CHAPTER II.
THE POISONED WINE.
"Whatever can untune th' harmonious soul,
And its mild reasoning faculties control;
Give false ideas, raise desires profane,
And whirl in eddies the tumultuous brain;
Mixed with curs'd art, she direfully around,
Through all his nerves diffused the sad compound."
OVID.
When Donna Isidora rushed from Quentin, she took her way unerringly (as she knew the villa well) up several flights of stairs, through passages and suites of apartments, where he could not have followed her without a guide, until she reached a little room, which had been the library and confessional of the family chaplain.
Remote from the rest of the house, its shelves full of books, its table and desk littered with letters and papers, with little religious pictures on the walls, a Madonna crowned by a white chaplet on a bracket, a vase of withered lilies, and other little matters indicative of taste, were all untouched as when the poor Padre Florez had last been there. In rambling over the villa, if Ribeaupierre's dragoons had been in the chamber, they found nothing in it which they deemed valuable enough to destroy or carry off.
Here it was that Donna Isidora had been, when, in a fit of petulance, she had before absented herself from Quentin. She set down the lamp, and taking up a book which she had been previously perusing, and which she had found lying upon the desk where the padre had left it open, for its pages were covered with dust, she muttered—
"Let me read it again, and let me be assured; but oh, if I should destroy him or myself! What matter, then? Better both die than that she should have him, whoever she is—wherever she is! Oh, Padre Florez—Padre Florez, if this anecdote you have left in my way should be but a snare to death!"
Then she ground her little pearly teeth as she spoke, and turned with trembling hands the dust-covered page which the chaplain's hand had indicated for some scientific purpose with certain marks in pencil, ere he had cast the volume on his desk, doubtless when scared from the villa by the irruption of Ribeaupierre's dragoons.
It was a quarto volume on poisons, printed at Madrid, and the paragraph which interested Isidora ran as follows.
"Note of a medicated wine, which produceth various emotions and quaint fancies, but chiefly love and madness for a time in those who partake thereof.
"Celius, an ancient Latin writer, telleth us of a company of young men, who were drinking in a taberna of the luxurious city of Agrigentum in Sicily, in those days when the tyrant Phalaris usurped the sovereignty thereof, and who, on a sudden, were seized by a malady of the brain. Being in sight of the sea, they believed themselves to be on board of a ship which was about to be cast away in a storm, and while clamouring and shouting wildly, to save themselves, they flung out of the windows the whole of the furniture; and in this belief they continued for some hours, even after being brought before a magistrate, whom they mistook for a pilot, and besought in moving terms to steer the galley aright, lest she should founder.
"On others, this wine acted as a philtre, and on seeing women, they fell madly in love with them, threatening their own destruction if their love were not responded to.
"I was persuaded in my own mind, says Celius, that this singular malady could only arise from some adulteration of the wine, and therefore had the landlord summoned before a magistrate, who compelled him to confess that he was in the habit of adulterating wines with a mixture of henbane and mandrakes (the root of which is said to bear a resemblance to the human form), and which must thus doubtless be considered the cause of this singular disease."
"Mandrake and henbane—a little of this mixture, and Quentin might love me! There is no sea here, and he could never fancy the villa to be a ship," thought Isidora, weeping tears of bitterness and wounded pride. "If I can only bring this delirium on him, the real truth of his heart may come out, and I shall learn whether he loves me or loves me not, and who this other is that he prefers to me. But if in his madness—pho! I can defend myself. Oh, Padre Florez, was it a good or bad angel that tempted you to leave this open book in my way, and lured me to read it?"
A strange and deep dark smile came over the lovely face of this wild and wilful girl as she took up the lamp and approached the cabinet of the worthy Padre Florez, whose room seemed quite as much a laboratory as a library, for goodly rows of phials and bottles contested for place with the Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, the Acts of the Council of Trent, the Annals of Ferrereas, &c., for doubtless he had been the doctor—a curer of bodies as well as of souls—in his comarca, or district of Estremadura.
Hastily and impatiently she passed her lamp along the rows of little drawers containing herbs and simples, and the shelves of phials, the labels of which were quite enigmas to her; but on the third occasion a cry of joy escaped her.
"Las Mandragoras—el Beleño!" she exclaimed, as she snatched two small bottles, each full of a clear liquid, which bore those names. But now a terrible yet natural doubt seized her.
"How much of these may I pour in this wine without destroying us both?—what matter how much—what matter how much, so far as I am concerned? My life is neither a valuable nor a happy one; but he—have I a right to destroy him, perhaps body and soul—ah, Madre divina, body and soul, too! No matter—I must learn the truth, and whether he loves or only fears me."
In fact, the sudden passion which she had conceived for Quentin seemed to have disordered her brain.
She heard him calling her at that moment, and as there was no time to lose in further consideration, she filled a small phial from both bottles, thrust it in her bosom, and left the room, previously, by what impulse we know not, concealing the book of the padre, who could little have foreseen the dangerous use to which its open pages would be put.
With a heart that palpitated painfully between hope and fear, love and anger, Isidora quitted the room of the padre to return to Quentin.
He, in the meantime, had become greatly alarmed by her protracted absence, and procuring a light by flashing powder in the pan of one of his pistols, he was proceeding in search of her through the chambers of the villa, from the walls of which many a grim old fellow in beard and breast-plate looked grimly and sternly at him out of his frame:—many a grave hidalgo by Diego Velasquez were there, and many a scriptural Murillo, sold, perhaps, by that great painter for bread in the streets of his native Seville.
Of all the chateaux en Espagne, this Villa de Maciera, with its episodes, was, perhaps, the last of which Quentin could have imagined himself to be even temporarily master. Gloomy, empty, and deserted, it seemed to be veritably one of the mysterious mansions of which he had read so much in the romances of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, who was then in the zenith of her fame.
"It is, indeed, a devil of a predicament," he muttered.
Again and again he called her name aloud, without hearing other response than the echoes. The place was mournfully still, and now the wind and rain had ceased, and the night had become calm. Well, there was some comfort in that; with morning he might resume his journey; but this Spanish girl—his heart trembled for her, for there seemed to be no extravagant impulse to which she was not capable of giving way.
To have responded to her wayward love, and then to have "levanted" on the first convenient opportunity, "a way we (sometimes) have in the army," might have been the treacherous measure adopted by many; but Quentin, apart from his admiration of her beauty, had a sincere regard for the girl, and though young in years, felt older by experience than those years warranted.
He thought she might have retired to her room—to rest, perhaps; yet he could not hear her breathing, for when he listened at the door, all was still within.
He knocked gently, but there was no response, so pushing it open, he entered. Isidora had told him that this was the apartment she usually occupied when residing with the Condesa de Maciera.
It was the perfection of a little bed-chamber; elaborate candelabra of cut crystal glittered like prisms on the white marble mantelpiece, the central ornament of which was an exquisite crucifix of ivory. The floor was of polished oak, and the walls were hung with some charming water-colour landscapes of the adjacent mountain scenery, in chaste and narrow frames: and then the little bed, half buried amid muslin curtains of the purest white, was much more like an English than a Spanish one.
Tent-form, the flowing drapery depended from a gilt coronet; the pillows, edged with the finest lace, were all untouched and unpressed, so Donna Isidora was not there.
Quentin started as he saw her figure suddenly reflected in a large cheval-glass. She was standing behind him, near the door of the apartment, regarding him with an expression of mournful interest in her eyes; her face pale as death, her hair flowing and dishevelled over her shoulders, her hands pressed upon her bosom, and seeming wondrously white when contrasted with the deep scarlet velvet of her corset; her flounces of black and scarlet, and the taper legs ending in the pretty Cordovan shoes, making altogether a very charming portrait.
"Senor," she said, in a low voice, "what were you seeking here?"
"I sought you, Isidora; I became seriously alarmed——"
"You do, then, care for me, senor—a little?"
"Care for you, dearest Isidora——"
"Yet you drove me away from you!" she said, in a voice full of tender reproach.
"Do not say so," replied Quentin, taking her hot and trembling hands in his, and feeling very bewildered indeed.
"Your studied coldness repelled me. Ah, Dios mio! how calm, how collected you are, and I—! get me some water, friend—or some wine, rather; and this other—this other—she——"
"Who, senora?"
"Some wine, my friend. I am cold and flushed by turns. Some wine, I implore you!"
"Permit me to lead you from this," said Quentin, conducting her back to the boudoir, where he seated her on the sofa by his side, and endeavoured to soothe her; but the memory of the late scene, and the fire of jealousy that glowed in her heart, filled it with mingled anger and love.
While Quentin, all unconscious of what was about to ensue, was untwisting the wire of a champagne flask, she—while the light seemed to flash from her eyes, and her cheek flushed deeply—emptied the entire contents of her secret phial into a crystal goblet, and when the sparkling wine, with its pink tint and myriad globules, frothed and effervesced, as Quentin poured it in, the poison—for such it was—became at once concealed.
"Drink with me," said she, kissing the cup and presenting it to him; then, feverish and excited as he was, he took a deep draught; after which, with another of her strange smiles, the donna drank the rest, and, as she did so, the pallor of her little face, and the unnatural light in her eyes, attracted the attention of Quentin.
He took her hands in his, and began to speak, saying he knew not what, for he seemed to have lost all control over his tongue; then the room appeared to swim round him, while objects became wavering and indistinct.
"What—what is this that is coming over me?" he exclaimed.
"Death, perhaps," said Isidora, laying her head on his shoulder, and pressing his hand to her lips; "but, mi vida—mi querido—you will not go from me to her?"
"To whom?"
"She—that other whom you love?"
"Flora—Flora Warrender!" exclaimed Quentin, wildly, as the potent wine and its dangerous adjuncts began to affect his brain.
Whether the padre's beleño was the exact compound referred to by his ancient authority, we are not prepared to say, but the effect of the cup imbibed by Quentin was sufficiently disastrous.
The objects in the room began to multiply with wonderful rapidity; the white silk drapery of the walls seemed to be covered with falling stars; the pale blue damask curtains of the windows assumed strange shapes, and appeared to wave to and fro. The bronze statuettes on the mantelpiece, the tables and buffets, appeared to be performing fandangos and other fantastic dances, and, as the delirium crept over him, Quentin grasped at the back of a sofa to save himself from falling, while Isidora still clasped him in her arms; and now he believed her to be Flora Warrender, and as such addressed, and even caressed her.
Another draught of pure champagne, which he took greedily to quench the burning thirst that now seized him, completed the temporary overthrow of his reason.
Isidora seemed to pass away, and Flora Warrender took her place. He wept as he kissed her hands, and spoke with sorrow of their long, long separation; of the dangers and privations he had undergone, and of Cosmo's tyranny; of the joy with which he beheld her again, and now, that they never more would part; and thus, with every endearing word, he unconsciously stabbed his rash and impetuous Spaniard, who, although he spoke in English, and she was half delirious with the wine, knew too well that when Quentin kissed her thick, dark wavy hair that curled over her broad low forehead, and pressed her hand to his heart, he was thinking of another, for whom these endearments were intended.
At last, stupefaction came over him, and sinking on a fauteuil, he remembered no more.