REMORSE.
In the gipsies' camp a night of snow and storm was accepted without a
murmur, and provided against in a spirit of ingenuity and forethought
peculiar to such wayfarers, as love the shelter of no roof so well as
the canopy of heaven. Fin Cooper in his tent, at the door of which
crackled a liberal fire of roots and brushwood, filling the interior
with warmth, and indeed smoke, declared himself as happy as a king! He
had all his comforts about him, and most of his possessions within call,
nor wanted a sufficient share of such superfluities as made the luxuries
of his hard unsophisticated life. There was a dressed skin for his
couch, a good blanket for his coverlet, and a soft shawl doubled over an
anker of brandy for his pillow. In the kettle steamed a hare, a brace of
partridges, and a haunch from the fore-quarter of a red-deer. With food,
rest, and warmth, good liquor in his cup and good tobacco in his pipe,
Fin could not but admit that, so long as his tent held waterproof, he
was not much to be pitied, even on a Devonshire moor under an early fall
of snow. To-night, also, he considered himself more fortunate than
usual, as he shared these advantages with no less welcome a visitor than
Waif, accompanied, for reasons of propriety, by her grandmother, an old
Egyptian, reputed to have once been handsome, and of fascinating
demeanour, now, to say the least, a remarkable person in appearance,
grim, taciturn, given to drink, and seldom condescending to remove a
short black pipe from her mouth.
His promised wife, on the contrary, seemed in high spirits, as she was
unquestionably in great beauty. Her black eyes, flushed and sparkled,
her tawny cheek glowed with a rich deep crimson, while her manner
betrayed no little self-assertion, her tone something, amounting almost
to defiance, when addressed by her future lord. Talkative she never had
been from childhood, but to-night she was less taciturn than usual, and
seemed strangely eager to break such occasional silence as gave scope
for her own thoughts.
Fin, looking on her with admiring eyes, did not fail to notice that in
figure she had grown thin, to leanness, and that there shone a
brilliancy, unnatural even for a gipsy, in the uneasy glances that
watched his movements so narrowly, yet never rested for an instant on
his face.
Thyra always seemed unlike other girls, thought Fin, and this
preoccupation, no doubt, was but the slyness of love.
He took her hand, while the old beldame was busy refilling her pipe, and
raised the slender, shapely fingers to his lips, with a comely grace,
that a gipsy wears no less naturally than a prince of the blood.
"To-morrow, Thyra," said he, "you will make Fin Cooper the happiest man
alive. To-morrow we shall be one in the sight of all our people, never
to part again. The parson of the Gorgios joins a couple by the hand,
like a brace of thieves chained together in the dock, but the Romipen of
the Romany, a true gipsy marriage, solders them heart to heart, as I
would weld tin and copper into brass! To-morrow, my lass, you will be
mine. To-night I am altogether yours. Ask me what you will, beautiful
Thyra, I can deny you nothing at such a time as this!"
Her hand remained in his while he spoke: when he dropped it she shivered
from head to foot.
"I am cold," she murmured, "so cold. There will be snow to-morrow, Fin,
deep snow, amongst these hills. The Gorgio bride wears white on her
marriage-day. A Romany lass might do worse than follow the example."
Her fixed gaze, that seemed looking on some object miles and miles away,
her sorrowful tone, so quiet and so very weary, disturbed him. He caught
her hand once more, and would have drawn her into his arms, but for the
shake and snort of a horse at the tent-door, and Parson Gale's
well-known voice, bidding him rouse and show himself, with a tass of
brandy in his hand.
A man who has little to offer is usually very hospitable. Fin sprang
forward to welcome the intruder, with cordial alacrity, and summoned a
bare-legged urchin from half-a-score within call, to lead the Parson's
horse into a sheltered nook behind the adjoining copse, where two or
three donkeys were pulling at a truss of hay. Abner Gale was then
hurried into the tent, and supplied with brandy; the inclemency of the
weather rendering that liquor unusually grateful to his burly frame.
"All friends, here?" asked the Parson, holding the untasted cup in his
hand.
"All friends," replied Fin Cooper. "The old woman is stone deaf, and
this time to-morrow Thyra will be my wife!"
Gale was equal to the occasion. Ere Waif could turn her head, he
imprinted a kiss on her cheek, and tossed off the brandy to her health.
"I claim my priest's dues," said he gallantly, "the first right to
salute a bride. And now to business, Fin. Not a moment is to be lost. I
want to borrow the sure-footed roan again to-night. I'll pay you
handsome this time."
With the lofty politeness of men who deal in horses honestly or
otherwise, Fin ignored the question of money altogether.
"Oh! that's nothing between me and you," said the gipsy; "but the last
journey you went our roan might as well have been stag-hunting. You must
have galloped him a dozen miles on end without drawing bridle. 'Tis a
good little beast as was ever bred on the moor, but I needn't tell you,
Parson, that horseflesh is not iron. What do you want with him, now?"
"To mount Dick Boss," was the answer.
Fin made a wry face, and Waif held her breath. A sheriff's officer
seemed the last person to whom it was natural for a gipsy to lend his
horse.
Parson Gale put his head out at the tent-door, looked about him into the
dark night through which snow-flakes were falling thick; and, having
satisfied himself, he could not be overheard, proceeded to unfold his
plans, the more frankly that he had every reason to count on the
assistance of both his listeners.
"There's money be to got by the job," said he, with an evil scowl on his
heavy brows. "Blood-money, but what of that? We will share and share
alike. This pretty lass of yours, Fin, she found out where the deer
harboured. You and Dick Boss, and another handy chap or two, shall help
me take him, and when King George comes down with the reward, God bless
him--there will be twenty guineas each to spend in drink! If that won't
make a blithe wedding, Fin Cooper, I'll engage to remain a bachelor till
my dying day!"
The gipsy was a man of business. "And your share, Parson?" he asked,
calculating the sum to be divided with great exactitude.
"I don't desire to be paid," replied the Parson. "I do it for the
sport!"
Waif leaped from her seat, with flashing eyes, and her hand on the
knife she always wore, but sank back laughing wildly, and speaking in
short disjointed gasps.
"Good!" she said. "Good! He's the right sort, Fin, this Gorgio. Bid him
tell us how he means to set about the job."
Fin Cooper, turning to the Parson, thought he had never seen so wicked a
smile as that which gleamed in Gale's eyes, and curled round his mouth
while he repeated, "I do it for the sport, lad; he's a right deer, I
tell ye; and if I don't set him up to-morrow, I swear I'll never go
hunting again."
"That's why you want the roan?" asked Fin, turning the matter over in
his mind, as a question of profit and loss.
"Right," answered the Parson; "Dick Boss must be on a good nag, and so
must I. If John Garnet should get the wind of us, he'll show a clean
pair of heels, you may take your oath. But what of that? Let worst come
to worst, four mounted men spreading wide, and knowing every yard of the
ground, ought to ride him down, though the grey horse had a wing at each
foot instead of an iron shoe. But that's not my plan. Hark ye, Fin;
we'll be in the saddle before daybreak, and we'll take him while he's
asleep."
Waif stirred uneasily, but only muttered again, "Good! good! Mind what
he says, Fin, for surely the Gorgio speaks fair."
"'Tis as easy as drinking out of a glass," continued the Parson, scarce
noticing her interruption. "Dick Boss and the roan, his two men riding
their own nags, yourself, Fin, on something that can gallop a bit, I
never knew you without one--and game old Cassock to bring me along with
the best of ye. It would be a rare chase, lad--I could almost wish he
might slip through our fingers, and ride for it over the moor, but he'll
never have the chance, Fin; he'll never have the chance!"
"Suppose he shows fight, Parson," suggested the gipsy, who was a bold
fellow enough on occasion, but regarded such matters with a keen eye to
business. "'Tis none of your dunghill fowls this, but a cock of the
game, with never a morsel of white in his wing, put him down where you
will. Suppose he lugs out on Dick Boss, and whistles a brace of balls
into you and me?"
"I'm not afraid of him," answered Gale; "it makes no difference in the
reward, Fin, whether we take him dead or alive."
"Come back, Thyra!" exclaimed the gipsy, with more of a husband's
authority than was yet permissible in his tone. "Where are you going,
lass? Come back, I tell ye."
She was already through the tent-door, but returned at his bidding.
"It's stifling hot in here, Fin," she said; "I should have choked but
for that mouthful of fresh air."
"And you were so cold a while ago," he replied, watching her narrowly.
"Parson Gale," he added, turning to his visitor, "take the roan and
welcome. The lad will show you where to find him. I'll meet you at the
head of the coombe an hour before daybreak. It's a job that won't work
well in the dark; but the less time we put off the better when once the
sun's up. Will you take another cup of brandy, Parson? You've a cold
ride before you, and we've not done with the snow yet."
But Gale declined, and Waif, who suffered nothing to escape her notice,
argued from this unusual abstinence an intense longing to work out the
project of his revenge.
So John Garnet was to be in the power of his enemies, bound hand and
foot, delivered over to a shameful death, with to-morrow's dawn, and it
wanted but three hours of daylight now. John Garnet, with his merry
eyes, his winning smile, and frank, kindly face. Was this to be the end
of all? The nightcap, and the nosegay, and the hangman's cart rumbling
over the stones on Tyburn-hill. John Garnet, the man she used to love so
dearly she would have followed him bare-footed through the world. And
it was _her_ doing--_her_ revenge. Yes! If she had driven a knife into
his throat she could not more surely have slain him, than when she
betrayed the secret of his hiding-place, and denounced him to Parson
Gale. The man she used to love, the man she loved so fondly, so madly
still. Now that it was too late, the whole tide of her feelings seemed
to turn, and she would have given her own life freely, then and there,
to save him, aye even for the blue-eyed girl, whom from the moment she
saw them whispering together in the orchard she hated, with the fierce,
pitiless hatred of her race.
She gasped for breath, the tent and its occupants swam before her eyes;
a deadly faintness seemed to hang fetters of ice about her limbs, and
she turned sick, with a maddening fear, lest the strength and hardihood
she had so prized might fail her, in this, the extremity of her need.
Fin Cooper watched her with shrewd suspicious glances. The gipsy, a man
of few words, but keen in perception, and ready of resource, drew his
own conclusions from the restlessness he could not fail to notice in his
promised wife, and resolved not to let her out of his sight till he
started on horseback to join Parson Gale and his satellites. Once in the
saddle, he had no fear that Waif could outstrip them, or give John
Garnet warning of his danger, till he was safe in their hands.
So he sat and smoked in silence, stretching his legs across his own
tent-door, while Waif gnawed her lip in an agony of remorse within, and
the snow fell fast through the darkness without. But towards dawn the
air turned colder and the sky began to clear. Fin Cooper rose, shook
himself, drank a mouthful of brandy, and bestowing a sarcastic nod on
its inmates, left the tent to saddle his horse and depart. In a moment
the girl slipped out behind him, and, lightly clad as she was, sped
through the sleeping encampment, swift and noiseless as a deer. Her
grandmother, waking from a doze, never doubted but that Thyra had
returned to her own tent, and unwilling to face the night-air, composed
herself to sleep again with the pipe still in her mouth. Fin Cooper,
riding steadily up the coombe, chuckled to think how he had outwitted
his bride, and stifled the pangs of jealousy it seemed so unreasonable
to entertain, now that the lapse of an hour or two must deliver his
rival into his hand, while the swarm of gipsies he left behind him,
huddled up in their blankets under their canvas coverings, snored
healthily and loud, thinking little, and caring less, about the pearl of
their tribe, her anguish, her sorrows, her coming espousals, or, indeed,
anything but their own warmth, comfort, and repose.
So Waif sped on, fast as her supple limbs could carry her, through the
copse, and up the coombe, and across the moor, wrapped in its cheerless
shroud, stretching, as it seemed in her impatience, to a limitless
expanse that mortal foot could never compass, mortal eye was powerless
to scan. Oh! for the wings of the curlew! Oh! for the speed of the
red-deer. She would give all the rest of her life, willingly,
thankfully, for two leagues, only two leagues, less to traverse, for two
hours, only two hours more to spare. Was it the snow that showed
everything so distinctly, or was this really the light of morning
stealing, cold and pitiless, over a world of white? Toiling, hurrying,
panting, all agape with pain and fear, she yet found breath to curse the
coming day. And still she hardly knew how or why she was straining nerve
and sinew in this desperate race. There could be nothing in common now,
between herself and the man whom she hated so bitterly, yet loved so
well. He had deceived her, aye, as he had deceived many another, before
it came to her turn (here Waif's small white teeth closed hard on her
dainty lip), and would deceive more, no doubt, hereafter, with the same
alluring smile, if through her agency he should escape the penalty of
his misdeeds, and survive for future treachery. How could he be so
false, so cruel, so heartless? Were all men like this, Fin Cooper and
the rest, or was John Garnet a vile exception to his kind? She knew not,
she cared not. Good or bad, she loved him! she loved him! how could she
ever have thought otherwise? and she would do all in her power to save
him, cost what it might.
Oh, that endless stretch of moor--those weary dragging miles! Curse
them! Curse them! It was broad daylight already, and she had only now
caught sight of the Severn Sea, lowering a dark and sullen line beyond
the snowy waste. A band of iron seemed to enclose her head, a weight to
drag at each of her limbs, a cold hand to tighten round her heart. What
if her strength were to fail, and she should be too late after all.
To see him once again!--once again! Only to look in his face and die!
She would be content then, and ask for nothing more. But the time
passed, ah! so quickly, and her lagging feet so laboured in the
snow-drifts, that he might be taken long before she could arrive at
Porlock, and even then the only mercy she asked of heaven might be
denied.
Her lips were parched and dry, her knees trembled, she could hold out at
such exhausting speed no longer, and yet she had scarce accomplished
half the distance to her goal. She knew that deep, dark ravine well,
narrowing yonder in her front to some eight or nine yards from bank to
bank. It would save more than a mile could she cross it at that point
where the blighted fir-tree stood. Above and below it widened into a
deep precipitous coombe, tangled with brushwood, through which a silver
thread of running water laughed and whispered many a fathom down in its
slippery bed of stones. No. It was too far to leap, and she must go
round. She lost heart utterly; and the wind, rising once more in
mocking gusts, seemed to flout and buffet her, driving another
snow-storm in her face.
But on its wings it carried a dull, smothered beat, faint and distant,
yet drawing nearer with each regular monotonous foot-fall. It was the
tramp of horses, galloping at speed over the snowy surface of the moor;
and Waif, eager, erect, motionless, listening with every nerve, as the
red hind listens to the tufters, made out distinctly that the nearest
rider was far ahead of two or three others in pursuit.
As the blinding storm passed over, that death-chase came fairly into
view. Along the side of the opposite hill swept two horsemen at headlong
pace, the one a quarter of a mile before the other, and increasing his
distance with every stride. A third laboured hopelessly in the rear; and
two more, one of whom she recognised as her affianced husband, were
making for the head of the coombe, with the obvious intention of hemming
in and cutting off the object of their pursuit.
Keener even than a gipsy's eye-sight, the instincts of love and hate
told Waif that the first rider was John Garnet, the second Abner Gale.
"Have I found thee, oh, mine enemy!" muttered the Parson, plying Cassock
with his spurs, while he scanned the ravine before them, and reflected,
not without a grim humour, how impossible it seemed that any creature
unprovided with wings should reach the other side. He knew that deep and
yawning chasm, where the fir-tree stood, well as he knew his own
stable-door; but he did _not_ know the grey horse's dauntless courage,
nor the recklessness of a man like John Garnet riding for his life!
Waif, however, could understand and rely on both. Tearing the 'kerchief
from her bosom while she ran, she hurried down to the deep precipitous
edge at its narrowest part, and waved for the man she loved her signal
to come on.
How _like_ him, she thought, to spare a hand, even at such a crisis, and
raise his hat from his comely head ere he forced it firmly down and set
his horse going for the leap.
"By George! you _are_ a flyer!" said John Garnet, as Katerfelto,
pricking his ears and shortening his stride while he increased his pace,
bounded freely from bank to bank, detaching, however, with his hind feet
a large portion of earth and shingle, that went rumbling and rattling
down many a perpendicular fathom into the abyss. So that, even while the
words were on the rider's lips, the horse stumbled and fell as he
landed, rolling forward on his side and shoulder in the snow.
John Garnet, who never let go his reins, was up in an instant; whilst
the horse rose almost as nimbly, with wild eye and spreading nostril,
snorting in terror and defiance, scared alike by his exploit and his
fall.
Plunging forward, the buckle of his throat-lash gave way, the bit
slipped out of his mouth, and Katerfelto scoured riderless into the
waste, leaving John Garnet standing on his feet, with the bridle in his
hand. A shout of triumph from the pursuers, who were already rounding
the head of the coombe, warned him that they had seen the catastrophe,
and were prepared to take advantage of it. Unarmed and dismounted they
could ride him down now, they thought, at their leisure, let the grey
horse go where he might.
Among the many faults of his character, none could tax Abner Gale with
want of promptitude or decision in an emergency. No sooner was he
satisfied that his enemy meant to charge boldly the obstacle in front,
than he too, urged no less by vanity than hatred, made up his mind,
while he caught hold of the black horse's head, to ride at it,
neck-or-nothing, and take his chance!
[Illustration: NECK-OR-NOTHING.]
John Garnet was hardly down and up again, ere the Parson, sitting firmly
in the saddle, had forced his horse at the leap, even to the very brink.
But, wiser than his master, poor Cassock was fain to be excused. Alas!
the rider's strength of seat and hands and limbs, above all, his
indomitable _will_, would take no denial, and the gallant old horse
made his effort too late! Chesting the opposite bank, the concussion
shot the hapless pair, as if from a catapult, to the very bottom of the
chasm.
Even in the turmoil of her feelings, Waif turned sick, while her
imagination, rather than her senses, told her the hideous truth; but
John Garnet, peering over the brink to where a dead man and horse, with
hardly a bone unbroken in either of their frames, lay rolled up in a
ghastly heap, could not help murmuring, "'Tis a pity sure, for vile as
he is, a scoundrel not worth hanging, no better rider, nor bolder, ever
buckled on a pair of spurs!"