Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (405 page)

‘No, Señor, it is not that,’ returned the lady.  ‘I — ’ and a flood of colour once more mounted to her brow — ’I am confused and ashamed because I have deceived you.  Spanish,’ she began, and paused — ’Spanish is, of course, my native tongue,’ she resumed, as though suddenly taking courage; ‘and this should certainly put the highest value on your thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me?  And how shall I confess to you the truth — the humiliating truth — that I cannot read?’

As Harry’s eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban seemed to shrink before his gaze.  ‘Read?’ repeated Harry.  ‘You!’

She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble gesture.  ‘Enter, Señor,’ said she.  ‘The time has come to which I have long looked forward, not without alarm; when I must either fear to lose your friendship, or tell you without disguise the story of my life.’

It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry passed the window.  A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had presided over the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself.  It was filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels.  The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, and sinking herself into another, thus began her history.

STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN

I am not what I seem.  My father drew his descent, on the one hand, from grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal line, from the patriot Bruce.  My mother, too, was the descendant of a line of kings; but, alas! these kings were African.  She was fair as the day: fairer than I, for I inherited a darker strain of blood from the veins of my European father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her neighbours, and surrounded by the most considerate affection and respect, I grew up to adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh upon my lips, still ignorant that she was a slave, and alas! my father’s mistress.  Her death, which befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had known: it left our home bereaved of its attractions, cast a shade of melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and durable change.  Months went by; with the elasticity of my years, I regained some of the simple mirth that had before distinguished me; the plantation smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the estate had already forgotten my mother and transferred their simple obedience to myself; but still the cloud only darkened on the brows of Señor Valdevia.  His absences from home had been frequent even in the old days, for he did business in precious gems in the city of Havana; they now became almost continuous; and when he returned, it was but for the night and with the manner of a man crushed down by adverse fortune.

The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in the Caribbean Sea, some half-hour’s rowing from the coasts of Cuba.  It was steep, rugged, and, except for my father’s family and plantation, uninhabited and left to nature.  The house, a low building surrounded by spacious verandahs, stood upon a rise of ground and looked across the sea to Cuba.  The breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned us as we lay swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs and flowers of the magnolia.  Behind and to the left, the quarter of the negroes and the waving fields of the plantation covered an eighth part of the surface of the isle.  On the right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast and deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, dotted with profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters, man-eating crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes.  Into the recesses of that jungle, none could penetrate but those of African descent; an invisible, unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the European; and the air was death.

One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in that warm climate all are early risers, and found not a servant to attend upon my wants.  I made the circuit of the house, still calling: and my surprise had almost changed into alarm, when coming at last into a large verandahed court, I found it thronged with negroes.  Even then, even when I was amongst them, not one turned or paid the least regard to my arrival.  They had eyes and ears for but one person: a woman, richly and tastefully attired; of elegant carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old in years, as worn and marred by self-indulgence: her face, which was still attractive, stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye burning with the greed of evil.  It was not from her appearance, I believe, but from some emanation of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting terror; as we hear of plants that blight and snakes that fascinate, the woman shocked and daunted me.  But I was of a brave nature; trod the weakness down; and forcing my way through the slaves, who fell back before me in embarrassment, as though in the presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones: ‘Who is this person?’

A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have a care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.

In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes, studied me with insolent particularity from head to foot.

‘Young woman,’ said she, at last, ‘I have had a great experience in refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them.  You really tempt me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more importance, on my hand, I should certainly buy you at your father’s sale.’

‘Madam — ’ I began, but my voice failed me.

‘Is it possible that you do not know your position?’ she returned, with a hateful laugh.  ‘How comical!  Positively, I must buy her.  Accomplishments, I suppose?’ she added, turning to the servants.

Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up like any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.

‘She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,’ said the Señora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses; ‘and I should take a pleasure,’ she pursued, more directly addressing myself, ‘in bringing you acquainted with a whip.’  And she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty upon her face.

At this, I found expression.  Calling by name upon the servants, I bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat, and set her back upon the mainland.  But with one voice, they protested that they durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be more wise; and, when I insisted, rising higher in passion and speaking of this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me as from one who had blasphemed.  A superstitious reverence plainly encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces; and their fear perhaps reacted on myself.  I looked again at Madam Mendizabal.  She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through her glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage, fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.

I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.  As I went, my head whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults.  Who was she? what, in Heaven’s name, the power she wielded over my obedient negroes?  Why had she addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father’s sale?  To all these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and in the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except the hateful leering image of the woman.

I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father coming to meet me from the landing-place; and with a cry that I thought would have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a passion of sobs and tears upon his bosom.  He made me sit down below a tall palmetto that grew not far off; comforted me, but with some abstraction in his voice; and as soon as I regained the least command upon my feelings, asked me, not without harshness, what this grief betokened.  I was surprised by his tone into a still greater measure of composure; and in firm tones, though still interrupted by sobs, I told him there was a stranger in the island, at which I thought he started and turned pale; that the servants would not obey me; that the stranger’s name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that, he seemed to me both troubled and relieved; that she had insulted me, treated me as a slave (and here my father’s brow began to darken), threatened to buy me at a sale, and questioned my own servants before my face; and that, at last, finding myself quite helpless and exposed to these intolerable liberties, I had fled from the house in terror, indignation, and amazement.

‘Teresa,’ said my father, with singular gravity of voice, ‘I must make to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman by her spirit.  As for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to tell you what she is?  Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves; to-day she is what you see her — prematurely old, disgraced by the practice of every vice and every nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its reason is mysterious.  Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo.  Be that as it may, I would have you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you shall never fall.’

‘Father!’ I cried.  ‘Fall?  Was there any truth, then, in her words?  Am I — O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense.’

‘I will tell you,’ he replied, with merciful bluntness.  ‘Your mother was a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail to the free land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her: a design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment, intervened.  You will now understand the heaviness with which your mother’s memory hangs about my neck.’

I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to console the survivor, I forgot myself.

‘It matters not,’ resumed my father.  ‘What I have left undone can never be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse.  But, Teresa, with so cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once to do what was still possible: to liberate yourself.’

I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre roughness.

‘Your mother’s illness,’ he resumed, ‘had engaged too great a portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred — all these had been too long absent from the conduct of affairs.  Teresa, I was insolvent.’

‘What matters that?’ I cried.  ‘What matters poverty, if we be left together with our love and sacred memories?’

‘You do not comprehend,’ he said gloomily.  ‘Slave, as you are, young — alas! scarce more than child! — accomplished, beautiful with the most touching beauty, innocent as an angel — all these qualities that should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell.  You are a chattel; a marketable thing; and worth — heavens, that I should say such words! — worth money.  Do you begin to see?  If I were to give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the manumission would be certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I a criminal.’

I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for myself, in sympathy for my father.

‘How I have toiled,’ he continued, ‘how I have dared and striven to repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember.  Its blessing was denied to my endeavours, or, as I please myself by thinking, but delayed to descend upon my daughter’s head.  At length, all hope was at an end; I was ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the morrow, which I could not meet; I should be declared a bankrupt, and my goods, my lands, my jewels that I so much loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and rendered happy, and oh! tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would be sold and pass into the hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers.  Too long, I saw, had I accepted and profited by this great crime of slavery; but was my daughter, my innocent unsullied daughter, was
she
to pay the price?  I cried out — no! — I took Heaven to witness my temptation; I caught up this bag and fled.  Close upon my track are the pursuers; perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow, they will land upon this isle, sacred to the memory of the dear soul that bore you, to consign your father to an ignominious prison, and yourself to slavery and dishonour.  We have not many hours before us.  Off the north coast of our isle, by strange good fortune, an English yacht has for some days been hovering.  It belongs to Sir George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now I have rendered unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our escape.  Or if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the power to force him.  For what does it mean, my child — what means this Englishman, who hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and returns from every trip with new and valuable gems?’

‘He may have found a mine,’ I hazarded.

‘So he declares,’ returned my father; ‘but the strange gift I have received from nature, easily transpierced the fable.  He brought me diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in innocence; at a second glance, I started; for of these stones, my child, some had first seen the day in Africa, some in Brazil; while others, from their peculiar water and rude workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient temples.  Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries.  Oh, he is cunning, but I was cunninger than he.  He visited, I found, the shop of every jeweller in town; to one he came with rubies, to one with emeralds, to one with precious beryl; to all, with this same story of the mine.  But in what mine, what rich epitome of the earth’s surface, were there conjoined the rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel, and the diamonds of Golconda?  No, child, that man, for all his yacht and title, that man must fear and must obey me.  To-night, then, as soon as it is dark, we must take our way through the swamp by the path which I shall presently show you; thence, across the highlands of the isle, a track is blazed, which shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and close by the yacht is riding.  Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I look to see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man attends on the mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold, if it be dark, the redness of a fire, if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on the opposing headland; and thus warned, we shall have time to put the swamp between ourselves and danger.  Meantime, I would conceal this bag; I would, before all things, be seen to arrive at the house with empty hands; a blabbing slave might else undo us.  For see!’ he added; and holding up the bag, which he had already shown me, he poured into my lap a shower of unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every size and colour, and catching, as they fell, upon a million dainty facets, the ardour of the sun.