“If you do, how will you be the loser?—your family harasses and confines you—your country would shout to see you at the stake, for you have some heretical feelings about you, Isidora. And for the rest—”
“God!” said the poor victim, clasping her hands, and looking upwards, “God, aid me in this extremity!”
“If I am to wait here only as a witness to your devotions,” said Melmoth with sullen asperity, “my stay will not be long.”
“You cannot leave me, then, to struggle with fear and perplexity alone! How is it possible for me to escape, even if—”
“By whatever means I possess of entering this place and retiring unobserved—by the same you may effect your escape. If you have resolution, the effort will cost you little—if love—nothing. Speak, shall I be here at this hour tomorrow night, to conduct you to liberty and—” Safety he would have added, but his voice faltered.
“Tomorrow night,” said Isidora, after a long pause, and in accents almost inarticulate. She closed the casement as she spoke, and Melmoth slowly departed.
XXIII
If he to thee no answer give,
I’ll give to thee a sign;
A secret known to nought that live,
Save but to me and mine. …Gone to be married. …
Shakespeare
The whole of the next day was occupied by Doña Clara, to whom letter-writing was a rare, troublesome, and momentous task, in reading over and correcting her answer to her husband’s letter; in which examination she found so much to correct, interline, alter, modify, expunge, and new-model, that finally Doña Clara’s epistle very much resembled the work she was now employed in, namely, that of overcasting a piece of tapestry wrought by her grandmother, representing the meeting of king Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The new work, instead of repairing, made fearful havoc among the old; but Doña Clara went on, like her countryman at Mr. Peter’s puppet-show, playing away (with her needle) in a perfect shower of backstrokes, fore-strokes, side-thrusts, and counter-thrusts, till not a figure in the tapestry could know himself again. The faded face of Solomon was garnished with a florid beard of scarlet silk (which Fra Jose at first told her she must rip out, as it made Solomon very little better than Judas) that made him resemble a boiled scallop. The farthingale of the queen of Sheba was expanded to an enormous hoop, of whose shrunk and pallid wearer it might be truly said, “Minima est pars sui.” The dog that, in the original tapestry, stood by the spurred and booted heel of the oriental monarch (who was clad in Spanish costume), by dint of a few tufts of black and yellow satin, was converted into a tiger—a transformation which his grinning fangs rendered as authentic as heart could wish. And the parrot perched on the queen’s shoulder, with the help of a train of green and gold, which the ignorant mistook for her majesty’s mantle, proved a very passable peacock.
As little trace of her original epistle did Doña Clara’s present one bear, as did her elaborate overcasting to the original and painful labours of her grandmother. In both, however, Doña Clara (who scorned to flinch) went over the same ground with dim eye, and patient touch, and inextinguishable and remorseless assiduity. The letter, such as it was, was still sufficiently characteristic of the writer. Some passages of it the reader shall be indulged with—and we reckon on his gratitude for not insisting on his perusal of the whole. The authentic copy, from which we are favoured with the extracts, runs thus.
Your daughter takes to her religion like mother’s milk; and well may she do so, considering that the trunk of our family was planted in the genuine soil of the Catholic church, and that every branch of it must flourish there or perish. For a Neophyte (as Fra Jose wills me to word it), she is as promising a sprout as one should wish to see flourishing within the pale of the holy church;—and for a heathen, she is so amenable, submissive, and of such maidenly suavity, that for the comportment of her person, and the discreet and virtuous ordering of her mind, I have no Christian mother to envy. Nay, I sometimes take pity on them, when I see the lightness, the exceeding vain carriage, and the unadvised eagerness to be wedded, of the best trained maidens of our country. This our daughter hath nothing of, either in her outward demeanour, or inward mind. She talks little, therefore she cannot think much; and she dreams not of the light devices of love, and is therefore well qualified for the marriage proposed unto her. …
One thing, dear spouse of my soul, I would have thee to take notice of, and guard like the apple of thine eye—our daughter is deranged, but never, on thy discretion, mention this to Don Montilla, even though he were the descendant in the right line of the Campeador, or of Gonsalvo di Cordova. Her derangement will in no wise impede or contravene her marriage—for be it known to thee, it breaks out but at times, and at such times, that the most jealous eye of man could not spy it, unless he had a foretaught intimation of it. She hath strange fantasies swimming in her brain, such as, that heretics and heathens shall not be everlastingly damned—(God and the saints protect us!)—which must clearly proceed from madness—but which her Catholic husband, if ever he comes to the knowledge of them, shall know how to expel, by aid of the church, and conjugal authority. That thou may’st better know the truth of what I hereby painfully certify, the saints and Fra Jose (who will not let me tell a lie, because he in a manner holds my pen) can witness, that about four days before we
