May Fleming - The Gypsy Queen's Vow

She made no reply; but sat with both arms clasped round her knees – her dry, burning, tearless eyes glaring before her on vacancy.

“Do not despair, mother; we may yet meet again. Who knows?” he said, musingly, after a pause.

She turned her red, inflamed eyeballs on him in voiceless inquiry.

“There are such things as breaking chains and escaping, mother.”

Still that lurid, straining gaze, but no reply.

“And I, if it be in the power of man, I shall escape – I shall return, and then – ”

He paused, but his eyes finished the sentence. Lucifer, taking his last look of heaven, might have worn just such a look – so full of relentless hate, burning revenge, and undying defiance.

“You may come, but I will never live to see you,” said the gipsy, in a voice so deep, hollow and unnatural, that it seemed issuing from a tomb.

“You will – you must, mother. I have a sacred trust to leave you, for which you must live,” he said impetuously.

“A trust, my son?”

“Yes. One that will demand all your care for many years. You shall hear my story, mother. I would not trust any living being but you; but I can confide fearlessly in you.”

“You have only to name your wishes, Reginald. Though I should have to wade through blood to fulfill them, fear not.”

“Nothing so desperate will be required, mother. The less blood you have on your hands the better. My advice to you is, when I am gone, to return to Yetholm, and wait with patience for my return – for return I will, in spite of everything.”

Her bloodshot eyes kindled fiercely with invincible determination as he spoke, but she said nothing.

“My story is a somewhat long one,” he said, after a pause, during which a sad shadow had fallen on his handsome face; “but I suppose it is necessary I should tell you all. I thought never to reveal it to any human being; but I did not dream then of ever being a convicted felon, as I am now.”

He had been sitting hitherto with his head resting on his hand; now he arose and began pacing to and fro his narrow cell, while the dark, stern woman, crouching in a distant corner like a dusky shadow, watched him with her eyes of fire, and prepared to listen.

“Eight years ago, mother,” began the prisoner, “I first entered Eton. Through your kindness, I was provided with money enough to enable me to mix on terms of equality in all things with the highest of its high-born students. No one dreamed I was a gipsy; they would as soon have thought of considering themselves one as me. I adopted the name of Reginald Germaine, and represented myself as the son of an exiled French count, and being by Nature gifted with a tolerable share of good looks, and any amount of cool assurance, I soon worked my way up above most of my titled compeers, and became ringleader and prime favorite with students and professors. They talk of good blood showing itself equally in men as in horses, mother. I don’t know how that may be, but certain it is the gipsy’s son equaled all, and was surpassed by none in college. In fencing, shooting, riding, boxing, rowing, I was as much at home as reading Virgil or translating Greek. If it is any consolation to you, mother, to know what an exceedingly talented son you have,” he said, with a bitter smile, “all this will be very consoling to you – more especially as Latin, and Greek, and all the rest of my manifold accomplishments will be extremely necessary to me among my fellow-convicts in Van Dieman’s Land. It is very probable I will establish an infant school for young thieves and pickpockets when the day’s labor is over. I wonder if our kind, fatherly, far-seeing British government dreams what an incalculable treasure they possess in the person of Germaine, the convicted burglar!”

His bitter, jeering tone was terrible to hear; but the dark, burning glare of his fierce eyes was more terrible still. Oh, it was a dreadful fate to look forward to – a chained, manacled convict for life – and so unjustly condemned! With his fierce, gipsy blood, is it any wonder that every noble and generous feeling in his breast should turn to gall?

The dusky form crouching in the corner moved not, spoke not; but the inflamed eyes glared in the darkness like two red-hot coals.

“Well, mother, I was boasting of my cleverness when I interrupted myself – was I not?” he said, after a pause, during which he had been pacing, like a caged lion, up and down. “It is an exciting subject, you perceive; and if I get a little incoherent at times, you must only pass it over, and wait until I come to the point. That brief exposé of my standing in the school was necessary, after all, as it will help to show the sort of estimation I was held in. When the vacations came, numberless were the invitations I received to accompany my fellow-students home. Having no home of my own to go to, I need hardly say those invitations were invariably accepted. How the good people who so lavishly bestowed their hospitality upon me feel now, is a question not very hard to answer. I fancy I can see the looks of horror, amazement and outraged dignity that will fill some of those aristocratic mansions, when they learn that the dashing son and heir of the exiled Count Germaine, on whom they have condescended to smile so benignly, is no other than the convicted gipsy thief. It will be a regular farce to witness, mother.”

He laughed, but the grim, shadowy face in the corner was as immovable as a figure in stone.

“Among the friends I made at Eton,” he went on, “there was one – a fine, princely-hearted fellow about my own age – called Lord Everly. He was my ‘fag’ for a time, and, owing to a similarity of tastes and dispositions, we were soon inseparable friends, Wherever one was, there the other was sure to be, until we were nicknamed ‘Damon and Pythias’ by the rest. Of course, the first vacation after his coming, I received a pressing invitation to accompany him home; and, without requiring much coaxing, I went.”

The young man paused, and a dark, earnest shadow passed over his fine face. When he again resumed, his voice was low and less bitter.

“I met my fate there, mother – the star of my destiny, that rose, for a few brief, fleeting moments, and then set forever for me. I was a hot-blooded, hot-headed, hotter-hearted boy of nineteen then, who followed the impulse of his own headstrong passions wherever they chose to lead, without ever stopping to think. At Everly Hall I met the cousin of my friend – one of the most perfectly beautiful creatures it has ever been my lot to see. Only fourteen years of age, she was so well-grown, and so superbly-proportioned, as to be, in looks, already a woman; and a woman’s heart she already possessed. Her name, mother, it is not necessary to tell now. Suffice it to say, that name was one of the proudest of England’s proud sons, and her family one of the highest and noblest in the land. She was at Everly Hall, spending her vacation, too, and daily we were thrown together. I had never loved before – never felt even those first moonlight-on-water affairs that most young men rave about. My nature is not one of those that love lightly; but it was as resistless, as impetuous, as fierce and consuming as a volcano’s fire, when it came. Mother, I did not love that beautiful child-woman. Love! Pshaw! that is a cold word to express what I felt – every moonstruck youth prates about his love . No; I adored, I worshipped, I idolized her; the remembrance of who I was, of who she was – all were as walls of smoke before the impetuosity of that first consuming passion. The Everlys never dreamed – never, in the remotest degree, fancied – I, the son of an exiled count, could dare to lift my eyes to one whom a prince of the blood-royal might almost have wed without stooping. They had confidence in her, the proud daughter of a proud race, to think she would spurn me from her in contempt, did I dare to breathe my wild passion. But how little, in their cool, clear-headed calculations, did they dream that social position and worldly considerations were as a cobweb barrier before the impetuosity of first love!