Читать книгу The Gypsy Queen's Vow - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 9

And how fell the news of Reginald Germaine’s innocence of the crime for which he was condemned, and his sad end, on the other personages connected with our tale?

To his mother came the news in her far-off greenwood home; and as she heard he had perished forever in the stormy sea, Reason, already tottering in her half-crazed brain, entirely gave way, and she fled, a shrieking maniac, through the dim, old woods.

To Earl De Courcy it came in his stately home, to fill his heart with deepest sorrow and remorse. Hauntingly before him arose the agonized, despairing face of the lonely woman, as on that last night she had groveled at his feet, shrieking for that mercy he had refused. Proud, stern man as he was, no words can express the deep pity, the heartfelt sorrow he felt, as he thought of that lonely, despairing, childless woman, a wanderer over the wide world.

To Lord Ernest Villiers it came, bringing deepest regret for the bold-eyed, high-hearted youth, so unjustly condemned, so wrongly accused. He thought of him as he knew him first – proud, princely, handsome, and generous. And now! that young life, under the unjust sentence of the law, had passed away; that haughty head, noble even in its degradation, lay far under the deep sea, among the bleaching bones of those guilt-hardened men.

To one, in her father’s castle halls, it came, bringing a feeling of untold relief. He had cruelly wronged her; but he was dead now, and she freely forgave him for all she had suffered. While he lived, incurable sorrow must be hers; but he was gone, and happy days might dawn for her yet. She might love another now, without feeling it a crime to do so – one noble and generous, and worthy of her in every way. One deep breath of relief, one low sigh to the memory of his sad fate, and then a look of calm, deep happiness stole over the beautiful face, such as it had not worn for years, and the beautiful head, with its wealth of raven ringlets, dropped on her arm, in a voiceless thanksgiving, in a joy too intense for words.

And this was Lady Maude Percy.

In spite of her steady refusal of his suit, Lord Villiers had not despaired. He could not understand the cause of her strange melancholy and persistent refusal of her hand, knowing, as he did, that she loved him, but, believing the obstacle to be merely an imaginary one, he hoped on, and waited for the time to come when this singular fancy of hers would be gone. That time had come now. Calling, one morning, and finding her in the drawing-room, he was greeted with a brilliant smile, with a quick flush of pleasure, and a manner so different from her customary one, that his heart bounded with sudden hope.

“I am truly rejoiced to see Lady Maude recovering her spirits again,” he said, his fine eyes lit up with pleasure. “She has been shadowed by the dark cloud of her nameless melancholy long enough.”

“If Lord Villiers only knew how much cause I had for that ‘nameless melancholy,’ he would forgive me any pain it may ever have caused him,” she said, while a shadow of the past fell darkly over her bright young face.

“And may I not know? Dearest Maude, when is this mystery to end? Am I never to be made happy by the possession of this dear hand?”

He took the little, white hand, small and snowy as a lily-leaf, and it was no longer withdrawn, but nestled lovingly in his, as if there it found its rightful home.

“Maude, Maude!” he cried, in a delirium of joy, “is your dark dream, then, in reality over? Oh, Maude, speak, and tell me! Am I to be made happy yet?”

“If you can take me as I am, if you can forgive and forget the past, I am yours, Ernest!” she said, in a thrilling whisper.

In a moment she was in his arms, held to the true heart whose every throb was for her – her head upon the breast that was to pillow hers through life.

“Maude, Maude! My bride, my life, my peerless darling! Oh, Maude, this is too much happiness!” he cried, in a sort of transport between the passionate kisses pressed on her warm, yielding lips.

Blushingly she rose from his embrace, and gently extricated herself from his arms.

“Oh, Maude, my beautiful darling! May Heaven forever bless you for this!” he fervently exclaimed, all aglow with passionate love.

She had sunk into a seat, and bent her head into her hand, not daring to meet the full, falcon gaze, flashing with deepest tenderness, that she knew was bent upon her.

“Speak again, Maude! Once more let me hear those precious words from your own sweet lips, Maude! Maude, sweetest and fairest, speak!”

He wreathed his arms around her, while he seemed breathing out his very soul as he aspirated her name.

“But you have not heard all, my lord. This secret – do you not wish to hear it?” she faintly said, without lifting her dark, beautiful eyes.

“Not unless it is your wish to tell it. I want to hear nothing but that you are my own.”

“Yet, when you hear it, my lord, you may reject the hand I have offered.”

“Never, never! Nothing under heaven could make me do that!”

“You speak rashly, Lord Ernest. Wait until you have heard all. I dare not accept the noble heart and hand you offer, without revealing the one great error of my youth.”

“You commit error, my beautiful saint? You, who are as perfect in soul as in body. Oh, Maude, I cannot believe it.”

“It is true, nevertheless, my lord. But oh, how shall I tell you? How can I confess what I have been – what I am?”

There was a sharp agony in her voice, and her head dropped on her hands, and her fair bosom rose and fell like a tempest-tossed sea.

Encircling her with his arm, he drew her down until her white face lay hidden in his breast, and then pressing his lips to the dark ripples of hair sweeping against his cheek, he murmured, in tenderest whisper:

“Tell me now, Maude, and fear not; for nothing you can say will convince me you are not as pure and unsullied as the angels themselves. What is this terrible secret, sweetest love?”

“Oh, my dear lord, every word you speak, every caress you give me, makes my revelation the harder!” she passionately cried. “And yet it must be made, even though you should spurn me from you in loathing after. Listen, my lord. You think me Lady Maude Percy?”

“Yes, dear love.”

“That is not my name!”

“What, Maude?”

“That is not my name. No; I am not mad, Lord Villiers, though you look as if you thought so. I have been mad once! You and all the world are deceived. I am not what I seem.”

“What, in Heaven’s name do you mean? What then are you?”

“I was a wife! I have been a mother! I am a widow!”

“Maude!”

“You recoil from me in horror! I knew it would be so. I deserve it – I deserve it! but oh, Lord Villiers, it will kill me!” she cried, passionately wringing her hands.

“Maude, are you mad?”

“I am not – oh, I am not! if a grief-crazed brain, a blighted life, a broken heart be not madness.”

“But, Maude! Good heavens! You are so young – not yet eighteen! Oh, it cannot be true!” he cried, incoherently.

“Would to God it were not! Yet four years ago I was a wedded wife!”

“Wife, mother, and widow at eighteen! Maude, Maude, how can I realize this?”

“Oh, I was crazed! I was mad! and I did love him so, then! Not as I love you, Lord Ernest, with a woman’s strong, undying affection, but with the wild, passionate fervor of youth. I must have inherited my dead mother’s Spanish blood; for no calm-pulsed English girl ever felt love like that.”

“Oh, Lady Maude! – Lady Maude! I could hardly have believed a messenger from heaven had he told me this.”

“God be merciful to human error! A long life of sorrow and remorse must atone for that first rash fault.”

He was pacing up and down the long room with rapid, excited strides; his fine face flushed, and his hands tightly shut, as if to keep down the bitterness that rebelliously rose at this unlooked-for avowal. He had expected to hear some light, trivial fault, magnified by a morbid imagination; but not a clandestine marriage. No man likes to hear that the woman he loves has ever loved another; and Lady Maud Percy had already seemed so angelic that this sudden “falling off” of his high ideal, brought with it a pang like the bitterness of death.

And therefore, pacing up and down – up and down, with brain and heart in a tumult – Lord Ernest Villiers’ pride for one moment overcame and mastered his love. For one brief moment only – for then his eyes fell on the drooping figure and despair-bowed young head; and the anguished attitude went to his heart, bringing back a full tide of pity, love, and forgiveness. All was forgotten, but that she was the only one he ever did or could love; and lifting the sorrowing head and grief-bowed form in his arms, once more he clasped her closer to the manly young heart she could feel throbbing under her own, and whispered:

“My own life’s darling still! Oh, Maude! if you must grieve, it shall be on my breast. If you have erred, so, too, have I – so have we all often. I will forget all but that you have promised my arms shall be your home forever!”

“And you forgive and love me still? Oh, Lord Ernest!” He kissed away her tears as she wept aloud.

“One thing more, dearest. Who was my Maude’s first love!”

He felt a convulsive shiver run through the delicate form he held. He felt her breast heave and throb as if the name was struggling to leave it, and could not.

“Tell me, Maude, for I must know.”

“Oh, saints in heaven! how can I? Oh, Lord Ernest! this humiliation is more than I can endure.”

“Speak, Lady Maude! for I must know.”

She lifted her eyes to his, full of unspeakable anguish, and then dropped her head heavily again; for in that fixed, grave, noble face, full of love and pity as it was, there was no yielding now.

“Tell me, Maude, who was the husband of your childhood?”

From the pale, quivering lip, in a dying whisper, dropped the words: “Reginald Germaine, the gipsy!”

There was a moment’s death-like silence. The handsome face of Lord Ernest Villiers seemed turned to marble, and still motionless as if expiring, she lay in the arms that clasped her still in a close embrace. At last:

“Heaven be merciful to the dead! Look up, my precious Maude; for nothing on earth shall ever come between us more!”

Calm and clear, on the troubled wave of her tempest-tossed soul, the low words fell; but only her deep, convulsive sobs were his answer.

“Maude! – my own dear Maude!” he cried, at last, alarmed by her passion of grief, “cease this wild weeping. Forget the troubled past, dear love; for there are many happy days in store for us yet.”

But still she wept on – wildly, vehemently, at first – until her strong passion of grief had passed away. He let her sob on in quiet now, with no attempt to check her grief, except by his silent caresses.

She lifted her head and looked up, at last, thanking him by a radiant look, and the soft, thrilling clasp of her white arms.

“I will not ask you to explain now, sweet Maude,” he softly whispered. “Some other time, when you are more composed, you shall tell me all.”

“No – no; better now – far better now; and then, while life lasts, neither you nor I, Ernest, will ever breathe one word of the dark sorrowful story again. Oh, Ernest! can all the fondest love of a lifetime suffice to repay you for the forgiveness you have shown me to-day?”

“I am more than repaid now, dear love. Speak of that no more. But now that the worst is over, will my Maude tell me all?”

“I have not much to tell, Ernest; but you shall hear it. Nearly three years before you and I met, when a child of fourteen, I was on a visit to my uncle Everly’s. My cousin Hubert, home from college, brought with him a fellow-student to spend the vacation, who was presented to me as Count Germaine. What Reginald Germaine was then, you, who have seen him, do not need to know. Handsome, dashing, fascinating, he took every heart by storm, winning love by his gay, careless generosity, and respect by his talents and well-known daring. I was a dreamy, romantic school-girl; and in this bold, reckless boy, handsome as an angel, I saw the living embodiment of my most glorious ideal. From morning till night we were together; and, Ernest, can you understand that wild dream? How I loved him then, words are weak to express, how I loathed and despised him after no words can ever tell. Ernest, he persuaded me to elope with him one night; and we were married. I never stopped to think of the consequences then. I only knew I would have given up my hopes of heaven for him! Three weeks longer he remained at Everly Hall; and then papa sent me back to school, and he went to London.

“No one was in our secret, and we met frequently, unsuspected; though papa, thinking he was too presuming, had forbidden me to associate with him. One day we went out driving; the carriage was upset; I fainted; and for a long time I remembered nothing more.

“When reason returned, I was in a little cottage, nursed by an old woman; while he hovered by my bedside night and day. Then I learned that I had given birth to a child – dead now and buried. I could recollect myself as people recollect things in a confused dream – of hearing for a time the feeble cries of an infant, and seeing a baby face, with the large, black, beautiful eyes of Reginald Germaine. I turned my face to the wall and wept, at first, in childish grief; but he caressed and soothed me, and I soon grew calm. I thought, at the time, a strange, unaccountable change had come over him; though I could not tell what. When I was well again I learned. Standing before me, one morning, he calmly and quietly told me how he had deceived me – that, instead of being a French count, he was the son of a strolling gipsy; but that, having repented of what he had done, he was willing to give me up.

“The very life seemed stricken out of my heart as I listened. Then my pride – the aroused pride of my race – arose; and, oh! words are weak to tell how I loathed myself and him. That I, a Percy – the daughter of a race that had mated with royalty hitherto – had fallen so low as to wed a gipsy! I shrunk, in horror unspeakable, from the black, bottomless quagmire into which I had sunk. All my love in that instant turned to bitterest scorn, and I passionately bade him leave me, and never dare to come near me again, or breathe a word of the past. He obeyed; and from that day I never beheld him more.

“After that, I met you, Lord Ernest, and I loved you as I never loved him. For him, I cherished a blind, mad passion; for you, I felt the strong, earnest love of womanhood. You loved me; but I shrunk from the affection my very soul was crying out for, knowing I dared not love you without guilt. Now you know the secret of my coldness and mysterious melancholy.

“I heard often of Germaine; and his name was like a spear-thrust to my heart. When I was told of his arrest, trial and condemnation for grand larceny, you perhaps may imagine, but I can never tell, exactly what I felt. His name was the theme of every tongue; and day after day I was forced to listen to the agonizing details, knowing – low as he had fallen, guilty as he might be – he was my husband still. Thank God! through all his ignominy, he had honor enough never to reveal our dark secret. Then came the news of his death; and Heaven forgive me if my heart bounded as I heard it!

“Oh, Lord Ernest! you were my first thought. I felt I could dare to love you now as you deserved to be loved, without sinning. I determined to tell you all, and to love you still, even though you spurned me from you forever. Oh, Ernest! my noble-hearted! may God forever bless you for forgiving me as you have done, and loving me still!”

Her voice ceased, but the dark, eloquent eyes were full of untold love – of love that could never die for all time.

“My own! – my own! never so well beloved as now! My Maude! – my bride! – my wife! blot out from the leaves of your life that dark page – that year of passion, of error, of sorrow and shame. We will never speak or think of it more, sweet Maude. Germaine has gone to answer for what he has done; if he has sinned while living, so also he has deeply suffered and sorrow-atoned for all. Fiery, passionate and impulsive, if he has wronged others, so also has he been deeply wronged. May God forgive him!”

“Amen,” was the solemn response.

“And now, Maude, what need of further delay? When shall this dear hand be mine?”

“Whenever you claim it, dear Ernest. I shall have no will but yours now,” she answered, with all a woman’s devotion in her deep eyes, “I am yours – yours through life, and beyond death, if I may.”