Theodore! do not let your brow be clouded when you read this. Smile, smile! as when you first greeted me, a stranger! God knows how much devotion I lavished upon you for that kindness. Shall it now curse me? Pray write to me. There is no misery so long as we love; but in the flickering light of hope I see darkly.
To-day I have looked over all your letters. Some I pressed to my bosom as priceless treasures; others dropped from my fingers like lead. Oh my heart! Theodore, you are changeable. I am an unprotected, unbefriended girl. I have reposed all in you. Your love is the only sunlight that can illumine this life. Hot tears gush from my eyes, but that’s no matter. God bless you, Theodore! All will yet go well, will it not? It cannot be that you despise me, as the tongue of envy interprets your indifference. If you do, I can endure this life no longer. Write, write! or visit, this evening, your betrothed but unhappy
Maria.
This letter, like a dozen others which had preceded it, produced no response of any description. About ten days afterwards, towards evening, there was a tap at the door of the house where Maria then was, alone. It was Maxwell. She fell into his arms, and fainted. He had, on that day, been apprised, through a tobacco warehouse in Boston, that his father desired his speedy return to Georgia. He had now come to say farewell—and a long and last farewell he meant it should be. When she regained composure, and wiped the tears from her cheek, she pressed to his forehead a kiss. Then he spoke: “Maria, I am summoned home. To-morrow I go. I am here to bid you farewell. I have long avoided you; now you will trouble me no more. It’s strange that you hang about me so.” “Hush!” interrupted Maria, in a low tone; “speak not, but go.” The blood of pride suffused her face; she saw the fruits of her fidelity trampled in the dust, in these words of Maxwell—her devotedness the mark of his derision. He had now come to announce his abandonment. As this thought broke in upon her brain, she gazed at him with the intenseness of despair.—Maxwell burst into a laugh. “Why, ma chere amie,” said he, “such undauntedness of spirit as that would put two thousand dollars upon your head, at a slave market. Suppose you go to Georgia, and let my father advertise you for sale. Many slave-girls are as white as you are. Then you would be provided for: all your wants supplied. Perhaps some covey would make you his bed-favorite, with the full freedom of his plantation.”[5]
Not a word or emotion escaped Maria during the utterance of this jargon of slavery. Maxwell rose unbidden, and left the dwelling. When he was out of sight, Maria gave utterance to a wild despair. From that moment her nature again put on strange garments, and underwent another change. A new lustre beamed in her eyes. It was the embodiment of an unsleeping revenge. She saw her own wreck: and now that all was engulphed within that avalanche of death, disgrace, she summoned to her aid the powers of a long-slumbering fortitude—the fortitude of an injured woman, and formed a stern resolve.
“I am lost. All is over. A thousand demons are hissing at me. I shrink from the faces of my friends. This night I, too, will leave thee, beautiful village, scene of my destruction! Henceforth my life shall be dedicated to the society of strangers. Bravely will I play my part. I will smile when I curse. I will win to destroy.”
Scarcely were these incoherent sentences finished, before Maria recalled to her mind the old Seeress at the Lucky Basin—the letter of fate, and her own solemn promise not to break its seal before the arrival of her eighteenth birth-day. “Two long years yet,” said she, musingly; “I may cease to breathe before that time; all is blighted even now. I will heed my pledge no longer.” Immediately she started for her portfolio, up stairs, in which it lay. She seized and broke it open in an instant: “To love so young; a Lamb and a Wolf; so young; A Killing Frost; Destitution; Marriage; Crime; there is Blood! Death!” One shriek announced that the forbidden contents were known. Maria lay senseless upon the floor!