The heiress of Greenhurst

Then for the first time Turner saw the eyes of my mother, those wonderful, glorious eyes, fiery as a star, soft as the dew in a flower They were lifted to Clare’s face, fondly, wonderingly, as if she marvelled that he could thus break the delicious joy that thrilled her heart and soul. There was something of lingering terror yet in her face, but so blended with the wild, deep passion of her love, that it kindled up her features like lightning. The old woman was regarding her not with tenderness, that was impossible. If she had any, it lay so deep in that rocky old heart that no ripple of it ever disturbed the hardness of her features.

The Gitanilla drew toward her, took her rigid fingers, and pressed them to her lips and forehead. She uttered a few words in a tongue unknown to Turner, and tears crowded one after another into her great bright eyes. They must have been full of passionate feeling, for the hard, keen eyes of the Sibyl grew strangely dim, and with her hand she put back the jetty waves from my mother’s forehead, making the sign of some strange writing upon its bloodless surface.

They stood together thus, the bright red flounces of their sayas mingling in waves of gold lace and heavy crimson. The blue bodice of the girl pressed to the jet black velvet that clung to the form of the Sibyl like the fragment of some funeral pall. There was something terrible in their appearance. The old woman’s arms clung around that lithe form with serpentlike folds. Her turban blended, like waves of fire, with those raven tresses. It seemed like the embrace of a demon. For the lamp whirled and flared overhead, swinging to some concealed current of wind, and the smoke flung around them a dusky veil, now of heavy grey, now threaded with fire by the unsteady flame. Besides this, was the contrast of her rich youth with that terrible thing, a wicked old age.

No wonder Turner shrunk against the wall, and grew chilly without knowing why. No wonder Lord Clare was aroused from all the feelings that had enchained him till now! He started forward, and would have taken my mother from the embrace of her last and only relative. But the old woman thrust him aside, and spoke eagerly with the grand-daughter in the Rommany tongue; and in this tongue my mother answered her.

Shall I tell you what she was saying? My mother left me a record in the fragments of her journal. The Sibyl first urged her to win the Busne to the sending of more and more gold; then she extorted a promise, a fearful promise, which the poor girl kept but too faithfully.

When the Sibyl relinquished my mother from her embrace, the poor child staggered and fell away from her arms like a crushed lily. Her lips were violet color; her face more than bloodless. She seemed to be dying.

Lord Clare took her in his arms and laid her face upon his bosom. It was beautiful to see the warm flood of life come back to the mysterious influence of his touch. Her lips grew bright as strawberries; and tears rolled from her half-closed eyes, dropping like dew upon the peachy bloom of her cheek. You could see her tremble from head to foot, so deep, so passionate were the feelings that flooded her young being with their delicious joy.

The Sibyl looked on with grim satisfaction, but the two strange men seemed to expostulate with her, or to ask some directions. She answered them haughtily, and touching the ruby ear-rings with her finger, pointed down the passage.

They obeyed at once, each bending his head submissively as he passed the old woman. I do not know how far those ruby ear-rings were symbols of authority, but my great grandame had some mysterious claim of obedience from the descendants of those few of her people who aided her ancestress in the betrayal of Maria de Padilla, and the two men were all of our tribe who could boast of the treacherous blood that had persuaded that heroic woman to her terrible death. They believed that obedience unto death was due the last descendant of the arch-sorceress, who had most effectually worked out their national hate against the whites. To them the ruby ear-rings were a symbol of absolute power. Had my great grandame commanded them to leap into the Darro without a struggle for life, they would have done it. She only imposed secrecy, craft, and unscrupulous falsehood, and those things came so naturally that it required little authority to enforce them.

These men passed Turner without seeing him. He did not heed them, but still watched the persons who remained standing near the Egyptian idol.

The Sibyl stood directly before Lord Clare, who still half supported her grand-daughter. Now her manner was imposing, her energy sublime; the sorceress blood seemed to glow and burn in her veins as she spoke. It was to Lord Clare she addressed herself, not to the girl. The whispered words that had withered her cheek and lip, were all the farewell admonition she had to give her: but that which she said to Clare had the same effect. Aurora shook with terror as her relative uttered her last—it might almost be called malediction.

“Go,” she said—“go, and with you take the last drop of my blood that burns in a human heart. Take her—keep faith with her, nor dream that this marriage is less binding than if all the high priests of Spain and of your land, wherever it may be, had celebrated it in the great cathedral down yonder, with the high altar in a blaze of light, and the tomb of Queen Isabella giving sanctity to the spot. Look at your wife, how her eyes dwell upon you—how full of hope and trust they are—how wildly she wishes to be free from this dim vault, alone with you, and away from her last of kin. The blossoms that live half in sunshine, half in snow, on the Sierra Nevada, are not more stainless than this child. The hot sun that ripens the orange on the Guadalquivir is not more fervent than her passionate nature—more burning than her pride. Be just to the child, or beware of the woman. She is in your hands; make of her what you will, a gazelle or a tiger, the thing you call an angel, or the thing you fear as a fiend. That which you make her she will be, a blessing or a curse, which will cling to you for ever and ever. Free to act, free to marry, these were your words twelve hours ago. This you believed, and I, the old gipsy, mocked at your folly.

“In England, you say, and here with us, marriages are alike binding unto death—death, and nothing but death, can separate you from this child. You have sworn it before my god; she has sworn it before her god; and I have sworn by all the eternal powers that exist, high or low. Hope not to shake off Papita’s oath, or your own. Your laws—all the laws of this nation or yours are but shadows against the stern will of a woman whom nature has made strong, and treason has left desperate.

“I looked for the stars to-night. They were troubled, buried in clouds, pale and half extinguished in vapor, as the Darro flings them back when it is turbid and muddy. So it always is when I would read her fate and yours. That bespeaks”——

“Stay!” said the earl, sternly, “you are killing her—see how white she is—how she trembles. Why torture her in this way, it can do no good?”

“I declare to you again I feel it in my soul, and read it in the stars, nothing but death shall separate you from this, my grand-daughter. Swear it again!”

She spoke to Aurora, who either from weakness, or obeying the Sibyl’s gesture, laid her hand on the forehead of the Egyptian idol, and her white lips moved as if uttering some inward vow. Turner saw this, but Lord Clare mistook the sudden recoil as an evidence of exhaustion, and with a flushed cheek sought to protect her from further persecution.

“This has gone too far,” he said; “I will submit no longer. Make what preparations you will, but in haste, for the night is wearing on.”

“It is enough,” answered the Sibyl. “I have said my say, and the oath is sworn.”

“Be in haste,” answered the earl impatiently, drawing forth his watch. “It is now past midnight.”

The old woman drew aside, and by the smoky light Turner saw that she was searching for something in the folds of her dress.

“Here,” she said, coming forth, “this trinket may be worth something to you. Our people would have crushed it up for the gold, but I would not let them.”

She held it in her hand, so that the light fell directly upon an exquisite little miniature formed like a shell, which the reader will remember as a portion of the plunder which Chaleco brought from his expedition to Seville. That side of the case was open which held the female portrait, and the light fell with peculiar brightness upon the features.

As Lord Clare saw it he recoiled, drew a sharp breath, and the sudden paleness that crept over his face was terrible.

“This, and in your hands?” he said, in a husky voice, fixing his enlarged eyes on the Sibyl. “How dare you, fiend—how dare you?”

The old woman gave a low hiss with her tongue, and looking hard at Aurora, said, in a clear, sharp tone, “Remember the oath; you will have need; remember this face too.”

Lord Clare snatched the miniature from her hand with a violence that made the case shut with a snap, that seemed like the click of a pistol before it goes off. But my mother had seen the face, and though it made little impression at the time, when everything seemed like a dream, she remembered it in after years.

“Now,” said the earl, more fiercely than he had spoken before that night, “prepare her at once, I will remain here no longer.”

The old woman withdrew, leading my mother with her. They went into some side passage, and Turner lost sight of them, for he was too deeply interested in the movements of Lord Clare to leave his position.

The earl watched till they were out of sight, then sat down with his back against the idol, opened the miniature, gave one glance, shut it again, and bent his forehead upon the hand in which it was clenched. Thus he remained motionless till a sound of footsteps aroused him, when he sprang up, thrust the miniature in his bosom, and stood calm and immovable as a statue, ready to receive his wife. I call her his wife, and never, never while there is breath in my bosom, will I, her child, his child, admit that she was not. Are not our laws as sacred as those of England?

My mother came forward clad in the pretty attire of an English page, and so disguised, so full of that beautiful, shrinking modesty which true women always feel when presented in a doubtful position before a beloved object, that it could not fail to arouse Lord Clare from the stupor that had fallen upon him. He smiled faintly as she came forward, and drawing her arm through his, followed the Sibyl down the subterranean passage, guided by a small lamp that had stood before the Egyptian idol. They came out into the fresh night, on the very spot where the Moorish King gave up the splendor of his life. Lord Clare thought of this, and his heart grew heavy again.

Turner followed with long, noiseless strides, and gliding behind the Fonde like a shadow, stood by the mules which had been drawn up beneath the thick trees ready to receive the party.

An hour after, my poor mother was looking back to obtain one more last glimpse of Granada, and the gipsy Sibyl sat alone in her cave with a heap of gold in her lap, counting it over and over by the dim light that struggled down from a niche in the smoky wall.