The Deed of Blood.

Throughout that livelong night, the thunder roared and rolled incessantly, and from moment to moment the whole firmament seemed to yawn asunder, showing its inner vaults, sheeted with living and coruscant fire, while ever and anon long, arrowy, forked tongues, of incandescent brightness, darted down from the zenith, cleaving the massive storm-clouds with a crash that made the whole earth reel and shudder.

Never, within the memory of man, had such a storm been known at that season of the year. Huge branches, larger than trees of ordinary size, were rent from the gigantic oaks by the mere force of the hurricane, and whirled away like straws before its fury. The rain fell not in drops or showers, but in vast sheeted columns. The rills were swollen into rivers, the rivers covered the lowland meadows, expanded into very seas. Houses were unroofed, steeples and chimneys hurled in ruin to the earth, cattle were killed in the open fields, unscathed by lightning, by the mere weight of the storm.

Yet through that awful turmoil of the elements, which kept men waking, and bold hearts trembling from the Land’s End to Cape Wrath, Jasper St. Aubyn slept as calmly as an infant, with his head pillowed on the soft bosom of his innocent and lovely wife. And she, though the tempest roared around, and the thunder crashed above her, so that she could not close an eye in sleep; though she believed that to-morrow she was about to fly from her native land, her home, never, perhaps, to see them more; though she looked forward to a life of toil and wandering, of hardship, and of peril as an exile’s wife, perhaps to a death of horror, as a traitor’s confederate, she blessed God with a grateful heart, that he had restored to her her husband’s love, and watched that dear sleeper, dreaming a waking dream of perfect happiness.

But him no dreams, either sleeping or waking, disturbed from his heavy stupor, or diverted from his hellish purpose. So resolute, so iron-like in its unbending pertinacity was that young, boyish mind, that having once resolved upon his action, not all the terrors of heaven or of hell could have turned him from it.

There lay beneath one roof, on one marriage bed, ay, clasped in one embrace, the resolved murderer, and his unconscious victim. And he had tasted the honey of her lips, had fondled, had caressed her to the last, had sunk to sleep, lulled by the sweet, low voice of her who, if his power should mate his will, would never look upon a second morrow.

And here, let no one say such things cannot be, save in the fancy of the rhapsodist or the romancer; such things are impossible—for not only is there nothing under the sun impossible to human power, or beyond the aim of human wickedness, but such things are and have been, and will be again, so long as human passion exists uncontrolled by principle.

Such things have been among ourselves, and in our own day, as he who writes has seen, and many of those who read must needs remember—and such things were that night at Widecomb.

With the first dappling of the dawn, the rage of the elements sunk into rest, the winds sighed themselves to sleep, the pelting torrents melted into a soft, gray mist; only the roar of the distant waters, mellowed into a strange fitful murmur, was heard in the general tranquillity which followed the loud uproar.

Wearied with her involuntary watching, Theresa fell asleep also, still clasping in her fond arms the miserable, guilty thing which she had sworn so fatally, and kept her vow so faithfully, to love, honor, and obey.

When the sun rose, the wretched man awoke from his deep and dreamless deep; and as his eye fell on that innocent, sweet face, calm as an infant’s, and serene, though full of deep thoughts and pure affections, he did start, he did shudder, for one second’s space—perhaps for that fleeting point of time, he doubted. But if it were so, he nerved himself again almost without an effort, disengaged himself gently from the embrace of her entwined arms, with something that sounded like a smothered curse, and stalked away in sullen gloom, leaving her buried in her last natural slumber.

Two hours had, perhaps, gone over, and the morning had come out bright and glorious after the midnight storm, the atmosphere was clear and breezy, the skies pure as crystal, and the glad sunshine glanced and twinkled with ten thousand gay reflections in the diamond rain-drops which still gemmed every blade of grass, and glistened in every flowret’s cup, when Theresa’s light step was heard coming down the stairs, and her sweet voice inquiring where she should find Master St. Aubyn.

“I am here,” answered his deep voice, which for the moment he made an effort to inflect graciously, and with the word he made his appearance from the door of his study, booted to the mid-thigh, and spurred; with a long, heavy rapier at his side, and a stout dagger counterbalancing it in the other side of his girdle. He was dressed in a full suit of plain black velvet, without any ornament or embroidery; and whether it was that the contrast made him look paler, or that the horror of what he was about to do, though insufficient to turn his hard heart, had sufficed to blanch his cheek and lips, I know not, but, as she saw his face, Theresa started as if she had seen a ghost.

“How pale you look, Jasper,” she said earnestly; “are you ill at ease, dearest, or anxious about me? If it be the last, vex not yourself, I pray you; for I am not in the least afraid, either of the fatigue or of the voyage. For the rest,” she added, with a bright smile, intended to reassure him, “I have long wished to see la belle France, as they call it; and to me the change of scene, so long as you are with me, dearest Jasper, will be but a change of pleasure. I hope I have not kept you waiting. But I could not sleep during the night for the thunder, and about daybreak I was overpowered by a heavy slumber. I did not even hear you leave me.”

“I saw that you slept heavily, my own love,” he made answer, “and was careful not to wake you, knowing what you would have to undergo to-day, and wishing to let you get all the rest you could before starting. But come, let us go to breakfast. We have little time to lose, the horses will be at the door in half an hour.”

“Come, then,” she answered, “I am ready;” and she took his arm as she spoke, and passed, leaning on him, through the long suit of rooms, which now, for above a year had been her home in mingled happiness and sorrow. “Heigho!” she murmured, with a half sigh, “dear Widecomb! dear, dear Widecomb, many a happy hour have I spent within your walls, and it goes hard with me to leave you. I wonder, shall I ever see you more.”

“Never,” replied the deep voice of her husband, in so strange a tone, that it made her turn her head and look at him quickly. A strange, dark spasm had convulsed his face, and was not yet passed from it, when her eye met his. She thought it was the effect of natural grief at leaving his fine place—the place of his birth—as an outlaw and an exile; and half repenting that she had so spoken as to excite his feelings, she hastened to soothe them, as she thought, by a gayer and more hopeful word.

“Never heed, dearest Jasper,” she said, pressing his arm, on which she hung, “if we do love old Widecomb, there are as fair places elsewhere, on the world’s green face, and if there were not, happy minds will aye find, or make happy places. And we, why spite of time and tide, wind and weather, we will be happy, Jasper. And I doubt not a moment, that we shall yet live to spend happy days once more in Widecomb.”

“I fear, never,” replied the young man, solemnly. It was a singular feeling—he did not repent, he did not falter or shrink in the least from his murderous purpose; but, for his life, he could not give her a hope, he could not say a word to cheer her, or deceive her, further than he was compelled to do in order to carry out his end.

The morning meal passed silently and sadly; for, in spite of all her efforts to be gay, and to make him lighter-hearted, his brow was clouded, and he would not converse; and she, fearing to vex him, or to trespass on what she believed to be his deep regret at leaving home, ceased to intrude upon his sorrow.

At length he asked her, “Are you ready?” and as he spoke, arose from the table.

“Oh yes,” she answered, “I am always ready when you want me. And see, Jasper,” she added, “here are my jewels,” handing him a small ebony casket “I thought they might be of use to us, in case of our wanting money; and yet I should grieve to part with them, for they are the diamonds you gave me that night we were wedded.”

He took it with a steady hand, and thrust it into the bosom of his dress, saying, with a forced smile, “You are ever careful, Theresa. But you have said nothing, I trust, to your maidens, of our going.”

“Surely not, Jasper, they believe I am going but for a morning’s ride. Do you not see that I have got on my new habit? You have not paid me one compliment on it, sir. I think you might at least have told me that I looked pretty in it. I know the day when you would have done so, without my begging it.”

“Is that meant for a reproach, Theresa?” he said, gloomily, “because—”

“A reproach, Jasper,” she interrupted him quickly, “how little you understand poor me! I hoped, by my silly prattle, to win you from your sorrow at leaving all that you love so dearly. But I will be silent?—”

“Do so, I pray you, for the moment.”

And without further words, he led her down the steps of the terrace, and helped her to mount her palfrey, a beautiful, slight, high-bred thing, admirably fitted to carry a lady round the trim rides of a park, but so entirely deficient in bone, strength, and sinew, that no animal could have been conceived less capable of enduring any continuous fatigue, or even of making any one strong and sustained exertion. Then he sprung to the back of his own noble horse, a tall, powerful, thorough-bred hunter, of about sixteen hands in height, with bone and muscle to match, capable, as it would appear, of carrying a man-at-arms in full harness through a long march or a pitched battle.

Just as he was on the point of starting, he observed that one of his dogs, a favorite greyhound, was loose, and about to follow him, when he commanded him to be taken up instantly, rating the man who had held the horses very harshly, and cursing him soundly for disobeying his orders.

Then, when he saw that he was secure against the animal’s following him, he turned his horse’s head to the right hand, toward the great hills to the westward, saying aloud, so that all the bystanders could hear him,

“Well, lady fair, since we are only going for a pleasure ride, suppose we go up toward the great deer-park in the forest. By the way,” he added, turning in his saddle to the old steward, who was standing on the terrace, “I desired Haggerston, the horse-dealer, to meet me here at noon, about a hunter he wants to sell me. If I should not be back, give him some dinner, and detain him till I return. I shall not be late, for I fancy my lady will not care to ride very far.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Jasper,” she replied, with an arch smile, thinking to aid him in his project. “It is so long since I have ridden out with you, that I may wish to make a day of it. Come, let us start.”

And she gave her jennet its head, and cantered lightly away over the green, her husband following at a trot of his powerful hunter; and in a few minutes they were both hidden from the eyes of the servants, among the clumps of forest-trees and the dense thickets of the chase.

At something more than three miles’ distance from Widecomb House, to the westward, there is a pass in the hills, where a bridle-road crosses the channel of the large brook, which I have named so often, and which, at a point far lower down, was the scene of Jasper’s ill-omened introduction to Theresa Allan.

This bridle-road, leading from the sparse settlements on Dartmoor to the nearest point of the seacoast, was a rough, dangerous track, little frequented except by the smugglers and poachers of that region, and lay for the most part considerably below the level of the surrounding country, between wooded hills, or walk of dark gray rock.

The point at which it crosses the stream is singularly wild and romantic, for the road and the river both are walled by sheer precipices of gray, shattered, limestone rock, nearly two hundred feet in height, perfectly barren, bare, and treeless, except on the summits, which are covered with heather and low, stunted shrubbery.

The river itself, immediately above the ford, by which the road passes it, descends by a flight of rocky steps, or irregular shelvy rapids, above a hundred feet within three times as many yards, and then spreads out into a broad, open pool, where its waters, not ordinarily above three feet deep, glance rapidly, but still and unbroken, over a level pavement of smooth stone, almost as slippery as ice. Scarce twenty yards below this, there is an abrupt pitch of sixty feet in perpendicular height, over which the river rushes at all times in a loud foaming waterfall, but after storms among the hills, in a tremendous roaring cataract.

The ford is never a safe one, owing to the insecure foothold afforded by the slippery limestone, but when the river is in flood, no one in his senses would dream of crossing it.

Yet it was by this road that Jasper had persuaded his young wife that they could alone hope to escape with any chance of safety, and to this point he was leading her. And she, though she knew the pass, and all its perils, resolute to accompany him through life, and, if need should be, to death itself, rode onward with him, cheerful and apparently fearless.

They reached its brink, and the spectacle it afforded was, indeed, fearful. The river swollen by the rains of the past night, though, like all mountain torrents, rising and falling rapidly, it was already subsiding, came down from the moors with an arrowy rush, clear and transparent as glass, yet deep in color as the rich brown cairn-gorm. The shelvy rapids above the ford were one sheet of snow-white foam, and in the ford itself the foam-flakes wheeled round and round, as in a huge boiling caldron, while below it the roar of the cataract was louder than the loudest thunder, and the spray rolling upward from the whirlpool beneath, clung to the crags above in mist-wreaths so dense that their summits were invisible.

“Good God!” cried Theresa, turning deadly pale, as she looked on the fearful pool. “We are lost. It is impossible.”

“By heaven!” he answered, impetuously, “I must pass it, or stay and be hanged. You can do as you will, Theresa.”

“But is it possible?”

“Certainly it is. Do you think I would lead you into certain death? But see, I will ride across and return, that you may see how easy it is, to a brave heart and a cool hand.”

And, confident in the strength of his horse and in his own splendid horsemanship, he plunged in dauntlessly, and keeping up stream near to the foot of the upper rapids, struggled through it, and returned to her without much difficulty, though the water rose above the belly of his horse.

He heard, however, that a fresh storm was rattling and roaring, even now, among the hills above, and he knew by that sign that a fresh torrent was even now speeding its way down the chasm.

There was no time to be lost—it was now or never. He cast an eager glance around—a glance that read and marked every thing—as he came to land; save only Theresa, there was not a human being within sight.

“You see,” he said, with a smile, “there is no danger.”

“I see,” she answered, merrily. “Forgive me for being such a little coward. But you will lead Rosabella, wont you, Jasper?”

“Surely,” he answered. “Come.”

And catching the curb-rein of the pony with his left hand, and guiding his own horse with his right, holding his heavy loaded hunting-whip between his teeth, he led her down into the foaming waters, so that her palfrey was between himself and the cataract.

It was hard work, and a fearful struggle for that slender, light-limbed palfrey to stem that swollen river; and the long skirt of Theresa’s dress, holding the water, dragged the struggling animal down toward the waterfall. Still, despite every disadvantage, it would have battled to the other side, had fair play been given it.

But when they reached the very deepest and most turbulent part of the pool, under pretence of aiding it, Jasper lifted the jennet’s fore-legs, by dint of the strong, sharp curb, clear off the bottom. The swollen stream came down with a heavier swirl, its hind legs were swept from under it, in an instant, and with a piercing scream of agony and terror, the palfrey was whirled over the brink of the fall.

But, as it fell, unsuspicious of her husband’s horrible intent, the wretched girl freed her foot from the stirrup, and throwing herself over to the right hand, with a wild cry, “Save me! save me, my God! save me, Jasper!” caught hold of his velvet doublet with both hands, and clung to him with the tenacious grasp of the death-struggle.

Even then—even then, had he relented, one touch of the spur would have carried his noble horse clear through the peril.

But no! the instant her horse fell, he shifted his reins to the left hand, and grasped his whip firmly in the right; and now, with a face of more than fiendish horror, pale, comprest, ghastly, yet grim and resolute as death, he reared his hand on high, and poised the deadly weapon.

Then, even then, her soft blue eyes met his, full, in that moment of unutterable terror, of hope and love, even then overpowering agony. She met his eyes, glaring with wolfish fury; she saw his lifted hand, and even then would have saved his soul that guilt.

“Oh no!” she cried, “oh no! I will let go—I will drown, if you wish it; I will—I will, indeed! Oh God! do not you—do not you—kill me, Jasper.”

And even as she spoke, she relaxed her hold, and suffered herself to glide down into the torrent; but it was all too late—the furious blow was dealt—with that appalling sound, that soft, dead, crushing plash, it smote her full between those lovely eyes.

“Oh God!—my God!—forgive—Jasper! Jasper!”—and she plunged deep into the pool; but as the waters swept her over the cataract’s verge, they raised her corpse erect; and its dead face met his, with the eyes glaring on his own yet wide open, and the dread, gory spot between them, as he had seen it in his vision years before.

He stood, motionless, reigning his charger in the middle of the raging current, unmindful of his peril, gazing, horror-stricken, on the spot where he had seen her last—his brain reeled, he was sick at heart.

A wild, piercing shout, almost too shrill to be human, aroused him from his trance of terror. He looked upward almost unconsciously, and it seemed to him that the mist had been drawn up like a curtain, and that a man in dark garb stood gazing on him from the summit of the rocks.

If it were so, it was but for a second’s space. The fog closed in thicker again than before, the torrent came roaring down in fiercer, madder flood, and wheeling his horse round, and spurring him furiously, it was all that Jasper St. Aubyn could do, by dint of hand and foot, and as iron a heart as ever man possessed, to avoid following his victim to her watery grave.

Once safe, he cast one last glance to the rocks, to the river, but he saw, heard nothing. He whirled the bloody whip over the falls, plunged his spurs, rowel-deep, into the horse’s sides, and with hell in his heart, he galloped, like one pursued by the furies of the slain, back, alone, to Widecomb.

——