THE MIDNIGHT RAMBLE.
A forest of lilies seemed to have poured both whiteness and fragrance
upon the moonbeams as they fell, softly as the flower breathes, on the
grim towers and fairy-like courts of the Alhambra. It was not very late,
but all about the ruins lay still as midnight. The nightingales had
nestled down to sleep among the roses, leaving the air which they had
thrilled with music to the mysterious chime of hidden brooklets, the
bell-like tinkle of water-drops falling into unseen fountains, and the
faint ripple of leaves and roses, as they yielded their voluptuous
breath to the night winds.
The sounds that came from the distant city but served to render this
solitude more complete. The baying of dogs, the low tinkle of guitars,
the faint, hive-like hum that rose up from the dim mass of buildings,
seemed all of another world. A spirit looking down upon earth from
beyond the stars, could not have felt more completely isolated than a
person wandering in the Alhambra after the nightingales were asleep.
Whatever of human life had been hanging about the ruins that day should
have disappeared long ago, for travelling was not so common as it is
now, and few persons chose to seek the Alhambra after dark. But on this
night there was a sound now and then breaking the stillness—the tread of
footsteps wandering about the ruins. You heard them at intervals with
long pauses, and from various points, as if some one were roaming about
within the very walls of the palace.
This sound had continued some time. It issued first from that beautiful
double corridor which was once the grand entrance to those enchanting
scenes, that even in ruins have more than the fascinations of romance.
Time, that has dimmed their first loveliness, but leaves broader scope
for the imagination, which, starting from these vestiges of beauty,
rebuilds, creates, becomes luxurious. Contrast, too, has its share; the
bleak, almost rude severity of those grim towers, the weeds, the broken
stonework, the walls tracing the uneven slopes of the hill, the ruined
defences, all give a force, and brighten the exquisite grace of that
little Paradise, which takes one by surprise.
Well, the footsteps, I have said, came from this corridor, once the
thoroughfare of kings. Then they were heard from the gorgeous saloon on
the right, composing a portion of those apartments in which the Moorish
Sultanas spent their isolated lives. Then these footsteps moved towards
the great tower of Comares, and two shadowy forms appeared moving
slowly, almost languidly, between the slender columns and azulejo
pillars of a gallery that leads that way.
These persons—for two were walking close together, and with footsteps so
light that those of the female seemed but an echo of the harder and
firmer tread of the man—these persons were not wandering in that
heavenly place, you may be certain, from a desire to examine the
wonderful beauty that surrounded them. They had looked a thousand times
on those singular remnants of art. Besides, the gallery was almost
wrapped in shadow, and the rich colours, the lace-like stucco, the dim
gilding, were all flowing together unveiling the darkness, but nothing
more.
They hurried on, for the dome of heavy wood that overhung them seemed
gloomy and portentous as a thunder-cloud. The shadows within those noble
carvings were black as ebony. The beautiful design, the long, graceful
stalactites, honeycombed and dashed with gold, all breaking out as from
the midnight of ages, had a sombre effect. It seemed, as I have said
before, like a storm-cloud condensed over them, full of gloom and
prophetic wrath. My parents had come forth in search of joy, light,
beauty—things that would harmonize with the ineffable happiness that
overflowed their own young hearts—and they hastened from beneath this
frowning roof, with its marvel of art, its grim antiquity, as we flee
from the chill of a vault to the warm sunshine.
Other persons might have lost themselves in this labyrinth of beauty,
but my mother had trod those ruined halls before she could remember, and
the darkness was nothing against her entire knowledge of the place. Now
she stood in that miracle of beauty, the Hall of the Ambassadors, the
grand Moorish state chamber which occupies the entire Comares Tower.
They were no longer in darkness, for through the deep embrasures of its
windows came the moonlight, falling upon the pavement in long gleams of
radiance, and flowing over the rich colors like the unfolding of a
silver banner.
It fell upon the walls with their exquisite tracery heavy in themselves,
but so refined by art that the golden filagree work of Genoa is scarcely
more delicate, and snow itself less pure. It gilded the azulejos. By
this I mean those exquisite little tiles, brilliant as the richest
enamel, of various tints—blue, red, and yellow predominating—which
inlaid a gorgeous recess in the wall, and glittered around that raised
platform which had been the foundation of a lost throne, now glowing in
gorgeous masses, as if precious stones had been imbedded in the
snow-work. All this was so richly revealed, so mistily hidden, that with
a full knowledge of all which the shadows kept from view, the
imagination would take flight, and you felt as if the gates of Paradise
must have been flung open, before even a glimpse of so much beauty could
be given to mortal eyes.
For a moment even those two lovers, in the first sublime egotism of
passion which was destiny to them, stood hushed and dumb as they found
themselves beneath the dome of that wonderful chamber. It was before the
present ribs of wood and masses of intricate carving were introduced,
with all their elaborated gloom, to brood over the most graceful
specimen of art that human genius ever devised. The original dome arched
above them seventy feet in the air, pure, majestic, gorgeous, as if the
gold and crimson of a sunset sky were striving to break through the
masses of summer clouds centred there. Then they became accustomed to
the light, and things grew more distinct. The glorious moonlight of
southern Europe is so luminous—the darkness that it casts so deep—it
leaves no beauty unrevealed—it gathers all deformity under its shadows.
Every beautiful line of art that surrounded them was not only revealed,
but idealized. The noble stucco work within the dome, moulded into
exquisite designs two feet deep, pure as if cut from the snow ridges of
Alpujarras—the ground-work of gorgeous colors, red, blue, gold glowing
out from those depths of woven whiteness—the long, delicate stalactites
dripping with moonlight, and peering downward from the compartments of
each deep interstice, as if the snow-work, beginning to melt, had frozen
again into great icicles—the pure whiteness all around, the colors
burning underneath, or breaking out in rich masses like belts of jewels
near the pavement—all this, as I have said, made even the lovers tread
across the chamber cautiously and in silence. The stillness, the glow,
the moonlight, made even the stealthy tread of their footsteps a
sacrilegious intrusion.
They stole into one of the deep recesses of a window, where the
moonlight fell upon them full and broad. The walls were so deep that it
gave them a sort of seclusion. They began to breathe more freely, and
the deep spell that had rapt their hearts for an instant, gave way to
the rich flood of happiness that no power on earth could long hold in
abeyance.
They stood together in the recess, but with a touch of art—for entire
love has always a shyness in it, a sort of holy reserve, which is the
modesty of passion—Aurora’s eyes were turned aside, not exactly to the
floor, but she seemed gazing upon the beautiful plain of Granada, which
lay like a stretch of Paradise far below them. He was looking in her
face, for there was something of wild beauty, of the shy grace which one
sees in a half-tamed bird, which would have drawn the eyes of a less
interested person upon the gipsy girl, as she stood there with the
radiant moonlight falling upon her like a veil. As she looked forth a
shade of sadness fell upon her face, singular as it was beautiful, for
in her wild life the passions seldom found repose enough for that gentle
twilight of the soul, sadness. But it was both strange and lovely, that
unwonted softness, the first sweet hush of civilization upon her
meteor-like spirit. Still he could see her eyes glitter through those
curling lashes, thick, long, inky as night, but nothing could entirely
shut out the wonderful radiance of those eyes.
“What are you looking at so earnestly, my bird?” said the young man,
reaching forth his hand as if to draw her closer to his side.
But she hung back, and for the first time seemed to shrink from him.
“Will you not speak? Are you afraid of me, Aurora?” he added with a tone
of feeling that changed her face in an instant.
“Afraid! no, no—that is not the word—but this moment, something came
over me as I looked upon our fires up the ravine yonder. It seems as if
every cave were full of light this evening, and our people—my
people—were rejoicing over something.”
“Well, child, and what then? Why should this make you shrink away from
me thus?” questioned the young man, smiling gently upon her as he spoke.
“It may be over _his_ return.”
She spoke the word with a sort of gasp, and of her own accord crept
close to his side, drawing a deep breath as he folded her with his arm.
“_His_ return! Of whom do you speak, little one?”
“Of—of Chaleco,” faltered the gipsy child.
“And who is Chaleco?”
“Our chief—the Gipsy Count of our people—the husband they have given to
me!”
“The husband they have given to you!” cried the young Englishman,
flinging aside his arm, and drawing back—“the husband, Aurora!”
Aurora started back, even as he did, for she was not a woman to be
spurned, child and gipsy though she was. She did not speak, but her eyes
flashed, and her lips began to curl. She was a proud wild thing, that
young Gitana; and the fire of her race began to kindle up beneath the
love that had smothered it so long.
“Aurora, why did you not tell me of this earlier? How could I think
it—you, who in my own country would yet be so mere a child—how could I
dream that you were already married?”
“I did not say that,” cried the young girl, and her eyes became dazzling
in the moonlight, so eager was she to make herself understood. “It is
not yet—he, Chaleco, my grandmother, all the tribe say that, it must
be—and I know that he is to hurry home the sweetmeats and presents from
Seville.”
“The sweetmeats? What have sweetmeats to do with us?”
“Nothing, I dare say; perhaps you do not use them; but with us there is
no marriage without sweetmeats, a ton or more. I heard Chaleco say once
that he would dance knee deep in them when I become his—his”——
She broke off, and her face became dusky with the hot blood that rushed
over it, for the Englishman, spite of his anger and of his sharp
interest in the subject, burst into a fit of merry laughter.
“Why do you laugh?” she said, with trembling lips—“does it please you
that they will marry me to Chaleco—that my life must end then?”
“What do you mean, Aurora? I never saw you weep, but your voice seems
choked with tears. Tell me what is this trouble that threatens us? What
is it makes you weep, for I see now that your eyes are full, that your
cheeks are wet? Come close to me, darling, say, what is it? Not my
foolish laughter, I could not help it, child, the idea of dancing one’s
self into married life through an ocean of sweetmeats was too
ridiculous!”
“It may be,” said Aurora, gently, for the tears she was shedding had
quenched all her anger. “It does not seem so to us, but then a poor
child who cannot help fearing death a little, when she knows that the
grave lies beyond all this, it may well trouble her.”
“The grave, Aurora!—what has driven you mad? The grave for you, my
pretty wild bird? Nay, nay, leave this sort of nervousness to our fine
ladies at home. Here it is pure nonsense.”
“Hush!” exclaimed my mother, and her eyes flashed like lightning as she
turned them around the vast chamber. “That was a sound; surely I heard
some one move.”
“I hear nothing,” said the young man, listening and speaking low. “It
was a bat probably, flitting across the dome—these things are common,
you know”——
“Yes, yes! but yonder the shadows are moving.”
“I see nothing!”
“But I did,” whispered the young girl, wildly, “I did!”
“It might have been something sweeping between the moonlight and the
window,” suggested her companion, who, quite ignorant of any great
danger in being watched, felt little anxiety about the matter.
“This was no cypress bough, no bat trying its wings in the night. Such
movements are common here, but they do not chill one to the soul like
this—see!”
The gipsy placed her little hands in those of the young man, and though
she clasped her fingers hard together both her hands and arms trembled
till they shook his.
“What does all this mean, Aurora?” he questioned, earnestly. “I thought
nerves were only for fine ladies.”
There was a slight sarcasm in his voice, but the girl did not seem to
heed it. Her great wild eyes continued to roam over the ambassador’s
chamber, and she listened, not to him, but for something that seemed
lurking in a distant corner of the room. At length she drew a deep
breath as if inexpressibly relieved, and lifted her eyes to his again.
“It is gone,” she said, smiling uneasily—“it is gone!”
“What is gone?”
“I don’t know, but something has just left this room: I can breathe
again.”
“Did you see any one depart?”
“No!”
“Did you hear it?”
“No!”
“Then how could you be certain?”
“I _felt_ it.”
“How?”
“Did you never feel certain of a presence which you neither saw nor
heard?”
“I do not know; perhaps yes,” replied the young man, thoughtfully; “the
atmosphere of a particular person sometimes does seem to enwrap us, but
this is visionary speculation. I did not think these vagaries could
haunt a wild, fresh, untaxed brain like yours. They have hitherto seemed
to me purely the result of an over-refined intellect.”
“It seemed to me as if my grandmother were close by,” said the gipsy.
“Your grandmother! I thought she never left her cave—her home!”
“I know that—she could not reach this place—you must be right. But why
should the bare thought have made me tremble if she was not here—I who
never tremble, at least from dread?”
“And if not from dread, what is the power that can make you tremble?”
inquired the youth, bending his mischievous eyes smilingly upon her.
She did not speak, but the little hands, still clasped in his, began to
quiver like newly-caught ring-doves. Those wonderful eyes were lifted to
his, luminous still, for all the dews of her young soul could not have
quenched their brilliancy—but so flooded with love-light, so eloquent of
the one great life passion, that the smile died on his lip. There was
something almost startling in the thought that his hand had stricken the
crystal rock from which such floods of brightness gushed forth. He felt
like one who had, half in sport, aroused some sleeping spirit, which
must henceforth be a destiny to him—an angel or a demon in his path
forever.
“You almost make _me_ tremble,” he whispered, bending forward and
kissing her upturned forehead softly, and with a sort of awe. “Come,
love, come, let us walk; this still moonlight lies upon us both like a
winding-sheet.”
“Yes, yes, let us go,” cried the gipsy eagerly, and gliding down the
spacious hall, the two moved on, seeking that exquisite colonnade from
which the Moors commanded a view of the whole valley and plain in which
Granada stands. Now all was darkness. The slender marble shafts blended
and bedded in with coarse mortar, were scarcely visible. The moonbeams
broke against the rude walls, and fell powerless from the beautiful
arches which they had once flooded with silvery light; but the lovers
walked on through all this gloom reassured, and with their thoughts all
centred in each other once more. Aurora forgot her fears, and he was not
of an age or temperament to yield himself long to gloomy fancies.
At length they entered a small chamber, still in good repair, and
flooded with a moonlight which swept through the delicate columns of a
small balcony or temple that jutted from the outer wall. The pavement
seemed flagged with solid silver, the moonbeams lay so hard and
unbrokenly upon it, and received these exquisite shadows as virgin ivory
takes the soft traces of an artist’s pencil. The glow of rich fresco
paintings broke out from the walls, brilliant as when the colors were
first laid on by order of that Vandal Charles. In the soft scenic
obscurity, the deformity or mutilations of time were unseen. You missed
the frost-like Moorish tracery from over that bed of colors, but
scarcely felt the loss amid the misty gorgeousness that replaced it.
They passed through this room and went out upon the marble colonnade.
Nothing but the delicate Moorish shafts I have mentioned stood between
them and the beautiful plain of Granada. Lights still sparkled in all
directions over the old city, as if heaven had sent down a portion of
its stars to illuminate a spot that so nearly resembled itself. The
gentle undulations of the plain were broken into hills and ridges of the
richest green. The soft haze blended with the moonlight where it lay
upon the horizon. The mountains that overlooked all this, on the left,
were cut up with ravines full of black shadows, green as emerald at the
base, glittering with snow at the top.
Close by was that belt of huge dark trees, sweeping around the old
fortress, with glimpses of the Darro breaking up through the dusky
foliage—on the right, a dim convent nestled among the hills, and nearer
yet, the vine-draped ascent of Sierra del Sol, with its mountain villa,
its Darro waters, its orange terrace, and rose hedges, all filling the
sweet night with melody and fragrance! Do you wonder that they forgot
themselves?—that they looked on a scene like this filled only with a
delicious sense of its beauty?
The air was balmy with fragrance, yet cool from the mountain snows,
invigorating, and still voluptuous. The entire stillness, too—nothing
was astir but the sweet, low sounds of nature, the rustle of myrtle
thickets, the mournful shiver of a cypress tree as the wind sighed
through it, the movement of a bird in its nest.
Is it strange, I say, that all this beauty became food to the love that
filled their young lives with its first tumultuous emotions? That while
they forgot that love, and thought only of the scene before them, it
grew the stronger from neglect? When they did speak, it was in low
tones, and as if a loud word might disturb the entire happiness that
reigned in each full heart.
“Aurora, you have been here many times before, and at this hour,
perhaps—say, have your eyes ever fallen upon the scene when it was
beautiful as now?” murmured the young man, dreamily.
“I do not know; I have seen it a thousand times, but never, never felt
that it was really beautiful. To-night it seems as if I had just been
aroused from sleep—that all my life has been one dull stupor. I shudder
at the remembrance of what I was. I pant for new scenes of beauty—new
emotions, these are so full of joy. Tell me, Busne, my own, own Busne,
does happiness like this never kill? I grow faint with it as one does
when the orange trees are thick overhead, and burdened with blossoms. My
breath comes heavily as if laden with their fragrance. I long to creep
away into the shadows, yonder, and cry myself to sleep.”
“Why do you wish to weep, my bird? Tears are for the unhappy.”
“Yet you see that I am weeping; my eyes are blinded; the lights down
yonder seem floating in a mist. I cannot see, and yet I know that you
are smiling there in the moonlight. It is happiness, oh, such happiness
that floods my eyes.”
He was not smiling, or if he had been for one moment, the impulse died
of itself the next. Educated as he had been, hemmed in by
conventionalities, it was impossible not to be startled by the wildness,
the depth of feeling revealed by this strange child. The very reckless
innocence with which she exposed every sensation as it arose in her
heart—the intensity of feeling thus betrayed made him thoughtful, nay,
anxious. It was only for a brief time, however. Before Aurora could
notice his abstraction it had disappeared.
“Is it, indeed, love for me, Aurora, that makes you so happy?” he
questioned with fond egotism.
“I do not know; to-night I scarcely know myself. Love! it has a soft,
sweet sound—but does not mean enough. Oh, if you could speak Rommany
now, in our language are such words; oh, how insipid your word love is
when compared to them.”
In a deep, passionate voice, the very tones of which seemed to thrill
and burn into the heart, she uttered some words in pure Rommany, that
language which has yet been traced to no given origin. Like ourselves,
it is an outcast, vagabond dialect, which baffles investigation.
He understood nothing of what she said. But her eyes so dazzlingly
brilliant; her lips kindled to a vivid red, as it were, by the burning
words that passed through them; the exquisite modulations of each tone,
all had a powerful effect upon the young man—powerful, but not that
which might have been expected, for it filled his mind with distrust.
She did not heed the change in his countenance. Juliet herself was never
more thoroughly inspired or more trusting. Crafty in all things else,
our women are single-hearted as children in their love. Truth itself is
not more constant. Religion does not give you a trust more
perfect—religion—love is a religion to them, they have no better, poor,
wandering creatures, bereft of all things, home, name, nationality,
faith. But all people must have something that they deem holy, something
upon which the soul can lean for strength and comfort. Happier nations
put faith in a God, we poor outcasts have only our household affections,
and we keep them sacred as your altars.
Though the gipsy adopts the faith of any nation that gives him
protection, becomes Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Idolater, as the
case may be, it is all a pretence. In his soul he loathes the object
that he craftily seems to worship.
But the Englishman knew nothing of this. He had no idea of the rigid
bonds with which antique custom hedges in the domestic affections in a
gipsy household. These affections are the most sacred thing known to us.
I have said that as a people we have no other religion.
With all this ignorance of our customs, how could he comprehend a
creature like that, with her unreserve, her passion so vivid, that it
struggled constantly for some new medium of expression, and grew
impatient of the stately Spanish, and the few English words that seemed
to chill every impulse as she strove to frame it into utterance. He
could not believe that a woman trained to deception, wild, unchecked,
nay, taught to believe the right wrong, was in everything that related
to her own womanly tenderness true as gold—honest as infancy.
He shrunk from this poor child then, as her own language gushed up and
swept the cold Spanish from her lips. It seemed to him that she must
have uttered those words before; perhaps to some traveller-dupe like
himself; perhaps to Chaleco—Chaleco. He began to dwell upon that name
with jealous eagerness, and coupled it with the words of Rommany that
still trembled on Aurora’s lips. For the first time he began to doubt
the poor gipsy girl; yet I, who know the women of his own people to the
soul, say to you most solemnly, that among the best of his fair
compatriots he might have searched a life-time, and in vain, for a young
heart so pure in every loving impulse, so thoroughly virtuous as that
which beat within the velvet bodice of the little Gitana.
“Aurora, look in my face,” he said, seizing both her hands as she ceased
speaking.
She did look in his face with a glance that ought to have shamed him—a
glance, smiling, fond, and yet so void of evil. He might have searched
in those eyes till doomsday, and found nothing there but a beautiful
reflection of himself.
“Aurora, you have repeated these heathenish words before!”
He made the assertion somewhat faintly, for something in her look
half-smothered the suspicion as it arose to his lips.
“Before! when?” she answered, in smiling surprise.
“To Chaleco, perhaps.”
“To Chaleco—oh, never; I could not speak thus to Chaleco,” and the poor
girl shuddered at the sound of that name, as an apostate would when
reminded of his old faith.
“But—your chief, this Chaleco, he has uttered them to you.”
“He—where—at what time?”
“Here, perhaps, by moonlight, as you are now standing by me.”
She looked at him with a troubled and questioning eye. He was a mystery
to her then, and the child was striving to fathom the new feeling that
she saw in his countenance.
“No! Chaleco never came here with me at night—never at all since we were
little children! Have I not told you that he is my betrothed?”
She spoke sadly, almost in tears.
“Well, is not that a good reason why he of all others should overwhelm
you with this sweet Rommany, here by moonlight, as you now stand with
me?”
“Oh, that could never happen,” she exclaimed eagerly, “they would take
the countship from him—they would drive us both ignominiously from the
tribe; you do not know our ways, our laws. Of all the men in our tribe,
Chaleco would not dare to seek me here.”
“Why?”
“It is not permitted; we are betrothed, and so never must be alone; it
would be infamy!”
“And to be here with me, is that nothing?”
“There is no law that keeps us from seeking the Busne. It is our duty.
From them we win most gold!”
The young man recoiled.
“Gold, is it for that you come?” he said bitterly. “No, no, I have
offered tenfold what she has ever taken. It was not for that you came,
Aurora, I had rather die than think it. Speak, child, tell me it was not
for gold that you sought me!”
“I dared not go home empty-handed, for the grandame would have given me
blows,” answered the poor girl, while tears began to run down her
cheeks. “I could not dance to others as in former times; yet I never
touched a piece of your coin without feeling all the strength leave
me—without longing to hide myself from every one. Of late you have never
offered money when I came.”
“I know—I know,” said the young man, quickly, “it seemed like a
desecration; I could not do it.”
“Oh, how happy I was to feel this, it made me so grateful, but I was
afraid of her. Sometimes I would be for hours getting home, in hopes
that she would be asleep?”
“My poor child, I never thought of this. Is the old Sibyl cruel to you,
then?”
“Every one is cruel to me now—every one but you; and to-night, it seems
sometimes, as if you were joining them. What have I done that you should
make me weep like the rest?”
“Nothing, my poor Aurora, nothing. The fault is mine; I was annoyed by
what you told me of this Chaleco; it made me unreasonable.”
“Was that all?” cried the poor little gipsy, brightening up, and
pressing her lips softly down into the palm of his offered hand.
He made no answer, but drew her gently toward him, and for a time they
stood together in thoughtful silence. Their eyes were bent on the same
object, one that they had usually avoided; for there was little promise
of tranquillity in that direction.
Amid the luxuriance of the scene before them, so full of all that might
reasonably win the attention, their eyes were fascinated by one object
alone, and that so dreary, so uninviting, that it aroused nothing but
ideas of sin and wretchedness, unhappy subjects for hearts laden as
theirs were with the first sweet impulses of affection.
They were looking towards the Barranco, that bleak ravine, cut like a
huge wound in the beautiful hills, on whose barren sides the gipsy
dwellings were burrowed. Even with the soft moonlight sleeping over its
sterility, the ravine had a miserable aspect, choked up with great,
spectre-like aloes and coarse prickly pears—with a few dusty fig trees,
and stunted vines trailing themselves along the meagre soil that just
served to cover them with a sparse growth of leaves.
These unseemly objects were now blended into one mass of blackness in
the depth of the ravine, giving lurid force to some dozen forges in full
blast, that shot their weird fires from the open caves above.
This was no unusual thing. The gipsies all over the world have been
workers of iron from the beginning, and those of Granada were ever most
busy at their craft after sunset. But this evening the fires seemed to
glow with unusual brilliancy. Long lines of light shot across the
ravine. Men and women moved to and fro before the open caves. It was a
scene that Dante would have loved.
“It is strange,” said the Englishman, musingly, “it is strange that any
human being could select that miserable place to live in. There is
something unearthly—fiendish in the choice.”
“Choice,” answered Aurora, sadly, “whoever allows choice to the Zincali?
No, no, if there is one spot on earth more dreary than another, it is
set aside for them.”
“And you, Aurora, so delicate, so full of imagination, how can you live
there, burrowed up in the earth like some beautiful wild animal? Surely,
surely any fate must be better than that!”
The young man looked at her earnestly. His words had not been addressed
to her, but were an argument against his own conscience—a reply to some
undercurrent of thought all the time going on in his mind. He was about
to say something more, to utter the thought that was taking form in his
own bosom, but she looked at him so earnestly—her large, fond eyes so
full of innocent love-light sought his with so sweet a trust—he could
not go on. The holy influence of true affections clung to his soul like
fetters of gold. The evil spirit tempting him so powerfully was not
strong enough to fling them off.
Her ignorance, her helplessness, what a defence it proved against all
his knowledge—for young as he appeared, the stranger was an old man in
experience! He had begun to live early. Youth had been swept from his
path as if by a tornado. The wrong that he might do then could have none
of the excuses which inexperience gives. He was no ordinary person, but
had lived more in those brief years than many an old man.
She saw no second meaning in his words, but turning her eyes once more
upon the Barranco, answered according to her own innocent interpretation
of their import.
“It does seem dark to me now. I never felt it till lately, but the caves
are very dismal, close, smoky; the air seems to smother me at night.
Besides, I am afraid it is only in the old woods yonder, or up here,
lifted half way into the sky, that I can breathe freely. You are looking
at the ravine,” she added, “and I—now I can feel how coarse, how dark,
how like a den for wild animals it seems to you—for within the last few
weeks I have felt a strange love of beautiful things—for with them I can
think of you.”
“Then you never think of me in connection with that infernal hollow
yonder?” questioned the young man.
“What, yonder? Oh, no, within the darkness that was once my home,
surrounded by those strong, fierce men, grimed with iron dust, and
smelling of the mules they have been tending—I fold you deep in my
heart, afraid to turn my thoughts that way—I bury you in my sleep, and
strive not to exist till I can escape hither. It seems like two worlds,
this, where you sometimes come, and yonder where I cannot even think of
you.”
“But here you are happy even though I am not present.”
“Ah, yes, here I am free—here I have such dreams—oh, a thousand times
brighter than any that ever come to my sleep. Sometimes I think these
soft, sweet dreams are better than being with you.”
“And in these dreams are we ever separated?” questioned the youth,
pursuing the same undercurrent of thought that had swept through his
bosom all that evening. But she did not take his meaning; the time for
reflection had not arrived; she was too busy with her own sensations for
anything but dreams.
“Separated! oh, no. What would the brightest of these dreams be worth if
you were not in the midst? I love to come up here just before nightfall,
when the snowy top of Sierra Nevada seems sprinkled with roses, and a
soft floating haze, now purple, now golden, settles upon the plain, the
hills, and the beautiful old city—when the insects are nestling
themselves down to sleep, and the nightingales send gushes of music
through the woods. How I love to sit here, perfectly alone, while the
colors float together in soft masses on the walls around, and all this
vast heap of ruin shapes itself into beauty again.
“Then all that is ruinous, all that is gloomy disappears; the marble
pillars glitter with gold again, a network of snow breaks over these
paintings. From that marble slab in the corner, perforated in a hundred
places, floats up a cloud of perfume. I feel it in my garments, and
penetrating the folds of my hair. I go forth. _We_ go forth, for you are
always by my side. The long colonnade yonder glitters in the twilight;
the filagree arches are tipped with a rosy hue. The shadows are all of a
faint purple; the pavements gleam beneath our feet like beds of precious
stones. The nightingales are heard more faintly as we penetrate deep
into the building, overpowered by the silvery rush of fountains at play
in the courts.
“The myrtle hedges rustle softly as we pass into the Court of Lions.
There in my dreams I replace all that has been torn away; the hundred
slender columns that support those filagree arches are once more
burnished with gold. The old tints break out afresh from the capitals,
wreathing their endless variety with radiant colors. The azulejo pillars
glowing like twisted rainbows, all come back softened by a mental haze
that creeps over me at such times.
“We leave the court—pass on through those wonderful arches, and enter
the saloons which people say were once the most private retreat of the
Moorish kings. But they are never in my mind—those dead monarchs. It is
for another—only one—that I heap those alcoves in which sultanas have
slept with silken cushions, and mingle cool drinks from the snows of
Alpujarras; those decorations upon the wall, so like the rare antique
lace with which queens adorn themselves—that saloon, with its great
pillars of marble gleaming in the light like solid masses of pearl, and
crowned with ornaments so rich, that when broken to pieces each fragment
is a marvel of itself. Even these are not beautiful enough for one whom
my soul makes lord of all!
“For him I bring back the past. Rare colors start up, fresh and vivid,
from under that exquisite lace-work, where you can just see that they
have existed. Stalactites starred with gold penetrate downward like a
rich conglomeration of pearls escaping through a thousand rainbows
embedded in the ceiling. It is a luxury to breathe the air in these
rooms, so rich with perfumes, yet kept so pure and cool by the
innumerable fountains that penetrate every corner with their dreamy
murmurs.”