The heiress of Greenhurst

I had made all my preparations, packed up a few clothes, such as I could carry upon the horn of my saddle, and carefully sealed up the bronze coffer, which was half full of gold. Turner had been absent most of the day, and Maria, luckily, was at the village, for some household purpose. All this was fortunate. Knowing that a few hours would separate us, perhaps forever, I could not have sustained my part in their presence.

When they came home my eyes were red with weeping, and I sat down helplessly between them, so sick at heart that it seemed to me like death. They had heard of Cora’s elopement, and did not wonder at my grief.

We parted for the night about ten. Oh, how I yearned to throw myself once more into those kind arms and ask a last blessing! But it could not be. A suspicion that I was about to leave them would have defeated my plans. I knew well that they would go forth into the highway homeless beggars rather than see me so depart.

With calm sadness, though my heart swelled painfully in my bosom, I went to my room. Oh, that dull, mournful hour of solitude while I waited for those two friends, all I had on earth, to sleep, that I might escape like a thief from beneath their roof. I shall never forget that hour. A life-time of dreary pain was crowded into it. Remember I was very young, and could only recall as a dream the time when that park had not been my home.

True, I had a purpose that gave me strength. Cora must be brought back to her father; then what was to be my fate? The gipsy caves of Granada—those caves at whose bare remembrance my poor mother had shuddered even in the zenith of her happiness? But where else should I go? Ishmael was not more thoroughly cast out by his father’s people than I had been—while more fortunate than me, his mother went with him into the desert. I was alone. In the broad world there was no human being from whom I could claim the draught of cold water which poor Hagar gave to him.

I went forth, braving all the woes that were divided by the outcast mother and her child. The rival that I had loved better than a sister had taken the soul that was mine, and cruelly left me to perish or to suffer; it mattered as little which to her as it did to Sarah, that her handmaid died in the wilderness, or passed heartbroken into the desert. Driven forth from my last shelter by my father’s sister, hunted down like an evil thing, I felt like the poor stag which I had once saved from the very foes that seemed chasing me to death. As I sat there alone in my pretty chamber, with the coffer in my lap, and the bundle at my feet, I thought of the stone cairn beneath which my mother lay, deep in the snow mountains, and wished that I too were under it.

Everything was still. Nothing but the faint flutter of autumn leaves as they fell to the earth reached my ear. Yes, one thing more, the beatings of my poor heart sounded loud and quick in the stillness, like the laugh of winter winds when they rustle through masses of dead foliage.

I got up at last—oh, with what heaviness of heart and limb. With the coffer in one hand, and the bundle in the other, I passed like a ghost from my beautiful chamber, leaving it bathed in the autumn moonbeams, all the more quiet that a weary heart had gone out of it.

I went through the little picture gallery. The moonlight threw my black shadow on the lovely pictures and statuettes, veiling them, as it were, in mourning at my approach. As I looked back through my tears, they were poised gracefully as ever, and smiling in the pale light heartless as my human friends. It was only in my path that the darkness fell.

One moment I paused at the door of Turner’s room. I held my breath, listening at the key-hole for the faintest noise. A sigh from those loved sleepers would have fallen upon my heart like a blessing. Nothing reached me—nothing but the sound of the wind, which was beginning to sob among the leaves out of doors.

As I listened, something rubbed against my ankle, and the soft purr of a house cat, whose instinct had recognized me in the dark, made me utter a faint exclamation. I stooped down and caressed the kind animal a moment, then hurried away, fearful that my sobs would arouse Turner. The cat followed me to the stable, and looked on while I saddled Jupiter with a sort of grave wonder, which seemed to me like regret. She watched me as I fastened my bundle and mounted the poor old pony. When I rode away, looking wistfully back at the house, she kept her place till I could no longer distinguish her.

I believe it was a beautiful night; certainly the moon was at its full, and the sky crowded with stars, luminous with that deep glow which precedes an early frost. Without being boisterous, the wind filled the leaves with their mournful whispers, and the fragrance of broken leaves and forest flowers, that always breathe sweetest as the frost kills them, floated silently on the air, saddening the atmosphere with the perfume of their decay.

I received all these impressions passively, for my heart was too heavy for anything but that dull consciousness which is blunted by pain. All the way I was comparing myself with the boy Ishmael, and thinking of Hagar with yearning sympathy, such as a woman only who has been wronged and cast forth into that great desert the world can feel.

I reached Marston Court, but the imposing beauty of those walls, the picturesque effect which the broad moonlight produced among its carved balconies, broad eaves, and great entrance doors, made only a dream-like impression on me. My heart was full of one thought. Here and now I must part with old Jupiter for ever, my last friend. I reached the steps, let myself down from the saddle, and unknotted my bundle with cold, trembling fingers, that blundered painfully in their task. Then—it was because I wanted to prolong the moment of parting—I knotted up the bridle short upon his neck, that he might not tread on it. When this was done, I stood a long time with my arm over his neck, crying like a child. Poor old fellow! when I stood up and shook his bridle, telling him as well as I could for my sobs, to go home again, he turned his head and fell to whimpering, as if he understood my desolation better than any human creature had done.

“Go,” I said, for all the strength was leaving me. “Go home, Jupiter—home!”

He went tramping heavily over the tangled ground homeward as I had commanded. I stood till he disappeared among the thickets, listening breathlessly for his last footfall. When that came, I felt, for the first time, how utterly, utterly I was alone in the world. I sat upon the steps of that old house a long time, without thinking or caring what was next to be done. Perhaps I fell asleep; but at last a hand was laid on my shoulder, and Chaleco stood beside me.

“Come,” he said, “this is no place for you; the night is cold.”

“Is it?” I said, rising languidly, “I did not know it!”

“Not know it? Why you are trembling like a willow branch now.”

I was indeed shivering from head to foot. My garments rustled as I stood up, for the dew upon them had turned into frost.

Chaleco had kindled a fire in the huge chimney of his tower room, and the flames sent a thousand shadows dancing among the grotesque marble carvings that overhung them. He had evidently made some preparations for my coming. A huge easy-chair, cushioned with tarnished velvet, stood on the hearth; and on a little work-table, with curiously twisted legs, was a plate of biscuit, and one of those old-fashioned goblets of Venetian glass which have since become so rare.

I was about to sit down, somewhat cheered by the warmth; but Chaleco prevented this, while he shook the frost from my garments and carefully removed my bonnet.

“There, now, you may warm yourself without being wet through,” he said, kindly; and taking a silver cup from the hearth, he filled the goblet with Bordeaux wine, spiced and warm.

“There,” he said, “eat and drink; then we will have some talk together.”

I obeyed him, cheered and comforted, spite of my grief.

“There, now that you have got a dash of color, and have ceased trembling, tell me how you got away. Did any one attempt to stop you?” said Chaleco, at length.

“No one knew—I ran away!”

He laughed.

“That was right—the old blood there. But Papita’s money—you did not leave that behind?”

“No, I have it here. Do you want it?”

“I? by the Sphinxs! no, it would burn my soul. The gold is yours—everything in the coffer is yours. Papita’s curse would consume any other who touched it.”

“But what can I do with it?”

Chaleco laughed till his white teeth shone again.

“What can you do with it?” he said. “Anything, anything. It will take you to Granada—make a queen of you.”

I shook my head.

“So you reject it; you still despise the Caloes who would adore you—still cling to the Gentiles who have spurned you forth like a dog.”

“Not so—I scorn no one—I cling to no one—God help me! I have nothing on earth to which I can cling!”

“Your mother’s people—are they nothing?”

“They murdered her!” I said with a shudder.

Chaleco turned white; his eyes fell, and he muttered,

“I—I did not do it!”

“No, but they did,” I answered.

“It was the law—an old law, made among the people of Egypt centuries ago; no man among us dares withstand the law.”

“But you would have me acknowledge these laws—enforce them?”

“Our people are ready; go to them with those blood-red rubies in your ears; give them of Papita’s gold, and they will make you greater than Chaleco—greater than Papita ever was.”

Again I recoiled from the thought.

“Where else will you go?” asked the gipsy; “who else will receive you? What other friend have you on earth but me—me, the man whom your mother betrayed? Yet who has spent his life in guarding her child. If not with your own people, where will you go, Zana?”

Where could I go? Deserted by the whole world, who would receive me save the gipsy hordes of my mother’s race, or those to whom friendship for me would bring ruin on themselves?

I did not attempt to answer. On the broad earth that strange gipsy man was the only human being that would not turn away in scorn, or become imperilled by defending me.

“You will go to Granada, Zana?” he continued, bending over me with paternal interest. “Had Lord Clare but lived to sign that will, then, indeed, you might have remained here to triumph over your mother’s foes. Many of her tribe could have crossed the sea to render homage to Papita’s great-grandchild—the inheritance of her gold, and the symbols of her power. In these old walls, Zana, should your court have been; these great oaks clothing the uplands should have sheltered a thousand tents. Oh, Zana, we would have built up a little kingdom here in the midst of our enemies. Why did you not have that will signed, Zana? It was for this we brought you back to England—for this you have been left among her destroyers so long.”

“Hush!” I said, shuddering—“hush! I dare not think of it. Great heavens, were all his estates mine at this moment, I would give them to forget that death-scene. Thank God, he did not sign that will!”

“Bah! it was a bad move—but let that drop. Granada is still open, and Papita’s gold will do wonders among our people there!”

“But they are ignorant, rude, untaught. My poor mother pined among them, even before Lord Clare came to turn her discontent into aversion.”

“But they are capable of learning—they will follow Papita’s child in all things. She has but to will it, and the young ones of her tribe can be wise and deeply read as their queen.”

This idea filled me with a new life. Yes, I might be the means of improving this wild race. Perhaps God had permitted me to be spurned and cast forth like a rabid dog from among the gentiles, that I might become a benefactor to the Caloes. Surely they could not deal more treacherously by me than my father’s people had done. These thoughts were succeeded by a remembrance of Cora, and they gave way before the great duty that I had imposed on myself.

“Chaleco,” I said, with energy and decision, “there is yet something for me to do here. I had a friend”——

He interrupted me.

“I know the parson’s daughter, a little golden-haired, blue-eyed thing, that will always be a child. You would find her—for what?”

“That she may return to her father—that she may be saved,” I answered.

“Nay, nay, let her go. What has Papita’s child in common with this traitress? What is there worth loving in one who could become the victim of a wily boy like that?”

I felt the blood rush to my forehead at this scornful mention of the man I had loved with all the fervor of my mother’s race, and all the pride of his. But was he not a traitor? How could I resent it, though the swart gipsy did revile him? But the anger I dared not form in words broke out in decision of purpose.

“Stay with me—help me till I find Cora—till I send an assurance of her marriage back to that broken-hearted man, and I will then go with you to Granada.”

“Heart and soul?” questioned the gipsy.

“Heart and soul!” I replied.

“You will abandon these people?”

“If you insist, I will.”

“Then let us linger.”

“But where—how?” I questioned. “What course can we take?”

“That which they took—the way to Scotland.”

“Let us start at once,” I cried, fired with a thousand conflicting feelings, in which there was jealousy, doubt, and a generous desire to rescue my friend; but my limbs gave way beneath all this eagerness, and I fell back gasping for breath.

“Not now—you must have rest, poor child,” said the gipsy, smoothing my hair with his palms.

I drew back, recoiling from a repetition of the mysterious influence which had possessed me the last time I was in that room.

“Do you fear me—me, Chaleco?” he said, with saddened eyes.

“No; but let me act independently—let my brain be clear, my limbs free—let my own will control me—none other shall!”

He smiled quietly, and kept his softened eyes fixed on mine. I began to struggle against the drowsiness that possessed me; my eyelashes fell together, and I could muster neither strength nor wish to open them. A languid repose stole over my limbs—I did not awake till morning, and then Chaleco stood before me, holding an antique china cup and saucer in his hand full of smoking chocolate.

“Drink!” he said, raking open the embers; “here are roasted eggs and bread—they will give you strength.”

I took the cup. “When shall we start?” I asked, eager to commence my search for Cora.

“Not till after nightfall,” was the reply; “one day of entire rest you must have. Besides, it will not do for us to travel so near Greenhurst by daylight.”

My heart fell at the thought that no one would trouble themselves about us—no one except old Turner, and secrecy was the only kindness I could render him.

After I had breakfasted, Chaleco left me, and all day long I wandered through the vast desolation of that old building, as a ghost might haunt the vaulted passages of a catacomb.

The reaction of all the exciting scenes I had passed through was upon me, and with dull apathy I strolled through those desolated chambers, regardless of all that would, in another state of mind, have filled my brain with the keenest emotions. Everything was so still in the old house—the sunbeams that came through the windows were so dulled with accumulated dust upon the glass, that I seemed gliding through a cloudy twilight quietly as a shadow, and almost as lifeless. I literally cared for nothing; my heart beat so sluggishly that I could hardly feel the life within me. Now I remembered every object in the old house with perfect distinctness. Then everything ran together like an incoherent dream.

Night came, and then I began to wonder about Chaleco, who had been absent all day. I had no apprehension, and but little anxiety; nothing just then seemed important enough for me to care about. I thought even of my father’s death-bed with a sort of stolid gloom.

Lifted high up among the old trees, and opening both to the east and west, the turret in which I sat took the last sunbeams in a perfect deluge, as they broke against the tall windows and shed their golden warmth all around me. I knew that these bright flashes came from behind Greenhurst, and that I might never see it more. This saddened me a little, and a throb of pain was gathering in my bosom when Chaleco came in. I did not know him at first, so completely was he changed. The broad sombrero, the tarnished gold and embroidery of his gipsy habiliments were all gone. A suit of quiet brown, with knee-buckles of gold and leggins of drab cloth, such as the better classes of England wore on their journeys at that time, had quite transfigured him. His coal-black beard was neatly trimmed, and though his flashing eyes and peculiar features bespoke foreign blood, no one would have suspected him of being the picturesque vagrant he had appeared in the morning.

“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “are you rested and quite ready to start? I have been making inquiries.”

“Do you still intend going to Scotland?” I asked. “What have you found out?”

“That they went north—so must we. Here, I have brought some food—the dusk is gathering—eat and let us be off. Old Turner tracked your pony across the park in this direction; he may be for searching the old house, and then all chance of coming again will be over. I would not have this eagle’s nest discovered for the world.”

“But Lady Catherine will discover it,” I said. “She will not leave the noble building to fall away thus.”

“I have taken care of that. The door leading to the rooms below was walled up when I first came to England. You have not noticed, but the staircase winds down within the walls, and has a passage outward through the wine vaults. We entered through a great oak panel which opens from the picture gallery; close that and no passage can be found to the turret. I have formed a snug bower here, off and on, ever since you were left in the tent, Zana.”

“And were you here then?” I asked, remembering the suffering of that period.

“No, I fled. Old Papita’s death and her work at the Hurst drove me off. I went into Spain for a little time—and then farther still.”

“And since then have you been always here?”

He laughed in derision at my ignorance.

“What, a Caloe count of our tribe, and always in one place? What a child it is! No, no, I only found a roost up in this tower now and then, long enough to see how it fared with you and the enemy. I have been a great traveller, Zana, sometimes on your father’s track for months and months—sometimes hovering over your pretty nest—sometimes with our people in Granada.”

“Why did you follow Lord Clare?” I inquired, filled with wonder and respect for energies so indomitable.

“That my rights of vengeance should not be lost. I had received nothing but pangs and shame. The tribe had her. Papita swooped up Lady Clare—but the greater criminal, the most hated thing of all, was left to me. No dog ever scented his prey as I tracked Clarence, Earl of Clare.”

“What for?” I cried, thrilled with a horrible suspicion. “Why did you so hound out my father?”

“Why?” he repeated with shut teeth and gleaming eyes. “What do we follow the trail of a snake when it has bitten us for, but to kill it?”

My heart was seized as with the talons of a vulture, as he said this. I remembered the subtle poisons so often mentioned in my mother’s journal, and rapidly connected them with my father’s terrible appearance when he returned home to die. Some of these poisons I knew to be of slow action, eating up vitality from the human system like the sluggish influence of miasma. Had my noble father been thus poisoned, and by the man who stood before me?

I could not speak—the horrible thought paralyzed me; my throat was parched; the breath panted and swelled in my lungs, but I could not draw a deep respiration. Was it indeed so?—had I sought shelter with my father’s murderer? He read my thoughts and smiled fiercely.

“You are wrong,” he said; “I did not do that, it needed not the drao, his own thoughts were enough to poison a dozen lives stronger than his. I watched him night and day—night and day, Zana; at a distance sometimes, but oftener close as a brother might, in those safe disguises that our people study so well. Month after month I was alone with him in the desert—on the hot sands of Africa—on the sluggish waters of the Nile. I was his dragoman, his confidential companion; for in the desert, Zana, even that haughty being, an English nobleman, learns something of that equality which he is sure to find in the grave. Ten thousand times I could have killed him like a dog, left him in the hot sands for the jackals, and no one have been the wiser; but that would have been like a gentile, who, in the greed of his revenge, ends all with a blow. It was sweeter to see the flesh waste from his bones; the light from his eyes; and to watch the death-fires kindle in his cheeks, set to blazing and fed by the venom of his own thoughts. I tell you, girl, not for the universe would I have shortened his misery for a moment. To watch it was all the joy I have tasted since your mother’s last death-wail.”

While he spoke, I struggled with the breath driven back upon my chest as one wrestles with a nightmare. It seemed as if I was given up to the power of a demon. At last my voice broke out so sharp and unnatural that it seemed like another person’s.

“Stop, stop, I will not endure this; he was my father—he was not deserving of this cruel malice, this murderous revenge. He was my father, man, remember that, and spare me.”

“It is because he was your father that I hated him—that I gloated over the pangs that ate away his life with a keener anguish than I could have dealt him,” answered the gipsy, hissing the words forth as a serpent shoots venom through its jaws.

“My God! my God! is the murderous blood of this man’s race in my veins?” was the wild response that broke from me as I writhed in the torture of his words—“must I become a fiend like this?”

Instantly Chaleco seemed transformed; the evil light went out from his face, leaving that look of subtle cunning almost universal among Caloes. With sinister gentleness he strove to soothe me into forgetfulness of all the tiger so late rampant in his nature.

“Come, little one, look up and weep, if you can; this hot and fiery look never was your mother’s.”

“She had only her own wrongs to suffer and forgive; while I—oh, Father of mercies, how great is the load of evil that I inherit and must endure! Am I doomed like Ishmael? Must my hand be raised against all races and all people? Is there no brotherhood—no sisterhood—no humanity left for me on earth?”

“Hush!” said Chaleco, softly, and gliding to the back of my chair—“hush, little one, this is madness!”

As he spoke, I felt the soft touch of his hands upon my head. What unearthly power was it that possessed this man? Scarcely had his palm smoothed down my hair twice, when the oppression upon my chest was gone. A feeling of ineffable calm stole over me; the hate which a moment before had burned in my heart against him, sunk quietly down, as a tiger falls asleep. I remembered all that had been said of my father, it is true, but vaguely as one thinks of a dream; the sting and anguish, the sense of reality was gone. I slept a little, probably ten minutes, for it was not wholly dark when I awoke, but it seemed as if that sweet slumber had refreshed me for hours.

“Come now,” said the gipsy, bringing my bonnet, and a habit of dark green cloth that I usually wore in cold weather when on horseback, “get ready and let us ride. We must make a good night’s work of it!”

“My poor Cora,” I muttered, gathering up the riding-habit, “when you are found, what will there be for me to accomplish? What is before me after that?”

“Hush, Zana—have you no belief in the God you talk about? We of the Caloes, who expect nothing beyond this earth, fear nothing while here; but you, this hereafter makes cowards of you all; you are forever and ever flinging the present—all a man ever is sure of—after the past, or filling it with fears that blacken the future. Bah! what is your faith to be counted for, if it gives no better courage than this?”

I felt the rebuke, and without another complaint equipped myself to depart.

I saw no more of the old house that night, for we passed the secret panel in the winding staircase which led to the main building, and penetrating downward through cellars and vaulted passages, came to the open air through the floor of a dilapidated summer-house.

“Look,” said Chaleco, holding his lantern down that I might examine the tessellated pattern worked in with colored marbles. “Should the old house be inhabited at any time, and you wish to seek the tower yonder, press your hand upon this little flag of verd-antique, the only block of that noble stone that you will find here. See how easily it works!”

He touched the diagonal fragment, and instantly the centre of the floor sunk an inch or two and wheeled inward, leaving a circular entrance and a glimpse of the winding stairs we had just mounted, where a large mosaic star had a moment before formed a centre to the radiating pattern of the pavement.

“You understand,” he said, wheeling the star back to its place, “this passage may yet be of use, who knows? At any rate, it is our secret. I found the passage and blocked up the turret door. No one remembers much about the old house now, and the change will never be noticed. No human soul that ever breathed here, save you and I, are alive; and my lady countess must take the old pile as she finds it. Twenty years of ruin will make changes; the birds and I have held possession a long time,” he added, lifting his eyes to the rooks’ nests that blackened the topmost boughs of a group of elms just above us.