The buildings of the “Josefita” were destroyed by fire; the family wealth taxed out of existence; Don Pancho, who was so attentive to Ellie, and such a kindly neighbor, dead of gout; the family all impoverished and scattered, and the hospitable old Cuban home wiped off the face of the earth. All the prancing steeds were seized by the Spaniards on the one side or the insurgents on the other; no cattle left for the boyero to care for, or labor for the mayoral to superintend; no engine for the sturdy Scotch engineer to run—all gone—and little else than a waste of weeds and choked cane left to indicate the spot where, little more than a decade ago, stood a magnificently equipped and managed sugar estate! If Spain had ravaged her “siempre fiel Isla de Cuba” with fire and pestilence, the destruction could scarcely have been more rapid and complete.
That superb province, whose natural resources are almost inexhaustible, has been bled to death by the leeches and parasites to whom her welfare and government were intrusted.
Zell, having already formed the strongest of ties, decided to remain at Desengaño, with his wife and children, even after it had passed into other hands. Through Mr. Hall, our consul-general in Cuba, he was furnished with all the necessary papers of United States citizenship. After assisting him in making a favorable contract for work with the new owner of the plantation, in the same capacity as in the past, viz., mandadero (messenger), we paid him several hundred dollars, the accumulated amount of his savings. Year after year we received letters from him, written in Spanish by some plantation employé, giving all the neighborhood news of interest, and messages from the Chinese and negroes, among whom we had lived and labored almost ten years—invariably subscribing himself “Your devoted and faithful slave.” Serviente was the conventional phrase used from equal to equal, and may not have appeared expressive enough to suit Zell, so it was esclavo (slave). One day a mourning letter came to Henry. Zell was dead! congestion or fever, it mattered little—Zell was dead! Bitter tears we wept over that black-bordered letter, the last one we ever received from Desengaño. Faithful friend—not slave!
Martha returned to the United States with us, and, when she married, her savings were found sufficient to purchase a lot and pay for the building of a comfortable house in Virginia, near enough for us to see her almost every year, when she could take our daughter, already taller and larger than herself, in her loving arms, and call her “my Mexican baby.”
Now that tender, faithful soul, who ministered to our comfort, not as slave but helpful companion during those trying years, has gone “where change shall come not till all change end”—thus severing one of the few remaining links that bound us to the old, old life.
THE END.
D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.
A VIRGINIA INHERITANCE. By Edmund Pendleton, author of “A Conventional Bohemian.” 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
“‘A Virginia Inheritance’ will easily take rank among the best novels that have appeared this year, both for the remarkable interest and artistically skillful development of the story, and for the brilliancy and originality of its character-sketching.”—Boston Home Journal.