Isaura, the SlavePart 14
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Part 14
A crowd of curious heads, and of hearts throbbing in the most anxious expectation, thronged around the piano; the gentlemen were eager to know whether that woman's voice corresponded to her extraordinary beauty; whether the fairy would also be a siren; the young ladies hoped that at least in that domain they would have the pleasure of seeing their formidable rival defeated, and already counted on comparing her to the peacock of the fable, complaining to Juno that, having formed it as the most beautiful of birds, she had given it no other voice than a harsh and unpleasant screech.
The situation was delicate and solemn; the young lady found herself in the difficult position of a prima donna who, preceded by a great reputation, makes her debut before a demanding and cultivated public. Around her deep silence fell; breaths seemed suspended, while one seemed to hear the beating of every heart in the panting of expectation. Alvaro, despite already knowing the excellence of Elvira's voice and her mastery of singing, could not help showing himself uneasy and moved. Elvira for her part cared little whether she sang well or badly; she would even wish to pass as the ugliest, the most graceless and the most foolish young lady in that gathering, so long as they left her forgotten and quiet in a corner. One would say she was under the empire of some terrible presentiment. But Elvira loved Alvaro, and grateful for the delicate zeal with which he, full of solicitude and enthusiasm, strove to present her as a prototype of beauty and talent in the eyes of that brilliant society, to satisfy him, and not to belie the flattering opinion he had spread about her, she wished to sing as best she could. It was for Alvaro's triumph that she aspired more than for her own.
Once seated at the piano, as soon as her dainty and flexible fingers, resting on the keyboard, had preluded a few simple chords, the young lady felt herself another, revealing to the amazed bystanders a new and original aspect of her beauty. Her countenance, whose habitual expression was all modesty, ingenuousness and candor, animated itself with unwonted light; her admirably chiseled bust rose lofty and majestic; her ecstatic eyes lifted themselves full of splendor and serenity; her breasts, which until then had barely rippled like the waves of a lake on a tranquil moonlit night, began to pant, swollen and agitated, like a capped ocean; her neck stretched out white and slender like that of the swan preparing to release its divine warbling. It was the breath of artistic inspiration, which, brushing her brow, transformed her into a priestess of the beautiful, into an inspired interpreter of the harmonies of heaven. There she felt herself a queen upon her ideal throne; there she was Calliope seated upon the sacred tripod, subjugating the world to the sound of ravishing and ineffable harmonies. From her own disquietudes and anguish of soul she knew how to draw breath and inspiration to overcome the difficulties of the arduous situation in which she found herself engaged. She bathed her lips with the tears of her heart, and her voice broke from her breast with such original and ravishing vibration, in modulations so pure and soft, so steeped in sublime melancholy, that more than one tear was seen to roll down the faces of the frequenters of that temple of pleasures, of laughter, and of frivolity!
Elvira had just achieved a colossal triumph. Hardly had the song ended when the salon resounded with the most thunderous applause, and it seemed that it was collapsing under the deafening noise of clapping and cheers!
"Alvaro's fairy is also a siren," Dr. Geraldo was saying to one of the gentlemen in whose company we have already seen him. "She sums up everything in herself!... what a timbre of voice so pure and so soft! I thought myself carried off to the seventh heaven, hearing the harmonies of the angelic choirs."
"She is a consummate artist... in the theater she would make one forget Malibran, and would conquer a European reputation. Alvaro is right; a creature like this cannot be an ordinary woman, and much less an adventuress... The music giving the signal for the quadrille interrupts the conversation or does not let us hear it."
"D. Elvira," says Alvaro, addressing his protégée, who was already seated beside her father, "remember that you did me the honor of granting me this quadrille."
Elvira strove to smile and to combat the terrible dejection that, upon leaving the piano, had once again taken possession of her spirit.
She took Alvaro's arm, and both went to take their place in the quadrille.
Chapter XII.
Now the readers already know, if they have not long since guessed it, that the supposed Elvira is none other than the slave Isaura, just as Anselmo is none other than the overseer Daniel, both of whom are already old acquaintances of ours. As they also know that Isaura was not only endowed with a superior spirit, but had also received the finest and most careful education, they will not find strange in her the distinction of manners, the elegance and elevation of language, and other gifts, which made it possible for this exceptional slave to appear and even shine in the midst of the most brilliant and aristocratic society.
It was the desperate situation in which he saw his beloved daughter that inspired Daniel with the extreme expedient of a precipitate flight, exposed to a thousand hazards and dangers. He remembered with horror the wretched fate of which, in equal circumstances, Isaura's mother had been the victim, and he well knew that Leôncio, as soulless as his father, and even more corrupt and libertine, was capable of excesses and outrages still greater. Having lost hope of freeing his daughter, he understood that he could make use of the sum he had gathered for that purpose, employing it to snatch the poor victim from the hands of the executioner, by whatever means it might be. He well saw that in the eyes of the world to take a slave from her masters' house, and to protect her flight, besides being a crime, was a dishonorable act and unworthy of a man of honor; but the slave was an idolized daughter, and a pearl of purity, about to be polluted or crushed by the hand of a master executioner, and this consideration justified him in the eyes of his own conscience.
The unfortunate father had well remembered to denounce the fact to the authorities, imploring the protection of the laws in favor of his daughter, so that she would not be the victim of the violences and cruelties of her dissolute and brutal master. But all those whom he consulted answered him with one voice: "Don't get involved in such a thing; it is time lost. The authorities have nothing to do with what goes on inside the houses of the rich. Don't fall into that; you will be very lucky if you only have to pay the costs, and they don't pile on top of you some lawsuit with which you have to end up with your ribs in jail." Where has one ever seen the poor man be right against the rich man, the weak against the strong?...
Daniel kept secret relations with some of the former slaves of Leôncio's plantation, who, still remembering with longing the time of his good administration, preserved for him the same respect and affection, and through them he had exact information of what was happening on the plantation. Learning of the cruel straits to which his daughter was reduced after the death of the commander, he hesitated no longer an instant, and set about taking all provisions and measures of safety to steal away his daughter, and put her out of the reach of her barbarous master. On the same dawn that followed the afternoon on which he abducted her, he set sail with Isaura for the northern provinces in a slave ship, whose captain was a Portuguese, an old and devoted friend of his. This one, arriving at the heights of Pernambuco, since from there he had to sail on to the coast of Africa, dropped them off in Recife, promising them that within three or four months he would be back and ready to conduct them wherever they wished. Daniel, who in his profession of gardener or overseer had spent his life since childhood within a narrow horizon and in a very limited circle of relations, had little knowledge and no experience of the world, and therefore could not calculate all the consequences of the difficult position in which he was about to place himself and his daughter. During the long years in which he had overseen the plantation of the commander and of others, there had been no more than one or another insignificant escape of slaves, for a few days and to some neighboring plantation, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that he almost completely ignored the extent of the rights that a master has over a slave, and the infinite means and resources he can employ to capture them in case of flight. He understood, then, that in Pernambuco he could live with his daughter in full security, at least for three or four months, once they kept as far as possible from society, and sought to hide their life in the most complete obscurity.
Isaura too, although she had a more alert and enlightened spirit, far from the principal object of her terror and aversion, could not help feeling tranquil, and to a certain extent careless of the dangers to which she was exposed. But this more or less tranquility lasted only until the day when she first saw Alvaro. She loved him with that exalted love of elevated souls, who love for the first and only time, and this love, as is well understood, came to make her already so precarious and wretched situation even more critical and anguished.
Alvaro had in his countenance, in his manners, in his voice and in his gesture, an I know not what of noble, of amiable and profoundly sympathetic, that subjugated all hearts. What would he not be for her who alone until then had known how to conquer his love. Isaura could not resist such a prestigious seduction; she loved him with the ardor and enthusiasm of a virgin heart; and with the improvidence and blindness of an artist's soul, although she saw in that love no more than a new source of tears and tortures for her heart.
Measuring the abyss that separated her from Alvaro, she well knew that no hope could feed that fatal passion, which should remain forever buried in the depths of her heart, like a cancer devouring it eternally.
The chalice of bitterness, already almost overflowing, was still to receive from the hand of destiny that further cruel gall, which was to burn her lips and poison her existence.
It already weighed heavily enough upon her to go on deceiving society as to her true condition; a sincere and scrupulous soul, she was ashamed within herself of imposing upon the few persons who dealt closely with her a respect and consideration to which she could have no right. But considering that from such a disguise no great harm could result to society, she resigned herself to her fate. Ought she, however, or could she without harm keep her lover in the same illusion? By her silence, keeping him in ignorance of her condition as a slave, ought she to let the deep and energetic passion that the young man had conceived for her be fed and grow?... would this not be a vile deception, an indignity, an infamous betrayal? would he not have the right, upon learning the truth, to overwhelm her with bitter reproaches, to despise her, to trample her underfoot, to treat her in short as the abject and vile slave she would then be?
--Oh! this for me would be more horrible than a thousand deaths!--she exclaimed amid the anguished clash of ideas that stirred in her spirit.--No, I must not deceive him; this would be an infamy ... I shall reveal everything to him; this is my duty, and I must fulfill it. He will learn that he cannot, that he must not love me; but at least he will not have the right to despise me ... a slave who acts with honesty and loyalty can at least be esteemed.
No; I must not deceive him; I must reveal everything to him.
This was the resolution inspired in her by her natural honor and loyalty, and by the dictates of a upright and delicate conscience, but when the moment came to put it into practice her heart failed her, and Isaura kept postponing from day to day the execution of her purpose.
She lacked all courage to shatter with her own hands the sweet chimera that so delightfully cradled her, and in which she sometimes managed to forget for a long time her miserable condition, to remember only that she loved and was loved.
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