STRONG AS DEATH.
To have lost a hundred guineas after supper was bad enough, but to yield
possession of the best horse he ever owned, and pursue Lord Bellinger
into the West on foot, or by the tardy progress of a stage-waggon, was
not to be thought of.
He never intended permanently to part with either, or John Garnet would
have been more loth to risk his horse and to pay up his gold. The money
must be recovered, and Katerfelto, as he now determined to call the
animal, must be retained at all hazards. Pondering these matters deeply,
the unlucky card-player only waited till the lights were out and the
hotel became quiet, to put his plans in execution. An hour after
midnight he had drawn off his boots, and satisfied himself that his
lordship's door was securely fastened. He must find another opportunity
of taking by violence that which he now despaired of gaining by
artifice; and he stole out to the stable, there to saddle his horse and
effect his escape. Though by no means satisfied with his night's work,
he did not consider he had entirely wasted time or money. In the course
of conversation, he had made himself acquainted with Lord Bellinger's
intended movements, and could prepare for a bold stroke. "If I had been
more fortunate with the cards," he thought, "I might have improved my
acquaintance sufficiently to join them as a travelling-companion,
perhaps accompanying my lord and my lady in their coach. It would have
been easier then to effect my purpose, though I do _not_ think I could
have found it in me to make love to her ladyship any more than to her
waiting-maid. But I never held a card! That hundred guineas I paid down
on the table I must have back again, as surely as I do not mean to part
with my good grey horse. There is only one way. I must seize the
warrants, and recover my money with the strong hand. Some unknown
highwayman may bear the blame, and if I can get off, I will lose no time
in gaining the West Country, and warning the honest squires of Devon and
Somerset that they are in danger. Nothing venture, nothing have! I'm in
it now, over shoes, over boots! Let me think. Highway robbery. It's an
ugly word, and a hanging matter, but so is high treason; and if every
neck that risks the noose must be stretched, why, as I heard those
player fellows sing last winter--
"I wonder there ain't better companie
Under Tyburn tree!"
Thus meditating, John Garnet, who had made himself acquainted with the
geography of the hotel and its surroundings, proceeded noiselessly to
the stable, not without anxious glances toward the East, where that
forerunner of morning, the false dawn, was already visible.
A true horseman, he had identified himself so completely with his steed,
and busied himself so earnestly about its wants, that Katerfelto neighed
with pleasure to acknowledge the friendly presence as he approached its
stall thus stealthily and in the dark. While he hurried to the horse's
head, that he might silence this untoward greeting, a slim figure rose
from below the manger and glided like a phantom to the door. John Garnet
was no less prompt than resolute. In an instant he had seized this
shadowy intruder by the throat. Outcry and escape were alike
impossible; but his hand opened as if it grasped a red-hot iron, when a
half-stifled voice, that he remembered only too well, murmured, "Hold!
do not hurt me. I am here to serve you. I will follow you to the end of
the world."
"Waif!" he exclaimed, in an accent that, smothered as it was, denoted
the very extremity of surprise; but even while he spoke, the figure slid
through the dark stable out into the night.
For a few seconds John Garnet was persuaded that he must be
dreaming--the meeting had been so sudden, so unexpected, and so soon
over. When he realised the fact, his surprise amounted to dismay. That
this impracticable gipsy-girl should have followed him, watched him, and
made herself acquainted with his movements, seemed a fatal climax to the
disasters of the night. For one disheartening minute he thought of
riding back to London, returning Katerfelto to his former owner, and
abandoning the whole project. Then he reflected, that under any
circumstances he must make his escape before daylight, and so saddled
his horse with what alacrity he might. Dawn was breaking as he led the
animal out of the court-yard softly and at a walk, though its tramp was
smothered in the snores of a stalwart ostler who slept in a loft above,
for protection of the stables, and a red streak of sunrise bound the
eastern horizon, to which he looked back on emerging from a belt of
coppice that skirted the high-road a mile from the inn. Bold as he was,
Katerfelto shied at an object moving in the brushwood, while a slim
boyish figure sprang out, laid its hand on the horse's shoulder, and
looked wistfully up in the rider's face.
Waif--for it was none other--attired as a country lad, and only the more
beautiful for her disguise, seemed to anticipate no less affectionate a
greeting than she was prepared to offer. But already she knew every
change of the face she had studied so fatally, and her own fell, while
she marked the displeasure that settled on the brows and about the lips
she loved.
"Speak to me," she murmured, "for pity's sake. I tracked you so
patiently, and followed you so far!"
"Waif, why are you here?" he asked, while his heart smote him to think
of the distance travelled by that slender form, those shapely delicate
limbs.
"I could not bear you to go away," replied the girl, laying his hand to
her heart and pressing her cheek against Katerfelto's warm shoulder. "I
could not live without you; and for the matter of that, you could not
live without _me_. If I had let you go by yourself, every mile you rode
was a mile towards your grave."
They were pacing on together, Waif walking at his stirrup with a free
untiring step, that the good horse must have fairly broken into a trot
to leave behind. John Garnet looked at her with an astonishment in which
there was no little interest and admiration.
"What mean you?" said he, "and how came the Doctor to let you go?"
"I never asked the Patron's leave," was her answer, "because, if he had
forbidden me, I should have lain down to die. No; when you rode out of
London, I was scarcely half an hour behind. The Patron must have been
very angry when he found me gone. What do I care? I care for nobody but
_you_. I knew where to get these clothes well enough. Do you like me in
them? I might have had a horse from our people before I had done a day's
journey, but I thought I could be nearer you on foot, and I've walked
all the way. I'm not tired. I'd walk as far again only to hear your
voice."
John Garnet was in utter perplexity. Such a phase in his affairs he had
never contemplated, yet there seemed something so ridiculous in his
position, bound on a political adventure thus attended, that he could
not forbear a laugh.
"Nonsense, my lass!" said he kindly enough. "You must go back; indeed
you must. I won't have you come a step farther. You ought never to have
followed me at all."
The tears were in Waif's dark eyes, and she raised them to his face with
the pleading, reproachful look of a dog that you chide when he knows he
is doing right.
"Not follow you!" she repeated. "How am I not to follow you, when you
are going into danger? I can share it even if I cannot keep it off; and
you tell me I must go back to London! You cannot mean it. I don't think
you quite understand."
"That's the truest word you have said yet," was his answer; "but I do
understand that, for your own sake, you ought not to be here now. Still,
if you persist in accompanying 'a beggar on horseback,' you ought to
have your share of the saddle, till we get down."
With these words, he took her by the hand, and braced his foot in the
stirrup to afford a purchase for her ascent. In one bound she stood on
his instep, light and buoyant as a bird; in another, she was seated
before him with her arm round his neck, and her comely smiling face very
near his own. It might have been the exertion, or the novelty of the
position, or something he whispered, with his lips close to hers, that
turned Waif crimson, and then deadly pale. She seemed more out of breath
now, clinging to the rider, than she had been awhile ago walking beside
his horse. Katerfelto, in obedience to his master's hand, broke into a
canter; before she spoke another word, they were nearing a hamlet, of
which the smoke was visible above the trees, when she made shift to ask
in a trembling voice if she might not be set down, and taken up again
when they had passed through? For answer, John Garnet laughed, and
increasing his pace, dashed along the street at a gallop. When he
relapsed once more into a walk, the startled villagers had been left
two miles behind.
Waif's nerves were of the firmest, and she had now recovered some of her
self-possession, no easy matter for a woman who finds herself seated on
the same horse with the man she loves. Her heart beat fast indeed, and
the colour came and went in her cheek; but she could review the
situation calmly, and resolved that now was the time to explain all she
had done, all she intended to do in John Garnet's behalf. Even those
women, whose station renders them slaves of custom, like other slaves,
assume the wildest freedom when they have elected to throw off the yoke;
but this gipsy-girl, an unsophisticated child of nature, had no scruples
to vanquish, no social laws to break, found nothing to restrain the
ardent expression of her feelings, save the innate delicacy of a proud
and loving heart.
It was not, therefore, without such a blush and downward glance, as few
men could have withstood, and none, perhaps, less firmly than John
Garnet, that she announced her resolution.
"I shall hold by you to the last. I shall never desert you till you have
performed your task in safety. It is right you should know it.
But--but--I cannot expect to accompany you like this. Only promise that
you will not try to leave me behind, and never fear, but I can find my
way from place to place, and be at hand when I am wanted, without
shaming you by my presence. The gipsy-girl is proud to give her life for
_you_, though you may blush to acknowledge one of my people as your
friend!"
"Blush!" repeated John Garnet, and perhaps because their faces were so
near together, the blushing seemed all on the other side. "I would never
blush to own a true friend; and Waif, my pretty lass, you have proved
yourself more than a friend to-day. You say that I am in danger; I know
well enough that I soon shall be; but my head is out of the halter as
yet, and I see not how you could help if it were in!"
"Out of the halter!" said Waif. "How little you fear and how little you
seem to care! Do you think I was not listening at the door when Abner
Gale came to the Patron thirsting for the man's blood who took his
brother's life? You know not our people, John Garnet, nor the gifts that
nature bestows on us, instead of hearth and home, bed and board, gold
and silver, houses and land. Do you believe the gipsy can forget a path
once trod, a voice once heard, a face once seen? I was dancing in
Taunton Fair, when Abner Gale, one of your priests, as you call them,
tossed me a bit of silver, with a coarse laugh and a brutal jest. The
gipsy has no feelings to wound, no character to sustain, no honour to
defend, but she has the instincts and the memory of a dog for friend or
foe! Parson Gale had better have bitten his tongue through and kept his
silver in his pocket. I know his home, his habits, his haunts, his
vices, as I know my own ten fingers. I listened because I hated _him_.
But when I heard more, I listened on, because--because I loved _you_!"
It was wrong, no doubt, scandalous, shocking, if not entirely without
excuse; but something in the proximity of those two young faces again
made the girl blush deeper than before.
"There are no secrets too close for the Patron," continued Waif, "and as
you have seen, people come from far and near to consult his art. This
man's errand was to discover your hiding-place and hunt you down to
death. He gave the Patron money--golden guineas--I heard them jingle. He
was in earnest--bitter earnest, and so am I!"
"But what said the Patron?" asked her listener. "I thought he was my
friend."
"The Patron is every man's friend," answered Waif, "who is willing to do
him service, or to pay him gold. He promised to betray you when the moon
was full, but that very night he sent you out of London on his own
affairs, and I followed close, lest evil should befall, for I knew you
were journeying to the West."
Laughing lightly, he asked if that was a dangerous quarter, and whether
the Wise Men, who came there from the East, were ancestors of her own?
But Waif scorned to enter on the subject of genealogy with one who could
neither believe nor understand her claims to a descent co-eval with the
earliest history of man. Her tone was grave and almost stern, while she
looked him steadfastly in the face, and proceeded with her warning.
"When a stag goes down to the water, where an enemy waits to take away
his life, the voice of a child, or the wave of a woman's hand, is enough
to turn him back into the moor. Abner Gale lives in the very country to
which you are bound. I know the man, John Garnet, and I will save you
from his vengeance, though I swing for it--there! Now will you let me
come with you and help you as best I can?"
John Garnet did not hesitate long. True, he was unable to stifle certain
scruples, while he reflected on the dangers into which this wilful girl
was running of her own accord, on her loss of character, if indeed she
had any character to lose, and the inconvenience he would himself
experience in accounting for such a travelling companion, however well
disguised; above all, on the advantage he was taking of a professed
devotion, that exchanged, as he could not but admit, the pure gold of
sincere affection for a baser metal, compounded of gratitude, vanity,
and self-indulgence. But men have seldom far to seek for an excuse when
they would do that which is pleasant and convenient rather than right;
so John Garnet persuaded himself that to make this beautiful girl an
assistant of his schemes, and comrade in his dangers, was an act of
self-denial and loyalty vouching for his fealty to the exile whom he
called his lawful king.
"Agreed!" said he; "and, now, Waif, if you are really to help me, I must
tell you my plans."
He never forgot this ride through the summer's afternoon. The yellow
light that glimmered in copse and dingle. The glare on the white road
they travelled. The distant lake that gleamed like a sheet of
silver--the brook at his feet, that brawled and gurgled and broke into
bubbles of gold. The bloom of wild flowers, the song of birds, the
murmur of the breeze, the lowing of kine, the deep rich meadows, the
stretching uplands, and, over all, that sunny haze which veiled without
hiding the distance, and added its crowning grace to the beauties of a
landscape that became fairer and fairer, the further he journeyed
towards the West.
Katerfelto paced proudly on, while John Garnet poured in a willing ear
the details of his journey, and the manner in which he proposed to turn
the tables on an adversary who had despoiled him of his money, and could
lay claim to his horse. It was difficult to make her understand how the
stake could have been lost.
"For," said Waif, "the Patron bids the cards come out just as he likes.
It seems so easy, if a man has only the use of eyes and hands! This lord
must be very clever with his fingers, cleverer even than _you_!"
"It's not all cleverness," he answered, impatiently. "There's such a
thing as luck, and I never held a card all night."
Waif stared and made a motion with her slender fingers, the import of
which it was impossible to misunderstand.
"But that would have been dishonourable," protested John Garnet.
"Dishonourable!" repeated Waif. "Why? When you sit down, you do not mean
to be beat. It is only a trial of skill, like a race or a
wrestling-match. Let the best man win. Why is it dishonourable?"
Despairing to explain to this untutored mind the code of fair-play as
practised amongst so-called men of honour, John Garnet proceeded to
discuss the means by which, in a few hours, he hoped to equalise the
chances of Fortune, and reimburse himself for his previous losses. Of
his scheme Waif greatly approved, holding, nevertheless, to her first
opinion, that it would have been wiser to win by fraud than to lose by
ill-luck, but promising her hearty assistance in all parts of the plan
he proposed to carry out.
Thus conversing, they arrived at the outskirts of a country town; and
here, before John Garnet could suggest that he should alight and lead
the horse on foot, thus to avoid the remarks that might be provoked by
its double burden, Waif glided like water from the saddle, slipped
through a tangled hedge by the way-side, and disappeared. In vain,
standing high in his stirrups, he peeped and peered over the obstacle;
in vain he galloped to the gate, and searched and traversed the whole
meadow, calling her loudly by name. The girl had vanished; and riding
thoughtfully into the town, her late companion, for the second time
since daybreak, wondered whether he was under the spell of some unholy
witchcraft, or was really awake and in his right mind.