CHAPTER XLI.MY STRANGE VISITOR.
All at once, I felt a hand laid on my shoulder, and, starting up, saw the strange man by my side.
He was little changed. The same picturesque combination of rich colors soiled and rudely flung together, composed his garments; the same sharp glitter made me shrink from a full glance of his eyes. When he smiled, I saw that his teeth were even and white as ever.
“Zana, get up; you need me, and I am here.”
“I do need some one; but who can help me?” I said despondingly.
“I can!”
“No, God alone can give me what I want!”
“And what is that, Zana?” he said, smiling.
“Light, memory. I would know who and what I am!”
“Well, child, that is easy!”
“To God, truly—but to him alone.”
“But why do you want this knowledge now more than formerly?” he asked.
“My father is dying in anguish from this want!”
“Your father—and who is he?” was the abrupt question with which he answered this.
“I know, but have not the right to tell!”
“But how came you by the knowledge?”
“My heart lay, for a little time, against his, and they understood each other. I knew that the same blood beat in both, certainly as if an angel had told me, I want no other evidence,” was my prompt answer.
“And you crave this knowledge in proof, that it may render his death easy?”
“Yes!”
“And for no other reason?”
“That I may know myself and those who gave me life, that is all!”
“But Lord Clare is rich!” said the man, fixing his keen eyes upon me. “Did you think of that?”
“I did not mention Lord Clare,” was my answer, given in astonishment at the reckless way in which he handled my secret.
“But you were thinking of him, and that he would have money to give a child proven to be his!”
“No, I never thought of it—never shall think of it!”
“There is no Rommany in that,” he muttered, “the blood does not speak there.”
Then speaking louder, he addressed me, pointing toward Marston Court.
“Look,” he said, fastening his wild eyes on my face, “that is a fine estate, and not tied up like Greenhurst to legal heirs; Lord Clare’s daughter might get that if she had proof of her birth before the earl dies. Had this nothing to do with your anxiety just now?”
“Nothing,” I replied, with a touch of scorn. “I do not want that estate, or any other.”
“Fool!” sneered the man; “if I believed you, the secret were not worth telling!”
“What secret?” I inquired, breathlessly; “canyoutell me anything of my mother?”
“And if I did, what then?”
“I would worship you!”
“Yes, as she did,” he answered, with a sort of mournful fierceness in his eyes and voice.
“As who did?” I demanded.
“Your mother, Aurora.”
“That was what he called her.”
“Who?”
“It was the name my father used!”
“Ha! the murderer! how dare he?”
“But you know something of my mother!” I said eagerly; “tell it me!”
“That you may give Lord Clare the knowledge he thirsts for?”
“Yes!”
“You shall have this knowledge—he shall have it—and may it crush him down, down”——
“Stay!” I cried out, seizing his uplifted arm, “I will not listen—it is my father you curse.”
“Yourfather—I know it; but what was he to her?—to Aurora?—what was he to her? What was she to him?”
A flood of burning shame rushed over my face, and my eyes fell beneath the lurid scorn of his.
“Can you know this and not hate the traitorous gentile?” he said.
I covered my burning face, but could not answer.
“Look up! the fire of your Caloe blood is burning to waste; it should hurl vengeance on those who have heaped shame on it.”
“What, on my father?” I cried, struck with horror—“he is dying!”
“And without proof that you are his child?”
“Alas! yes.”
“He shall have it.”
“Give it me now, now,” I cried, in eager joy.
“No; let him writhe a little longer—revenge should be eaten slowly—you must learn this—the blow that kills at once makes a gourmand of the avenger—he swallows all at a mouthful.”
There was something fiendish in the man’s look as he said this, that made me shudder as I faltered out, “You terrify me—I do not understand. Will you tell me of my mother?”
“I will give you the knowledge soon.”
“Oh, now, that it may bless his last moments,” I pleaded; “he may not live another hour.”
“That it may curse him,” shouted the man. “But that I am sure of it, he might die like a dog, in his ignorance. Not for all those lands which the secret shall bring you, child, would I speak, only I know how sweet my words will be to him,” he cried, pointing toward Greenhurst. “Choke back those tears, little one; it is time you were among us, full time.”
“But my mother—speak of her—you terrify me.”
“Yes, I forget,” he said, with a sudden change of manner, “there is gentile blood in your cheeks, and that is cowardly; but what I have to say will fire it up by and by, Zana,” he continued, with a touch of feeling, “you are like your mother!”
“I know it.”
“How? I thought—nay, nay, you cannot remember her!”
“Yes, I do.”
“How and where?”
“The face, only the face, I remember that, nothing more!”
“It was a beautiful face, Zana.”
“I know it—very beautiful!”
His forehead grew heavy and dark. A look of wild horror came into his eyes that were dwelling upon me in apparent wrath.
Just then a gun was fired near us, and through the trees I saw George Irving and Morton coming toward us.
“Hush, no outcry,” whispered the man, drawing me back into a thicket. “Come, or do you wish them to see you?”
“No, no—heaven forbid!” I cried, shrinking under cover.
The man smiled grimly.
“It is well,” he said; “there is no contamination here—the blood is true to itself yet—I will leave you now!”
“No, no, not till you tell me of my mother,” I cried, wild with the dread of losing this clue to my history.
“Not here, it is impossible,” was his answer. “You have that black pony yet?”
“Yes.”
“And are no coward? not afraid of the dark?”
“No.”
“After nightfall come to yonder old house.”
“What, Marston Court?”
“Yes, I will be there!”
“And will you tell me all?”
“Yes!”
He darted from me while speaking, and the next instant all trace of him was lost.
I must have remained a long time buried in the woods, but I have no remembrance even of my own sensations. So much was crowded on my brain that it seemed stolid to all subjects but the one great wish to learn more. Up to the time I met that strange being, who seemed so familiar and yet so frightful, I had been overwhelmed with tender grief. My father, suffering, perhaps dying—my father so lately found, filled every thought. No doubt entered my mind that he was my father; for months the conviction had gradually settled upon me; but when I remembered the distrust which tortured him, a painful wish to conquer it—to sweep it away, possessed me, not for my own sake—never for a moment did I think of any advantage it might prove to myself—but that he might be satisfied; that the cruel check that made his tenderness for me a torture might be removed.
But now came other feelings, such as I had never known or dreamed of before. I have repeated that man’s conversation word for word, but its effect no power of mine can reveal. Instead of that tender, holy thirst for knowledge that might give my father peace, a fierce curiosity took possession of my soul. I felt not like a child, but an avenger. I would know myself that night; mysteries should henceforth cease to surround me. The blackness would be swept from my brain, and by that man—that man. Was he man or demon? Could anything human, with so little effort, have filled my bosom with bitterness? I was to meet him that night, meet him in secrecy and darkness, in a strange place—I, a young girl, not more than seventeen. It did not frighten me; I panted for the hour to come, though the very thought thrilled me through and throughwith the idea of a sacrilege performed with a demon. My heart would now and then recoil from the thought, not in fear, but as from something unholy that I had resolved to do.
This thought could not deter me; on the contrary, it imparted ferocious strength to my resolution. I was determined to pluck and eat the fruit of knowledge, though it poisoned me. Toward evening, when I saw the first beams of sunset shooting like golden lances through the chestnut boughs and broken against their stately boles, I awoke from this chaos of thought and went home.
As I mounted the stairs to my room, Maria called after me, begging that I would come down and eat something; but I hurried on, closed the door of my chamber, and bolted it without answering a word. The very idea of seeing any one that night was hateful. She came softly up the stairs and knocked a long time, telling me that Turner had not been at home all day, and that she wassoanxious about us both. I took no heed, but sat down by a window, looking with fierce impatience on the west.
A great embankment of clouds, black as chaos, rolled up from where the sun had been, sweeping all its glowing gold and crimson up through their ebon outskirts, where it burned and quivered in folds and fringes of fiery brightness. It was a beautiful sight, but lurid and wild, covering the earth with uncouth shadows, and filling the woods with a pale glare that to me seemed demoniac.
It answered well to the fierce impatience gnawing at my heart! Tented by that dark cloud, I should go forth on my errand with firmness. The more dreary my road became, the better I should like it.
When the cloud had spread and blackened over the whole horizon, I started up and put on my dress of dark cloth and a broad-leaved beaver hat, which I tied firmly on my head with a scarlet silk handkerchief, passed over the crown. I searched for no gloves, but went out, darting like a shadow through the hall, that Maria might not detect me.
I stopped by a laburnum tree and broke off a shoot, stripping the leaves away with my hand, for I had no time to search for my little gold and agate-headed whip then. Jupiter was in his stall. I girded on his saddle, and buckled the throat-latch of his bridle so tightly, that he rose back, shaking off my hold. At another time I might have regretted this impetuous haste, but now I gave Jupiter a blow over the head with my whip, that made him whimper like a child.
I took no notice, but led him out, and from the door sill, which was somewhat lifted from the ground, sprang to the saddle. He hung back when I attempted to move, but I struck him smartly over the ears and he walked on, but sideling and plunging with great discontent. I suppose the dense clouds and the close atmosphere terrified him; but to me their sluggish grandeur was full of excitement.
After we had cleared the woods, my old pony became more tractable. Very soon his speed answered to my sharp impatience, and we dashed on through the lurid twilight with spectre-like velocity. As we neared Marston Court, the darkness settled thick and heavy over everything. We could hardly distinguish the turrets and pointed towers from the black sky that they seemed to loom against. The road became ascending and broken. More than once Jupiter stumbled over the loose boulders that had rolled down the banks into the road.
As we drew near the building the trees closed in upon us. Their gnarled branches hung low, and vines now and then trailed down, almost sweeping me from the saddle. The atmosphere was heavy and still as death; not a leaf stirred; no sound but the tramp of Jupiter reached us from any quarter. My heart grew heavy. I would have given the world for a gush of air or a gleam of starlight, everything around was so terribly black.
Still, I urged Jupiter on, following the deviations of a carriage-road half choked up. We passed by a pile of something that seemed denser and closer than the great trees, whichslowly assumed the outline of a building overrun with foliage, and this I took for a ruined lodge.
After passing it, we found ourselves tangled up in the luxurious growth of some pleasure-ground run to waste; for long trailing branches swept across my face, and from the perfume, which rose heavy and sickening on the close air, I knew that Jupiter was treading flowers to death every moment with his hoofs.
At last, we came close to the building. All around the base was matted and overrun with ivy, and the straggling branches of ornamental trees. I checked Jupiter, hoping to detect some light or signal to guide me on.
The outline of a vast building alone met my search. It might have been a heap of rocks or the spur of a mountain, for any idea that I could obtain of its architecture; but its blackness and size disheartened me. How was I to search, in a pile like that, for the man I had come to meet? As I sat upon Jupiter looking wistfully upward, the clouds broke above and began to quiver, and from the depths rushed out a flash, followed by a broad, lurid sheet of lightning.
There, for the first time, and a single moment, I saw Marston Court, its gables, its stone balconies, heavy with sculpture, its facade flanked with towers that loomed grimly over the broad steps and massive granite balustrades that wound up from where we stood to the front door.
In my whole life I never witnessed a scene more imposing. A glimpse, and all was black again. The flash had given me one view of the mansion, nothing more. I was impressed painfully by its vastness. How could I force an entrance?—how make way through the vast interior when that was obtained?
It seemed a hopeless effort, but my determination was strong as ever; so springing to the ground, I felt my way to the stone balustrade and tied Jupiter. Then guiding myself by the carved stone, I mounted one flight of the steps that curved like the two horns of a crescent from the great oaken doors that divided them upon the arch.
I started, and a shriek burst from me. Upon my hand, which lay upon the balustrade, another fell. When I shrieked it grasped my fingers like iron, and a voice that I knew, said in that language—the language I had never spoken, but could understand—“hush. Who taught you to fear?”
“You came upon me so abruptly, so still!” I whispered, shuddering as his breath floated across my lips.
“Speak in your own language—speak Rommany,” he said, in the same tongue.
“I cannot,” was my half timid answer.
“Try!”
The command was imperative. I made an effort to answer in his own mysterious tongue. To my surprise the words syllabled themselves rudely on my trembling lips; he comprehended me.
“Where are you taking me?” I had said.
He grasped my hand till the pain made me cry out.
“It is there—the true fire—old Papita kindled it in the soul of her great-grandchild—the mystery is not broken—the sorcery still works—queen of our people, speak again,” he cried, with an outburst of fiery enthusiasm, more impressive from the hushed tones in which he spoke.
I felt like one possessed. By what power did my tongue form that language?—what was it? All at once, while he waited for me to speak, I began to shiver and burst into tears. He tossed my hand away with a gesture of contempt.
“Bah! you are only a half-blood after all, the Caloe is poisoned on your tongue.”
I checked the tears that so offended him, and moved breathlessly forward, relieved by the gesture which had freed me from his hand.
When we reached the broad, stone platform that clasped the two staircases in one, he took hold of my hand again. That moment another flash of lightning leaped from the clouds, sheeting us, the building and all its neglected grounds in a glare of bluish light.
It blinded me for an instant, then I saw the man’s face clearly, bending over me as I cowered to the stones. The lightning had no effect upon me like the unearthly glow of those eyes. Since then I have seen birds fascinated by the undulating movements of a serpent, and they always brought back a shuddering remembrance of that hour.
“Up,” he said, grasping my arm, and lifting me to his side, “half the true blood is stagnant still. We will set it on fire.”
He placed one heavy foot against a leaf of the oaken door, and it fell open with a clang that resounded frightfully from the deep, empty hall. Again the lightning blazed upon the floor, tessellated with blocks of black and white marble, and suits of antique armor, with shields and firearms, that hung upon the wall.
“It is a fearful night,” I said, looking wildly at my companion.
“Gitanilla!” he said, turning upon me with folded arms, and a fierce gathering of the brow, “I have seen a morning when the sunlight lay rosy among the snow peaks—when the earth seemed covered with sifted pearls—when every breath poured health and vigor into the frame; I have seen such a morning more fearful a thousand times than this! Come with me!”
“What for?—where?” I demanded, thrilled and astonished by the glowing words, which I must ever fail to give in English.
“That you may hate the sunshine and love the storm as I do—that whiteness may make you shudder—and nothing but black midnight seem beautiful. Come with me!”
“Are you possessed? Would you possess me with some evil thing?” I said, terribly excited. “Would you fill my veins with gall, my soul with hate?”
“Yes,” he answered, through his shut teeth, leading me along the marble floor.
I shuddered, remembering what I had been only that morning, and the fearful sensations that possessed me then. Was it a fiend that I was following?
“Oh, I feel the bitterness, the soul-blight even now. Unclasp my hand,” I shrieked.
“Are you afraid?” he retorted, with a sneer.
“Yes, I am afraid.”
He dropped my hand.
“Go, you are not worthy to learn anything of your mother—go, such knowledge is not for cowards.”
“My mother,” I cried, “oh, I had forgotten. Yes, tell me of her—I will follow anywhere, only tell me.”
“Nay, I will tell you everything—come!”
He drew me rapidly forward, threading the darkness like a night bird. We mounted steps winding upward till I was sick and dizzy. At last he passed into what seemed to me a small circular room, high in one of the towers.
“Sit down,” he said, pressing a hand upon my shoulder till I sunk into a seat that yielded to my weight. “Sit down and keep still, we are alone, high above the earth; the stars, which those of your blood should read like a parchment, are all hidden. It has a bad look for the future, but this is the appointed hour.”
He paused a moment, and seemed to be leaning from a narrow window interrogating the darkness. He turned abruptly and said,
“You saw Lord Clare, this morning?”
“Yes.”
“And he is dying?”
“Alas! I fear so.”
“How many days first?”
“What!” I exclaimed, shocked by the coldness with which he questioned me.
“How many days at the most will he live?”
“I cannot tell; God forbid that I should even guess.”
“Would you save his life?”
“Would I?—would I keep the breath in my own bosom?”
“Then you wish him to live?”
“Wish it, yes—heaven only knows how much!”
“Renegade!”
“What?”
“Nay,” he said, with a sudden change from ferocity to the most child-like tenderness, “let her know all—how can she judge?”