The heiress of Greenhurst

by Ann S. Stephens

A low chair of heavy carved wood, the antique plunder of some religious house, served the old woman for a seat; and before her, upon the embers, stood a small bronze vessel, which gave forth a soft odor as its contents simmered sleepily in the dying heat.

Besides these objects, there was little of interest in the dwelling. The cave was scooped from the soft sandstone cliff that forms one side of a ravine, through which the Darro passes before making its graceful sweep around the Alhambra. The walls and ceiling were blended together in a thousand irregular curves and angles, roughly chiselled, and blackened over with smoke. It had no particular form; but sunk into recesses; was cut up into hollows; bulged out in places that should have been corners, and had a dozen angles that promised some definite form, but failed in the performance.

In size it might have covered eighteen or twenty square feet. The floors were of stone, like the walls, for all was cut from one rock; but smoke and long use had so disguised the native material, that it could hardly be guessed at. A few dried herbs were hung in one hollow of the wall; an earthen pot, full of fresh flowers, stood in another; some specimens of coarse pottery occupied a shelf opposite the door, and cooking utensils of heavy iron were huddled in a corner, making the shadows in that portion of the cave still more dense.

The old Sibyl arose, took down the candle, and holding it over the bronze vessel peered into it, muttering to herself. Now the dark mummy-like aspect of her features changed; the eyes, black, firm and large, for age had no power to quench their lightning, illuminated those withered features and gave expression to every wrinkle. Her thin lips parted, and through a weird smile, that made them writhe like disturbed serpents, shot the gleam of her sharp, long teeth, white as ivory, and strong as those of a tiger.

My great grandame in her youth was of middle size; but age had contracted her muscles and warped her sinews, leaving her limbs spare and lean till she was scarcely larger than a child of twelve years. Her head was singularly large, the forehead heavy, the eyes under it burning like coals of living fire; and this disproportion was exaggerated by the heavy red kerchief that I have already spoken of.

As the old woman lifted her person from its stooping position and rose upright, you wondered that she had power in those withered limbs to stand so erect, or carry the weight of that heavy blue saya, with its succession of crimson flounces all edged with golden lace, from which the brightness had departed years ago. You wondered, too, at the picturesque and singular arrangement of colors in her dress. It is true the old velvet jacket had lost all traces of its original lustre. The colors of the saya were dimmed and worn away; but the vestige of former dignity was there, and no age could injure that mystic seal, or the massive ruby rings that bent her thin ears with their weight, and flashed like great drops of blood falling from beneath her kerchief.

Two or three times the grandame waved her light over the bronze vessel, then thrusting the candle back into its niche, with an air of discontent she walked to the door of her cave, flung it open and looked out.

At first she held one hand over her eyes as we do when the sun strikes us suddenly, and no wonder, for what a contrast was that beautiful night with the black hole she had left!

I have seen the Alhambra by moonlight, from the very point of view which the old Sibyl commanded, and it is one of the memories which one would give up years of life rather than surrender. Down from the soft purple of that glorious sky fell the moonlight, pouring its rich luminous floods over the snows that lie forever upon the noble mountain ranges of the Alpujarras. It cast a silvery halo around each snowy peak, making the whiteness lustrous as noonday, then came quivering down their sides, and fell in a silvery torrent among the groves that girdle the Alhambra. There, subdued and softened by the masses of foliage, it divided a sweet empire with the night, leaving half those dim old towers to the shadows, and pouring its whole refulgence upon the rest, throwing a glory over some broken arch, and abandoning its neighbor to obscurity.

Ah me, there is nothing on earth so beautiful as the moonlight shining amid a grim old ruin like that. It is the present smiling away the gloom of the past.