The heiress of Greenhurst

by Ann S. Stephens

But her faith in the Egyptian descent of our people was like a religion. How it came to her, whether from tradition, fable, fact, or those sorcerers’ arts that made her famous among all our nation, I do not know. Save in those wild sympathies that knit our tribe together, as with bonds of iron, all over the earth, our people have no history. They came like a cloud of locusts sweeping down from the East. It may be one of the curses sent forth to infest the earth after ravaging Egypt. It may be a fragment of the lost tribes. It may be even, as some of our traditions say, that we were sent forth as a punishment for inhospitality to the mother of God and her holy child. There is a wide field for conjecture. Let your wise men guess on. With us, our Egyptian descent is a faith—all the religion that we have!

I know many languages, am learned in historic lore—learned in the great foundation of all history, the Bible. Of that which pertains to my people I have studied long and deeply; yet as my great grandmother, the Gitana, believed, so do I. To her occult wisdom, her subtle sympathies, I have brought all the knowledge to be gathered from the literature of other races.

I have searched your sacred book till my soul has been stirred to its depths with the dark prophecies that foreshadow the scattering of our tribes over the face of the earth. I find the destiny that is now upon us written out in that great book, certain, unmistakable as the thunder-cloud that heralds in a tempest. There is wisdom in that book. Our people should know it better, for much of its grandeur came from Egypt, as we did—Egypt the great mother of learning—the land which gave its wisdom to Moses, and taught the irresolute how to think, act, and suffer.

And we too are of Egypt. Does the Gentile want proof? Let him search for it in the prophecies that he holds sacred. Let him read it in the voluptuous character of our dances, in the unwritten poetry, unwritten because it grows tame and mean in any language but the Rommany. The Gitanos speak their poetry as it swells warm from the heart, for it would grow cold in the writing. Let him search for it where he pleases. We require no proof, better than the mysterious spirit within us. Our hearts turn back to the old land, and we know that it once belonged to us.

My great grandame was no common Gitana. Her husband had been a chief, or count, among the gipsies, during his entire manhood. This was no common dignity, for our people choose their own leaders, and it is seldom that one man’s popularity lasts during a life-time. The Gitano chooses his wife for her talent, her art, her powers of deception; in short, for what you would call her keen wickedness. These are the endowments that recommend the Gitana bride to her lord. It was for these qualities, joined to talents that would have given her a position in any nation, that my ancestor married his wife.

This great grandame of mine was bravely descended, and richly endowed. Talent descends most frequently from the mother, and through the female line she could trace her blood back to that arch sorceress, who wound herself around Maria de Padilla, during her heroic life, and in the end betrayed that noble woman to death, when she fled from Toledo with her son.

Maria de Padilla had offended our ancestress, and she was true to her hate. My great grand-dame wore a pair of ear-rings, massive gold circlets set with great rubies. In her poverty—for in the end she became very poor—these antique ornaments were always about her person. No amount of suffering, no temptation could win them from her, even for a moment. These antique rings had been wrested from the heroine of Toledo, on the night when she disappeared with her Gitana attendant. There was a tradition, that the precious stones with which they were beset, had once been white, but that after the murder, had changed to the blood-red hue which they ever after maintained. I know not how this superstition took birth; but the craft of our Gitana ancestress seemed to descend with the rings, as they came down from that wonderful creature, always through the females, to the old Sibyl who was the grandame of my mother.

I know that the Gitanos are considered as impostors; that they are supposed to practise their arts for coarse gain, and for that only; but this is not always true. No devotee ever put more faith in her saint than the gipsy, who has long exercised her powers of divination, places in the truth of her mysterious art.

It was late in the evening, and old Papita—for thus my ancestress was named—sat in her cave-home waiting the return of her grand-daughter from the Alhambra. Perhaps upon the whole earth there is nothing more repulsive than a very old woman in any portion of southern Europe. The voluptuous atmosphere, the warm sunshine that matures female life so early, seems to mock its own precocious work, by proving how hideous time can render it. But if age makes itself so repulsive among the luxurious women of Spain, those who scarcely draw a breath of that delicious atmosphere which is not heavy with fragrance, how much more hideous must be the old age of a Gitana hid away in the dark hollows of the earth, with rude and insufficient food, clothed in rags, uncared for, held in no higher repute than the foxes who burrow in the earth like themselves, and are scarcely held apart from civilization more than they are?

There was something witch-like in the appearance of my great grandame as she sat alone in her cave that night. A meagre candle shed its light in sickly flickers around a rude niche scooped in the rock, from whence the entire dwelling was cut. The body of this light fell upon the old woman’s head, kindling up a scarlet kerchief that she wore, somewhat in the fashion of a Moorish turban, into vivid brilliancy; but casting the rough features into blacker shadow, till they seemed meagre, dark, and almost as withered as those of an Egyptian mummy. Her claw-like hands were folded over her bosom, and a ring set with some deep green stone cut with Egyptian characters, caught the light like a star; for the setting was of rough massive gold, that seemed heavy enough to break the withered finger, that it covered from joint to joint. A few embers lay upon the stone floor at her feet, the remnants of a fire that had burned low, leaving a thin cloud of smoke still floating in the vaulted roof of the cave.