“Do you not know, Catherine, that any body drowned in that part of the river where the supposed signs of her suicide were found, must have come to light. Don’t you know that the current is very rapid there, and that a ledge of rocks crosses the river a few yards below it, upon which her body must have been thrown, if she had been in the river at all? And, Catherine, if I have never breathed this thought before, it was upon account of poor Carolyn. I knew that in her weak, depressed state of mind and body, she could better bear the belief of Zuleime’s death, than the frightful uncertainty of her fate. You are discreet, Kate; you will not breathe this to Carolyn, or to any one, lest it should reach her ear.”
“Never! And do you know, dear Mrs. Clifton, I have sometimes had the thought that Zuleime might yet be living—and I dared not indulge the hope secretly—much less breathe it aloud.”
“And what was your reason for such a supposition, Catherine?”
“Why my thought was not so well founded—so logical as yours. I knew nothing about the peculiarities of the river. My thought was only a vague hope, and it agitated me so much as to interfere with my practical duties. I had to banish it.”
“You are so sensitive, so sympathetic, my dear girl. Well, Kate, no more exciting talk to-night. We will return thanks to God for these glad tidings, and then retire to rest.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
ZULEIME.
Among a jumbled heap of murky buildings.—Keats.
Zuleime had been placed by Georgia under the care of a poor woman, the wife of a carver and gilder, who had occasionally worked for her father. And as long as the funds of the belle had held out, the trifling expenses of such poor board and lodging had been regularly paid. But when the syren was reduced to support her own extravagance entirely by credit, founded upon the false reputation of wealth—her small remittances to her protégé, or rather her victim, ceased. Zuleime was afraid to seek her, afraid to write to her—there was nothing she feared more than discovery, and the recognition of her hand-writing on the superscription of a letter might have led to that. It was long after the death of her father before she heard of it—nor then did she hear any of the particulars of time, place or circumstance. The fact came to her knowledge irregularly, through the report of the transcendant charms and conquests of his beautiful young widow. A long and dangerous illness was the result of this sudden news. It was some weeks after her recovery before the poor people of the house, who had long despaired of getting anything for her board, could find it in their kind hearts to ask her to seek another home. And even then they sent a sigh after the desolate young widow—the child who went forth carrying in her arms another child. And how she lived during the interval between that and the period at which I shall again introduce her to you, I cannot tell. Sometimes a little fine needle-work came to her hands; sometimes a spell of want, reaching almost to starvation; then a little assistance from neighbors; and a little going in debt to shopkeepers. And then she always lodged with the poor. And the poor seldom persecute the poor; remember that the needy family who first sheltered her, had been for months at the sole expense of her food, lodging, and long illness—and yet they had never reproached or persecuted her for unpaid debts—though they scarcely refrained from reproaching themselves for sending her away.
In a quiet, back street, mostly inhabited by very humble people, in the middle of the square, and fronting immediately upon the battered pavement, stood an old two-story brick house, occupied by a poor cabinet-maker and old furniture dealer. The lower front room was used as the ware-room, and crowded and piled up with every description of miserably dilapidated household furniture, apparently good for nothing else under the sun but kindling wood, and scarcely worth splitting up for that. Old worm-eaten, carved mahogany bureaus and bedsteads; tables without legs or leaves; chairs without backs; cradles without bottoms or rockers; clocks wanting faces; beaufets wanting doors; sofas minus arms; smoky pictures without frames; and tarnished frames without pictures; worm-eaten cabinets, and mildewed looking-glasses; broken pots, pans and kettles; and mismatched crockery-ware in any quantity.
Reader, I do not wish to give you an inventory of an old furniture-shop, but merely some idea of the inextricable confusion in which this heterogeneous mass of worn out, broken, worm-eaten, mildewed, fly-stained, dust-clothed, cobweb-veiled items, were piled up from floor to ceiling. It would make your heart and head ache with wondering what sort of a living could be picked out from so much dirt, disorder and decay—and who on earth could be the patrons of the establishment. You would unconsciously gather close about you your most worthless dress in passing through the shop, and look up in involuntary dread of a broken head or limbs, by the fall of some of those dilapidated, ill-balanced, old chairs and tables.