"Silvain, Kristel, and Avicia, accompanied by her father, rowed from
the lighthouse to the shore. The villagers saw but little of them;
they passed out of the village, and Avicia's father returned alone to
the lighthouse. Kristel loved Avicia with all the passion of a hot,
imperious, and intense nature. He looked upon her as his, and had he
suspected that Silvain would have fallen in love with her, it can
readily be understood that he would have been the last man to bring
them into association with each other. But so it happened.
"When Kristel and Avicia met in the Tyrol, Kristel was buoyed up with
hopes that she reciprocated the love she had inspired in his breast.
He had some reason for this hope, for at his request, when he asked
her to become his wife and said that he could not marry without his
father's consent, she had written home to _her_ father with respect to
the young gentleman's proposal, thereby leading him to believe that
she was ready to accept him. It appeared, however, that there was no
real depth in her feelings for him; and, indeed, it may be pardoned
her if she supposed that his fervid protestations were prompted by
feelings as light and as little genuine as her own. Unsophisticated as
she was in the ways of the world, the fact of his making the
honourable accomplishment of his love for her dependent upon the fiat
of another person could not but have lessened the value of his
declarations--more especially when she had not truly given him her
heart. It was given to Silvain upon the occasion of their first
meeting, and it was not long before they found the opportunity to
exchange vows of affection--a circumstance of which I and every person
but themselves were entirely ignorant. But love is cunning.
"It was because of Avicia's fear of her father that this love was kept
secret; he held her completely in control, and--first favouring
Kristel and then Silvain, playing them against each other, as it were,
to his own advantage in the way of gifts--filled her with
apprehension.
"'Looking back,' Silvain said in his statement to me, 'upon the
history of those days of happiness and torture, I can see now that I
was wrong in not endeavouring to arrive at a frank understanding with
my brother; but indeed I had but one thought--Avicia. As Kristel
believed her to be his, so did I believe her to be mine, and the idea
of losing her was sufficient to make my life a life of despair. And
after all, it was for Avicia to decide. Absorbing as was my love for
her, I should have had no choice but to retire and pass my days in
misery had she decided in favour of Kristel.'
"The base conduct of Avicia's father was to a great extent the cause
of turning brotherly love to hate. Seeing their infatuation, he
bargained with each secretly, saying, in effect, 'What will you give
me if I give you my daughter's hand?--for she will not, and cannot,
marry without my consent.'
"And to the other, 'What will _you_ give me?'
"He bound them to secrecy by a solemn oath, and bound his daughter
also in like manner, promising that she should have the one she loved.
Silvain was the more liberal of the two, and signed papers, pledging
himself to pay to the avaricious father a large sum of money within a
certain time after his union with Avicia. So cunningly did the keeper
of the lighthouse conduct these base negotiations, that, even on that
last day when they all rowed together to the village, neither of the
brothers knew that matters were to be brought then and there to an
irrevocable end.
"The village by the sea lay behind them some six or eight miles. Then,
upon a false pretext, Avicia's father got rid of Kristel, sending him
on an errand for Avicia which would render necessary an absence of
many hours. That done, he said to Silvain and Avicia, 'Everything is
arranged. This day will see you man and wife. Come with me to the
priest.'
"'But where is Kristel?' asked Silvain, his heart throbbing with joy.
'Does he not know?'
"'Yes, he knows,' replied Avicia's father, 'but, as you are aware, he
had a sneaking regard himself for my daughter, and he thought he would
feel more comfortable, and you and Avicia too, if he were not present
at the ceremony. He bade me give you his blessing.'
"Satisfied with this--being, indeed, naturally only too willing to be
satisfied--the marriage ceremony took place, and Silvain and Avicia
became man and wife. They departed on their honeymoon, and instructed
the keeper of the lighthouse to inform Kristel of their route, in
order that he might be able to join them at any point he pleased.
"Then came the interview between Avicia's father and Kristel, in which
the young man was informed that he had lost Avicia. Kristel was
dismayed and furious at what he believed to be the blackest treachery
on the part of his brother. He swore to be revenged, and asked the
road they had taken. Avicia's father sent him off in an entirely
opposite direction, and he set out in pursuit. Needless to say that he
soon found out how he had been tricked, and that it infuriated him the
more. Not knowing where else to write to Silvain, he addressed a
letter to him at their home in Germany; he himself did not proceed
thither, judging that his best chance of meeting the married couple
lay near the village by the sea, to which he felt convinced Silvain
and Avicia would soon return. Therefore he lurked in the vicinity of
the village, and watched by day and night the principal avenues by
which it was to be approached. But his judgment was at fault; they did
not return.
"In the meantime the lovers were enjoying their honeymoon. In order to
keep faith with Avicia's father in the bargain made between him and
Silvain--which rendered necessary the payment of a substantial sum of
money by a given time--it was imperative that Silvain should visit his
boyhood's home, to obtain his share of the inheritance left to him and
Kristel by their father. The happy couple dallied by the way, and it
was not until three months after their marriage that they arrived at
Silvain's birthplace.
"'Perhaps we shall meet Kristel there,' said Silvain.
"Instead of meeting his brother, Silvain received the letter which
Kristel had written to him. It breathed the deepest hate, and Silvain
had the unhappiness of reading the outpourings of a relentless,
vindictive spirit, driven to despair by disappointed love.
"'You have robbed me,' the letter said; 'hour by hour, day by day,
have you set yourself deliberately to ensnare me and to fill my life
with black despair. Had I suspected it at the time I would have
strangled you. But your fate is only postponed; revenge is mine, and I
hold it in my soul as a sacred trust which I shall fulfil. You shall
die by my hands. Never in this world or in the next will I forgive
you! My relentless hate shall haunt and pursue you, and you shall not
escape it!'
"And then the writer recorded an awful oath that, while life remained
within him, his one sole aim should be to compass his revenge. It was
a lengthy letter, and strong as is my description of it, it falls
short of the intense malignity which pervaded every line. Kristel
launched a curse so terrible against his brother that Silvain's hair
rose up in horror and fear as he read it. These are Silvain's own
words to me:
"'After reading Kristel's letter,' he said, 'I felt that I was
accursed, and that it was destined that he should kill me.'
"How to escape the terrible doom--though he had scarcely a hope of
averting it--how to prevent the crime of blood-guiltiness lying upon
Kristel's soul: this was thereafter the object of Silvain's life. It
afforded him no consolation to know that for the intense hate with
which Kristel's heart was filled Avicia's father was partly
responsible.
"In its delineation of the trickery by which Kristel had been robbed
of Avicia the letter was not truthful, for there had occurred between
the brothers a conversation in which Silvain had revealed his love for
her. Kristel's over-wrought feelings probably caused him to forget
this--or it may have been a perversion of fact adopted to give
sanction to hate.
"Kristel's letter was not the only despairing greeting which awaited
Silvain in the home of his boyhood. By some unhappy means the
inheritance left by his father had melted away, and he found himself a
beggar. Thus he was unable to carry out the terms of the bargain
Avicia's father had made with him. This part of his misfortune did not
greatly trouble him; it was but a just punishment to a grasping,
avaricious man; but with beggary staring him in the face, and his
brother's curse and awful design weighing upon him, his situation was
most dreadful and pitiable.
"It was his intention to keep Kristel's letter from the knowledge of
Avicia, but she secretly obtained possession of it, and it filled her
soul with an agonising fear. They decided that it was impossible to
return to the village by sea.
"'It is there my brother waits for us,' said Silvain.
"So from that time they commenced a wandering life, with the one
dominant desire to escape from Kristel.
"I cannot enter now into a description of the years that followed.
They crept from place to place, picking up a precarious existence, and
enduring great privations. One morning Silvain awoke, trembling and
afraid. 'I have seen Kristel,' he said.
"She did not ask him how and under what circumstances he had seen his
brother.
"'He has discovered that we are here, and is in pursuit of us,'
Silvain continued. 'We must fly without delay.'
"This was an added grief to Avicia. The place in which Silvain's dream
of his brother had been dreamt had afforded them shelter and security
for many weeks, and she had begun to indulge in the hope that they
were safe. Vain hope! They must commence their wanderings again. From
that period, at various times, Silvain was visited by dreams in which
he was made acquainted with Kristel's movements in so far as they
affected him and Avicia and the mission of vengeance upon which
Kristel was relentlessly bent. They made their way to foreign
countries, and even there Kristel pursued them. And so through the
days and years continued the pitiful flight and the merciless pursuit.
In darkness they wandered often, the shadow of fate at their heels, in
Avicia's imagination lurking in the solitudes through which they
passed, amidst thickets of trees, in hollows and ravines, waiting,
waiting, waiting to fall upon and destroy them! An appalling life, the
full terrors of which the mind can scarcely grasp.
"At length, when worldly circumstances pressed so heavily upon them
that they hardly knew where to look for the next day's food, Avicia
whispered to her husband that she expected to become a mother, and
that she was possessed by an inexpressible longing that her child
should be born where she herself first drew breath. After the lapse of
so many years it appeared to Silvain that the lighthouse would be the
likeliest place of safety, and, besides, it was Avicia's earnest wish.
They were on the road thither when I chanced upon them in the forest."