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.