The Gypsy Queen's Vow

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE OUTLAW’S STORY

“Be seated,” said the outlaw, with a wave of his hand.

Silent and wondering, Ray obeyed.

His strange companion walked across the room, and for some moments stood with knit brows and downcast eyes, like one absorbed in painful thought. Then he began pacing up and down, while Ray watched him, inwardly wondering whether this half-smuggler, half-pirate captain was quite right in his mind.

He stopped, at last, in his quick, excited walk as rapidly as he had commenced, and facing round to where Ray sat, demanded:

“Why did my – this gipsy, Ketura, leave England?”

“I do not know – she never told me,” replied Ray.

“Old Earl De Courcy died shortly after I, her son, left England – perhaps she was instrumental in his death and was obliged to fly.”

“Of that I know nothing,” said Ray, impatiently. “What has all this to do with the revelations you are to make?”

“Not much, perhaps; but I wish my question answered. You say she resides in Old Barrens cottage?”

“Yes.”

“You live there too, with her, of course?”

“Yes.”

“If she is, as you say, a helpless paralytic, how has she contrived to support and educate you – for I perceive you are educated?”

“It was not she who did it. I am indebted for my education to the kindness of an old gentleman who resides near us,” said Ray, flushing and biting his lip till it was bloodless.

“Who attends to her now, in her helplessness?”

“Erminie and her servant.”

“Erminie who? Oh, I remember; Miss Lawless spoke of some Erminie Germaine, who was to have been brought here instead of her. Who is this Erminie?”

“I cannot tell. My grandmother brought us from England together – she was a mere infant, then.”

“Perhaps she is your sister?”

“No; her very looks forbid such a supposition. That there is no gipsy blood in her veins, I am confident.”

“And gipsy Ketura brought her from England? Strange – strange! Who can she be?” said the outlaw, musingly. “She has often spoken to you of the De Courcy family, no doubt!”

“Yes, often.”

“Did she tell you Lord Ernest Villiers married Lady Maude Percy?”

“She did.”

“Do you know if they had any children?”

“I do not know.”

“She never told you?”

“Never,” said Ray, wondering where this “Catechism of Perseverance” was to end.

“Strange, strange – very strange!” said the outlaw, pacing up and down, with brows knit in deep thought. “And so you are determined to avenge the wrongs of your father, young man?” he said, after a pause stopping before him again.

“Yes, Heaven helping me, I will!” exclaimed Ray, fiercely.

“Heaven?” said the outlaw, with his old sneer. “It is the first time I ever heard Heaven aided revenge; Satan helping you, you mean. And how is this revenge to be accomplished?”

“Time will tell,” said Ray, impatiently. “It cannot concern you in anyway, Captain Reginald; and on this subject you need ask me no more questions, for I will not answer them.”

“As you please,” said he, with a strange smile. “You have inherited the fiery, passionate spirit of your race, I see. Your father is, you say, drowned?”

“Yes – yes! To what end are all these questions?”

“Patience, Mr. Germaine; I will come to that presently. Did your grandmother ever speak to you of your mother?”

“Very little,” said Ray, in a softer tone. “She told me she never saw her, but that she was a lady of rank. That, however, I am inclined to doubt.”

“And why?”

“Because my father was a gipsy. No lady of rank, knowing it, would have anything to do with one of his class. Proud England’s proud daughters would not mate with despised gipsies.”

A streak of fiery red darted for a moment across the dark face of Captain Reginald, and then passed away, leaving it whiter than before.

“Love levels all distinctions, young sir,” he said, haughtily. “If she loved him would not that be sufficient to break through all the cobweb barriers of rank? Have not all social ties been proven, thousands of times, to be more flimsy than paper walls before the irresistible whirlwind of human love and passion?”

Ray thought of Pet, and his dark cheek flushed slightly. What a convenient belief this would be, dared he adopt it. He loved her, and thrilling through his heart came the conviction that she loved him. Would she, too, break down these “paper walls” for his sake? Would she give up all the world for him, as thousands had done before, according to this strange man’s story?

“Your mother was a lady of rank – is a lady of rank, for she still lives!” were the next words, spoken rapidly and excitedly, that aroused him from his dangerous reverie.

“My mother lives?” exclaimed Ray, springing to his feet.

“Yes.”

“Great Heaven! Where?”

“In England, most probably.”

“My mother lives? Can it be possible? Who is she? What is her name?” demanded Ray, like one beside himself.

“Lady Maude Villiers, Countess De Courcy!” exclaimed the outlaw, while his dark, fierce eyes blazed.

Ray stood for an instant paralyzed; then an expression of anger and utter incredulity flushed his face and flashed from his eyes.

“My mother the Countess De Courcy!” he said, scornfully. “Do you take me for a fool, Captain Reginald?”

“Young man, before high Heaven I swear I speak the truth!” said the outlaw, solemnly. “Did not Ketura tell you the manner in which your father’s marriage was brought about?”

“That he inveigled my mother into it by some unlawful means? Yes; she told me that. But, good heavens! the idea of it being Lady Maude Percy! Oh, it is absurd, ridiculous, incredible, impossible!” exclaimed Ray, vehemently.

“It is the truth! Reginald Germaine, look me in the face, and see if I am not speaking the truth.”

Yes; no one could look in those dark, solemn eyes and doubt his words.

Stunned, giddy, bewildered, Ray dropped into his seat, feeling as if the room was whirling round him.

“And you – who, in Heaven’s name are you, that know all this?” he passionately asked.

“That I will tell you presently. Suffice it to say that I do know that I am speaking God’s truth.”

“Angels in heaven! the Countess De Courcy my mother! From whom did you learn this?”

“From your father.”

“My father is dead.”

“Your father is not.”

“What?”

“Your father is not dead!”

“Sir, you are either mad or mocking me!” exclaimed Ray, springing fiercely to his feet.

“Young man, I am neither.”

“My father was drowned on his way to Van Diemen’s Land.”

“Your father was not.”

“Great heavens, am I sane or mad?” exclaimed Ray, in a loud, thrilling tone. “Man, demon, devil! whoever you are, was not the transport wrecked on her way from England?”

“She was.”

“And all on board lost?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No; I repeat. All were lost but two – your father was one of these.”

“Heaven of heavens! And where is my father now?”

“That, too, you will learn anon. If you please, we will take things in the order of their occurring. Listen, now. Sit down and be calm; getting excited will do no good and only retard matters. The transport struck a sunken reef and was wrecked one stormy night. Your father and one sailor clung to a spar until daylight. By that time all the rest had disappeared – were engulfed in the ocean and perished. Captain, sailors, convicts and all were equal, at last, in the boundless sea. Before noon the next day your father and the sailor were seen and picked up by a passing vessel.”

“Were you that sailor?”

“Patience, my dear sir,” said Captain Reginald, with a slight smile: “who I was does not matter just now. The ship was a merchantman, bound to a far-distant port. They took us with them, and over a year elapsed before our sails filled for ‘Merrie England’ again. We were in the South Seas – then, as now, infested with pirates; and we never reached our island-home. For one day we were chased, overtaken, attacked and defeated by a pirate, and more than half our number found graves in the wide ocean, where many a brave heart had grown cold before, and will while the great sea rolls.”

“We?” broke in Ray at this point, fixing his eyes piercingly on the other’s face – “we? Then you were the sailor saved with my father?”

Again that fleeting, quickly-fading, inexplicable smile flickered for an instant round the lips of the outlaw, as he said:

“Hasty and impatient yet. You must learn that great Christian virtue, patience, Mr. Germaine; one cannot well get through the world without it. Whether I was the sailor in question, or not, does not matter; suffice it to say, I was on board the ship when she was mastered by the pirates. They were short of hands, and the captain very graciously offered their lives to those that remained, on condition of their taking an oath of allegiance to him, and becoming rovers and free lords of the high seas. One or two honest souls preferred the red maws of hungry sharks who went swimming round the ships, casting longing eyes up at us, asking, as plainly as looks could speak, for another mouthful of an old salt. They were gratified, too; for three of as good, brave, warm-hearted fellows as ever climbed the rigging walked the plank that hour, and found their graves in the capacious stomachs of the ravenous devils of sharks. Poor fellows! if there is such a place as heaven they went there straight; for heaven is as easily reached by water as land. I suppose it doesn’t matter whether people are conveyed to it in canvas shrouds or inside of sharks.”

“Very true,” said Ray; “and you joined the pirates to aid my father?”

“Yes, we joined them; I was reckless and so was he; we did not care a fillip whether we cruised under the black flag or the red cross of St. George. Life was not of much value to him for its own sake, but he had to live for sundry notions – revenge, I fancy, being the strongest. Then he had a child living – you, Master Raymond; and though considerable of a devil himself, he had some human feeling left, and the only white spot in his soul was his love for you, for his mother, and for Lady Maude Percy. For he loved her then, loves her still, and will while life remains for him.”

“And yet she scorned him,” said Ray, with flashing eyes and dilating nostrils.

“Yes, she scorned him,” said the outlaw, “no one else could have done it and live. But he loved her, and though he had resolved never to see her more, yet her memory and that of her child were the only bright spots remaining in his darkened life.

“Well, Mr. Germaine, he sailed along with the pirates. They were a motley assembly, that crew – men from every nation, whom crime, wrong, revenge, hatred, or any other dark, dreadful cause had driven together here to wage eternal war against the world they hated, and find their only delight in scenes of blood, pillage and murder. There were French, Spanish, Italians, English, Corsicans, and Heaven knows what besides, all jabbering together there – raising the most infernal commotion sometimes, when they got drinking and fighting, that ever shamed Babel. The discipline was pretty strict, about as strict as it could by any possibility be among such a gang, but they would break out at times, and then the diabolical regions themselves might have found it hard to raise such scenes as ensued. There were worse crimes than murder committed, sometimes, by these human fiends; your father never took part in them, though; the memory of the past kept him from that. Standing by myself, sometimes, after witnessing things that would make your blood curdle, I used to wonder if there was a deep enough pit in hell for these fellows. When I was young I used to believe in such a place. Mr. Germaine, no doubt you do now; but somehow I got over that and sundry other pleasant beliefs of late years. Though, whenever I think of what I saw and heard on board of that cursed floating pandemonium, I wish, from the bottom of my soul, there was one to grill them alive for their deeds in the flesh.”

“Did my father ever take part in these horrible scenes?” asked Ray, with a slight shudder.

“No, never!” replied the outlaw, emphatically; “your father had been a gentleman once, and his whole nature revolted against this brutality. No, he never joined these fearful revels, but he fought like the very fiend himself in open warfare, especially against the English ships. When they were attacked he was worth the whole pirate crew together. He fought, and cut, and clove, and slashed them, like the devil and all his angels. Burning and smarting still under the sense of his mighty wrongs and degradations, he seemed determined to wipe out all his sufferings in their blood. Many an English heart grew cold in death to atone for the wrong one of their countrymen had done him. He had vowed vengeance against the whole nation, and I doubt whether St. Senanus himself kept a vow more religiously both in letter and spirit.

“Well, Mr. Germaine, we cruised along with these sea-wolves for some four or five months, and kept on at our old trade of throat-cutting, plank-walking, scuttling, sinking and burning ships. Sometimes, to vary the amusement, and breathe a spell, we used to go ashore and raise old Nick generally among the peaceable inhabitants of various sea-port towns and cities. These places very soon got too hot to hold us, and we never ventured back to the same place twice; for some of the men, getting tender-hearted at times, would take a fancy to the pretty wives and daughters of the good citizens, and carry off two or three of them for the benefit of sea-air. Of course there always was the devil to pay when these little escapades were found out, and it was like running our heads into a hornet’s-nest to go back. Your father wished to go to England and see after you, I fancy, but there was no opportunity. He managed to make his escape, however, after a long time; gave the high sea-wolves leg-bail one moonlight night, and was off. He reached England in safety, and there, the first news he had was his own death, and the marriage of Lady Maude Percy to the son of his enemy, Lord Ernest Villiers.

“The news nearly drove him mad, for his love for that beautiful lady amounted to frenzy. His intentions had been to seek you out; but when he heard of that marriage he fled from England as if the old demon was after him, and never rested till he reached the place where he knew he was most likely to meet his old friends, the pirates, again.

“Well, he found them, gave some plausible reason for his absence, and was admitted among that happy band of Christian brothers once more. He reached them just in the nick of time, too; for their commander was dead, and the whole crew were plunged in deepest affliction about it, as they were never likely to find another who could kill, slay, burn, and murder all before him, and send insubordinate sailors to kingdom come, with a rap of a marlin-spike, as neatly as he could. Your father had, from the first, been an immense favorite with them, and had obtained that powerful ascendency over them that men of refined and strong minds always possess over coarse, brute natures; and besides, he had the amiable qualities of his lamented and accomplished predecessor in a very high degree. Therefore, no sooner did he arrive than he was unanimously and with one accord, elected to the vacant command, and stood in the shoes of the never-to-be-sufficiently-mourned-for Captain Diago who, having served his Satanic Majesty like a faithful servant for five-and-twenty years in this whirligig world, went to aid him in keeping the Kingdom Infernal in order, with five ounces of lead through his skull.

“Well, Mr. Germaine, under the command of your worthy father, who, by the way, dropped his alias of Germaine when he first joined the pirates, the ‘Diable Rouge,’ as we called, very appropriately, our ship, did a flourishing business, and sunk more goodly vessels belonging to their various Christian Majesties than all the other gay crafts sailing under the black flag at the time. He did some good, too, among his own crew – put a stop to all their not-easily-to-be-told excesses, of more kinds than one, and let them know they had found their master at last. They were inclined to rebel, and did rebel at first; but he very coolly took out a brace of pistols and shot two of the ringleaders of the mutiny dead; and then, in a speech much shorter than sweet, gave them to understand that every symptom of insubordination would, in the future, be put a stop to in the same gentle and fatherly way. Well, Mr. Germaine, would you believe it, instead of flying into a rage at this, and kicking up a rumpus, they immediately conceived an immense respect for him, and from that day no Caliph Haroun Alraschid ever reigned it more royally over his bastinadoed subjects than did Captain Re – your father, on board the ‘Red Devil.’ On board a French privateer, that we sent to Davy Jones’ one night, we found a lot of ladies; and after sending their masculine friends to another, and it is to be hoped a better world, we transferred the fair portion of the cargo to our own ship. It was nothing unusual for us to take ladies in this way; but since your father took command they were always well and respectfully treated, and landed at the first port we touched, well supplied with money, and left to make the best of their way home. Therefore, our having three or four of the dear creatures on board now would not have been worthy of notice, had not one of them, a most beautiful French girl, and a daughter of a great magnate of the land – a marquis de something – took it into her head to fall in love with our dare-devil of a captain; and when the ship arrived at the place where the rest were to be landed, mademoiselle absolutely ‘put her foot down,’ to use a common expression, and flatly refused to leave him. In vain he expostulated: told her he did not love her; that the life he led was too dangerous for her to think of sharing; that his life was never safe for two consecutive minutes; that she would be wretched with him, and so forth; in fact, he talked to her as if he had been the greatest old anchorite that ever looked upon the adorable sex as a special invention of Satan – the whole thing was the old story of St. Revere and Cathleen over again. Mademoiselle wouldn’t listen to reason, and determined to have him at any price. Our moral young captain hesitated at first; but she was young, beautiful, ‘rounded and ripe,’ and he was only frail flesh and blood like the rest of us; and the result of all her tears and pleadings was, that one evening they both went on shore together, and perpetrated downright matrimony, in free and easy defiance of all the statutes and by-laws against bigamy that ever were made. Perhaps he thought he had made enough miserable for life, and that there might be some merit, after all, in making this infatuated young creature happy. It is really wonderful how girls, all the world over, will cling to the most undesirable set of men, black-legs, pugilists, loafers, all sorts of outlawed people, and give the cold shoulder to sensible, straight-forward, every-day Christians. You may talk to them till your tongue aches, and show them the evil of their ways in the most glaring colors, their reply will be: ‘I love him,’ and after that you might as well try to drain the Atlantic with a teaspoon as to make them give him up; they’ll cling to him like a barnacle to the bottom of an old ship. But hold on! it won’t do to indulge in a train of moral reflections; for if I begin I won’t know when to stop.

“Well, our captain took his pretty wife to sea with him – for, though he offered to procure a home for her on any part of the globe, she would not hear of leaving him. He was totally unworthy of such strong, passionate love as she lavished upon him, but he did all he could under the circumstances to make her happy. He liked her, she was such a strong-loving, brave-hearted girl – but he did not, could not love her. It seemed as if all love had died out of his heart until the birth of his little daughter, and then some of the old slumbering affections awoke and centered in her.

“After her birth, his better nature, or what remained of it, seemed to awake, and he grew tired and sick of the evil life he led. He had glutted his vengeance sufficiently already: and she was continually urging him to give it up; and now that time had calmed his feelings concerning the marriage of Lady Maude, he wished to return to England and seek out his other child! Such was his continual resolve, but still nearly two years elapsed before he carried it into effect. At the end of that time he gave up his command of the ‘Diable Rouge’ to the chief mate, and with his wife and little dark-eyed daughter Rita, set out for England. No one knew him there; time and a tropical sun had changed him wonderfully, so he was free to pursue his investigations unmolested. He made every inquiry about his mother and son; but, of course, they were in vain, since long before, they had left for this place.

“But Fate, as if not tired of showering blows upon him, had still another in reserve for him. His little daughter Rita was lost one day in the great wilderness of London, and he never saw or heard of her after.”

Captain Reginald paused for a moment and averted his face, while Ray continued to listen with breathless interest.

“His wife nearly went crazy,” continued Captain Reginald at last, lifting his head and speaking very rapidly; “she was crazy for a time, and he – he grew desperate. He did not rejoin the pirates – his very soul loathed them – but he became a reckless man. He roamed the world over, smuggled, ran into danger, exposed himself to death every day – and lived through all. His wife accompanied him in every danger; she never left his side during all these long, long, sorrowful years. Fate, Providence – a superior power of some sort – drove him to this coast; he found this cave, made it one of his rendezvous, and often came here, without dreaming that his mother and son were within a stone’s throw of him. Truly, as I said, this world is full of paper walls, when mother, and father, and son dwell so near, and never until now met.”