CHAPTER VII.WAITING FOR VENGEANCE.
Clare stood in the Court of Lions, absolutely bewildered by the suddenness of what had happened. As he listened the sound of a footstep, heavier than the one he sought—but of this he did not think at the time—reached him from the lower end of the court. He moved hurriedly in that direction, and just as he reached the azulejo pillars, that still retain their first beauty in that portion of the ruin, a man came toward him, but keeping behind the columns with a sort of cowardly ferocity, like one who was seeking an opportunity to strike in the dark.
The Englishman paused. There was something in the appearance of this man, closely as he kept to the shadows, which reminded him of an unpleasant adventure that he had met on his route to Granada. The idea was enough. He darted forward and stood face to face with the leader of a prowling band of gipsies who had robbed him, not two months before, on his way from Seville.
The man seemed to recognize him also. At first he slunk away as if with a hope of concealment, but a slight jingle of the numerous silver tags on his jacket, and a stealthy movement of the right arm downward, while his eyes followed the Englishman like a basilisk, were significant of some more vicious intent.
Slowly, and as a weary man might change his position, the gipsy drew up his figure, and a gleam of moonlight shooting through the network of an arch close by, fell upon the blade of a Manchegan knife which he held with a backward thrust of the arm, slowly raising the point to a level with the heart he wished to reach.
Few strangers are mad enough to go unarmed in Spain. The Englishman was bold as a lion too, but with all this he could not have drawn the pistol from his bosom before that knife had done its work. Still he made the effort, keeping his eyes steadily on the man, and with something of the effect which such looks have upon fierce animals. But the point of that murderous blade rose higher and higher. In another moment it would have been sped; but on the instant a sharp clutch was laid on the assassin’s arm, and the gipsy Sibyl thrust herself between the combatants.
“Back, Chaleco—begone, I say. How dare you step in between me and my right? Think you Papita wants your knife to help her?” cried the fierce old witch, grinding her sharp teeth together at each pause of her speech.
“But the wrong is mine,” answered Chaleco fiercely. “Aurora was my betrothed: let her die—let her die; but he, I will send him before!”
He struggled with the old woman who had clutched the knife with her tawny fingers and clung to him, hissing out her wrath in his face like a wild cat.
“Die! who says Aurora shall die? Is she not mine, the grand-daughter of a count? Who shall condemn her but myself? When I have said she is guilty, then you may talk of wrong—not before. Go home. How dare you follow my grand-daughter when she goes about her work!”
But the gipsy shook her off, wrenching the knife from her clutch with a violence that flung her to the ground.
She started fiercely up. The red turban had fallen from her grey hairs, and they streamed around her like a torn banner that has once been white. Her eyes gleamed and flashed with lurid fire. She flung up her long, flail-like arms, and shrieked forth curses that seemed absolutely to blast the air around like a simoon. She spoke in Rommany, but the curses that came seething from her heart were more horrible to the Englishman, than if he had understood the words. They cowed even the gipsy chief. He gave up his knife abjectly, and casting a fierce, sullen look on the Englishman, slunk away.
This sullen submission appeased the Sibyl’s fury. She followed him into the darkest portion of the cloister, and seemed to drop suddenly down from threats to expostulations, which ended at last in low, wheedling tones, which gradually died away in the melody of the fountain.
The Englishman looked around like one in a dream. Not fifteen minutes had elapsed since he sat in theSala de los Abencerrages, with the Gitanilla so close to him that he could hear every full throb of her heart. Had she gone forever? That storm of fiendish passion which he had just witnessed, was it real? How still, how deliciously tranquil was the Alhambra! Had that soft moonlight looked but a moment since on the assassin’s knife close to his own heart? It seemed an impossibility. He could not realize the terrible danger which even yet threatened him.
It was long before he could, by all the efforts of his strongwill, bring his thoughts under any degree of control. But he did not leave the place, for the first reasonable reflection aroused the keenest anxiety for the Gitanilla. Her fears of death were not all fancies then. He remembered the old Sibyl’s words; she had only claimed the right of vengeance as her own. The proof which he held in his own person, was enough to convince him that no laws could prevent crime in a people to whom most crimes are held as virtues. Had he not been plundered of property, and saved from death almost by a miracle, in spite of the Spanish laws?
His anxiety regarding the poor gipsy girl became tormenting. Where could he seek her? Not at the ravine; surely she would not go there, knowing the fiendish inhabitants so well, and fearing all that she feared. The storm of her passion had been so violent it could not last. The poor child to save her own life must come back again. He would wait.
He did wait, hour after hour, till the moon went down, and nothing but the bright, holy stars kept watch over the Alhambra. He traversed the saloons, explored the cloisters, and leaving all that was beautiful behind him, wandered off among those dark red towers that harmonized better with the gloomy fears that possessed him.
Still he continued the search, clambering up those broken walls, tramping his way over wild flowers and weeds alike—called to a distance, sometimes, by the rustle of a bird, and mocked every instant by shadows that proved unreal as his hopes. But he would not believe that Aurora had left the ruins. Besides, rest was impossible. Alone in the little fonda he must have gone mad with anxiety.
Twenty times that night did he pass hurriedly through the Gate of Justice, hoping to find her returning from the woods. He searched the whole uneven sweep of those walls, clambering up the declivities, and finding relief in the physical exertion which covered his forehead and saturated his hair with moisture.
When the first rosy light of morning quivered on the snowsof Alpujarras, he returned to the little fonda so weary, so hopelessly dejected that he could hardly stand. His fate day had come round again.