The remaining individual that formed the trio was in every respect far different from those already described; yet, as she stood a few paces behind Bridget—to mark the difference in their rank, although near enough to join in the conversation—her lofty and commanding figure called equally for attention and admiration. The clear olive tinge of her complexion, the large black eye, which sparkled with dazzling light, and the long coal-black hair, braided and twined round and round her head, told that she was not of the same country, or the same people as her mistress. Servant—slave as she was—she looked born to command; and daring must that person be who would encounter for the second time the flash of her offended eye. Formed in a larger mould than Bridget, her figure still bore the utmost symmetrical proportions; and the rounded arm and taper fingers might have served as a model for the Goddess of Beauty: this female was Zulmiera—the half-Carib girl.
The mother of Zulmiera was a very beautiful Carib woman, who, in that disgraceful partition of them among the English, (after the massacre of their male friends at St. Kitts during Sir Thomas Warner’s government of that island,) fell to the share of a young Englishman, a follower of Sir Thomas Warner’s son, in his after colonization of Antigua. Xamba accompanied her master to his new residence, and there bore him a daughter; but dying soon after, the infant was brought up in the governor’s family. After the reduction of Antigua by Sir George Ayscue, and the establishment of a republican governor, in place of the opposer of Cromwell’s power, Zulmiera, who was rapidly attaining the full burst of womanhood, was, at the earnest entreaties of Bridget Everard, who was charmed with the untutored graces of the beautiful Indian maiden, promoted to the office of her companion. It must be allowed, that this appointment met not with the full approval of the governor. Violently attached to Cromwell, and bearing bitter hatred to the royalist party, and all malignants, he thought the girl had been too long nurtured in their principles to make a faithful attendant to the daughter of a republican. But Bridget was his only child,—a motherless girl; and stern and unbending as he was to others, his iron mood gave way before her playful caresses.
Still there was another and deep cause of dislike he had against Zulmiera. Upon further acquaintance with this Indian girl, he found her too haughty for his own arrogant spirit to deal with. Too high-minded and forgetful of her real rank as a servant, and apparently under the impression that, while attending upon her mistress, she was in fact her equal, if not her superior.
Zulmiera was, in truth, fully alive to this sentiment. She looked upon herself as the descendant (on her mother’s side) of a long line of chiefs—of those who had once been rulers in the land, and who had received from their swarthy subjects the homage that monarchs of a more civilized nation were wont to receive.
Thinking thus of Zulmiera, no wonder that the governor distrusted her. Nor was the girl ignorant of his opinion of her; and consequently their feelings of dislike were mutual. She knew he hated her; and he felt that in her heart she despised him. Still, she loved Bridget—for who could not love that mild, fair girl?—loved her with an intensity of fervour, unknown to the inhabitants of colder climes—and would have shed for her her heart’s best blood; for love and hatred were to Zulmiera all-absorbing passions. Yet there was another who held the first place in Zulmiera’s heart,—one that was to the half-instructed, half-Indian girl—her “idol god.”
But to return to the movements of the trio. Having left the concealment of the shrubbery, the whole party paused, and with different feelings gazed upon the landscape stretched before them. The slight declivity upon the brow of which they were standing, had been cleared, and was now planted with tobacco, whose broad green leaves, and delicate trumpet flowers, attracted the attention of numerous gorgeous insects. This plantation stretched to the end of a wild copse, where every native shrub and brushwood grew together with the loftier trees, and formed an almost impervious thicket. Beyond this copse, the waters of a beautiful creek, which ran a short way inland, glittered like gold in the beams of the setting sun; while on every side rose undulating hills, begirt with many an infant plantation, belonging to some of the earlier settlers. Further off, the broad ocean stretched its interminable waves, its billows sleeping in calmness; except in one part, where a long ridge of shelving rocks fretted them into motion, and caused them to send forth their angry roar.[[89]]
At the bottom of the hill upon which they were standing ran a bridle-path, which, winding in and out, branched off in two directions; one passing through the populous town of Falmouth, the other extending to the shores of a beautiful harbour,[[90]] where some industrious settlers were cultivating the adjoining country. Along this path a single horseman was seen slowly advancing, in the direction of the harbour. As he gained the skirts of the hill, he reined up for a moment his prancing steed, and, looking towards the party, raised his plumed hat and bent forward in graceful obeisance. The dark eyes of Zulmiera sparkled with delight, and standing, as she did, behind the governor and his daughter, unseen by them, she raised her hand and waved a return, while, at the same instant, the rosiest blush sprang to the cheeks of Bridget, and crimsoned her very throat. The horseman again bent his head, and then, replacing his hat, shook the broidered reins and galloped off in the direction he had chosen for his equestrian amusement.
Following with his eye the plumed stranger until he was lost in the intervening copse, the governor turned to his daughter, and fixing a steady, penetrating glance upon her, exclaimed, “Ha! then the young malignant’s designs appear to be more open than they were. But, mark me, daughter Bridget,” and his eye became sterner and darker as the pupil dilated with his awakening passion, and his haughty lip curled with increased scorn—“mark me, Bridget, sooner than I’d see thee mated with one of his malignant race, mine own hand should stretch thee at my feet a breathless corpse!—yea, as Jephtha slew his daughter, so would I slay thee!” The agitated and frightened girl threw herself upon her father’s breast, and, amid tears and sobs, stammered out—“Father—dearest father! think not so. Raphe de Merefield is naught to me; he never spoke to me but with the most studied politeness, and, indeed, he shuns rather than seeks my presence.”—“’Tis well, then, maiden—my suspicions are unfounded; the wolf has not entered the sheepfold to steal the tender lamb; but I have observed him lately wandering about these grounds, and I feared my daughter was the object. But listen!” and again his eye flashed, his lip trembled—“verily, I know that young man well—ay, better than he knows me—for his father was my neighbour and my deadliest foe!—and what was more, the foe of Cromwell! He it was that assisted that tyrannical man, Charles Stuart, in his escape from Hampton Court, and after aided him in his long struggles to maintain possession of a crown which had long been doomed to destruction. He it was that beggared his brother to obtain money to carry out that well-slain tyrant’s nefarious designs! And he it was that, at the battle of Naseby, gave me this ugly sign of recognition,” pointing to the scar which disfigured his cheek. “But was he not discomfited? Yea, as the dry leaf he fell. Lo! as David girded up his strength in the day of battle, so girded I up mine; and as he smote his enemies with the edge of the sword, so my trusty weapon stretched the haughty Philistine upon the ground, never to rise again! Guess, then, if thou canst, how much I love yon cavalier, who hath sucked in with his very milk the taint of papistry—for did not that Babylonish woman whom men call the Queen of England rear him up from his cradle? yea, and taught him all her sorceries. Had my honoured friend and master, the protector, followed my advice, this young traitor to the commonwealth would never have escaped from England to disseminate his malignant poison abroad. Cromwell should have crushed the egg before it was hatched. But verily I wax hot and am impatient, not considering the time approacheth when rebels and arch-rebels shall melt away as the hoar frost melteth before the sun. Despatches have reached me that it is Cromwell’s intention to send, in the course of a few months, a squadron against St. Domingo, and my instructions are to see that a proper troop be raised in this island to join the expedition. I am resolved that Master Raphe de Merefield be one of the gallants who shall serve in that affair; a goodly bullet-shot or, albeit, a well-applied stroke from the rapier of a Spaniard, may relieve me from his machinations; or should he refuse to fight under the banner of the commonwealth, verily, I know the malignancy of his father cleaves so closely to him, that it will only be maintaining Cromwell’s interest to have him properly secured, or we may see another revolt when we least expect it.” Thus saying, the governor walked forward a few paces, and shading his eyes from the lingering sunbeams, scanned for a few moments the scene before him.
What passed in the mind of Bridget during the foregoing conversation it is unnecessary to relate, but the emotions called up in the heart of the Carib girl while hearing her lover thus traduced were violent and various. Hate, scorn, and revenge, fired her eye, and sent a torrent of hot blood through her veins, which, rushing to her face, turned the clear olive to a fiery crimson. Yet so well was she accustomed to master her feelings, that before her young mistress was sufficiently recovered to commence another dialogue, she stood the same apparently calm being, her hands folded across her breast; and only that her eye was more dilated, and her cheek still slightly tinged, none could tell that aught had moved her.
An exclamation from the governor, who had, for the last few minutes, been intently gazing in one direction, arrested his daughter’s attention, and, gliding to his elbow, she inquired if he addressed her. “Look, Bridget,” replied her father, in a still stern, but not unmusical voice—“look o’er yonder grove—dost thou see aught moving?”—“Nothing, dearest father,” answered the maiden, in her own sweet tones—“nothing but the bland zephyr sporting amid the young green leaves, and playing its fairy music upon them.” “Foolish enthusiast! But haste, girl!—fetch me the wondrous instrument the lord-general gave me, and let me give yon grove a sharper look—methinks it contains more inmates than we wot of. I have heard of wild Indians and their deeds.”