CHAPTER XXI.THE OATH REDEEMED.
Papita went out muttering hoarsely to herself, as we cowered together in that close hole. A great tumult arose from without. The tramp of feet, the hooting of voices, and wild murmurs drew near and nearer. My mother did not tremble, but when the door flew open, she stood out in the cave, holding me in her arms. The light from a dozen torches fell redly over us, a hundred fierce eyes glared in, and the door was blocked with grim, shaggy human heads, all waving and shaking in ferocious astonishment.
She stood before them, like a dusky statue, her heavy, raven hair falling in masses down her temples, and her pale hands locked around me so tightly that I breathed with pain. As the torchlight fell upon her dress, some one in the crowd recognized it as the wedding array that had been purchased for her marriage with Chaleco, and a low howl ran through the crowd.
“She mocks us, she mocks us with her shame—take her forth at once. It is a long way to the mountains, and by daylight the authorities may be upon us,” cried a stern voice.
“To the mountains—to the mountains!” ran through the throng, and then one or two from the crowd rushed in and would have seized my mother. But the old Sibyl placed herself in their way, confronting them with fierce wrath.
“Her father was a count, and her father’s father. It is of her own free will she comes. Let her walk forth alone. Think you that the grandchild of Papita is not strong enough to die?”
The crowd fell back, forming a wall from each side the door up the ravine. Through this lane of fierce, human bloodhounds my mother walked firmly, holding me still in her arms. By her side went the old Sibyl, regarding the tribe with a look of keen triumph, exulting in the desperate strength that nerved their victim. She gazed on the unearthly brilliancy of her countenance, as the torchlight fell upon it, and cried out with fierce ecstasy, “see, it is my soul in her eyes—my blood in her cheeks. Thus would old Papita go forth had she tarnished the honor of her people.”
On we went, crowding upward through the mountain passes till the snow became thick beneath our feet, and Granada lay diminished and indistinct in the distance. The dawn found us in a hollow of the mountains, with snow peaks all around, and half choking up the little valley. Nothing was seen but rocks protruding through the virgin snow, and a group of stone cairns peering through the drifts in the bottom of the valley. The rosy sunrise broke over the peaks as we entered this gloomy pass, but it did not penetrate to us. My mother lifted her eyes to the illuminated snow, a faint quiver ran through her form, and I felt the arms that supported me tremble. I threw myself upon her neck, and clung there, weeping. She shivered in my embrace. I felt her limbs giving way, and shrieked aloud. She answered me with a long, long kiss, that froze itself into my heart, for I knew that it was the last. Then she lifted up her face and said, in a clear, sad voice, “who will take my child?”
“Give her to me, Aurora!”
The voice was full of compassion, and a wild, haggard man, in the remnants of what had been a picturesque costume, came forward with his arms extended. His fierce heart had yielded at last. There was relenting in his gesture and voice.
My mother turned her eyes mournfully upon him.
“I have wronged you, Chaleco, but now”—she turned her eyes steadily toward the cairns, and added, “allwill be atoned for.”
“I want no atonement—I am sick of revenge,” was the impetuous answer. “Give me your child.”
“Chaleco, one promise—take her back to England. You will find plenty of gold sewed up in her dress. I was out of my mind—mad to bring her here. Take her back; she is bright beyond her years, and will tell him all better than any one else. Will you promise this, Chaleco, for the sake of old times?”
She smiled a pale, miserable smile, as she made the request.
“Give me your child; I will take her to England!” answered Chaleco, in a hoarse voice.
“That is all,” answered my mother, gently, “I am ready now.”
She turned away her face, and forcing my arms from her neck, held me toward the gipsy chief.
I shrieked, and struggled to get back, but he folded my face to his bosom, and thus smothering my cries, walked rapidly away.
Notwithstanding the close pressure of his arms, I heard a shriek, then the sound of dull, heavy blows, as if stone or iron were falling against some yielding substance. A groan burst from Chaleco. He shuddered from head to foot, and throwing himself forward, forced my face down into the snow, and buried his own there also, moaning and trembling.
The blows grew duller, heavier, and a soft, smothered noise mingled with them. No other sound was in the glen, not a hum, not a footfall, nothing but these muffled sounds, and the groans of Chaleco. Then a hush, like that of midnight, fell over us. Chaleco held his breath, and I struggled no longer; it seemed as if the cold snow had struck to my heart.
At last Chaleco arose, trembling with weakness, and taking me in his arms again, staggered through the snow down the glen. The tribe stood in a great circle round a cairn that had not existed when we entered the “Valley of Stones.” The stillness appalled me. I broke from Chaleco’s feeble hold, and rushed forward, calling for my mother.
The old Sibyl seized me by the arm, pointed to the cairn, and answered, “She is there!” I looked fearfully upon the stony pyramid, but saw nothing, till my eyes fell downward to the snow at its base—it was crimson with blood. Then I knew what death was, and what her oath meant. I grew sick, turned, and staggering toward the gipsy chief, fell at his feet.
I remember, dimly, being in the cave once more, and seeing the old Sibyl counting gold into her lap. I remember, also, that Chaleco was there, and she said to him, pointing to me:
“No, she will not die, half the oath only is accomplished, she must do the rest.”
Then the cairn, with its reddened base, came before me, and I fell away again.
Months must have been oblivion to me, for my next clear idea was in England. I lay in a canvas tent pitched by the wayside, half way between Greenhurst and the neighboring village. Chaleco and the Sibyl were with me, dressed after the vagrant fashion of those broken tribes of our people who infest England. I was in rags, and seated on the ground, wondering how this change had been made. Chaleco stood by the entrance of the tent watching; the old woman kept in a remote corner, and while I pondered over the meaning of it all, a merry chime of bells swept across the fields, that made my heart leap. I broke into a laugh, and crept toward the entrance of the tent, enticed by the sunlight that sparkled on the sward.
I had placed myself at Chaleco’s feet, when the sound of an advancing cavalcade came from toward the village. Chaleco shaded his eyes, and I saw them glow like coals beneath his hand. First came a troop of children with baskets and aprons full of blossoms, scattering them thick in the highway. Then followed a carriage, with four black horses, streaming with rosettes and white ribbon, followed by others decorated after the same fashion, and filled with richly dressed people. The children halted, and gathered around the first carriage, tossingshowers of roses over its occupants. In the midst of this blooming storm, I saw my father andthat woman. The gleam of her silver brocade, the snowy softness of the bridal veil made me faint again. The snow drifts in the mountains of Spain, encrimsoned and trampled, swept before my dizzy senses. As I saw my father half enveloped by the waves of those glittering bridal garments, but still pale and looking so anxious, it seemed to me as if those soft drifts had been shovelled over him in mockery of my mother’s death.
I asked no question, but gathered from my companions, who conversed in cautious tones, that Lord Clare and his bride would rest some days at Greenhurst before entering upon their wedding tour. I had no strength, no spirit then. Instead of becoming angry, I was faint, and lay down in the tent, weeping feebly as another child of my years might have done in its illness.
I remember hearing shouts, and seeing flashes of fireworks that went off in the village that night, and I saw old Papita and Chaleco hold up a small vial between them and the lamp, filled with a purple liquid—then, as in a dream, they passed away from the tent.
It was deep in the night, when I started from my sleep. Papita was shaking me by the shoulder, her face was close to mine, and it looked like a death’s head.
“Awake!” she said, reeling on her feet, as if intoxicated. “It is over—Papita has kept her oath—the work is done. Get up, last of my race, and see how a woman of Egypt can die.”
The terrible light of her eyes fired me with strength. I stood up, and asked what she had done—why she talked of dying.
“I have left the bride stiff and stark on her silken couch up yonder. A drop of this—only one drop—in the water which sparkled on her toilet was enough. I stood by her bed when the bridegroom came—shewas smiling on her pillow. Thedrao that I distill, always leaves smiles behind it. He saw me, old Papita, whose blood he has shamed, whose wrath he has braved, and while he stood frozen into a statue, I glided away, away, away forever! forever more.”
She crooned over these last words in a low mutter, and sunk slowly down to the earth.
Chaleco bent over her.
“Mother Papita,” he said, “how is this? you have not drank of the drao!”
The old woman gave a cough that rattled in her throat.
“There was no need, my count. Did you think the old frame would not give out when its work was done? I knew it—I knew it. Come hither child, and take ‘the gipsy’s legacy,’ hate, hate, hate to the Busne, the enemies of our people.”
She struggled to a sitting posture, and tore the great ruby rings from her ears.
“Your dagger, Chaleco. Quick, quick,” she said.
Chaleco took a poniard from his bosom. The Sibyl seized it, and thrust the sharp point through each of my ears, then she locked the rubies into the wounds, while the blood trickled down their antique settings.
“It is your mother’s blood that baptizes them, remember.”
As the Sibyl spoke she staggered to her feet and pressed her cold hands upon my forehead, passing them down my face again and again. At first the touch made me shudder; then a feeling of dull calm came over me. The excitement left my nerves, and I lay like one in a trance. The past was all gone, only a vivid consciousness of the present remained; my eyes were closed, my limbs still as death, but my senses seized upon every motion, every whisper, and locked them up in my memory, creating each instant a new past for that which had left me.
“Now leave her to the destiny that she must surely work out, Papita’s vow is redeemed.”
When the old woman said these words, her voice seemed far off and unreal as the echoes of some forgotten horror. I heardher gasp for breath; moans broke from her lips—a sharp cry, and her limbs fell together in a heap, like a skeleton when its wires give way.
For a moment all was deathly stillness, Chaleco held his breath—some brooding evil seemed to fall upon the tent.
Still I lay bound in that mesmeric trance, conscious, but utterly helpless. I heard Chaleco steal forth, and for a long time the grating of a spade reached me from the depths of a neighboring hollow. Then came the fall of earth, spadeful after spadeful, followed by stealthy footsteps coming toward the tent again.
Chaleco came close to me, stooped down and took the antique rings from my ears. I was numb and could not feel the pain; but consciousness utterly left me after that. The iron thread of my mother’s life was woven into mine that terrible, terrible night.