University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

The ensuing morning, Duncan Powell took his way on foot by
a path through the wood from Kirkwood to Rock Hall. The
beauty of Kate had made an impression upon his imagination, and
he inwardly resolved to make himself quite intimate at the gothic
cottage. The path which he followed crossed the post road, and,
as he entered it, he saw Paul Tatnall approaching with a large
bundle slung to a stick, and walking at a long tranching pace.

`Whither away now, Paul?' he said, as they met in the road.

`To New York,' he answered, moodily.

`Without saying good-bye? You are coming back again?'

`No — I hope not. But don't detain me. I am hastening to the
Fishkill landing, to take the steamboat when she comes down.'

`You are not in a very pleasant humor. Has any thing happened
at home, that you are making off in this guize?'

`No. I am going to live with my uncle, the printer. It is time
for a penniless boy like me to do something. Good morning.'

`Paul, I am sorry you are going,' said Duncan, with feeling, and
taking his hand, `I wish my old cove up there would launch out
some of his gold, and I would not let you go without a proof of my
friendship.'

`I have some money which my mother gave me with her blessing.
You are very kind, Duncan. I am in hopes I shall do well
in the city.'

`I promise to come and see you when I go down. But I have
news too! I am to be admitted to West Point this fall term.
I ought to have passed examination two weeks ago, but the letter
from the Secretary of War only arrived last night; but there is yet
time for me to be admitted. So I shan't miss you so much.
I wish you were to be one of us. Don't forget Butterwick Falls!'

`No,' said Paul, seconding the wish in his heart. `You are fortunate,
Powell.'

`Yes, and more than in one way! Do you know I discovered a
prize last night? I shall have something to fill up my leisure
hours of cadet duty. You have heard that that stern, black-looking
Miles Ogilvie has a pretty looking daughter!'

Paul, who had been scarcely heeding his words and anxious to
proceed, instantly felt the blood leave his heart for his temples,
while a pang of some indescribably painful sensation made him lean
for support upon his stick. He looked in his friend's face without
replying.

`Why, man, what has come over you?'

`You spoke of Catharine Ogilvie,' said Paul, faintly but quickly.

`Ah, then you have seen her! Isn't she a beauty, though I saw
her only by starlight. I was spuring home along the larch path,
which you know is scarce three feet wide, when I saw her standing
in it looking down the river. It was over her, and ride her down,
or take the water eighteen feet clear! There was no time for
thought—Deerfoot was too free on the bit to be reined up, and turning
him short just in time to save her, I took the leap! It was
beautifully done! Deerfoot seemed winged! Well, she was grateful
enough, showed me where to land, and — the vixen! refusing to
let me see her home in a wet jacket, invited me to come and call
upon her to-day. So I am going. You should have seen her, Paul,
before you left, for she is a queen!'

Paul heard this narration with a cheek of marble, and with difficulty
kept from betraying his emotion. He succeeded, however,
hurriedly bade Duncan `good-bye,' and, without another word, pursued
his way along the road; while the other entered the wood
through which the path led to Rock Hall.

Paul walked a long distance before he was able to collect his
thoughts from the tumult into which Duncan's words had thrown
them. He thought he now had the key to her rejection of his
passion.

`Yes,' he said, sternly, `she has hopes of entangling the rich heir of
Kirkwood, and so scorns me! And her duplicity! That she should
have so artfully deceived me, and kept the secret of having seen
Powell! I have been the dupe of my own blind passion; she has
been laughing at me while I believed her heart mine! I could despise
myself for my folly! I will forget her. Let Duncan Powell
win and wed her, if he will; she is henceforth nothing to me!'

With this determination in his mind, the young man strode
forward at a more rapid pace, as if he would speedily remove himself
far from the scene of his defeat. Yet there lingered in his
heart, with his contempt and anger towards her, the germ of his
youthful love, which had not been destroyed but only trampled
upon. Nevertheless, the young girl he so severely condemned was
not insensible to his attachment, and bitterly wept in the solitude
of her chamber after their parting.

`Alas, alas!' she said, in a voice of deep, suppressed agony, as she
sat by her window which overlooked the Hudson; `bitter is my
lot! I do indeed love him, love him with all the passion of my
woman's soul! But his love were a curse to him should I return
it, and I love him too well to sacrifice his noble heart. He is gone
believing I despise him. It is best it should be so! Oh, did he,
boy as he is, but know my heart's deep feelings! Oh, that it had
been ice, ere I had suffered love to melt it with tenderness! And
must it ever be thus? Am I justified in thus sacrificing myself
to a power I detest, in that it hath brought upon me this misery, to
a destiny I shrink from with horror? My poor breaking heart!
What with my father's woes, and those love hath now brought on
me, I am truly wretched! Oh, that I had never known the fearful
secret, that bids me crush my heart within my bosom and makes
love a curse!'

The morning found her early in her father's presence. He was
seated in an old arm-chair, with his head leaning upon his hand,
a folio volume of the prayers of the Romish church before him.
He looked up on her entrance, and smiled faintly, and extended his
hand. She took it, and kissing his forehead sat by him. He was
a tall, slender man, with exceedingly dark but noble features, and
had that indefinable aristocratic outline which is supposed to be
peculiar to men of high birth. His face was handsome, but wore
a look of settled melancholy. His eyes were black and flashing,
and singularly piercing. His dress was dark and plain; the only
ornament he displayed about his person being a seal ring of great
size and beauty.

`You have not slept, child,' he said, in a voice rich yet low in its
tones, and speaking in a foreign tongue.

`I am not well, nay, I will speak truly, I am unhappy, father,'
she answered in the same language. `Life is wretched with the
price I pay for it!'

`Life is cheap at the soul's price,' he said, in a voice of startling
energy and depth.

`Nay—I think it of little value when a bar so awful lies upon the
outgoings of the heart's affections!'

`Ha, you love this youth!' he said, in a voice of sudden furiness.
Beware!'

`He is worthy! He saved my life!'

`And you would give your soul in exchange for it? Yet one life
is precious, God knows!' Here he groaned, and for a moment
buried his face in his hands.

`Will you never forget that crime, dear father?' she said, soothingly.
`There is forgiveness on repentance; and surely your
penitence has been for years a most bitter one!'

`Tears can never wash out blood, nor sighs bring back the breath
of life; else thy mother had been living!'

`My mother! was it my mother whose murder has thus driven
thee from clime to clime, as if fleeing from thy own conscience?'
she cried, starting up, and gazing upon him with a look of horror.
`I knew a dark crime of murder lay upon thy soul, and that thou
hast thought, if thou couldst save a human life in its extremest
peril, it would atone for that thou hadst taken away. But my
mother! Father, speak! Fell she by thy hand? Were those
lovely features which I saw writhing in the agonies of a death by
poison, torn thus by thy murderous act? Nay, then — I cease to
pity and do scorn thee! I knew she was a Gypsy, for thou hast
told me. I knew she was not thy wedded wife, for my brain yet is
unsteady with the accursed narrative of my mother's wrongs.
I knew all this and I forgave you, forgave you freely, for how could
a child withstand a father, kneeling at her feet for pardon! But
I knew not till now, that, beside the crimes thou wert guilty of
towards my mother and inflicted on me the child of shame, thy
crime of blood had her for its victim! I was accursed in being
a Gypsy's and an unwedded mother's daughter, accursed enough in
being bound by the laws of my race not to wed with a Christian!
accursed in being the child of a murderer, brooding daily over his
crime! But all this is light compared with what I now endure, in
the knowledge that my fair mother, whom I remember so gentle
and beautiful, fell by thy hand! Henceforth thou art no more my
father! The tie that bound us is sundered forever!'

The guilty man listened to her in silence, and with a look of
agony and remorse stamped upon his dark features.

`My child,' he at length cried, taking her hand as she was turning
to leave the chamber,' listen to me, and then judge me! I am of
the noblest blood of Portugal, but my mother being a Jewess, I,
who should have been heir to a vast estate, was repudiated, and
became in boyhood an outcast. I joined the Gypsies of the
mountains, and rose to be their chief.'

`This has nothing to do with my mother's murder!' said the
young girl, haughtily.

`Hear me, Zuriza. Your mother was the most beautiful Gypsy
in all the tribes of the peninsula, and I became enamoured of her.
The attachment was reciprocal. The severe laws against intermarriage

with a Christian could not be set aside unless I changed
my religion, or rather would acknowledge no religion, for with
them there is no God. I yielded, and solemnly renounced my hopes
of Heaven! You shudder, for I have endeavored to atone in some
degree for my crime by educating you as a Christian! There was
yet another fearful rite to pass through which I refused to do, and
confident in her love for me, prevailed upon your mother, who was
called Zuriza, to fly with me. We reached Lisbon and thence
sailed in a Scotch vessel for the North. We reached an Irish port,
where I purchased for I brought great wealth with me, a secluded
dwelling, and lived with her happily.'

`Unwedded?'

`Yes.'

`Thy dreadful abjuration of Christ's faith, then, availed thee
naught! Alas, my father! Alas, my mother!'

`She urged me to wed her, but I now refused, though I loved her
with devotion. At length you were born. When you had attained
your fourth year, she discovered that I was striving by a rigorous
course of penance to make my soul's peace. Till then she believed
me, like herself, and as I had vowed to be, an unbeliever in a God
or a state beyond this life. On making this discovery all her hatred
to Christianity arose in her breast. One day she discovered me on
my knees, with a crucifix, giving you a lesson in the truths of
Christianity. Her eyes flashed fire, and dashing the crucifix from
my hand to the earth, she trampled upon it, and taking you up bore
you off in her arms.

`From this time my remorse at my abjuration of my faith filled
me with despair, and fearing that you would be brought up in the
wicked paganism of your mother, and dreading your soul's loss
would be upon mine, I at length sought a priest and made full
confession. After his horror at my recital would permit him to
speak, he answered me, that my restoration to the Divine favor and
your soul's safety would depend upon the death, by my own hand,
of the woman whose beauty had bewitched me! Two years I let
pass before I could make up my mind to do this fearful deed, for I
was fondly attached to your mother. But I loved my soul dearer;
and one day, hearing you openly blaspheme and spit upon a cross,
I knew that your mother had been poisoning your mind with her
heathenish infidelity, and that, unless I soon acted, I should have
the loss of your soul as well as my own to answer for.'

`Fearful, horrible!' cried the young girl, burying her face in her
hands. `Oh, would it not have been better to have sought to win
her to Christianity, and thus save three souls!'

`I did. But she scorned and curled her beautiful lip at the name
of Christ, and the words of our holy faith were turned into contempt
by her ridicule. In the mean while I had no hope for myself.
I knew my own reconciliation was not made with Heaven till I had
paid the price for it. I was trembling each hour lest death in some
shape should overtake me, my soul unpardoned. At length I resolved
to fulfil the destiny the church had imposed upon me! It was a
trial that made my heart bleed; for never was man's love for woman
like mine for the infidel Zuriza. I prepared the death for her
in the shape of a subtle poison. You were playing upon the floor,
when I entered her room, and she met me with a smile. My heart
failed me, when you run to me holding up a toy and said, `see, pa,
what a pretty doll mamma has made me, with its musical bells!'

`I glanced it, and, to my horror and indignation, discovered your
doll to be an image of the Saviour, dressed up in a harlequin's fantastic
costume, with cap and bells!'

`I remember it, alas!'

`This sacrilegious sight nerved my wavering purpose, and
I secretly poisoned a needle which I knew she would soon take
to embroider with. I then sat down in the room, for fear you might
take it up. I did not allude to the hariequin. By praising some
part of her embroidery, I led her to take up the needle and resume
it. I watched her with feelings no human being can conceive.
She turned round and smiled upon me from time to time as she
worked, asking my opinion of the color and shading of the
leaves. I spoke not — I could not. I watched her, and by and by
I saw the needle drop from her fingers. It had done its work! Her
head fell upon the frame, and then reviving a little she complained
of pain in the head. She rose, and I assisted her to her couch. In
a few minutes she was in convulsions. I stood over in horror;
guilt and remorse strangely mingled in my feelings with hope and
indescribable relief. Her death was to purchase my soul's life!
In that one idea I soon lost all other reflections, and calmly watched
her agonizing struggles.'

`Oh, I remember them, as vividly as yesterday! My poor
mother!' cried the daughter, as, with her head buried in the
cushions of an ottoman, she listened to the dreadful narrative of
crime and superstition.

`At length she expired in my arms. Her last look upon me one
of love, of forgiveness; for I read in the eloquent language of its
dying expression, that she knew whose hand had thus brought to an
end her young life.—Well,' continued the wretched man, after a painful
pause, `she died, and I had fulfilled the command of the church.
For a few moments this exhilarating thought was uppermost, and
left me no grief at her loss or sense of crime. But soon came
other feelings, dark and terrible, and I felt that I stood before God
a murderer. I fled from the house with a cry of horror. I took my
way, unconsciously, in the direction of the church. The priest, my
confessor, met me in the door. I was rushing in to east myself at
the altar (for my murder had purchased me that privilege I had
been denied for years!); but the priest held aloft his arm and cried,
`Stop, accursed of God!'

`Father,' I said, kneeling, `I have at length obeyed. Zuriza no
longer lives. She has within the hour perished by my hand!' I
still kneeled, and he sprinkled upon me holy water, signed my forehead
and breast with the sign of the cross, and led me to the high
altar. Taking a consecrated robe he cast it over me and bade me
kneel. High mass was said, and for an hour I lifted not my fore-head
from the marble pavement. I was restored to the bosom of
the church. I rose from my knees and was solemnly assoilzied
from the murder with which I had purchased reconciliation.

`But I will not linger over this fearful yet joyful occasion. Reconciled
to the church I had now no longer fears for my soul's safety,
but the murder of your mother weighed upon my heart and gave
me no peace. I remembered her beauty, her love for me, my
almost adoration of her, and my bosom had no peace. Her image
seemed to be present with me as I saw her in her horrible moments
of expiring agony. In all my dreams, in all my waking fancies,
I beheld only her whom I had wroaged and murdered. Life became
burdensome. The church could give me no relief; for it was not
fear of punishment! I was weighed down with, but it was the presence
of the murdered, haunting me like my shadow. I parted
with my house, and left Ireland for England. I was here still
wretched with remorse, that gave me no peace. I became a wanderer,
and in you I centred all the love I had once had for your
mother. I strove, by devoting my time to your education, to forget
my remorse and alone to her. But then I was giving you a
Christian education, and this I felt could not atone to her restless
shade. I became a wanderer. Each year increased my wretchedness.
You had discovered by accident that I was mourning a
crime, and had learned something from me of your own history;
and your sympathy and affection alone supported me. At length,
I fled to the shores of America, and here sought in these mountain
wilds that seclusion my heart yearns for; for the gayety of the busy
world only makes it feel deeper the sting of its vain remorse.
Now, my child, you know my history. Despise, scorn, spurn me, if
you will; for I feel I only need my child's contempt to fill up the
measure of my miserable existence!'

When he had ended this extraordinary communication, he sat
before his daughter with folded hands and drooping head, like a
criminal awaiting judgment. She had listened to the tale of her
mother's wrongs with varied feelings, stronger than all which were
pity and horror. She now stood in thought, her beautiful face pale
as marble, her bosom heaving with emotion, and her small hands
clenched with the energy of her emotions. At length she approached
her father and laid one hand upon his, while the tears fell fast
from her eyes, and kissing him tenderly upon his cold forehead,
glided from the room without a word. This act of filial duty and
forgiveness produced an extraordinary effect upon the wretched
parent. For a moment he appeared striving to realize the truth,
and at length when he did so, he fell from his seat over upon his face,
and embracing the foot of a bronzed crucifix, said, in tones of
thrilling pathos:

`This is too much happiness! My child forgives me! Now,
that she hath been told all, half the load I have borne for years
in the secret of my soul is dispelled! She forgives! Now
am I blessed, indeed. But, alas! Zeruza, never shall my wrong to
thee be forgotten! Thy child has blessed me; yet so long as I remember
the look of forgiveness thou gavest me in thy dying hour
shall I mourn thy death by my hand!'

The superstitious Portuguese rose to his feet with a calmer
aspect than he had worn for years, and instead of returning to his
missal, left his gloomy chamber to enjoy the freshness of the
morning.

His daughter, who, under the name of Kate Ogilvie, but whose
real name was Zeruza de Torno, after remaining alone nearly an
hour, reflecting upon her father's extraordinary story, and exculpating
him as far as she could, went forth to relieve her mind by
a ramble upon the wild shores of the river. Though she had been
educated by her father in the rigidest Roman Catholic faith, yet the
seeds of infidelity early sown by her pagan mother had not been
eradicated, and her religion, though outwardly unobjectionable, was
a singular mixture of paganism and Christianity, the former as
coming from her mother the most firmly seated in her heart. She
had, therefore, no fixed principles, and was a creature of impulse
and feeling. Her attachment to her father was a species of idolatry,
which, though shocked by her discovery, had not been over-turned,
and which his history re-confirmed. She spoke English
perfectly and without any foreign accent, and also fluently her
father's tongue. She was in character fearless, something masculine
in her amusements, full of the fire of passion and feeling, characteristic
of her race, and generous and unsuspecting to a fault.
Her heart was buoyant as a child's, and soon rose above the weight
of sorrows that would have broken down others. The scene that
she had gone through with her father had a powerful effect upon

her at the first; but her spirits rebounded with elasticity peculiar
to her temperament, and in an hour she was tranquil, nay, gay, as
before. The tears had been poured to her mother's memory. Her
resentment had passed by against her father, and he was forgiven;
and, forgetting the past, she lived only in the present and in the
future.

These happier feelings were, however, shaded by her thoughts
of Paul. An indefinable fear of incurring the curse and doom that
menaced all of her race, that wedded with a Christian, though herself
one, had interposed, deeply as she had suffered herself to
become attached to him, an impassable barrier to his love. Her
heart was his; but a strange, wild, superstitious dread, imbibed
from her pagan mother's teachings and growing with her growth,
locked up all its avenues to the encroaches of the love of one who
as a Christian, brought, concealed in the offerings of his affection,
the deadly asp that should pierce both their hearts. She well knew
she could not tempt Paul to deny his faith—for even this wild idea
came into her mind—and to be his otherwise was to incur some fearful
penalty, worse than that which befell her mother, who was but
the wedless wife of a forsworn Christian! Whether she would have
suggested to Paul this temptation, is not clear; but so extraordinary
was her character, and so vacillating and unsettled her faith, it is
probable, if she had held out to her the least hope of success, she
would not yet hesitate to put his love for her to the test by tossing
it into the scale against his religion. But Paul was now beyond
the reach of this danger—if such a singular temptation could be
supposed to convey even the idea of danger to an American youth
—and striving to banish him from her thoughts she joined her
father whom she saw standing upon a point of rock looking upon
the river. Not a word was spoken by either in allusion to the past,
as if by mutual consent, and the noble scenery was made the subject
of conversation. She had not seen her father so cheerful for
many months, and this change in him, the result of being relieved
from the weight of a fearful secret, was most gratifying to her and
gave her additional vivacity.

`What a majestic head old Cro'nest lifts to the morning sky,' she
said, gazing upon the stupendous, cliff-like mountain; `and behind,
Bull Hill seems to stretch out and upward like a huge behemoth,
kneeling! and how delicate and fair the white lines on the plains
appear drawn upon the green background, with the scarlet-striped
banner waving above!'

`The whole scene, Zuriza, that is, Catharine,' he said, and quickly
correcting his mode of addressing her, with a look of pain, as if the
idea had called up what he would have forgotten, `it all reminds
me of the Highlands of the Upper Rhine! Yonder pine-crowned
summit wants a fortress; the jutting cliff below us a castle half in
ruins, and `Cro'nest' to be battlemented with wall and bastion, to
be scenery of the Rhine!'

`Yet this is grander and wilder! The dark blue forests of pine,
and the solemn, unpeopled repose of these inland mountains give
to the American scene a character commanding awe and wonder
in a degree I never felt elsewhere! Besides, the river here expands
lake-like and vast, as if to affix the seal of its mighty power to the
scene, stamping all with the impress of majesty!'

`You have spoken with eloquence and feeling, Miss Ogilvie,' said
Duncan Powell, at this moment making his appearance; `and I
am gratified to find you so fully appreciate the sublime beauty of
our Highlands.'

Kate started, and was surprised to find Duncan Powell by day-light
a much handsomer, young man than by starlight she conceived
him to be. She frankly extended her hand to receive him,
and presented him to her father, who had surveyed his approach
with looks of suspicion and inquiry. She recounted, in a few brief
sentences, the adventure of the preceding evening, and after Mr.
Ogilvie had chided her for being so far from the cottage at such an
hour, he warmly complimented Duncan upon his conduct, and all
three walked to see whence the leap had been taken. This visit—
for Duncan remained half the forenoon, and was much alone with
her—laid the foundation for an intimacy, in which Paul promised
fairly to be rivalled. But Kate's heart was already so far Paul's as
she dared surrender it, and, except so far as for mere innocent pastime,
she felt she should care little for the heir of Kirkwood. She
liked him, for he strove to please her; and he became enamoured
of her, for no one much less susceptible could have helped being
so. But Duncan never thought of love seriously in his life, and now
his feelings, with reference to her, were only those of pride and satisfaction,
at having fallen into acquaintance with so fine a girl.
Duncan was not the person to be a sentimentalist in love. No two
characters would be more opposite than his and Paul's. Catharine
also thought so. Yet she was glad to have Duncan take the place
of the latter, at least in companionship; though she knew he had
no hope of place in her regard. But then she felt she was forbidden
by her cruel destiny to have regards for any one, else Paul
would have shared them, and that one person must be to her even
as another. So she reasoned; but her heart never coincided in her
conclusions. Nevertheless, she and Duncan became friends, and
Paul in a few days seemed forgotten.