"LISTEN AND LEARN IT."
"And you never told me your life was in danger, never said that a
careless word might ruin both of us at a blow. Dear heart, surely you
might have trusted _me_."
It was Nelly Carew's voice, and her brow was pressed to John Garnet's
shoulder, while she spoke. The red-cheeked apples hanging overhead in
her grandfather's orchard had ripened less quickly under a hot harvest
sun, than the love that a few short days brought to maturity in the
maiden's heart. She could not believe that a month ago she had never so
much as heard of the man whose presence now seemed a condition of
existence, like the very air she breathed. Could she be the same Nelly
Carew, whose whole being was once engrossed in grandfather's posset and
the incubations of the speckled hen. Or was it all a dream. If a dream,
she only prayed she might never wake again.
"Why should I have told you?" he asked. "It could but make you anxious
and unhappy, dearest; we have surely enough of difficulty and vexation
as it is. Besides," he added, in a higher tone, "how was I to know,
Nelly, that you liked me well enough to care?"
There came a very kind look in the blue eyes--"Didn't you guess?" she
whispered, softly. "Didn't you think it very strange of me, that day,
when I gave you the posy out of the hedge?"
There is a pleasant fiction amongst lovers, that the tender passages to
which they constantly refer, must have taken place in the remote past.
Nelly spoke of _that_ day as if the time since elapsed was to be counted
by years, instead of hours.
"I thought you the dearest, and the best, and the loveliest girl on
earth!" was the appropriate reply; "and now I could almost find it in my
heart to wish we had never met. For _your_ sake, Nelly, not for
mine--not for mine."
They were the old conventional words which have probably been the
prelude to every rupture of attachments since men grew weary and women
false; yet it was impossible to look in John Garnet's face, or listen to
the tone of his voice, and doubt that this was the outcry of an
unselfish heart, so loving, that it longed for the happiness of another,
rather than its own.
Nelly's eyes filled with tears. "I care for you," she said--"I care for
you; that's enough! If you were to go to prison, I should go with you.
If you were to die, dear heart, I should die too."
The girl spoke truth. Who shall account for these sudden overmastering
passions, that take possession of humanity to defy all considerations of
self-esteem, self-preservation, probability, fitness, and, especially,
common sense? A man passes a shape in the street, catches the glance of
an eye at a window, the turn of an ear in a playhouse, and straightway,
as in the taking of an epidemic, his whole system becomes impregnated
with a strange and subtle poison, for which there is no antidote, and
but one remedy. The disease must run its course. In a few days the fever
is at its height, the delirium paramount, liver deranged, appetite
impaired, brain seriously affected, and the patient, to all intents and
purposes, raving mad. He is haunted by delusions; an inevitable figure
is always dancing before his eyes; he forgets his business and friends,
his nearest and dearest; neglects his mother, sisters, aunts, cousins,
and in some aggravated cases, even his wife. His sleep is broken, his
eye wild, his speech incoherent. His fellows shun him like a leper, and
he rejoices in this enforced isolation. He meets with no encouragement
and little sympathy. Fresh constitutions, as yet unimpaired, and old
battered patients who have recovered from the disease, shrug their
shoulders and say, "Poor devil! he's in love;" but these observers
entertain for him less of pity than contempt. The calamity is accepted
as a dispensation, and nobody thinks it worth while to offer a syllable
of comfort or advice, because experience has shown that the illness must
at last be cured by indulgence, or die a lingering death in
disappointment.
A woman, too, is liable to the same disorder, contracted even more
unreasonably, and with less apparent cause. Her symptoms, if not so
obtrusive, or troublesome to others, are none the less dangerous to
herself. In some cases, happily but rare, they prove incurable. It is of
_men_ that the poet says: "They have died and worms have eaten them, but
not for love."
Nelly Carew, whose life had hitherto flowed on in a calm unruffled
stream, little thought the gentle, scarce perceptible pleasure she
experienced in a stranger's society, on the memorable evening when she
addressed him for the first time, to thank him for his courtesy, while
he helped her grandfather home, must soon grow into a hunger of the
heart, that nothing but absolute reciprocity could appease. The second
time she saw him, she feared the third time, she admitted the fourth,
she gloried in her enslavement. They had known each other barely a week,
when Nelly discovered and confessed that henceforth, if life was to be
passed apart from John Garnet, she would rather elect to die. He, too,
surrendered at discretion, or rather without discretion, so soon as the
blue eyes opened fire. Wilfully blind to his ruined prospects and his
false position, he abandoned himself to the happiness of the hour,
forgetting the past, ignoring the future--Waif, Katerfelto, Lord
Bellinger, robbery, high treason, and Tyburn-hill, while he held Nelly
Carew's hand, and looked lovingly in her delicate face under the
apple-trees by Porlock Bay.
"I need not go to prison, and I need not die," he answered, lightly.
"This is a secure hiding-place enough. I should like to stay here for
the rest of my life."
"It must be very dull!" observed Nelly, plaiting the hem of her apron.
"I wonder how long it would take for you to weary of us all?"
There could be but one answer to such an accusation, and he was ready
with it before she could explain.
"Weary!" he repeated, "weary of Porlock! weary of _you_, Nelly, from
whom I never mean to part! How can you say such things. You know you did
not mean it!" And again Nelly's disclaimer was stifled on her lips.
"Besides," he added, gaily, "What can a man want to make him happy more
than I have here? The sweetest girl in the world to walk with, and the
best horse in England to ride. I gave him a ten-mile stretch on the moor
this morning, while you were fast asleep and dreaming. _Were_ you
dreaming, Nelly?"
"Never mind my dreams," she answered, blushing. "If I _did_ dream of
somebody, I'm not going to say so. Tell me about your ride."
"I met a strange old man," he continued, "so weird-looking, that in the
North we should have thought him something uncanny, a Brownie, at least,
or a wandering spirit of the moor. Not that he was a jack-o'-lanthorn
nor will-o'-the-wisp, for he showed me the way out, instead of luring me
_into_ a bog, or I should have been there now."
"You must never try to cross our moors without _me_," said Nelly,
gravely, "or somebody who knows them well, to take care of you."
"Will you take care of me?" and "never mind, that is not the question
now," were two necessary interpolations before John Garnet could
proceed.
"The man knew his ground, every inch of it," he continued, "and offered
to put me in the right way for home. His pony, he said, was hobbled at
the head of the coombe, but he seemed to think very little of walking
ten miles out of his road, and he looked between seventy and eighty."
"It must have been Red Rube!" exclaimed Nelly, joyfully. "Did he say
there were deer in Horner Woods? Oh! how I long for a gallop over the
moor after a stag, and--with you!"
John Garnet pondered. There would be little risk, he thought, in joining
these West-country gentlemen in the hunting-field. Most of them were of
his own way of thinking in politics, and for many, his ready audacity
had preserved, at least temporarily, both life and lands. Even if
recognised, it was unlikely he would be denounced; and then, the
temptation! To ride Katerfelto far ahead of meaner steeds from ridge to
ridge and coombe to coombe, sweeping over mountain and moor as though on
the wings of an eagle, to hover at last alone in his glory above the
dying deer, while a burst of music from the good hounds pealing louder
than its roar, announced in a crash of triumph that here, under the
deafening waterfall, they had set him up to bay!
Yes, he would have a ride, he resolved, in pursuit of the red deer, at
any risk and at any cost!
"Who talked about dreaming?" she said, "and who is dreaming now? Where
have your thoughts flown to all in a minute? They are miles and miles
from Porlock. I can see it in your face."
She had already arrived at the stage of jealousy--jealousy, that was
fain to be mistress of his thoughts, no less than of his words, deeds,
looks, and actions. Truly, for Nelly, the pleasantest part of the whole
delusion was even now at an end. To be on the brink is delightful, but
to fall in love is more than uncomfortable; it is a process akin to
pain. The fire looks bright and cheerful enough, but wisdom warms its
hands thereat, while folly burns its fingers to the bone.
"I was thinking how comely you must look on the white pony with your
hair blown about by the Exmoor breezes," said he; and Nelly seemed so
pleased with his answer, that the rest of their conversation was carried
on in whispers, too low to be overheard even by the "little bird on the
green tree," but of which the purport may be gathered from a final
sentence delivered by John Garnet in a louder tone, as of a man who
resolves to carry his point in defiance of all obstacles.
"Then I may come up and speak to your grandfather this afternoon?"
She acquiesced with a timid little nod and a bright blush, that she
stooped her head to hide, retiring with swift and noiseless steps
towards her home.
But whatever passages of folly between these young people may have
escaped notice from the "little bird on the green tree," whose own
love-songs must seem to it so much more rational than "what he is
saying, what answereth she," there crouched behind the hedge of the
orchard one whose dark eye and tawny ear missed not the lowest whisper,
the lightest gesture--whose tameless heart quivered and throbbed with
every syllable, every caress, as at the stroke of a knife. If women are
all jealous, even in the silks and satins and conventional fetters of
civilized life, what must be the jealousy of a savage nature
unreclaimed by education, untamed by principle, untaught by the
selfishness that is so essential a constituent of respectability and
good sense? It is possessed by a devil, who tears and rends it, refusing
to be cast out.
Waif, or Thyra, as she was called by her own people, had journeyed with
them into the West-country nothing loth, for she knew they were
following in the track of the man she loved. Restored to her tribe after
an absence of many years, her familiarity with the habits of the Gorgios
rendered her an exceedingly valuable acquisition. She had the knack of
_dukkering_, or telling fortunes, with a tact that brought in handfuls
of silver, and many a "_balanser_" in red gold; therefore she came and
went unquestioned in the tents; could be absent at all hours, and for as
long as she pleased. Nor, so soon as she found herself within reach of
John Garnet's retreat, was she slow to take advantage of her liberty.
A dozen miles afoot, across the moorland heather and along the
sweet-scented Somersetshire lanes, was an easy journey to Waif's supple
frame and light untiring tread. The honest carriers, leading their
string of pack-horses, looked after her in open-mouthed admiration, with
blessings, homely but sincere, on her strange swarthy beauty, so well
set off by the short scarlet cloak and the gold in her raven hair. A
house-wife possessing the old faith would cross herself perhaps, or her
gossip, a Primitive Methodist, would mutter a charm against witchcraft
as the dark girl passed; but the country-folk generally, though
regarding her people with little favour, were not proof against Waif's
flashing eyes and flattering tongue, while she returned their
"good-morrow" and promised them good luck. One stout farmer, riding a
half-broken colt, insisted on stopping to have his fortune told,
crossing his broad palm with a silver shilling, and demanding in return
a shilling's worth of her craft. "Three groats, uncle," said Waif,
looking up in his jolly face with a roguish leer, while the colt
fidgetted, and the rider, half pleased, half ashamed, hid his confusion
in a "Woa! drat ye, stan' still!" and a sheepish laugh.
"Three is a lucky number, good gentleman.
"'Three silver groats,
Three women's lives,
Three cows, three calves,
Three scolding wives.
The first to lie at your side,
The second to lie at your feet,
The third a widow, a witch, and a bride,
To sew your winding-sheet.'"
The man, who had been twice married, and was not indisposed for another
venture, rode on in no slight perplexity, pondering this mysterious
doggrel, and more convinced than ever that the gipsy-folk, as he called
them, possessed some dark and dreadful knowledge, unlimited in scope and
embracing the future as the past.
With a beating heart, that yet danced in her bosom under a sense of her
own happiness, Waif drew near the village of Porlock. She had decided to
exercise the utmost caution in approaching John Garnet's refuge, lest
her presence should in any way compromise his safety, or afford a clue
to his hiding-place. For one of her race, this was no difficult task.
Her gipsy experiences had taught her long ago to take advantage of every
irregularity of surface, even in so open a plain as Marlborough Downs;
and in such a country as West Somerset, with its narrow lanes, high
tangled hedges, scattered brakes, impervious copses, valleys, coombes,
and forests, rugged mountains, and broken moor, Waif could glide from
point to point as secretly and almost as swiftly as the very wild deer,
to which she bore some vague and fanciful resemblance. Since she told
the farmer his fortune three leagues off, no mortal eye had rested on
her form till she caught sight of the man she loved, within three hundred
feet.
[Illustration: THE LESSON LEARNT.]
Why did her colour fade, her breath come quick, her blood run icy cold?
There was a white dress by John Garnet's side, and that unaccountable
intuition, swift and subtle as the electric spark--that instinct of the
heart, which never hesitates and is never mistaken, told her the truth.
This was the meeting for which she had so longed, to compass which she
had cajoled Fin Cooper, deceived her people, and travelled afoot across
the heather all these weary miles! Waif trembled and her knees shook;
for the first time in her life she turned sick and faint.
That cruel pain of hers though was not of the kind to gain relief from
insensibility. On the contrary, all her faculties seemed preternaturally
sharpened, while she writhed her slim body like a snake through tufted
grass and broad dock leaves, and all the luxuriant vegetation of the
adjoining meadow, to a hedge that fenced the orchard, where, parting the
tangled branches in her noiseless hands, she peered through, with the
eager, hopeless gaze of an outcast spirit looking on the paradise it has
lost. Not a smile, not a glance, not an unwise gesture of that fond,
foolish pair escaped the watcher. When John Garnet stooped to kiss
Nelly's brow, it seemed as if molten lead had dropped on her own and
seared it to the brain. Then it was that the white teeth clenched to
keep back a little piteous cry, and the nimble fingers stole to her
knife, as though she must needs bury it in his breast, whom she loved,
or hers, the rival's, whom she hated, or, better still, deep and
quivering to the very haft, in her own!
But strong as is the passion of jealousy, it is not, especially in the
female breast, without an element of curiosity that is stronger still.
To scream, to stab, to make any overt disturbance, would be to declare
her presence and debar her from hearing more. Waif bit her lip till the
blood came, and nerved herself to listen. Thus, as the lovers paced to
and fro, taking short turns, after the manner of their kind, and
stopping altogether in often-repeated pauses, for the interchange of
superfluous endearments, she made herself mistress of their secret and
overheard all their conversation. She learned, not without a bitter
pang, how short was John Garnet's sojourn in this fatal vicinity, where
she had been so soon and so easily forgotten. She learned the penalty
that would be exacted for his late exploit, in which she had herself
taken part, should his identity with the reputed highwayman be
discovered by those who were already on his track. She learned in a
brief period of eaves-dropping, that seemed an eternity of misery, more
of his daring courage and good-humoured recklessness--of those very
qualities she most admired and loved in him--than she ever knew before.
And, lastly, she learned that the whole scaffolding on which she so
unconsciously built the edifice of her future had crumbled into ruins
and crushed her own heart in its collapse.
Waif had no God to whom she could pray in this agony of sorrow; but
looking round in wild appeal to sea and sky and mountain as though they
were sentient beings, her large dark eyes seemed to plead with Nature,
the only mother she knew, and to demand, in mute upbraiding, why her
punishment was greater than she could bear?