The White Gauntlet Part 83

"Father!" exclaimed she, joyfully, trembling in his embrace. "Saved!

you are safe!"

"Safe, my child! Sure with such a brave following, I may feel safe enough!"

"And I am spared. Oh! to come at such a crisis! Just as I was on the eve of consenting to a sacrifice--painful as death itself."

"What sacrifice, my daughter?"

"Myself--to him yonder. He promised to obtain your pardon; but only on the condition, I should become--"

Marion hesitated to p.r.o.nounce the terms that Scarthe had proposed to her.

"I know them," interposed Sir Marmaduke. "And you would have accepted them, n.o.ble girl! I know that too. Thank heaven! my pardon has been obtained, not through the favour of an enemy, but by friends--foremost among whom is this gallant gentleman by my side. But for him, the King's _grace_ might have come too late."

Marion looked up. Holtspur, still seated in his saddle, was tenderly gazing upon her.

It was at this moment, that Sir Marmaduke was called upon to interfere between the cuira.s.siers of Scarthe, and his own enthusiastic escort.

For an instant Marion and Holtspur were left alone.

"I thank you, sir," said she, her voice trembling from a conflict of emotions--"I thank you for my _father's_ life. The happiness arising from that is some recompense--for--for the misery you have caused _me_."

"Misery, Marion? I--I--"

"Oh, sir, let it pa.s.s. 'Tis better without explanation. You know what is meant--too well you know it. O Henry! Henry! I could not have believed you capable of such a deception--such cruelty."

"Cruelty?"

"No more--go--go! Leave me to my sorrow--leave me to a life-long repentance!"

"I obey your commands," said Holtspur, taking up his bridle-reins, as if with the intention of riding away. "Alas!" he added, in an accent of bitterness, "whither am I to go? For me there is no life--no happiness--where thou art not O G.o.d! whither am I to go?"

"_To your wife_," muttered Marion, in a low reproachful tone, and with faltering accent.

"Ha! 'tis that! You have heard then?"

"All--all."

"No--not all--I _have no wife_."

"O sir! Henry! Why try to deceive me any longer? You have a wife! I have been told it, by those who know. It is true!"

"I _have_ deceived you. That is true, that only. I _had_ a wife. _She is dead_!"

"Dead!"

"Ay, dead."

"I acknowledge my crime," continued he, after a solemn pause. "I should have told you all. For my justification I can plead only my own wrongs, and your beauty. _I loved you, while she was still living_."

"O, mercy! what is this? She is dead; and you love me no more?"

"No more? What mean you, Marion? Heart and hand, soul and body, I am yours. I swore it at our last interview. It cost no sacrifice to keep the oath: I could not break it if I would."

"O Henry! This is cruel. 'Tis insulting! Have you not kept _that promise_? How, then, can you be true to your troth?"

"What promise?"

"Cruel--cruel! You are trifling with my misery; but you cannot make it more. Ah! the _white gauntlet_! When it was brought back--with your message that accompanied it--my dream of happiness came to an end. My heart was broken!"

"Brought back--the white gauntlet--message!"

"Marion!" cried Sir Marmaduke, who had by this time disposed of the pretty quarrel between Scarthe and his own following; "Indoors, my daughter! and see that your father's house does not forfeit its character for hospitality. There's dust upon the king's highway; which somehow or other has got into the throats of our worthy friends from Uxbridge, Denham, and Iver. Surely there's an antidote in the cellars of Bulstrode? Go find it, my girl!"

Promptly did Marion obey the commands of her father; the more promptly, from having been admonished, by the surprise exhibited in Holtspur's countenance, that the return of her token would admit of a different interpretation, from that she had hitherto put upon it.

Time permitting, it would be a pleasant task to depict the many joyous scenes that took place in the precincts of Bulstrode Park, subsequent to the departure of Scarthe and his cuira.s.siers.

Lora, no longer subject to the tiresome importunities of Stubbs, found little else to do than listen to Walter's pretty love prattlings-- excepting to respond to them.

Near at hand were two hearts equally _en rapport_ with one another-- equally brimful of beat.i.tude--trembling under a pa.s.sion still more intense--the one paramount pa.s.sion of a life, destined to endure to its ending.

It was no young love's dream,--no fickle fondness--that filled the bosoms of Henry Holtspur and Marion Wade; but a love that burned with a bold, blazing flame--like a torch that no time could extinguish--such a love as may exist between the eagle and his majestic mate.

With all its boldness, it sought not notoriety. The scenes in which it was displayed lay not inside the walls of the proud mansion; nor yet within the enclosure of its park. A spot to Marion Wade reminiscent of the keenest pang she had ever experienced--was now the oft-repeated scene of earth's purest pleasure--at least its supremest. Oft might the lovers have been seen in that solitary spot, under the spreading beech tree, not rec.u.mbent as t.i.tyrus, but seated in the saddles, their horses in close approximation--the n.o.ble black steed curving his neck, not in proud disdain, but bent caressingly downward, till his velvet muzzle met in friendly contact with that of the white palfrey.

And yet there was scarce necessity for these clandestine meetings. The presence of Scarthe and his cuira.s.siers no longer interdicted the entrance of Henry Holtspur into the mansion of Sir Marmaduke Wade--who was ever but too happy to make his preserver welcome.

Why then did the lovers prefer the forest shade, for interviews, that no one had the right to interrupt? Perhaps it was caprice? Perhaps the mystic influence of past emotions--in which, to Marion at least, there was a co-mingling of pain with pleasure? Perhaps, and more probably, their choice was determined by that desire--or instinct--felt by all true lovers, to keep their secret unrevealed--to indulge in the sweetness of the stolen?

Whatever may have been their motive, they were successful in their measures. Oft,--almost daily,--did they meet under the spreading tree whose sombre shadow could not dim the bright colour of Marion's golden hair, nor make pallid the roseate hue of her cheeks--always more radiant at parting!

Volume Three, Chapter XIX.

To bring our drama to a _denouement_, only two more scenes require to be described.

Two scenes were they, antagonistic in character,--though oft coupled together, like their emblematical deities in the pagan Pantheon.

Over the first, presided Mars. The G.o.d called cruel--and not always just--on this occasion, gave the victory to the side that deserved it.

For three years had the trumpet of war been braying loudly over the land: and England's best blood, marshalled into the field, was arrayed on both sides of the fraternal strife. The combatants had become known as _royalist_ and _republican_: for the latter phrase--first breathed by Holtspur in the secret conference at Stone Dean--was no longer a t.i.tle to be concealed. On the contrary, it had become openly avowed-- proclaimed as a thing to be proud of--_as it ever will and must among enlightened and n.o.ble men_.

There were heard also the words "Cavalier" and "Roundhead;" but these were only terms of boasting and reproach--proceeding princ.i.p.ally from the lips of ribald royalists, humiliated by defeat, and giving way to the ferocious instincts that have distinguished "Toryism" in all times; alas! still rife at the present day, both in the tax-paying s.h.i.+res of England, and the slave-holding territories _outre_ the Atlantic.

The "Cavalier" of Charles's time--so specifically styled--was a true _sham_; in every respect shabby as his modern representative, the _swell_--distinguished only by his vanity and his vices; with scarce a virtue: for, even in the ordinary endowment of courage, he was not equal to his "Roundhead" antagonist. His t.i.tle of "cavalier," and his "chivalry," like that of the Southern slave-driver, were simply pseudonyms--a ludicrous misapplication of terms, self-appropriated by a prurient conceit.

It had come to the meeting on Marston Moor--that field ever to be remembered with pride by the lovers of liberty. The rash swaggerer Rupert, disregarding the counsels of a wiser head, had sallied forth from York, at the head of one of the largest armies ever mustered on the side of the king. He had already raised the siege, so gallantly protracted by the Marquis of Newcastle; and, flushed with success, he was in haste to crush the _ci-devant_ besiegers; who, it must be confessed, with some dispirit were retiring--though slowly, and with the sulky reluctance of wounded lions.