by Ouida
And in the stillness of the night their lips met. She would give up the world for him.
* * *
He parted from the woman he loved, upon the terrace that night, under the starry summer skies; he could not return to the crowded salon within; he could not join again the glitter and gaiety of French society; and he took his way across the park towards the little village of Chailly, to rest there for the few short hours which remained before sunrise.
It was now midnight; all was still as the silence of the grave about him, while he went across the great stretches of sward under the trees, with only the hoot of a night bird in his ear, or the stealing of a fox among the brush woods breaking the deep tranquility. The awe of that great guilt, which so near had been his, was still upon him; the weight of his erring past hung on him; his heart was sad and heavy, and the fruit of his own bygone madness was bitter in his teeth. His pride was bent; his iron will broken; his deep passions chastened; a chasm of crime had yawned at his feet, to leave him a humbler and a gentler man. And the bitterness of a yearning and futile remorse, a remorse which made him loathe himself, a remorse which gnawed and seared his heart like scorching fire, was on him, as he remembered across the far stretch of misspent years, his mother’s prophecy:
“You will love again; to find the crowning sorrow of your life, or drag another in to share your curse!”
Like the blow of a knife into open, bleeding wounds, struck a few coarse laughing words whispered in his ear, as he paced through the dense woodland in the shadows and the stillness of the midnight hour:
“Do you love your wife any dearer to-night, sir; or are you thinking what a cursed mistake you made a dozen years ago!”
He swung round, starting like a thoro’bred under the galling and the rending of the spur; in the moonlight solitude the words sounded like the hissing gibe of demons, mocking in his ear, and jabbering at his bondage. Close behind him, in the dim light, he saw his exvalet, Raymond, with a laugh upon his face, as the moon shone full on it.
Stung past endurance by the impudent leer of this cur who dogged his steps even in solitude; maddened at the words which made a brutal jest of the deadly curse upon his life, De Vigne, by sheer instinct, and without thought or pause, seized him by his throat, and. flung him away from him, as men fling a dog out of their path.
“Hound! learn how I bear with insolence!”
The man fell with a heavy crash among the brushwood; but the ferns and gorse of the thick undergrowth tempered his fall, and with a muttered’ oath he gathered himself slowly up, and sprang with a light bound after De Vigne:
“Sir! sir, listen! Don’t be so hasty, Major. I mean you no insult, before God I don’t. I can do for you what nobody else can!” —
De Vigne motioned him aside:
“Out of my way, or I shall do you a mischief!”
But the man was undaunted, and ran beside him, to keep pace with his swift strides, panting, breathless, eager:
“Do hear me, sir, do. By Heaven, sir, I can free you from your wife!”
At the words, spoken in such an hour, De Vigne staggered as if a shot had struck him, and reeled backward against the tall moss-grown fence which ran along the borders of the park. In the gray moonlight the man Raymond saw the dark blood that stained his face, then faded, leaving it an ashy pallor, and the gesture with which his hand went to his heart, like one under the heavy suffocation of asphyxia:
“Free! Free! O God!”
His voice rattled incoherently in his throat, he paused for breath, he looked up to the starlit skies with a wild appealing stare, the earth reeled round him, his eyes swam, he wondered whether this were delirium or dream.
The man was awed and frightened at his look; and came up to him and shook him by the arm:
“Sir, sir, for Heaven’s sake don’t look like that! It’s truth I’m telling you. She’s not your wife, sir!” —
De Vigne’s eyes turned on him with a mute, imploring, unconscious prayer; his lips quivered, his veins swelled, his voice shook, hoarse, stifled, inarticulate: the agony of joy unnerves us more than the agony of death!”
“Not my wife! Not! Good God! you are not brute enough to lie — to hoax—”
The words died in his throat, and the man looked up at him steadily and fearlessly in the light slanting in through the boughs.
“‘Fore George, sir, no. I wouldn’t be such a blackguard!” he said, heartily. “It ain’t no lie! I can do for you what no divorce laws can, thanks to the timorous fools that frame them. If those gentlemen were all fettered themselves, they’d make the gate go a little easier to open! I can set you free, but how I won’t tell you till we come a little to terms.”
Free! Not to Bonnevard, pining in the darkness and wretchedness of Chillon, was freedom what it was to him. Free! The very thought maddened him with eager, impatient, breathless thirst for certainty. He seized the man by the shoulders in his iron grip:
“Great Heaven! Tell me all — all; do you hear? — all!”
“Gently, gently, Major,” said Raymond, wincing under his grasp, “or I shall have no breath to tell you anything. I can set you free, sir; and I don’t wonder you wish to be rid of her! But before I tell you how, you must tell me if you will give me the proper price for information.”
De Vigne shook him like a little dog.
“Cur! Do you think I will make a compact with such as you? Out with all you know, and I will reward you afterwards: out with it, or it will be the worse for you!”
“But Major,” persisted the man, halting for breath, “if I tell you all first, what gage have I that you will not act on my information, and never give me a farthing!”
“My word!” gasped De Vigne, hurling the answer down his throat “It is bond enough! Speak; do you hear. Is she not my wife!”
“No, sir; because! — she was mine first!”
“Fours? Then—”
“Your marriage is null and void, sir.”
As the words of his release were uttered in the hushed stillness of the midnight woodlands, De Vigne staggered against the fence, dizzy and blind as in delirium. Free! Free! — his name once more his own, purified from the taint of her claim upon it; free! — his home once more his own, purged from the dark and haunting memories of an irremediable past; free! — from the bitterness of his own folly, so long repented of in agony and solitude; free! — to recompense with honour in the sight of men, the love which would have given up all for his sake, and followed him, content, to any fate.
Breathless with his new-born hope, he leaned there in the solitude of the night, forgetful of Raymond’s presence, seeing, hearing, heeding nothing, save that one word — free! the blood flowing with fever-heat through all his veins, every nerve throbbing with the electric shock, his whole frame trembling with voiceless thanksgiving.
He covered his eyes with his hand, like a man dazzled with the sudden radiance of a noontide sun.
“Will you swear that!”
“Aye, sir, on the Bible, and before all the courts and judges in the land, if you like.”
De Vigne gave one quick, deep sigh, flinging off from him for ever the iron burden of many years:
“Tell me all, quick, from beginning to end, and give me all your proofs.”
He spoke with the eager, wayward, restless impatience of his boyhood; the old light gleamed in his eyes, the old music rang in his voice. The chains were struck off; he was free!
“Very well, sir. I must make a long story of it. Nineteen years ago, sir, Lucy Davis was a very dashing-looking girl — as you thought, Major, at that time — and I was twenty-two, and much more easily taken in than I was when I had seen a little more of human nature. My name was Trefusis, sir, not Raymond at all. I took an alias when I entered your service. My father was a Newmarket leg, and he made a good lot of money one way and another; and he had more gentlemen in his power, and more of your peerage swells, sir, under his dirty old thumb, knowing all that he knew, and having done for ’em all that he had
done, than you’d believe if J was to swear it to you. He wanted to make a gentleman of me. ‘Charlie, my boy,’ he used to say, ‘with brains and tin you may be as good as them swells any day; they hain’t no sort of business to look down on you. I’ve done dirty work enough to serve them, I reckon.’ He wanted to make a gentleman of me, and he gave me a capital education, and more money and fine clothes than any boy in the school. He went to glory when I was about eighteen, sir, leaving me all his tin to do just whatever I liked with, and not a soul to say me nay. I soon spent it, sir; every stiver was gone in no time. I bought horses, and jewellery, and wine. I betted, I played; in short, I made ducks and drakes of it in a very few years with a lot of idle young dogs like myself. Jimmy Jarvis — you will have heard of him, sir? — was going to have a mill with the Brownlow Boy, at Greystone Green, and I went down with two or three others to see the fight. While I was in Frestonhills, sir, I saw Lucy Davis in the milliner’s shop in High-street, and I fell straight in love with her for her great black eyes and her bright carnation colour. I went to church to see her the next day, and bowed to her; and so we got acquainted, sir, and I fell more and more in love, and I wouldn’t have stirred from Frestonhills just then to have made my fortune. That was a year after you had left, sir. But I knew nothing of your affair, sir, then — trust her!
“Well! I was in love with Lucy, and she thought me a man of fashion and of fortune, and married me; the register is in the church of Frestonhills; you can see it, sir, any day you like. In six months I thought myself a great fool for having fettered myself. Lucy’s temper was horrid; — always had been — and when she found out that all my riches would soon make themselves wings and flee away, it was not softened much. She helped me to spend my money, sir, for twelve months, leading me about as wretched a life as any woman could lead a man. We lived chiefly abroad, sir, at the German Baths; then the tin was all gone, and Lucy grew a very virago; as she had taken me only out of ambition, it was a hard cut to her, I dare say, to find me a mere nobody. We parted by mutual consent; I left her at Wiesbaden, and went my own ways; she had spent every shilling I had. Some time after I was fool enough to forge a cheque; it was found out, and they shipped me off to the colonies, and Lucy was free of me. Some years after, I learnt what she did with herself; at Wiesbaden old Lady Fantyre was staying, rouging, gambling, and living by her wits, as you know she always has done, sir, ever since anybody can remember her. She saw Lucy at the Kursaal, and Lucy had improved wonderfully in twelve months; she could get up a smattering of things very fast; she could dress well on little or nothing; she had quick wits, and a haughty, defiant, knock-me-down manner that concealed all her ignorance, and carried everything before her. Old Fantyre took a fancy to her; she wanted to have a companion, somebody to make her up well for the evenings, and read her novels to her, and humour her caprices, and amuse the young fellows while she fleeced them at écarté or vingt-et-un. Lucy seemed just fit for her place. She didn’t know she was married; Lucy made herself out an unprotected girl, whom you, sir, had deserted, and old Fantyre took her into her service. Now, Lucy was uncommonly clever, hard-hearted, and sharp-sighted; she humoured the old woman, she made herself necessary to her, she chimed in with all her sayings, she listened to all her stories, she got into her good graces, and made her do pretty well what she chose. You remember, sir, perhaps, that when you and Lucy parted at Frestonhills she told you she’d be revenged on you. She isn’t a woman to forget. She told Lady Fantyre about you, and she induced her to think that if she could catch you and marry you, what a capital thing it would be for both of them, and how royally they could help you to spend your fortune.
“I must tell you, Lucy had heard that the government ship that had taken me out to Botany Bay had foundered, and she didn’t know that I and a few others had managed to drift in the jolly-boat till an American cruiser picked us up. She thought I was drowned, or else she would have been too wide awake to go in for bigamy. Clever women don’t do that foolery out of novels! Old Fan tyre listened, agreed, and took her to England, and introduced her as her niece. There, as you know, sir, you met her, and fell into her toils again. I don’t wonder you did not know her. Years and society and dress, and the education she’d given herself, made such a difference. Four years after you had married her, I came to Europe, and went as valet to the Duc de Vermuth. I often wondered what had become of my wife; till one Sunday, when I went to the Pré Catalan, I saw a lady in a carriage, talking and laughing with a number of young fellows round her. She was a remarkably fine-looking woman, and something in her face struck me as like my wife. At that minute she saw me. She turned as white as her rouge would let her, gave a sort of scream, and stared at me. Perhaps she thought she saw my ghost. At any rate, she pulled the checkstring, and drove away from me as fast as she could. Of course I didn’t let her give me the slip like that I. followed her to a dashing hotel in the Champs Elysées, and just stepped up to her, and said, ‘Well, old girl, how are you?’ Horrible she looked — as if she longed to kill me — and, indeed, I dare say she did. She signed me not to blow on her, and said, ‘Not now; come at eight this evening.’ I went; and she told me all her story, and offered me, if I would keep quiet and tell nobody she was my wife, to go shares with me in the money you allowed her provided she lived out of England. I thought about it a little; I saw I should get nothing by proclaiming our marriage; I closed with her, and lived at my ease. But she grew screwy; she didn’t pay up to time. She used to anticipate the money, and then defraud me of my share. At last it came into my head, when I heard you had come back from India, to see what sort of a gentleman you were, and whether you wanted your freedom bad enough to pay me a high price for it You required a valet. I entered your service; and when I was sent down to Richmond with the parrot and the books and the flowers, and so on, for that little lady — no, Major, don’t stop me, I mean no offence to her — I thought the time would soon come, when you’d give any price for your freedom, for I heard plenty of talk, sir, at that time, about you and her; servants trouble themselves more about their master’s business than they do about their own. The day you dismissed me from your service, I was going to tell you, if you had only listened. But you were so impatient and so haughty, that I thought I’d let you go on in ignorance, and free, yourself, if ever you wanted, as best you might. I entered Lord Vane Castleton’s service then. You know he was gone quite mad about Miss Tressillian. It seems, sir, he had been very good friends with Lucy in Paris, and he wrote and told her you were in love again, and with somebody who, he thought, didn’t know you were married, and that if she wished to put a stop to it, she should come over and tell the young lady. Over she did come, saw him first, and then went to St Crucis; and after she’d been — I didn’t know she was in London — he sent me to bring Miss Tressillian to Windsor, while you were sitting in court-martial on Mr. Halkett. Mine was a dirty job, sir, I know, and a rascally one. Don’t look at me so fiercely, Major, for God’s sake! I am sorry I did it now, for she’d sweet blue eyes, that lady, and I was never quite easy till I knew she got out of Lord Vane’s clutches. Then you went to the Crimea, and Lucy paid worse and worse. At last I thought I would try you again, if only to spite Lucy, who was living in splendour, and grudging me every shilling. I wrote to you at the Crimea — I tried to speak to you in the Rue Lafitte — finally, I tracked you here. Now I’ve told you all, Major. I know you well enough to know your word is as sure a bond as another man’s cheque; and if you’ll go with me, sir, to Trinity Church, Frestonhills, I’ll show you the register of my marriage, which makes yours null and void.”
And thus in the hush around, only broken by the sough of the wind, or the sweep of a night-bird, he heard the history which set him free. His arm was wound about the stem of a tree nigh, for he was dizzy, like a man after a mortal blow; he shaded his eyes with his hand; his lips moved silently in voiceless prayer to God, and whispers to the woman whom he loved; his breathing came short and thick; his whole frame trembled like a woman’s. The ecsta
sy of that hour! No criminal, condemned to death and suddenly reprieved, felt the warm rush of fresh air welcoming him as he issued — a free man — from the darkness of his prison-cell of doom, with more bewildering joy than he now felt; his liberty from the festering and bitter chains which so long had dragged upon him — his liberty from the weary weight, the repented folly, the bitter curse of Early Marriage.
He was silent, breathing fast and loud, struggling to realise his freedom from his bondage. Then — he threw back his head with a proud, joyous gesture; he looked up to the brilliant summer stars shining above his head; he drew in with a deep long breath the free sweet air that streamed around him. He turned his eyes upon the man, flashing with their old, shadowless light:
“Right! I would pay any price for freedom. Let us go to-night to England. I will not lose an hour — a moment!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Freed from Bondage.
FRESTONHILLS, unchanged, lay nestling among the green pastures and fresh woods of Berkshire, and all the old familiar places struck strangely on him as he passed them on the morrow. There flowed the silver Kennet, bright and rapid as of old, rushing on its swift sunny way past the wild luxuriant hedges; and through the quiet country towns and villages. There, on its banks, were schoolboys lying among the purple clover and under the fragrant hawthorns, as poor little Curly had done long years ago. There were the dark palings, and the forest-trees of Weivehurst, long changed to other hands before its rightful owner was laid to rest, his grave marked only by a simple wooden cross, under the southern skies of Lorave. There, against the blue heavens, rose above its woods the grey pinnacles of the old house where Alma Tressillian had made the roof ring with her childish laughter, playing under the golden laburnums that flung the same shadows on the lawn, now, as then. There was the old Chancery, its gable roofs and its low ivy-grown walls; as he passed a lady glanced up, gardening among her geraniums and heliotropes — it was Miss Arabella — the ringlets very grey now! A little farther on, in the old playing-field, there were the wickets, and the bats, and the jumping poles, and four or five boys, in their shirt sleeves and their straw hats, enjoying their half-holiday, as we had done before them. So life goes on; when one is bowled out, another is ready to step into his shoes, and, no matter how many the ball of death may knock over, the cricket of life is kept up the same, and players are never wanting!