CHAPTER V. THE VENGEANCE.
“A change came o'er the spirit of my dream,
The wanderer was returned.”
—Byron.
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It was not yet high noon, when, wet from spur to shoulder
with mud and spray, bloody with spurring, spotted from head
to heel with gory foam-flakes from his jaded horse's wide-distended
jaws, and quivering nostrils, bareheaded, pale as death,
and hoarse with shouting, Jasper St. Aubyn galloped frantically
up to the terrace-steps of Widecomb house; and springing to
the ground, reeled, and would have fallen headlong had he not
been caught in the arms of one of the serving-men, who came
running down the stone stairs to assist him.
As soon as he could collect breath to speak, “Call all!” he
cried, “call all! Ring the great bell, call all — get ladders,
ropes — run — ride — she is gone — she is lost — swept over the
black falls at Hawkshurt! O God! O God!” and he fell, as it
seemed, senseless to the earth.
Acting — sheer acting, all!
They raised him, and carried him up stairs, and laid him on
the bed — on her bed — the bed whereon he had kissed her lips
last night, and clasped her lovely form which was now haply
entwined in the loathsome coils of the slimy mud-eels.
He shuddered. He could not endure it. He opened his
eyes again, and feigning to recover his senses, chid the men
from his presence, and again commanded, so peremptorily, that
none dare disobey him, that every servant — man, woman, maid
or boy — should begone to the place he had named, nor return
till they brought back his lost angel's body.
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They believed that he was mad; but mad or sane, his anger
was so terrible at all times, and now so fierce, so frantic and
appalling, that none dared to gainsay him.
Within half an hour after his return, save himself there was
not a human being left within the walls of Widecomb manor.
Then he arose and descended slowly, but with a firm foot
and unchanged brow, into the great library of the hall. It was
a vast, gloomy, oblong chamber, nearly a hundred feet in
length, wainscoted and shelved with old black-oak, and dimly
lighted by a range of narrow windows, with dark-stained glass
and heavily-wrought stone mullions.
There was a dull wood-fire smouldering under the yawning
arch of the chimney-piece, and in front of the fire stood an old
oaken-table, and a huge leathern arm-chair.
Into this Jasper cast himself, with his back to the door,
which he had left open, in the absence of his mind. For
nearly an hour he sat there without moving hand or foot, gazing
gloomily at the fire. But, at the end of that time, he started,
and seemed to recollect himself, opened the drawer of the writing-table,
and took out of it the record of his wretched victim's
marriage.
He read it carefully, over and over again, and then crushed
it in his hand, saying, “Well, all is safe now, thank God!”
Yes, he thanked God for the success of the murder he had
done! “But here goes to make assurance doubly sure.”
And with the word he was about to cast the paper which he
held into the ashes, when the hand of a man, who had entered
the room and walked up to him with no very silent or stealthy
step, while he was engrossed too deeply by his own guilty
thoughts to mark very certainly anything that might occur
without, was laid with a grip like that of an iron vice upon his
shoulder.
He started and turned round; but as he did so, the other hand
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of the stranger seized his right hand which held the marriage
record, grasping it right across the knuckles, and crushed it together
by an action so powerful and irresistible, that the fingers
involuntarily opened, and the fatal document fell to the ground.
Instantly the man cast Jasper off with a violent jerk which
sent him to a distance of some three or four yards, stooped,
gathered up the paper, thrust it into his bosom, and then folding
his arms across his stalwart breast, stood quietly confronting
the murderer, but with the quietude of the expectant gladiator.
Jasper stared at the swarthy, sun-burnt face, the coal-black
hair clipped short upon the brow, the flashing eyes, that pierced
him like a sword. He knew the face — he almost shuddered
at the knowledge — yet, for his life, he could not call to mind
where or when he met him.
But he stared only for an instant; insulted — outraged — he,
in his own house! His ready sword was in his hand forthwith—
the stranger was armed likewise with a long broadsword and
a two-edged dagger, and heavy pistols at his girdle; yet he
moved not, nor made the slightest movement to put himself on
the defensive.
“Draw, dog!” cried Jasper, furiously. “Draw and defend
yourself, or I will slay you where you stand.”
“Hold!” replied the other steadily. “There is time enough—
I will not balk you. Look at me! — do you not know me?”
“Know you? — not I; by Heaven! some rascal smuggler, I
trow — come to rob while the house is in confusion! but you
have reckoned without your host this time. You leave not this
room alive.”
“That as it may be,” said the other, coolly. “I have looked
death in the face too often to dread much the meeting; but ere
I die, I have some work to do. So you do not know me?”
“Not a whit, I tell you.”
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“Then is the luck mine, for I know you right well, young sir!”
“And for whom do you know me!”
“For a most accursed villain always!” the man answered;
“two hours since, for Theresa Allan's murderer! and now,
thanks to this paper, which, please God, I shall keep, for Theresa
Allan's — husband!”
He spoke the last words in a voice of thunder, and at the
same time drew and cocked, at a single motion, a pistol with
each hand.
“You know too much — you know too much!” cried Jasper,
furious but undaunted. “One of us two must die, ere either
leaves this room.”
“It was for that end I came hither! Look at me now, and
know Denzil Bras-de-fer — Theresa Allan's cousin! your wife's
rejected lover once, and now — your wife's avenger!”
“Away! I will not fight you!”
“Then, coward, with my own hands will I hang you on the
oak tree before your own door; and on your breast I will pin
this paper, and under it will write, Her Murderer, taken in
the fact, tried, condemned, executed by me,
Denzil Bras-de-fer.”'
“Never!”
“Take up your pistols, then — they lie there on the table.
We will turn, back to back, and walk each to his own end of
the room, then turn and fire — if that do not the work, let the
sword finish it.”
“Amen!” said St. Aubyn, “and the Lord have mercy on
your soul, for I will send it to your cousin in five minutes.”
“And may the fiend of hell have yours — as he will, if there
be either fiend or God. Are you ready?”
“Ay.”
“Then off with you, and when you reach the wall, turn and
fire.”
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And as he spoke, he turned away, and walked slowly and
deliberately with measured strides toward the door by which
he had entered.
Before he had taken six steps, however, a bullet whistled
past his ear, cutting a lock of his hair in its passage, and rebounded
from the wall, flattened at his feet. Jasper had turned
at once, and fired at him with deliberate aim.
“Ha! double murderer! die in your treason!” and the sailor
leveled his pistol in turn, and pulled the trigger; had it gone
off, Jasper St. Aubyn's days were ended then and there; but no
flash followed the sparks from the flint — and he cast the useless
weapon from him.
At once they both raised their second pistol, and again Jasper's
was discharged with a quick, sharp report; and almost
simultaneously with a crack, a dull sound, as of a blow, followed
it; and he knew that his ball had taken effect on his
enemy.
Again Denzil's pistol failed him; and then, for the first time
Jasper observed that the seaman's clothes were soaked with
water. He had swam that rapid stream, and followed his beloved
Theresa's murderer, almost with the speed of the stout
horse that bore him home.
Not a muscle of Denzil's face moved, not a sinew of his
frame quivered, yet he was shot through the body, mortally —
and he knew it.
“Swords!” he cried, “swords!”
And bounding forward, he met the youth midway, and at the
first collision, sparks flew from the well-tempered blades.
It was no even conflict, no trial of skill — three deadly
passes of the sailor, as straight and almost as swift as lightning,
with a blade so strong, and a wrist so adamantine, that no
slight of Jasper's could divert them, were sent home in tierce—
one in his throat, “That for your lie!” shouted Denzil; a
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second in the sword-arm, “that for your coward blow!” a third,
which clove his heart to the very cavity, “that for your life!”
Ten seconds did not pass, from the first crossing of their
blades until Jasper lay dead upon the floor, flooding his own
hearth-stone with his life-blood.
Denzil leaned on his avenging blade, and looked down upon
the dead.
“It is done! it is done just in time! But just — for I am
sped likewise. May the great God have mercy on me, and
pardon me my sins, as I did this thing not in hatred, but in
justice and in honor! Ah — I am sick — sick!”
And he dropped down into the arm-chair in which Jasper
was sitting as he entered; and though he could hardly hold his
head up for the deadly faintness, and the reeling of his eyes
and brain, by a great effort he drew out the marriage-record
from his breast — Jasper's ball had pierced it, and it was dappled
with his own life-blood — and smoothed it out fairly, and
spread it on the board before him.
Then he fell back, and closed his eyes, and lay for a long
time motionless; but the slow, sick throbbing of his heart
showed that he was yet alive, though passing rapidly away.
Once he raised his dim eyes, and murmured, “They tarry—
they tarry very long. I fear me, they will come too late.”
But within ten minutes after he had spoken, the sound of a
multitude might be heard approaching, and a quick, strong, decided
step of one man coming on before all the rest.
Within the last few minutes, Denzil had seemed to lose all
consciousness and power. He was, indeed, all but dead.
But at these sounds he roused like a dying war-horse to the
trumpet; and as the quick step crossed the threshold, he staggered
to his feet, drew his hand across his eyes, and cried,
with his old sonorous voice — it was his last effort —
“Is that you, lieutenant?”
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“Ay, ay, captain.”
“Have you found her?”
“She is here,” said the young seaman, pointing with his
hand to the corpse, which they were just bearing into the
room.
“And he — ha! ha! ha! ha! — he is there!” and he pointed
with a triumphant wafture of his gory sword, toward Jasper's
carcass, and then, with the blood spouting from his mouth and
nostrils, he fell headlong.
His officer raised him instantly, and as the flow of blood
ceased, he recovered his speech for a moment. He pointed to
the gaping crowd.
“Have — have you — told them — lieu — lieutenant?”
“No, sir.”
“Tell — tell them — l-let me hear you.”
“You see that wound in her forehead — you saw it all, from
the first,” he said, to the crowd, who were gazing in mute horror
at the scene. “I told you, when I took you to the body,
that I saw her die, and would tell you how she died, when the
time should come. The time has come. He — that man,
whose body lies there bleeding, and whose soul is now burning
in Tophet, murdered her in cold blood — beat her brains out
with his loaded hunting-whip. I — I, Hubert Manvers, saw
him do it.”
There was a low, dull murmur in the crowd, not of dissent
or disbelief, but of doubt.
“And who slew master?” exclaimed black Jem Alderly,
coming doggedly forward, “this has got to be answered for.”
“It is answered for, Alderly,” said Denzil, in a faint, but audible
voice. “I did it — I slew him, as he has slain me. I
am Denzil Olifaunt, whom men call Bras-de-fer. Do any of
you chance to know me?”
“Ay, ay, all on us! all on us!” shouted half the room; for
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the frank, gallant, bold young seaman had ever been a general
favorite. “Huzza, for Master Denzil!”
And in spite of the horrors of the scene, in spite of the presence
of the dead, a loud cheer followed.
“Hush!” he cried, “hush! this is no time for that, and no
place. I am a dying man. There is not five minutes' life in
me. Listen to me. Did any of you ever hear me tell a lie?”
“Never! never!”
“I should scarce, therefore, begin to do so now, with heaven
and hell close before my eyes. Hubert Manvers spoke truly.
I also saw him murder her — murder his own wife — for such
she was; therefore I killed him!” He gasped for a moment,
gathered his breath again, and pointing to the table, “that paper,
Hubert — quick — that paper — read it — I — am going —
quick!”
The young man understood his superior's meaning in an instant,
caught the paper from the table, beckoned two or three
of the older men about him, among others, Geoffrey, the old
steward, and read aloud the record of the unhappy girl's marriage.
At this moment the young vicar of Widecomb entered the
room, and his eyes falling on the paper, “That is my father's
handwriting,” he cried; “this is a missing leaf of my church-register!”
“Was she not — was she not — his — wife?” cried Bras-de-fer,
raising himself feebly on his elbow, and gazing with his
whole soul in his dying eyes at the youthful vicar, and at the
horror-stricken circle.
“She was — she was assuredly, his lawful wife, and such I
will uphold her,” said the young man, solemnly. “Her fame
shall suffer no wrong any longer — her soul, I trust, is with her
God already — for she was innocent, and good, and humble, as
she was lovely and loving. Peace be with her.”
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“Poor, poor lady!” cried several of the girls who were present,
heart-stricken, at the thought of their own past conduct,
and of her unvarying sweetness. “Poor, poor lady!”
“Hubert — Hubert — I — I have cleared her — char — her
character, I have avenged her death; lay me beside her. In
ten — ten minutes I shall be — God — bless you, Hubert — with
Theresa! A — men!”
He was dead. He had died in his duty — which was justice—
truth — vengeance!
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Herbert, Henry William, 1807-1858 [1852], The Cavaliers of England, or, The times of the revolutions of 1642 and 1688. (Redfield, New York) [word count] [eaf580T].
