CHAPTER IV. ALMAMEN HEARS AND SEES, BUT REFUSES TO BELIEVE; FOR THE BRAIN,OVERWROUGHT, GROWS DULL, EVEN IN THE KEENEST.
The dawn broke slowly upon the chamber, and Almamen still slept. It wasthe Sabbath of the Christians--that day on which the Saviour rose fromthe dead--thence named so emphatically and sublimely by the early ChurchTHE LORD'S DAY.
[Before the Christian era, the Sunday was, however, called the Lord's day--i.e., the day of the Lord the Sun.]
And as the ray of the sun flashed in the east it fell like a glory,over a crucifix, placed in the deep recess of the Gothic casement; andbrought startlingly before the eyes of Leila that face upon which therudest of the Catholic sculptors rarely fail to preserve the mystic andawful union of the expiring anguish of the man with the lofty patienceof the God. It looked upon her, that face; it invited, it encouraged,while it thrilled and subdued. She stole gently from the side of herfather; she crept to the spot, and flung herself on her knees beside theconsecrated image.
"Support me, O Redeemer!" she murmured--"support thy creature!strengthen her steps in the blessed path, though it divide herirrevocably from all that on earth she loves: and if there be asacrifice in her solemn choice, accept, O Thou, the Crucified! acceptit, in part atonement of the crime of her stubborn race; and, hereafter,let the lips of a maiden of Judaea implore thee, not in vain, for somemitigation of the awful curse that hath fallen justly upon her tribe."
As broken by low sobs, and in a choked and muttered voice, Leila pouredforth her prayer, she was startled by a deep groan; and turning, inalarm she saw that Almamen had awaked, and, leaning on his arm, was nowbending upon her his dark eyes, once more gleaming with all their wontedfire.
"Speak," he said, as she coweringly hid her face, "speak to me, or Ishall be turned to stone by one horrid thought. It is not before thatsymbol that thou kneelest in adoration; and my sense wanders, if it tellme that thy broken words expressed the worship of an apostate? In mercy,speak!"
"Father!" began Leila; but her lips refused to utter more than thattouching and holy word.
Almamen rose; and plucking the hands from her face, gazed on her somemoments, as if he would penetrate her very soul; and Leila, recoveringher courage in the pause, by degrees met his eyes unquailing--her pureand ingenuous brow raised to his, and sadness, but not guilt, speakingfrom every line of that lovely face.
"Thou dost not tremble," said Almamen, at length, breaking the silence,"and I have erred. Thou art not the criminal I deemed thee. Come to myarms!"
"Alas!" said Leila, obeying the instinct, and casting herself upon thatrugged bosom. "I will dare, at least, not to disavow my God. Father! bythat dread anathema which is on our race, which has made us homeless andpowerless--outcasts and strangers in the land; by the persecutionand anguish we have known, teach thy lordly heart that we are rightlypunished for the persecution and the anguish we doomed to Him, whosefootstep hallowed our native earth! FIRST, IN THE HISTORY of THEWORLD, DID THE STERN HEBREWS INFLICT UPON MANKIND THE AWFUL CRIME OFPERSECUTION FOR OPINIONS SAKE. The seed we sowed hath brought forth theDead Sea fruit upon which we feed. I asked for resignation and for hope:I looked upon yonder cross, and I found both. Harden not thy heart;listen to thy child; wise though thou be, and weak though her womanspirit, listen to me."
"Be dumb!" cried Almamen, in such a voice as might have come from thecharnel, so ghostly and deathly sounded its hollow tone; then, recoilingsome steps, he placed both his hands upon his temples, and muttered,"Mad, mad! yes, yes, this is but a delirium, and I am tempted with adevil! Oh, my child!" he resumed, in a voice that became, on the sudden,inexpressibly tender and imploring, "I have been sorely tried; and Idreamt a feverish dream of passion and revenge. Be thine the lips, andthine the soothing hand, that shall wake me from it. Let us fly for everfrom these hated lands; let us leave to these miserable infidels theirbloody contest, careless which shall fall. To a soil on which the ironheel does not clang, to an air where man's orisons rise, in solitude, tothe Great Jehovah, let us hasten our weary steps. Come! while the castleyet sleeps, let us forth unseen--the father and the child. We will holdsweet commune by the way. And hark ye, Leila," he added, in a low andabrupt whisper, "talk not to me of yonder symbol; for thy God is ajealous God, and hath no likeness in the graven image."
Had he been less exhausted by long travail and racking thoughts, fardifferent, perhaps, would have been the language of a man so stern. Butcircumstance impresses the hardest substance; and despite his nativeintellect and affected superiority over others, no one, perhaps, wasmore human, in his fitful moods,--his weakness and his strength, hispassion and his purpose,--than that strange man, who had dared, in hisdark studies and arrogant self-will, to aspire beyond humanity.
That was, indeed, a perilous moment for the young convert. Theunexpected softness of her father utterly subdued her; nor was shesufficiently possessed of that all-denying zeal of the Catholicenthusiast to which every human tie and earthly duty has been oftensacrificed on the shrine of a rapt and metaphysical piety. Whatever heropinions, her new creed, her secret desire of the cloister, fed as itwas by the sublime, though fallacious notion, that in her conversion,her sacrifice, the crimes of her race might be expiated in the eyes ofHim whose death had been the great atonement of a world; whatever suchhigher thoughts and sentiments, they gave way, at that moment, to theirresistible impulse of household nature and of filial duty. Should shedesert her father, and could that desertion be a virtue? Her heart putand answered both questions in a breath. She approached Almamen, placedher hand in his, and said, steadily and calmly, "Father, wheresoeverthou goest, I will wend with thee."
But Heaven ordained to each another destiny than might have been theirs,had the dictates of that impulse been fulfilled.
Ere Almamen could reply, a trumpet sounded clear and loud at the gate.
"Hark!" he said, griping his dagger, and starting back to a sense of thedangers round him. "They come--my pursuers and my murtherers!--but theselimbs are sacred from--the rack."
Even that sound of ominous danger was almost a relief to Leila: "Iwill go," she said, "and learn what the blast betokens; remain here--becautious--I will return."
Several minutes, however, elapsed before Leila reappeared; she wasaccompanied by Donna Inez, whose paleness and agitation betokened heralarm. A courier had arrived at the gate to announce the approach of thequeen, who, with a considerable force, was on her way to join Ferdinand,then, in the usual rapidity of his movements, before one of the Moorishtowns that had revolted from his allegiance. It was impossible forAlmamen to remain in safety in the castle; and the only hope of escapewas departing immediately and in disguise.
"I have," she said, "a trusty and faithful servant with me in thecastle, to whom I can, without anxiety, confide the charge of yoursafety; and even if suspected by the way, my name, and the companionshipof my servant, will remove all obstacles; it is not a long journey henceto Guadix, which has already revolted to the Moors: there, till thearmies of Ferdinand surround the walls, your refuge may be secure."
Almamen remained for some moments plunged in a gloomy silence. But, atlength, he signified his assent to the plan proposed, and Donna Inezhastened to give the directions of his intended guide.
"Leila," said the Hebrew, when left alone with his daughter, "think notthat it is for mine own safety that I stoop to this flight from thee.No! but never till thou wert lost to me, by mine own rash confidence inanother, did I know how dear to my heart was the last scion of my race,the sole memorial left to me of thy mother's love. Regaining thee oncemore, a new and a soft existence opens upon my eyes; and the earth seemsto change, as by a sudden revolution, from winter into spring. For thysake, I consent to use all the means that man's intellect can devise forpreservation from my foes. Meanwhile, here will rest my soul; to thisspot, within one week from this period--no matter through what danger Ipass--I shall return: then I shall claim thy promise. I will arrange allthings for our flight, and no stone shall harm thy footstep by the way.The L
ord of Israel be with thee, my daughter, and strengthen thy heart!But," he added, tearing himself from her embrace, as he heard stepsascending to the chamber, "deem not that, in this most fond and fatherlyaffection, I forget what is due to me and thee. Think not that mylove is only the brute and insensate feeling of the progenitor to theoffspring: I love thee for thy mother's sake--I love thee for thineown--I love thee yet more for the sake of Israel. If thou perish, ifthou art lost to us, thou, the last daughter of the house of Issachar,then the haughtiest family of God's great people is extinct."
Here Inez appeared at the door, but withdrew, at the impatientand lordly gesture of Almamen, who, without further heed of theinterruption, resumed:
"I look to thee, and thy seed, for the regeneration which I oncetrusted, fool that I was, mine own day might see effected. Let thispass. Thou art under the roof of the Nazarene. I will not believe thatthe arts we have resisted against fire and sword can prevail with thee.But, if I err, awful will be the penalty! Could I once know that thouhadst forsaken thy ancestral creed, though warrior and priest stood bythee, though thousands and ten thousands were by thy right hand, thissteel should save the race of Issachar from dishonour. Beware! Thouweepest; but, child, I warn, not threaten. God be with thee!"
He wrung the cold hand of his child, turned to the door, and, after suchdisguise as the brief time allowed him could afford, quitted the castlewith his Spanish guide, who, accustomed to the benevolence of hismistress, obeyed her injunction without wonder, though not withoutsuspicion.
The third part of an hour had scarcely elapsed, and the sun was yet onthe mountain-tops, when Isabel arrived. She came to announce thatthe outbreaks of the Moorish towns in the vicinity rendered thehalf-fortified castle of her friend no longer a secure abode; and shehonoured the Spanish lady with a command to accompany her, with herfemale suite, to the camp of Ferdinand.
Leila received the intelligence with a kind of stupor. Her interviewwith her father, the strong and fearful contests of emotion which thatinterview occasioned, left her senses faint and dizzy; and when shefound herself, by the twilight star, once more with the train ofIsabel, the only feeling that stirred actively through her stunned andbewildered mind, was, that the hand of Providence conducted her from atemptation that, the Reader of all hearts knew, the daughter and womanwould have been too feeble to resist.
On the fifth day from his departure, Almamen returned to find the castledeserted, and his daughter gone.