THE OLD TOWER CHAMBER.
It was my bridal morning. I sat within my own pretty chamber, for from
the cottage that had been my first shelter, not from the mansion which
was only my inheritance, I resolved that Irving should take his bride.
For the first time in my life I was clad in pure white. No summer cloud
was ever more soft and vapory than the flow of my robe. The bridal veil,
crowned by a garland of pale blush roses, fell like a web of exquisite
frost-work around me. Pearls gleamed like hail-stones amid the snow of
this dress, and a single white rose-bud, hidden in moss, gathered its
cloudiness over my bosom.
Cora and my blessed old bonne had done this fairy work, and I was not to
see myself till the toilet was complete. At last they led me up to the
mirror. As I looked in, a faint pang seized me, for the whiteness of my
dress struck inward, and drifts of snow seemed crowding against my
heart. A vague dread of some unseen presence brought the old shudder
upon me. I looked around in chill apprehension for my mother’s face. As
I turned, a gush of sunshine come through the pink and white
window-curtains, flooding me from head to foot with its rosy glow. I
felt the brightness and the warmth. For one instant it seemed to me that
my mother’s soft eyes looked upon me through the floating haze. My heart
swelled again. A smile sprang to my lips. The coldness had forever
departed from my bosom. The chill of my mother’s death was quenched in
the glory of my new life.
The sound of bells sweeping up through the beautiful morning came to my
chamber, filling my soul with a sweet tranquillity. On this day began
the calm of my life. I went forth garlanded with bridal roses, on which
the dew still rested, and with old Turner by my side rode to the church
along the road where the wedding of my father and the funeral of his
bride had passed by me, a poor gipsy beggar, lying sick and dizzy, with
returning life in the open field. I thought of all this with gentle
sadness, but it could not reach the heaven in my heart. The iron thread
had melted away from the gold of my destiny. The altar was graced with
roses that made the air fragrant with their breath, as we knelt before
it. Mr. Clark, that day appointed rector of Marston Court, clasped our
hands together before it, and sent us forth into the beautiful eternity
of our love.
Marston and Cora, the new lord and lady of Marston Court, stood by,
regarding us with gentle affection, while lady Catherine, yielding to
her own interests, but half reconciled at heart, looked down in
sovereign pride on Mr. Turner, from whose hands her high-born son was
willing to receive his bride, for who else had the right to give me
away?
As we turned from the altar, I saw, at the lower end of the church, the
dark face of Chaleco. He was looking at me with a wild, mournful
expression, that seemed more sombre from the shadows in which he stood.
He answered my smile, which invited him to approach, with a moody wave
of the head; but as we went down the aisle, he came toward us.
“Zana,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “if these people wrong you, if in
all things they do not regard Aurora’s child as a queen, send the ruby
ear-rings to Chaleco. During a few months he will be with his people,
and even after he is gone the man or woman who offends you shall feel
their vengeance.”
“Oh, there will be no need,” I answered, regarding my husband with a
heart swell; “but for yourself, Chaleco, my more than friend, for your
people—yours and mine, count—remember that a portion of all the wealth
you have won for us must each year go to them.”
The gipsy count grasped my hand hard, his eyes sparkled, he uttered a
wild blessing in Rommany, and left the church before we could urge him
to join us at Greenhurst.
Amid the mellow chime of bells that filled the air with rejoicings—along
a path littered with flowers, rained over it by the village
children—with the morning lighting up the earth into a paradise, I
entered Greenhurst, its mistress, yet scarcely wishing to be that. It
was enough and too much happiness for me that I was the wife of its
master.
Three months after my wedding-day, I was taken with a sudden desire to
visit Marston Court. None of my old habits had been laid aside. I still
gloried in a gallop over the uplands on Jupiter who grew young as he
undertook these wild rides. My husband was absent, and Lady Catherine
now lived entirely at Paris. It was not often that my old restless
habits came on, but this day I was haunted with a feeling that some one
wanted me at Marston Court. I had been thinking of Chaleco all day, with
a degree of anxiety which no reasoning could explain or dispel. These
haunting thoughts grew so powerful at last, that I ordered Jupiter to be
saddled. Just as I was mounting him, a bit of paper was placed in my
hand by a boy. It contained a single sentence:
“Zana, Aurora’s child, come to me.
“CHALECO.”
This message was a relief. It gave a reason for the depressing thoughts
that had driven me forth. I put my horse to his speed, never pausing to
ask what direction we should take. By this time Marston Court was no
longer a picturesque wilderness; the gardens were almost in order; the
noble trees were free from undergrowth; the house itself princely.
Leaving my horse in the grounds, I walked across the garden to the
summer-house, through which the gipsy chief had conducted me from the
tower chamber. The mosaic star remained, with its secret undiscovered,
in the pavement. I remembered its mechanism, and with a little force
wheeled it from the opening it concealed. The passage was dark, but a
little time brought me to a door which opened into the tower.
The chamber was desolate and empty. Ashes lay on the hearth as when we
left it that night. The same drapery of cobwebs fell in dusty festoons
over the narrow windows, rendering the room at first so dim that I could
see no object distinctly. But in an instant I caught the light of two
large eyes glaring at me from a corner; then a pale face, distorted with
pain, with the dusky outlines of a human form, reposing on what had once
been a magnificent couch. The glow of an old velvet cushion, which still
retained gleams of original crimson, was insufficient to give a tinge of
color to that pallid face, which seemed the more deathly from contrast
with the beard of iron-grey which fell from it, like moss from a blasted
tree.
“Zana! Zana!” said a sharp voice from the couch.
“Chaleco, my friend, my poor friend,” I cried, throwing myself on my
knees by his couch, and taking his hand, which lay so wet and cold in my
clasp, that a sudden fear came upon me that he was dying. “Your hand
freezes mine—your whole frame quivers; what is the matter—what does this
terrible prostration mean?”
“It means,” said Chaleco, pointing his finger to a vial that had rolled
from his hand half across the floor, where it lay uncorked, with its
purple contents oozing drop by drop from the neck—“it means that, like
Aurora, Chaleco has fulfilled his oath. That night, Zana, when you lay
in Paplta’s tent, while the rubies burned in her ears with the color of
Lady Clare’s blood—that night, while the death throes were at her heart,
she made me swear an oath that our revenge for Aurora’s death should be
completed by the overthrow of every living Clare; that by craft or
violence I would wrest away their wealth for our people, and make
you—her last of race—a queen at Granada; or failing, die like a poisoned
dog by this hand. As the last death-rattle left her throat she pressed
the drao into my palm. Look, you see it yonder dripping like gouts of
black blood drop by drop from the vial. From that day I have carried it
in my bosom. Zana, Zana! I have bought your happiness with my vengeance
and my life; now tell me, on your soul—if human beings have souls—are
you happy?”
“But for this knowledge—but for your danger—oh, heavens! that it should
have been done for me—I am happy, Chaleco.”
A smile trembled over his white mouth, he reached forth his quivering
hands and, seizing my garments, drew me down to his embrace.
“Live in peace,” he said; “her fate is atoned for. It was vengeance on
them, or death to myself. I have parted with my people. A new count
reigns in my place. I had the choice and wandered back to die with you,
Zana.”
“Oh, Chaleco, it was a wicked oath; sinful in the taking, doubly sinful
in the keeping.”
“Hush, Zana, is was that you might live free from Papita’s curse.”
I looked at him in dismay, the death shadows were gathering on his
features.
“You are in great pain. Oh, my friend, is it death?” I questioned.
“Pain! yes, I might have made it the work of an instant, but gave myself
time; every moment of your presence I have bought with a pang; but I
could not die without you, Zana.”
“And must you die—die in this desolate place?” I said, shuddering as his
arms loosened and fell from around me.
“I like this best,” said Chaleco, rising to one elbow, and casting his
glittering eyes around the room. “A Caloe count should not die in the
sun’s light, while his people grovel in the dark earth. I am but a
shadow now, Zana, fast melting away into dark nothingness; this place is
fittest.”
“Not so, not so, my friend!” I cried, sobbing out the grief I most truly
felt; “cast aside these terrible ideas of death—pray to God—let me pray
for you. She will help us—Aurora, whom you loved, whom you shall surely
see again.”
The gipsy began to revive again. The glances of his eyes burned into
mine. His frame shook like a dead branch in winter.
“Zana, do you believe this?—do you believe that Aurora lives
in—in—anywhere?”
“I do not believe—I _know_ it, certainly as I know that the stars burn
in heaven, or that the earth is solid under my feet.”
His eyes grew brighter and more eager. He turned over, grasping my hands
between both his.
“Zana, how am I to reach her? What can I do? Tell me—tell me, before
this coldness reaches my heart—tell me, Zana!”
“Pray—pray to God.”
“I do not know how,” he pleaded; “it is like grasping at mist. What
shall I repeat?—which way must I turn?”
The sight of that poor, helpless man would have inspired marble with a
spirit of prayer. I was upon my knees; his quivering hands were clasped
in mine. I uplifted them to heaven with broken sobs—with tears and a
burning eloquence with which no prayer for my own soul had ever yet
ascended to heaven.
As I prayed, his hands were softly withdrawn from mine. I paused, and
through the agony of my tears saw those poor fingers tremblingly clasp
around each other, and uplift themselves. Broken words wavered on his
lips. He seemed looking at something afar off in the dim shadows of the
room.
“Chaleco!” I cried, in affright.
His hands fell apart and dropped slowly down, touching mine, like ice;
his eyes, glazed and fireless, turned upon my face.
“Aurora! Aurora!”
Was it a prayer that Chaleco uttered when he gasped forth my mother’s
name? I hope so. I believe so.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MRS. STEPHENS’ ILLUSTRATED NEW MONTHLY HAS NOW BEEN ESTABLISHED ONE
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Mrs. Ann S. Stephens’ Novels.
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I.
Fashion and Famine.
There is no sorrow for the earnest soul
That looketh up to God in perfect faith.
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The Old Homestead.
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Born, like lost cherubim, so close to heaven,
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And unto such are holy missions given.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.