A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE.
Through the dark fens, and the yielding morass, and the spicy sycamore grove, and the mossy walnut woods of Virginia, stole a gray-faced man; panting, hunger-smitten, weary; starting at every crash of the rotten underbrush, stopping ever with dilating eye to peer from the top of every hill into the valley beneath.
And a thin, tawny shadow glided before him with his nose upon the ground, and his eyes flaming ferociously—a blood-hound upon the trail.
Thoms had deserted from the army, and was out in search of Colonel Brand, and this dog which he held in chains was guiding him foot by foot along the secret path which St. Udo had traversed to perform his embassy.
How the old man brightened when a blue curl of distant smoke promised him a speedy sight of St. Udo's watch-fire! How his limbs trembled and his haggard face blackened when the blood-hound wavered in his steady run, and sniffed about uneasily for a lost scent! How the wicked, tigerish eyes gleamed when the creature ran on again with eager haste and dripping fangs!
And the long brown fingers were ever straying toward the dagger in the bosom; and the cruel lips ever were sneering out their fell design; and the march seemed only a summer holiday to Thoms hastening to his colonel.
St. Udo Brand had been sent to Washington with dispatches, and was on his way South again to join his command.
Thus much had Thoms discovered, and he was sure of coming up with him in these pathless forests, if he trusted to the unerring instinct of his hideous guide.
It was a lovely day that first of September—so warm, and lambent, and sunny-hued that St. Udo, weary with nights and days of ceaseless exertion, ordered a halt in a cedar grove, and threw himself from his jaded horse to rest a while.
His twenty followers, who were struggling after him on foot, were overjoyed to throw themselves beside him, and soon most of the poor fellows were fast asleep on their arms.
The following day there was a slight skirmish, in which but one, a mere youth, was injured.
St. Udo was talking kindly to this youth, who lay quite still in a corner listening to the whispered words of cheer with a faint and hopeless smile, when a shadow fell across the sweet, dying face, and a woman's gasp of terror fell upon St. Udo's ear. He turned to look upon her, and started involuntarily.
There she drooped, with wild, grief-darkened eyes fastened on the boy, her fair cheeks white with horror, her shapely hands clasped in anguish; her snaky tresses lying low upon her sloping shoulders—a vision of surpassing grace and dumb sorrow—Madam Estvan.
How came she there? Where came she from, who had lain entombed in a holocaust of flame?
A spirit, was she? Ay, truly, a spirit of pity and grief, weeping over a brave boy-soldier's end.
"God bless you, madam!" burst from St. Udo's lips.
She turned her tranced eye from its shocked scrutiny of the boy, and lifted it in mute anguish to the colonel's. She did not recognize him in that supreme moment of her woe.
"Is he dying, do you think?" whispered she, pressing close.
The sweet face turned with a smile of anguish at her voice, the dark eyes opened on her lovely countenance with a far away look already in their depths.
"Yes, yes, madam, I am dying," murmured the boy.
"Oh, Edgar! Edgar!" moaned the woman, in harrowing tones, "must you go? I loved you so dearly, too—my last, my only hope on earth or in Heaven—my son!"
"Ah, madam, you did not treat me as your son."
"Hush!" whispered she, in anguish. "I was not to blame for that. Your father was to blame when he deserted us both, my poor boy. How could I fight against fate? In self-defence I parted from you, but I have loved you truly, Edgar."
"May God, to whom I go, forgive your cold rejection of me many times when I have besought you on my knees to let me call you mother. From place to place you have led me, keeping me at a distance all the while, and now my sad, lonely life must end here. Oh, madam, you have been cruel!"
She wept wildly, she raised him in her arms and kissed him many times, but her lips framed no excuse.
"To think that I should find you here, my boy," moaned she, "when I sent you North expressly for safety's sake. Why—why did you enter the army, Edgar?"
"To find death," said the calm, dying voice.
She laid him down upon the straw, and raised her streaming eyes to St. Udo Brand. They recognized him now, and grew hard and fierce. She rose, and clutched him by the arm.
"Where is that fiend in human shape who calls himself Colonel Calembours?" cried she, vehemently.
"I cannot tell," replied St. Udo. "He has played the traitor to the North; he must be with Lee's army."
"He has played the traitor to me, and to that boy, his son!" she exclaimed, vengefully. "He has deserted us for eighteen years, and now my boy is dying. He threw me back among the flames three months ago in Colonel Estvan's house as soon as he recognized in me his wife. Oh! can such a monster escape justice?"
"Did you come here to-day expecting to find Colonel Calembours?" inquired St. Udo, compassionately.
"I did. I have just come from a sickroom, which my terror drove me to after my servants had rescued me from being consumed in the flames which destroyed my only home. I hear that Monsieur Estvan was killed, and I searched in every hospital in Richmond, and every jail, for some tidings of the monster in case he might have been captured. Now, alas! I find my son in the agonies of death."
She knelt again by the boy and kissed his cold lips, smiling so stilly.
St. Udo left the hapless pair together, and strode to the doorway of the shed for a breath of Heaven's pure air; the despair, the misery behind him were wringing his heart, adamantine as he was wont to call it.
St. Udo suddenly heard the beat of hoofs, and in a moment a Confederate officer dashed in front of the tent and reined up.
"Eh bien! Monsieur, mon ami," chirped a familiar voice. "Well met, my colonel. Par ma foi. I like this extravagantly—yes."
And the Chevalier de Calembours, dismounting from a magnificent war-horse, performed a profound obeisance.
"You unhanged villain!" shouted St. Udo, scornfully.
A white face peered out from behind Colonel Brand. Madam Estvan glided out, and put a nervous hand upon the chevalier's arm.
"Come here," whispered the wan lips, sadly.
He went with her into the tent, and looked at the sweet young face, sealed with the smile of death, of a noble soldier lad.
"Colonel Calembours, look at your son," whispered madam.
The chevalier grew ghastly white. Truly this fair, smiling dead bore his own sin-coarsened lineaments; but the woman! Who was she?
Just then there were heard shouts mingled with firing, and, ere the chevalier's eyes had time to light upon that beautiful face, a random ball struck him down at her feet. Like a bolt of retribution from Heaven, it laid him across the senseless clay of his deserted son.
And, with a shriek that tingled in the shocked St. Udo's ears, the lovely woman sank beside her dead, and the dark blood of her perfidious husband oozed onto her dainty robes, and washed her trembling hands; and, turning to the battle, he saw no more.
In half an hour St. Udo led back his soldiers, and found her still there, with the senseless man's head in her lap, and her soft hands deftly dressing his gaping wound.
"He will live," said she, quite calmly. "I have snatched him back from death; he will live for me."
"Can you forgive such perfidy as his?" asked the wondering St. Udo.
"Yes, if he will take me to his heart again," she said, with a flash of ineffable yearning. "I will forget his indifference to me, his injustice to this dead boy. I will be happy to be his bond slave, if he will own me as his wife evermore, for—I love him."
How passionately she breathed the sublime words, "I love him!" How God-like was the forgiveness of such sins as his for such a plea!
St. Udo forced some drops of brandy into his unfortunate comrade's lips, and in time had the satisfaction to hear a deep sigh escape him.
"Calembours," exclaimed St. Udo, "look up and speak to this noble woman."
The chevalier opened his eyes, and strove to see her through the dim gloom, but vainly.
"My husband!" breathed the lady, with bitter tears, "will you cast me off for the third time? Ah, don't break my heart! My poor Edgar is dead, and I have not a soul but you, and after all these years of separation. Oh, Ladislaus!"
Her face sank on his breast, she clung to him with both eager hands.
He glared about him like some savage animal. He forgot his pain and his capture, in rage at such a proposition, and answered with an insulting laugh.
"Oh—ha, ha!" screamed he, with the enjoyment of a hyena. "This maniac mistakes the Chevalier de Calembours for her husband Ladislaus. Excellent! nom de Dieu! most excellent. Sweet madam, your troubles have crazed your brain. A chance resemblance has deceived you—mon coeur! You have mistaken your man."
She heard him with a gasp of horror.
She extricated herself and stood off, a dark shadow in the gray night.
"You repudiate me once more?" she cried, in a thrilling voice. "Traitor, renegade—spy! You are not worthy of a woman's love; but you shall feel a woman's vengeance!"
She snatched a stiletto from her bosom, and threw herself upon the prostrate rascal, but was caught by St. Udo and disarmed.
"Enough, madam," said he, icily; "the miscreant shall expiate his villainies by death, but not at your hands."
She submitted in silence, and without one backward look upon the man who had been her life's curse, she galloped back with her attendants, to watch over her dead boy, and to keep him from the dews of Heaven and the birds of prey for many a dread day.
There is yet another scene to paint in this series of life-pictures, gentle reader.
It is the last.
On through dim night sped the little force, under a rising moon eclipsed by drifting clouds, and met face to face a regiment in full march.
The leaders anxiously gazed at each other, hoping to encounter friends, but in the gloom their uniforms were undistinguishable.
"What regiment is yours?" demanded St. Udo, at last.
There was a pause, brief and ominous.
"What is yours?" cautiously returned the officer in command.
"The—Vermont," said Udo Brand.
"Then, in heaven's name, take it! Fire!" commanded the other.
A simultaneous flash along; each line distinctly revealed every face, and then the front ranks fell in the windrows under the murderous volley.
"Again!" shouted the Confederate leader.
Again his men stepped forward, aimed at St. Udo's handful, and again the brave Vermonters melted away like smoke before the wind.
Then Colonel Brand gave the orders for retreat, and sullenly took the rear of his diminished band. But the foe pressed close, and a chance shot killed his horse, and a flying pursuer dealt the rider a stunning blow, and left him for dead; and the battle-storm rolled away, and was lost in the distant woods.
And when the shrouded moon was shining (three black stripes across its disk) upon the man lying on his broken sword, with his head upon the neck of his pulseless horse, he heard a rustle in the dewy leaves, and footsteps soft and sure approaching, and he raised his dark, dim eyes supplicatingly, for he thought of faithful friends who might be seeking him.
But a long, lean hound was baying hoarsely, and its red eyes gleamed like chysolites, and it led, step by step, the shuffling feet of a haggard man who long had sought St. Udo.
And the skulker came to his side, and looked in his face with demoniac eagerness, and plunged the dastardly dagger hilt-deep into his breast, and stood erect with a long, wild, triumphant laugh.
So the moon rode on in clearer majesty, and the night-dews dripped upon the slain—for "the dearest tears which heaven sheds are her dews upon the dead hero's face."