Inez cried out aloud in her alarm, when she thus unexpectedly found herself in darkness, a prisoner in her own home. With mingled threats, entreaties, and promises she conjured the false Chico to open the door. The traitor, however, thought time far too precious to wait either to listen or to reply. He could not, indeed, pa.s.s through the grating, of which Teresa had taken the key; but he easily made his way out by the same pa.s.sage as that through which he had entered, one which communicated with the now empty stable.
Inez now exerted all her strength in the endeavour to force open the door, but it resisted her utmost efforts. The air in the armoury was close and confined. Inez could hardly breathe; she was faint with exhaustion and terror. Her cries for help were not heard, though she tried to call out loud enough for her voice to reach some pa.s.ser-by in the street. Inez at last, finding all her exertions vain, could only await in discomfort and misery the return of Teresa, who would liberate her from her prison.
How long, how intolerably wearisome was the time of waiting! What painful companions to poor Inez in her solitude were her own reflections! She could not doubt that the family had been robbed by the worthless Chico,--robbed of their all at the very time when its possession was most sorely needed. The short-lived hopes which the sight of the treasure had raised in the mind of Inez, had vanished from her view like some mirage in the desert before the thirsty traveller"s eyes. Poverty--dest.i.tution--appeared all the more dreadful from contrast with abundance beheld, but not enjoyed.
The minor cares of the moment lent their weight to add to the pressure of greater. Inez was uneasy at the thought of Donna Benita awaking from her siesta, and being frightened at finding no one beside her.
Alcala, too, must need his lemonade, and would miss his Book,--the precious volume which Inez had still in her bosom. Add to all this the physical distress, the sense of suffocation consequent on confinement in a place in which there was no circulation of air, and some idea may be formed of the misery endured by Alcala"s sister.
The impatience of Inez had risen to the point of agony long before, to her intense relief, she heard in the vaulted pa.s.sage the heavy step of Teresa, wearily returning from her visit to the shrine of her patron saint.
"Release me--oh, release me!" cried out Inez from her place of confinement.
Teresa was so much astonished by hearing the cry for help, m.u.f.fled as it came through the closed door of the armoury, that she dropped the key of the grating, which she was just about to open.
"Make haste--or I die!" gasped poor Inez.
Teresa made what haste her infirmities and her amazement would permit; but she had to stoop and pick up the key, fit it into the hole, and then push open the grating, and every moment thus employed was a moment of torture to Inez. At length, guided by the voice of her mistress, the old servant entered the patio, and turned round where the armoury door stood close behind the grating. In another second Inez, trembling and gasping for breath, was released from her terrible prison.
"In the name of all the saints, how came you to be locked up here?"
exclaimed the wondering duenna.
"Chico has robbed us--I can say no more now!" faltered Inez, scarcely able to speak. "Go quickly to Donna Benita,--she may want help,--while I--" The sentence was never ended; for Inez, exhausted and faint as she felt, was already on her way to her brother"s apartment.
"Chico has robbed us!" echoed the bewildered Teresa, lifting up her hands in amazement. "Robbed the house, and shut up the lady! I know not what there was in the place that the poorest thief in Seville would think it worth his while to take!"
Glancing around her, Teresa soon perceived the disordered state of the patio; the marble round the parterre enc.u.mbered with heaps of dust and earth, and in the ground under the bushes a hole large enough for an infant"s grave. Something had surely been dug out, something had been carried away. Teresa was puzzling her brain to divine what could have occurred during her absence, when she was alarmed by sounds,--but the cause of these sounds must be reserved for the ensuing chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] _Vide_ "Daybreak in Spain."
[19] A kind of police.
CHAPTER XVII.
ARRESTED.
"Inez!--truant! I have lost you all the morning!" cried Alcala, as he heard the approach of his sister. Inez was surprised on entering the room to see that the wounded man had managed to rise and dress himself without a.s.sistance. "I waited for you till I had no patience for longer waiting," continued Alcala cheerfully; "you have carried away my Book, and have been so buried in its contents that you have quite forgotten your brother."
The playful rebuke was given with a smile, which, however, vanished from the face of Alcala as soon as he turned and looked on that of his sister.
"What has happened?" exclaimed Aguilera, alarmed at the appearance of Inez, who stood with pale lips apart, as if still gasping for breath; her hair, usually smooth as satin, disordered, and pushed carelessly back from a face that bore the impress of terror and suffering.
The poor girl, exhausted both by the strain on her physical endurance and the alarm which she had undergone, came forward, sank on her knees at her brother"s feet, and burst into tears. Inez did not, however, long give vent to her emotions. Struggling to speak through her sobs, she gave an account of all that had happened,--the discovery of the treasure, the treachery of Chico, and the cruel means which he had taken to secure his own flight with the gold.
Alcala listened with breathless attention and burning indignation. The fiery young Spaniard bit his nether lip hard to keep himself from uttering the vow of deep vengeance which, a few weeks before, would have been, under lighter provocation, sternly spoken and ruthlessly kept. It was no easy task to Aguilera to wrestle down and keep under control the pa.s.sion which he now felt to be unbecoming a Christian.
Alcala, however, said not a word until Inez had finished her story.
Then he spoke in a tone of suppressed indignation.
"This false--Chico must be tracked at once, and forced to yield up his ill-gotten spoil. Would that Lepine had not yesterday started for Madrid,--his intelligence, his English energy, would have been invaluable now. Give me my writing materials, Inez. If I had but strength to go myself to the minister of justice,--surely I have strength," added Alcala, rising and supporting himself by the table, "I shall be given strength to rescue my family from want, and win back the property of my grandmother. The alguazils must at once be set on the scent of the thief."
"The alguazils!" faltered Inez, who was still in her crouching position at the feet of her brother; "O Alcala, have we no reason to dread them ourselves?"
A heavy tramping in the corridor without was as an answer to the question. Inez sprang to her feet with an exclamation of terror, as the door was opened and the room entered by a body of the Spanish police.
The flush which indignation had lately brought to Alcala"s pale face pa.s.sed away. Still leaning on the table for support, he drew himself up to his full height, and in a calm voice demanded of the alcalde who headed the party what errand had brought him to the house of a cavalier.
"I come under a warrant from the corregidor, ill.u.s.trious senor," said the alcalde, advancing towards his prisoner, and bowing low with the punctilious courtesy peculiar to Spaniards. "It is my painful duty to arrest the n.o.ble caballero."
"Upon what charge?" demanded Alcala.
"The charge of having held an unlawful meeting for the purpose of reading a forbidden Book, senor," was the answer.
"And who has preferred the charge?" asked Alcala.
"Your own servant, senor, by name Tomaso Chico, who was one of the party a.s.sembled at the meeting, and who engages to bring many other witnesses to support his accusation against you."
"Many witnesses!" murmured Inez.
"This Chico is a false villain, who has just robbed me, and who has doubtless brought the charge against his injured master to incapacitate him from pursuing the traitor, and giving him up to justice," said the indignant Alcala.
"Of that, ill.u.s.trious senor, it is not my part to judge," replied the alcalde. "I have but to perform my duty, which is to search this house for any prohibited writings or books, and to bear you off--pardon me, senor--to the prison."
Resistance or expostulation would have been utterly useless. Alcala, with quiet dignity, resumed his seat, and motioned to his sister to take one beside him, while the alguazils commenced their search. It was more rigid than it probably would have been had the cavalier slipped a few dollars into the officer"s hands. Aguilera might, perhaps, in that case, have been spared the personal search which made the wounded hidalgo colour both from a sense of violated dignity and actual physical pain. But the thought, "O my Lord, this humiliation is for Thy sake!" took all bitterness from the trial, and Alcala"s only care was to calm and rea.s.sure his terrified sister.
The search was continued for some time, and extended all over the mansion. Even the apartment of the imbecile old lady was invaded, and Donna Benita was thrown into hysterics by the strange sight of alguazils throwing open her drawers and presses, and dragging forth and flinging on the floor even her articles of dress, notwithstanding the loud indignant remonstrances of Teresa. Every place was explored, every corner searched for the forbidden Book, which, unsuspected by the alguazils, lay under the folds of the mantle of the young senorita.
Foiled in their search for Bibles, it now only remained for the alguazils to bear off their prisoner. A close conveyance was waiting at the entrance, surrounded by a little mob that had gathered to see the officers of the law bring out their captive. Inez still clung to her brother, helping to support his feeble steps, as, with guards before and behind, Alcala traversed the long lofty corridor, and entered the patio. The cavalier paused when he reached the fountain, where he wished to bid his sister farewell. He would not expose Inez to the view of the rabble, the sound of whose voices he now heard without in the street.
"Allow me a moment, senor," he said, addressing the alcalde, who bowed a.s.sent to the trifling delay. Then bending down, Alcala imprinted one kiss on the marble-cold brow of his sister.
"Be of good courage, my Inez; all will be well," whispered Alcala.
"You know not the peace and joy that is given to those who suffer for _Him_." There was no time to speak more, but with a smile which said more than his words--for it was as the reflection of Heaven"s sunshine upon him--Alcala pressed the hand of Inez, and so they parted. A prisoner for conscience" sake, the Spaniard quitted the home of his fathers, and pa.s.sed over the threshold which he was conscious that he was not likely ever to cross again.
Inez was almost stunned at first by the suddenness of the blow which had fallen upon her. She could hardly realize that she was not in a horrible dream. Was it true--could it be true--that her brother, that Don Alcala de Aguilera had been arrested as if he were a felon, and marched off to endure, in his enfeebled state, the miseries of a Spanish prison? Alcala"s danger so entirely absorbed the mind of Inez that it left no room for a thought of self; in her desolation and poverty the Spanish girl did not even ask herself, "What will become of me?"
Inez was roused from her state of half-stupefaction by Teresa, who, beating her breast, and tearing her gray hair, came up to her young mistress.
"Ah, Donna Inez! Donna Inez!" she exclaimed, "all this disgrace and misery would never have befallen the house of Aguilera had you not sold the hair of Santa Veronica!"
"Teresa, this is no time for reproaches," said Inez faintly; "we must act, we must do all in our power to aid my brother. Oh that the English senor were not absent at Madrid!"
Teresa ground her teeth at the mention of Lucius Lepine, whom she regarded as the original author of all these calamities, the villain who had corrupted the faith of her master.