The Gypsy Queen's Vow

“Yes – of course.”

The man pointed to the remote end of the room; and Pet, turning her eyes in that direction saw a sort of opening in the wall, serving evidently for a door, and covered by a screen of thick, dark baize.

Garnet went toward it and called:

“Madame Marguerite.”

“Well,” said a woman’s voice from within, with a strong foreign accent.

“Can I see you a moment, on business?”

“Yes – enter.” And Pet saw a small, delicate-looking hand push aside the screen, and Garnet disappeared within.

“Here, little nettle, sit down,” said Black Bart, pushing a stool toward Pet, gallantly, with his foot. “How do you like the looks of this here place, young woman?”

“Well,” said Pet, “I should say there was no danger of thieves breaking in at night; and by the look of things, I don’t expect they would find much for their pains, if they did break in. There’s no danger of its blowing down windy nights – is there?”

“Well, no, I reckon there isn’t,” said Black Bart with a grin, “seeing it’s right under a hill, and nothing but solid rocks above and below.”

“A strong foundation,” said Pet; “Like the true Church it’s built on a rock. I should think it would be damp, though, when the tide rises and fills it; and I am subject to rheumatism – ”

“No danger,” said Bart. “I’ll risk your drowning. There! Garnet’s calling you. Go in there.”

Pet arose, and Garnet, holding back the baize screen, motioned her to enter. She obeyed and looked curiously around.

The room was smaller than the one she had left and better furnished. The rocky floor was covered with India matting, and chairs, couches, and tables were strewn indiscriminately around. A bed with heavy curtains stood in one corner, and a stand containing books, writing materials, and drawing utensils stood opposite. Pet gave all these but a fleeting glance, and then her whole attention was caught and occupied by the person who stood between them, with one hand resting on the back of a chair, and her eyes fixed with a sort of stem, haughty scrutiny on Pet.

It was a woman of some five-and-thirty years of age, of middle size, and dressed in a solid and frayed black satin dress. Her face had evidently once been very handsome; for it still bore traces of former beauty; but now it was thin, sallow, and faded – looking still more faded in contrast with the unnaturally large, lustrous black eyes by which it was lit up. Her hair, thick and black, hung disordered and uncombed far over her shoulders, while jewels flashed from the pendants in her ears, and sparkled on the small, beautiful hands. Something in that face moved Pet as nothing had ever done before – there was such a look of proud, sullen despair in the wild, black eyes; a sort of fierce haughtiness in the dark, weird face; a look of passionate impatience, hidden anguish, undying woe, in the slumbering depths of those gloomy, haunting eyes, that Pet wondered who she could be, or what great sorrow she had ever endured. There was an air of refinement about her, too – a lofty, commanding hauteur that showed she was queen and mistress here, and as far above the brutal men surrounding her as heaven is above the earth.

“This is the girl, Madame Marguerite,” said Garnet, respectfully, “I entrust her to your care until the captain comes.”

“She shall be cared for. That will do,” said the woman, waving her hand until all its burning rubies and blazing diamonds seemed to encircle it with sparks of fire.

Garnet bowed low, cast a triumphant glance on Pet as he passed, and hissed softly in her ear: “Mine own – mine own, at last.” And then he raised the screen and disappeared.

The cold, proud, black eyes were fixed piercingly on Pet; but that young lady bore it as she had done many another stare, without flinching.

“Sit down,” said the woman, with her strong foreign intonation, pointing to a seat.

Pet obeyed, saying, as she did so:

“I may as well, I suppose. Am I expected to stay here all night?”

“Yes,” said the woman, curtly, “and many more nights after that. You can occupy my bed; I will sleep on one of these lounges while you remain.”

“Well,” said Pet, “I would like to know what I am brought here for anyway. Some of Rozzel Garnet’s capers, I suppose. He had better look out; for when I get free, if the gallows don’t get their due it won’t be my fault.”

“Rozzel Garnet had nothing to do with it; he was but acting for another in bringing you here.”

“For another?” said Pet, with the utmost surprise; “who the mischief is it?”

“That you are not to know at present. When the proper time comes, that, what many other things, will be revealed.”

“So I’m like a bundle of goods, ‘left till called for,’” said Pet; “now, who could have put themselves to so much unnecessary trouble to have me carried off, I want to know? I thought I hadn’t an enemy in the world, but his excellency, the right worshipful Rozzel Garnet. It can’t be Orlando Toosypegs, surely – hum-m-m. I do wonder who can it be,” said Pet, musingly.

While Pet was holding converse with herself, the woman, Marguerite, had gone out. Pet waited for her return until, in spite of her strange situation, her eyes began to drop heavily. A little clock on a shelf struck the hour of midnight, and still she came not. Pet was sleepy, awfully sleepy; and, rubbing her eyes and yawning, she got up, and holding her eyes open with her fingers, knelt down and said her usual night-prayers, and then jumped into bed, and fell into a sound sleep, in which Rozzel Garnet, and Marguerite, and the under-ground cave, and her previous night’s adventure, were one and all forgotten.

When Pet awoke she found herself alone, and the apartment lit up by a swinging-lamp, exactly as it had been the night before. She glanced at the clock and saw the hands pointed to half-past ten. A little round stand had been placed close to her bed, on which all the paraphernalia of a breakfast for one was placed. On a chair at the foot of the bed was a basin and ewer, with water, combs, brushes, and a small looking-glass.

Pet, with an appetite not at all diminished, sprung out of bed, hastily washed her face and hands, brushed out her silken curls, said her morning-prayers, and then, sitting down at the table, fell to with a zest and eagerness that would have horrified Miss Priscilla Toosypegs. The coffee was excellent, the rolls incomparable, the eggs cooked to a turn, and Miss Pet did ample justice to all.

As she completed her meal, the screen was pushed aside, and the woman Marguerite entered.

“Good-morning,” said Pet.

The woman bent her head in a slight acknowledgment.

“I suppose it’s daylight outside by this time?” said Pet.

“Yes, it was daylight five hours ago,” was the reply.

“Well, it’s pleasant to know even that. What am I to do for the rest of the day, I want to know?”

“Whatever you please.”

“A wide margin; the only thing I would please to do, if I could, would be to go out and walk home. That, I suppose, is against the rules?”

“Yes; but there are books and drawing materials; you can amuse yourself with them.”

“Thankee; poor amusement, but better than none, I expect Who is commander here, the captain I heard them speak of?”

“My husband,” said the woman, proudly.

“And where is he now? I should like to have a talk with him, and have things straightened out a little if possible.”

“He is absent, and will not be back for some days.”

“Hum! this is, then, the hiding-place of the smugglers they make such a fuss about – eh?” said Pet.

“Yes, they are smugglers – worse, perhaps,” said the woman, sullenly.

“There! I knew I’d find it; I always said so!” exclaimed Pet, exultantly. “Oh, if I could only get out! See here, I wish you would let me escape!”

The woman looked at her with her wild, black eyes for a moment, and then went on with her occupation of cleaning off the table, as if she had not heard her.

“Because,” persisted Pet, “I’m of no use to any one here, and they’ll be anxious about me up home. They don’t know I’m out, you know.”

The woman went calmly on with her work without replying, and Pet, seeing it was all a waste of breath, pleading, got up and went over to the shelf where the books were, in search of something to read. A number of pencil-drawings lay scattered about. Pet took them, and little as she knew of art, she saw they had been sketched by a master-hand.

“Oh, how pretty!” she exclaimed; “was it you drew these?”

“No; my husband,” answered the woman. “They are all fancy sketches, he says.”

There was a sort of bitterness in the last words, unnoticed by Pet, who was eagerly and admiringly examining the drawings. One, in particular, struck her; it represented a large, shadowy church, buried in mingled lights and shades, that gave a gloomy, spectral, weird appearance to the scene. At the upper end, near the grand altar, stood a youth and a maiden, while near a white-robed clergyman, book in hand. A dying bird seemed fluttering over their heads, and ready to drop at their feet. The face of the youth could not be seen, but the lovely, childlike face of the girl was the chief attraction of the drawing. Its look of unutterable love, mingled with a strange, nameless terror; its rare loveliness, and the passionate worship in the eyes upturned to him who stood beside her, sent a strange thrill to the very heart of Pet. A vague idea that she had seen a face bearing a shadowy resemblance to the beautiful one in the picture somewhere before, struck her. The face was familiar, just as those we see in dreams are; but whether she had dreamed of one like this, or had really seen it, she could not tell. She gazed and gazed; and the longer she gazed, the surer she was that she had really and certainly seen, if not that face, some one very like it, before.

“Can you tell me if this is a fancy sketch?” said Pet, holding it up.

“My husband says so. Why?” asked the woman, fixing her eyes, with a keen, suspicious glance, on Pet.

“Oh, nothing; only it seems to me as if I had seen that face before. It is very strange; I cannot recollect when or where; but I know I have seen it.”

“You only imagine so.”

“No, I don’t. I never imagine anything. Oh, here’s another; what a pretty child! why – why, she looks like you!”

It represented a beautiful, dark little girl, a mere infant, but resplendently beautiful.

“She was my child,” said the woman, in a low, hard, despairing voice, as she looked straight before her.

“And where is she?” asked Pet, softly.

“I don’t know – dead, I expect,” said the woman, in that same tone of deep, steady despair, far sadder than any tears or wild sobs could have been.

Pet’s eyes softened with deep sympathy; and coming over, she said, earnestly: “I am so sorry for you. How long is it since she died?”

“It is seven years since we lost her; she was two years old then. I do not know whether she is living or dead. Oh, Rita! Rita!” cried the woman, passionately, while her whole frame shook with the violence of emotion.

No tear fell, no sob shook her breast, but words can never describe the utter agony of that despairing cry.

There were tears in Pet’s eyes now – in those flashing, mocking, defying eyes; and in silent sympathy she took the woman’s hand in her own little brown fingers, and softly began caressing it.

“It was in London we lost her – in the great, vast city of London. I was out with her, one day, and seeing a vast crowd at the corner of the street, I went over, holding my little Marguerite by the hand, to see what was the matter. The crowd increased; we were wedged in, and could not extricate ourselves. Suddenly some one gave her a pull; her little hand relaxed its hold; I heard her cry out; and shrieking madly, I burst from the crowd in search of her; but she was gone. I rushed shrieking through the streets until they arrested me as a lunatic, and carried me off. For a long, long time after, I remember nothing. My husband found me out, and took charge of me; but we never heard of our child after that. I nearly went mad. I was mad for a time; but it has passed. Since that day, we never heard of Rita. I heard them say she was stolen for her extraordinary beauty; but, living or dead, I feel she is forever lost to me – forever lost – forever lost!”

She struck her bosom with her hand, and rocked back and forward, while her wild, black eyes gazed steadily before her with that same rigid look of changeless despair.

“I loved her better than anything in earth or heaven, except her father – my heart was wrapped up in hers – she was the dearest part of myself; and, since I lost her, life has been a mockery – worse than a mockery to me. Girl!” she said, looking up suddenly and fiercely, “never love! Try to escape woman’s doom of loving and losing, and of living on, when death is the greatest blessing God can send you. Never love! Tear your heart out and throw it in the flames sooner than love and live to know your golden idol is an image of worthless clay. Girl, remember!” and she sprung to her feet, her eyes blazing with a maniac light, and grasped Pet so fiercely by the arm that she was forced to stifle a cry of pain, “never love – never love! Take a dagger and send your soul to eternity sooner!”

She flung Pet from her with a violence that sent her reeling against the wall, and darted from the room.