_A Prisoner in the Tower_
[Sidenote: Confusion among Guests]
As the old man spoke, sounds arose not unsuited to his tale. But my faith
in the legend did not amount to so sudden a realization, and I looked
toward the banquet. There, from whatever motive, everything was in sudden
disturbance. The guests were hurrying from the tables. Many had thrown
the military cloak over their festal robes; some were in the adjoining
apartments hastily equipping themselves with arms and armor. A group was
standing round Titus, evidently in anxious consultation. In the spacious
grounds below, horsemen were mounting and attendants hurrying in all
directions. The calls of the clarion echoed through the courts; shortly
after a large body of cavalry came wheeling round to the portal of the
gardens, and Titus went forth, conspicuous among the bustling crowd
for his manly composure. He gave some orders which were despatched by
tribunes galloping as for their lives; then mounting his charger, rode
slowly through the gates at the head of his stately company, himself the
most stately of them all.
The woods surrounding the palace soon intercepted the view of the
imperial troop; and after straining my eyes as long as I could see the
glitter of a helmet by the waning moon, I turned to my casement to make
that prayer for the peace of Jerusalem which had been nightly on my
lips from the hour when they first could pronounce the name. From the
dungeon has that supplication risen; from the mine; from the sands of the
wilderness; from the shores of the farthest ocean; from the bosom of the
rolling waters; from the fires of the persecutor; from the field before
the battle; from the field covered with its dead; from the living grave
of the monk; from the cavern of the robber; from the palace; even from
the scaffold!
[Sidenote: The Red Illumination]
While I continued in this outpouring of the soul, with my eyes fixed
on the cloudy world above, a pale reflection spread over the masses of
rolling vapor; it lingered, faded, and night covered the earth; suddenly
a fierce luster turned the low and heavy clouds into the color of
conflagration.
“There is an attack on either the enemy’s camp or the city,” I exclaimed
to my companion. “Daybreak it can not be, for the middle watch has not
been half an hour sounded. Help me to escape; be but my guide through the
chambers, and name your recompense.”
The steward wrung his helpless hands, and offered his life to my service,
but described the precautions of my jailers so fully that I gave up the
idea. Still I was tossed by anxious thoughts. I heard the treading of the
guard until its recurrence irritated me. The moanings of the wind through
the trees told that a storm was rising, and to get rid of the uneasy
conflict between the desire of sleep and the difficulty of shutting out
thought, I rose and watched the progress of the tempest.
The lightnings flashed in broad beams through the clouds, and the rain
fell with the violence of the southern storm. But through the flash,
deepening again, shone the red illumination above the city, and neither
the roar of the wind nor the dash of the descending deluge could
extinguish the shouts that, remote as they were, I knew to be shouts
of battle. I measured the tower with my eye; I tried the strength of
the bars; but the attempt only served to disturb my companion, who had
survived his sorrows long enough to sleep as soundly as if there were not
a wo on earth.
“I am glad,” said he, “that you awoke me, for I was dreaming the story of
my unfortunate lord and his son over again.”
“The natural result of your having so lately renewed its recollection.”
[Illustration: “Titus rode at the head of his stately company, himself
the most stately of them all.”
[_see page 487._
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.]
[Sidenote: A Figure in the Gallery]
“Aye, there is perhaps scarcely a room under the palace roof where some
heart is not trembling to-night with ghostly fear, nor a peasant’s
thatch where the death of Matthan and the Arabian has not made pale
faces; and where men tell of the bridegroom stricken in his hour of
pride. But—— powers of Heaven preserve us! look there!”
I looked, but it was to the old man, whose countenance alarmed me with
the idea that he had wrought his imagination to a hazardous extreme. I
took his cold hand, and telling him that I felt unable to sleep, gently
laid his stiffened limbs on the couch and bade him try to rest. But his
eye stared through the casement till I followed its direction, yet with
only the added belief that he was overcome by the common terrors of the
household; for to me tenfold darkness lay upon every object from the
ground to the battlements.
I accidentally glanced at the gallery, and there I saw a figure, slight
and shadowy, passing backward and forward in front of a quivering lamp!
My surprise was more startling than I would venture to communicate to my
companion, already almost paralyzed with fear. But if I had conjured up
a phantom to give force to the tale, none could have been more closely
similar. The figure was enveloped in robes whose richness I could
perceive even across the court; the gestures, the wild hurry of the
pacings through the chamber, the general air of wo and distraction, were
not to be mistaken. In the midst of the silence I heard the creaking of
bolts and the fall of chains that seemed to be at my side. A single word
followed, but that word was terribly comprehensive—“Death!” The sound was
uttered in a sepulchral tone, that left the imagination free to shape the
picture with what sullenness it willed!
But the sound was scarcely uttered when I heard a shriek, wild as ever
told of wo; saw the figure sink down, and the lamp quiver and expire!
The old man had seen what I had seen, but the natural feebleness of age
left him a mere helpless prey to superstitious fear, and no attempt to
explain these singular coincidences could calm him. He was convinced that
the vengeance that had stricken his master’s house was still abroad, and
that he had beheld its minister. Remonstrance was in vain, and he sank
alternately into reveries and the stupefaction of spiritual terror.
[Sidenote: Naomi, the Specter]
I tended him with the more interest from my being not altogether
unimpressed with the possibility that his alarms were just. I was no
believer in the vulgar narratives of superstition. But nature has her
mysteries!
While I sat beside the couch and watched the ebb and flow of life in a
frame that I sometimes expected to see utterly give way, a jarring of
bolts again struck my ear. I listened with a strange emotion. The old man
had heard it, and in a new convulsion grasped both my hands and held me
close. The sound returned; it increased; I saw the wall of the tower open
and the figure stand before me.
“It is she; it is she!” shudderingly murmured my companion, fixing his
eyes on it and holding me with the clasp of agony.
The heart beat loud within me; but I interposed myself between the
corpse-like being whom I held in my arms and the unearthly visitant, and
demanded “for what purpose it had come.” The figure started as I spoke;
then gazing intently on me as I turned to the light, threw the mantle
from its forehead and fell at my feet. The lovely Naomi was the specter!
Yet perfectly guiltless of the ghostly potency of her presence and the
unfilial alarm into which she had thrown her adopted father, whom she was
delighted to find, but whom she candidly acknowledged “she never dreamed
of finding there.”
“The tower contains a prisoner,” said she tremblingly, “who must be saved
this night, for to-morrow at daybreak is his dreadful hour. I knew that
he would be condemned, and we agreed on a signal, by which I was to learn
when the time was fixed. I have watched all night for it, and almost
betrayed myself by a cry of horror that I could not suppress at the sight
of that signal just now. I had no resource but to bear my own message,
and assist him myself in escaping from this place of sorrow.”
“But, my child, who is the prisoner, or where is he?”
She blushed and said: “One who saved me when the world was against me. He
rescued me from the hands of barbarians—and could I leave him to perish?”
[Sidenote: Salathiel Finds a Prisoner]
“Lead on then, and without delay, for daybreak is not far. But how shall
we find our way to his dungeon?”
“I paid high,” said she, “for my knowledge of this tower, and it has no
concealments from me. Remove this bar.”
I drew out a slender iron rod; a door deep in the wall gave way and
disclosed a winding stair, by which we descended. We found the prisoner
writing, and so earnestly occupied that our footsteps did not interrupt
him.
“There,” soliloquized he as he ran his eye down the epistle. “I think, my
masters if not the better, some of you will be the wiser for my labors.
Home truths are the truths, after all. Titus will learn what a set of
incurable reprobates he has about him, and by this time to-morrow, when
I shall care as little for mankind as mankind ever cared for me, I shall
do the state service; from my gibbet turn reformer and make the scaffold
popular. And now, for the farewell to my lady and my love.”
He sighed and threw down the pen.
“No, my Naomi, I can say nothing half so fond or half so bitter as my
feelings would have me say at this moment. Would that I had never seen
you, if we are to part so soon. Yet why should I regret to have known
innocence and beauty in their perfection? No, my love, rosy was the hour
when I first saw you, and proud is even the parting hour that tells me I
could have loved so noble a being—but all is better as it is. How could
I have borne to see you following the fortunes of a wanderer, of a man
without a country or a name? Then farewell, my Naomi dearest, farewell;
you were the gleam of sunshine in my cloudy day, the star in my dreary
night, and while my heart beats you shall be there. Your name shall be
the last upon my lips, and if there be thought beyond the grave, you
shall be remembered, and—oh, how deeply—loved!”
[Sidenote: The Arab Captain Recognized]
I had been on the point of disturbing his meditation, but Naomi, with the
fine avarice of passion, would not lose a syllable. She held me back, and
implored me by her countenance to let her have the full confession of her
lover’s faith. That beautiful countenance ran through all the shades of
feeling, and was covered with blushes and tears while the unconscious
worshiper poured out his devotion. But the time was flying; I insisted on
interrupting this epicureanism of the soul; and when Naomi found that she
must hear no more, she would allow none but herself the pleasure of the
surprise. A sigh which swelled from the prisoner’s heart was echoed. He
turned suddenly, and pronounced her name with a loudness of delight that
nothing but the chance that protects the imprudent could have prevented
from bringing the guard upon us. His quick eye soon caught me where I
stood in shadow, and he sprang forward to overpower the intruder. But
the lamp saved us from the encounter, and lifting his hands and eyes in
amazement, he laughed as loudly as he had spoken.
“In the name of all the wonders of the world,” exclaimed he, “are you
here too? Where are we to meet next? We have met already in water, fire,
and earth, and nothing is left for us now but the clouds. Come, be
honest, prince, and tell me whether it was not for the sake of some such
experiment that you ventured here; for if another hour finds us within
these four walls, we shall know the grand secret as assuredly as Titus
wears a head and has a traitor at his elbow.”
It was the Arab captain! I was rejoiced to find that in attempting to
save the life of Naomi’s lover, I was discharging a debt to the preserver
of my own. To my mention of this service he replied with soldierlike
frankness that “I owed him no obligation whatever; he had long hated the
intolerable cruelty of Cestius, and the debt was on his side, as I had
indulged him with an opportunity that every officer in the service would
have been happy to use.”
Naomi hung upon me, pale, and anxiously listening to every sound abroad.
“This little trembler,” said he sportively, as he took her passive hand,
“I am destined to meet always in alarm. I first found her flying from a
troop of human brutes who were robbing the baggage of the Roman camp; I
thought her worth something better than to keep goats on the Libanus and
weave turbans for some Syrian deserter; she was of the same opinion, and
fell in love with me on the spot.”
[Sidenote: Attempts to Escape]
Naomi exclaimed against this version of the story.
“No matter for the mode,” said he; “I give the facts. I dazzled her
ambition by the promise of a palace—in the air; bribed her avarice by the
display of a purse unconscious of gold; and bewitched her senses by a
speech, a smile, and a figure that for the first time in my life I found
to be irresistible.”
Naomi again protested, and the dialog might have consumed half the night
without their discovering the lapse of time, had I not interposed and
inquired what further means of escape were in our power. The lovely girl
started from her waking dream and pointed to a ring in the wall. I tried
it, but it resisted my force. At length we all strove at it together. But
no door opened. Naomi wrung her hands.
“The unfortunate lord of this tower in former times,” said she, and the
tears stood in her eyes, “always predicted that it would be fatal to his
family. To escape his own fate, he pierced its walls with passages in
every direction, but they did not save my noble, my unfortunate father.”
She sat down weeping while I tore at the ring, which finally broke off in
my hands. The lover stood with folded arms, gazing in sad delight on the
beautiful being from whom he was so soon to part forever, and whose face
and form wore almost the shadowy loveliness of a vision.
The chance of their escape now devolved on me solely, for neither
would have desired to disturb that strange and melancholy luxury of
contemplation. But as the concealed door must be given up, the only
resource was to return to my cell and thence make our way through the
passage by which Naomi had arrived. A glance from the casement showed me
the court filled with soldiery and lights moving through the palace. This
hope was gone!
In the deepest doubt and fear I ventured up through the tower to discover
whether my cell was not already in possession of the guard. I pushed back
the door noiselessly; the cell was empty; even the old steward was gone.
Imagination is a dangerous auxiliary in such a crisis, and it created
out of this trivial change a host of alarms. He must have fled to give
notice of my retreat, or to rouse the vigilance of the soldiery by the
stories of the wonders that he had seen. Escape was hopeless. I even
heard a confused whispering, which proved that we had fallen into the
snare.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Discovers a Door]
There was now no alternative but to be seized and die, or to make a bold
rush for life and take our chances. I carried the fainting Naomi up the
stairs; and suppressing the infinite risk of the attempt to penetrate
through a building in which its inmates were still awake and busy, and
which was guarded by the vigilance of Roman patrols, I advised that we
should do anything rather than remain where we were. She was timid and
submissive; but to my surprise the bold seaman, the haughty leader of
men, harder to be ruled than the elements, the gallant despiser of death
but a day past, was now totally unnerved. The novelty of passion absorbed
the spirit of the man; he lingered near his mistress, and gazed on her
with an intenseness that told his world was there. To my questions he
gave no answer, but obeyed without a word, or a glance turned from the
exquisite countenance that sank and blushed under his gaze. If the actual
power of enchantment had been wrought upon him, he could not have been
more fixed, helpless, and charmed.
[Sidenote: Naomi Causes Consternation]
I heard the voice of pain, and thought of the ancient follower of the
house of Ananus. My cooler judgment had acquitted him of betraying me
into the enemy’s hands. A part of the cell was filled up with remnants
of a canopy removed from the statelier apartments. The groan came from
behind them. I flung them away, and saw a door open by which he must
have entered. I returned, desired the captain and Naomi to follow,
wrapped myself in a cloak, and sword in hand, led the way through the
darkness. I had not gone far when I found myself treading on a human
body. I sprang back, but the figure, more startled than I, rolled down a
succession of steps before me, and falling against a door, burst it open.
A strong light from within flashed up the stairs, and taking Naomi’s
hand, I led her down this steep and narrow outlet of the grand gallery.
As she came toward the light, a wild cry was given; a man rushed back,
and exclaiming, “It is she risen from the grave, the Arabian!” darted
through the vast hall, in which were still a number of domestics setting
it in order after the banquet. Every eye instantly turned to the spot
from which we emerged. Naomi’s white-robed form, followed by her lover’s
and mine wrapped to the brow in our dark mantles, formidably verified the
superstition.
The crowd were already prepared to witness a wonder on this night of wo;
they fled or fell on their faces. The man, still rushing on, propagated
terror before us; and through the long vista of lighted chambers, where
to be seen might have been ruin, we moved unquestioned until we reached
the portal. It, too, had been thrown open by some of the fugitives; the
gardens were deserted; the troops had been drawn to another quarter of
the palace. Before us was welcome solitude, and we were soon winding
through the wood-paths by the light of the stars.