Imri saw the cold shuddering creeping over the blighted form of his beloved, and he led her to a sheltering rock, whose projecting cliffs partly concealed the wretched objects on the beach. There was one vessel on the broad ocean, and in her he determined at once to secure a passage, if to do so cost the forfeit of the few valuables he had been enabled to secrete. He lingered awhile by the side of his Josephine, for he saw, with anguish, the noble spirit, which had so long sustained and consoled her, now for the first time appear to droop. The sudden appearance of a Spanish officer, and his apparent advance towards them, arrested him as he was about to depart. He was attired richly, his whole bearing seeming to denote a person of some rank and consequence. Josephine’s gaze became almost unconsciously riveted upon him. He came nearer, nearer still; they could trace his features, on which sorrow or care had fixed its stamp. A moment he removed the plumed cap from his head, and passed his hand across his brow. An exclamation of recognition escaped the lips of Imri, and in another moment Josephine had bounded forward and was kneeling at his feet. “My father! my father!” she sobbed forth. “O God, I thank Thee for this unlooked-for mercy. I have seen him once again.”
“Thou—art thou my child, my Josephine, whom I left in such bright, blooming beauty—whom I have sought in such trembling anguish from the moment I might reach these shores? Child of my Rachel, art thou, canst thou be? Oh, yes, yes, yes! ’Twas thus she looked when I departed. Could I hope to see thee as I left thee, when blight and misery fell upon thy native vale, as on all the dwellings of thy wretched race? And I—O God!—my child, my child, curse me, hate me—I hurled down destruction on thy house.”
But even as he spoke in those wild accents of ungovernable passion, but too familiar to the ears that heard, he had raised and strained her convulsively to his breast, covering her cheeks and lips with kisses, till his burning tears of agonized remorse mingled with those of softer feeling on the cheeks of Josephine. But not long might she indulge in the blessed luxury of tears; shuddering, she repeated his last words, gazing up in his face with eyes of horrified inquiry.
“Yes, I, even I, my child. I was not sufficiently wretched—the bitter cup of remorse was not yet full. The edict was proclaimed. On all sides there was but wretchedness and unutterable misery, beyond all this woe-built world hath known. Then came a wild yearning to look again upon my native vale—to know if in truth its concealed and sheltered caves had escaped uninjured by the wide-spreading, devastating scourge that edict brought—to look on thee, my child, if I might without endangering that precious life—to know the fate of my unborn babe. I dared not dream my wife yet lived. Josephine, I looked upon her tomb, and by its side beheld my own, my beautiful, my unknown boy. O God! O God! my crime was visited upon his innocent head; and where—oh, where is he? Why may I not look upon his sweet face again?”
He ceased, choked by overwhelming emotion, and some minutes passed ere either of his agitated listeners could summon sufficient composure to reply. But the anguish of Castello seemed incapable of increase. For several minutes, indeed, he was silent; the convulsive workings of his features denoting how deeply that simple narrative had sunk.
When he spoke, it was briefly and hurriedly to relate how he had lingered in the vicinity of Eshcol, till at length discovered by a party of Spaniards sent to seek him, with a message from the sovereigns. His wanderings had been tracked, and that which he had most desired to avert he had been the means of accomplishing—the discovery of the vale. And then convulsively clasping the hands of Josephine and Imri in his own, he besought them to remove in part the load of misery from his heart—to say they would not leave him more.
“Goest thou then forth, my father? Hast thou indeed tarried for us, that we may seek a home together?” The father’s eyes shrunk beneath those mild inquiring eyes.
“My child, I go not forth,” he said at length, and his voice trembled. Josephine gently withdrew herself from his arms, and laid her hand on her husband’s.
“My child! my noble child,” he said, in smothered accents, “I am not perjured. I am still a son of Israel, though to the world a Catholic. Oh, do not turn from me. Come with me to my home, and thou shall see how the exiled and the persecuted can defy the power of their destroyers. Life, with every luxury, shall be thy portion; thine Imri shall have every dream of ambition and joy fulfilled. The children of Sigismund Castello will be courted, cherished, and loved. ’Tis but to kneel in public before the cross of the Nazarene—in private, we are sons of Israel still.”
“Father, urge me not; it cannot be,” was her calm and firm reply.