May Fleming - The Gypsy Queen's Vow

“Oh, I forgot! Well, she’s called the gipsy Ketura, and is queen of her tribe. It is something to be a queen’s son is it not?” he said, with another hard, short laugh.

“Ketura, did you say?” repeated Lord Villiers, in surprise.

“Yes. What has surprised you now?”

“Why, the simple fact that I saw her three hours ago.”

“Saw her! Where?”

“At my father’s house. She came to see him.”

Germaine sprung up, and while his eyes fiercely flashed, he exclaimed:

“Came to see Lord De Courcy? My mother came to see him? Villiers, you do not mean to say that my mother came to beg for my life?”

“My dear fellow, I really do not know. The interview was a private one. All I do know is, that half an hour after my father returned among his guests, looking very much as if he had just seen a ghost. In fact, I never saw him with so startled a look in all my life before. Whether your mother had anything to do with it or not, I really cannot say.”

“If I thought she could stoop to sue for me,” exclaimed the youth, through his clenched teeth; “but no, my mother was too proud to do it. My poor, poor mother! How was she looking, Villiers?”

“Very haggard, very thin, very worn and wild; very wretched, in a word – though that was to be expected.”

“Poor mother!” murmured the youth, with quivering lips, as he bowed his face in his manacled hands, and his manly chest rose and fell with strong emotion.

“My dear fellow,” said Lord Villiers, with tears in his own eyes, “your mother shall never want while I live.”

The prisoner wrung his hand in silence.

“If you like, I will try to discover her, and send her to you before you – ”

His voice choked, and he stopped.

“My dear Villiers, you have indeed proven yourself my friend,” said the convict, gratefully. “If you could see her, and send her to me before I leave England to-morrow, you would be conferring the greatest possible favor on me. There are several things of which I wish to speak to her, and which I cannot reveal to any one else – not even to you.”

“Then I will instantly go in search of her,” said Lord Villiers, rising and taking his hat. “My dear Germaine, good by.”

“Farewell, Ernest. God bless you!”

The hand of the peer and the gipsy met in a strong clasp, but neither could speak.

And so they parted. The prison door closed between the convicted felon and his high-born friend. Did either dream how strangely they were destined to meet again? With his face shaded by his hand, the prisoner sat; that small white hand, delicate as a lady’s, doomed now to the unceasing labor of the convict, when a noise as of persons in altercation in the passage without met his ears. He raised his head to listen, and recognized the gruff, hoarse voice of his jailer; then the sharp, passionate voice of a woman; and, lastly, the calm, clear tones of Lord Ernest Villiers. His words seemed to decide the matter; for the huge key turned in the rusty lock, the heavy door swung back on its hinges, and the tall form of gipsy Ketura passed into the cell.

“Mother!”

The prisoner started to his feet, and with a passionate cry: “Oh, my son! my son!” he was clasped in the arms of his mother – clasped and held there in a fierce embrace, as though she defied Heaven itself to tear them apart.

“Thank Heaven, mother, that I see you again!”

“Heaven!” she broke out, with passionate fierceness; “never mention it again! What is heaven, and God, and mercy, and happiness? All a mockery, and worse than a mockery!”

“My poor mother!”

“What have I done, that I should lose you!” she cried, with a still-increasing fierceness. “What crime have I committed, that I should be doomed to a hell upon earth? He was conceived in sin and born in iniquity, even as I was; yet the God you call upon permits him to live happy, rich, honored, and prosperous, while I – oh! it maddens me to think of it! But I will have revenge!” – she added, while her fierce eyes blazed, and her long, bony hand clenched – “yes, fearful revenge! If I am doomed to perdition, I shall drag him down along with me!”

“Mother! mother! Do not talk so! Be calm!”

“Calm! With these flames, like eternal fires, raging in my heart and brain? Oh, for the hour when his life-blood shall cool their blazing!”

“Mother, you are going mad!” said the young man, almost sternly. “Unless you are calm, we must part.”

“Oh, yes! We will part to-morrow. You will go over the boundless sea with all the thieves, and murderers, and scum of London, and I – I will live for revenge. By-and-by you will kill yourself, and I will be hung for his murder.”

She laughed a dreary, cheerless laugh, while her eyes grew unnaturally bright with the fires of incipient insanity.

“Poor mother!” said the youth, sadly. “This is the hardest blow of all! Try and bear up, for my sake, mother. Did you see Lord De Courcy to-night?”

“I did. May Heaven’s heaviest curses light on him!” exclaimed the woman, passionately. “Oh! to think that he, that any man, should hold my son’s life in the hollow of his hand, while I am here, obliged to look on, powerless to avert the blow! May God’s worst vengeance light on him, here and hereafter!”

Her face was black with the terrific storm of inward passion; her eyes glaring, blazing, like those of a wild beast; her long, talon like fingers clenched until the nails sunk deep in the quivering flesh.

“Mother, did you stoop to sue for pardon for me tonight?” said the young man, while his brow contracted with a dark frown.

“Oh, I did! I did! I groveled at his feet. I cried, I shrieked, I adjured him to pardon you – I, who never knelt to God or man before – and he refused! I kissed the dust at his feet, and he replied by a cold refusal. But woe to thee, Earl De Courcy!” she cried, bounding to her feet, and dashing back her wild black hair. “Woe to thee, and all thy house! for it were safer to tamper with the lightning’s chain than with the aroused tigress Ketura.”

“Mother, nothing is gained by working yourself up to such a pitch of passion; you only beat the air with your breath. I am calm.”

“Yes, calm as a volcano on the verge of eruption,” she said, looking in his gleaming eyes and icy smile.

“And I am submissive, forbearing, and forgiving.”

“Yes, submissive as a crouching lion – forgiving as a tiger robbed of its young – forbearing as a serpent preparing to spring.”

He had awed her – even her, that raving maniac – into calm, by the cold, steely glitter of his dark eyes; by the quiet, chilling smile on his lip. In that fixed, iron, relentless look, she read a strong, determined purpose, relentless as death, or doom, or the grave; terrific in its very quiet, implacable in its very depth of calm, overtopping and surmounting her own.

“We understand each other, I think,” he said, quietly. “You perceive, mother, how utterly idle these mad threats and curses of yours are. They will effect nothing but to have you imprisoned as a dangerous lunatic; and it is necessary you should be free to fulfill my last bequest.”

Another mood had come over the dark, fierce woman while he spoke. The demoniac look of passion that had hitherto convulsed her face, gave way to one of despairing sorrow, and stretching out her arms, she passionately cried:

“Oh, my son! my only one! the darling of my old age! my sole earthly pride and hope! Oh, Reginald! would to God we had both died ere we had lived to see this day!”

It was the very agony of grief – the last passionate, despairing cry of a mother’s utmost woe, wrung fiercely from her tortured heart.

“My poor mother – my dear mother!” said the youth, with tears in his dark eyes, "do not give way to this wild grief. Who knows what the future may bring forth?”