CHAPTER V.
MOTHER AND SON
“Oh, my son, Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would to God, I might die for thee! Oh! Absalom! my son, my son!”
That same night; that night of storm and tempest without, and still fiercer storm and tempest within; that same night – three hours later; in a narrow, dark, noisome cell, with grated window and iron-barred door, with a rude pallet of straw comprising the furniture, and one flickering, uncertain lamp lighting its tomb-like darkness, sat two young men.
One of these was a youth of three-and-twenty; tall and slender in form, with a dark, clear complexion; a strikingly-handsome face; a fierce, flashing eye of fire; thick, clustering curls of jet; a daring, reckless air, and an expression of mingled scorn, hatred, defiance and fierceness in his face. There were fetters on his slender wrists and ankles, and he wore the degrading dress of a condemned felon.
By his side sat Lord Ernest Villiers – his handsome face looking deeply sad and grave.
“And this is all, Germaine?” he said, sorrowfully. “Can I do nothing at all for you?”
“Nothing. What do you think I want? Is not the government, in its fatherly care, going to clothe, feed, and provide for me during the remainder of my mortal life? Why, man, do you think me unreasonable?”
He laughed a bitter, mocking laugh, terrible to hear.
“Germaine, Heaven knows, if I could do anything for you, I would!” said Lord Villiers, excitedly. “My father, like all the rest of the world, believes you guilty, and I can do nothing. But if it will be any consolation, remember that you leave one in England who still believes you innocent.”
“Thank you, Villiers. There is another, too, who, I think, will hardly believe I have taken to petty pilfering, your father and the rest of the magnates of the land to the contrary, notwithstanding.”
“Who is that, Germaine?”
“My mother.”
“Where is she? Can I bring her to you?” said Lord Villiers, starting up.
“You are very kind; but it is not in your power to do so,” said the prisoner, quietly. “My mother is probably in Yetholm with her tribe. You don’t need to be told now I am a gipsy; my interesting family history was pretty generally made known at my trial.”
Again he laughed that short, sarcastic laugh so sad to hear.
“My dear fellow, I think none the worse of you for that. Gipsy or Saxon, I cannot forget you once saved my life, and that you have for years been my best friend.”
“Well, it is pleasant to know that there is one in the world who cares for me; and if I do die like a dog among my fellow-convicts, my last hour will be cheered by the thought,” said the young man, drawing a deep breath. “If ever you see my mother, which is not likely, tell her I was grateful for all she did for me; you need not tell her I was innocent, for she will know that. There is another, too – ”
He paused, and his dark face flushed, and then grew paler than before.
“My dear Germaine, if there is any message I can carry for you, you have only to command me,” said the young lord, warmly.
“No; it is as well she should not know it – better, perhaps,” muttered the prisoner, half to himself. “I thank you for your friendly kindness, Villiers; but it will not be necessary.”
“And your mother, Germaine, how am I to know her?”
“Oh, I forgot! Well, she’s called the gipsy Ketura, and is queen of her tribe. It is something to be a queen’s son is it not?” he said, with another hard, short laugh.
“Ketura, did you say?” repeated Lord Villiers, in surprise.
“Yes. What has surprised you now?”
“Why, the simple fact that I saw her three hours ago.”
“Saw her! Where?”
“At my father’s house. She came to see him.”
Germaine sprung up, and while his eyes fiercely flashed, he exclaimed:
“Came to see Lord De Courcy? My mother came to see him? Villiers, you do not mean to say that my mother came to beg for my life?”
“My dear fellow, I really do not know. The interview was a private one. All I do know is, that half an hour after my father returned among his guests, looking very much as if he had just seen a ghost. In fact, I never saw him with so startled a look in all my life before. Whether your mother had anything to do with it or not, I really cannot say.”
“If I thought she could stoop to sue for me,” exclaimed the youth, through his clenched teeth; “but no, my mother was too proud to do it. My poor, poor mother! How was she looking, Villiers?”
“Very haggard, very thin, very worn and wild; very wretched, in a word – though that was to be expected.”
“Poor mother!” murmured the youth, with quivering lips, as he bowed his face in his manacled hands, and his manly chest rose and fell with strong emotion.
“My dear fellow,” said Lord Villiers, with tears in his own eyes, “your mother shall never want while I live.”
The prisoner wrung his hand in silence.
“If you like, I will try to discover her, and send her to you before you – ”
His voice choked, and he stopped.
“My dear Villiers, you have indeed proven yourself my friend,” said the convict, gratefully. “If you could see her, and send her to me before I leave England to-morrow, you would be conferring the greatest possible favor on me. There are several things of which I wish to speak to her, and which I cannot reveal to any one else – not even to you.”
“Then I will instantly go in search of her,” said Lord Villiers, rising and taking his hat. “My dear Germaine, good by.”
“Farewell, Ernest. God bless you!”
The hand of the peer and the gipsy met in a strong clasp, but neither could speak.
And so they parted. The prison door closed between the convicted felon and his high-born friend. Did either dream how strangely they were destined to meet again? With his face shaded by his hand, the prisoner sat; that small white hand, delicate as a lady’s, doomed now to the unceasing labor of the convict, when a noise as of persons in altercation in the passage without met his ears. He raised his head to listen, and recognized the gruff, hoarse voice of his jailer; then the sharp, passionate voice of a woman; and, lastly, the calm, clear tones of Lord Ernest Villiers. His words seemed to decide the matter; for the huge key turned in the rusty lock, the heavy door swung back on its hinges, and the tall form of gipsy Ketura passed into the cell.
“Mother!”
The prisoner started to his feet, and with a passionate cry: “Oh, my son! my son!” he was clasped in the arms of his mother – clasped and held there in a fierce embrace, as though she defied Heaven itself to tear them apart.
“Thank Heaven, mother, that I see you again!”
“Heaven!” she broke out, with passionate fierceness; “never mention it again! What is heaven, and God, and mercy, and happiness? All a mockery, and worse than a mockery!”
“My poor mother!”
“What have I done, that I should lose you!” she cried, with a still-increasing fierceness. “What crime have I committed, that I should be doomed to a hell upon earth? He was conceived in sin and born in iniquity, even as I was; yet the God you call upon permits him to live happy, rich, honored, and prosperous, while I – oh! it maddens me to think of it! But I will have revenge!” – she added, while her fierce eyes blazed, and her long, bony hand clenched – “yes, fearful revenge! If I am doomed to perdition, I shall drag him down along with me!”
“Mother! mother! Do not talk so! Be calm!”
“Calm! With these flames, like eternal fires, raging in my heart and brain? Oh, for the hour when his life-blood shall cool their blazing!”
“Mother, you are going mad!” said the young man, almost sternly. “Unless you are calm, we must part.”
“Oh, yes! We will part to-morrow. You will go over the boundless sea with all the thieves, and murderers, and scum of London, and I – I will live for revenge. By-and-by you will kill yourself, and I will be hung for his murder.”
She laughed a dreary, cheerless laugh, while her eyes grew unnaturally bright with the fires of incipient insanity.
“Poor mother!” said the youth, sadly. “This is the hardest blow of all! Try and bear up, for my sake, mother. Did you see Lord De Courcy to-night?”
“I did. May Heaven’s heaviest curses light on him!” exclaimed the woman, passionately. “Oh! to think that he, that any man, should hold my son’s life in the hollow of his hand, while I am here, obliged to look on, powerless to avert the blow! May God’s worst vengeance light on him, here and hereafter!”
Her face was black with the terrific storm of inward passion; her eyes glaring, blazing, like those of a wild beast; her long, talon like fingers clenched until the nails sunk deep in the quivering flesh.
“Mother, did you stoop to sue for pardon for me tonight?” said the young man, while his brow contracted with a dark frown.
“Oh, I did! I did! I groveled at his feet. I cried, I shrieked, I adjured him to pardon you – I, who never knelt to God or man before – and he refused! I kissed the dust at his feet, and he replied by a cold refusal. But woe to thee, Earl De Courcy!” she cried, bounding to her feet, and dashing back her wild black hair. “Woe to thee, and all thy house! for it were safer to tamper with the lightning’s chain than with the aroused tigress Ketura.”
“Mother, nothing is gained by working yourself up to such a pitch of passion; you only beat the air with your breath. I am calm.”
“Yes, calm as a volcano on the verge of eruption,” she said, looking in his gleaming eyes and icy smile.
“And I am submissive, forbearing, and forgiving.”
“Yes, submissive as a crouching lion – forgiving as a tiger robbed of its young – forbearing as a serpent preparing to spring.”
He had awed her – even her, that raving maniac – into calm, by the cold, steely glitter of his dark eyes; by the quiet, chilling smile on his lip. In that fixed, iron, relentless look, she read a strong, determined purpose, relentless as death, or doom, or the grave; terrific in its very quiet, implacable in its very depth of calm, overtopping and surmounting her own.
“We understand each other, I think,” he said, quietly. “You perceive, mother, how utterly idle these mad threats and curses of yours are. They will effect nothing but to have you imprisoned as a dangerous lunatic; and it is necessary you should be free to fulfill my last bequest.”
Another mood had come over the dark, fierce woman while he spoke. The demoniac look of passion that had hitherto convulsed her face, gave way to one of despairing sorrow, and stretching out her arms, she passionately cried:
“Oh, my son! my only one! the darling of my old age! my sole earthly pride and hope! Oh, Reginald! would to God we had both died ere we had lived to see this day!”
It was the very agony of grief – the last passionate, despairing cry of a mother’s utmost woe, wrung fiercely from her tortured heart.
“My poor mother – my dear mother!” said the youth, with tears in his dark eyes, "do not give way to this wild grief. Who knows what the future may bring forth?”
She made no reply; but sat with both arms clasped round her knees – her dry, burning, tearless eyes glaring before her on vacancy.
“Do not despair, mother; we may yet meet again. Who knows?” he said, musingly, after a pause.
She turned her red, inflamed eyeballs on him in voiceless inquiry.
“There are such things as breaking chains and escaping, mother.”
Still that lurid, straining gaze, but no reply.
“And I, if it be in the power of man, I shall escape – I shall return, and then – ”
He paused, but his eyes finished the sentence. Lucifer, taking his last look of heaven, might have worn just such a look – so full of relentless hate, burning revenge, and undying defiance.
“You may come, but I will never live to see you,” said the gipsy, in a voice so deep, hollow and unnatural, that it seemed issuing from a tomb.
“You will – you must, mother. I have a sacred trust to leave you, for which you must live,” he said impetuously.
“A trust, my son?”
“Yes. One that will demand all your care for many years. You shall hear my story, mother. I would not trust any living being but you; but I can confide fearlessly in you.”
“You have only to name your wishes, Reginald. Though I should have to wade through blood to fulfill them, fear not.”
“Nothing so desperate will be required, mother. The less blood you have on your hands the better. My advice to you is, when I am gone, to return to Yetholm, and wait with patience for my return – for return I will, in spite of everything.”
Her bloodshot eyes kindled fiercely with invincible determination as he spoke, but she said nothing.
“My story is a somewhat long one,” he said, after a pause, during which a sad shadow had fallen on his handsome face; “but I suppose it is necessary I should tell you all. I thought never to reveal it to any human being; but I did not dream then of ever being a convicted felon, as I am now.”
He had been sitting hitherto with his head resting on his hand; now he arose and began pacing to and fro his narrow cell, while the dark, stern woman, crouching in a distant corner like a dusky shadow, watched him with her eyes of fire, and prepared to listen.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHILD-WIFE
“Oh, had we never, never met,
Or could this heart e’en now forget,
How linked, how blessed we might have been,
Had fate not frowned so dark between!”
– Moore.
“Eight years ago, mother,” began the prisoner, “I first entered Eton. Through your kindness, I was provided with money enough to enable me to mix on terms of equality in all things with the highest of its high-born students. No one dreamed I was a gipsy; they would as soon have thought of considering themselves one as me. I adopted the name of Reginald Germaine, and represented myself as the son of an exiled French count, and being by Nature gifted with a tolerable share of good looks, and any amount of cool assurance, I soon worked my way up above most of my titled compeers, and became ringleader and prime favorite with students and professors. They talk of good blood showing itself equally in men as in horses, mother. I don’t know how that may be, but certain it is the gipsy’s son equaled all, and was surpassed by none in college. In fencing, shooting, riding, boxing, rowing, I was as much at home as reading Virgil or translating Greek. If it is any consolation to you, mother, to know what an exceedingly talented son you have,” he said, with a bitter smile, “all this will be very consoling to you – more especially as Latin, and Greek, and all the rest of my manifold accomplishments will be extremely necessary to me among my fellow-convicts in Van Dieman’s Land. It is very probable I will establish an infant school for young thieves and pickpockets when the day’s labor is over. I wonder if our kind, fatherly, far-seeing British government dreams what an incalculable treasure they possess in the person of Germaine, the convicted burglar!”
His bitter, jeering tone was terrible to hear; but the dark, burning glare of his fierce eyes was more terrible still. Oh, it
was
a dreadful fate to look forward to – a chained, manacled convict for life – and so unjustly condemned! With his fierce, gipsy blood, is it any wonder that every noble and generous feeling in his breast should turn to gall?
The dusky form crouching in the corner moved not, spoke not; but the inflamed eyes glared in the darkness like two red-hot coals.
“Well, mother, I was boasting of my cleverness when I interrupted myself – was I not?” he said, after a pause, during which he had been pacing, like a caged lion, up and down. “It is an exciting subject, you perceive; and if I get a little incoherent at times, you must only pass it over, and wait until I come to the point. That brief
exposé
of my standing in the school was necessary, after all, as it will help to show the sort of estimation I was held in. When the vacations came, numberless were the invitations I received to accompany my fellow-students home. Having no home of my own to go to, I need hardly say those invitations were invariably accepted. How the good people who so lavishly bestowed their hospitality upon me feel now, is a question not very hard to answer. I fancy I can see the looks of horror, amazement and outraged dignity that will fill some of those aristocratic mansions, when they learn that the dashing son and heir of the exiled Count Germaine, on whom they have condescended to smile so benignly, is no other than the convicted gipsy thief. It will be a regular farce to witness, mother.”
He laughed, but the grim, shadowy face in the corner was as immovable as a figure in stone.
“Among the friends I made at Eton,” he went on, “there was one – a fine, princely-hearted fellow about my own age – called Lord Everly. He was my ‘fag’ for a time, and, owing to a similarity of tastes and dispositions, we were soon inseparable friends, Wherever one was, there the other was sure to be, until we were nicknamed ‘Damon and Pythias’ by the rest. Of course, the first vacation after his coming, I received a pressing invitation to accompany him home; and, without requiring much coaxing, I went.”
The young man paused, and a dark, earnest shadow passed over his fine face. When he again resumed, his voice was low and less bitter.
“I met my fate there, mother – the star of my destiny, that rose, for a few brief, fleeting moments, and then set forever for me. I was a hot-blooded, hot-headed, hotter-hearted boy of nineteen then, who followed the impulse of his own headstrong passions wherever they chose to lead, without ever stopping to
think.
At Everly Hall I met the cousin of my friend – one of the most perfectly beautiful creatures it has ever been my lot to see. Only fourteen years of age, she was so well-grown, and so superbly-proportioned, as to be, in looks, already a woman; and a woman’s heart she already possessed. Her name, mother, it is not necessary to tell now. Suffice it to say, that name was one of the proudest of England’s proud sons, and her family one of the highest and noblest in the land. She was at Everly Hall, spending her vacation, too, and daily we were thrown together. I had never loved before – never felt even those first moonlight-on-water affairs that most young men rave about. My nature is not one of those that love lightly; but it was as resistless, as impetuous, as fierce and consuming as a volcano’s fire, when it came. Mother, I did not
love
that beautiful child-woman. Love! Pshaw! that is a cold word to express what I felt – every moonstruck youth prates about his
love
. No; I adored, I worshipped, I idolized her; the remembrance of who I was, of who
she
was – all were as walls of smoke before the impetuosity of that first consuming passion. The Everlys never dreamed – never, in the remotest degree, fancied – I, the son of an exiled count, could dare to lift my eyes to one whom a prince of the blood-royal might almost have wed without stooping. They had confidence in her, the proud daughter of a proud race, to think she would spurn me from her in contempt, did I dare to breathe my wild passion. But how little, in their cool, clear-headed calculations, did they dream that social position and worldly considerations were as a cobweb barrier before the impetuosity of first love!
“And so, secure in the difference between us in rank, the Everlys permitted their beautiful niece to ride, walk, dance and drive with the gay, agreeable son of the exiled Count Germaine. Oh! those long, breezy morning rides, over the sloping hills and wide lawns that environed the home of the Everlys! I can see her now, as side by side we rode homeward – I drinking in, until every sense was intoxicated, the bewildering draught of her beauty, as she sat on her coal-black pony, her dark riding-habit fluttering in the morning breeze; her cheek flushed with health and happiness; her brilliant eyes, more glorious to me than all the stars in heaven; her bright, black hair flashing back the radiant sunlight! Oh! those long, moonlight strolls, arm-in-arm, through the wilderness of roses, not half so beautiful as the queen-rose beside me, that bloomed in wild luxuriance in the gardens! Oh! those enchanting evenings, when, encircled by my arm, we kept time together to the delicious music of the voluptuous waltz. Then it was, there it was, that the gipsy youth wooed and won the high-born daughter of a princely race.
“For, mother, even as I loved her she loved me. No, not as I loved her – it was not in her nature to do that, but with all the passionate ardor of a first, strong passion. I had long known I was not indifferent to her; but when, one night, as I stood bending over her as she sat at the piano, and heard her stately lady-aunt whisper to a friend that, in a few more years, her ‘lovely and accomplished niece’ would become the bride of Lord Ernest Villiers, only son of Earl De Courcy, all that had hitherto restrained me from telling that love was forgotten. I saw her start, and turn pale as she, too, heard and caught the quick, anxious glances she cast at me. All I felt at that moment must have been revealed in my face, for her eyes fell beneath mine, and the hot blood mounted to her very brow.
“‘And you are engaged to another?’ I said, in a tone of passionate reproach. ‘Oh, why did I not know this?’
“‘It is no engagement of my making,’ she said, in a low, trembling voice. ‘I never saw Lord Villiers, nor he me. Our fathers wish we should marry, that is all.’
“‘And will you obey?’ I said, in a thrilling whisper.
“‘No,’ she said, impulsively; ‘never.’
“The look that accompanied the words made me forget all I had hitherto striven to remember. In an instant I was at her feet, pouring out my wild tale of passion; in another, she was in my arms, whispering the words that made me the happiest man on earth. It was well for us both the room was nearly deserted, and the corner where we were in deepest shadow, or the ecstasies into which, like all lovers, we went, would have led to somewhat unpleasant consequences. But our destinies had decreed we should, for the time, have things all our own way; and that night, wandering in the pale, solemn moonlight, I urged, with all the eloquence of a first, resistless passion, a secret marriage. I spoke of her father’s compelling us to part; of his insisting on her marriage with one whom she could not love; I drew a touching description of myself, devoted to a life of solitude and misery, and probably ending by committing suicide – which melancholy picture so worked upon her fears, that I verily believe she would have fled with me to New South Wales, had I asked it. And so I pleaded, with all the ardor of a passion that was as strong and uncontrollable as it was selfish and exacting, until she promised, the following night, to steal secretly out and fly with me to where I was to have a clergyman in waiting, and then and there become my wife.”
Once more he paused, and his fine eyes were full of bitter self-reproach now.
“Mother, that was the turning-point in my destiny. Looking back to that time now, I can wish I had been struck dead sooner than have hurried, as I did, that impulsive, warm-hearted girl into that fatal marriage.
Then,
in all the burning ardor of youth, I thought of nothing but the intoxicating happiness within my grasp; and had an angel from heaven pleaded for the postponement of my designs, I would have hurled a refusal back in his face. I thought only of the present – of the joy, too intense, almost, to be borne – and I steadily shut my eyes to the future. I knew she would loathe, hate, and despise me, if she ever discovered – as discover she must some day – how I had deceived her; for, with all her love for me, she inherited the pride and haughtiness of her noble house uncontaminated. Had she known who I really was, I know she would have considered me unworthy to touch even the hem of her garment.
“All that day she remained in her room; while I rode off to a neighboring town to engage a clergyman to unite us at the appointed hour. Midnight found me waiting, at the trysting-place; and true to the hour, my beautiful bride, brave in the strength of her love and woman’s faith in my honor, met me there, alone; for I would have no attendants to share our confidence.
“Two horses stood waiting. I lifted her into the saddle, sprung upon my own horse; and away we dashed, at a break-neck pace, to consummate our own future misery. There was no time for words; but I strove to whisper of the happy days in store for us, as we rode along. She did not utter a word; but her face was whiter than that of the dead when I lifted her from the saddle and drew her with me into the church.
“The great aisles were dimly lighted by one solitary lamp, and by its light we beheld the clergyman, standing, in full canonicals, to sanction our mad marriage. Robed in a dark, flowing dress, with her white face looking out from her damp, flowing, midnight hair I can see her before me, as she stood there, shivering at intervals with a strange presaging of future evil.
“It was an ominous bridal, mother; for, as the last words died away, and we were pronounced man and wife, the harsh, dreadful croak of a raven resounded through the vast, dim church, and the ghostly bird of omen fluttered for a moment over our heads, and fell dead at our feet. Excited by the consciousness that she was doing wrong; the solemn, unlighted old church; the dread, mystic hour – all proved too much for my little child-wife, and with a piercing shriek, she fell fainting in my arms. Mother, the unutterable reproach of that wild agonizing cry will haunt me to my dying day.”
No words can describe the bitterness of his tone, the undying self-reproach that filled his dark eyes, as he spoke.
“We bore her to the vestry; but it was long before she revived, and longer still before, with all the seductive eloquence of passionate love, I could soothe her into quiet.
“‘Oh, Reginald, I have done wrong!’ was her sorrowful, remorseful cry to all I could say.
“We paid the clergyman, and rode home – the gipsy youth and the high born lady, united for life now by the mysterious tie of marriage. Now that the last, desperate step was taken, even I grew for a moment appalled at what I had done. But I did not repent. No; had it been again to do, I would have done it over a thousand times. I would have lost heaven sooner than her!
“Three weeks longer we continued inmates of Everly Hall; and no one ever suspected that we met other than as casual acquaintances. Looking back now on my past life, those are the only days of unalloyed sunshine I can remember in the whole course of my life; and she – she, too, closed her eyes to the future, and was for the time being perfe