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 perfectly happy.
"But the time came when we were forced to part. She went back to school,
while I returned to London, I met her frequently, at first; but her
father, after a time, began to think, perhaps, that, for the son of an
exiled count, I was making too rapid progress in his daughter's
affections, and peremptorily ordered her to discontinue the
acquaintance. But she loved me well enough to disobey him; and though I
saw she looked forward with undisguised terror to the time when the
revelation of our marriage would be made we still continued to meet at
long intervals.
"So a year passed. One day, wishing to consult her about something--I
forget what--we met at an appointed trysting place. She entered the
light chaise I had brought with me, and we drove off. The horses were
half tamed things at best, and in the outskirts of a little village,
several miles from the academy, they took fright at something, and
started off like the wind. I strove in vain to check them. On they flew,
like lightning, until suddenly coming in contact with a garden-fence,
the chaise was overthrown, and we were both flung violently out.
"I heard a faint cry from my companion, and, unheeding: a broken arm,
which was my share of the accident I managed to raise her from the
ground, where she lay senseless, and bear her into the cottage.
Fortunately, the cottage was owned by an old widow, to whom I had once
rendered some slight service which secured her everlasting gratitude;
and more fortunately still, my companion had received no injury from her
fall, beyond a slight wound in the head.
"Leaving her in the care of the old woman, I went to the nearest
surgeon, had my wounds dressed, and my horses disposed of until such
times as we could resume our journey. Then I returned to the cottage;
but found to my great alarm, that my wife, during my absence, had
become seriously ill, and was raving in the wild delirium of a burning
fever.
"There was no doctor in the village whose skill I could trust where her
life was concerned; and, half-mad with terror and alarm, I sprung on
horseback, and rode off to London for medical aid. But with all my
haste, nearly twelve hours elapsed before I could return accompanied by
a skillful though obscure physician, chosen by me because he was
obscure, and never likely to meet her again.
"As I entered, the feeble wail of an infant struck on my ear; and the
first object on which my eyes rested as I went in, was the old woman
sitting with a babe in her arms, while the child-mother lay still
unconscious, as I had left her.
"Mother, what I felt at that moment words can never disclose. Discovery
now seemed inevitable. She must wake to the knowledge that he for whom
she had given up everything was a gipsy; that her child bore in its
veins the tainted gipsy blood. Disowned and despised by all her
high-born friends, she would hate me for the irretrievable wrong I had
done her; and to lose her was worse than death to me.
"The intense anguish and remorse I endured at that moment, might have
atoned for a darker crime than mine. I had never felt so fully, before,
the wrong I had done her; and with the knowledge of its full enormity,
came the resolution of making all the atonement in my power.
"The doctor had pronounced her illness severe, but not dangerous; and
said that with careful nursing she would soon be restored to health.
When he was gone, I turned to the old woman, and inquired if she was
willing to undertake the care of the child. The promise of being well
paid made her readily answer in the affirmative; and then we concluded a
bargain that she was to take care of the infant, and keep its existence
a secret from every one, and, above all, from its mother. For I knew
that she would never consent to give it up, and I was resolved that it
should not be the means of dragging her down to poverty and disgrace.
The woman was to keep it out of her sight while she remained, and tell
her it had died, should she make any inquiries.
"During the next week, I scarcely ever left the cottage; and when she
was sufficiently recovered to use a pen, she wrote a few lines to the
principal of the academy, saying she had gone to visit a friend, and
would not return for a fortnight, at least. As she had ever been a
petted child, accustomed to go and come unquestioned, her absence
excited no surprise or suspicion; and secreted in the cottage, she
remained for the next two weeks. How the old woman managed to conceal
the child I know not; but certain it is, she did it.
"The time I had dreaded came at last. My better nature had awoke since
the birth of my child; and I resolved to tell her all, cost what it
might, and set her free. Mother, you can conceive the bitter humiliation
such a confession must have been to me--yet I made it. I told her all;
how basely I had deceived her; how deeply I had wronged her. In that
moment, every spark of love she had ever felt for me was quenched
forever in her majestic indignation, her scorn, and utter contempt.
Silently she arose and confronted me, white as the dead, superb in her
withering scorn, as far above me as the heavens from the earth. All the
pride of her proud race swelled in her breast, in a loathing too deep
and intense for words. But those steady, darkening eyes, that seemed
scintillating sparks of fire, I will never forget.
"'Here we must part, then, Reginald Germaine; and on this earth we must
never meet again!' she said, in a voice steady from its very depth of
scorn. 'Of the matchless wrong you have done me, I will not speak; it is
too late for that now. If one spark of the honor you once professed
still lingers in your breast, be silent as regards the past. I ask no
more. You have forever blighted my life; but the world need never know
what we once were to each other. If money is any object'--and her
beautiful lip curled with a contempt too intense for words--'you shall
have half my wealth--the whole of it, if you will--if it only buys your
silence. I will return to school, and try to forget the unutterable
degradation into which I have sunk. You go your own way, and we are
strangers from henceforth!'
"Mother! mother! such was our parting; in scorn and hatred on one side;
in utter despair and undying remorse on the other. That day she returned
to school; I fled, to drown thought in the maddening whirl and tumult
of London; and we have never met since. She is unmarried still, and the
reigning belle of every gilded salon in London; but I know she never
will, never can, forget the abyss of humiliation into which I dragged
her down. For her sake, to injure her happiness, I would willingly end
this wretched existence, but that I must live for what is so dear to the
gipsy heart--revenge! With all her lofty pride, what she will feel in
knowing she is the wife of a convicted felon, God and her own heart
alone will ever know."
He threw himself into a seat, and shading his face with his hands, sat
silent; but the convulsive heaving of his strong chest, his short, hard
breathing, told, more than words could ever do, what he felt at that
moment. And still the dusky shadow in the duskier corner sat silently
glaring upon him with those red, lurid eyes of flame.
"To tell you this story, to commit my child to your charge, I wished to
see you to-night, mother," he said, at last, without looking up. "She
does not dream of its existence; she was told it died the hour of its
birth, and was buried while she was still unconscious. In this
pocketbook you will find the address of the woman who keeps it; tell her
the count--for as such she knows me--sent you for it. Take it with you
to Yetholm, mother; try to think it is your son, Reginald, and forget
the miserable convict whom you may never see more."
Still no reply, but oh, the fixed, burning gaze of those spectral eyes
of fire!
"Mother, you must leave me now," he said, lifting his head, and looking
sorrowfully in her rigid, haggard face; "for the few hours that are left
me, I would like to be alone. It is better for us both that we part
now."
"I will not go!" said a voice so hollow, so unnatural, that it seemed to
issue from the jaws of death. "I will not go. I defy heaven and earth,
and God himself, to tear me from you now."
"Mother, it is my wish," he said, calmly.
"Yours, Reginald?" she cried, in a voice of unutterable reproach. "You
wish that I should leave you? For fifteen years I have given you up, and
in one short hour you tire of me now. Oh, Reginald, my son! my son!"
No words can describe the piercing anguish, the utter woe, that rived
that wild cry up from her tortured heart.
He came over, and laid his small, delicate hand on hers, hard, coarse,
and black with sun, wind and toil.
"Listen to me, my mother!" And his low, calm, soothing tones were in
strong contrast to her impassioned voice. "I am not tired of you--you
wrong me by thinking so; but I have letters to write, and many matters
to arrange before to-morrow's sun rises. I am tired, too, and want to
rest; for it is a long time since sleep has visited my eyes, mother."
"Sleep," she bitterly echoed; "and when do you think I have slept. Look
at these sunken eyes, this ghastly face, this haggard form, and ask when
I have slept. Think of the mighty wrong I have suffered, and ask when I
shall sleep again."
"My poor, unhappy mother!"
"_He_ can sleep," she broke out, with a low, wild laugh. "Oh, yes! in
his bed of down, with his princely son under the same roof, with menials
to come at his beck, he can sleep. Yes, he sleeps now! but the hour
comes when that sleep shall last forever! Then my eyes may close, but
never before!"
"You are delirious, mother; this blow has turned your brain."
She rose to her feet, her tall, gaunt form looming up in the shadowy
darkness; her wild black hair streaming disheveled down her back; her
fierce eyes blazing with demoniacal light, one long, bony arm raised and
pointing to heaven. Dark, fierce and stern, she looked like some dread
priestess of doom, invoking the wrath of Heaven on the world.
"Delirious, am I?" she said, in her deep, bell-like tones, that echoed
strangely in the silent cell. "If undying hate, if unresting vengeance,
if revenge that will never be satiated but by his misery, be delirium,
then I am mad. I leave you now, Reginald, such is your command; and
remember, when far away, you leave one behind you who will wreak fearful
vengeance for all we have both suffered."
"Mother, Lord De Courcy is not so much to blame after all, since he
believes me guilty. I am not alarmed by your wild threats; for I know,
in the course of time, this mad hate will grow less."
"Never--never!" she fiercely hissed through her clenched teeth. "May God
forget me if I ever forget my vow! Reginald, if I thought that man could
go to heaven, and I by some impossibility could be saved, too, I would
take a dagger and send my soul to perdition, sooner than go there with
him."
Upturned in the red light of the lamp, her face, as she spoke, was the
face of a demon.
"Strong hate, stronger than death!" he said, half to himself, as he
gazed on that fiendish face. "Farewell, then, mother. Will you fulfill
my last request?"
"About your child?--yes."
"Thank you, dearest mother. If so lost a wretch as I am dare invoke
Heaven, I would ask its blessings on you."
"Ask no blessing for me!" she fiercely broke in. "I would hurl it back
in the face of the angels, did they offer it."
Folding her mantle around her, she knotted the handkerchief, that had
fallen off, under her chin, and stood ready to depart. The young man
went to the door, and knocked loudly. A moment after, the tramp of heavy
feet was heard in the corridor approaching the door.
"It is the jailer to let you out. Once more, good-by, mother."
She was hard, and stern, and rigid now; and there were no tears in her
dry, stony, burning eyes, as she turned to take a last farewell of the
son she idolized--the son she might never see again. His eyes were dim,
but her tears were turned to sparks of fire.
Without a word she pressed one hot, burning kiss on his handsome brow;
and then the door opened, and she flitted out in the darkness like an
evil shadow. The heavy door again swung to; the key turned in the lock;
the son was alone in his condemned cell; and the maniac mother, out once
more in the beating rain and chill night wind, was lost in the great
wilderness of mighty London.