"I don't care to," she answered, with a slight shudder,--"I don't want to, love."

"Yes, yes,--do, sweet," importuned he; "I want to hear it."

"Then if I must," said she, "I will. I dreamed that you and I were walking on a road together, and 'twas such a beautiful road, with flowers and fruit, and lovely cottages on either side. I thought you held my hand; I felt it just as plain as I clasp yours now. Presently a rough ugly man overtook us, and bid you let me go; and that you refused, and held me all the tighter. Then he gave you a diabolical look, and touched you on the face, and you broke out in loathsome black spots, and screamed in such agony and frightened me so, that I awoke all in a shiver of terror, and did not get over it all the next day."

Clarence clutched her hand tighter as she finished, so tight indeed, that she gave a little scream of pain and looked frightened at him. "What is the matter?" she inquired; "your hand is like ice, and you are paler than ever.

You haven't let that trifling dream affect you so? It is nothing."

"I am superst.i.tious in regard to dreams," said Clarence, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Go," he asked, faintly, "play me an air, love,--something quick and lively to dispel this. I wish you had not told me."

"But you begged me to," said she, pouting, as she took her seat at the instrument.

"How ominous," muttered he,--"became covered with black spots; that is a foreshadowing. How can I tell her," he thought. "It seems like wilfully destroying my own happiness." And he sat struggling with himself to obtain the necessary courage to fulfil the purpose of his visit, and became so deeply engrossed with his own reflections as to scarcely even hear the sound of the instrument.

"It is too bad," she cried, as she ceased playing: "here I have performed some of your favourite airs, and that too without eliciting a word of commendation. You are inexpressibly dull to-night; nothing seems to enliven you. What is the matter?"

"Oh," rejoined he, abstractedly, "am I? I was not aware of it."

"Yes, you are," said Little Birdie, pettishly; "nothing seems to engage your attention." And, skipping off to the table, she took up the newspaper, and exclaimed,--"Let me read you something very curious."

"No, no, Anne dear," interrupted he; "sit here by me. I want to say something serious to you--something of moment to us both."

"Then it's something very grave and dull, I know," she remarked; "for that is the way people always begin. Now I don't want to hear anything serious to-night; I want to be merry. You _look_ serious enough; and if you begin to talk seriously you'll be perfectly unbearable. So you must hear what I am going to read to you first." And the little tyrant put her finger on his lip, and looked so bewitching, that he could not refuse her. And the important secret hung on his lips, but was not spoken.

"Listen," said she, spreading out the paper before her and running her tiny finger down the column. "Ah, I have it," she exclaimed at last, and began:--

"'We learn from unimpeachable authority that the Hon. ---- ----, who represents a district of our city in the State legislature, was yesterday united to the Quateroon daughter of the late Gustave Almont. She is said to be possessed of a large fortune, inherited from her father; and they purpose going to France to reside,--a sensible determination; as, after such a _mesalliance_, the honourable gentleman can no longer expect to retain his former social position in our midst.--_New Orleans Watchman_.'"

"Isn't it singular," she remarked, "that a man in his position should make such a choice?"

"He loved her, no doubt," suggested Clarence; "and she was almost white."

"How could he love her?" asked she, wonderingly. "Love a coloured woman! I cannot conceive it possible," said she, with a look of disgust; "there is something strange and unnatural about it."

"No, no," he rejoined, hurriedly, "it was love, Anne,--pure love; it is not impossible. I--I--" "am coloured," he would have said; but he paused and looked full in her lovely face. He could not tell her,--the words slunk back into his coward heart unspoken.

She stared at him in wonder and perplexity, and exclaimed,--"Dear Clarence, how strangely you act! I am afraid you are not well. Your brow is hot,"

said she, laying her hand on his forehead; "you have been travelling too much for your strength."

"It is not that," he replied. "I feel a sense of suffocation, as if all the blood was rushing to my throat. Let me get the air." And he rose and walked to the window. Anne hastened and brought him a gla.s.s of water, of which he drank a little, and then declared himself better.

After this, he stood for a long time with her clasped in his arms; then giving her one or two pa.s.sionate kisses, he strained her closer to him and abruptly left the house, leaving Little Birdie startled and alarmed by his strange behaviour.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

Dear Old Ess again.

Let us visit once more the room from which Mr. Walters and his friends made so brave a defence. There is but little in its present appearance to remind one of that eventful night,--no reminiscences of that desperate attack, save the bullet-hole in the ceiling, which Mr. Walters declares shall remain unfilled as an evidence of the marked attention he has received at the hands of his fellow-citizens.

There are several noticeable additions to the furniture of the apartment; amongst them an elegantly-carved work-stand, upon which some unfinished articles of children's apparel are lying; a capacious rocking-chair, and grand piano.

Then opposite to the portrait of Toussaint is suspended another picture, which no doubt holds a higher position in the regard of the owner of the mansion than the African warrior aforesaid. It is a likeness of the lady who is sitting at the window,--Mrs. Esther Walters, _nee_ Ellis. The brown baby in the picture is the little girl at her side,--the elder sister of the other brown baby who is doing its best to pull from its mother's lap the doll's dress upon which she is sewing. Yes, that is "dear old Ess," as Charlie calls her yet, though why he will persist in applying the adjective we are at a loss to determine.

Esther looks anything but old--a trifle matronly, we admit--but old we emphatically say she is not; her hair is parted plainly, and the tiniest of all tiny caps sits at the back of her head, looking as if it felt it had no business on such raven black hair, and ought to be ignominiously dragged off without one word of apology. The face and form are much more round and full, and the old placid expression has been undisturbed in the lapse of years.

The complexion of the two children was a sort of compromise between the complexions of their parents--chubby-faced, chestnut-coloured, curly-headed, rollicking little pests, who would never be quiet, and whose little black b.u.t.tons of eyes were always peering into something, and whose little plugs of fingers would, in spite of every precaution to prevent, be diving into mother's work-box, and various other highly inconvenient and inappropriate places.

"There!" said Esther, putting the last st.i.tch into a doll she had been manufacturing; "now, take sister, and go away and play." But little sister, it appeared, did not wish to be taken, and she made the best of her way off, holding on by the chairs, and tottering over the great gulfs between them, until she succeeded in reaching the music-stand, where she paused for a while before beginning to destroy the music. Just at this critical juncture a young lady entered the room, and held up her hands in horror, and baby hastened off as fast as her toddling limbs could carry her, and buried her face in her mother's lap in great consternation.

Emily Garie made two or three slight feints of an endeavour to catch her, and then sat down by the little one's mother, and gave a deep sigh.

"Have you answered your brother's letter?" asked Esther.

"Yes, I have," she replied; "here it is,"--and she laid the letter in Esther's lap. Baby made a desperate effort to obtain it, but suffered a signal defeat, and her mother opened it, and read--

"DEAR BROTHER,--I read your chilling letter with deep sorrow. I cannot say that it surprised me; it is what I have antic.i.p.ated during the many months that I have been silent on the subject of my marriage. Yet, when I read it, I could not but feel a pang to which heretofore I have been a stranger.

Clarence, you know I love you, and should not make the sacrifice you demand a test of my regard. True, I cannot say (and most heartily I regret it) that there exists between us the same extravagant fondness we cherished as children--but that is no fault of mine. Did you not return to me, each year, colder and colder--more distant and unbrotherly--until you drove back to their source the gushing streams of a sister's love that flowed so strongly towards you? You ask me to resign Charles Ellis and come to you. What can you offer me in exchange for his true, manly affection?--to what purpose drive from my heart a love that has been my only solace, only consolation, for your waning regard! We have grown up together--he has been warm and kind, when you were cold and indifferent--and now that he claims the reward of long years of tender regard, and my own heart is conscious that he deserves it, you would step between us, and forbid me yield the recompense that it will be my pride and delight to bestow. It grieves me to write it; yet I must, Clary--for between brother and sister there is no need of concealments; and particularly at such a time should everything be open, clear, explicit. Do not think I wish to reproach you. What you are, Clarence, your false position and unfortunate education have made you. I write it with pain--your demand seems extremely selfish. I fear it is not of _me_ but of _yourself_ you are thinking, when you ask me to sever, at once and for ever, my connection with a people who, you say, can only degrade me. Yet how much happier am I, sharing their degradation, than you appear to be! Is it regard for me that induces the desire that I should share the life of constant dread that I cannot but feel you endure--or do you fear that my present connections will interfere with your own plans for the future?

"Even did I grant it was my happiness alone you had in view, my objections would be equally strong. I could not forego the claims of early friendship, and estrange myself from those who have endeared themselves to me by long years of care--nor pa.s.s coldly and unrecognizingly by playmates and acquaintances, because their complexions were a few shades darker than my own. This I could never do--to me it seems ungrateful: yet I would not reproach you because you can--for the circ.u.mstances by which you have been surrounded have conspired to produce that result--and I presume you regard such conduct as necessary to sustain you in your present position. From the tenor of your letter I should judge that you entertained some fear that I might compromise you with your future bride, and intimate that _my_ choice may deprive you of _yours_. Surely that need not be. _She_ need not even know of my existence. Do not entertain a fear that I, or my future husband, will ever interfere with your happiness by thrusting ourselves upon you, or endanger your social position by proclaiming our relationship. Our paths lie so widely apart that they need never cross. You walk on the side of the oppressor--I, thank G.o.d, am with the oppressed.

"I am happy--more happy, I am sure, than you could make me, even by surrounding me with the glittering lights that shine upon your path, and which, alas! may one day go suddenly out, and leave you wearily groping in the darkness.

I trust, dear brother, my words may not prove a prophecy; yet, should they be, trust me, Clarence, you may come back again, and a sister's heart will receive you none the less warmly that you selfishly desired her to sacrifice the happiness of a lifetime to you. I shall marry Charles Ellis. I ask you to come and see us united--I shall not reproach you if you do not; yet I shall feel strange without a single relative to kiss or bless me in that most eventful hour of a woman's life. G.o.d bless you, Clary! I trust your union may be as happy as I antic.i.p.ate my own will be--and, if it is not, it will not be because it has lacked the earnest prayers of your neglected but still loving sister."

"Esther, I thought I was too cold in that--tell me, do you think so?"

"No, dear, not at all; I think it a most affectionate reply to a cold, selfish letter."

"Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that. I can trust better to your tenderness of others' feelings than to my own heart. I felt strongly, Esther, and was fearful that it might be too harsh or reproachful. I was anxious lest my feelings should be too strikingly displayed; yet it was better to be explicit--don't you think so?"

"Undoubtedly," answered Esther; and handing back the letter, she took up baby, and seated herself in the rocking-chair.

Now baby had a prejudice against caps, inveterate and unconquerable; and grandmamma, nurse, and Esther were compelled to bear the brunt of her antipathies. We have before said that Esther's cap _looked_ as though it felt itself in an inappropriate position--that it had got on the head of the wrong individual--and baby, no doubt in deference to the cap's feelings, tore it off, and threw it in the half-open piano, from whence it was extricated with great detriment to the delicate lace.

Emily took a seat near the window, and drawing her work-table towards her, raised the lid. This presenting another opening for baby, she slid down from her mother's lap, and hastened towards her. She just arrived in time to see it safely closed, and toddled back to her mother, as happy as if she had succeeded in running riot over its contents, and scattering them all over the floor.

Emily kept looking down the street, as though in anxious expectation of somebody; and whilst she stood there, there was an opportunity of observing how little she had changed in the length of years. She is little Em magnified, with a trifle less of the child in her face. Her hair has a slight kink, is a little more wavy than is customary in persons of entire white blood; but in no other way is her extraction perceptible, only the initiated, searching for evidences of African blood, would at all notice this slight peculiarity.

Her expectation was no doubt about to be gratified, for a smile broke over her face, as she left the window and skipped downstairs; when she re-entered, she was accompanied by her intended husband. There was great commotion amongst the little folk in consequence of this new arrival. Baby kicked, and screamed out "Unker Char," and went almost frantic because her dress became entangled in the buckle of her mamma's belt, and her sister received a kiss before she could be extricated.

Charlie is greatly altered--he is tall, remarkably athletic, with a large, handsomely-shaped head, covered with close-cut, woolly hair; high forehead, heavy eyebrows, large nose, and a mouth of ordinary size, filled with beautifully white teeth, which he displays at almost every word he speaks; chin broad, and the whole expression of his face thoughtful and commanding, yet replete with good humour. No one would call him handsome, yet there was something decidedly attractive in his general appearance. No one would recognize him as the Charlie of old, whose escapades had so destroyed the comfort and harmony of Mrs. Thomas's establishment; and only once, when he held up the baby, and threatened to let her tear the paper ornaments from the chandelier, was there a twinkle of the Charlie of old looking out of his eyes.

"How are mother and father to-day?" asked Esther.