_THE BROWN BOX_
Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of
Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London, but
itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace. It was in Queen
Square that he had pitched his tent, next door to the Children’s
Hospital, on your left hand as you go north: Queen Square, sacred to
humane and liberal arts, whence homes were made beautiful, where the poor
were taught, where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where groups
of patient little ones would hover all day long before the hospital, if
by chance they might kiss their hand or speak a word to their sick
brother at the window. Desborough’s room was on the first floor and
fronted to the square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by which he often
profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back, which looked down
upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in turn commanded by the
windows of an empty room.
On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth upon this
terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had been now some weeks
on the vain quest of situations, and prepared for melancholy and tobacco.
Here, at least, he told himself that he would be alone; for, like most
youths, who are neither rich, nor witty, nor successful, he rather
shunned than courted the society of other men. Even as he expressed the
thought, his eye alighted on the window of the room that looked upon the
terrace; and to his surprise and annoyance, he beheld it curtained with a
silken hanging. It was like his luck, he thought; his privacy was gone,
he could no longer brood and sigh unwatched, he could no longer suffer
his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe himself with
sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the moment, he struck his
pipe upon the rail with unnecessary force. It was an old, sweet,
seasoned briar-root, glossy and dark with long employment, and justly
dear to his fancy. What, then, was his chagrin, when the head snapped
from the stem, leaped airily in space, and fell and disappeared among the
lilacs of the garden?
He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out the
story-paper which he had brought with him to read, tore off a fragment of
the last sheet, which contains only the answers to correspondents, and
set himself to roll a cigarette. He was no master of the art; again and
again, the paper broke between his fingers and the tobacco showered upon
the ground; and he was already on the point of angry resignation, when
the window swung slowly inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and
a lady, somewhat strangely attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.
‘Señorito,’ said she, and there was a rich thrill in her voice, like an
organ note, ‘Señorito, you are in difficulties. Suffer me to come to
your assistance.’
With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting
hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough’s eyes, seemed magical,
rolled and presented him a cigarette. He took it, still seated, still
without a word; staring with all his eyes upon that apparition. Her face
was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant triangle, so
innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so rare in our more northern
climates; her eyes were large, starry, and visited by changing lights;
her hair was partly covered by a lace mantilla, through which her arms,
bare to the shoulder, gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all the
womanly contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life,
and slender by grace of some divine proportion.
‘You do not like my cigarrito, Señor?’ she asked. ‘Yet it is better made
than yours.’ At that she laughed, and her laughter trilled in his ear
like music; but the next moment her face fell. ‘I see,’ she cried. ‘It
is my manner that repels you. I am too constrained, too cold. I am
not,’ she added, with a more engaging air, ‘I am not the simple English
maiden I appear.’
‘Oh!’ murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.
‘In my own dear land,’ she pursued, ‘things are differently ordered.
There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous restrictions;
little is permitted her; she learns to be distant, she learns to appear
forbidding. But here, in free England—oh, glorious liberty!’ she cried,
and threw up her arms with a gesture of inimitable grace—‘here there are
no fetters; here the woman may dare to be herself entirely, and the men,
the chivalrous men—is it not written on the very shield of your nation,
_honi soit_? Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be
myself. You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this
stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do I speak the language
well?’
‘Perfectly—oh, perfectly!’ said Harry, with a fervency of conviction
worthy of a graver subject.
‘Ah, then,’ she said, ‘I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my
father’s veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in your
expressive tongue. If I speak already without accent, with my thorough
English appearance, there is nothing left to change except my manners.’
‘Oh no,’ said Desborough. ‘Oh pray not! I—madam—’
‘I am,’ interrupted the lady, ‘the Señorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening
air grows chill. Adios, Señorito.’ And before Harry could stammer out a
word, she had disappeared into her room.
He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand. His
thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and beautified the
image of his new acquaintance. Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her
eyes, of which he could not tell the colour, haunted his soul. The
clouds had risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world. What
she was, he could not fancy, but he adored her. Her age, he durst not
estimate; fearing to find her older than himself, and thinking sacrilege
to couple that fair favour with the thought of mortal changes. As for
her character, beauty to the young is always good. So the poor lad
lingered late upon the terrace, stealing timid glances at the curtained
window, sighing to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of romance;
and when at length he entered and sat down to dine, on cold boiled mutton
and a pint of ale, he feasted on the food of gods.
Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a little ajar,
and he enjoyed a view of the lady’s shoulder, as she sat patiently sewing
and all unconscious of his presence. On the next, he had scarce appeared
when the window opened, and the Señorita tripped forth into the sunlight,
in a morning disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow foreign,
tropical, and strange. In one hand she held a packet.
‘Will you try,’ she said, ‘some of my father’s tobacco—from dear Cuba?
There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as gentlemen. So
you need not fear to annoy me. The fragrance will remind me of home. My
home, Señor, was by the sea.’ And as she uttered these few words,
Desborough, for the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the
great deep. ‘Awake or asleep, I dream of it: dear home, dear Cuba!’
‘But some day,’ said Desborough, with an inward pang, ‘some day you will
return?’
‘Never!’ she cried; ‘ah, never, in Heaven’s name!’
‘Are you then resident for life in England?’ he inquired, with a strange
lightening of spirit.
‘You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,’ she answered sadly; and
then, resuming her gaiety of manner: ‘But you have not tried my Cuban
tobacco,’ she said.
‘Señorita,’ said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry in her
manner, ‘whatever comes to me—you—I mean,’ he concluded, deeply flushing,
‘that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.’
‘Ah, Señor,’ she said, with almost mournful gravity, ‘you seemed so
simple and good, and already you are trying to pay compliments—and
besides,’ she added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into a
smile, ‘you do it so badly! English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be
fast friends, respectful, honest friends; could be companions,
comforters, if the need arose, or champions, and yet never encroach. Do
not seek to please me by copying the graces of my countrymen. Be
yourself: the frank, kindly, honest English gentleman that I have heard
of since my childhood and still longed to meet.’
Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the Cuban
gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.
‘Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, Señor,’ said the
lady. ‘See!’ marking a line with her dainty, slippered foot, ‘thus far
it shall be common ground; there, at my window-sill, begins the
scientific frontier. If you choose, you may drive me to my forts; but
if, on the other hand, we are to be real English friends, I may join you
here when I am not too sad; or, when I am yet more graciously inclined,
you may draw your chair beside the window and teach me English customs,
while I work. You will find me an apt scholar, for my heart is in the
task.’ She laid her hand lightly upon Harry’s arm, and looked into his
eyes. ‘Do you know,’ said she, ‘I am emboldened to believe that I have
already caught something of your English aplomb? Do you not perceive a
change, Señor? Slight, perhaps, but still a change? Is my deportment
not more open, more free, more like that of the dear “British Miss” than
when you saw me first?’ She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand from
Harry’s arm; and before the young man could formulate in words the
eloquent emotions that ran riot through his brain—with an ‘Adios, Señor:
good-night, my English friend,’ she vanished from his sight behind the
curtain.
The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon the neutral
terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and the dinner-hour
summoned him at length from the scene of disappointment. On the next it
rained; but nothing, neither business nor weather, neither prospective
poverty nor present hardship, could now divert the young man from the
service of his lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised,
he took his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture
of damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing inwardly with tender and
delightful ardours. Presently the window opened, and the fair Cuban,
with a smile imperfectly dissembled, appeared upon the sill.
‘Come here,’ she said, ‘here, beside my window. The small verandah gives
a belt of shelter.’ And she graciously handed him a folding-chair.
As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a certain
bulkiness in his pocket reminded him that he was not come empty-handed.
‘I have taken the liberty,’ said he, ‘of bringing you a little book. I
thought of you, when I observed it on the stall, because I saw it was in
Spanish. The man assured me it was by one of the best authors, and quite
proper.’ As he spoke, he placed the little volume in her hand. Her eyes
fell as she turned the pages, and a flush rose and died again upon her
cheeks, as deep as it was fleeting. ‘You are angry,’ he cried in agony.
‘I have presumed.’
‘No, Señor, it is not that,’ returned the lady. ‘I—’ and a flood of
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, Señor,’ 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 strain 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 Señor 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 the
Señora 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
blabbing 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.