Stories after Nature/Zara, the Rich Man's Daughter
ZARA,
the Rich Man's Daughter.
N an ancient city of Arabia there dwelt a very rich man. He had one great failing, that of being very proud; and to such an excess did this blind and self-perplexing fault extend, that he sacrificed every feeling to his self-devotedness and rage. Woe to the slave who spoke not on his knees, and to the embassy that shouted not his name. He was more feared than loved; for he hated independence, but would enrich adoration, munificently. He was a widower, and had three daughters; the eldest of whom, named Zara, was the image of her deceased mother; the other two were reflections of their father, both in shape and nature.
This rich man's palace was ever thronged with princes, warriors, and noble strangers; and many had been the attempts to gain the hand of Zara, but it was handmaid to her heart. She, not having entered into the gates of pride, of pomp, and empty gorgeousness, as the rest of her family, overlooked the possessors of mines, of armies, and of kingdoms; and although she was diligent in her search, she never could find a good and sound heart amongst all this greatness; and consequently no reciprocal feelings with her own. Many noble qualities were possessed by some who sought her bed; but something was wanting that left her heart untouched. Fair time, however, was before her, for she was but just a woman; and her beauty was indeed a glowing summer that cometh after the spring.
It chanced that Zara passed a mausoleum where they were burying the dead; and as her breast was always open to powerful excitement, she delayed her suite, and went alone to the door of the sepulchre; here she sat herself on a stone, by a pillar; and sighing, she began the painful office of noticing the feelings of those who mourned. One figure, the peculiar beauty and power of which was subdued by inward sorrow to a declining tenderness, engrossed her wholly. Her interest waxed great, and her heart soft; but when his gentle hand removed the mantle from his face to look once more upon the cold bed of death, her heart beat violently, and an enthusiasm at the noble sorrow of the countenance stifled her tears; and though the mantle again fell in a moment, enveiling the face, yet it, and the inward agony of feeling that was in the look, was stamped upon her heart for ever. Her eye followed the figure, as the procession moved to perform some other rite, and when it passed the buttress of the mausoleum, her imagination became busy with its image. She thought it to be a face familiar to her (though she had never seen it before), and that it was the same countenance she had looked for all her life, though she had never known it. She might have sat in this dream of fancy till night (for it was painfully sweet), had not the keeper of the keys aroused her. She went, looking upon her feet, with a melancholy aspect to her attendants, and the gates closed upon her. They jarred upon her soul. Then mounting to her mule, she returned home, and shut herself in her chamber.
The fruit of much restlessness was to make inquiries respecting this young stranger. She learned that he was poor, but gentle; that he and his mother were the purchased slaves of her father; that his mother had died with excessive grief, and had left him alone in such great sorrow, a pauper, and a slave.
With much smothering, Zara hid her feelings during this recital, and when it was ended her grief and tears struggled in vain with her tongue; and she spoke, desiring her servant to carry gold to buy his freedom, and skins, and raiment; and promised comfort, and to bid him be of good heart. For all this she was much easier; and one week, and then another went over, but her fancy thickened with his image. His face, with that heart-breaking look, was everywhere; her flowers were not her pride; solitude was her only comfort, wherein she got pale; her spirits grew aërial and refined; and the pomp and noise of her father's palace was a grossness no longer tolerable. Another week passed; when one morning, having had a light sleep and gentle dream, she arose, and with a soothed and quiet mind passed unattended from the garden to the road. The sun not being up, and the air of the morning cool, she strayed on (well knowing where, though she did not confess it to herself) until she reached the thatched habitation of this sad youth. When she came to think of what she was about, she trembled, but still went on. She paused at the threshold, and knocked, but no answer came. Upon looking round, she saw him asleep beneath a tree at a well's side. At the sight of his countenance again, her heart beat violently.
He had been wandering and watching with a miserable heart through the night, with sorrow that knows no custom; and being wearied, had cast himself down in the morning, to snatch a few moments of oblivious sleep. Zara went gently to him, and sat herself at his feet, watching his uneasy slumber. His face had recovered some colour, and his eyes were a little stained with weeping. Three hours she sat and stirred not, but gazed upon his face. At length he awoke; and having assured himself that it was no dream, his sorrow gave way to courtesy, his courtesy to tenderness, and tenderness increased to love and affection. The lady well believed all he said; not only because she was willing, but moreover, her life existed only in such a speech; so she cast off her purple and gold, put on a dress of skins, and walked with him; and married him that day.
When the morning came, no whit repenting of her great change, she sent one to her father, telling who she had married, and saying, "I love the choice that my heart has made, better than gold, or price, or kingdoms, or renown; and am content with the little honour that is in the virtue of my act. But as I know you, my father, and my sisters, affect the honour that is in the world's eye, I must leave your house; which I am willing to do, though I shall not love you the less. It was in my power to have taken money and jewels, and to have enriched myself as a princess; this I have not done, as I wot well all these were the price of my obedience. As, however, I have wedded myself to nakedness, your anger will demand that which the fulness of your defeated hope bestowed; being therefore without money, it is my request that you will enrich me with a little gold, so that I, and my dear lord, may not starve at this present."
As the messenger reported this, the rich man trembled, and was dumb with rage, and suddenly he smote him so hard that it nearly killed him; and he went raving about mad, vowing that he would have their blood. He shut himself up in his chamber, to think on what orders he should give to lay hands upon their lives; but when his rage abated, some touch of tenderness came unconfessedly to his breast. He walked out, called upon his daughters, his friends, and all his relatives; summoned his vassals, gathered them in the great hall, and told them all the sorrow of his proud heart; saying, "Put ye on your gay attire, and take with you the cymbal, and the pipe, and the dulcimer, and make music; and proceed ye with songs and rejoicing by the highway, until you shall come to this woman's house; take ye also, my daughters, in your hands, a young camel, a map, a bag of pebbles, and four dried skins; and say ye to her, without pity, ridiculing her estate, 'Thy father sends the portion thou deservest, and fitting thy most honourable marriage. For thy five hundred camels, take thou this one; for thy lands, thy woods, and springs on this tracked earth, take thou this map; these pebbles be thy jewels and thy gold; and these hard skins be all the tender raiment for thy cherished limbs.' Then leave her to the shafts of the world." And they all went as they were bid.
When Zara heard the sound of her father's music, and saw the banners and the array that approached, she said to her husband, "Be of good cheer and grieve not; for you see that my father's heart is turned gentle, and that thou hast not plucked me from such high fortune (which has given thee so much pain)." The numbers came to her, and the music ceased. And when they had said with scorn all they had desired, she turned not pale, but looking in her husband's face she kissed him before them all. Then she took the skins, the pebbles, and the map, and put them upon the camel; and turning to the multitude smiled sweetly, and said, "Tell my father that I am content." So she bowed, and put her arm upon her husband's neck, and leading the camel by a string, she turned her back to them, and journeyed towards the desert. And the multitude returned shouting.
Here the virtuous were content and happy; and the proud heart plagued to the amount of its folly: but "Heaven, that hath the hearts of princes in its own hand," worketh after its own way.
These two built them a house, and the continual content and cheerfulness of Zara at length shamed away the melancholy that existed in the fine feeling of her husband; he knowing that for him she had become an outcast, and that he was a beggar without any worldly comforts. The remainder of the money, that Zara in her charity had sent to her husband, was now their daily life and anchor; it was soon gone, and they bethought themselves how they might live. Zara said, "Heaven did not put it into the head of my dear father to bestow on me the camel to no use; howbeit I love the animal with almost a holy love, not only that it fondles me and is so gentle to kneel when I shall mount it, but that it is allied to the best remembrance of my home; why should we not turn this gift to our use? Hew thyself a bow and arrows, and a spear; hunt thou the beasts for their skins; and with the feathers of birds, by the rareness of the art taught me in my infancy, I will weave mats and fans of devices above all common powers. We will from time to time load our camel with the labour of our hands, and take our tent to a far market, and thus live to love and bless one another." Her husband was astonished, but comforted, and did as she had said; and her singing and her converse made the way short and the labour sweet.
Thus led they for some months an enviable life; but one morning, when two months longer would have made her a mother, a fever seized her; at night she grew dumb, and on the morrow died. Her husband fell into an oblivion of despair, and was as a single weed in the garden of paradise, misery's heir. On the third day he buried her with his own hands. When the sharpness of his agony was somewhat past, he loved to linger about her favourite haunts, and bestowed all tenderness on the camel she had so dearly loved; and this patient creature, missing the gentle hand that had fostered it daily, shewed a dumb sorrow by a thousand signs, that found a way to his breaking heart.
His way of life became wild, he loathed all intercourse as intrusive; and finding that he must follow the same means as hitherto to live, he loaded his camel, and went his way to the market.
Each step that he took, reminded him of his happy estate, the last time he had travelled that way; he thought of the many things that his dear wife had said in the places they had passed, of the songs she had sung, and the tears rolled from his eyes by night and by day; yet these musings were comfortable to him. He sold the skins, and returned, full of the soothing thoughts of the past, and agonizing certainty of the present reality.
Not having eaten or drunk that day, he stopped his camel; and looking for the skins containing the water (which he had filled as usual from the great spring), found that they had come unloosed and were gone. Parched with thirst, and thinking that he had dropped them many miles off, he knew not what to do; but sighing at such mean persecutions of fate, he mounted his camel and retraced his way, but they were nowhere to be found. As a whole skin of water would not have been enough to have carried him back to the spring, he bethought him that his time was come, and that heaven would at length release him. So he unloaded his camel, that it might go whither it would, and cast himself on the sand.
The night came on, and was very dark; his bowels grew fevered, and raged with heat, and he passed the night in horrible torture. When the morning was come, his eyes were starting forth; and he was bent double with pain: his tongue was parched, and clave to the roof of his mouth, and was dry and pursed like a fig. He saw the camel lying beside him, and bethought him of the way among the Arabs, who when they are in danger for want of water, slay these beasts, and open the pouch that is in the chest, which nature has provided for them to store their drink for many days. When he arose to do the same, he thought upon the service that this gentle creature had done him, and of the love his dear wife bore to it; and notwithstanding his physical agony, the tenderness of his mind was above the act, and he could not do it. He again threw himself down, and soon died.
The camel staid by him three days; but when the water was gone, and the pain of thirst came on, he made madly for the desert to find some spring, but as there was none there he must have perished.