TEMPTED SORE.
There were few better horses in the West of England than Parson Gale's
black nag Cassock, 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. Cassock, 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 _chored_ 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-cock 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.
Cassock 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 Cassock 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 Cassock
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 Cassock, 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
identity, even when contusions or alcohol have numbed to insensibility
his associate'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 button 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-buttock, 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? Cassock, 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 lass 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 Cassock 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 lustre 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
assistance, 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!
[Illustration: THE TALE TOLD.]
Cassock 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 assistance he
required.
"Speak up!" he exclaimed, in a fierce and threatening voice, the more
angrily, perhaps, that he felt his flesh creep with superstitious dread.
"If you come straight from hell, I'll have a word with you before you go
back. Steady, Cassock, my lad. What, you know her, do ye? and it's only
the little gipsy-lass, 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 Cassock's neck, and the horse tolerated her caress,
though his restless backward-moving ear showed he was only half
reassured.
"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 pass 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 lass?" 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 assumed 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 compassing of his own eternal destruction, the
gipsy-girl's shape and semblance might have been assumed 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 passed through
her firm-set lips, hard, cruel, and distinct.
With returning confidence rose the coarse overbearing manner that had
already lost this man so many friends. "Nothing for nothing," said he
with a brutal laugh. "Come, lass, 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.