WAITING AND FEARING—A WILDERNESS OF BEAUTY.
Aurora obeyed her grandmother almost hopefully; for her faith in the
Sibyl was unbounded. In a little time she appeared in the outer cave,
arranged in the picturesque costume which should have been her
wedding-garments. The old woman had been pouring a quantity of the
poison drao into a vial, which she thrust into her bosom as the girl
came in.
“Why do you take that?” she faltered out, struck with new dread.
“It is for him—the Busne, if he falters in doing what I shall ask.”
“Be it so,” said my mother, sadly, pointing toward the bowl. “There will
be enough left—I will go with him”——
“You must,” answered the Sibyl, sharply. “Now come.”
They left the cave, closing the door after them.
“Stay,” exclaimed the old woman, going back, “you will want food and
drink.”
She was gone a little time, and returned with a bottle of water and some
bread. These she handed to Aurora and walked on, moving down the ravine
toward the Alhambra.
It was wonderful how much strength excitement had given to that old
crone; she scarcely seemed to feel the great fatigue of the night, but
with a quick, scrambling walk led the way in silence, only calling back
now and then for Aurora to move faster, or the day would be upon them.
They entered the enclosure of the Alhambra by _La Torre del Pico_, and
kept within the shadows, for, though the moon was down, it leaves a
transparent atmosphere behind it in Granada; and once or twice the Sibyl
fancied that she heard footsteps amid the ruins.
Near _La Torre del Pico_ stood, at that time, the grand mosque of the
Alhambra, the most exquisite remnant of Moorish art in the world. An
entrance to this mosque was easy, for sacred as it had been, all its
rich beauty lay exposed to ruin like the rest.
Papita led the way, holding my mother by the hand. A dim light fell amid
the delicate pillars innumerable as the young trees in a forest, but
guided by far-off memories, the Sibyl threaded them confidently as if
she had been walking through her own barranca. She paused before that
portion of the mosque formerly the seat occupied by the Moorish Kings in
their worship. Here, by the gleam of azulejos, richer and far more
brilliant than any to be found elsewhere in Spain, and which even the
darkness could not subdue, she found the _Mih-rab_ or recess in which
the Alcoran had been kept.
It was a deep vaulted recess set thick with azulejos, that burned like
gems on a bed of gold. The floor was a single slab of agate; and a belt
of precious stones had spanned the arch like a petrified rainbow. It was
broken and partly defaced now, but the very fragments were a marvel of
beauty.
Another might have looked with reverence on a spot so enriched, that it
might be worthy to hold the treasure kept most sacred by a fallen
nation. But to the old gipsy woman such feelings and such things were a
scoff.
“Hide yourself in there,” she said, thrusting Aurora toward the niche.
“You will be driven out by no Moors coming to worship; sit still if any
one enters the mosque, or if steps turn this way, stand up close to one
of the porphyry pillars yonder, moving so that it will be placed between
you and the intruder whichever way he comes.”
“But where do you go? How long must I wait?” said Aurora, placing her
foot on the glittering pavement of the _Mih-rab_.
“I go to find him,” was the terse answer. “Wait till _he_ comes, or till
_I_ come. You have food: be patient, and on your life, let none of the
tribe find you!”
Aurora shrunk back into the recesses at this command, and stood there
motionless as stone till daylight glittered upon the azulejos around
her, and she was shrined, as it were, in a mass of living gems.
At length the terror that had kept her so motionless gave way. She
changed her position; sat down, began counting the exquisite fragments
that jewelled the wall, tracing the delicate lines of gold and silver
that crept like glittering moss around them, with the tip of her
fingers. At last, emboldened by the silence, she stepped down from the
recess, and wandered restlessly around the body of the mosque.
Notwithstanding the great causes for anxiety that beset her, and though
she had been in that spot before, she wandered through its gorgeous
mazes with a strange and delicious swell of the heart. Love, the great
magician, had unsealed her eyes to the beautiful. Never before had she
distinguished the grand and varied richness of those columns. The deep,
many-tinted greens engrained in the verd-antique, jasper of that rare
kind which seems clouded with blood, grew beautiful in her eyes. She saw
pillars of oriental alabaster rising among the forest of columns, like
snow mellowed to golden richness by a meridian sun; and others with
sweeping clouds of the deepest ruby tint, stained into a ground of dusky
yellow. These mingled with columns of glittering black, or sheeted from
floor to arch with gold, contrasted gorgeously with the snow-white
shafts that rose on every hand; some with capitals, dashed lightly with
gold; others cut, as it were, from solid pearl, and all made precious
with the most perfect sculpture.
Filled, as I have said, with a new-born sense of the Beautiful, my
mother wandered through all this Byzantine gorgeousness, amazed that she
had never seen it before. With no knowledge of architecture, she _felt_
without understanding the beautiful proportions of the building, while
her eyes were fixed upon its pillars supporting arches graceful as the
bend of a rainbow, and enriched with a beauty hitherto unknown even to
Moorish art.
Her heart was numb for the time, and she wandered on like one in a
dream—now looking upon the pavement, then lifting her eyes upward where
traceries of snow, delicate as a spider’s web, but yet of a pearly
richness, linked with blossoms of silver, ran through the arches,
chaining the pillars together with a gleaming network. The doors, the
royal seat, everything around was one blaze of rich mosaic—the pavement
of white marble, starred with gorgeous tiles, spread away beneath her
feet. Broken, soiled by neglect, in ruins, as all this was, perhaps it
seemed but the more enchanting for that! for to a keen imagination these
fragments of beauty were suggestive of an ideal perfection, which no art
ever reached. But my mother could not long be won from the great causes
of anxiety that surrounded her. Her heart began to ache again, and with
a weary step she sought the _Mih-rab_, and seating herself on the agate
floor, sat pondering over her own miserable thoughts till the sun went
down.
With strained eyes and a weary heart, she saw the rich light fade away
from the pillars till the arches were choked up with blackness, and all
the slender columns seemed like spectres crowding toward her
hiding-place. She grew feverish with anxiety; her lips were parched; a
faintness crept through her frame. It was not hunger, but she was
exhausted, and remembering the food her grandame had left, felt for it
in the darkness.
She drank of the water, and tasted a mouthful of bread; but it was
suspense, not want of food, that had taken away her strength. She could
not endure to look out from her hiding-place, for now that crowd of
pillars seemed like men of her tribe, all greedy and athirst for her
young life.
Thus she remained; it might be hours or minutes; it seemed an eternity
to her, and then she heard footsteps and a voice.