THE RETURN.
THE RETURN.
The post-office the next day supplied a letter, without post-mark, giving Adolph an officer’s commission for the gallantry that saved his colonel’s life at the imminent risk of his own, and extending his furlough for a year.
“But Louise,” said Adolph, “how your complexion has suffered since I saw you.”
“I have been absent for some weeks.”
“Yes, and these mountain relatives of yours always look of about the same color as one of their ripe grapes.”
Adolph having now some position, and a source of reliance upon his good resolution, presented himself before Madam Berien to solicit formally the hand of her daughter.
The matterhadevidently occupied the worthy lady’s attention, as she consented at once, referred to an early day for the marriage, and desired that her own house might be the residence of her son-in-law and his wife.
“Surely, Providence is too good to me,” said Adolph, when he announced to Louise the result of his negotiation.
“Has it ever failed you when you really relied upon it?”
“Did it not allow me to be sent to the army, and to suffer horribly? I do believe I should have died without Klemm.”
“Has not your campaign resulted in the adoption of a sounder code of morals, a restoration to religious exercises, and the acquisition of rank, and in our almost immediate marriage? And will not Klemm be here at our wedding?”
“I hope so, but faith Klemm is such a well-made handsome little fellow, that I might wish him to tarry until after our marriage. I should not like to find him and you chatting German sentiment together in the German language.”
“And why not, Adolph?”
“I mightfearthat the sleek little secretary would outshine the wounded lieutenant.”
“Fear, Adolph! You would notfear.”
“Why not?” asked he, with a smile.
“Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus,” said Louise, with a strong German accent.
“Good Heaven, Louise! where did you find that quotation, and where that accent and look?”
“Why, the quotation is from the Bible, and the accent is as true German as my grape-raising relatives know how to give.”
No Klemm arrived as Adolph hoped, and so the bridal party set forward to the church where Father Rudolph was awaiting their arrival. The simple but interesting ceremony was concluded, and as the party rose from their last genuflection toward the altar, Louise whispered into her husband’s ear:
“Klemm has come!”
“Where—where is he? Oh! how I long to have him share in the happiness which I enjoy, and hewillshare in it, for it is of his own producing. Oh! Louise, could you but know—but I have told you all I can tell; yet I cannot express what I feel for that young man’s beautiful devotion to my good—to him alone, next to God, am I indebted for this day’s unspeakable delight.”
“I thought you owed it tome,” said Louise.
“To you—to you indeed, that you are mine—but to him that I was made worthy of your acceptance. Dear Louise, I amafraidyou must share—”
“Afraid, Adolph—‘Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus.’ ”
“Louise, you confound me—whose is that tone of voice—whose that arch look? Surely you are not yourself now?”
“Not this moment, Adolph. JustnowI am Klemm!”
The sacrifices of Louise had been accepted in Heaven—of course they were appreciated on earth, and “perfect love which casteth out fear,” had lured the wanderer back to religion, and had been rewarded in its good performed and the power of doing good.
TO MY STEED.
———
BY S. D. ANDERSON.
———
Come forth, my brave steed, for the dew’s on the flowers,And we will away with the speed of the hours;The breath of the summer-time rides on the gale,And health is abroad on each mountain and dale.Come forth, for the lark is alive with his song,And the bound of my pulses is life-like and strong;It is gladness to see the wild fire of thine eye,And feel thy light tread as the breeze rushes by.Come forth, my own Arab, the Sun is asleep,And the tears of the morning thy dark mane shall steep;Thou shalt drink from the gushes of Summer’s cool streams,E’er the flow of the fountain is tipt with morn’s beams.Come forth to the greenwood whilst perfume is there,And we’ll start the wild deer from his slumbering lair;The leap of the cascade, and dash of the spray,Shall echo more faint as we hurry away.Come forth, my brave steed—far truer art thouThan the smile on the lip, or the light on the brow;More faithful than promises lovers may breathe,Or the garlands of fame that a nation may wreath.Come forth—I am ready—hurrah for the hills,Whilst the harp-string of pleasure with ecstasy thrills;No hour like the morning—no scene like to thisIn all the wide world, for a moment of bliss.
Come forth, my brave steed, for the dew’s on the flowers,And we will away with the speed of the hours;The breath of the summer-time rides on the gale,And health is abroad on each mountain and dale.Come forth, for the lark is alive with his song,And the bound of my pulses is life-like and strong;It is gladness to see the wild fire of thine eye,And feel thy light tread as the breeze rushes by.Come forth, my own Arab, the Sun is asleep,And the tears of the morning thy dark mane shall steep;Thou shalt drink from the gushes of Summer’s cool streams,E’er the flow of the fountain is tipt with morn’s beams.Come forth to the greenwood whilst perfume is there,And we’ll start the wild deer from his slumbering lair;The leap of the cascade, and dash of the spray,Shall echo more faint as we hurry away.Come forth, my brave steed—far truer art thouThan the smile on the lip, or the light on the brow;More faithful than promises lovers may breathe,Or the garlands of fame that a nation may wreath.Come forth—I am ready—hurrah for the hills,Whilst the harp-string of pleasure with ecstasy thrills;No hour like the morning—no scene like to thisIn all the wide world, for a moment of bliss.
Come forth, my brave steed, for the dew’s on the flowers,And we will away with the speed of the hours;The breath of the summer-time rides on the gale,And health is abroad on each mountain and dale.
Come forth, my brave steed, for the dew’s on the flowers,
And we will away with the speed of the hours;
The breath of the summer-time rides on the gale,
And health is abroad on each mountain and dale.
Come forth, for the lark is alive with his song,And the bound of my pulses is life-like and strong;It is gladness to see the wild fire of thine eye,And feel thy light tread as the breeze rushes by.
Come forth, for the lark is alive with his song,
And the bound of my pulses is life-like and strong;
It is gladness to see the wild fire of thine eye,
And feel thy light tread as the breeze rushes by.
Come forth, my own Arab, the Sun is asleep,And the tears of the morning thy dark mane shall steep;Thou shalt drink from the gushes of Summer’s cool streams,E’er the flow of the fountain is tipt with morn’s beams.
Come forth, my own Arab, the Sun is asleep,
And the tears of the morning thy dark mane shall steep;
Thou shalt drink from the gushes of Summer’s cool streams,
E’er the flow of the fountain is tipt with morn’s beams.
Come forth to the greenwood whilst perfume is there,And we’ll start the wild deer from his slumbering lair;The leap of the cascade, and dash of the spray,Shall echo more faint as we hurry away.
Come forth to the greenwood whilst perfume is there,
And we’ll start the wild deer from his slumbering lair;
The leap of the cascade, and dash of the spray,
Shall echo more faint as we hurry away.
Come forth, my brave steed—far truer art thouThan the smile on the lip, or the light on the brow;More faithful than promises lovers may breathe,Or the garlands of fame that a nation may wreath.
Come forth, my brave steed—far truer art thou
Than the smile on the lip, or the light on the brow;
More faithful than promises lovers may breathe,
Or the garlands of fame that a nation may wreath.
Come forth—I am ready—hurrah for the hills,Whilst the harp-string of pleasure with ecstasy thrills;No hour like the morning—no scene like to thisIn all the wide world, for a moment of bliss.
Come forth—I am ready—hurrah for the hills,
Whilst the harp-string of pleasure with ecstasy thrills;
No hour like the morning—no scene like to this
In all the wide world, for a moment of bliss.
JASPER ST. AUBYN;
OR THE COURSE OF PASSION.
———
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.
———
(Concluded from page 262.)
The Sacrifice.
Ask any thing but that.
An hour had not quite passed, when, as she sat alone in her little gayly-decorated study, with its walls hung with water-color drawings of her own execution, its tables strewn with poetry and music of her own composition, and her favorite books, and her own lute—her little study in which the happiest hours of her life had been spent, the first hours of her married life, while Jasper was all that her fancy painted him—his step came along the corridor, but with a slow and hesitating sound, most unlike to the quick, firm, decided tread, for which he was remarkable.
She noticed the difference, it is true, at the moment, but forgot it again instantly. It was enough! It was he! and he was coming once again to seek her in her own apartment; he had a boon to ask of her—he had promised to love her—he had called her “his dear Theresa.”
And now she sprung up, with her soul beaming from her eyes, and ran to meet him. The door was opened ere he reached it, and as he entered, she fell upon his neck, and wound her snowy arms about his waist, and kissed him fifty times, and wept silent tears in the fullness of her joy.
And did not his heart respond in the least to her innocent and girlish rapture; did he not bend at all from his bad purpose; was there no melting, no relenting in that callous, selfish nature; was, indeed, all within him hard as the nether millstone?
He clasped her, he caressed her, he spoke to her fondly, lovingly, he kissed, like Judas, to betray. He suffered her to lead him to his favorite seat of old, the deep, softly-cushioned, low arm-chair, and to place her footstool by his side, and nestle herself down upon it as she used to do, with her arms folded negligently across his knee, and her beautiful rounded chin propped upon them, with her great earnest eyes looking up in his face, like unfathomable wells of tenderness.
And he returned her gaze of fondness, unabashed, unembarrassed; and yet it was sometime before he spoke; and when he did speak at length, his voice was altered and almost husky. But it was from doubt how best he might play his part, not that he shrunk from the task he had imposed upon himself, either for shame or for pity.
“Well, my Theresa,” he said, at last, “have you thought whether you will make this sacrifice?”
“No, Jasper, I have not thought about it; but if you wish me to make it, I will make it, and it will be no sacrifice.”
“But I tell you, Theresa, that it is a sacrifice, a mighty and most painful sacrifice; a sacrifice so great and so terrible, that I almost fear, almost feel that it would be selfish in me to ask it of you.”
“Ask it, then; ask it quickly, that you may see how readily it shall be granted.”
“Can you conceive no sacrifice that you would not make to please me?”
“None, that you would ask of me.”
“Theresa, no one can say what anothermightask of them. Husbands, lovers, brothers, have asked strange sacrifices—fearful sacrifices, at woman’s hands; and—they have been made.”
“Ask me, then, ask me,” she repeated, smiling, although her face had grown somewhat pale as she listened to his words, and marked his strangely excited manner. “I repeat, there isnosacrifice which you would ask of me, which I will not make. Nay more, there is none which I should think a sacrifice if it is to preserve your love to me, when I feared that I had lost it forever, though how, indeed, I knew not.”
“We shall see,” he said, affecting to muse with himself, and ponder deeply. “We shall see; you are a great historian, and have read of all the celebrated women of times past and present. You have heard of the beautiful Mademoiselle Desvieux, she who—”
“She who was the promised wife of the great, the immortal Bossuet; and who sacrificed her own happiness, freeing her lover from the claims she held on him, lest a wife should be a clog upon his pure yet soaring ambition, lest an earthly affection should wean him from a higher love, and weaken the cords that were drawing him toward heaven! I have—I have heard of her! Who has not—who does not revere her name—who does not love her?”
“And what think you of her sacrifice, Theresa?”
“That it was her duty. A difficult duty to perform, you will say, but still her duty. Her praise is, that she performed it gloriously. And yet I doubt not that her sacrifice bore her its own exceeding great reward. Loving as she loved, all her sorrows must have been changed into exultation, when she saw him in after days the saint he became, the saint she helped to make him.”
“And could you have made such a sacrifice, Theresa?”
“I hope so, and I think so,” she replied, with a little hesitation. “But it avails not now to think of that, seeing that I cannot make such. She was a maiden, I am a wedded wife.”
“True, dearest, true. I only named her, to judge by your opinion, of what I wish to learn, ere I will ask you. There was another sacrifice, Theresa, a very terrible sacrifice, made of late, and made to no purpose,too, as it fell out—a sacrifice of far more doubtful nature; yet there be some who have not failed to praise it.”
“What was it—do you praise it?”
“At least I pity it, Theresa.”
“What was it—tell me?”
“After the late rebellion at Sedgemoor. Have you not heard, Theresa?”
“No, I think not—go on, I want to hear it; go on, Jasper.”
“There was a young man, a cavalier, very young, very brave, very nobly born, and, it is said, very handsome. He was taken after the route of that coward, Gray of Werk’s horse—cast into prison, and, when his turn came, tried by the butcher, Kirke—you know what that means, Theresa?”
“Condemned,” she said, sadly. “Of course he was condemned—what next?”
“To be hung by the neck upon the shameful gibbet, and then cut down, while yet alive, and subjected to all the barbarous tortures which are inflicted as the penalty of high treason.”
“Horrible! horrible! and—what more, Jasper?”
“Have you not, indeed, heard the tale?”
“Indeed, no. I pray you tell me, for you have moved me very deeply.”
“It is very moving. The boy had a sister—the loveliest creature, it is said, that trod the soil of England, scarce seventeen years of age, a very paragon of grace and purity and beauty. They two were alone in the world—parents, kinsfolk, friends, they had none. They had none to love but one another, even as we, my Theresa; and they did love—how, you may judge. The girl threw herself at the butcher’s feet, and implored her brother’s pardon.”
“Go on, go on, Jasper!” cried the young wife, excited almost beyond the power of restraining her emotions by the dreadful interest of his tale, “and, for once, he granted it?”
“And, for once, as you say, he granted it. But upon one condition.”
“And that was—?”
“And that was, that the young girl should make a sacrifice—an awful sacrifice—should submit, in a word, to be a martyr for her brother’s sake.”
“To die for him—and she died! Of course, she died to save him; that werenosacrifice, none, Jasper—I say none! Whyanywoman would have done that!”
“It was not to die for him—it was to sacrifice herself—herself—for she was lovely, as I told you—to the butcher.”
“Ah!” sighed Theresa, with a terrible sensation at her heart, which she could not explain, even to herself; “and what—what did she?”
“She asked permission to consult her brother.”
“And he told her that he had rather die ten thousand deaths than that she should lose one hair’s breadth of her honor!” cried Theresa, enthusiastically clasping her hands together.
“And he told her that life was very sweet, and death on a gallows very shameful!”
“The catiff! the miserable,loathsome slave! the filthy dastard! I trust that Kirke drew him with wild horses! The gallows were too good for such a slave.”
“Thenyouwould not have made such a sacrifice?”
“I—I!” she exclaimed, her soft blue eyes actually flashing fire; “I sacrifice my honor! but lo!” she interrupted herself, smiling at her own vehemence, “am not I a little fool, to fancy that you are in earnest. No, dearest Jasper, I would no more makethatsacrifice, than you would suffer me to do so. Did not I make that reservation, did I not say any sacrifice, which you would ask of me?”
“Ay, dearest!” he replied gently, laying his hand on her head, “you do me no more than justice there. I would die as many deaths as I have hairs on my head, before you should so save me.” And for the first time that night Jasper St. Aubyn spoke in earnest.
“I know you would, Jasper. But go on, I pray you, with this fearful tale. I would you had not begun it; but now you have, I must hear it to the end. What did she?”
“She did, Theresa, as her brother bade her. She sacrificed herself to the butcher.”
“Poor wretch! poor wretch! and so her brother lived with the world’s scorn and curses on his head—and she—did shedie, Jasper?”
“No, my Theresa. She is alive yet. It was the brother died.”
“How so? how could that be? Did Kirke then relent?”
“Kirke never relented! When the girl awoke in the butcher’s chamber, with fame and honor—all that she loved in life—lost to her for ever—he bade her look out of the window—what think you she saw there, Theresa?”
“What?”
“The thing, that an hour before was her brother, dangling in the accursed noose from the gibbet.”
“And God did not speak in thunder.”
“To the girl’s mind, He spoke—for that went astray at once, jangled and jarred, and out of tune forever!Therewas a sacrifice, Theresa.”
“A wicked one, and so it ended, wickedly. We’ll none of such sacrifices, Jasper. If we should ever have to die, which God avert in his mercy, any death of violence or horror, we will die tranquilly and together. Will we not, dearest?”
“As you said but now, may the good God guard us from such a fate, Theresa; and yet,” he added, looking at her fixedly, and with a strange expression, “we may be nearer to it than we think for, even now.”
“Nearer to what, Jasper? speak,” she cried, eagerly, as if she had missed the meaning of the words he last uttered.
“Nearer to the perils of the law, for high treason,” answered her husband, in a low, dejected voice. “It is of that I have been anxious to speak with you all the time.”
“Then speak at once, for God’s sake, dearest Jasper! speak at once, and fully, that we may know the worst;” and she showed more composure now, in what she naturally deemed the extremity of peril, than he had looked for, judging from the excitement she had manifested at the mere listening to the story of another’sperils. “Say on,” she added, seeing that he hesitated, “let me know the worst.”
“It must be so, though it is hard to tell, Theresa; we—myself, I mean, and a band of the first and noblest youths of England—have been engaged for these three months past in a conspiracy to banish from the throne of England this last and basest son of a weak, bigoted, unlucky race of kings—this cowardly, blood-thirsty, persecuting bigot—this Papist monarch of a Protestant land, this James the Second, as men call him; and to set in his place the brave, wise, virtuous William of Nassau, now Stadtholder of the United Provinces. It is this business which has obliged me to be absent so often of late, in London. It is the failure of this business which has rendered me morose, unkind, irritable—need I say more, you have pardoned me, Theresa.”
“The failure of this business!” she exclaimed, gazing at him with a face from which dismay had banished every hue of color—“the failure!”
“Ay, Theresa, it is even so. Had we succeeded in liberating England from the cold tyrant’s bloody yoke, we had been patriots, saviors, fathers of our country—Brutuses, for what I know, and Timoleons! We have failed—therefore, we are rebels, traitors and, I suppose, ere long shall be victims.”
“The plot, then, is discovered?”
“Even so, Theresa.”
“And how long, Jasper, have you known this dreadful termination?”
“I have foreseen it these six weeks or more. I knew it, for the first time, to-day.”
“And is it absolutely known, divulged, proclaimed? Have arrests been made?” she asked, with a degree of coolness that amazed him, while he felt that it augured ill for the success of his iniquitous scheme; but he had, in some sort, foreseen her questions, and his answers were prepared already. He answered, therefore, as unhesitatingly as if there had been one word of truth in all that he was uttering.
“It isallknown to one of the leading ministers of the government; it is not divulged; and no arrests have been made yet. But the breathing space will be brief.”
“All, then, is easy! Let us fly! Let us take horse at once—this very night! By noon to-morrow, we shall be in Plymouth, and thence we can gain France, and be safe there until this tyranny shall be o’erpast.”
“Brave girl!” he replied, with the affectation of a melancholy smile. “Brave Theresa, you would bear exile, ruin, poverty with the outlawed traitor; and we might still be happy. But, alas, girl! it is too late to fly. The ports are all closed throughout England. It is too late to fly, and to fight is impossible.”
“Then it remains only that we die!” she exclaimed, casting herself into his arms, “and that is not so difficult, now that I know you love me, Jasper.” But, even as she uttered the words, his previous conversation recurred to her mind, and she started from his arms, crying out, “but you spoke of a sacrifice!—a sacrifice which I could make! Is it possible that I can save you?”
“Not me alone, Theresa, but all the band of brothers who are sworn to this emprise; nor them alone, but England, which may, by your deed, still be liberated from the tyrant.”
She turned her beautiful eyes upward, and her lips moved rapidly, although she spoke not. She was praying for aid from on high—for strength to do her duty.
He watched her with calm, expectant, unmoved eyes, and muttered to himself, “I have gained. She will yield.”
“Now,” she said, “now,” as her prayer was ended, “I am strong now to bear. Tell me, Jasper, what must I do to save you?”
“I cannot tell you, dearest. I cannot—it is too much—you could not make it; nor ifyouwould, could I. Let it pass. We will die—all die together.”
“And England!” exclaimed the girl, with her face kindling gloriously; “and our mother England, must she perish by inches in the tyrant’s clutch, because we are cowards? No, Jasper, no. Be of more constant mind. Tell me, what is it I must do? and, though it wring my heart and rack my brain, if Icansave you and your gallant friends, and our dear native land, I will save them, though it kill me.”
“Could you endure to part from me, Theresa—to part from me forever?”
“To part from you, Jasper!” No written phrase can express the agony, the anguish, the despair, which were made manifest in every sound of those few simple words. A breaking heart spoke out in every accent.
“Ay, to part from me, never to see me more—never to hear my voice; only to know that I exist, and that I love you—love you beyond my own soul! Could you do this, Theresa, in the hope of a meeting hereafter, where no tyranny should ever part us any more?”
“I know not—I know not!” she exclaimed, in a shrill, piercing tone, most unlike her usual soft, slow utterance. “Is this the sacrifice you spoke of? Would this be called for at my hands?”
“To part from me so utterly that it should not be known or suspected that we had ever met—ever been wedded?”
“Why, Jasper,” she cried, starting, and gazing at him wildly, “thatwere impossible; all the world knows that we have met—that we have lived together here—that Iamyour wife. What do you mean? Are you jesting with me? No, no! God help me! that resolute, stern, dark expression! No, no, no, no! Do not frown on me, Jasper; but keep me not in this suspense—only tell me, Jasper.”
“The whole world—that is to say, the whole world of villagers and peasants here, do know that we have met—that we have lived together; but they do notknow—nay, more, they do notbelieve, that youaremy wife, Theresa.”
“Not your wife—not your wife! What, in God’s name, then, do they believe me to be? But Iam—Iam—yes, before God and man, Iamyour wife, Jasper St. Aubyn! That shame will I never bear. The parish register will prove it.”
“Before God, dearest, most assuredly youaremy wife; but before man, I grieve to say, it is not so; nor will the register, to which you appeal—as I did, when I first heard the scandal—prove any thing, but against you. It seems the rascal sexton cut out the record ofour marriage from the register, so soon as the old rector died. He is gone, so that he can witness nothing. Alderly and the sexton will not speak, for to do so would implicate themselves in the guilt of having mutilated the church-register. Alderly’s mother is an idiot. We canprovenothing.”
“And when did you learn all this, Jasper?” she asked, calmly; for a light, a fearful yet most clear illumination began to dawn upon her mind.
“Last night. And I rode down this morning to the church, to inspect the register. It is as I was told; there is no trace of the record which we signed, and saw witnessed, on its pages.”
“And to what end should Verity and Alderly have done this great crime needlessly?”
“Villains themselves, they fancied that I too was a villain; and that, if not then, at some after time, I should desire to profit by their villainy, and should then be in their power.”
“Ha!” she said, still maintaining perfect self-possession. “It seems, at least, that their villainy was wise, was prophetical.”
“Theresa!” his voice was stern, and harsh, and threatening—his brow as black as midnight.
“Pardon me!” she said. “Pardon me, Jasper; but you should make allowance for some feeling in a woman. I am, then, looked upon as a lost, fallen wretch, as a disgrace to my name and my sex, a concubine, a harlot—is it not so, Jasper?”
“Alas! alas! Theresa!”
“And you would have me?—speak!”
“I would not have you do it; God knows! it goes nigh to break my heart to think of it—I only tell you what alone can save us—”
“I understand—it needs not to mince the matter; what is it, then, that can save us—saveyou, I should say rather, andyourfriends?”
“That you should leave me, Theresa, and go where you would, so it were not within a hundred miles of this place—but better to France or Italy; all that wealth could procure you, you should have; and my love would be yours above all things, even although we never meet, until we meet in heaven.”
“Heaven, sir, is for the innocent and faithful, not for the liar and the traitor! But how shall this avail any thing to save you, if I consent to do it? I must know all; I must see all clearly, before I act.”
“Are you strong enough to bear what I shall say to you, my poor Theresa?”
“Else had I not borne to hear what youhavesaid to me.”
“It is the secretary of state, then, who has discovered our plot. He is himself half inclined to join us; but he is a weak, interested, selfish being, although of vast wealth, great influence, and birth most noble. Now, he has a daughter—”
“Ah!” the wretched girl started as if an ice-bolt had shot to her very heart, “and you—you would wed her!”
“That is to say,hewould have me wed her; and on that condition joins our party. And so our lives, and England’s liberties, should be preserved by your glorious sacrifice.”
“I must think, then—I must think,” she answered, burying her head in her hands, in truth, to conceal the agony of her emotions, and to gain time, not for deliberation, but to compose her mind and clear her voice for speech.
And he stood gazing on her, with the cold, cutting eye, the calm, sarcastic sneer, of a very Mephistopheles, believing that she was about to yield, and inwardly mocking the very weakness, on which he had played, to his own base and cruel purposes.
But in a moment she arose and confronted him, pale, calm, majestical, most lovely in her extremity of sorrow, but firm as a hero or a martyr.
“And so,” she said, in a clear, cold, ringing voice, “this is the sacrifice you ask of me?—to sever myself from you forever—to go forth into the great, cruel, cold world alone, with a bleeding, broken heart, a blighted reputation, and a blasted name? All this I might endure, perhaps I would—but you have askedmoreof me, Jasper. You have asked me to confess myself a thing infamous and vile—a polluted wretch—not a wife, but a wanton! You have askedme, your own wedded wife, to write myself down, with my own hand, a harlot, and to stand by and look on at your marriage with another—as if I were the filthy thing you would name me. Than be that thing, Jasper, I would rather die a hundred fold; than call myself that thing, being innocent of deed or thought of shame, I had ratherbe it! Now, sir, are you answered? What, heap the name of harlot on my mother’s ashes! What, blacken my dead father’s stainless ’scutcheon! What—lie, before my God, to brand myself, the first of an honest line, with the strumpet’s stain of blackness! Never! never! though thou and I, and all the youth of England, were to die in tortures inconceivable; never! though England were to perish unredeemed! Now, sir, I ask you, are you answered?”
“I am,” he replied, perfectly unmoved, “I am answered, Theresa, as I hoped, as I expected to be.”
“What do you mean?—did you not ask me to do this thing?”
“I didnot, Theresa. I told you what sacrifice might save us all. I didnotask you to make it. Nay, did I not tell you that I would not even suffer you to make it?”
“But you told me—you told me—God help me, for I think I shall go mad! Oh! tempt me no further, Jasper; try me no further. Is—is this true, that you have told me?”
“Every word—every word of it, my own best love,” answered the arch deceiver, “save only that I would not for my life, nay, for my soul, have suffered you to make the sacrifice I spoke of. Perish myself, my friends! perish England! nay, perish the whole earth, rather!”
“Then why so tempt me? Why so sorely, so cruelly try this poor heart, Jasper?”
“To learn if you were strong enough to share in my secrets—and you shall share them. We must fly, Theresa; not from Plymouth; not from any seaport, but from the wildest gorge in the wild coast of Devon. I have hired a fishing-boat to await us. We must ride forth alone, as if for a pleasure party, across the hills,to-morrow, and so make our way to the place appointed. If we escape, all shall be well—come the worst, as you said, my own Theresa, at least we shall die together.”
“Are you in earnest, Jasper?”
“On my soul! by the God who hears me!”
“And youwilltake me with you; you will not cast me from you; you will uphold me ever to be your own, your wedded wife?”
“I will—I will. Not for the universe! not for my own soul! would I lose you, my own, own Theresa!”
And he clasped her to his bosom, in the fondest, closest embrace, and kissed her beautiful lips eagerly, passionately. And she, half fainting in his arms, could only murmur, in the revulsion of her feelings, “Oh, happy! happy! too, too happy!”
Then he released her from his arms, and bade her go to bed, for it was waxing late, and she would need a good night’s rest to strengthen her for the toils of to-morrow’s journey.
And she smiled on him, and prayed him not to tarry long ere he joined her; and retired, still agitated and nervous from the long continuance of the dreadful mental conflict to which he had subjected her.
But he, when she had left the room, turned almost instantly as pale as ashes—brow, cheeks, nay, his very lips were white and cold. The actor was exhausted by his own exertions. The man shrunk from the task which was before him.
“The worse for her!” he muttered, through his hard-set teeth, “the worse for her! the obstinate, vain, willful fool! I would, by heaven! I would have saved her!”
Then he clasped his burning brow with the fingers of his left hand, as if to compress its fierce, rapid beating, and strode to and fro, through the narrow room, working the muscles of his clinched right hand, as if he grasped the hilt of sword or dagger.
“There is no other way,” he said at length; “there is no other way, and Imustdo it—must do it with my own hand. But—can I—can I—?—” he paused a moment, and resumed his troubled walk. Then halted, and muttered in a deep voice, “By hell! there is naught that a man cannot do; and I—am I not a man, and a right resolute, and stout one? It shall be so—it is her fate! her fate! Did not her father speak of it that night, as I lay weak and wounded on the bed? did I not dream it thrice thereafter, in that same bed? though then I understood it not. It shall be there—even there—where I saw it happen; so shall it pass for accident. It is fate!—who can strive against their fate?”
Again he was silent, and during that momentary pause, a deep, low, muttering roar was heard in the far distance—a breathless hush—and again, that long, hollow, crashing roll, that tells of elemental warfare.
Jasper’s eye flashed, and his whole face glared with a fearful and half frenzied illumination.
“Itis,” he cried, “itisthunder! From point to point it is true! It is her fate—her fate!”
And with the words, he rushed from the room; and within ten minutes, was folded in the rapturous embrace of the snowy arms of her, whose doom of death he had decreed already in the secrets of his guilty soul.
——
The Deed of Blood.
It rose again, but indistinct to view,And left the waters of a purple hue.Byron.
It rose again, but indistinct to view,And left the waters of a purple hue.Byron.
It rose again, but indistinct to view,
And left the waters of a purple hue.
Byron.
Throughout that livelong night, the thunder roared and rolled incessantly, and from moment to moment the whole firmament seemed to yawn asunder, showing its inner vaults, sheeted with living and coruscant fire, while ever and anon long, arrowy, forked tongues, of incandescent brightness, darted down from the zenith, cleaving the massive storm-clouds with a crash that made the whole earth reel and shudder.
Never, within the memory of man, had such a storm been known at that season of the year. Huge branches, larger than trees of ordinary size, were rent from the gigantic oaks by the mere force of the hurricane, and whirled away like straws before its fury. The rain fell not in drops or showers, but in vast sheeted columns. The rills were swollen into rivers, the rivers covered the lowland meadows, expanded into very seas. Houses were unroofed, steeples and chimneys hurled in ruin to the earth, cattle were killed in the open fields, unscathed by lightning, by the mere weight of the storm.
Yet through that awful turmoil of the elements, which kept men waking, and bold hearts trembling from the Land’s End to Cape Wrath, Jasper St. Aubyn slept as calmly as an infant, with his head pillowed on the soft bosom of his innocent and lovely wife. And she, though the tempest roared around, and the thunder crashed above her, so that she could not close an eye in sleep; though she believed that to-morrow she was about to fly from her native land, her home, never, perhaps, to see them more; though she looked forward to a life of toil and wandering, of hardship, and of peril as an exile’s wife, perhaps to a death of horror, as a traitor’s confederate, she blessed God with a grateful heart, that he had restored to her her husband’s love, and watched that dear sleeper, dreaming a waking dream of perfect happiness.
But him no dreams, either sleeping or waking, disturbed from his heavy stupor, or diverted from his hellish purpose. So resolute, so iron-like in its unbending pertinacity was that young, boyish mind, that having once resolved upon his action, not all the terrors of heaven or of hell could have turned him from it.
There lay beneath one roof, on one marriage bed, ay, clasped in one embrace, the resolved murderer, and his unconscious victim. And he had tasted the honey of her lips, had fondled, had caressed her to the last, had sunk to sleep, lulled by the sweet, low voice of her who, if his power should mate his will, would never look upon a second morrow.
And here, let no one say such things cannot be, save in the fancy of the rhapsodist or the romancer; such things are impossible—for not only is there nothing under the sun impossible to human power, or beyond the aim of human wickedness, but such thingsareandhave been, and will be again, so long as human passion exists uncontrolled by principle.
Such things have been among ourselves, and in our own day, as he who writes has seen, and many of those who read must needs remember—and such things were that night at Widecomb.
With the first dappling of the dawn, the rage of the elements sunk into rest, the winds sighed themselves to sleep, the pelting torrents melted into a soft, gray mist; only the roar of the distant waters, mellowed into a strange fitful murmur, was heard in the general tranquillity which followed the loud uproar.
Wearied with her involuntary watching, Theresa fell asleep also, still clasping in her fond arms the miserable, guilty thing which she had sworn so fatally, and kept her vow so faithfully, to love, honor, and obey.
When the sun rose, the wretched man awoke from his deep and dreamless deep; and as his eye fell on that innocent, sweet face, calm as an infant’s, and serene, though full of deep thoughts and pure affections, hedidstart, hedidshudder, for one second’s space—perhaps for that fleeting point of time, he doubted. But if it were so, he nerved himself again almost without an effort, disengaged himself gently from the embrace of her entwined arms, with something that sounded like a smothered curse, and stalked away in sullen gloom, leaving her buried in her last natural slumber.
Two hours had, perhaps, gone over, and the morning had come out bright and glorious after the midnight storm, the atmosphere was clear and breezy, the skies pure as crystal, and the glad sunshine glanced and twinkled with ten thousand gay reflections in the diamond rain-drops which still gemmed every blade of grass, and glistened in every flowret’s cup, when Theresa’s light step was heard coming down the stairs, and her sweet voice inquiring where she should find Master St. Aubyn.
“I am here,” answered his deep voice, which for the moment he made an effort to inflect graciously, and with the word he made his appearance from the door of his study, booted to the mid-thigh, and spurred; with a long, heavy rapier at his side, and a stout dagger counterbalancing it in the other side of his girdle. He was dressed in a full suit of plain black velvet, without any ornament or embroidery; and whether it was that the contrast made him look paler, or that the horror of what he was about to do, though insufficient to turn his hard heart, had sufficed to blanch his cheek and lips, I know not, but, as she saw his face, Theresa started as if she had seen a ghost.
“How pale you look, Jasper,” she said earnestly; “are you ill at ease, dearest, or anxious about me? If it be the last, vex not yourself, I pray you; for I am not in the least afraid, either of the fatigue or of the voyage. For the rest,” she added, with a bright smile, intended to reassure him, “I have long wished to seela belle France, as they call it; and to me the change of scene, so long as you are with me, dearest Jasper, will be but a change of pleasure. I hope I have not kept you waiting. But I could not sleep during the night for the thunder, and about daybreak I was overpowered by a heavy slumber. I did not even hear you leave me.”
“I saw that you slept heavily, my own love,” he made answer, “and was careful not to wake you, knowing what you would have to undergo to-day, and wishing to let you get all the rest you could before starting. But come, let us go to breakfast. We have little time to lose, the horses will be at the door in half an hour.”
“Come, then,” she answered, “I am ready;” and she took his arm as she spoke, and passed, leaning on him, through the long suit of rooms, which now, for above a year had been her home in mingled happiness and sorrow. “Heigho!” she murmured, with a half sigh, “dear Widecomb! dear, dear Widecomb, many a happy hour have I spent within your walls, and it goes hard with me to leave you. I wonder, shall I ever see you more.”
“Never,” replied the deep voice of her husband, in so strange a tone, that it made her turn her head and look at him quickly. A strange, dark spasm had convulsed his face, and was not yet passed from it, when her eye met his. She thought it was the effect of natural grief at leaving his fine place—the place of his birth—as an outlaw and an exile; and half repenting that she had so spoken as to excite his feelings, she hastened to soothe them, as she thought, by a gayer and more hopeful word.
“Never heed, dearest Jasper,” she said, pressing his arm, on which she hung, “if we do love old Widecomb, there are as fair places elsewhere, on the world’s green face, and if there were not, happy minds will aye find, or make happy places. And we, why spite of time and tide, wind and weather, wewillbe happy, Jasper. And I doubt not a moment, that we shall yet live to spend happy days once more in Widecomb.”
“I fear, never,” replied the young man, solemnly. It was a singular feeling—he did not repent, he did not falter or shrink in the least from his murderous purpose; but, for his life, he could not give her a hope, he could not say a word to cheer her, or deceive her, further than he was compelled to do in order to carry out his end.
The morning meal passed silently and sadly; for, in spite of all her efforts to be gay, and to make him lighter-hearted, his brow was clouded, and he would not converse; and she, fearing to vex him, or to trespass on what she believed to be his deep regret at leaving home, ceased to intrude upon his sorrow.
At length he asked her, “Are you ready?” and as he spoke, arose from the table.
“Oh yes,” she answered, “I am always ready when you want me. And see, Jasper,” she added, “here are my jewels,” handing him a small ebony casket “I thought they might be of use to us, in case of our wanting money; and yet I should grieve to part with them, for they are the diamondsyougave me that night we were wedded.”
He took it with a steady hand, and thrust it into the bosom of his dress, saying, with a forced smile, “You are ever careful, Theresa. But you have said nothing, I trust, to your maidens, of our going.”
“Surely not, Jasper, they believe I am going but for a morning’s ride. Do you not see that I have got on my new habit? You have not paid me one complimenton it, sir. I think you might at least have told me that I looked pretty in it. I know the day when you would have done so, without my begging it.”
“Is that meant for a reproach, Theresa?” he said, gloomily, “because—”
“A reproach, Jasper,” she interrupted him quickly, “how little you understand poor me! I hoped, by my silly prattle, to win you from your sorrow at leaving all that you love so dearly. But I will be silent—”
“Do so, I pray you, for the moment.”
And without further words, he led her down the steps of the terrace, and helped her to mount her palfrey, a beautiful, slight, high-bred thing, admirably fitted to carry a lady round the trim rides of a park, but so entirely deficient in bone, strength, and sinew, that no animal could have been conceived less capable of enduring any continuous fatigue, or even of making any one strong and sustained exertion. Then he sprung to the back of his own noble horse, a tall, powerful, thorough-bred hunter, of about sixteen hands in height, with bone and muscle to match, capable, as it would appear, of carrying a man-at-arms in full harness through a long march or a pitched battle.
Just as he was on the point of starting, he observed that one of his dogs, a favorite greyhound, was loose, and about to follow him, when he commanded him to be taken up instantly, rating the man who had held the horses very harshly, and cursing him soundly for disobeying his orders.
Then, when he saw that he was secure against the animal’s following him, he turned his horse’s head to the right hand, toward the great hills to the westward, saying aloud, so that all the bystanders could hear him,
“Well, lady fair, since we are only going for a pleasure ride, suppose we go up toward the great deer-park in the forest. By the way,” he added, turning in his saddle to the old steward, who was standing on the terrace, “I desired Haggerston, the horse-dealer, to meet me here at noon, about a hunter he wants to sell me. If I should not be back, give him some dinner, and detain him till I return. I shall not be late, for I fancy my lady will not care to ride very far.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, Jasper,” she replied, with an arch smile, thinking to aid him in his project. “It is so long since I have ridden out with you, that I may wish to make a day of it. Come, let us start.”
And she gave her jennet its head, and cantered lightly away over the green, her husband following at a trot of his powerful hunter; and in a few minutes they were both hidden from the eyes of the servants, among the clumps of forest-trees and the dense thickets of the chase.
At something more than three miles’ distance from Widecomb House, to the westward, there is a pass in the hills, where a bridle-road crosses the channel of the large brook, which I have named so often, and which, at a point far lower down, was the scene of Jasper’s ill-omened introduction to Theresa Allan.
This bridle-road, leading from the sparse settlements on Dartmoor to the nearest point of the seacoast, was a rough, dangerous track, little frequented except by the smugglers and poachers of that region, and lay for the most part considerably below the level of the surrounding country, between wooded hills, or walk of dark gray rock.
The point at which it crosses the stream is singularly wild and romantic, for the road and the river both are walled by sheer precipices of gray, shattered, limestone rock, nearly two hundred feet in height, perfectly barren, bare, and treeless, except on the summits, which are covered with heather and low, stunted shrubbery.
The river itself, immediately above the ford, by which the road passes it, descends by a flight of rocky steps, or irregular shelvy rapids, above a hundred feet within three times as many yards, and then spreads out into a broad, open pool, where its waters, not ordinarily above three feet deep, glance rapidly, but still and unbroken, over a level pavement of smooth stone, almost as slippery as ice. Scarce twenty yards below this, there is an abrupt pitch of sixty feet in perpendicular height, over which the river rushes at all times in a loud foaming waterfall, but after storms among the hills, in a tremendous roaring cataract.
The ford is never a safe one, owing to the insecure foothold afforded by the slippery limestone, but when the river is in flood, no one in his senses would dream of crossing it.
Yet it was by this road that Jasper had persuaded his young wife that they could alone hope to escape with any chance of safety, and to this point he was leading her. And she, though she knew the pass, and all its perils, resolute to accompany him through life, and, if need should be, to death itself, rode onward with him, cheerful and apparently fearless.
They reached its brink, and the spectacle it afforded was, indeed, fearful. The river swollen by the rains of the past night, though, like all mountain torrents, rising and falling rapidly, it was already subsiding, came down from the moors with an arrowy rush, clear and transparent as glass, yet deep in color as the rich brown cairn-gorm. The shelvy rapids above the ford were one sheet of snow-white foam, and in the ford itself the foam-flakes wheeled round and round, as in a huge boiling caldron, while below it the roar of the cataract was louder than the loudest thunder, and the spray rolling upward from the whirlpool beneath, clung to the crags above in mist-wreaths so dense that their summits were invisible.
“Good God!” cried Theresa, turning deadly pale, as she looked on the fearful pool. “We are lost. It is impossible.”
“By heaven!” he answered, impetuously, “I must pass it, or stay and be hanged.Youcan do as you will, Theresa.”
“But is it possible?”
“Certainly it is. Do you think I would lead you into certain death? But see, I will ride across and return, that you may see how easy it is, to a brave heart and a cool hand.”
And, confident in the strength of his horse and in his own splendid horsemanship, he plunged in dauntlessly, and keeping up stream near to the foot of the upper rapids, struggled through it, and returned to her without much difficulty, though the water rose above the belly of his horse.
He heard, however, that a fresh storm was rattling and roaring, even now, among the hills above, and he knew by that sign that a fresh torrent was even now speeding its way down the chasm.
There was no time to be lost—it was now or never. He cast an eager glance around—a glance that read and marked every thing—as he came to land; save only Theresa, there was not a human being within sight.
“You see,” he said, with a smile, “there is no danger.”
“I see,” she answered, merrily. “Forgive me for being such a little coward. But you will lead Rosabella, wont you, Jasper?”
“Surely,” he answered. “Come.”
And catching the curb-rein of the pony with his left hand, and guiding his own horse with his right, holding his heavy loaded hunting-whip between his teeth, he led her down into the foaming waters, so that her palfrey was between himself and the cataract.
It was hard work, and a fearful struggle for that slender, light-limbed palfrey to stem that swollen river; and the long skirt of Theresa’s dress, holding the water, dragged the struggling animal down toward the waterfall. Still, despite every disadvantage, it would have battled to the other side, had fair play been given it.
But when they reached the very deepest and most turbulent part of the pool, under pretence of aiding it, Jasper lifted the jennet’s fore-legs, by dint of the strong, sharp curb, clear off the bottom. The swollen stream came down with a heavier swirl, its hind legs were swept from under it, in an instant, and with a piercing scream of agony and terror, the palfrey was whirled over the brink of the fall.
But, as it fell, unsuspicious of her husband’s horrible intent, the wretched girl freed her foot from the stirrup, and throwing herself over to the right hand, with a wild cry, “Save me! save me, my God! save me, Jasper!” caught hold of his velvet doublet with both hands, and clung to him with the tenacious grasp of the death-struggle.
Even then—even then, had he relented, one touch of the spur would have carried his noble horse clear through the peril.
But no! the instant her horse fell, he shifted his reins to the left hand, and grasped his whip firmly in the right; and now, with a face of more than fiendish horror, pale, comprest, ghastly, yet grim and resolute as death, he reared his hand on high, and poised the deadly weapon.
Then, even then, her soft blue eyes met his, full, in that moment of unutterable terror, of hope and love, even then overpowering agony. She met his eyes, glaring with wolfish fury; she saw his lifted hand, and even then would have saved his soul that guilt.
“Oh no!” she cried, “oh no! I will let go—I will drown, if you wish it; I will—I will, indeed! Oh God! do notyou—do notyou—kill me, Jasper.”
And even as she spoke, she relaxed her hold, and suffered herself to glide down into the torrent; but it was all too late—the furious blow was dealt—with that appalling sound, that soft, dead, crushing plash, it smote her full between those lovely eyes.
“Oh God!—my God!—forgive—Jasper! Jasper!”—and she plunged deep into the pool; but as the waters swept her over the cataract’s verge, they raised her corpse erect; and its dead face met his, with the eyes glaring on his own yet wide open, and the dread, gory spot between them, as he had seen it in his vision years before.
He stood, motionless, reigning his charger in the middle of the raging current, unmindful of his peril, gazing, horror-stricken, on the spot where he had seen her last—his brain reeled, he was sick at heart.
A wild, piercing shout, almost too shrill to be human, aroused him from his trance of terror. He looked upward almost unconsciously, and it seemed to him that the mist had been drawn up like a curtain, and that a man in dark garb stood gazing on him from the summit of the rocks.
If it were so, it was but for a second’s space. The fog closed in thicker again than before, the torrent came roaring down in fiercer, madder flood, and wheeling his horse round, and spurring him furiously, it was all that Jasper St. Aubyn could do, by dint of hand and foot, and as iron a heart as ever man possessed, to avoidfollowing his victim to her watery grave.
Once safe, he cast one last glance to the rocks, to the river, but he saw, heard nothing. He whirled the bloody whip over the falls, plunged his spurs, rowel-deep, into the horse’s sides, and with hellin his heart, he galloped, like one pursued by the furies of the slain, back, alone, to Widecomb.
——
The Vengeance.