CHAPTER IX.
THE DAUGHTER'S ACCUSATION.
Neither Cora nor Toby was aware that there had been a listener during the latter part of their conversation; but it was not less a fact. Gerald Leslie had returned unobserved by either of the excited speakers, and, arrested by the passionate gestures of the mulatto slave, had lingered in the background, anxious to discover the cause of his agitation.
His anger was terrible when he found that the fatal secret, which it had been the business of his life to conceal from Cora, was now revealed. But he still lingered, anxious to hear all.
"Toby," murmured Cora, rising from her knees; "tell me where did they bury my mother?"
"Her grave is half-hidden in the thickest depths of a wood of magnolias upon the borders of Silas Craig's plantation. I carved a rustic cross and placed it at the head."
"You will conduct me to the spot, Toby?" asked Cora.
At this moment Gerald Leslie rushed forward, and, springing toward Toby, lifted his riding-whip as if about to strike the mulatto, when Cora flung herself between them.
"Strike me rather than him!" she exclaimed; then turning to the slave, she said quietly, "Go, Toby! I swear to you that while I live none shall harm so much as a hair of your head."
The mulatto lingered for a moment, looking imploringly at Gerald Leslie.
"Forgive me, master, if I have spoken," he murmured pleadingly.
"I will not have you excuse yourself," said Cora; "you have only done your duty. Go!"
Toby bent his head and slowly retired. Cora stood motionless, with her arms folded, her eyes fixed upon Gerald Leslie.
"Well," she said, "why do you not strike me? Who am I that your hand has not already chastised my insolence? Your daughter? No! The child of Francilia, a quadroon, a slave! Prove to me, sir, that I am before my master; for if I am indeed your daughter, I demand of you an account of your conduct to my mother."
"You accuse me! You, Cora!" exclaimed Gerald Leslie.
"I am ungrateful, am I not? Yes, another father would have allowed this child to grow up to slavery; while you, ashamed of your paternal love, as if it had been a crime, you tore me from my mother's arms, in order that I might forget her; in order to withdraw me from the curse which rested upon me; to efface, if possible, the last trace of this fatal stain!"
"What could I have done more than this, Cora?"
"You could have refrained from giving me life! You sent me to England; you caused me to be educated like a princess. Do you know what they taught me in that free country? They taught me that the honor of every man, the love of every mother are alike sacred."
"It is, then, with my affection that you would reproach me!" replied Gerald Leslie, mournfully. "I would have saved you, and you accuse me, as if that wish had been a crime! I snatched you from the abyss that yawned before your infant feet, and in return you curse me! Oh, remember, Cora, remember the cares which I lavished upon you! Remember my patient submission to your childish caprices; the happiness I felt in all your baby joys; my pride when your little arms were twined about my neck, and your rosy lips responded to my kisses?"
"No, no!" exclaimed Cora; "do not remind me of these things. I would not remember them, for every embrace I bestowed upon you was a theft from my unhappy mother."
"Your mother! Hold, girl! do not speak to me of her! for though I feel that she was innocent of the hazard of her birth, I could almost hate her for having transmitted to you one drop of the accursed blood which flowed in her veins."
"Your hatred was satisfied," replied Cora, bitterly. "You sold her! The purchase money which you received for her perhaps served to pay for the costly dresses which you bestowed upon me! The diamonds which have glittered upon my neck and arms were perhaps bought with the price of my mother's blood!"
"Have a care, Cora! Beware how you goad me to desperation. I have tried to forget—nay, I have forgotten that that blood was your own! Do not force me to remember!"
"And what if I do remind you! what would you do with me?" asked Cora. "Would you send me to your plantation to labor beneath the burning sun, and die before my time, worn out with superhuman toil? No! sell me rather. You may thus repair your ruined fortunes. Are you aware that one of your creditors, Augustus Horton, offered, not an hour ago, the fifty thousand dollars that you owe him as the price of your daughter's honor?"
"Oh, Heaven!" exclaimed Gerald Leslie; "all this is too terrible!" and flinging himself upon his knees at Cora's feet, he clasped her hands passionately in his own. "Cora, Cora, have pity upon me! What would you ask of me? What would you have me to do? My crime is the crime of all. Is the punishment to fall upon me alone? Am I alone to suffer? I, who have sacrificed my honor—yes, Cora, my honor as a colonist—to the claim of paternal love. Do you know that every citizen in New Orleans would blame and ridicule me for my devotion to you? Do you know that I am even amenable to the laws of Louisiana for having dared to educate your mind and enlighten your understanding? See, I am on my knees at your feet. I, your father, humiliate myself to the very dust! Do not accuse me; in mercy, do not accuse me!"
Cora's beautiful face was pale as ashes, her large dark eyes distended, but tearless.
"Upon my knees, beside my mother's grave," she said, solemnly, "I will ask her spirit if I can forgive you."
She released herself from her father's grasp, and hurried into the house before he could arrest her. The planter rose from the ground and looked mournfully after his daughter, but he did not attempt to follow her.
Later in the evening Gerald Leslie returned to New Orleans, and spent the long hours of the night alone in his solitary office face to face with ruin and despair.
The one crime of his youth had risen to torture his remorseful soul—ghastly and horrible shadow, it pursued the sinner in every place; it appeared at every moment. Repentance only could lay the phantom at rest, and he was now only learning to repent.
He had never before looked upon his conduct to the beautiful quadroon, Francilia, in the light of a crime. What had he done which was not done every day by others? What was she, lovely and innocent being as she was, but a slave—his property—bought with his sordid gold—his to destroy as he pleased?
Her melancholy death he looked upon as an unhappy accident, for which he himself was in no way responsible. That crime rested upon Silas Craig's overburdened soul.
Gerald Leslie utterly forgot that had he not been heartless enough to sell the mother of his only child, this cruel fate would never have been hers.
But now the consequences of his crime had overtaken him in a manner he had never dreamed of; Cora, his beloved, his idolized child, accused and cursed him as the murderer of her mother.
It was too horrible.
He dared not remain at the summer pavilion. He dared not meet the reproachful glances of those eyes which appeared to him as the ghostly orbs of the late Francilia. No, alone in his office, surrounded only by the evidences of commerce, and the intricate calculations of trade, he endeavored to forget that he had a daughter, and a daughter who no longer loved him.
And where all this time was Cora? With the Venetian shutters of her apartment closed; with the light of day excluded from her luxurious apartment, she lay with her head buried in the satin cushions of her couch, weeping for the mother whose mournful face she could scarcely recall—weeping for the father whose youthful sins she so lately learned.
Bitter, bitter were the thoughts of the young girl, whose life had heretofore been one long summer sunshine.
She, the courted, the caressed, the admired beauty of a London season—she was a slave—an Octoroon—a few drops only of the African race were enough to taint her nature and change the whole current of her life.
Her father loved her, but he dared only love her in secret. The proud colonists would have laughed aloud at the planter's affection for his half-caste daughter. And he, too, Gilbert Margrave, the poet painter; he, whose every glance and every word had breathed of admiration, almost touching upon the borders of love; would doubtless ere long know all; and he, too, oh, bitter misery, would despise and loathe her.
Oh, thank Heaven, the unhappy girl wronged the noble nature of the English heart! She knew not that to the Briton there is no such word as slavery. She knew not that in a free country the lowest laborer in the fields has as full a right to law and justice as the proudest noble in the land.