CHAPTER XX.
The world for a brief season seemed wholly surrendered
to them. They lived for each other only; and
as they saw no other forms, so they forgot for a time,
that they were to be disturbed by other beings of a
nature like their own. Lopez had no hopes—shall
we call them fears?—that the Dian de Burgos would
ever again appear to seek him out in his place of
exile. He knew how serious and how terrible always
were the jokes of his late tyrant, and never looked
for his repentance. Nor did the poor Amaya—such
was the name of the damsel—dream that her Caribbean
kindred would ever sunder a union so marvellously
wrought by Heaven. Her barbarous rites were
neglected in the prompt realization of her dreams.
This was due in great measure to the teachings of the
Maroon. Already had he begun to bestow upon
her some of his theology—crude and selfish as it was.
The Agnus Dei which he put into her hands, was
quite as frequently an object of her entreaty as it
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was of his. Their supplications, at morning and at
evening, to the Virgin, were twined together; and it
must be confessed that, of the two, the poor pagan
damsel was much more earnest in her prayers than
the habitual Christian.
He taught her other lessons. Already had he
begun to conduct her fingers among the strings of his
guitar, and she, rejoicing at the merry tinkle which
she produced, soon promised to acquire its language.
The instrument was constantly in her keeping, except
when she summoned him to perform upon it. Then
she sat beside him, on the edge of the great ocean,
and while the waters rolled and tumbled toward their
feet, she listened to his chant—his fierce ballads of
Spanish chivalry—comprehending but little of the
story, but feeling all the sweetness of the music, the
more perhaps that the words were mysterious and
vague.
But their sports were not always of this subdued
order, though they were scarcely less romantic—such,
at least, as she now taught and encouraged him to
practise. The sea was scarcely an object of terror
to the practised swimmers of the Caribbean Isles.
Amaya, like all the damsels of her people, had been
accustomed to embrace its billows from her infancy.
She soon taught the more apprehensive Lopez to pursue
her in the waves. At the fall of the tide she led
him off among the rocks, whose heads at such periods
were distinctly visible. Here, resting on their dark
gray summits, he beheld her, with a terror in which
she did not share, leap down into the boiling black
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abysses, and disappear wholly from his sight. Before
he had yet recovered from his alarm, she reappeared,
bringing up with her the peculiar oyster, whose
immedicable wounds give birth to the beautiful pearl
which is so much valued, though not in the same
degree, by Indian and European. After this discovery,
our Maroon encouraged the sport which had
first alarmed his fears. He, too, acquired courage
from cupidity, and, being no bad swimmer, he
learned to follow her into the grim recesses of the
rocks, when the seas were at repose. He reserved to
himself the opening of the valves, so that he extricated
the fruit from their embrace, without subjecting
it to injury. Great was the wealth which he thus
acquired, to say nothing of the ancient treasures of
the cavern.
But these treasures, which he had not sought, were
valueless where he was. His possessions, so unsuited
to his present condition, first taught him to repine.
When he looked upon his unprofitable stores, his
thoughts immediately yearned for the native land, in
which they had made him famous. With this recollection,
his heart saddened within him. He looked
earnestly along the ocean waste for some sign of his
countrymen. He looked with a momentary indifference
upon the sweet, wild, and artless creature, who
gambolled before his eyes, or crouched in confidence
beside him. Her keen glance beheld these changes.
No change in his aspect ever escaped her vigilance.
At such moments, she would incline herself timidly
toward him—would draw his attention by little
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artifices—would appeal to him in awkward Castilian,
which insensibly glided into her native Caribbean
tongue;—the broken accents finally acquiring emphasis
as they concluded in some sweet and foreign ditty.
Sometimes, with a playful fondness, she would assail
his melancholy by sudden plunges into the billows,
striking out for the cluster of little rocks; hiding in
whose hollows, she would beguile him with a wild
strain of her people, or in appealing fancies of her
own, which might have found a fitting translation in
such a ballad as the following:—
THE LAY OF THE CARIB DAMSEL.
I.
Come, seek the ocean's depths with me,
For there are joys beneath the sea;
Joys, that when all is dark above,
Make all below a home of love!
II.
In hollow bright and fountain clear,
Lo! thousand pearl await us there;
And amber drops that sea-birds weep
In sparry caves along the deep.
III.
A crystal chamber there I know,
Where never yet did sunshaft go;
The soft moss from the rocks, I take,
Of this our nuptial couch to make.
IV.
There, as thou yieldest on my breast,
My songs shall soothe thy happy rest—
Such songs as still our prophets hear,
When winds and stars are singing near.
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V.
These tell of climes, whose deep delight
Knows never change from day to night;
Where, if we love, the blooms and flowers,
And fruits—shall evermore be ours.
VI.
Oh! yield thee to the hope I bring;
Believe the truth I feel and sing;
Nor teach thy spirit thus to weep
Thy Christian home beyond the deep.
VII.
'Tis little—ah! too well I know,
The poor Amaya may bestow—
But if a heart that's truly thine,
Be worthy thee, O, cherish mine!
VIII.
My life is in thy look—for thee
I bloom, as for the sun the tree;
My hopes—when thou forget'st thy woes—
Unfold, as flowers when winter goes.
IX.
And though, as our traditions say,
There bloom the worlds of endless day,
I would not care to seek the sky,
If there thy spirit did not fly.
It was impossible even for a heart so selfish as that
of our Maroon, wholly to resist a confidence so sweet
and touching. The wild grace of her action, the
spiritual delicacy of her love, the delightful companionship
with which she cheered his solitude—all succeeded,
in the absence of any absolute temptations,
to secure his continued devotion to her charms.
But a change was destined to cast its shadow over
their otherwise happy dreams. Three weeks of
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delight, with little interval and scarcely any respite, had
passed since they first knew each other. No doubt of
the security, as well as transport, of her condition,
assailed the heart of the Indian damsel; and if the
Spaniard ever thought of his home, it was only as
one of those vexing fancies, which, as he could
scarcely hope to realize it, it was but childish to encourage.
He made the most of his present happiness,
and resigned himself to the possession of Amaya,
with the more satisfaction, indeed, since, in a choice
among a thousand, she still would most probably have
been the object of his preference. But he did not
the less regard the dowry which she brought him.
He subjected his treasure to daily examination, and,
when the weather served, to daily increase. His
necessities made him a miser. He did not the less
enjoy the treasure, which it seemed he could never
spend.
Simms, William Gilmore, 1806-1870 [1853], Marie de Berniere: a tale of the Crescent City (Lippincott, Grambo and Co., Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf685T].
