CHAPTER XIII.THE WEIRD WEDDING.
“Turner!”
“My lord!”
“Have you prepared the dress I spoke of?”
“It is ready: what shall I do with it, my master?”
“Leave it in my room. The preparations, are they all made?”
“All.”
“And you will be ready to start at a moment’s warning, night or day?”
“The mules are saddled now; every thing packed!”
“It is well; I shall not want you again for some hours. As we leave Granada so soon, you may have friends to part with, something to purchase. Go into the city if you desire.”
“Thank you, my lord!” replied Turner, with more than ordinary meekness; “I am much obliged by the permission.” The young earl looked up suddenly. There was a dryness in Turner’s voice that he did not like, but the immovable face of the old man revealed nothing. He touched his hat with military brevity and moved away, measuring his long strides down the avenue with a slow regularity that marked all his movements.
Lord Clare looked after him anxiously, and muttering to himself, “Well, well, we must manage him some way,” entered the Fonde, and spent some hours alone in his room walking to and fro, and tortured with those thousand wild dreams that haunt an imaginative person so like demons when the great epochs of life are close at hand. The sunset paled around him, and night came more darkly than is usual in that climate.Still he ordered no lights, but placing the bundle of page’s garments on the table near his elbow, sat down and waited in sombre silence.
To reveal all the thoughts that flowed through his mind, one must have known his previous life, and of that even to this day I am not informed. Nay, who is ever informed of those acts which give the well-springs of thought in any human being? Men and women live together under the same roof, sit at the same board, and talk of knowing each other’s hearts, feelings, lives. At the Day of Judgment when all hearts will be read, fold by fold, like the leaves of a book, how will these persons be astonished at the unspoken feelings, the unimagined acts that have marked the lives, and burned themselves upon the hearts with which they believed themselves so familiar.
Lord Clare sat motionless now, for he was waiting with that intense anxiety which makes one’s own breath a torment, because it disturbs the stillness with which we desire to envelop ourselves when listening. At length he heard a step, soft and cat-like, stealing through the passage. Then the door of his room opened, and in the darkness he saw two eyes glowing upon him like those of a tiger, when the rest of its body is concealed among the dusky limbs of a forest tree.
“Come,” said the voice of old Papita, “it is time.”
Lord Clare started up and moved toward the door.
“The clothes, give me the disguise,” whispered the Sibyl; “where is it?”
Without waiting for a reply, she put forth her claw-like hands, felt her way to the table, and grasped the bundle.
“Come, come,” she whispered, seizing Lord Clare by the hand.
It seemed to him as if his hand were grasped by the claw of a demon, so hard, dry and hot were those fingers as they clutched his; and as he stooped that she might whisper in his ear, the hot breath that passed over his cheek made him shudder. She led him out back of the Fonde amid broken timbers,loose rocks and rubbish of every description: she scrambled on, dragging him after her, till they stood by a wooden door opening, as it seemed, into the embankment behind the Fonde.
Papita pushed at this door, and it gave way, revealing the mouth of a subterranean passage choked up with darkness.
“Come quickly, or some one may be on the watch,” whispered the Sibyl, for Lord Clare had hesitated at this forbidding entrance.
He was a brave man, but at this instant many stories of gipsy vengeance flashed through his mind, and his companion was not one to reconcile these doubts. There was something too impish and unearthly in her for that.
“Do you fear? the Busne is brave,” said the Sibyl scornfully—for even interest could not always keep down her malice—“like a gipsy baby, afraid of the dark!”
“Peace, woman. It is not fear; but I go into this place only when I am certain what it contains, and where it ends,” replied the earl, firmly.
“It contains Aurora, and it ends in the palace of the Alhambra,” answered the Sibyl, promptly. “It was through this passage that the last Moorish king, Boabdil, left the Alhambra forever. You stand upon the very earth where he came forth to the day which he had learned to curse.”
A deeper gloom fell upon Lord Clare. He looked upward. The black, rugged towers of the Alhambra loomed between him and the sky. Clouds hung low upon them, and the dim trees were thick and pall like, blacking the night below him.
The unfortunate Moorish king seemed near by. Never, perhaps, had history pressed so close upon a human heart. Lord Clare for a moment forgot his own position, the Sibyl, Aurora, everything in his intense realization of the past.
“In, in,” exclaimed the Sibyl. “I see a man creeping round yon corner of the Fonde; we have no time. If you fear, stay behind: the men of our people know how to avenge themselves in the day time as well as in the dark.”
“Have done—have done,” exclaimed the earl, sharply, “howcan you judge of my thoughts? I trust you in nothing, but am sure of myself. If you play me false I will shoot you like a dog, woman or no woman; so move on and only speak when you have something to say.”
He entered the passage speaking, and the next moment was engulphed with his weird companion in thick darkness.
“Truly, Thomas Turner, my estimable friend, you have got a sad fool for a master, that is a dead certainty!” muttered old Turner, for it was his figure the sharp eye of the Sibyl had discovered—“to trust himself now with this old vagrant—to plunge headforemost into that black pit with the imp of Satan for a guide. It’s enough to make one’s heart leap into his mouth and freeze there. But of course it’s the bounden duty of a good servant to follow his master. Thomas Turner, you are a good servant, everybody admits that. Therefore, Thomas, my friend, follow—follow like a brave fellow as you are!”
With these words, Turner, who was in truth a brave fellow, drew his travelling pistol, settled the lock, and holding it in his right hand, stole cautiously into the passage.
Nothing could have been better calculated to daunt even a brave man than the profound stillness, the palpable blackness of this subterranean passage. Turner had proceeded only a few paces when he felt that like a cavern it had its compartments and its intricate windings—steps to ascend and descend. Then to his dismay he found that it branched off into vaults, and what appeared to be dungeons or secret chambers for concealment. He paused and listened. Nothing was heard, not even the sweet gush of waters that in Granada are ever present like the sunshine or the breeze. All was profound stillness. No footstep, no voice. Deep midnight and those solid stone walls surrounded him alone. He groped about, advancing he knew not whither, tempted every moment to call aloud, though certain that this rash act must defeat his own object.
At last, completely bewildered, he held forth his pistol, and with a finger on the trigger was about to fire, that at least he might have the benefit of a flash to guide his course. But thatmoment a faint sound reached his ear. He dropped his hand, listened, and moved on. Yes, it was a light, the faintest possible gleam breaking over the rugged corner of a wall, but it burned steadily enough to guide him onward.
He moved cautiously, for now the faint hum of voices came stealing through the vaulted passage, and he knew that the slightest mistake might expose his presence. Reaching an angle of the wall, he crept into its shadow and held his breath. Before him was a small chamber, or it might be merely an enlargement of the passage. An antique house lamp, rust eaten and moist with mould, hung from the ceiling, evidently trimmed for the first time in years, for the flame was half buried in clouds of smoke; and drops of the olive oil, with which it had just been filled, rolled down the chased sides, leaving a green path in the rust.
In this strange, murky light a group of persons were standing around a fragment of black marble, in which Turner, with difficulty, traced the outlines of some very ancient sculpture, like that which in his travels he had seen on Egyptian idols. Two other persons besides the Sibyl were present, both in strange garments, and unlike the class of persons he had yet seen in any province of Spain. But Turner scarcely gave them a thought. His attention was too eagerly fixed on Lord Clare, who stood before the platform on which the idol had been lifted, holding a young girl, undoubtedly of gipsy blood, by the hand.
From their attitude they must have just risen from a kneeling posture, and some ceremony seemed just concluded. What the ceremony could be which had brought his master, the withered Sibyl, those strange men and that wildly beautiful girl around that mutilated form of black marble, Turner could not even imagine. But the whole scene was weird and strange enough for the wildest conjecture. The Sibyl stood forward directly under the lamp. The smoke wreathed in clouds around the fiery red folds of her turban. Her saya was edged knee deep with the richest gold lace, bright in broad flashes, thentarnished to a green hue, but still of unique splendor; her ear-rings glowed over those mummy-like shoulders like drops of congealed blood. The exulting brightness of her eyes was terrific. She looked so like an evil spirit that poor Turner absolutely believed her to be one, who had cast some infernal charm upon his master.
He shrunk away crowding himself hard against the wall, but still with his eyes fixed on the group. Lord Clare was very pale, and the grim light made this pallor and the excitement in his eyes almost unearthly. A look of painful disgust was on his features, like that of a man who loathes the thing he has forced himself to do. Once he dropped the Gitanilla’s hand, looking wearily around as if for something to sit down upon.