CHAPTER III.
THE HUT ON THE HEATH.
Far away from the lofty, battlemented ancestral home of Sir Jasper Kingsland--straight to the seash.o.r.e went Achmet the Astrologer. A long strip of bleak marshland spreading down the hill-side and sloping to the sea, arid and dry in the summer-time--sloppy and sodden now--that was his destination. It was called Hunsden"s Heath--a forlorn and desolate spot, dotted over with cottages of the most wretched kind. To one of these wretched hovels, standing nearest the sea and far removed from the rest, Achmet swiftly made his way.
The sun was high in the heavens; the sea lay all a-glitter beneath it.
The astrologer had got over the ground at a swift, swinging stride, and he had walked five miles at least; but he paused now, with little sign of fatigue in his strange white face. Folding his arms over his breast, he surveyed the shining sky, the glittering sea, with a slow, dreamy smile.
"The sun shines and the sea sparkles on the natal day of the heir of Kingsland," he said to himself; "but for all that it is a fatal day to him. "The sins of the father shall be visited on the children even to the third and fourth generation," saith the Book Christians believe in.
Christians!" he laughed a harsh, strident laugh. "Sir Jasper Kingsland is a Christian! The religion that produces such men must be a glorious one. He was a Christian when he perjured himself and broke her heart.
"Tis well. As a Christian he can not object to the vengeance Christianity teaches."
He turned away, approached the lonely hut, and tapped thrice--sharp staccato knocks--at the door. The third one was answered. The door swung back, and a dark damsel looked out.
"Is it thee, Pietro?"
"It is I, Zara."
He stepped in as he spoke, closed the door, took her face between his hands, and kissed both brown cheeks. The girl"s dark face lighted up into the splendor of absolute beauty as she returned his caress.
"And how is it with thee, my Zara, and thy little one?"
"It is well. And thyself, Pietro?"
"Very well. And the mother?"
"Ah, the mother! Poor mother! She lies as you saw her last--as you will always see her in this lower world--dead in life! And he"--the girl Zara"s eyes lighted fiercely up--"didst see him, Pietro?"
"I have seen him, spoken to him, told him the past, and terrified him for the future. There is a son, Zara--a new-born son."
"Dog and son of a dog!" Zara cried, furiously. "May curses light upon him in the hour of his birth, and upon all who bear his hated name!
Say, Pietro, why didst thou not strangle the little viper as you would any other poisonous reptile?"
"My Zara, I did not even see him. He lies cradled in rose leaves, no doubt, and the singing of the west wind is not sweet enough for his lullaby. No profane eye must rest on this sacred treasure fresh from the hands of the G.o.ds! Is he not the heir of Kingsland? But Achmet the Astrologer has cast his horoscope, and Achmet, and Zara, his wife, wilt see that the starry destiny is fulfilled. Shall we not?"
"If I only had him here," Zara cried, clawing the air with her two hands, "I would throttle the baby snake, and fling him dead in his father"s face. And that father! Oh, burning alive would be far too merciful for him!"
Achmet smiled, and drew her long black braids caressingly through his fingers.
"You know how to hate, and you will teach our little one. Yes, the fate I have foretold shall come to pa.s.s, and the son of Sir Jasper will live to curse the day of his birth. And now I will remove my disguise, and wash and breakfast, for I feel the calls of hunger."
The lower apartment of the hut on the heath was the very picture of abject poverty and dreary desolation. The earthen floor was broken and rough; the sunlight came sifting through the c.h.i.n.ks in the broken walls. A smoky fire of wet driftwood smoldered, under a pot on the crook. There was neither table nor chairs. A straw pallet with a wretched coverlet lay in one corner; a few broken stools were scattered around; a few articles of clothing hung on the wall. That was all.
"The little one sleeps," the man said, casting a swift glance over at the pallet. "Our pretty baby, Zara. Ah, if Sir Jasper Kingsland loves his first-born son as we love our child, or half so well, we are almost avenged already!"
"He had need to love it better than his first-born daughter!" Zara said, fiercely. "The lion loves its whelp, the tiger its cub; but he, less human than the brutes, casts off his offspring in the hour of its birth!"
"Meaning yourself, my Zara?" the man said, with his slow, soft smile.
"What would you have, degraded daughter of a degraded mother--his toy of an hour? And there is another daughter--a fair-haired, insipid nonent.i.ty of a dozen years, no more like our beautiful one here than a farthing rush-light is like the stars of heaven."
He drew down the tattered quilt, and gazed with shining eyes of love and admiration at the sleeping face of a child, a baby girl of scarce two years, the cherub face rosy with sleep, smiling in her dreams; the long, silky black lashes sweeping the flushed cheek; the abundant, feathery, jet-black curls floating loosely about--an exquisite picture of blooming, healthful, beautiful childhood.
Zara came to where the man knelt.
"My beautiful one! my rosebud!" she murmured. "Pietro, the sun shines on nothing half so lovely in this lower world!"
"And yet the black, bad blood of the Gitana flows in her veins, too.
She is a Spanish gypsy, as her mother and grandmother before her. Nay, not her mother, since the blue blood of all the Kingsland"s flows in her veins."
"Never!" cried Zara, her eyes ablaze. "If I thought one drop of that man"s bitter blood throbbed in my heart, the first knife I met should let it forth. Look at me!" she wildly cried, "look at me, Pietro--Zara, your wife! Have I one look of him or his abhorred English race?"
"My Zara, no! You are Sir Jasper Kingsland"s daughter, but there is no look of the great Sir Jasper in your gypsy face, nor in the face of our darling, either. She is all our own!"
"I would strangle her in her cradle, dearly as I love her, else!" the woman said, her pa.s.sionate face aflame. "Pietro, my blood is like liquid fire when I think of him and my mother"s wrongs."
"Wait, Zara--wait. The wheel will turn and our time come. And now for breakfast!"
She whipped off the pot, removed the lid, and a savory gush of steam filled the room. The man Pietro laughed.
"Our poached hare smells appetizing. Keep the choicest morsel for the mother, Zara, and tell her I will be with her presently. There!
Achmet the Astrologer lies in a heap."
He had deftly taken off his flowing cloak, his long, silvery beard and hair, and flung them together in a corner, and now he stood in the center of the room, a stalwart young fellow of thirty or thereabouts, with great Spanish eyes and profuse curling hair of an inky blackness.
"Let me but wash this white enamel off my face," he said, giving himself a shake, "and Pietro is himself again. Sir Jasper would hardly recognize Achmet, I fancy, if he saw him now."
He walked to a shelf on which was placed a wash-bowl and towel, and plunged his face and head into the cold water. Five minutes" vigorous splashing and rubbing, and he emerged, his pallid face brown as a berry, his black hair in a snarl of crisp curls.
"And now to satisfy the inner man," he said, walking over to the pot, seizing a wooden spoon, and drawing up a cricket. "My tramp of last night and this morning has made me famously hungry, Zara."
"And the hare soup is good," said Zara. "While you breakfast, Pietro, I will go to mother. Come up when you finish."
A steep stair-way that was like a ladder led to the loft. Zara ascended this with agile fleetness, and the late astrologer was left alone at his very unmagician-like work of sc.r.a.ping the pot with a wooden spoon. Once or twice, as the fancy crossed him of the contrast between Achmet, the Astrologer reading the stars, and Pietro the tramp sc.r.a.ping the bones of the stolen hare, he laughed grimly to himself.
"And the world is made up of just such contrasts," he thought, "and Pietro at his homely breakfast is more to be dreaded than Achmet casting the horoscope. Ah! Sir Jasper Kingsland, it is a very fine thing to be a baronet with fifteen thousand pounds a year, a n.o.ble ancestral seat, a wife you love, and a son you adore. And yet Pietro, the vagabond tramp--the sunburned gypsy, with stolen hares to eat, and rags to wear, and a hut to lodge in--would not exchange places with you this bright March day. We have sworn vendetta to you and all of your blood, and we will keep our vow!"
His swarthy face darkened with pa.s.sionate vindictiveness as he arose.
""As a man sows so shall he reap,"" he muttered between his clinched teeth, setting his face toward Kingsland Court. "You, my Lord of Kingsland, have sown the wind. You shall learn what it is to reap the whirlwind!"
"Pietro! Pietro!" crowed a little voice, gleefully. "Papa Pietro!
take Sunbeam!"
The little sleeper in the bed had sat up, her bright, dark face sparkling, two little dimpled arms outstretched.