Their necromantic forms in vain
Haunt us on the tented plain;
We bid these spectre shapes avaunt,
Ashtaroth and Termagaunt. WARTON.
The most profound silence, the deepest darkness, continued to brood for
more than an hour over the chapel in which we left the Knight of the
Leopard still kneeling, alternately expressing thanks to Heaven and
gratitude to his lady for the boon which had been vouchsafed to him.
His own safety, his own destiny, for which he was at all times little
anxious, had not now the weight of a grain of dust in his reflections.
He was in the neighbourhood of Lady Edith; he had received tokens of her
grace; he was in a place hallowed by relics of the most awful sanctity.
A Christian soldier, a devoted lover, could fear nothing, think of
nothing, but his duty to Heaven and his devoir to his lady.
At the lapse of the space of time which we have noticed, a shrill
whistle, like that with which a falconer calls his hawk, was heard to
ring sharply through the vaulted chapel. It was a sound ill suited to
the place, and reminded Sir Kenneth how necessary it was he should be
upon his guard. He started from his knee, and laid his hand upon his
poniard. A creaking sound, as of a screw or pulleys, succeeded, and a
light streaming upwards, as from an opening in the floor, showed that
a trap-door had been raised or depressed. In less than a minute a long,
skinny arm, partly naked, partly clothed in a sleeve of red samite,
arose out of the aperture, holding a lamp as high as it could stretch
upwards, and the figure to which the arm belonged ascended step by step
to the level of the chapel floor. The form and face of the being who
thus presented himself were those of a frightful dwarf, with a large
head, a cap fantastically adorned with three peacock feathers, a
dress of red samite, the richness of which rendered his ugliness more
conspicuous, distinguished by gold bracelets and armlets, and a white
silk sash, in which he wore a gold-hilted dagger. This singular figure
had in his left hand a kind of broom. So soon as he had stepped from
the aperture through which he arose, he stood still, and, as if to show
himself more distinctly, moved the lamp which he held slowly over
his face and person, successively illuminating his wild and fantastic
features, and his misshapen but nervous limbs. Though disproportioned in
person, the dwarf was not so distorted as to argue any want of strength
or activity. While Sir Kenneth gazed on this disagreeable object, the
popular creed occurred to his remembrance concerning the gnomes or
earthly spirits which make their abode in the caverns of the earth; and
so much did this figure correspond with ideas he had formed of their
appearance, that he looked on it with disgust, mingled not indeed with
fear, but that sort of awe which the presence of a supernatural creature
may infuse into the most steady bosom.
The dwarf again whistled, and summoned from beneath a companion. This
second figure ascended in the same manner as the first; but it was
a female arm in this second instance which upheld the lamp from the
subterranean vault out of which these presentments arose, and it was a
female form, much resembling the first in shape and proportions,
which slowly emerged from the floor. Her dress was also of red samite,
fantastically cut and flounced, as if she had been dressed for some
exhibition of mimes or jugglers; and with the same minuteness which her
predecessor had exhibited, she passed the lamp over her face and person,
which seemed to rival the male's in ugliness. But with all this most
unfavourable exterior, there was one trait in the features of both which
argued alertness and intelligence in the most uncommon degree. This
arose from the brilliancy of their eyes, which, deep-set beneath black
and shaggy brows, gleamed with a lustre which, like that in the eye
of the toad, seemed to make some amends for the extreme ugliness of
countenance and person.
Sir Kenneth remained as if spellbound, while this unlovely pair, moving
round the chapel close to each other, appeared to perform the duty of
sweeping it, like menials; but as they used only one hand, the floor was
not much benefited by the exercise, which they plied with such oddity of
gestures and manner as befitted their bizarre and fantastic appearance.
When they approached near to the knight in the course of their
occupation, they ceased to use their brooms; and placing themselves side
by side, directly opposite to Sir Kenneth, they again slowly shifted the
lights which they held, so as to allow him distinctly to survey features
which were not rendered more agreeable by being brought nearer, and to
observe the extreme quickness and keenness with which their black and
glittering eyes flashed back the light of the lamps. They then turned
the gleam of both lights upon the knight, and having accurately surveyed
him, turned their faces to each other, and set up a loud, yelling laugh,
which resounded in his ears. The sound was so ghastly that Sir Kenneth
started at hearing it, and hastily demanded, in the name of God, who
they were who profaned that holy place with such antic gestures and
elritch exclamations.
“I am the dwarf Nectabanus,” said the abortion-seeming male, in a voice
corresponding to his figure, and resembling the voice of the night-crow
more than any sound which is heard by daylight.
“And I am Guenevra, his lady and his love,” replied the female, in tones
which, being shriller, were yet wilder than those of her companion.
“Wherefore are you here?” again demanded the knight, scarcely yet
assured that they were human beings which he saw before him.
“I am,” replied the male dwarf, with much assumed gravity and dignity,
“the twelfth Imaum. I am Mohammed Mohadi, the guide and the conductor of
the faithful. A hundred horses stand ready saddled for me and my train
at the Holy City, and as many at the City of Refuge. I am he who shall
bear witness, and this is one of my houris.”
“Thou liest!” answered the female, interrupting her companion, in tones
yet shriller than his own; “I am none of thy houris, and thou art no
such infidel trash as the Mohammed of whom thou speakest. May my curse
rest upon his coffin! I tell thee, thou ass of Issachar, thou art King
Arthur of Britain, whom the fairies stole away from the field of Avalon;
and I am Dame Guenevra, famed for her beauty.”
“But in truth, noble sir,” said the male, “we are distressed princes,
dwelling under the wing of King Guy of Jerusalem, until he was driven
out from his own nest by the foul infidels--Heaven's bolts consume
them!”
“Hush,” said a voice from the side upon which the knight had
entered--“hush, fools, and begone; your ministry is ended.”
The dwarfs had no sooner heard the command than, gibbering in discordant
whispers to each other, they blew out their lights at once, and left the
knight in utter darkness, which, when the pattering of their retiring
feet had died away, was soon accompanied by its fittest companion, total
silence.
The knight felt the departure of these unfortunate creatures a relief.
He could not, from their language, manners, and appearance, doubt that
they belonged to the degraded class of beings whom deformity of person
and weakness of intellect recommended to the painful situation of
appendages to great families, where their personal appearance and
imbecility were food for merriment to the household. Superior in no
respect to the ideas and manners of his time, the Scottish knight might,
at another period, have been much amused by the mummery of these poor
effigies of humanity; but now their appearance, gesticulations, and
language broke the train of deep and solemn feeling with which he was
impressed, and he rejoiced in the disappearance of the unhappy objects.
A few minutes after they had retired, the door at which he had entered
opened slowly, and remaining ajar, discovered a faint light arising from
a lantern placed upon the threshold. Its doubtful and wavering gleam
showed a dark form reclined beside the entrance, but without its
precincts, which, on approaching it more nearly, he recognized to be the
hermit, crouching in the same humble posture in which he had at first
laid himself down, and which, doubtless, he had retained during the
whole time of his guest's continuing in the chapel.
“All is over,” said the hermit, as he heard the knight approaching, “and
the most wretched of earthly sinners, with him who should think himself
most honoured and most happy among the race of humanity, must retire
from this place. Take the light, and guide me down the descent, for I
must not uncover my eyes until I am far from this hallowed spot.”
The Scottish knight obeyed in silence, for a solemn and yet ecstatic
sense of what he had seen had silenced even the eager workings of
curiosity. He led the way, with considerable accuracy, through the
various secret passages and stairs by which they had ascended, until at
length they found themselves in the outward cell of the hermit's cavern.
“The condemned criminal is restored to his dungeon, reprieved from one
miserable day to another, until his awful Judge shall at length appoint
the well-deserved sentence to be carried into execution.”
As the hermit spoke these words, he laid aside the veil with which his
eyes had been bound, and looked at it with a suppressed and hollow sigh.
No sooner had he restored it to the crypt from which he had caused the
Scot to bring it, than he said hastily and sternly to his companion;
“Begone, begone--to rest, to rest. You may sleep--you can sleep--I
neither can nor may.”
Respecting the profound agitation with which this was spoken, the knight
retired into the inner cell; but casting back his eye as he left the
exterior grotto, he beheld the anchorite stripping his shoulders with
frantic haste of their shaggy mantle, and ere he could shut the frail
door which separated the two compartments of the cavern, he heard
the clang of the scourge and the groans of the penitent under his
self-inflicted penance. A cold shudder came over the knight as he
reflected what could be the foulness of the sin, what the depth of the
remorse, which, apparently, such severe penance could neither cleanse
nor assuage. He told his beads devoutly, and flung himself on his rude
couch, after a glance at the still sleeping Moslem, and, wearied by the
various scenes of the day and the night, soon slept as sound as infancy.
Upon his awaking in the morning, he held certain conferences with the
hermit upon matters of importance, and the result of their intercourse
induced him to remain for two days longer in the grotto. He was regular,
as became a pilgrim, in his devotional exercises, but was not again
admitted to the chapel in which he had seen such wonders.