LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 922, 8 June 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ZANETTA, A CREOLE,

By Mrs Alexander Eraser {Concluded!)

She knew all this, but she also knew that he was hers—that the world put no claim between them here-—that it was face to face, heart bared to heart, and that out of her loving clinging arms no human power could wrest him now. They belonged to each other—she, Zanetta Le Clcrcq, and he, Derrick Mainwaring. He had told her so the night before, but the full sense of it did not come r to her till now, now that he was dying in the wild and mighty forest, with none near him save his God and her. Gradually his mind began to wander, and he talked fondly of an English home that his eyes would never look upon again. ' If I could only have taken you there, my own !' he said, with a sudden return to consciousness. 'lf my mother could have seen my wife ! She would have loved you, not only for my sake, but for your own. But this may be best. We have tasted the sweetness of the cup of love, and we are spared any of its bitterness. Bitterness might have come, you know, even to us. I wonder if am going, Zanetta ? I wonder if it is because I am not myself that I feel so strangely content •- so strangely sure that everything is right for me ?' 'God only knows, love. God grant that it may indeed be all right for yon.' 'Darling, you won't forget ute soon ?' ' Forget you !' cried the poor girl, in a low pitiful voice that would have moved the coldest breast. 'lf I could go with you into the arms of death I would.' 'Thank God you cannot, then, for life is sweet, and you are young, Zanetta. I shall not see you when you are old.' 'No ime eve- will, she auswered, with strange calmness. ' You chink so now, but—ah !' It was another Kerce paroxysm, the very fiercest that had been, and Zanetta almost thought it was the struggle of death ; but it passed, and then she heard him whisper under hid breath a fragment of the grand old ' Dies Ira?.' For the iirst time, and yet she was a devout Roman Catholic, his halfaudible words made her think of his soul.

' Derrick !' she cried, ' shall I not pray for you ? Shall I not ask God's mercy for you ?' He tried to speak an assent, but the words died away on his white lips ; and, without changing her position, she poured out a tide of fervent supplication that came straight from her torn heart. The whole strength of her mighty love went into it, and never before had the silent forest hearkened to such an appeal as now went forth piercing the infinite space of eternity. Suddenly she stopped, for there was a change, which even in the darkness she saw. What it was she could not analyse, but she knew at once that the very end was at hand. ' Derrick, Derrick !' she cried out loudly and wildly, ' are you leaving me ?' He muttered something brokenly, and lay for an instant in a stupor ; then he started, and a smile swept over his face—a smile, the radiance of which Zanetta caught even through the misty starlight —and he spoke, very low, her own name. With that name still on his lips, with his hand in hers, his face against hers, a strong shiver seized him. The breath fluttered—ceased—the eyes cclosed. A deadly sickness came over the watcher ; in another moment she fell back insensible. Part IV. It was in her own dormitory at Kingston that the Creole ca-ne to herself, out o p an awful blackness and blankness. Every ohj.ct around looked so quiet and familiar that for a while she almost believed that she had awakened from a horrible dream, but it was only for a little while. Memory— c uel and relentless memory—soon rushed up»n her ; not singly and by degrees, but suddenly and in an awful whole. In a moment or two she remembered everything, felt everything, and with a low moaning cry—a protest, as it were, against life - she turned her face a poor wan white face from the light and buried it in her pillow. At that cry the German teacher rose quietly from her seat behind tha curtains, and advancing, laid her thin hand on the girl's brow. Nhe started, for that hrow had loat its burning heat of days. Then she leaned over and spoke. ' Liebehen, do you feel better ?' The voice was marvellously tender and sweet, and Zanetta openel her eyes. She had never fancied this woman much ; indeed, she had rather quite an unreasonable antipathy to her, in the quick impatient fashion of youth ; but now she read such genuine kindness in the pale light eyes that her sore heart opened at once to receive it. ' Better !' she exclaimed. Then with a burst, ' Oh, why did you try to make me well again ? Why, oh, why did you not let me drift into death V ' Child,' the German said gravely, ' life and death are in God's hand's. Were you so ready to go to Him that you can talk like this ?' ' I shall never be more ready, and I would have gone anywhere with him. 0 Frau Shaeffer, tell me where he is buried.' The Frau looked grave again, but she also looked sad and pitiful. ' Is it of Colonel Mainwaring that you speak ?' she asked at length. 'Of whom else should I speak ? My poor love !he died in these arms, and I-1 must live on and never see him again.' ' Died, my child ! Are you sure of that ?' 'Am I sure ? Did I not see him die ? Did I not feel the last quiver of life that passed over him ? Did I not—oh, why do yon. ask me such a question ? Why do you look at me so strangely ? Ic can't—it can't be that.' She raised herself and caught the teacher's arm, gazing wildly and passionately into the eyes that regarded her with such infinite compassion. ' Speak !' she gasned out, her heart beat ing high,, her breath short and Hurried, her large black eyes glittering with feverish excitement. ' It cannot be that he is alive ?' ' Yes, he is alive ?' The Creole strove to speak, strove to question, strove to cry * Thank God!' but speech failed, and strength failed as well. Her nerveless hand released its frantic grasp on the teacher's arm ; her lids closed ; her head, with ,its wealth of blue-black tresses, sank back. She had fainted. The German applied some remedies, and as tho swoon was slight it yielded to them. Then, when the great starlike eyes opened, there was a question in their depths ; and when the lips unclosed it came rushing forth at once : ' Will he rocover ? Oh, God bless you for your news. But tell me if he will ever be himself again.' 'He will recover certainly. They say he is much better already.' ' Where is he ?—when can I see him ?' The teacher toyed neivously with the tassels of the curtain, and looked away, trying to avoid the piteous beseeching gaze ' You cannot see him, I fear,' she said at last, in a low reluctant tone. ' Colonel Mainwaring is gone.' ' Gone !' 'Hesailed yesterday for England.' Her startled eyes opened wider and wider, with incredulity in their look. It seemed indeed as if they could not take themselves from the woman's face, until the expression of that face repeated the news the mouth had told. Then there was a cry —a low cry of pain ; scarcely like a human being—the cry more of a poor dumb hunted animal wounded unto death—and the Creole turned once more her face from the light, that mocked her with its brightness. This time she tasted the full bitterness of desolation, and tasting it, cried out incessantly for death as a release ; but the King of Terrors did not come at her bidding. As the days wore on life flowed slowly into her veins, and beat in her languid pulse. The duties of existence thronged back, and she rose up to meet thorn. She did so with a dead calmness, a strange apathy—the feeling and the bearing of one on whom Fate had dealt its lar,t blow. But one day the calm was broken and the apathy shattered. The girl Amelia Wilton came to see her, and from the child's careless prattle she gained an assurance which she would gladly have gone in sackcloth and ashes all her life to gain. Derrick Mainwaring, the man whom she had loved so madly, had not deserted her willingly. When he was found, helpless and insensible, they had sent for a relative of his, who was the British Consul at Kingston; and under his instructions Colonel Mainwaring had been removed at once, in his uuconscious state, to a vessel starting for England. It was due to reports spread by the

the scheming widow Mrs De Lorme that all Jamaica, having heard of his accident and his miraculous recovery, believed that he left the island of hi 3 own free will. The cruel report had been propagated for a purpose ; but whether the widow would have succeeded in parting Zanetta from her lover entirely cannot be told, for the good ship weut down in mid ocean, the tides swept over the heart that might have been so true, and all love, all hope, all suffering, were at an end. When the news came of Colonel Mainwaring's death, the Creole never spoke a word. However long and weary the days, she never murmured at their leugth or sameness. She had lived her life, and that seemed to suffice; and she did not live to grow old. While the billows rocked her lover in his last long sleep she lay at rest in a quiet churchyard embowered in broad leaved bananas and stately palms, with the tropical stars of Jamaica shining down on her grave. In calo qnies.