CHAPTER XV

"Silvain, Kristel, and Avicia, accompanied by her father, rowed from the lighthouse to the shore. The villagers saw but little of them; they passed out of the village, and Avicia's father returned alone to the lighthouse. Kristel loved Avicia with all the passion of a hot, imperious, and intense nature. He looked upon her as his, and had he suspected that Silvain would have fallen in love with her, it can readily be understood that he would have been the last man to bring them into association with each other. But so it happened.

"When Kristel and Avicia met in the Tyrol, Kristel was buoyed up with hopes that she reciprocated the love she had inspired in his breast. He had some reason for this hope, for at his request, when he asked her to become his wife and said that he could not marry without his father's consent, she had written home to her father with respect to the young gentleman's proposal, thereby leading him to believe that she was ready to accept him. It appeared, however, that there was no real depth in her feelings for him; and, indeed, it may be pardoned her if she supposed that his fervid protestations were prompted by feelings as light and as little genuine as her own. Unsophisticated as she was in the ways of the world, the fact of his making the honourable accomplishment of his love for her dependent upon the fiat of another person could not but have lessened the value of his declarations-more especially when she had not truly given him her heart. It was given to Silvain upon the occasion of their first meeting, and it was not long before they found the opportunity to exchange vows of affection-a circumstance of which I and every person but themselves were entirely ignorant. But love is cunning.

"It was because of Avicia's fear of her father that this love was kept secret; he held her completely in control, and-first favouring Kristel and then Silvain, playing them against each other, as it were, to his own advantage in the way of gifts-filled her with apprehension.

"'Looking back,' Silvain said in his statement to me, 'upon the history of those days of happiness and torture, I can see now that I was wrong in not endeavouring to arrive at a frank understanding with my brother; but indeed I had but one thought-Avicia. As Kristel believed her to be his, so did I believe her to be mine, and the idea of losing her was sufficient to make my life a life of despair. And after all, it was for Avicia to decide. Absorbing as was my love for her, I should have had no choice but to retire and pass my days in misery had she decided in favour of Kristel.'

"The base conduct of Avicia's father was to a great extent the cause of turning brotherly love to hate. Seeing their infatuation, he bargained with each secretly, saying, in effect, 'What will you give me if I give you my daughter's hand? – for she will not, and cannot, marry without my consent.'

"And to the other, 'What will you give me?'

"He bound them to secrecy by a solemn oath, and bound his daughter also in like manner, promising that she should have the one she loved. Silvain was the more liberal of the two, and signed papers, pledging himself to pay to the avaricious father a large sum of money within a certain time after his union with Avicia. So cunningly did the keeper of the lighthouse conduct these base negotiations, that, even on that last day when they all rowed together to the village, neither of the brothers knew that matters were to be brought then and there to an irrevocable end.

"The village by the sea lay behind them some six or eight miles. Then, upon a false pretext, Avicia's father got rid of Kristel, sending him on an errand for Avicia which would render necessary an absence of many hours. That done, he said to Silvain and Avicia, 'Everything is arranged. This day will see you man and wife. Come with me to the priest.'

"'But where is Kristel?' asked Silvain, his heart throbbing with joy. 'Does he not know?'

"'Yes, he knows,' replied Avicia's father, 'but, as you are aware, he had a sneaking regard himself for my daughter, and he thought he would feel more comfortable, and you and Avicia too, if he were not present at the ceremony. He bade me give you his blessing.'

"Satisfied with this-being, indeed, naturally only too willing to be satisfied-the marriage ceremony took place, and Silvain and Avicia became man and wife. They departed on their honeymoon, and instructed the keeper of the lighthouse to inform Kristel of their route, in order that he might be able to join them at any point he pleased.

"Then came the interview between Avicia's father and Kristel, in which the young man was informed that he had lost Avicia. Kristel was dismayed and furious at what he believed to be the blackest treachery on the part of his brother. He swore to be revenged, and asked the road they had taken. Avicia's father sent him off in an entirely opposite direction, and he set out in pursuit. Needless to say that he soon found out how he had been tricked, and that it infuriated him the more. Not knowing where else to write to Silvain, he addressed a letter to him at their home in Germany; he himself did not proceed thither, judging that his best chance of meeting the married couple lay near the village by the sea, to which he felt convinced Silvain and Avicia would soon return. Therefore he lurked in the vicinity of the village, and watched by day and night the principal avenues by which it was to be approached. But his judgment was at fault; they did not return.

"In the meantime the lovers were enjoying their honeymoon. In order to keep faith with Avicia's father in the bargain made between him and Silvain-which rendered necessary the payment of a substantial sum of money by a given time-it was imperative that Silvain should visit his boyhood's home, to obtain his share of the inheritance left to him and Kristel by their father. The happy couple dallied by the way, and it was not until three months after their marriage that they arrived at Silvain's birthplace.

"'Perhaps we shall meet Kristel there,' said Silvain.

"Instead of meeting his brother, Silvain received the letter which Kristel had written to him. It breathed the deepest hate, and Silvain had the unhappiness of reading the outpourings of a relentless, vindictive spirit, driven to despair by disappointed love.

"'You have robbed me,' the letter said; 'hour by hour, day by day, have you set yourself deliberately to ensnare me and to fill my life with black despair. Had I suspected it at the time I would have strangled you. But your fate is only postponed; revenge is mine, and I hold it in my soul as a sacred trust which I shall fulfil. You shall die by my hands. Never in this world or in the next will I forgive you! My relentless hate shall haunt and pursue you, and you shall not escape it!'

"And then the writer recorded an awful oath that, while life remained within him, his one sole aim should be to compass his revenge. It was a lengthy letter, and strong as is my description of it, it falls short of the intense malignity which pervaded every line. Kristel launched a curse so terrible against his brother that Silvain's hair rose up in horror and fear as he read it. These are Silvain's own words to me:

"'After reading Kristel's letter,' he said, 'I felt that I was accursed, and that it was destined that he should kill me.'

"How to escape the terrible doom-though he had scarcely a hope of averting it-how to prevent the crime of blood-guiltiness lying upon Kristel's soul: this was thereafter the object of Silvain's life. It afforded him no consolation to know that for the intense hate with which Kristel's heart was filled Avicia's father was partly responsible.

"In its delineation of the trickery by which Kristel had been robbed of Avicia the letter was not truthful, for there had occurred between the brothers a conversation in which Silvain had revealed his love for her. Kristel's over-wrought feelings probably caused him to forget this-or it may have been a perversion of fact adopted to give sanction to hate.

"Kristel's letter was not the only despairing greeting which awaited Silvain in the home of his boyhood. By some unhappy means the inheritance left by his father had melted away, and he found himself a beggar. Thus he was unable to carry out the terms of the bargain Avicia's father had made with him. This part of his misfortune did not greatly trouble him; it was but a just punishment to a grasping, avaricious man; but with beggary staring him in the face, and his brother's curse and awful design weighing upon him, his situation was most dreadful and pitiable.

"It was his intention to keep Kristel's letter from the knowledge of Avicia, but she secretly obtained possession of it, and it filled her soul with an agonising fear. They decided that it was impossible to return to the village by sea.

"'It is there my brother waits for us,' said Silvain.

"So from that time they commenced a wandering life, with the one dominant desire to escape from Kristel.

"I cannot enter now into a description of the years that followed. They crept from place to place, picking up a precarious existence, and enduring great privations. One morning Silvain awoke, trembling and afraid. 'I have seen Kristel,' he said.

"She did not ask him how and under what circumstances he had seen his brother.

"'He has discovered that we are here, and is in pursuit of us,' Silvain continued. 'We must fly without delay.'

"This was an added grief to Avicia. The place in which Silvain's dream of his brother had been dreamt had afforded them shelter and security for many weeks, and she had begun to indulge in the hope that they were safe. Vain hope! They must commence their wanderings again. From that period, at various times, Silvain was visited by dreams in which he was made acquainted with Kristel's movements in so far as they affected him and Avicia and the mission of vengeance upon which Kristel was relentlessly bent. They made their way to foreign countries, and even there Kristel pursued them. And so through the days and years continued the pitiful flight and the merciless pursuit. In darkness they wandered often, the shadow of fate at their heels, in Avicia's imagination lurking in the solitudes through which they passed, amidst thickets of trees, in hollows and ravines, waiting, waiting, waiting to fall upon and destroy them! An appalling life, the full terrors of which the mind can scarcely grasp.

"At length, when worldly circumstances pressed so heavily upon them that they hardly knew where to look for the next day's food, Avicia whispered to her husband that she expected to become a mother, and that she was possessed by an inexpressible longing that her child should be born where she herself first drew breath. After the lapse of so many years it appeared to Silvain that the lighthouse would be the likeliest place of safety, and, besides, it was Avicia's earnest wish. They were on the road thither when I chanced upon them in the forest."