May Fleming - The Gypsy Queen's Vow

Toward midnight, she had cautiously entered, thinking all were most likely to be in the drawing-rooms at that hour, and having previously heard from the servants, by apparently careless questions, where the nursery was situated, bent her steps in that direction. Pausing at the door, which was ajar, she had glanced through, and beheld child and nurse both asleep.

To steal cautiously in, snatch up the child, muffle it so tightly in her cloak that if it cried it could not be heard, and fly down the staircase, was but the work of an instant. Pausing, for an instant, before the door of the grand salon, in her fleet descent, she had boldly uttered her denunciation, and then, with the speed of the wind, had flown through the long hall, out of the door, and away through the wind and sleet, as if pursued by the arch-demon himself.

When she paused, at last, from exhaustion, she was on London Bridge. Darkly came back the memory of the night, just two years before, when, with deadly despair in her heart, she had stood in that self-same spot, on the point of committing self-murder. With a fierce impulse, she opened her cloak and lifted the half-smothered infant high above her head, to dash it into the dark waters below. For one moment she held it poised in the air, and then she drew it back.

“No,” she said, with a fiendish smile; “it will be a greater revenge to let it live – to let it grow up a tainted, corrupted, miserable outcast; and then, when spurned alike by God and man, present it to them as their child. Ha! ha! ha! that will be revenge indeed! Live, pretty one – live! You are far too precious to die yet.”

Awakened from her sound sleep by the unusual and unpleasant sensation of the bitter March storm beating in her face, little Erminie began to cry. Wrapping it once more in her thick mantle, the gipsy, knowing there was no time to lose, fled away in the direction of a low house in St. Giles, where, with others of her tribe, she had often been, and the proprietor of which was a gipsy himself, and a member of her own tribe. Here, safe from all pursuit, she could stay with the child until the first heat of the search was past, and then – then to begin her tortures once more.

Little Erminie grieved without ceasing for “mamma,” at first, and seemed almost to know the difference between the miserable den wherein she was now located and the princely home she had left. It was not in any heart, however hard, to dislike the lovely infant; and much as Ketura hated the race from which she sprung, she really pitied the little, gentle, helpless babe. So, from two motives – one a feeling of commiseration for the child, and the other a fierce, demoniacal desire that she should live to be the instrument of her vengeance – she procured a nurse for little Erminie, a woman a shade better than the rest of her class, who had lately lost a child of her own; and owing to her care, little Erminie lived. Lived – but for what fate?

A month passed. Night and day the search had been carried on; enormous rewards were offered; detectives were sent in every direction; but all in vain. No trace of the lost child was to be found.

Lady Maude had awoke from that deadly swoon, only to fall into another, and another, until her friends grew seriously alarmed for her life. From this, she sunk into a sort of low stupor; and for weeks, she lay still and motionless, unconscious of everything passing around her. White, frail, and shadowy, she lay, a breathing corpse, dead to the world and all it contained. She scarcely realized her loss, she felt like one who has received a heavy blow, stunning her for a time, and rendering her unable to comprehend the full extent of her loss. She received what they gave her in a passive sort of way, heard without understanding what they said, and watched them moving about from under her heavy eyelids without recognizing them. She did not even know her husband, who, the very shadow of his former self, gave up everything to remain by her bedside, night and day. They began to be alarmed for her reason, at last; but her physician said there was no danger – she would arouse from this dull, death-like lethargy, at last: they must only let nature have her way.

Earl De Courcy never left his room now. Feeling as if in some sort he was the cause of this awful calamity, he remained, day and night, in his chamber, a miserable, heart-broken, wretched old man.

Late one evening, early in May, as he sat bowed and collapsed in his chair, a servant entered to announce a stranger below, who earnestly desired to see his lordship.

“Is it a woman?” asked the earl, turning ghastly.

“No, my lord, a man, I think, wrapped in a long cloak, and with a hat slouched down over his face. He said he had something of the utmost importance to reveal to your lordship.”

“Show him up,” said the earl eagerly: while his heart gave a sudden bound, as he thought it might be some one with news of Erminie.

The next moment the door was thrown open, and a tall, dark figure, muffled in a cloak reaching to the ground, and with a hat pulled far over the face, entered, and stood silently confronting the earl.

“Well? Do you bring news of my son’s child? Speak quickly, for God’s sake, if you do!” said the earl, half rising in his eagerness.

Two fierce, black eyes, like living coals, glared at him from under the hat; but the tall stranger spoke not a word.

A deadly fear, like an iron hand, clutched the heart of the earl. That tall, motionless form; those glaring eyes; that ominous silence, made his very blood curdle. White and trembling, he fell back in his seat, for all his undaunted strength was gone now.

“Leave the room,” said the stranger, in a deep, stern voice, turning to the servant, who stood gazing from one to the other.

The man vanished – the door closed. And Earl De Courcy was alone with his mysterious visitor, who still stood erect, towering and silent, before him.

“Man or devil, speak! With what evil purpose have you sought me to-night?” said the earl, at last finding voice.

Silently the stranger lifted his hat, and cast it on the floor. A mass of thick, streaming, black hair, on which, one wild March night, the pitiless rain had beat, fell over her shoulders. The long cloak was dropped off, and, stern, dark and menacing, he saw the lofty, commanding form, the fierce, black eyes, and dark, lowering brow of the wronged gipsy queen, Ketura, his relentless, implacable foe.

The last hue of life faded from the white face of the earl at the terrible sight; a horror unspeakable thrilled through his very soul. Twice he essayed to speak; his lips moved, but no sound came forth.

Silent, still, she stood before him, as rigid as a figure in bronze, her arms folded over her breast, her lips tightly compressed, every feature in perfect repose. You might have thought her some dark statue, but that life – burning life – was concentrated in those wild, dark eyes, that never for a single instant removed their uncompromising glare from his face.

So they stood for nearly five minutes, and then words came, at last, to the trembling lips of the earl.

“Dark, dreadful woman! what new crime have you come to perpetrate this night?”

“No crime, lord earl. I come to answer the questions you asked as I entered.”

“Of the child? You have stolen it?” he wildly demanded.

Her malignant eyes were on him still; her arms were still folded over her breast; no feature had moved; but now a strange, inexplicable smile flickered round her thin lips, as she quickly answered: