 | Fact and fiction |  |
THE QUADROONS.
Of man's perfidious cruelty:
Come then and hear what cruel wrong
Befell the dark Ladie.”
Coleridge
Not far from Augusta, Georgia, there is a pleasant
place called Sand-Hills, appropriated almost exclusively
to summer residences for the wealthy inhabitants
of the neighbouring city. Among the beautiful
cottages that adorn it was one far retired from the public
roads, and almost hidden among the trees. It was
a perfect model of rural beauty. The piazzas that
surrounded it were wreathed with Clematis and Passion
Flower. Magnificent Magnolias, and the superb
Pride of India, threw shadows around it, and filled
the air with fragrance. Flowers peeped out from
every nook, and nodded to you in bye-places, with a
most unexpected welcome. The tasteful hand of Art
had not learned to imitate the lavish beauty and harmonious
disorder of Nature, but they lived together in
loving unity, and spoke in according tones. The gateway
rose in a Gothic arch, with graceful tracery in
iron-work, surmounted by a Cross, around which fluttered
and played the Mountain Fringe, that lightest
and most fragile of vines.
The inhabitan's of this cottage remained in it all
that left them without neighbours. To one of the
parties, indeed, the fashionable summer residents, that
came and went with the butterflies, were merely neighbours-in-law.
The edicts of society had built up a
wall of separation between her and them; for she was
a quadroon. Conventional laws could not be reversed
in her favour, though she was the daughter of a wealthy
merchant, was highly cultivated in mind and manners,
graceful as an antelope, and beautiful as the evening
star. She had early attracted the attention of a
handsome and wealthy young Georgian; and as their
acquaintance increased, the purity and bright intelligence
of her mind, inspired him with far deeper interest
than is ever excited by mere passion. It was
genuine love; that mysterious union of soul and sense,
in which the lowliest dew-drop reflects the image of
the highest star.
The tenderness of Rosalie's conscience required an
outward form of marriage; though she well knew
that a union with her proscribed race was unrecognised
by law, and therefore the ceremony gave her no
legal hold on Edward's constancy. But her high
poetic nature regarded the reality, rather than the semblance
of things; and when he playfully asked how
she could keep him if he wished to run away, she replied,
“Let the church that my mother loved sanction
our union, and my own soul will be satisfied, without
the protection of the state. If your affections fall from
me, I would not, if I could, hold you by a legal fetter.”
It was a marriage sanctioned by Heaven, though
Sand-Hills was built for the young bride under her
own direction; and there they passed ten as happy
years as ever blessed the heart of mortals. It was
Edward's fancy to name their eldest child Xarifa; in
commemoration of a quaint old Spanish ballad, which
had first conveyed to his ears the sweet tones of her
mother's voice. Her flexile form and nimble motions
were in harmony with the breezy sound of the name;
and its Moorish origin was most appropriate to one so
emphatically “a child of the sun.” Her complexion,
of a still lighter brown than Rosalie's, was rich and
glowing as an autumnal leaf. The iris of her large,
dark eye had the melting, mezzotinto outline, which
remains the last vestige of African ancestry, and gives
that plaintive expression, so often observed, and so appropriate
to that docile and injured race.
Xarifa learned no lessons of humility or shame,
within her own happy home; for she grew up in the
warm atmosphere of father's and mother's love, like a
flower open to the sunshine, and sheltered from the
winds. But in summer walks with her beautiful
mother, her young cheek often mantled at the rude
gaze of the young men, and her dark eye flashed fire,
when some contemptuous epithet met her ear, as
white ladies passed them by, in scornful pride and ill-concealed
envy.
Happy as Rosalie was in Edward's love, and surrounded
by an outward environment of beauty, so well
adapted to her poetic spirit, she felt these incidents
with inexpressible pain. For herself, she cared but
heart, which the world might ridicule, but had no
power to profane. But when she looked at her beloved
Xarifa, and reflected upon the unavoidable and
dangerous position which the tyranny of society had
awarded her, her soul was filled with anguish. The
rare loveliness of the child increased daily, and was
evidently ripening into most marvellous beauty. The
father rejoiced in it with unmingled pride; but in the
deep tenderness of the mother's eye there was an indwelling
sadness, that spoke of anxious thoughts and
fearful forebodings.
When Xarifa entered her ninth year, these uneasy
feelings found utterance in earnest solicitations that
Edward would remove to France, or England. This
request excited but little opposition, and was so attractive
to his imagination, that he might have overcome
all intervening obstacles, had not “a change come
o'er the spirit of his dream.” He still loved Rosalie,
but he was now twenty-eight years old, and, unconsciously
to himself, ambition had for some time been
slowly gaining an ascendency over his other feelings.
The contagion of example had led him into the arena
where so much American strength is wasted; he had
thrown himself into political excitement, with all the
honest fervour of youthful feeling. His motives had
been unmixed with selfishness, nor could he ever define
to himself when or how sincere patriotism took
the form of personal ambition. But so it was, that at
twenty-eight years old, he found himself an ambitious
man, involved in movements which his frank nature
game of mutual cunning with all the fierce excitement
of a gambler.
Among those on whom his political success most
depended, was a very popular and wealthy man, who
had an only daughter. His visits to the house were
at first of a purely political nature; but the young
lady was pleasing, and he fancied he discovered in
her a sort of timid preference for himself. This excited
his vanity, and awakened thoughts of the great
worldly advantages connected with a union. Reminiscences
of his first love kept these vague ideas in
check for several months; but Rosalie's image at last
became an unwelcome intruder; for with it was associated
the idea of restraint. Moreover Charlotte,
though inferior in beauty, was yet a pretty contrast
to her rival. Her light hair fell in silken profusion,
her blue eyes were gentle, though inexpressive, and
her delicate cheeks were like blush-rose-buds.
He had already become accustomed to the dangerous
experiment of resisting his own inward convictions;
and this new impulse to ambition, combined
with the strong temptation of variety in love, met the
ardent young man weakened in moral principle, and
unfettered by laws of the land. The change wrought
upon him was soon noticed by Rosalie.
The presence of the love it would conceal;
But in far more the estranged heart lets know
The absence of the love, which yet it fain would show.”
At length the news of his approaching marriage
met her ear. Her head grew dizzy, and her heart
she inquired all the particulars; and her pure
mind at once took its resolution. Edward came that
evening, and though she would have fain met him as
usual, her heart was too full not to throw a deep sadness
over her looks and tones. She had never complained
of his decreasing tenderness, or of her own
lonely hours; but he felt that the mute appeal of her
heart-broken looks was more terrible than words. He
kissed the hand she offered, and with a countenance
almost as sad as her own, led her to a window in the
recess, shadowed by a luxuriant Passion Flower. It
was the same seat where they had spent the first
evening in this beautiful cottage, consecrated to their
youthful loves. The same calm, clear moonlight
looked in through the trellis. The vine then planted
had now a luxuriant growth; and many a time had
Edward fondly twined its sacred blossoms with the
glossy ringlets of her raven hair. The rush of memory
almost overpowered poor Rosalie; and Edward
felt too much oppressed and ashamed to break the
long, deep silence. At length, in words scarcely audible,
Rosalie said, “Tell me, dear Edward, are you
to be married next week?” He dropped her hand, as
if a rifle-ball had struck him; and it was not until
after long hesitation, that he began to make some reply
about the necessity of circumstances. Mildly,
but earnestly, the poor girl begged him to spare apologies.
It was enough that he no longer loved her,
and that they must bid farewell. Trusting to the
yielding tenderness of her character, he ventured, in
the most soothing accents, to suggest that as he still
his real wife, and they might see each other frequently.
He was not prepared for the storm of indignant
emotion his words excited. Hers was a passion too
absorbing to admit of partnership; and her spirit was
too pure and kind to enter into a selfish league against
the happiness of the innocent young bride.
At length this painful interview came to an end.
They stood together by the Gothic gate, where they
had so often met and parted in the moonlight. Old
remembrances melted their souls. “Farewell, dearest
Edward,” said Rosalie. “Give me a parting
kiss.” Her voice was choked for utterance, and the
tears flowed freely, as she bent her lips toward him.
He folded her convulsively in his arms, and imprinted
a long, impassioned kiss on that mouth, which had
never spoken to him but in love and blessing.
With effort like a death-pang, she at length
raised her head from his heaving bosom, and turning
from him with bitter sobs, she said, “It is our last.
God bless you. I would not have you so miserable
as I am. Farewell. A last farewell.” “The last!”
exclaimed he, with a wild shriek. “Oh, Rosalie, do
not say that!” and covering his face with his hands,
he wept like a child.
Recovering from his emotion, he found himself
alone. The moon looked down upon him mild, but
very sorrowful; as the Madonna seems to gaze on
her worshipping children, bowed down with consciousness
of sin. At that moment he would have given
worlds to have disengaged himself from Charlotte;
but he had gone so far, that blame, disgrace, and duels
obtain his freedom. Oh, how the moonlight oppressed
him with its friendly sadness! It was like the
plaintive eye of his forsaken one; like the music of
sorrow echoed from an unseen world.
Long and earnestly he gazed at that dwelling,
where he had so long known earth's purest foretaste
of heavenly bliss. Slowly he walked away; then
turned again to look on that charmed spot, the nestling-place
of his young affections. He caught a
glimpse of Rosalie, weeping beside a magnolia, which
commanded a long view of the path leading to the
public road. He would have sprung toward her, but
she darted from him, and entered the cottage. That
graceful figure, weeping in the moonlight, haunted
him for years. It stood before his closing eyes, and
greeted him with the morning dawn.
Poor Charlotte! had she known all, what a dreary
lot would hers have been; but fortunately, she could
not miss the impassioned tenderness she had never
experienced; and Edward was the more careful in his
kindness, because he was deficient in love. Once or
twice she heard him murmur, “dear Rosalie,” in his
sleep; but the playful charge she brought was playfully
answered, and the incident gave her o real uneasiness.
The summer after their marriage, she proposed
a residence at Sand-Hills; little aware what a
whirlwind of emotion she excited in her husband's
heart. The reasons he gave for rejecting the proposition
appeared satisfactory; but she could not quite
understand why he was never willing that their afternoon
drives should be in the direction of those plea
so much. One day, as their barouche rolled along a
winding road that skirted Sand-Hills, her attention
was suddenly attracted by two figures among the trees
by the way-side; and touching Edward's arm, she exclaimed,
“Do look at that beautiful child!” He turned,
and saw Rosalie and Xarifa. His lips quivered, and
his face became deadly pale. His young wife looked
at him intently, but said nothing. There were points
of resemblance in the child, that seemed to account
for his sudden emotion. Suspicion was awakened,
and she soon learned that the mother of that lovely
girl bore the name of Rosalie; with this information
came recollections of the “dear Rosalie,” murmured
in uneasy slumbers. From gossiping tongues she
soon learned more than she wished to know. She
wept, but not as poor Rosalie had done; for she never
had loved, and been beloved, like her, and her nature
was more proud. Henceforth a change came over
her feelings and her manners; and Edward had no further
occasion to assume a tenderness in return for hers.
Changed as he was by ambition, he felt the wintry
chill of her polite propriety, and sometimes in agony
of heart, compared it with the gushing love of her
who was indeed his wife.
But these, and all his emotions, were a sealed book
to Rosalie, of which she could only guess the contents.
With remittances for her and her child's support,
there sometimes came earnest pleadings that she
would consent to see him again; but these she
never answered, though her heart yearned to do so.
She pitied his fair young bride, and would not be
fault of hers. Her earnest prayer was that she might
never know of her existence. She had not looked on
Edward since she watched him under the shadow of
the magnolia, until his barouche passed her in her
rambles some months after. She saw the deadly
paleness of his countenance, and had he dared to look
back, he would have seen her tottering with faintness.
Xarifa brought water from a little rivulet, and sprinkled
her face. When she revived, she clasped the beloved
child to her heart with a vehemence that made
her scream. Soothingly she kissed away her fears,
and gazed into her beautiful eyes with a deep, deep
sadness of expression, which Xarifa never forgot.
Wild were the thoughts that pressed around her aching
heart, and almost maddened her poor brain;
thoughts which had almost driven her to suicide the
night of that last farewell. For her child's sake she
conquered the fierce temptation then; and for her
sake, she struggled with it now. But the gloomy
atmosphere of their once happy home overclouded the
morning of Xarifa's life.
And sighed among her playthings.”
Rosalie perceived this; and it gave her gentle heart
unutterable pain. At last, the conflicts of her spirit
proved too strong for the beautiful frame in which it
dwelt. About a year after Edward's marriage, she
was found dead in her bed, one bright autumnal
morning. She had often expressed to her daughter
a wish to be buried under a spreading oak, that shaded
had spent many happy evenings. And there she was
buried; with a small white cross at her head, twined
with the cypress vine. Edward came to the funeral,
and wept long, very long, at the grave. Hours after
midnight, he sat in the recess-window, with Xarifa
folded to his heart. The poor child sobbed herself to
sleep on his bosom; and the convicted murderer had
small reason to envy that wretched man, as he gazed
on the lovely countenance, which so strongly reminded
him of his early and his only love.
From that time, Xarifa was the central point of all
his warmest affections. He hired an excellent old
negress to take charge of the cottage, from which he
promised his darling child that she should never be
removed. He employed a music master, and dancing
master, to attend upon her; and a week never passed
without a visit from him, and a present of books, pictures,
or flowers. To hear her play upon the harp,
or repeat some favourite poem in her mother's earnest
accents and melodious tones, or to see her pliant
figure float in the garland-dance, seemed to be the
highest enjoyment of his life. Yet was the pleasure
mixed with bitter thoughts. What would be the destiny
of this fascinating young creature, so radiant with
life and beauty? She belonged to a proscribed race;
and though the brown colour on her soft cheek was
scarcely deeper than the sunny side of a golden pear,
yet was it sufficient to exclude her from virtuous society.
He thought of Rosalie's wish to carry her to
France: and he would have fulfilled it, had he been
unmarried. As it was, he inwardly resolved to make
it involved separation from his darling child.
But alas for the calculations of man! From the
time of Rosalie's death, Edward had sought relief for
his wretched feelings in the free use of wine. Xarifa
was scarcely fifteen, when her father was found dead
by the road-side; having fallen from his horse, on his
way to visit her. He left no will; but his wife, with
kindness of heart worthy of a happier domestic fate,
expressed a decided reluctance to change any of the
plans he had made for the beautiful child at SandHills.
Xarifa mourned her indulgent father; but not as
one utterly desolate. True, she had lived “like a
flower deep hid in rocky cleft;” but the sunshine of
love had already peeped in upon her. Her teacher
on the harp was a handsome and agreeable young
man of twenty, the only son of an English widow.
Perhaps Edward had not been altogether unmindful
of the result, when he first invited him to the flowery
cottage. Certain it is, he had more than once thought
what a pleasant thing it would be, if English freedom
from prejudice should lead him to offer legal protection
to his graceful and winning child. Being thus
encouraged, rather than checked, in his admiration,
George Elliot could not be otherwise than strongly
attracted toward his beautiful pupil. The lonely and
unprotected state in which her father's death left her,
deepened this feeling into tenderness. And lucky
was it for her enthusiastic and affectionate nature; for
she could not live without an atmosphere of love. In
her innocence, she knew nothing of the dangers in
simplicity, that rendered her sacred to his noble
and generous soul. It seemed as if that flower-embosomed
nest was consecrated by the Fates to Love.
The French have well named it La Belle Passion;
for without it life were “a year without spring, or a
spring without roses.” Except the loveliness of infancy,
what does earth offer so much like Heaven, as
the happiness of two young, pure, and beautiful beings,
living in each other's hearts?
Xarifa inherited her mother's poetic and impassioned
temperament; and to her, above others, the first
consciousness of these sweet emotions was like a
golden sunrise on the sleeping flowers.
Of busy life. * * * *
How fair it lay in solemn shade and sheen!
And he beside her, like some angel, posted
To lead her out of childhood's fairy land,
On to life's glancing summit, hand in hand.”
Alas, the tempest was brooding over their young
heads. Rosalie, though she knew it not, had been
the daughter of a slave, whose wealthy master,
though he remained attached to her to the end of her
days, yet carelessly omitted to have papers of manumission
recorded. His heirs had lately failed, under
circumstances which greatly exasperated their creditors;
and in an unlucky hour, they discovered their
claim on Angelique's grand-child.
The gentle girl, happy as the birds in spring-time,
accustomed to the fondest indulgence, surrounded by
all the refinements of life, timid as a fawn, and with
sheriff, and placed on the public auction-stand in Savannah.
There she stood, trembling, blushing, and
weeping; compelled to listen to the grossest language,
and shrinking from the rude hands that examined the
graceful proportions of her beautiful frame. “Stop
that!” exclaimed a stern voice. “I bid two thousand
dollars for her, without asking any of their d—d questions.”
The speaker was probably about forty years
of age, with handsome features, but a fierce and proud
expression. An older man, who stood behind him,
bid two thousand five hundred. The first bid higher;
then a third, a dashing young man, bid three thousand;
and thus they went on, with the keen excitement
of gamblers, until the first speaker obtained the
prize, for the moderate sum of five thousand dollars.
And where was George, during this dreadful scene?
He was absent on a visit to his mother, at Mobile.
But, had he been at Sand-Hills, he could not have
saved his beloved from the wealthy profligate, who
was determined to obtain her at any price. A letter
of agonized entreaty from her brought him home on
the wings of the wind. But what could he do? How
could he ever obtain a sight of her, locked up as she
was in the princely mansion of her master? At last,
by bribing one of the slaves, he conveyed a letter to
her, and received one in return. As yet, her purchaser
treated her with respectful gentleness, and
sought to win her favour, by flattery and presents; but
she dreaded every moment, lest the scene should
change, and trembled at the sound of every footfall.
A plan was laid for escape. The slave agreed to
and a swift boat was in readiness. But the
slave, to obtain a double reward, was treacherous.
Xarifa had scarcely given an answering signal to the
low cautious whistle of her lover, when the sharp
sound of a rifle was followed by a deep groan, and a
heavy fall on the pavement of the court-yard. With
frenzied eagerness she swung herself down by the
ladder of ropes, and, by the glancing light of lanthorns,
saw George, bleeding and lifeless at her feet. One
wild shriek, that pierced the brains of those who heard
it, and she fell senseless by his side.
For many days she had a confused consciousness
of some great agony, but knew not where she was,
or by whom she was surrounded. The slow recovery
of her reason settled into the most intense melancholy,
which moved the compassion even of her cruel purchaser.
The beautiful eyes, always pensive in expression,
were now so heart-piercing in their sadness,
that he could not endure to look upon them. For
some months, he sought to win her smiles by lavish
presents, and delicate attentions. He bought glittering
chains of gold, and costly bands of pearl. His
victim scarcely glanced at them, and her attendant
slave laid them away, unheeded and forgotten. He
purchased the furniture of the Cottage at Sand-Hills,
and one morning Xarifa found her harp at the bedside,
and the room filled with her own books, pictures,
and flowers. She gazed upon them with a pang unutterable,
and burst into an agony of tears; but she
gave her master no thanks, and her gloom deepened.
At last his patience was exhausted. He grew
and threats took the place of persuasion.
* * * * * * *
In a few months more, poor Xarifa was a raving
maniac. That pure temple was desecrated; that
loving heart was broken; and that beautiful head
fractured against the wall in the frenzy of despair.
Her master cursed the useless expense she had cost
him; the slaves buried her; and no one wept at the
grave of her who had been so carefully cherished, and
so tenderly beloved.
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