Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1892 — ZEYNAEL ZEGAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ZEYNAEL ZEGAL

Wmsmamt & lut’

BY HOMER P. BRANCH

[copyrighted by the author, 1800.] CHAPTER VI-Continued. He seemed convin ed of tho trnth of this and brought out the paper, an old, time-worn copy of a New York daily. I scanned this closely, and In tho marine intelligence saw a marked paragraph. I read: “Wrecked. —The schooner Morning Star, on the Florida coast, in a gale. Tho ill-fated vessel was bound from London to New Orleans. All lives saved but the first mate, two seamen and a passenger, who having heroically stayed on boi),rd to the last helping off the others, were swamped In the last boat half way between the wreck and the shore. Tho passenger lost was one Albert F. Arold, who was bound for Amer.ca to join his wife and child in cue of the Southern States. ” After reading this a thought slrufck me. Burton Arold’s mother had been an El Muza and had married in England while on a visit to, re atives In that country. Could she be the one whose husband was thought to have deserted her. and was the Albert F. Arold mentioned in the paper lnr husband coming to her? I found out by further contersation with tho negro that the initials in the name of tho senora’s husband, were A. F.; so I settled my mind upon this point, arid came to the conclusion, from the old man’s story, that tho phantom lady was no other than Burton’s sweetheart; also, that the people of the villa had consideredßurton’s legitimacy a 9 resting under a cloud, and that for this reason tho match between him and the fair Zeyna had been opposed and thwarted by the young lady’s parents. The sun was sotting In a blaze of gold and emera d and purple, throwing its manyTtinted lights up against the few slight clouds that were floating lazily along the sky, and a gentle Gulf breeze just stirred to a tremble-the ripe leaves upon the trees, as I left the negro’s shanty and started musingly back toward the solemn villa. I had partaken of supper at the exslave’s humble board, and had learned much of the Montinni history from his honest lips—much more than I need tell here. Engaged in deep thought, I strolled on toward the gloomy old house. It was growing dusk when I reached the shadow of the building. I entered, went up stairs and sat down upon an antiquo sofa at the end of the hall near a large double window where I could look out upon the fields and country beyond, and watch them as they slowly disappeared in the deepening gloom of night. In tho hush and listlessness of the place and •the Influence of the 9ootfling darkness I fell-into a pleasant sleep.

CHAPTER VII. THE PHANTOM LADY APPEARS TO BURTON. Words warm with the eloquence and ecstasy of love and of woe, addressed in a wild, passionate , vehemence, by a manly voice (to the phantom lady, so I surmised), echoing tnrough the grim old house, startled me from my sleep. I arose and started down the hall, but stopped midway as I saw the library door swing open and Burton step forward. His face was pale and set as if his soul within were wrenched with a pain of sorrow so deep and unspeakable as to even render emotion inanimate and still. I knew by his looks that his phantom sweetheart had appeared to him, and that the voice which had awakened me was his. He strode*forjvard to tho landing of tho stairs,ythen suddenly stopped. How grand he looked there in the hall, standing so erect and solemn in the moonlight! No bronze statue standing lone and stately upon Its marble pede.-tal, in ancient ruin, in the shadow of princely grandeur, could have presented a more striking picture. I amost expected to hear another outburst of eloquence, accompanied by some spiritualistic manifestation wilder and more beautiful than I had yet seen; but, instead, a groan echoed from the statue-like form and it began to totter forward- I leaped to Burton’s side just in time to save him from a precipitate fall down the stairway, and to convey him down its dark and crazy flight out Into the air. “Is that you, Hal?” ho asked. I answered affirmatively. “Did you see her?” was his next question. I replied that I had seen no one, having been as eep In the hall until awakened by his voice. We both sat down on the front veranda railings and taking out cigars smoked them In silence. Burton brooding and dreaming, and I wondering what would come next It must have been late in the evening when the silence was first broken It had become tedious, and I • ventured to ask Burton what the subject of his profound meditation could be. Pointing toward a wooded dell a half mile away, which 1 could just faintly discern through the moonlight, he answered: “Down in yon valley, where the woodbine and the ivy cling to the noble trees, lies the grave of her who would have been part of my life if she had lived. Since her death, years ago. I have not lived; only in appearance She was my soul, my existphee. Upon her every word I hung as upon . the breath of life.' Into her eyes I looked as into a lustrous sea upon whose balmy waves I should be borne away to lands of everlasting benediction. Her raven tresses, lightly falling about her queenly bodice, were as rays of sunshine to my vision. She was my world, nty* heaven. Her very fooisteps sounding,filled mo with an exquisite delight that was a sort of insane ecstasy. We were cruelly parted by her parent-, and before I could arrange to secretly convey her hence she died of broken heart; and I had rather died. These miserable years have been a period of quasi-madness—a strange and wildered dream, part temporal, part spiritual. To-night the spirit of my love appeared to me for the first time, but only for a moment, holding her clasped hands above my head as if mutely blessing me. It may be that this was but an eccentric vision of a dream distracted brain. However this may bo I feel that I too must 9oon pass away. I leel that my strength is weakening fast.” His voice during this speech was low and feverish; fitful and wild at first, then slow and solemn. As he quit speaking his breath began to come heavily and he fell back; but I anticipated this and caught him before he could fall to the ground. I assisted, or rather carried him into the parlor where I had noticed a sort of couch sofa, and fras looking arQond for something of 'Which to make a light when suddenly

the room became softly illuminated, and I saw the Senor Montinni and a number of the revelers of the night before standing around the couch. Montinni came close to me and whispered: “Senor Burton is very ill; his time is near at hand You must go ior his mother. We .will see that be is kept as comfortable as possible. Ills mother lives twenty miles up the tyayou in tho town of M— —. The packet steamer, Katie of the Dell, is due to pass hero about this time. You had better prepare to go at once. ” Looking out at tho window I saw a long train of sparks falling back from two tall dark pipes down, tho bayou, and knew that the steamer was coming. Getting a few details of direction from Montinni, aqd taking leave of Burton, I ran over tho hill to tho landing just in time to hail the boat. The steamer’s whistle answered my salute, the boat drew up against the bank to take me on. and soon I was a passenger, my thoughts mingling vaguely with the hissing of the engines, the splashing of tho wheels, the trailing of the sparks, and recollections of the strange events at tho haunted house.

CHAPTER VIII. A MIDNIGHT ERRAND. The' packet was a fast boat, and it was but little after midnight when it drew up at tho M landing, but notwithstanding tho night and the darkness I fol owed the direction given me and soon found the residence of Burton's mother. Tho house, as well as the whole town, was in the pulseless sleep of night, and the hollow thump-thump of tho old-fa hlor.ed knocker at the door echoed dully along the street as I applied it. Presently a nogress came to the door and asked in a frightened manner what was wanted. I told her that I was a messenger from Burton Arold to his mother, and that it was necessary for me to see that lady at once. The negress showed me into a small but neat drawing-room, and turning a low-burning lamp up to a full blaze left the room and went to call her mistress. In a few minutes a tall, handsome matron, of about fifty years, stepped into the room. “Is this the Senora Arold?” I asked, rising. She started and stepped backward several feet Then coming forward she took me by the hand and said: “You must pardon my being 9tartled, but you so much resembled my brother who is dead that I thought you an apparition. You have come from my son. Is ho well?” The anxious look in the mother’s face showed that she feared the truth; so I immediately gave her a short account of his illness, and suggested that she should be at his bedside as soon as possible. T his was an irrelevant suggestion, for while I was Hiving it the Senora rang for her servant, and when that person had appeared she was given the order to wake up her two brothers and have them get a skiff ready Sipon the bayou immediately. “We were to go down, ” she said, “by boat to C , eight miles below, whore we could catch the mail coach for Blank, which would take us within a half-mile of the villa.” In the course of fifteen minutes the negress returned and said that Sam and Tom were in their skiff at the landing, ready. The Senora had packed a few necessaries, among which was a small case of medicines, into a sachel, and after she had wrapped up well we started for the landing, where we found Sam and Tom, two strong negroes, in waiting with a sharp-prowed skiff. The Senora gave her orders, and tho stout fellows laid to their oars with a will, and several times I “spelled” one or the other of them, to give a breath of rest.

No wind stirred the water, and the skiff sped along Gown the bayou with a speed that brought us to C—— just a 9 waking day was opening his eyes in the faY dim east We had time to take refreshment at tho little tavern of the town before the coach started, and soon after breakfast we found ourselves in that old swaybacked vehicle, the only passengers. After having directed the Grivcr to drop us at the nearest point to the Montinni estate, we began to talk over the affairs in hand. After I had explained my connection with Burton, and told some of my experiences among the mysteries of the villa, I pulled from my pocket the old copy of the New York paper given me by the negro Ben, and showed her tho marked item of tho shipwreck. There aro times when the heart is full, when recollections of the past crowd in upon the soul, and the commingled anguish and joy, tho pent-up experience of years, the vicissitudes of life, perhaps, well up from the vaults of memory and overwhelm the heart. Far be it from me to assume to describe the feelings of that widow and mother when she learned through that old and timo-stained newspaper the true cause of her widowhood away back in the tender years of her earlier life. Her sorrow for the sad fate of her husbana, and her joy to know that instead of having deserted her he was coming to join her as they had arranged, and that he had acted bravely and noSly in those his last hours on e'arth, was a matter that drew forth my deepest sympathy at the time, and dwells pathoticically in my recollection yet, but that is a private affair and belongs only as a mere mention to this story. Her sufferings during all those years of bereavement, when she had thought that the man who had fascinated and won her maiden heart had deserted her and left that heart to eat itself away In *he canker, the bitterness, the ashes of unrequited iove and broken faith —these, too, I will pa9sover, leaving their intimations to impress the kind reader as they may. Slumbering sorrow when once really awakened in' the breast drives away all thoughts of business formality. Knowing this full well I did not disturb the, Senora in her thoughts. Let the fuff heart work away its grief with what little of joy that may beam Into it. At about the middle of the forenoon a blast from tho driver’s horn warned us that we were near our stopping place) and soon the coach stopped. After getting out we walked silently and quickly to the villa.

CHAPTER IX. A STARTLING VISITATION. A subdued purple ladiance flooded the Interior or the- villa; a delicately sweet perfume floated about op the airy draughts that wandered in fresh from their morning dalliance with the flowers of many fields; and a soft, delicious spell seemed to reign fairy like over the semienchanted place. If the soul of the phantom lady # had pervaded every room, carrying with it the atmosphere of the blessed realm where dwell the spirits of 'all like her, balmier breath could not have come to kiss the brow of him who was passing into the shadow. I had been sauntering thoughtfully through the rooms and chambers of the old house for an hour or so, having, upon our arrival, left the mother and son alone in the sacredness of their meeting, for, under the circumstances, this meeting was sacred. “She once strong young man, now

weak and at times delirious In the burning and the eating* of the fever, pouring the discontented eloquence of his life’s great sorrow and despair into the tender recesses of that mother's heart, and the reassuring words of love and comfort and sympathy spoken in return by that mother, are matters to which you and I are not parties. We can only guess by what has come under our own observations, and perhaps our limited experiences, what transpired during that interview; but I do know that the heart that had been broken in early years, and left; | bleeding and disconsolate by the cruel negloct and cold treatment of proud and unfeeling paronts; the beart to which ; he had been pressed in the days of his babyhood as if his very being were a ! healing balm that might assnage its interminable aching, aye, the most faithful of mother hearts, still yearned | toward her boy in his manhood as it had I in his infancy, and that its chords of symVa.hy would vibrato at tho slightest word from that boy in a tender love as sweet »as tho whispered music of the .(Eollan harp when the evening zephyr scarcely touches it and away. I had been wondering during this hour what should be done next; what the whole meaning could bo of my mission at the villa and among its mystic and shadowy people. As I was thus thinking, I felt a touch upon my arm, and upon looking up, behold bofore mo the shadowy, beautiful form of the Sonorlta El Muza. She pointed to one side, and following the direction she indicated I- saw such a counterpart of myself that I had to look •tho second time to ascertain that thero was no mirror there to reflect back my i form and visago. This person thus pointed out had tho shadowy appearance 1 had noticed in all the spirits. A pleasant smilo overspread his countenance when he noticed my discomfiture, and he said: “You are evidently surprised at the fact that you and I resemble each other so closely; still tnero need be no surprise when you learn'that we are related by a long line of ancestry through your mother, a descendant of the El Muza stock, but of a different wing of the family. “There are, ” he continued, “only two representatives of the direct lines now lining ‘on earth. These two are the Senora Arold aiid your friend Burton. The Senora is my sister, so I am tho young man’s undo My parents treated them shabbily because it was thought that the Senora had allowed herself to bo disgraced by being betrayed into* false marriage, followed by apparent desertion on the part of her husband; but they have fully repented of their harsh conduct since their advent into tho spirit world, where we have all met her husband, who was shipwrecked on the coast of Florida while an the way to join her, and have learned that the marriage was valid. They wish to repair as well as they can the Injury done their daughter’s happiness. She must be kindly taken care of during the remainder of her natural life, and when she joins us in the future existence we will all bo happy together forever more. “This estate,” continued he, “was a partnership one. The El Zegals are all in the spirit world, the Senora Arold was disinherited, and the whole estate, under certain conditions, falls to a' nephew (by marriage) of Montinnl’s, whoresiijles at Venice. The transfer Is made subject to the management 8f an administrator. Now, there never has been any administrator, appointed, but legal forms are drawn up accompanying Montinni’s last will and testament, wherein places for an administrator’s name are left blank. We authorize you to affix your name to them, and to take all legal steps necessary to secure your position. The two-thirds of the, estate left without a will by El Zegal and El Muza are in such a posltion that they can bo placed in possession of Montinni’s nephew or given over to the discretion of the state. What we want you to do is to acquaint Montinni’s heir with tho power vested In you and to get a testified contract from him to the effect that if this property is given over to him that he will allow the Senora Arold the freedom of th# villa as a home and provide her with a proper mainteni ance during her natural life, and so mako the transfer that if he fails in the leastwise to comply with his intrusted obligations his claim to the El Muza and' El Zegal property shall henceforth be, null and void. “You will find the papers In a small Iron safe in orfe of the closed rooms up stairs. If you go immediately for them the doors will be opened for you. The heir’s address will bo found among the papers. ” [TO BE CONTINUED.]