the screen of bushes,
disappeared into the pestilential silence of the swamp.
At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside; and
my father stepped from out the thicket, and paused, and almost staggered
in the first shock of the blinding sunlight. His face was of a singular
dusky red; and yet, for all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not
seem to sweat.
"You are tired," I cried, springing to meet him. "You are ill."
"I am tired," he replied; "the air in that jungle stifles one; my eyes,
besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong sunshine
pierces them like knives. A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment. All
shall yet be well. I have buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately
beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright
things, they now lie whelmed in slime; you shall find them there, if
needful. But come, let us to the house; it is time to eat against our
journey of the night; to eat and then to sleep, my poor Teresa: then to
sleep." And he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as
if in pity.
We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too long
and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy stretch of
the verandah; and came at length into the grateful twilight of the
shuttered house. The meal was spread; the house servants, already
informed by the boatmen of the master's return, were all back at their
posts, and terrified, as I could see, to face me. My father still
murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity, I hurried at
once to take my place at table; but I had no sooner left his arm than he
paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange gesture of
groping. "How is this?" he cried, in a sharp, unhuman voice. "Am I
blind?" I ran to him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted
and stood stiffly where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as if in
a painful effort after breath. Then suddenly he raised both hands to his
temples, cried out, "My head, my head!" and reeled and fell against the
wall.
I knew too well what it must be. I turned and begged the servants to
relieve him. But they, with one accord, denied the possibility of hope;
the master had gone into the swamp, they said, the master must die; all
help was idle. Why should I dwell upon his sufferings? I had him carried
to a bed, and watched beside him. He lay still, and at times ground his
teeth, and talked at times unintelligibly, only that one word of hurry,
hurry, coming distinctly to my ears, and telling me that, even in the
last struggle with the powers of death, his mind was still tortured by
his daughter's peril. The sun had gone down, the darkness had fallen,
when I perceived that I was alone on this unhappy earth. What thoughts
had I of flight, of safety, of the impending dangers of my situation?
Beside the body of my last friend, I had forgotten all except the
natural pangs of my bereavement.
The sun was some four hours above the eastern line when I was recalled
to a knowledge of the things of earth by the entrance of the slave-girl
to whom I have already referred. The poor soul was indeed devotedly
attached to me; and it was with streaming tears that she broke to me the
import of her coming. With the first light of dawn a boat had reached
our landing-place, and set on shore upon our isle (till now so
fortunate) a party of officers bearing a warrant to arrest my father's
person, and a man of a gross body and low manners, who declared the
island, the plantation, and all its human chattels, to be now his own.
"I think," said my slave-girl, "he must be a politician or some very
powerful sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them coming
than she took to the woods."
"Fool," said I, "it was the officer she feared; and at any rate why does
that beldam still dare to pollute the island with her presence? And oh,
Cora," I exclaimed, remembering my grief, "what matter all these
troubles to an orphan?"
"Mistress," said she, "I must remind you of two things. Never speak as
you do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a person of colour; for she
is the most powerful woman in this world, and her real name even, if one
durst pronounce it, were a spell to raise the dead. And whatever you do,
speak no more of her to your unhappy Cora; for though it is possible she
may be afraid of the police (and indeed I think that I have heard she is
in hiding), and though I know that you will laugh and not believe, yet
it is true, and proved, and known that she hears every word that people
utter in this whole, vast world; and your poor Cora is already deep
enough in her black books. She looks at me, mistress, till my blood
turns ice. That is the first I had to say; and now for the second; do,
pray, for Heaven's sake, bear in mind that you are no longer the poor
Senor's daughter. He is gone, dear gentleman; and now you are no more
than a common slave-girl like myself. The man to whom you belong calls
for you; oh, my dear mistress, go at once! With your youth and beauty,
you may still, if you are winning and obedient, secure yourself an easy
life."
For the moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you may
conceive; the next, it was gone: she did but speak after her kind, as
the bird sings or cattle bellow. "Go," said I. "Go, Cora. I thank you
for your kind intentions. Leave me alone one moment with my dead father;
and tell this man that I will come at once."
She went; and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to those deaf
ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered innocence. "Father,"
I said, "it was your last thought, even in the pangs of dissolution,
that your daughter should escape disgrace. Here, at your side, I swear
to you that purpose shall be carried out; by what means, I know not; by
crime, if need be; and Heaven forgive both you and me and our
oppressors, and Heaven help my helplessness!" Thereupon I felt
strengthened as by long repose; stepped to the mirror, ay, even in that
chamber of the dead; hastily arranged my hair, refreshed my tear-worn
eyes, breathed a dumb farewell to the originator of my days and sorrows;
and, composing my features to a smile, went forth to meet my master.
He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to which
he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle age,
sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by
nature. But the sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter
warned me to expect the worse.
"Is this your late mistress?" he inquired of the slaves; and, when he
had learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them. "Now, my dear," said he,
"I am a plain man: none of your damned Spaniards, but a true blue,
hard-working, honest Englishman. My name is Caulder."
"Thank you, sir," said I, and curtsied very smartly as I had seen the
servants.