'But yonder,' said he, pointing to a small building which stood at the
end of the vista. 'It is a temple consecrated to the Fates--our rites
require such holy ground.'
They passed into a narrow hall, at the end of which hung a sable
curtain. Arbaces lifted it; Ione entered, and found herself in total
darkness.
'Be not alarmed,' said the Egyptian, 'the light will rise instantly.'
While he so spoke, a soft, and warm, and gradual light diffused itself
around; as it spread over each object, Ione perceived that she was in an
apartment of moderate size, hung everywhere with black; a couch with
draperies of the same hue was beside her. In the centre of the room was
a small altar, on which stood a tripod of bronze. At one side, upon a
lofty column of granite, was a colossal head of the blackest marble,
which she perceived, by the crown of wheat-ears that encircled the brow,
represented the great Egyptian goddess. Arbaces stood before the altar:
he had laid his garland on the shrine, and seemed occupied with pouring
into the tripod the contents of a brazen vase; suddenly from that tripod
leaped into life a blue, quick, darting, irregular flame; the Egyptian
drew back to the side of Ione, and muttered some words in a language
unfamiliar to her ear; the curtain at the back of the altar waved
tremulously to and fro--it parted slowly, and in the aperture which was
thus made, Ione beheld an indistinct and pale landscape, which gradually
grew brighter and clearer as she gazed; at length she discovered plainly
trees, and rivers, and meadows, and all the beautiful diversity of the
richest earth. At length, before the landscape, a dim shadow glided; it
rested opposite to Ione; slowly the same charm seemed to operate upon it
as over the rest of the scene; it took form and shape, and lo!--in its
feature and in its form Ione beheld herself!
Then the scene behind the spectre faded away, and was succeeded by the
representation of a gorgeous palace; a throne was raised in the centre
of its hall, the dim forms of slaves and guards were ranged around it,
and a pale hand held over the throne the likeness of a diadem.
A new actor now appeared; he was clothed from head to foot in a dark
robe--his face was concealed--he knelt at the feet of the shadowy
Ione--he clasped her hand--he pointed to the throne, as if to invite her
to ascend it.
The Neapolitan's heart beat violently. 'Shall the shadow disclose
itself?' whispered a voice beside her--the voice of Arbaces.
'Ah, yes!' answered Ione, softly.
Arbaces raised his hand--the spectre seemed to drop the mantle that
concealed its form--and Ione shrieked--it was Arbaces himself that thus
knelt before her.
'This is, indeed, thy fate!' whispered again the Egyptian's voice in her
ear. 'And thou art destined to be the bride of Arbaces.'
Ione started--the black curtain closed over the phantasmagoria: and
Arbaces himself--the real, the living Arbaces--was at her feet.
'Oh, Ione!' said he, passionately gazing upon her, 'listen to one who
has long struggled vainly with his love. I adore thee! The Fates do
not lie--thou art destined to be mine--I have sought the world around,
and found none like thee. From my youth upward, I have sighed for such
as thou art. I have dreamed till I saw thee--I wake, and I behold thee.
Turn not away from me, Ione; think not of me as thou hast thought; I am
not that being--cold, insensate, and morose, which I have seemed to
thee. Never woman had lover so devoted--so passionate as I will be to
Ione. Do not struggle in my clasp: see--I release thy hand. Take it
from me if thou wilt--well be it so! But do not reject me, Ione--do not
rashly reject--judge of thy power over him whom thou canst thus
transform. I, who never knelt to mortal being, kneel to thee. I, who
have commanded fate, receive from thee my own. Ione, tremble not, thou
art my queen--my goddess--be my bride! All the wishes thou canst form
shall be fulfilled. The ends of the earth shall minister to thee--pomp,
power, luxury, shall be thy slaves. Arbaces shall have no ambition,
save the pride of obeying thee. Ione, turn upon me those eyes--shed upon
me thy smile. Dark is my soul when thy face is hid from it: shine over
me, my sun--my heaven--my daylight!--Ione, Ione--do not reject my love!'
Alone, and in the power of this singular and fearful man, Ione was not
yet terrified; the respect of his language, the softness of his voice,
reassured her; and, in her own purity, she felt protection. But she was
confused--astonished: it was some moments before she could recover the
power of reply.
'Rise, Arbaces!' said she at length; and she resigned to him once more
her hand, which she as quickly withdrew again, when she felt upon it the
burning pressure of his lips. 'Rise! and if thou art serious, if thy
language be in earnest...'
'If!' said he tenderly.
'Well, then, listen to me: you have been my guardian, my friend, my
monitor; for this new character I was not prepared--think not,' she
added quickly, as she saw his dark eyes glitter with the fierceness of
his passion--'think not that I scorn--that I am untouched--that I am not
honored by this homage; but, say--canst thou hear me calmly?'
'Ay, though thy words were lightning, and could blast me!'
'I love another!' said Ione, blushingly, but in a firm voice.
'By the gods--by hell!' shouted Arbaces, rising to his fullest height;
'dare not tell me that--dare not mock me--it is impossible!--Whom hast
thou seen--whom known? Oh, Ione, it is thy woman's invention, thy
woman's art that speaks--thou wouldst gain time; I have surprised--I
have terrified thee. Do with me as thou wilt--say that thou lovest not
me; but say not that thou lovest another!'
'Alas!' began Ione; and then, appalled before his sudden and
unlooked-for violence, she burst into tears.
Arbaces came nearer to her--his breath glowed fiercely on her cheek; he
wound his arms round her--she sprang from his embrace. In the struggle
a tablet fell from her bosom on the ground: Arbaces perceived, and
seized it--it was the letter that morning received from Glaucus. Ione
sank upon the couch, half dead with terror.
Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing; the Neapolitan did not
dare to gaze upon him: she did not see the deadly paleness that came
over his countenance--she marked not his withering frown, nor the
quivering of his lip, nor the convulsions that heaved his breast. He
read it to the end, and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said,
in a voice of deceitful calmness:
'Is the writer of this the man thou lovest?'
Ione sobbed, but answered not.
'Speak!' he rather shrieked than said.
'It is--it is!
'And his name--it is written here--his name is Glaucus!'
Ione, clasping her hands, looked round as for succour or escape.
'Then hear me,' said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper; 'thou
shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arms! What! thinkest thou
Arbaces will brook a rival such as this puny Greek? What! thinkest thou
that he has watched the fruit ripen, to yield it to another! Pretty
fool--no! Thou art mine--all--only mine: and thus--thus I seize and
claim thee!' As he spoke, he caught Ione in his arms; and, in that
ferocious grasp, was all the energy--less of love than of revenge.
But to Ione despair gave supernatural strength: she again tore herself
from him--she rushed to that part of the room by which she had
entered--she half withdrew the curtain--he had seized her--again she
broke away from him--and fell, exhausted, and with a loud shriek, at the
base of the column which supported the head of the Egyptian goddess.
Arbaces paused for a moment, as if to regain his breath; and thence once
more darted upon his prey.
At that instant the curtain was rudely torn aside, the Egyptian felt a
fierce and strong grasp upon his shoulder. He turned--he beheld before
him the flashing eyes of Glaucus, and the pale, worn, but menacing,
countenance of Apaecides. 'Ah,' he muttered, as he glared from one to
the other, 'what Fury hath sent ye hither?'
'Ate,' answered Glaucus; and he closed at once with the Egyptian.
Meanwhile, Apaecides raised his sister, now lifeless, from the ground;
his strength, exhausted by a mind long overwrought, did not suffice to
bear her away, light and delicate though her shape: he placed her,
therefore, on the couch, and stood over her with a brandishing knife,
watching the contest between Glaucus and the Egyptian, and ready to
plunge his weapon in the bosom of Arbaces should he be victorious in the
struggle. There is, perhaps, nothing on earth so terrible as the naked
and unarmed contest of animal strength, no weapon but those which Nature
supplies to rage. Both the antagonists were now locked in each other's
grasp--the hand of each seeking the throat of the other--the face drawn
back--the fierce eyes flashing--the muscles strained--the veins
swelled--the lips apart--the teeth set--both were strong beyond the
ordinary power of men, both animated by relentless wrath; they coiled,
they wound, around each other; they rocked to and fro--they swayed from
end to end of their confined arena--they uttered cries of ire and
revenge--they were now before the altar--now at the base of the column
where the struggle had commenced: they drew back for breath--Arbaces
leaning against the column--Glaucus a few paces apart.
'O ancient goddess!' exclaimed Arbaces, clasping the column, and raising
his eyes toward the sacred image it supported, 'protect thy
chosen--proclaim they vengeance against this thing of an upstart creed,
who with sacrilegious violence profanes thy resting-place and assails
thy servant.'
As he spoke, the still and vast features of the goddess seemed suddenly
to glow with life; through the black marble, as through a transparent
veil, flushed luminously a crimson and burning hue; around the head
played and darted coruscations of livid lightning; the eyes became like
balls of lurid fire, and seemed fixed in withering and intolerable wrath
upon the countenance of the Greek. Awed and appalled by this sudden and
mystic answer to the prayer of his foe, and not free from the hereditary
superstitions of his race, the cheeks of Glaucus paled before that
strange and ghastly animation of the marble--his knees knocked
together--he stood, seized with a divine panic, dismayed, aghast, half
unmanned before his foe! Arbaces gave him not breathing time to recover
his stupor: 'Die, wretch!' he shouted, in a voice of thunder, as he
sprang upon the Greek; 'the Mighty Mother claims thee as a living
sacrifice!' Taken thus by surprise in the first consternation of his
superstitious fears, the Greek lost his footing--the marble floor was as
smooth as glass--he slid--he fell. Arbaces planted his foot on the
breast of his fallen foe. Apaecides, taught by his sacred profession,
as well as by his knowledge of Arbaces, to distrust all miraculous
interpositions, had not shared the dismay of his companion; he rushed
forward--his knife gleamed in the air--the watchful Egyptian caught his
arm as it descended--one wrench of his powerful hand tore the weapon
from the weak grasp of the priest--one sweeping blow stretched him to
the earth--with a loud and exulting yell Arbaces brandished the knife on
high. Glaucus gazed upon his impending fate with unwinking eyes, and in
the stern and scornful resignation of a fallen gladiator, when, at that
awful instant, the floor shook under them with a rapid and convulsive
throe--a mightier spirit than that of the Egyptian was abroad!--a giant
and crushing power, before which sunk into sudden impotence his passion
and his arts. IT woke--it stirred--that Dread Demon of the
Earthquake--laughing to scorn alike the magic of human guile and the
malice of human wrath. As a Titan, on whom the mountains are piled, it
roused itself from the sleep of years, it moved on its tortured
couch--the caverns below groaned and trembled beneath the motion of its
limbs. In the moment of his vengeance and his power, the self-prized
demigod was humbled to his real clay. Far and wide along the soil went
a hoarse and rumbling sound--the curtains of the chamber shook as at the
blast of a storm--the altar rocked--the tripod reeled, and high over the
place of contest, the column trembled and waved from side to side--the
sable head of the goddess tottered and fell from its pedestal--and as
the Egyptian stooped above his intended victim, right upon his bended
form, right between the shoulder and the neck, struck the marble mass!
The shock stretched him like the blow of death, at once, suddenly,
without sound or motion, or semblance of life, upon the floor,
apparently crushed by the very divinity he had impiously animated and
invoked!
'The Earth has preserved her children,' said Glaucus, staggering to his
feet. 'Blessed be the dread convulsion! Let us worship the providence
of the gods!' He assisted Apaecides to rise, and then turned upward the
face of Arbaces; it seemed locked as in death; blood gushed from the
Egyptian's lips over his glittering robes; he fell heavily from the arms
of Glaucus, and the red stream trickled slowly along the marble. Again
the earth shook beneath their feet; they were forced to cling to each
other; the convulsion ceased as suddenly as it came; they tarried no
longer; Glaucus bore Ione lightly in his arms, and they fled from the
unhallowed spot. But scarce had they entered the garden than they were
met on all sides by flying and disordered groups of women and slaves,
whose festive and glittering garments contrasted in mockery the solemn
terror of the hour; they did not appear to heed the strangers--they were
occupied only with their own fears. After the tranquillity of sixteen
years, that burning and treacherous soil again menaced destruction; they
