CHAPTER XIX.

TEMPTED SORE.

There were few better horses in the West of England than Parson Gale's black nag Ca.s.sock, a beast on which he had performed many surprising feats of speed and endurance for trifling wagers amongst his friends. It speaks well for the favourable impression made by their clerical guest on his entertainers that the gipsies allowed him to retain possession of so valuable a steed, when nothing would have been easier than to slip its halter, and convey it secretly out of the camp while its master was engaged in his debauch. These strange people, however, respected their own peculiar principles of justice and fair-dealing, even in a life of robbery and fraud. Holding somewhat stringent notions on the laws of hospitality, they were, moreover, much fascinated by the Parson's freedom of manners and great absorbent powers. Ca.s.sock, therefore, was liberally supplied with the best forage they had to give; and when at last, in spite of the duke's protestations and the entreaties of his court, Abner Gale declared his intention of departing at once to travel home by moonlight, a score of tawny hands were ready to adjust saddle and bridle, to hold the stirrup while he mounted, and to wave a good-speed after him as he rode away.

Only Fin Cooper, a born horse-dealer and horse-stealer, regretted the scruples of his tribe. "What was the use of plying the Gorgio with ale and brandy," he murmured, as he lay down to sleep in his tattered blanket, "if he is to leave the Romanies no poorer than he came to these tents? I could have _ch.o.r.ed_ that _gry_, that good black nag, aye, stolen it twenty times over, while they emptied their cask by the fire, and sold it back again, as likely as not, to the Parson himself fresh and sober at Barnstaple Fair before harvest was done. And now I should like to know how any one of us is the better for this visit? though he sings a good song, I'll not deny, and takes his drink as free as old Michael himself." Then, hearing the game-c.o.c.k he had stolen stirring in its coop, Fin thought better of his grievances and dropped asleep, soothed by the reflection that the hospitality of his people had not been without some return, nor his own ingenuity wholly thrown away.

In the meantime Parson Gale, sitting rather loose in the saddle, was rounding the head of the coombe in which he had been so hospitably treated, with a wandering eye, flushed cheek, and brain dizzy, from the strength of his potations. A harvest moon, high in heaven, flooded the moor with light, so that the good horse picked his way through the heather, avoiding the level patches of bog as easily as at noon-day.

Ca.s.sock had learned from a foal to mind his own footsteps, to look out for himself in the scanty pastures he shared with the mountain sheep or wild red-deer on the hills where he was bred, and could skim the rush-grown swamps around the Black Pits of Exmoor, safe and swift as the very bittern that flitted across those lonely haunts. Going freely from his shoulders, but collected and prepared for effort behind the saddle, with head low, ears pointed, and the froth flying lightly from his bit, as he swayed at every stride to the turn of his rider's hand, he could sweep along at a gallop over ground where an unaccustomed horse would have stuck fast up to its girths before it had gone fifty yards. That sense, too, which we call instinct in the brute, because of its superiority to the power we call reason in the man, forbade him to venture on any surface wholly incapable of affording foothold; and it would have required all the persuasions of consummate horsemanship from his rider to beguile Ca.s.sock into a real, unmitigated, fathomless Devonshire bog. The horse was bred on the moor, and on the moor had never yet met his match. To-night he seemed more careful than usual, edging from side to side under his burden, as though conscious that on him, the drinker of water, must devolve the duty of balancing his master, the drinker of ale! He knew his way home, too, and could have found it like a dog; nor would he have objected to increase the pace considerably had he received the slightest indication that his lord was inclined for a gallop.

The Parson, however, had fallen into a meditative mood; such a mood as might possess a rough imaginative nature amongst the fairest scenes in England on a mellow autumn night. He paced along the sheep-track Ca.s.sock had selected at a walk, now stroking his horse's neck with maudlin kindness, now looking about him over the moonlit heather in affable approval; anon sighing deeply, and raising his eyes to heaven, with a meaningless smile.

Yet was his brain busy too, busy with stirring memories, morbid fancies, wild speculations--all the grotesque ideas that crowd into a man's mind when imagination is stimulated and judgment warped by the influence of strong drink. He seemed lifted, as it were, out of himself, and incorporated with that external nature of which he was perhaps a more faithful worshipper than he knew. He felt as if he could ride the moonbeam with the fairies, join in its moan with the spirit of the waterfall, shout aloud with the spirit of the air, or chase over its mountain ridges the spirit of the moor. Speaking words of encouragement to Ca.s.sock, he started at the sound of his own voice. The brushing of his horse's legs, knee-deep in heather, made his blood run cold, for it seemed to him that some phantom rider was at his heels. What if the devil in person, on a coal-black steed, were to come alongside and accost him, daring him to some break-neck gallop over rocks and precipices, that his own dead body and his horse's might be found, crushed and mangled in their fall, when the sun rose? He had heard of such things, and said to himself he would scorn to refuse the challenge, and would defy the devil then and there, less in the confidence of a good conscience than in the evil courage of despair. He wished, though, that he had filled his flask down yonder before he left the gipsy-tents.

A nip of brandy would do him a world of good just now, and keep out the night air. Then, with the inconsistency of his condition, he threw open his waistcoat and loosened the kerchief round his throat.

Presently the man within the man, the working partner in the firm, who never sleeps, never gets drunk, never loses his consciousness nor his ident.i.ty, even when contusions or alcohol have numbed to insensibility his a.s.sociate's weaker brain; the man who reproves us when we are wicked, who laughs at us when we are fools; to whom we make apologies for weakness, and excuses for crime, began to separate himself, as it were, from the _corporeal_ Parson Gale, and take him to task with half-indulgent cynicism, for the shortcomings of which both inner and outer man were fully conscious. Said the one to the other, "See now, I knew how it would be! You are at your old tricks again, Abner Gale, though you promised me yourself, only last week after Mounsey Revel, it should be the last time till Martinmas! You're not ashamed of it--not a bit! You're a good fellow, you say, and cannot refuse a cup when it's offered in good fellowship. All very well, my friend, but _respice finem_! There's Latin for you. Ah! you knew a bit of Latin once; I don't think it ever did you much good; but _keep your eye forward_! You can do that still when you ride to hounds across the moor. Look to the result. Already your hand has begun to shake; you can scarce b.u.t.ton the knees of your breeches till you've had your morning draught, and you couldn't tie a fly to save your life. Already you know what it is to hear a buzzing in your ears, and feel a shooting pain in your joints.

The last time you wrestled a fall with little Tremaine, he threw you easily with a cross-b.u.t.tock, and he is but a ten-stone man. It won't do, Abner Gale--it can't go on! You'll be losing your nerve next, and what is to become of you then? Ca.s.sock, my boy, you'll hardly know your master when he's afraid to ride! but it hasn't come to that yet. Take a pull, my lad, before it's too late. You've seen many a man as sober as a judge, who is as happy as a king! It wouldn't be such a bad life, after all, to shoot, and hunt, and fish, where you know every hazel in the copse, every tuft on the heather, every pebble in the stream; to look after your parish, speak a kind word to your poor, and come back at night, hungry and happy, to meet a loving welcome in your own home. Pull yourself together, Abner Gale; for all your reddened face and grizzled hair, there's many an older man than _you_ goes wooing still. What more should a girl want than bone and muscle, a good heart, and an easy temper,--your temper is easy enough when you're not put out,--a joint at the kitchen fire, and a slate roof over her head? So why should the likeliest la.s.s in all the West Country say nay? Abner Gale! Abner Gale!

there was one chance left, and may-be you lost it to-day, getting drunk with a parcel of tinkers and gipsies on the open moor."

Then the outer man reined in his horse; and while Ca.s.sock cropped the luxuriant heather under his nose, looked long and wistfully over a waste of uplands to where the moonlight broke in glints of gold upon the Severn Sea. Below him yonder lay the sweep of Porlock Bay, and not a stone's-throw from its edge, lulled by the lap and ripple of the tide, slept the only woman on earth he wished to call his wife.

But was it too late? Each by each, he recapitulated, with a certain grim humour (for the night-air had not yet thoroughly sobered him), the advances he had hazarded, the rebuffs he had received. Were these not sufficiently explicit? Were those but the resources of maidenly reserve and shame?--Or was there somebody she liked better?

Bright and clear as the colouring of a picture came back the scene he had witnessed when he found the stranger, sitting on the rocks by her side. She had been more silent than common, he remembered, after the new visitor took his leave; but he never thought her so beautiful, never noted so deep a l.u.s.tre in her eye, so rich a colour in her cheek. Was it possible? Such things had happened before. Could it be that she already loved this come-by-chance, and that he, Parson Gale, must be worsted in the one object of his life; must run second in the race he would barter his very soul to win?

And now, had the devil been, indeed, following on his track, had he ridden alongside, stirrup to stirrup, and offered him his fiendish a.s.sistance, the evil spirit could not have more fully possessed the man than while he ground a savage curse between his teeth, on himself, his horse, his fellows, the brute creation, all nature, animate and inanimate, to think that he should have lost Nelly Carew, the girl he had coveted from her childhood, to an unknown stranger, the acquaintance of a day. Somebody must pay for it. There should be no mistake about that! Perhaps it was less Nelly's fault than her new friend's, this young springald, who came into the West forsooth, with his town-bred manners and his town-made clothes, to rob honest men of their own. But town or country, the best of them should not poach on Parson Gale's moor without hearing of it. He only wished he could find out something more about him, that was all. If the devil himself offered to back him up now, he would drive no hard bargain, but pay fair market price for his help!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TALE TOLD.]

Ca.s.sock started violently, with a loud and prolonged snort. A more sober rider might have been both alarmed and unseated, so suddenly did the animal swerve aside from a dusky figure that rose against the sky out of its very path; but a good horseman's balance seems little influenced by unsteadiness of brain, and the Parson felt a thrill of triumph rather than fear, in the wild fancy that his awful wish had been granted, and the powers of evil had consented to afford him the a.s.sistance he required.

"Speak up!" he exclaimed, in a fierce and threatening voice, the more angrily, perhaps, that he felt his flesh creep with superst.i.tious dread.

"If you come straight from h.e.l.l, I'll have a word with you before you go back. Steady, Ca.s.sock, my lad. What, you know her, do ye? and it's only the little gipsy-la.s.s, after all!"

The figure, dim and phantom-like as it stood there beneath the moon, threw back its scarlet hood, and revealed to the Parson's excited senses, no spirit from below, but Waif's tangible beauty, pale indeed, and careworn, yet strangely attractive still, with its wild, sad eyes, and wealth of raven hair.

She laid her hand on Ca.s.sock's neck, and the horse tolerated her caress, though his restless backward-moving ear showed he was only half rea.s.sured.

"I know you!" said Waif. "I've seen you before. I watched you from our tents, and waited here to make sure Parson Gale, I can tell you something you would give ten years of your life to know."

She had waylaid him purposely at the bend of the coombe, that he could not but pa.s.s to reach the level moor, arriving by a path only accessible to an active hill-climber on foot, so that even had he come round at a gallop, she must have been here before him.

"Can you tell me my fortune, pretty la.s.s?" returned Gale, with a forced attempt at gallantry. "Give me hold of that slender little hand, and I'll put a silver groat in it, if I have one left in the world."

He leaned over his horse's shoulder while he spoke, preserving his balance with some difficulty. Waif, keeping well out of reach, gave no encouragement to his a.s.sumed familiarity.

"Forget," she said, "for the time, that I am a gipsy, and that you are a priest. Parson Gale, I know the wish that is nearest your heart this very moment. You look for health, ease, happiness, and a good name like your neighbours, but you would give the soul out of your body for revenge!"

He started; the certainty with which she had fathomed his desire, and named its price, recalled the speculations of a few minutes back. Again some nameless fear of the supernatural crept over him, and he shuddered to think that for the compa.s.sing of his own eternal destruction, the gipsy-girl's shape and semblance might have been a.s.sumed by the Prince of Darkness, who thus accosted him face to face. He had seen a Romish priest cross himself under a similar terror. He would have liked now to make the holy sign, and wondered would it be any use?

Waif, if she understood, only despised his hesitation. "I can give you what you want," she said, "and I ask nothing of you in return." Though spoken in a low voice, almost a whisper, every syllable pa.s.sed through her firm-set lips, hard, cruel, and distinct.

With returning confidence rose the coa.r.s.e overbearing manner that had already lost this man so many friends. "Nothing for nothing," said he with a brutal laugh. "Come, la.s.s, exchange is no robbery; speak what you have to say, and take a kiss from an honest fellow in return."

Her delicate face expressed a loathing that the vainest of men must have observed: but Waif had a task to perform, and she went through with it systematically, to the bitter end.

"The man you seek," she said, "is in your reach. The man who slew your brother sleeps to-night within three leagues of you, in the hamlet by Porlock Bay. When you stand face to face with John Garnet, tell him that the gipsy-girl he betrayed delivered him into your hand."

The words were hardly spoken before she disappeared behind the abrupt ridge of moor that overhung the coombe, with a rapidity that seemed, indeed, like the vanishing of a ghost. Ere the Parson could realise the startling fact, that this stranger, whom he already hated with an instinctive hatred, was the man he had sought in vain for weeks, swearing to hunt him down to death in atonement for a brother's blood--she was gone; and he rubbed his eyes in sheer amazement, almost doubting, even now, whether this had been a vision of fancy, or a creature of real flesh and blood.

None the less did he resolve to take advantage of her communication, and riding homeward across the moor, completely sobered by this mysterious interview, determined to lose no time in setting about the destruction of his enemy.

But Waif, traversing aimlessly up and down, wandered through the woods till the moon set, regardless of cold, discomfort, or fatigue, callous even to the weight of misery that benumbed her brain, causing her to move unconsciously, here and there, with smooth mechanical gait, like one who walks abroad, having mind and senses fettered in the thraldom of a dream.

CHAPTER XX.

THE COLD SHOULDER.

Lady Bellinger at least was pleased. When her lord, reflecting that the robbery he had sustained would render abortive his journey to the West, ordered the horses' heads to be turned for London, his wife accepted this alteration in their plans with a fervour of grat.i.tude that sufficiently indicated her dread of a prolonged _tete-a-tete_ with her husband. Nor was his lordship unwilling to resume the dissipations of the town, though entertaining shrewd misgivings as to the reception he was likely to meet with from the sovereign and his ministers. In war, in politics, or in love--in public affairs, as in private, there is no excuse for failure! Success does not necessarily imply merit; but merit, in the eyes of mankind, is a less valuable quality than success. There have been shrewd and prosperous managers of the world's most important matters, who have gone so far as to lay down this practical rule: "Never employ an unlucky man!"

Lady Bellinger was not obliged to have recourse to her drops more than half-a-dozen times between Hounslow and London on the return journey.

She contradicted my lord hardly twice as often, and was good enough to express a qualified approval of the scenery, the weather, even the roads, which last were execrable. Mistress Rachel, too, seemed pleased to think she was on her way back to civilized life, fresh from an adventure that made her a heroine in her own eyes. The champion with the blunderbuss was already reinstated in her favour; the other servants, by dint of frequent excuses for their poltroonery, and by talking the matter over till they had multiplied a hundred-fold the number and weapons of their a.s.sailants, were persuaded they had shown a fair amount of courage; and the whole party, with the exception of its chief, drove back in the highest spirits through the leafy glades of Kensington, to their town residence in Leicester Square. But Lord Bellinger's heart sank as he approached his home. Even for a man of pleasure there is something exceedingly fascinating in a political career, and here had he failed the very first time he was put to trial! It is hard to fall and break one's neck from the very lowest round of the ladder! Had he managed his business discreetly and well, no doubt his name would have been entered on that mysterious roll which prime ministers are supposed to keep, for the advancement of their friends and supporters, apportioning rewards for service, as an animal's food is regulated by its work. To support in many divisions, a baronetcy; to expenditure in a few elections, a peerage; for one timely change of opinion, an earldom; and so on. But it seemed to Lord Bellinger that he had played his stake in the great game--and lost!

No sooner did he arrive at home, than, sending for a modish barber to powder and arrange his hair, he dressed with exceeding splendour--a ceremony his lordship never neglected, and to which he owed much of his social success, a.s.sumed cane, sword, and snuff-box, called a chair, and caused himself to be carried straightway to the Cocoa Tree Club and Coffee-house. It was early in the afternoon, and several gentlemen were absent at their country-seats, yet this resort of loungers and idlers seemed sufficiently full. With the self-consciousness of human nature, an instinct, that years of worldly training cannot wholly eradicate, Lord Bellinger believed that his recent failure had made him a marked man; and observing a knot of members congregated in the room, one of whom held the scanty sheet of the _North Briton_ in his hand, felt persuaded they must be engaged in discussing his politics, his shortcomings, his inefficiency as a lord-lieutenant, and even his character as a gentleman. There was something of disappointment mingled with a sense of relief to observe that his arrival caused no break in their conversation, created no more sensation than if one of the waiters had entered and withdrawn. It is unpleasant, no doubt, to occupy public attention only to be abused; but it is more unpleasant still to be ignored entirely, and to find that when we thought the world was talking about us, our name has never been mentioned at all.

"I'll be judged by Bellinger!" exclaimed the gentleman who held the paper, looking at the new-comer over the others' heads. "Bellinger knows; Bellinger shall decide; Bellinger never leaves town even for a day. Five guineas, Bellinger gives it in my favour!"

"Done!" said a little man in a plum-coloured suit, with enormous ruffles at his wrists, offering his snuff-box to the referee, who looked from one to the other in vague surprise.

"The fact is this," said the little man; "our friend Sir Alexander, there, has been reading an account in the _North Briton_ of a fellow who lives somewhere near Covent Garden, and keeps a kind of prophesy shop, where half the ladies in town go to learn each other's secrets, and tell their own. The newspaper affirms that he has been driving this trade for years; and though all the while the prophet, or whatever he calls himself, is a spy from over the water, that our ministry never found it out! Sir Alexander vows it's impossible, and appeals to you, my lord, as knowing more of the town and its wicked ways than any man in this room.

What say you, Bellinger? I have only five guineas on it; but if I had five hundred, I would abide by your award!"

Lord Bellinger's presence of mind rarely deserted him; and although with the topic thus broached, the possibility of Katerfelto's treachery flashed across his brain, he answered quietly: "You do me too much honour, my lord; I cannot give an opinion. I have been in the country more than a week."

"The country!" repeated half-a-dozen voices, in tones of surprise and incredulity. "Bellinger in the country! What, in the name of all that is innocent, should take you to the country? You who have never slept a night out of town since you came of age. Think of the risks! You might have caught milk-fever or chicken-pox! We must believe it, my lord, because your lordship says so."

"It only shows how little a fellow is missed!" replied Lord Bellinger, not too well pleased to find his absence had been unnoticed by those among whom he considered himself a man of mark. "Did you never hear of my coach being robbed; money and papers carried off; myself, my lady, and my servants made prisoners on _parole_ by a band of gipsies, and a highwayman riding a grey horse? On my honour, gentlemen, I believe not one of you cares a bra.s.s farthing for any earthly thing that takes place beyond ten miles from London or two from Newmarket!"

He spoke bitterly, and with an energy so unlike his usual careless manner, that the man in the plum-coloured coat gazed at him in undisguised astonishment.

"A grey horse!" repeated this n.o.bleman, tapping his snuff-box. "The best-actioned horse I ever saw in my life was a grey, and belonged to a highwayman--a fellow they called Galloping Jack. It must have been the very man!"