Chapter IV

The Vengeance.

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream,

The wanderer was returned.

Byron.

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! Oh God! oh 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.

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 any thing 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 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 three or four yards, stooped, gathered up the paper, thrust it into his bosom, and then folding his arms across his stalwort breast, stood quietly confronting the murderer, but with the quietude of the expectant gladiator.

Jasper stared at the swarthy, sun-burned 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 baulk 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, I tell you.”

“Then is the luck mine, for I know you right well, young sir!”

“And for whom do you know me?”

“For a d—d 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 Durzil 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,

“ ‘Durzil 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.”

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 off 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 the crack, a dull sound, as of a blow, followed it; and he knew that his ball had taken effect on his enemy.

Again Durzil’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 Durzil’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 Durzil; a second in the sword arm, “That for your coward blow!” a third, which clove the very cavity of his heart asunder, “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.

Durzil 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, Durzil 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?”

“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, 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 Durzil, in a faint but audible voice. “I did it—I slew him, as he has slain me. I am Durzil 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 the frank, gallant, bold young seaman had ever been a general favorite. “Huzza! for Master Durzil!”

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 hand-writing,” he cried; “this is the 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.”

“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—bless you, Hubert—with Theresa! A—amen!”

He was dead. He had died in his duty—which was justice—truth—vengeance!