The heiress of Greenhurst

by Ann S. Stephens

At length she reached the door of her own cave and entered. The lamp which she had left burning in its niche was pouring forth a volume of mingled flame and smoke, and a few embers glowed still among the white ashes that lay in heaps under the brasier. A rustle of garments, a faint, shuddering shriek came from a dark angle of the cave as the door was flung open. The old Sibyl did not seem to heed it; but turned her eyes that way with a look of blank ferocity, and moved on without appearing to regard my poor mother who sat cowering on the ground, her limbs gathered up beneath the gorgeous masses of her dress, and her great gleaming eyes following each movement of the crone with a scared and shrinking gaze, like those of an animal which feels itself bound for the slaughter.

As if unconscious that any living thing occupied the miserable dwelling with herself, the old woman shook the herbs from her garments, crouched down by the brasier, and, bending her crooked fingers like the claws of a bird, began to rake the scattered embers in a heap from the ashes, blowing them fiercely with her lips till her face was lighted up by the glow like that of a fiend. Half stifled with the smoke, she began to strangle, and her cough sounded through the cave like the bark of a dog. Still she would not leave her work, but sat down on the floor, straightened a fold of her dusty saya between her hands, and commenced blowing up the embers, till her breath came back again.

As the liquid in the bronze vase began to simmer, she gathered up the loose herbs, and after twisting them into fragments with a ferocity that sent their juice trickling through her fingers, she cast them into the vase. Sometimes, when the stems were tough, she employed her sharp teeth, wrangling with the poisonous fibres like a wild cat over its prey.

This was a fearful proof of the insane wrath that possessed her, for she knew well the deadly nature of those herbs, yet remained insensible of the danger, even after her thin lips were swollen and turgid with the poison.

My poor mother, who had cowered in her corner watching all this, could endure the sight no longer; but rising slowly up, crept to her little bed-room and softly closed the door. The old woman eyed her with a sidelong glance as she crept by, but preserved silence and occupied herself with her fire.

Thus an hour passed. Huge drops of perspiration stood on the forehead of my great grandame, for the cave was becoming insufferably warm, and she still bent over her work, imbibing the steam and heat with the endurance of a salamander. At last she lifted the vase from its supporter, and placing a broken bowl upon the floor, drained off perhaps half a pint of dark liquid. This she held up to the lamp and examined closely. A gleam of horrid satisfaction was visible on her face, and she muttered, “They think of distilling the drao—who gave them the secret? Let them boast—let them fancy that the old woman is of no further use. They must come to her for their poison yet. Who else of all the tribe knows the secret, or could distil death into one sweet drop like this?”

She bent over the bowl; her head drooped. For the first time she appeared to think steadily, and mingle her thoughts with something of human feeling.

The fire went out. Heavy smoke, for which there was no outlet, gathered in a cloud of palpable darkness over her head. The poison stood cooling by her side, imbued by a thick, inky blackness, taken, as it were, from her thought; yet, for the first time that night, there was something of human feeling mingled with the bitterness of her nature. It might have been the pale, frightened face of my mother, as she glided by, that awoke a gleam of womanly regret in her fierce bosom. It might have been the memory of some foregone event which this poor child had shared with her; or the sobs that began to issue from the little bed-room, like the stifled moan of an infant, might have softened the iron of her nature.

It is impossible for me to say which of the thousand strings in that sered heart thrilled to the touch of the guardian angel that always, while there is life, finds some tone of music in a woman’s soul. But one thing is certain, the lurid fire in those wicked eyes grew dull, and was smothered as they watched the poison drao curdle and cool beneath them.

And there was my wretched mother, all this time shut up in the little stifled hole that she called a bed-room. Up to this time, a sort of wild excitement had kept her up. Indignation, terror, a conflict of feelings, which in her return from the Alhambra had given her the speed and strength of a reindeer, still burned in her heart like fire. But the stillness of the cave—the slow, silent preparations which that old woman was making for her death—all had a power to chill even her burning excitement. The heart in her bosom seemed turning to stone. Her limbs began to shrink and quiver with physical dread. She was but a woman, poor thing, nay, a child almost, and death was terrible to her, for the Spanish Gipsy has no bright dream of an after life. They who suffer so much in this world have no hope in death, but that of black oblivion. Why should they wish to prolong misery so griping? Would they not be proscribed, crushed, trampled on through all eternity? Would the Busne grant them a place in heaven, they who have hunted our whole race up and down, till it has been glad to find shelter like serpents in the very bosom of the earth?