“I tell you I cannot.”
“You can – you can! It is in your power? You are great, and rich, and powerful, and can have his sentence annulled. By your soul’s salvation, by your hopes of heaven, by your mother’s grave, by Him whom you worship, I conjure you to save my son!”
The haggard face was convulsed; the brow was dark, and corrugated with agony; the lips white and quivering; the eyes wild, lurid, blazing with anguish and despair; her clenched hands upraised in passionate prayer for pardon. A fearful sight was that despair-maddened woman, as she knelt at the stern earl’s feet, her very voice sharp with inward agony.
He shaded his eyes with his hands to keep out the pitiful sight; but his stern determined look passed not away. His face seemed hardened with iron, despite the deep pity of his heart.
“You are yielding! He will yet be saved! Oh, I knew the iron-heart would soften!” she cried out, with maniac exultation, taking hope from his silence.
“My poor woman, you deceive yourself. I can do nothing for your son,” said the earl, sadly.
“What! Do you still refuse? Oh, it cannot be! I am going mad, I think! Tell me – tell me that my son will live!”
“Woman, I have no power over your son’s life.”
“Oh, you have – you have! Do you think he could live one single day among those with whom you would send him? As you hope for pardon on that last dread day, pardon my son!”
“It is all in vain. Rise, madam.”
“You refuse?”
“I do. Rise!”
With the fearful bound of a wild beast, she sprung to her feet, and, awful in her rage, like a tigress robbed of her young, she stood before him. Even the stern earl drew back in dismay.
“Then, heart of steel, hear ME!” she cried, raising one long arm toward heaven, and speaking in a voice terrific in its very depth of despair. “Tiger-heart, listen to me! From this moment I vow, before God and all his angels, to devote my whole life to revenge on you! Living, may ruin, misery, and despair, equal to mine, be your portion; dead, may you never rest in the earth you sprung from! And, when standing before the judgment-seat of God, you sue for pardon, may He hurl your miserable soul back to perdition for an answer! May my curse descend to your children and children’s children forever! May misery here and hereafter be their portion! May every earthly and eternal evil follow a wronged mother’s curse!”
Appalled, horrified, the iron earl shrunk back from that awful, ghastly look, and that convulsive, terrific face – that face of a fiend, and not of mortal woman. A moment after, when he raised his head, he was alone, and the gipsy, Ketura, was gone. Whither?
CHAPTER V.
MOTHER AND SON
“Oh, my son, Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would to God, I might die for thee! Oh! Absalom! my son, my son!”
That same night; that night of storm and tempest without, and still fiercer storm and tempest within; that same night – three hours later; in a narrow, dark, noisome cell, with grated window and iron-barred door, with a rude pallet of straw comprising the furniture, and one flickering, uncertain lamp lighting its tomb-like darkness, sat two young men.
One of these was a youth of three-and-twenty; tall and slender in form, with a dark, clear complexion; a strikingly-handsome face; a fierce, flashing eye of fire; thick, clustering curls of jet; a daring, reckless air, and an expression of mingled scorn, hatred, defiance and fierceness in his face. There were fetters on his slender wrists and ankles, and he wore the degrading dress of a condemned felon.
By his side sat Lord Ernest Villiers – his handsome face looking deeply sad and grave.
“And this is all, Germaine?” he said, sorrowfully. “Can I do nothing at all for you?”
“Nothing. What do you think I want? Is not the government, in its fatherly care, going to clothe, feed, and provide for me during the remainder of my mortal life? Why, man, do you think me unreasonable?”
He laughed a bitter, mocking laugh, terrible to hear.
“Germaine, Heaven knows, if I could do anything for you, I would!” said Lord Villiers, excitedly. “My father, like all the rest of the world, believes you guilty, and I can do nothing. But if it will be any consolation, remember that you leave one in England who still believes you innocent.”
“Thank you, Villiers. There is another, too, who, I think, will hardly believe I have taken to petty pilfering, your father and the rest of the magnates of the land to the contrary, notwithstanding.”
“Who is that, Germaine?”
“My mother.”
“Where is she? Can I bring her to you?” said Lord Villiers, starting up.
“You are very kind; but it is not in your power to do so,” said the prisoner, quietly. “My mother is probably in Yetholm with her tribe. You don’t need to be told now I am a gipsy; my interesting family history was pretty generally made known at my trial.”
Again he laughed that short, sarcastic laugh so sad to hear.
“My dear fellow, I think none the worse of you for that. Gipsy or Saxon, I cannot forget you once saved my life, and that you have for years been my best friend.”
“Well, it is pleasant to know that there is one in the world who cares for me; and if I do die like a dog among my fellow-convicts, my last hour will be cheered by the thought,” said the young man, drawing a deep breath. “If ever you see my mother, which is not likely, tell her I was grateful for all she did for me; you need not tell her I was innocent, for she will know that. There is another, too – ”
He paused, and his dark face flushed, and then grew paler than before.
“My dear Germaine, if there is any message I can carry for you, you have only to command me,” said the young lord, warmly.
“No; it is as well she should not know it – better, perhaps,” muttered the prisoner, half to himself. “I thank you for your friendly kindness, Villiers; but it will not be necessary.”
“And your mother, Germaine, how am I to know her?”
“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