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 was
the Sabbath of the Christians--that day on which the Saviour rose from
the dead--thence named so emphatically and sublimely by the early Church
THE 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; and brought
startlingly before the eyes of Leila that face upon which the rudest of
the Catholic sculptors rarely fail to preserve the mystic and awful union
of the expiring anguish of the man with the lofty patience of the God.
It looked upon her, that face; it invited, it encouraged, while it
thrilled and subdued. She stole gently from the side of her father; she
crept to the spot, and flung herself on her knees beside the consecrated
image.
"Support me, O Redeemer!" she murmured--"support thy creature!
strengthen her steps in the blessed path, though it divide her
irrevocably from all that on earth she loves: and if there be a sacrifice
in her solemn choice, accept, O Thou, the Crucified! accept it, 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 some mitigation of
the awful curse that hath fallen justly upon her tribe."
As broken by low sobs, and in a choked and muttered voice, Leila poured
forth her prayer, she was startled by a deep groan; and turning, in alarm
she saw that Almamen had awaked, and, leaning on his arm, was now bending
upon her his dark eyes, once more gleaming with all their wonted fire.
"Speak," he said, as she coweringly hid her face, "speak to me, or I
shall be turned to stone by one horrid thought. It is not before that
symbol that thou kneelest in adoration; and my sense wanders, if it tell
me that thy broken words expressed the worship of an apostate? In mercy,
speak!"
"Father!" began Leila; but her lips refused to utter more than that
touching and holy word.
Almamen rose; and plucking the hands from her face, gazed on her some
moments, as if he would penetrate her very soul; and Leila, recovering
her courage in the pause, by degrees met his eyes unquailing--her pure
and ingenuous brow raised to his, and sadness, but not guilt, speaking
from 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 my
arms!"
"Alas!" said Leila, obeying the instinct, and casting herself upon that
rugged bosom. "I will dare, at least, not to disavow my God. Father!
by that dread anathema which is on our race, which has made us homeless
and powerless--outcasts and strangers in the land; by the persecution and
anguish we have known, teach thy lordly heart that we are rightly
punished for the persecution and the anguish we doomed to Him, whose
footstep hallowed our native earth! FIRST, IN THE HISTORY of THE WORLD,
DID THE STERN HEBREWS INFLICT UPON MANKIND THE AWFUL CRIME OF PERSECUTION
FOR OPINIONS SAKE. The seed we sowed hath brought forth the Dead 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 woman spirit, listen to
me."
"Be dumb!" cried Almamen, in such a voice as might have come from the
charnel, so ghostly and deathly sounded its hollow tone; then, recoiling
some 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 a
devil! Oh, my child!" he resumed, in a voice that became, on the sudden,
inexpressibly tender and imploring, "I have been sorely tried; and I
dreamt a feverish dream of passion and revenge. Be thine the lips, and
thine the soothing hand, that shall wake me from it. Let us fly for ever
from these hated lands; let us leave to these miserable infidels their
bloody contest, careless which shall fall. To a soil on which the iron
heel does not clang, to an air where man's orisons rise, in solitude, to
the Great Jehovah, let us hasten our weary steps. Come! while the castle
yet sleeps, let us forth unseen--the father and the child. We will hold
sweet commune by the way. And hark ye, Leila," he added, in a low and
abrupt whisper, "talk not to me of yonder symbol; for thy God is a
jealous God, and hath no likeness in the graven image."
Had he been less exhausted by long travail and racking thoughts, far
different, perhaps, would have been the language of a man so stern. But
circumstance impresses the hardest substance; and despite his native
intellect and affected superiority over others, no one, perhaps, was more
human, in his fitful moods,--his weakness and his strength, his passion
and his purpose,--than that strange man, who had dared, in his dark
studies and arrogant self-will, to aspire beyond humanity.
That was, indeed, a perilous moment for the young convert. The
unexpected softness of her father utterly subdued her; nor was she
sufficiently possessed of that all-denying zeal of the Catholic
enthusiast to which every human tie and earthly duty has been often
sacrificed on the shrine of a rapt and metaphysical piety. Whatever her
opinions, her new creed, her secret desire of the cloister, fed as it was
by the sublime, though fallacious notion, that in her conversion, her
sacrifice, the crimes of her race might be expiated in the eyes of Him
whose death had been the great atonement of a world; whatever such higher
thoughts and sentiments, they gave way, at that moment, to the
irresistible impulse of household nature and of filial duty. Should she
desert her father, and could that desertion be a virtue? Her heart put
and answered both questions in a breath. She approached Almamen, placed
her hand in his, and said, steadily and calmly, "Father, wheresoever thou
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 the
dangers round him. "They come--my pursuers and my murtherers!--but these
limbs are sacred from--the rack."
Even that sound of ominous danger was almost a relief to Leila: "I will
go," she said, "and learn what the blast betokens; remain here--be
cautious--I will return."
Several minutes, however, elapsed before Leila reappeared; she was
accompanied by Donna Inez, whose paleness and agitation betokened her
alarm. A courier had arrived at the gate to announce the approach of the
queen, who, with a considerable force, was on her way to join Ferdinand,
then, in the usual rapidity of his movements, before one of the Moorish
towns that had revolted from his allegiance. It was impossible for
Almamen to remain in safety in the castle; and the only hope of escape
was departing immediately and in disguise.
"I have," she said, "a trusty and faithful servant with me in the castle,
to whom I can, without anxiety, confide the charge of your safety; and
even if suspected by the way, my name, and the companionship of my
servant, will remove all obstacles; it is not a long journey hence to
Guadix, which has already revolted to the Moors: there, till the armies
of Ferdinand surround the walls, your refuge may be secure."
Almamen remained for some moments plunged in a gloomy silence. But, at
length, he signified his assent to the plan proposed, and Donna Inez
hastened to give the directions of his intended guide.
"Leila," said the Hebrew, when left alone with his daughter, "think not
that 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 in
another, 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 once
more, a new and a soft existence opens upon my eyes; and the earth seems
to change, as by a sudden revolution, from winter into spring. For thy
sake, I consent to use all the means that man's intellect can devise for
preservation from my foes. Meanwhile, here will rest my soul; to this
spot, within one week from this period--no matter through what danger I
pass--I shall return: then I shall claim thy promise. I will arrange all
things for our flight, and no stone shall harm thy footstep by the way.
The Lord of Israel be with thee, my daughter, and strengthen thy heart!
But," he added, tearing himself from her embrace, as he heard steps
ascending to the chamber, "deem not that, in this most fond and fatherly
affection, I forget what is due to me and thee. Think not that my love
is only the brute and insensate feeling of the progenitor to the
offspring: I love thee for thy mother's sake--I love thee for thine own--
I love thee yet more for the sake of Israel. If thou perish, if thou 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 impatient and lordly
gesture of Almamen, who, without further heed of the interruption,
resumed:
"I look to thee, and thy seed, for the regeneration which I once trusted,
fool that I was, mine own day might see effected. Let this pass. Thou
art under the roof of the Nazarene. I will not believe that the 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 thou hadst
forsaken thy ancestral creed, though warrior and priest stood by thee,
though thousands and ten thousands were by thy right hand, this steel
should save the race of Issachar from dishonour. Beware! Thou weepest;
but, child, I warn, not threaten. God be with thee!"
He wrung the cold hand of his child, turned to the door, and, after such
disguise as the brief time allowed him could afford, quitted the castle
with his Spanish guide, who, accustomed to the benevolence of his
mistress, obeyed her injunction without wonder, though not without
suspicion.
The third part of an hour had scarcely elapsed, and the sun was yet on
the mountain-tops, when Isabel arrived. She came to announce that the
outbreaks of the Moorish towns in the vicinity rendered the half-
fortified castle of her friend no longer a secure abode; and she honoured
the Spanish lady with a command to accompany her, with her female suite,
to the camp of Ferdinand.
Leila received the intelligence with a kind of stupor. Her interview
with her father, the strong and fearful contests of emotion which that
interview occasioned, left her senses faint and dizzy; and when she found
herself, by the twilight star, once more with the train of Isabel, the
only feeling that stirred actively through her stunned and bewildered
mind, was, that the hand of Providence conducted her from a temptation
that, the Reader of all hearts knew, the daughter and woman would have
been too feeble to resist.
On the fifth day from his departure, Almamen returned to find the castle
deserted, and his daughter gone.
