University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
SHADOWS ON THE SEA.

The act was like a flash — quick as lightning — one for which
not a syllable had prepared our cruiser. He had not heard or seen
her approach — was deeply busied in the work before him, which
seemed to tax all his attention, and to absorb his whole existence.

But with the act he started into terrible consciousness — started
to his feet, thrust the table from before him, and confronted her
with uplifted hand and clenched fingers. His brow was dark like
a thunder-storm; there was a lurid fire in his glance that seemed
to smite; and the veins grew suddenly corded across his forehead.
The change was instantaneous. Never had Zulieme beheld such
a countenance in man— never such a look from him, the powerful
man before her. She recoiled from it, as with all the instinct
of imbecility, cowered, crouched; and the broken murmur from
her lips, speaking which she was hardly conscious, attested her
first sense of her own folly and of his rage.

“Oh, Harry! do n't — do n't strike me.”

“Strike you!” was the hoarsely-spoken answer.

“Strike you!” and he drew himself up to his fullest height,
and threw his arms behind him, as if fearing to trust his own
emotions. And it was admirable to behold the wonderful effort
which the strong man made — in his pride, in all the consciousness
of power — to subdue himself, as Strength ever should in the
conflict with Imbecility. In a moment his countenance had become
composed. There was still a quiver of the muscles which

the woman did not see. And then he stooped down deliberately
and began picking up the scattered papers, as quietly as Molyneaux
had done on a similar occasion overhead. The woman
little dreamed that he thus employed himself only to gain time in
the struggle with his own passions. She said something, and
laughed hysterically, seeing him so employed; then, with sudden
impulse, she sprang to assist in gathering up the sheets of paper.
And he suffered her, but continued himself, until all the documents
were restored to the table. This done, he said — and with a tone
so sad, accents so subdued, an emphasis so melancholy, that the
simple words had in them a significance which even she could
feel, and which no language could define —

“It is you, Zulieme.”

He did not say so, but we may, that, had the offender been a
man — any other person, indeed — he would have brained him
where he stood. There would not have been a word spoken.

He took her hand. He led her to the divan, seated her, and
stood before her. She was now submissive enough to all his
movements.

“Zulieme Calvert, you once saved my life; and — you are my
wife. God forbid that aught should ever make me forget what
you are, what I owe you, and what I am! But, sit here. I must
speak with you. It is necessary that I should try, at least, to lift
you into some sense of what you are, what I am, and what is absolutely
necessary between us.”

“Oh, Harry, it was all fun.”

“Life, Zulieme, is not a funny thing. Men and women are not
made for fun. Life is a sad, serious thing, in which fun is very
apt to be impertinence. If I were dying on that couch before
you, would you think the affair funny? Would it make you
funny? Would you laugh, sing, dance, while I lay struggling with
the last enemy of man? There are women — wives, it is said —
who would rejoice at such a spectacle; but even they would deem
it proper to conceal their delight. They, at least, would not confess
that it was funny in their eyes, or try to make it appear so
to the eyes of others.”

“Oh, Harry, how can you speak so — and to me — when you
know—”

“Do I not tell you that I believe you saved my life? do I not

avow that I am your husband? Let this assure you that I will
not forget, in what I say, what are the relations between us.”

“But oh! Harry, to speak of your dying — and that I should
be funny!”

“I did not say that, Zulieme. Hear what I do say: when, in
your fun, you tore the papers from my table, I was writing my
last will and dying testament.”

“Ah — Dios! O, Harry! why should you write such things?”

“Because, the very hour that takes you into Charleston, for
which you long so much, may take me to the gallows.”

She answered with a scream of horror. He soothed her.

“Let this secure me your attention. If you will be funny,
Zulieme, pray be attentive also.”

“You stab me to the soul, Harry.”

“And I must so stab you to the soul; Zulieme, if only to make
you feel that you have one. If, in the pursuit of your merest
pleasures, your soul becomes insensible to the anxieties and sufferings
of those whom you profess to love, of what use to have a
soul at all? It is sometimes necessary to bruise the plant to make
it give forth its precious virtues; so, to the cold or sleeping soul
it needs that we should sometimes give an almost mortal stab, in
order that we may make it feel that life, of which otherwise it
makes no sign. You have seen that I suffer, yet you heed not;
you have been told that I have cares, yet you despise them; I
have shown you that I command a turbulent people, who would
soon cease to obey if I failed in proper authority, yet you wantonly
put that authority in danger. But of these things I have
already spoken, and always in vain. I will speak of them no
longer. I fear, from what I know of you, that the impressions,
even of a great terror, will possess your soul only for an instant;
that a gleam of sunshine, a bird song, the sound of music, the
laughter of a child, the voice of a gallant in compliment — or his
hand in the dance — will make you forget that Danger stands
waiting at the door, and that Death lurks, looking over your
shoulder, as over mine.”

“Oh! Harry, what a fool you must think me!”

“A child, Zulieme; but one that can never grow. Your whole
people are children. You have no voice in the soul, no urgent
thought, which compels growth. Happy only, if the world's cares

and your own resources will let you remain a child — let you sing,
dance, sleep.”

He paused, strode away, then turned and resumed. She would
have spoken, but, with uplifted hand, he silenced her.

“No, Zulieme, you must hear me now. You force me to speak.
In marrying me, you married a care — I a child. We were both
in error. I have brought you into an atmosphere for which you
are unaccustomed. You should have married a man who was
willing to dream away life, among the plains or hills of the isthmus,
between dance and siesta. I am one whom care and thought
do not permit to sleep. You are a bird, that, even in sleep, must
sing. You are not asked to do battle in the storm. My whole
life is a battle. Mine is a life of passion. You know not what
passion is. You sob and sleep, sing and sleep, prattle and sleep,
and sleep comes to you, rounding life with dream, and rousing it
only to new dreams with the morning. What had you, poor
Zulieme, to do with a stern, dark, careful man like me? I have
brought you to `an experience of care,' to a life of thought, for
which you have no sympathy. It was my fault, perhaps, Zulieme,
and your misfortune. And so, we live in different worlds, Zulieme,
and though we do not part, we never meet. When we
meet, your song is spoiled. I make for you a sky in which no
bird can sing, unless the hawk, the vulture, the cormorant. Is it
not so, Zulieme?”

“I do n't know, Harry; only I feel you are saying terrible
things to me. I do n't want to hear you!”

“But you must hear now. The time has come when you must
be made to see clearly how vast a space divides us — makes for
us different worlds and fates. Your world changes every day,
sometimes every hour. Of the fates, you take no more care than
the bird. To-day, you would find your sufficient world in Charleston.
In that little town of twelve hundred people, you would
dance and sing, quite satisfied, so long as there came a crowd to
admire, and a good waltzer to be your partner. And so would it
be in Havana. To me these are all childish things.”

“Harry, do n't talk to me any more. I won't dance again. I
will never—”

“Nay, that will be to give up your life, Zulieme. Do not be
impatient. You have forced me to speak, and you must hear,

and I promise you that I will not again speak to you, in this manner,
till you shall again force me. Now, you must let me finish.
I shall never, Zulieme, cease to repent the selfishness and weakness
that made me marry you. I should have known the dangers
and the sufferings to which such an alliance would expose you.
I should have known you well enough to see that you were unfitted
for the encounter. And I did know it. But I was weak after
long sickness, and you were very beautiful, Zulieme, and very
tender, and you had saved my life by your nursing, Zulieme.”

“Ah, Harry, but did n't I nurse you well?”

“No one could have done it better.”

“Yet, you are so cross to me.”

“Cross! alas, Zulieme, I try in vain to teach you. Cross!
Child — woman! were you any other than you are, I would have
torn you limb from limb, and thrown you, without remorse or
scruple, to the sharks of yonder deep sea.”

“Harry! — you horrid Harry.”

“Ay, I am tender to you, Zulieme — tender for my nature;
considerate of yours. But I must try and make clear to you the
absolute truths in my situation, however impossible to make you
comprehend the necessities of my nature, or of the character of
yours. When we married, I was weak, and sick, and sore, and
mortified. I had suffered a great disappointment.”

“Ah! I know — there was a lady, Harry. And I know her
name, too. You called her often enough when you were out of
your head. And you married me, a poor child you say, because
she would n't have you. That 's it, Harry.”

“That 's not it, Zulieme. The woman of whom you speak was
mine, all mine — heart, soul, voice — all! all!”

“And why did you not marry her, then?”

“I was an outcast, an exile; but seeking fortune that I might
do so; and in this search I was wrecked, narrowly escaped
drowning, found my way to your father's hacienda, and narrowly
escaped dying; and, after seventeen dreary months of absence
from home, she was made to marry another. But, do not force
me upon this, Zulieme. Rather hear what I would say in regard
to the present, and ourselves; let the past bury its own dead.
Enough for me — sad solace that it is — I knew her to be faithful;
feel that she has been betrayed by those who should have been

true; feel that she has suffered like myself; that never pang went
to my heart that did not find its way to hers. Let there be no
more of this. Let it suffice you that I am your husband — that
she is now the wife of another.”

Here he paused, strode aside with averted face, and hastily
swallowed a cup of water.

“Your father found me a dying man, almost glad to die. Had
I been conscious when he took me into his dwelling, I had certainly
died. Insensibility, however, came to the relief of nature.
and in the very aberration of intellect the animal recovered. It
was with pain only that I grew to consciousness, and your fond
nursing, Zulieme, gave me the first pleasant impression of returning
life and health. I do not reproach you; I am grateful. Yet,
a thousand times better had it been, for you as well as me, had
your sire and self suffered me to perish on the burning highways,
ere you took me to the shelter of your hacienda.”

“No! no! Harry — no!”

“Ah! you know not yet the end. And how it all must end.
The sting is yet to come. You are of light heart, a bird nature,
and you will not feel it long. There is consolation in that.”

“But, Harry — do n't—”

“Stay, Zulieme, hear!

“Your father's protection, your cares, a vigorous constitution,
and, perhaps, my utter mental unconsciousness for the time, saved
my life. Your father helped me with his means. I bought a
share in this vessel. I finally became sole proprietor. I made
her famous. She became the terror of the Spaniard on the seas.
And here, in this and other ports of the English, she was ever
welcome as a Spanish terror. The Spaniards had been their terror.
They knew them only as enemies; could know them only as
enemies; and he who strove with the Spaniard was to them an
ally and a friend. I was one of these. The English people
knew me as a friend, and when I tore down a Spanish flag I was
hailed by the plaudits of my people. To do this very work I had
the commission of my king; yet, he now abandons me. Bribed
by the Frenchman, bullied by the Spaniard, faithless to himself
and people, my own king sacrifices me to the foes of both. He
disavows my commission; he denounces me as a pirate of the
seas, whom it is permitted to all men to destroy.”

“Oh! Harry, I would n't fight for him again. Leave these
English; they're a hoggish sort of people — leave them and live
with our people. And why should you follow the seas, Harry?
What's the use? It is n't money that you want. You have
enough, and I have enough, and we'll go back to the Isthmus,
where no English can ever find us out; and there, O Harry,
there we can be so happy. No troubles, Harry; no cares; nothing
but dancing and delight, and fruits and pleasures. Let us go,
Harry; let us leave this place; and leave the seas; and have no
more trouble, safe, high up in the mountains of the Isthmus.”

He shook his head mournfully.

“Rather a single year of life, all storm and battle, than the
stagnation of such a life. No peace, no calm for me, Zulieme. I
can now live only in the storm. This is what I fail to make you
understand. My lot is cast on reefs of danger, through seas of
storm, with rocks on either hand, and the hurricane for ever on
the wing. It requires all my manhood to steer amid these dangers.
It is not for me to skulk them. But, though I do not fear
them, and will meet them as becomes a proper manhood, I do not
find it easy to win merriment from, or seek it while I am in the
death-struggle with, these warring elements. And when I am thus
wrestling for life, it is not easy to endure the jest, or the peevish
humors, of one even who has saved my life! — even a woman —
even a wife! a being whom, in moments of thought, we regard as
a thing to cherish close to the heart, and not to gaze on with look
of less than kindness. Do you see now why it is that I go to
Charleston with mood so different from yours?”

“Do not go, Harry — do not! I did not know that there was
danger. I 'm sure, Harry, I do n't care to go there. Why should
I care? I can be seen by quite as many people in Havana, and
then we have a thousand times better dancing, I 'm sure! No!
no! Do n't go there, Harry. Rather go home, to our old home
on the isthmus.”

“I must go, Zulieme, though the gallows waits me at the dock!
But I will do nothing rashly, Zulieme, unless goaded to it by your
passion for the dance, and by the passions of others not so innocent.”

“What passions — what others?”

“Enough, that they are unknown to you. In that ignorance is

my security — and yours! You know, now, why I avoid Charleston
by daylight — why I hide my vessel among these headlands, and
under cover of these pines. With midnight we will run into port;
we will run up Ashley river, and harbor there in a well-known
place of security. I will go ashore in disguise. You will remain
on board till I tell you that you may come forth in safety. You
must be content with this. If not — if stimulated by any foolish
love of show or amusement you allow yourself to be discovered —
it may lead to my ruin. You must rely on me so as to believe
that the restraint I put upon you for awhile, is absolutely necessary
for my safety.”

“Oh, Harry, I will mind all that you say.”

“One word more: beware, Zulieme, how you mind anybody
else.”

“Who else should I mind, Harry, but you? And if I do n't
mind you always, Harry, it 's because you are such a great English
bear sometimes; showing such great teeth and such big paws,
and not letting a body laugh as much.”

And she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. He
loosed himself tenderly from her hold, took her to the cabin-entrance,
and put her out — even as one gently puts out of the window
the little bird which has flown into his chamber unadvisedly,
and which, ignorant of his purpose, is throbbing with terror underneath
his hands. But he had scarce done so, when she returned:

“Harry, let me stay here awhile. I can 't go up there now.”

“Very well. Lie down, Zulieme.”

“Yes, yes! That 's what I want!”

And throwing herself down upon the divan behind him, while
he went on writing, her great black eyes suddenly gushed out
with tears.

But she suppressed the sobs.

After awhile, she started up and cried out:—

“O Harry! there was no truth in what you said about the gallows.
You only meant to scare me.”

“What my danger may be, Zulieme, I know not. It may not
be the gallows. It may not even be death. But there is danger.”

He now distinctly heard the sobbing. She could no longer subdue
it. He rose, went to her, and, bending over her, kissed her
tenderly, while he said:—

“Zulieme, I do n't think my neck will ever be defiled by a halter.
But it is certain that I am threatened with it by my king.
By yours I am threatened with the garote. But I am in danger
from neither shame, Zulieme, while I have my strength and senses
about me, and carry such a friend as this convenient to my grasp.”

And he touched the pistols in his belt, and pointed to certain
daggers that hung within reach against the wall.

She started up, and drew the poniard from her own girdle, as
she cried —

“And I would kill myself, Harry, if harm should ever come to
you.”

“Zulieme, if ever you hear of me in prison, come to me if you
can, and bring with you that pretty toy! But let them not see it
when you come. Weave it up in the masses of your hair, and
silence all speech of eyes or tongue, that might declare for what
you carry.”.....

Enough of this scene. Zulieme in half an hour was asleep, and
laughing merrily in her sleep, with those fancies which, in the
dialogue, she had been compelled to stifle. Calvert looked round,
half confounded, half amused.

“What a contradiction,” he muttered to himself. “An April
creature. In play a very hurricane — in passion a child that sobs
itself to slumber only to dream of play! Yet, though feeble as an
infant, she is faithful. If wanting in force and concentration of
soul, she is not wanting in truth; and if her love be of the sunshine
only, it is pure — a shallow brooklet that can satisfy no
thirst, but limpid as the light, and gliding openly, always in the
sunshine.”

And he resumed his writing for awhile; finished, folded up his
papers, and hurried on deck, leaving Zulieme sleeping. She only
woke, roused by the vessel's motion, to be told that they were already
within the harbor and pressing up toward the infant city.
Then she sprang upon her feet and joined her lord on deck.