CHAPTER IV.
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“Your true lover is a monopolizer. He must himself receive all
favours and do all favours. He can bear no participator. He will
sooner forgive acts of indignity against himself, than the man who steps
between him and his mistress danger. If he cannot aid her himself,
he would rather lose her than that another should boast of the honour.
If I wished to make him my enemy, I would save his mistress' life.”
Brown.
A MORNING EXCURSION—SCENE ON THE ICE—AN ESCAPE—
LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
Spring was just opening in that enlivening and
rapid manner peculiar to northern latitudes, when
Achille and his brother accompanied their cousin
on a morning excursion along the beautiful shores
of the river. The earth was clothed with the mantle
of green and grey, which young spring loves to
throw around her, and the morning was bright and
warm for the season, as if June had usurped the
wand of rude and blustering March.
They had reined in their horses on the verge of
a lofty cliff overhanging the river, and remained
gazing upon its icy surface, which, as far as the eye
could reach, north and south, presented one vast
plain of chrystal. The lateness of the season rendered
it imprudent to venture upon it, although,
except in its soft, white appearance, under the warm
sun, it presented no indication of weakness. Gertrude,
excited by the gay canter along the cliff, and
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in unusually high spirits, proposed galloping across
the river, which, during the winter they had frequently
done, and ascend a hill on the opposite
side, from whose summit there was an extensive
prospect she had repeatedly admired.
“By no means, Gertrude,” exclaimed Achille,
“it would be rashness to attempt it.”
“I think not, cousin,” she replied, with that love
of opposition which is the prescriptive right of the
sex. “It is evidently very firm; only three days
ago, I saw several horsemen passing down the river
at a hand gallop.”
“But you forget the warmth of the sun, Gertrude!”
“Not enough to affect this solid mass before us,”
she replied, “at all events, I can but try it.”
So, slightly shaking her bridle, she cantered down
the smooth road to the foot of the cliff, rapidly followed
by the brothers.
“Do not venture upon the ice, cousin Gertrude,
I beseech,” mildly remonstrated Achille, when they
gained the beach, “you will certainly endanger
your life!”
“How very pathetic and careful, cousin of
mine,” she replied, with a playful, yet half-vexing
air; “if you really think there is so much danger,
we will excuse your attendance. I am fearless as
to the result, and quite confident that the ice will
bear Léon and me. See, now,” added she, as her
beautiful jennet bounded forward on hearing his
name, “ `Léon is more obedient to fayre ladies' commands
than their sworn esquires;' ” and her fine
eyes glanced mischievously as she spoke.
This badinage touched Achille, who was sensitively
alive to ridicule, especially from the lips of
the lady of his love. Biting his lip to suppress his
feelings, he calmly observed, “I regard not myself,
Gertrude, it is for you I speak. If you are resolved
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to go, I shall certainly accompany you, although
the greater the weight, the more imminent will be
the danger.”
“So will Henri, will you not, Henri?” she said,
half-assuredly, half-inquiringly; and a sweet
smile, such as maidens love to bestow on their favoured
swains, dwelt, while she spoke, upon her
pretty lips, and mantled her cheeks, with a scarcely
perceptible shade of crimson.
Henri, who had remained silent during this brief
colloquy, though always close to his cousin's rein,
replied.
“Certainly, Gertrude, although I think with brother,
that there is a spice of temerity in the attempt.
Allow me to dis—”
“Allons then,” she gaily cried, placing her
gloved finger upon her cousin's mouth, and exciting
the spirited animal upon which she was
mounted to spring forward on to the crumbling
verge of the ice.
Achille buried his spurs in the sides of his horse,
and, in one bound, was the next moment at the
head of her palfrey and dismounted—with the rein
in his grasp.
“For God's sake, Gertrude, stop! you must not
venture so rashly,” he cried, with energy, “do not
go, I beg of you!”
“Loose my rein, Achille, and don't be so earnest
about a mere trifle,” she said, hastily.
“Nay, cousin,” said Achille, in a softer tone, “the
life of Gertrude can be—”
“Now don't be sentimental, cousin Achille;” she
laughingly interrupted, “do be just good enough to
free Léon's head. See how impatient he is.”
“Do, cousin, allow me to plead!”
“No, no, you know how I hate pleading;” and,
without replying further, she dexterously extricated
her bridle from his grasp, touched her impatient
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horse smartly with the whip, and gaily crying,
“Sauve qui peut,” sprung forward like an arrow.
“Achille! your horse!” exclaimed Henri. “Mad
girl, she is lost!” he added, and spurring after her,
was in an instant galloping by her side. Achille
turned on the instant to vault into his saddle, and
beheld his horse, which he had left unsecured on
dismounting, coursing, with his mane flowing, and
the stirrups wildly flying, at full speed on his way
homeward.
“Holy devil!” ejaculated he, through his clenched
teeth, at the same time uttering a malediction upon
the flying animal; then turning to look after the
rash girl, he scarcely forbore repeating it, as he saw
her with his brother at her side, cantering over the
brittle and transparent surface of the river.
They were more than half-way to the opposite
shore, when a loud report, deadened like the subterranean
discharge of cannon, or the first rumbling
of an earthquake, struck his ears, accompanied by
a white streak, flashing, like lightning, along the
surface of the ice, from shore to shore.
“God of heaven!” he exclaimed, uttering a cry of
horror, as he saw the vast field of ice shivered along
its whole extent. With a loud voice he shouted for
them to return for their lives. Yet they heard him
not, although now evidently aware of their danger;
for they increased the speed of their horses, and
made for the opposite shore, to which they were
nearest, as the only chance for safety.
Suddenly, sharp reports, in rapid succession, like
the near explosion of musketry, reverberated along
the ice, which began to swell and heave like
the surface of the ocean in a calm. Save the
agitation on the river, all else was still. The skies
wore the pure blue of spring, the winds were
hushed, the air was close and sultry, and a deep silence,
like that of night, reigned over nature.
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A wild cry of terror suddenly reached his ears,—
fearfully breaking the stillness of the morning. His
heart echoed the cry, but his arm could bring no
aid. The adventurers had diminished their furious
speed, and were hovering on the verge of a yawning
chasm, which had suddenly opened before
them. To advance was destruction; to retrace
their way equally threatening. There was a moment's
hesitancy, Achille observed from the summit
of a pyramid of ice, which had been thrown
upon the beach, and then he saw them turn their
horses' heads, and, with a rapid flight, seek, over
the moving, unsteady surface of the heaving flood,
the shore they had left.
Onward they flew, like the wind. The labouring
ice shivered and groaned in their rear, heaving
itself in huge masses of wild and fantastic shapes
into the air behind them. Near the shore towards
which they were now directing their fearful course,
the ice had yet remained firm. But, as they advanced,
it groaned, heaved, and rose in vast piles
in their path, while a yawning chasm gaped wide
before them. Loudly and despairingly Achille
shouted, as he indicated with his riding-whip, the
surer way of escape from this chasm, which was
momently enlarging; otherwise he could render
them no assistance.
They saw their danger, but too late. Their
impetus was too powerful to be resisted by the
slight fingers of the maiden, as she drew in her
reins with painful and terrified exertion, and her
horse dashed in among the broken and heaving
masses of ice, as they were agitated by the swelling
current, and hurled, crashing and grinding with a
loud noise, against each other. A wild cry pierced
the ears of the paralyzed Achille, and horse and
rider disappeared beneath the terrific surface.
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Henri, who with a stronger arm had reined in his
fiery animal, no sooner witnessed the fearful plunge,
than, springing from his horse, he flew to the verge
from which she had leaped, and for an instant gazed
down into the cold, black flood, which had closed
like a pall over the lovely girl. The next moment
the deep waters received his descending form into
their bosom!
A moment of intense suffering, during which
Achille's heart distended almost to bursting, passed,
and the waters were agitated, and the head of her
favourite Léon came to the surface. The affrighted
animal glaring around, his dilated eyes intelligent
with almost human expression, uttered a loud and
terrific scream, and pawing with his fore-feet upon
the cakes of ice floating near him, made several
violent and ineffectual attempts, with the exercise of
extraordinary muscular exertion, to draw himself
up on to them; while the big veins swelled and
started out in bold relief from his glossy hide, his
nostrils expanded and gushed forth blood upon the
white ice, and audible groans came from his bursting
chest.
In vain were the tremendous and sublime efforts
of the noble animal—his strength gradually failed,
and he could at last retain his hold only with one
hoof upon the crumbling verge: that at last fell
into the water. The dying steed gave an appalling
cry, which the other horse, who stood gazing
on him with a look of sympathy, repeated, and the
shores caught up and re-echoed from cliff to cliff, till
it died away in the distance, like the wailing notes
of suffering fiends. Then, rolling his large eyes
round in terror and despair, he sunk from the sight
of the horror-stricken Achille.
“She is lost, lost, lost!” he exclaimed, mentally
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imprecating his situation, which rendered it impossible
for him to assist her.
Vast cakes of ice, between the elevation upon
which he stood and the place where they had disappeared,
constantly rolled by, tossed and whirled,
like egg shells, tumultuously upon the fierce torrent.
Conscious of his total inability to afford the least aid,
he stood gazing like a rivetted statue upon the dark
sepulchre which had entombed the only being he
loved.
“Merciful providence, I thank thee!” he exclaimed,
dropping impulsively upon one knee, with
clasped and uplifted hands, as he saw appear above
the water, far below the spot where Léon sunk, one
after another, the heads of his cousin and brother.
She was lifeless in his arms, her luxuriant tresses
floating upon the waves, her beautiful head pillowed
upon his shoulder!
With a cry of joy he sprang forward to the point
towards which he was swimming among the floating
ice with his lovely burden. Henri was a bold
and experienced swimmer. In boyhood it was the
only amusement in which he delighted or fearlessly
engaged. Achille stood upon the utmost verge
of the ice, and cast his riding cloak out upon the
water, retaining the tassel that he might draw them,
now almost exhausted, to the shore.
“No, brother,” said Henri faintly, yet firmly.
And a triumphant smile lighted his pale cheek as
he declined the proferred aid. In a moment afterwards
he laid the fair girl upon the bank—the preserver
of her life!
Achille cursed in his heart the fortune that had
blessed his brother. When as he swam with her,
he saw her marble cheek reposing against his, his
arm encircling her waist,
“Would to God,” he muttered, in the dark chambers
of his bosom, “that she had made the cold
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waters her tomb than be saved thus! But no, no,
too blessed a death for that proud boy to die. His
death shall be less sacred.”
His lip curled bitterly as he spoke, and his blood
fired with the dark thoughts his new-born hatred
and revenge called up. The passions which had
slumbered for years were once more roused within
him, hydra-headed and terrible.
Like a superior being, his brother gently laid the
breathless form of his cousin upon the bank. Achille
gazed upon them both for an instant in silence, and
while he gazed, felt his bosom torn with conflicting
emotions of love and hatred.
As he bent over the lifeless girl, chafing her slender
fingers and snowy arm, he half breathed the
wish that she might not return to consciousness to
be told that Henri was her preserver. He looked
upon his brother as he assisted him in restoring her
to animation, and felt that hatred, malice, and revenge
burned in the concentrated expression of his
glowing dark eyes; but as he encountered the proud
glance of his brother, and witnessed the calm dignity
of his demeanor, he withdrew his gaze from his face,
but hated him the more.
But a few minutes elapsed after she had been
laid upon the bank, when, accompanied by the old
gardener and one or two of the servants, their father
advanced rapidly towards them, having been alarmed
by the appearance of Achille's horse flying riderless
to the stables.
The breathless old man, instinctively comprehending
the whole scene, kneeled by the side of his beloved
niece, and by their united efforts she was soon
resuscitated. Then, for the first time, he looked up,
and observing the dripping garments of Henri, he
smiled upon him with that comprehensive and affectionate
smile, he wore when he looked upon those
he loved. But as he turned upon Achille, there was
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no glance of affection, no smile of approval—his eye
was cold, severe and passionless.
Gertrude at length unclosed her eyes, gazed intelligently
upon those around her, and then resting
them for an instant upon the saturated dress of her
cousin, slowly dropped the lids again to shade them
from the light, while her lips, gently parted, and
almost inaudibly pronounced,
“Henri!”
Achille sprung as though a serpent had stung
him, and a fearful imprecation thrilled upon his
tongue. His father frowned menacingly, while a
smile, just such a one as passed over his face when
he rejected the proferred cloak, and which, from its
proud and happy, if not exulting expression, entered
his bosom like a poisoned barb, re-opening the wound
years had not healed, lighted up his brother's features,
and the glance accompanying the smile was
a glance of conscious victory.
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Ingraham, J. H. (Joseph Holt), 1809-1860 [1836], The pirate of the gulf volume 1 (Harper & Brothers, New York) [word count] [eaf156v1].
