Part 63 (1/2)
she could not forget what true love had been to her.
”She loved the boy, she nurtured him with care, and he was her only consolation when her heart was crushed with pain and what she then called--guilt.
”When her protector died, she married an American who took her out to Was.h.i.+ngton; but by this time her heart was so old, and cold, and weary of beating that it could hold no love for any man, and she devoted herself to the pretty boy, and brought him up a little gentleman, although she never dared treat him as her son for fear she should hate him some day for his wicked father's sake.
”She sent the boy to the North to gain a finished education, and lived very wearily with her jealous husband, finding her only amus.e.m.e.nt in attracting the homage of the men she met, and repaying it with scorn.
”At last she grew too restive under the yoke, and having had experience before of the evils of jealousy in a husband, she declined rehearsing her part a second time, and forestalled the humiliation by eloping with a Virginian planter.
”Hapless wretch! Can you blame her, dear count? no, no, we shall blame it all on that perfidious little tailor who broke her heart at first.
”She liked the sumptuous life on the fine plantation pa.s.sably well, her mansion was admirably arranged, her _menage_ was fine, her slaves numerous and docile; Dolores reigned royally.
”But her malevolent destiny could not leave her long in comfort, poor soul; it swooped upon her when she was almost contented, and with inflexible hand pushed her into misery once more.
”The war broke out, the slaves fled, monsieur, her kind friend went to Richmond and got a company, and Dolores was left in the great house with only one quadroon girl and a couple of old negroes to protect her from danger.
”In the second year of the war, her fate was sealed.
”One day a detachment of Federal soldiers encamped in the plantation, and two colonels came to the mansion to demand shelter for their wounded.
”The terrified Dolores was hastening down stairs to see them, when a voice which she had not heard for eighteen years sang a gay French _chanson_, which she last had heard from Ladislaus Schmolnitz, on the pretty banks of Theiss.
”Friends, this wretched woman recognized that voice as belonging to her once loved little tailor.
”Ah! her heart was not dead after all, it stirred in its long death-sleep, and thrilled with joy. Oh, Heaven! why is love so deathless in a woman's breast when it is ever her curse, her ruin?
”Well, she fled to her room again, and disguised herself as well as she could, for she yearned to meet her renegade husband, and to converse with him unsuspected. She did so. She concealed her pretty figure with clumsy padding, she browned her white face, she covered her yellow hair with a wig, and entering, she bowed low to her renegade husband and spoke only French, which he had never before heard her speak.
”But he could not feel at ease, he gazed suspiciously again and again at her, her eyes recalled the old love story by the banks of the Theiss--he feared the French madame of middle age.
”What her emotions were, it is scarce worth telling. She was happy to know that he was alive, she exulted that she had seen him, but she was bound to the kind planter and feared to betray herself to Schmolnitz, she let him go, not intending to reveal herself.
”But, at the moment of parting, a volley of shot was fired at the front of the mansion by some Confederate troops, who had surprised the encampment, and a cannon ball crashed in the doorway, almost in the midst of the little group in the hall.
”Dolores was startled out of her disguise and clung madly to the little tailor, crying out that she was his Dolores, and that she loved him still.
”Simple idiot! when she could live in palaces if she chose!
”Dear friends, that abject little tailor had the brutality to shake her off, to swear at her; to protest that he had suspected as much, and to fling her from him in a dead faint in the hall and escape with his comrade.
”Ah! count, could you believe that a fiend in man's form could be so dastardly?
”But Dolores did not fall a victim to the cruelty of the small Mephistopheles; her servants carried her out of the house, which was in flames, and she soon escaped to Richmond, where she fell ill, and on recovering learned that her friend, the planter, was killed in battle.
”Some months had pa.s.sed, but this insane creature was so enslaved by her pa.s.sion for that unworthy man that no sooner was she recovered from her illness than she determined to search out the little tailor, and display her true beauty, which was singularly heightened by the years which had pa.s.sed since they parted.
”She seriously hoped to win back his worthless heart, and dreamed of nothing but of endowing him with the wreck of her fortune, which was still quite a handsome possession.
”So she took to visiting the hospitals and prisons, fancying that he might have been wounded or captured; but without success.