The mother was a small and almost grotesque personage, with a somewhat
mediæval face, oaken colored and long and full of Gothic angularity;
only her eyes were young, full of vivacity and keen comprehension. The
daughter was tall and slight and dark; a skin with the tint of Mexican
gold; hair dead black and heavy with snaky ripples in it that made one
think of Medusa; eyes large and of almost sinister brilliancy, heavily
shadowed and steady as a falcon's; she had that lengthened grace of
dancing figures on Greek vases, but on her face reigned the motionless
beauty of bronze--never a smile or frown. The mother, a professed
sorceress, who told the fortunes of veiled women by the light of a lamp
burning before a skull, did not seem to me half so weird a creature as
the daughter. The girl always made me think of Sou they's witch, kept
young by enchantment to charm Thalaba.
The house was a mysterious ruin: walls green with morbid vegetation of
some fungous kind; humid rooms with rotting furniture of a luxurious
and antiquated pattern; shrieking stairways; yielding and groaning
floors; corridors forever dripping with a cold sweat; bats under the
roof and rats under the floor; snails moving up and down by night
in wakes of phosphorescent slime; broken shutters, shattered glass,
lockless doors, mysterious icy draughts, and elfish noises. Outside
there was a kind of savage garden--torchon trees, vines bearing spotted
and suspicious flowers, Spanish bayonets growing in broken urns,
agaves, palmettoes, something that looked like green elephant's ears, a
monstrous and ill-smelling species of lily with a phallic pistil, and
many vegetable eccentricities I have never seen before. In a little
stable-yard at the farther end were dyspeptic chickens, nostalgic
ducks, and a most ancient and rheumatic horse, whose feet were always
in water, and who made nightmare moanings through all the hours of
darkness. There were also dogs that never barked and spectral cats that
never had a kittenhood. Still the very ghastliness of the place had its
fantastic charm for me. I remained; the drowsy Southern spring came to
vitalize vines and lend a Japanese monstrosity to the tropical jungle
under my balconied window. Unfamiliar and extraordinary odors floated
up from the spotted flowers; and the snails crawled upstairs less
frequently than before. Then a fierce and fevered summer!
It was late in the night when I was summoned to the Cuban's bedside: a
night of such stifling and motionless heat as precedes a Gulf storm:
the moon, magnified by the vapors, wore a spectral nimbus; the horizon
pulsed with feverish lightnings. Its white flicker made shadowy the
lamp-flame in the sick-room at intervals. I bade them close the
windows. "El Vómito?"--already delirious; strange ravings; the fine
dark face phantom-shadowed by death; singular and unfamiliar symptoms
of pulsation and temperature; extraordinary mental disturbance. Could
this be Vómito? There was an odd odor in the room--ghostly, faint, but
sufficiently perceptible to affect the memory:--I suddenly remembered
the balcony overhanging the African wildness of the garden, the strange
vines that clung with webbed feet to the ruined wall, and the peculiar,
heavy, sickly, somnolent smell of the spotted blossoms! And as I leaned
over the patient, I became aware of another perfume in the room, a
perfume that impregnated the pillow--the odor of a woman's hair, the
incense of a woman's youth mingling with the phantoms of the flowers,
as ambrosia with venom, life with death, a breath from paradise with an
exhalation from hell. From the bloodless lips of the sufferer, as from
the mouth of one oppressed by some hideous dream, escaped the name of
the witch's daughter. And suddenly the house shuddered through all its
framework, as if under the weight of invisible blows: a mighty shaking
of walls and windows--the storm knocking at the door.
I found myself alone with her; the moans of the dying could not be shut
out; and the storm knocked louder and more loudly, demanding entrance.
"_It is not the fever_," I said. "I have lived in lands of tropical
fever; your lips are even now humid with his kisses, and you have
condemned him. My knowledge avails nothing against this infernal craft;
but I know also that you must know the antidote which will baffle
death;--this man shall not die!--I do not fear you!--I will denounce
you!--He shall not die!"
For the first time I beheld her smile--the smile of secret strength
that scorns opposition. Gleaming through the diaphanous whiteness of
her loose robe, the lamplight wrought in silhouette the serpentine
grace of her body like the figure of an Egyptian dancer in a mist of
veils, and her splendid hair coiled about her like the vipérine locks
of a gorgon.
"La voluntad de mi madre!" she answered calmly. "You are too late! You
shall not denounce us! Even could you do so, you could prove nothing.
Your science, as you have said, is worth nothing here. Do you pity the
fly that nourishes the spider? You shall do nothing so foolish, señor
doctor, but you will certify that the stranger has died of the vómito.
You do not know anything; you shall not know anything. You will be
recompensed. We are rich." Without, the knocking increased, as if the
thunder sought to enter: I, within, looked upon her face, and the face
was passionless and motionless as the face of a woman of bronze.
She had not spoken, but I felt her serpent litheness wound about
me, her heart beating against my breast, her arms tightening about
my neck, the perfume of her hair and of her youth and of her breath
intoxicating me as an exhalation of enchantment. I could not speak; I
could not resist; spellbound by a mingling of fascination and pleasure,
witchcraft and passion, weakness and fear--and the storm awfully
knocked without, as if summoning the stranger; and his moaning ceased.
Whence she came, the mother, I know not. She seemed to have risen from
beneath:
"The doctor is conscientious!--he cares for his patient well. The
stranger will need his excellent attention no more. The conscientious
doctor has accepted his recompense; he will certify what we
desire--will he not, hija mia?"
And the girl mocked me with her eyes, and laughed fiercely.