CHAPTER IV.
Once again they met,And then they saw, each in the other’s heart,And the black falsehood that had sever’d themRose 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!
Once again they met,And then they saw, each in the other’s heart,And the black falsehood that had sever’d themRose 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!
Once again they met,And then they saw, each in the other’s heart,And the black falsehood that had sever’d themRose 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!
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 heartrendingat 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 wayoff, 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,veryglad, 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 youareonly 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 lovesomuch, 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 mebefore 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 willIreproach; 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 underthe 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 thatburned 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, butin 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 toreveal 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 ofthem. 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 heartseemed 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.