Unfettered: A Novel — Reading Companion

AN ANGLO-SAXON'S DEATH.

Gently the midsummer breezes rustled the green leaves of the giant oaks and towering poplars that stood guard over the Dalton house, which, as though spurning their protection, rose majestically above them and commanded a splendid view of the Tennessee fields and woodlands, stretching far out on either side of the leisurely flowing Cumberland.

The subdued whisperings of the winds, their elf-like tread as they cautiously crept from tree top to tree top, tended to create the suspicion that they were aware of the tragedy which their mother, Nature, was so soon to enact within the walls of the house around which we now see them hovering.

In a sumptuously furnished room of this magnificent structure, Maurice Dalton, the present owner thereof, lies dying; battling heroically yet losingly in that last, inevitable conflict which he had been summoned to wage with the forces of decay. The head of this dying Anglo-Saxon rests, in these its last moments, on the bosom of Aunt Catherine, an aged Negro woman, who was his first and loving nurse in infancy, and has been his one unswerving friend and worshipper in all of his after life.

On former occasions, when disease had drawn him to the edge of the grave, so skillfully did Aunt Catherine second the recuperative work of nature that he was led back to life and health. Now that her healing art has failed her, she sits heartbroken, and, like Rachel weeping for her children, refuses to be comforted. No mother ever loved an offspring with greater intensity than Aunt Catherine loved "Maury," as she called him.

Near to Aunt Catherine stands Lemuel Dalton, a nephew and the sole surviving relative of Maurice Dalton. Tall, slender and well featured, he was an interesting figure at any time. His firm, gray eyes give evidence of great grief over the approaching death of his uncle, although the death of this uncle is his only known means of an early escape from poverty.

At the foot of the bed on which Maurice Dalton lies, stands Morlene, a beautiful girl just budding into womanhood. She is a Negro, although her very pleasing complexion is so light as to give plain evidence of a strong infusion of Anglo-Saxon blood.

A wealth of lovely black hair crowning a head of perfect shape and queenly poise; a face, the subtle charm of which baffles description; two lustrous black eyes, wondrously expressive, presided over by eyebrows that were ideally beautiful; a neck which, with infinite regard for the requirements of perfect art, descended and expanded so as to form part of a faultless bust; as to form, magnificently well proportioned; when viewed as a whole, the very essence of loveliness. Such was the picture of Morlene, who, once seen, left an image that never again passed from the mind of the beholder.

Morlene's bosom is just now the abode of many surging emotions. She views in a dying and speechless state the person who alone on earth knows the secret of her parentage. Maurice Dalton had promised to impart this information to Morlene at some time, but has delayed doing so until now it appears to be too late. Add to the fact that Maurice Dalton is carrying to the silence of the grave the information so earnestly, passionately desired by Morlene, the further fact that he had been her support, protection, and sole dependence from earliest infancy. So keen had been his interest in Morlene that only his known piety saved him from the suspicion that he was her father.

In addition to the sense of personal loss that Morlene is to sustain, she must contend with her grief over the approaching death of a man whose sweetness of soul and fatherly care had won from her almost a daughter's love. With hands clasped like unto one supplicating, she strains her beautiful eyes, as if, in her solicitude, to watch the soul along the whole distance of its flight into the great unknown.

Standing here and there in the room are distinguished white neighbors, intimate friends, ready to testify that the noblest Roman of them all is passing away.