CHAPTER XII.
TRISTAN'S SECRET.
Tristan, the negro, sat in his little chamber, in that quarter of Don Juan's splendid mansion, which was devoted solely to the slaves.
A dark and gloomy shadow rested upon the inky brow of the negro. For some time past the watchful eye of his mother, the old negress, Zarah, had detected her son's unhappiness, but she sought in vain to penetrate the cause. There was much of the savage in the character of this man, and even in his mother he sometimes inspired alarm and suspicion.
His was one of those natures, burning as Africa's skies, created, sometimes, like the venomous serpents of those tropical climes, only to terrify and destroy.
But he was a privileged being in the house of Don Juan Moraquitos. He had saved the life of the Spaniard's idolized daughter.
Yes, only one brief year before the period of which we write, Tristan, the negro, had by his courage and activity, preserved Camillia from a fearful death.
Late one evening the young girl and her governess had sat talking together in Camillia's luxurious boudoir. The slave Tristan had been admitted to the apartment to amuse the capricious beauty with his songs and antics. But Camillia had soon grown weary of this diversion and, turning to Mademoiselle Corsi, she said languidly:
"Tell Tristan to leave us Pauline, he is noisy, and he wearies me."
Generous-hearted as was the Spanish girl, her education had taught her to look upon a slave as an inferior being, unblest with those finer feelings which demand our courtesy and consideration. She dismissed Tristan as she would have dismissed her lapdog when tired of his antics. A black and gloomy frown obscured the negro's glittering eyes as he was thus unceremoniously ordered from the room.
It was unobserved by Camillia, but not unmarked by Pauline Corsi.
The slave retired, but he did not go far. Between the boudoir and the saloon there was an ante-chamber, the floor of which was covered with a square Persian carpet—a carpet of immense value, thick as velvet pile.
Upon this carpet, close to the door of the boudoir, Tristan threw himself like a dog on the threshold of his master's apartment.
"She sends me from her," he said, bitterly; "I am noisy, and I weary her; it was not so in the days that are long gone by, when she and I were playfellows."
The negro gone, Camillia reclined upon a sofa, and amused herself by looking over a pile of French novels, which had lately arrived from Paris. To do this she drew toward her a little inlaid table upon which stood an elegant reading-lamp.
Pauline Corsi was seated at the other extremity of the apartment, working briskly at a large piece of embroidery, and lost in thought. She did not, therefore, observe the proceedings of her young pupil.
For some time Camillia read on undisturbed; but by-and-by, growing weary of her book, she cast it from her with an impatient exclamation, and stretched out her hand to reach another from the volumes on the table beside her. In doing so she upset the reading-lamp.
The glass globe broke with a crash; the inflammable oil and burning wick were spilled upon the gauzy muslin folds of her voluminous dress.
She uttered a shriek of horror, for in one brief moment she found herself in flames.
The negro heard that shriek; and, swift as the panther darting from his lair, he bounded from the threshold where he had been lying.
Losing all presence of mind, Camillia, followed by Pauline Corsi, rushed past the slave Tristan, and from the ante-chamber into the saloon beyond.
The flames, fanned by the current of air through which she passed, rose toward her head. In another moment she would have been lost.
But the preserver was at hand.
With a yell of agony, like that of a wild beast in its death struggle with the hunter, the negro flung himself upon the floor of the ante-chamber, and tore up the heavy Persian carpet which covered the room; then, rushing upon Camillia, he enveloped her slender form in this massive fabric, and with his own hands extinguished the flames.
The Spaniard's daughter escaped unscathed from this terrible ordeal, but the hands of the slave were fearfully scorched and wounded.
Don Juan Moraquitos offered any reward he might choose to name to the deliverer of his child, but, to the Spaniard's astonishment, Tristan refused all his master's offers.
The Spaniard would have given him freedom, but the slave chose rather to stay in the house in which he had been born.
All gifts of money he also refused—refused with a gloomy determination which Don Juan and Camillia tried in vain to overcome.
"No!" he said, "let me stay with you, my master and my mistress. The poor slave, Tristan, asks no more."
In vain the old negress, Zarah, pleaded with her son, imploring him to ask freedom for himself and his mother, that they might return to the native shore from which the captain of a slaver had brought them. He refused to listen to her entreaties, and turned from her with a gloomy scowl.
Don Juan and his daughter praised the fidelity of the slave, and promised him every privilege that could render his service a happy one. Only one person in that household divined the secret clew to the negro's strange conduct. That person was the seemingly frivolous and light-hearted Frenchwoman, Pauline Corsi.
A depth of penetration lurked beneath that girlish exterior. She read the true meaning of Tristan's conduct.
The slave—the negro—the thick-lipped, woolly-haired African—the lowest type of a despised and abhorred race, loved his mistress, the wealthy Spanish heiress, the beautiful and haughty Camillia Moraquitos!