May Fleming - The Gypsy Queen's Vow

“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!”