WAITING FOR VENGEANCE.
Clare stood in the Court of Lions, absolutely bewildered by the
suddenness of what had happened. As he listened the sound of a footstep,
heavier than the one he sought—but of this he did not think at the
time—reached him from the lower end of the court. He moved hurriedly in
that direction, and just as he reached the azulejo pillars, that still
retain their first beauty in that portion of the ruin, a man came toward
him, but keeping behind the columns with a sort of cowardly ferocity,
like one who was seeking an opportunity to strike in the dark.
The Englishman paused. There was something in the appearance of this
man, closely as he kept to the shadows, which reminded him of an
unpleasant adventure that he had met on his route to Granada. The idea
was enough. He darted forward and stood face to face with the leader of
a prowling band of gipsies who had robbed him, not two months before, on
his way from Seville.
The man seemed to recognize him also. At first he slunk away as if with
a hope of concealment, but a slight jingle of the numerous silver tags
on his jacket, and a stealthy movement of the right arm downward, while
his eyes followed the Englishman like a basilisk, were significant of
some more vicious intent.
Slowly, and as a weary man might change his position, the gipsy drew up
his figure, and a gleam of moonlight shooting through the network of an
arch close by, fell upon the blade of a Manchegan knife which he held
with a backward thrust of the arm, slowly raising the point to a level
with the heart he wished to reach.
Few strangers are mad enough to go unarmed in Spain. The Englishman was
bold as a lion too, but with all this he could not have drawn the pistol
from his bosom before that knife had done its work. Still he made the
effort, keeping his eyes steadily on the man, and with something of the
effect which such looks have upon fierce animals. But the point of that
murderous blade rose higher and higher. In another moment it would have
been sped; but on the instant a sharp clutch was laid on the assassin’s
arm, and the gipsy Sibyl thrust herself between the combatants.
“Back, Chaleco—begone, I say. How dare you step in between me and my
right? Think you Papita wants your knife to help her?” cried the fierce
old witch, grinding her sharp teeth together at each pause of her
speech.
“But the wrong is mine,” answered Chaleco fiercely. “Aurora was my
betrothed: let her die—let her die; but he, I will send him before!”
He struggled with the old woman who had clutched the knife with her
tawny fingers and clung to him, hissing out her wrath in his face like a
wild cat.
“Die! who says Aurora shall die? Is she not mine, the grand-daughter of
a count? Who shall condemn her but myself? When I have said she is
guilty, then you may talk of wrong—not before. Go home. How dare you
follow my grand-daughter when she goes about her work!”
But the gipsy shook her off, wrenching the knife from her clutch with a
violence that flung her to the ground.
She started fiercely up. The red turban had fallen from her grey hairs,
and they streamed around her like a torn banner that has once been
white. Her eyes gleamed and flashed with lurid fire. She flung up her
long, flail-like arms, and shrieked forth curses that seemed absolutely
to blast the air around like a simoon. She spoke in Rommany, but the
curses that came seething from her heart were more horrible to the
Englishman, than if he had understood the words. They cowed even the
gipsy chief. He gave up his knife abjectly, and casting a fierce, sullen
look on the Englishman, slunk away.
This sullen submission appeased the Sibyl’s fury. She followed him into
the darkest portion of the cloister, and seemed to drop suddenly down
from threats to expostulations, which ended at last in low, wheedling
tones, which gradually died away in the melody of the fountain.
The Englishman looked around like one in a dream. Not fifteen minutes
had elapsed since he sat in the _Sala de los Abencerrages_, with the
Gitanilla so close to him that he could hear every full throb of her
heart. Had she gone forever? That storm of fiendish passion which he had
just witnessed, was it real? How still, how deliciously tranquil was the
Alhambra! Had that soft moonlight looked but a moment since on the
assassin’s knife close to his own heart? It seemed an impossibility. He
could not realize the terrible danger which even yet threatened him.
It was long before he could, by all the efforts of his strong will,
bring his thoughts under any degree of control. But he did not leave the
place, for the first reasonable reflection aroused the keenest anxiety
for the Gitanilla. Her fears of death were not all fancies then. He
remembered the old Sibyl’s words; she had only claimed the right of
vengeance as her own. The proof which he held in his own person, was
enough to convince him that no laws could prevent crime in a people to
whom most crimes are held as virtues. Had he not been plundered of
property, and saved from death almost by a miracle, in spite of the
Spanish laws?
His anxiety regarding the poor gipsy girl became tormenting. Where could
he seek her? Not at the ravine; surely she would not go there, knowing
the fiendish inhabitants so well, and fearing all that she feared. The
storm of her passion had been so violent it could not last. The poor
child to save her own life must come back again. He would wait.
He did wait, hour after hour, till the moon went down, and nothing but
the bright, holy stars kept watch over the Alhambra. He traversed the
saloons, explored the cloisters, and leaving all that was beautiful
behind him, wandered off among those dark red towers that harmonized
better with the gloomy fears that possessed him.
Still he continued the search, clambering up those broken walls,
tramping his way over wild flowers and weeds alike—called to a distance,
sometimes, by the rustle of a bird, and mocked every instant by shadows
that proved unreal as his hopes. But he would not believe that Aurora
had left the ruins. Besides, rest was impossible. Alone in the little
fonda he must have gone mad with anxiety.
Twenty times that night did he pass hurriedly through the Gate of
Justice, hoping to find her returning from the woods. He searched the
whole uneven sweep of those walls, clambering up the declivities, and
finding relief in the physical exertion which covered his forehead and
saturated his hair with moisture.
When the first rosy light of morning quivered on the snows of
Alpujarras, he returned to the little fonda so weary, so hopelessly
dejected that he could hardly stand. His fate day had come round again.