An hour had passed, two, three; midnight would soon be striking, and
Beatriz withdrew to her chamber. Alonso had not returned; he had not
returned, though less than an hour would have sufficed for his errand.
“He must have been afraid!” exclaimed the girl, closing her prayer-book
and turning toward her bed after a vain attempt to murmur some of the
prayers that the church offers for the dead on the Day of All Souls.
After putting out her light and drawing the double silken curtains, she
fell asleep; but her sleep was restless, light, uneasy.
The Postigo clock struck midnight. Beatriz heard through her dreams the
slow, dull, melancholy strokes, and half opened her eyes. She thought
she had heard, at the same time, her name spoken, but far, far away, and
in a faint, suffering voice. The wind groaned outside her window.
“It must have been the wind,” she said, and pressing her hand above her
heart, she strove to calm herself. But her heart beat ever more wildly.
The larchwood doors of the chamber grated on their hinges with a sharp
creak, prolonged and strident.
First these doors, then the more distant ones,--all the doors which led
to her room opened, one after another, some with a heavy, groaning
sound, some with a long wail that set the nerves on edge. Then silence,
a silence full of strange noises, the silence of midnight, with a
monotonous murmur of far-off water, the distant barking of dogs,
confused voices, unintelligible words, echoes of footsteps going and
coming, the rustle of trailing garments, half-suppressed sighs, labored
breathing almost felt upon the face, involuntary shudders that announce
the presence of something not seen, though its approach is felt in the
darkness.
Beatriz, stiffening with fear, yet trembling, thrust her head out from
the bed-curtains and listened a moment. She heard a thousand diverse
noises; she passed her hand across her brow and listened again; nothing,
silence.
She saw, with that dilation of the pupils common in nervous crises, dim
shapes moving hither and thither all about the room, but when she fixed
her gaze on any one point, there was nothing but darkness and
impenetrable shadows.
“Bah!” she exclaimed, again resting her beautiful head upon her blue
satin pillow, “am I as timid as these poor kinsfolk of mine, whose
hearts thump with terror under their armor when they hear a
ghost-story?”
And closing her eyes she tried to sleep,--but her effort to compose
herself was in vain. Soon she started up again, paler, more uneasy,
more terrified. This time it was no illusion; the brocade hangings of
the door had rustled as they were pushed to either side, and slow
footsteps were heard upon the carpet; the sound of those footsteps was
muffled, almost imperceptible, but continuous, and she heard, keeping
measure with them, a creaking as of dry wood or bones. And the footfalls
came nearer, nearer; the prayer-stool by the side of her bed moved.
Beatriz uttered a sharp cry, and burying herself under the bedclothes,
hid her head and held her breath.
The wind beat against the balcony glass; the water of the far-off
fountain was falling, falling, with a monotonous, unceasing sound; the
barking of the dogs was borne upon the gusts, and the church bells in
the city of Soria, some near, some remote, tolled sadly for the souls of
the dead.
So passed an hour, two, the night, a century, for that night seemed to
Beatrix eternal. At last the day began to break; putting fear from her,
she half opened her eyes to the first silver rays. How beautiful, after
a night of wakefulness and terrors, is the clear white light of dawn!
She parted the silken curtains of her bed and was ready to laugh at her
past alarms, when suddenly a cold sweat covered her body, her eyes
seemed starting from their sockets, and a deadly pallor overspread her
cheeks; for on her prayer-stool she had seen, torn and blood-stained,
the blue scarf she lost on the mountain, the blue scarf Alonso went to
seek.
When her attendants rushed in, aghast, to tell her of the death of the
heir of Alcudiel, whose body, partly devoured by wolves, had been found
that morning among the brambles on the Spirits’ Mountain, they
discovered her motionless, convulsed, clinging with both hands to one of
the ebony bedposts, her eyes staring, her mouth open, the lips white,
her limbs rigid,--dead, dead of fright!