Katerfelto Part 14

But Abner Gale, who accepted his lords.h.i.+p's invitation to supper, and cracked a bottle with him afterwards, though he prudently excused himself from playing cards, had a clear remembrance of the noted grey horse, whose speed and endurance were once the topic of every market-table and every drinking-bout in his own country. From Lord Bellinger's description of the animal on which his a.s.sailant was mounted; and which, by all the rules of gaming, my lord considered his own property, the Parson gathered that it could be none other than the famous grey, and that its rider must have been the celebrated highwayman, whose features were always masked, but whose figure was so well known at all fairs, races, c.o.c.k-fights, and other sporting or social gatherings in the West. Parson Gale, indeed, had only seen the horse once, and then for an instant, dismounted, as it was led off to the stable, but his admiring eye had taken its whole frame in at a glance, and he could recall its make-and-shape, its points and action, as vividly as those of his own good nag that he had ridden many scores and hundreds of miles.

"I always understood the man was hanged," murmured the Parson, as he laid his head on his pillow, "but I should know the horse among ten thousand!"

CHAPTER XIV.

LESS THAN KIN.

Again is Nelly Carew sitting among the rocks in Porlock Bay, but the tide is out now, and a broad sweep of wet sand stretches before her to a low and level line of white that seems receding farther and farther towards the chalk-bluffs of the distant Welsh coast. The faint moan of the ebb is melancholy enough, and heavy clouds gathering down Channel, against the wind, denote a coming storm, but gleams of sun are still slanting athwart them in pale shafts of light, and there is a colour in Nelly's cheek, a l.u.s.tre in her eye, little in accordance with the dull stagnation of slack water, the heavy atmosphere of a thunder-storm, speaking rather of bright thoughts, tranquil happiness, the springtide of health and youth and hope.

Keen observers might indeed detect a shade more colour than usual in the soft cheeks, a deeper blue in the speaking eyes; but, when young women sit by the sea, in pleasant company, such tokens are neither unusual nor out of place.

And Nelly Carew is not alone. By the merest accident--for how could he tell that this was her favourite haunt in the afternoon?--a gentleman, with whom she had lately made acquaintance, happened to stroll in the same direction as herself. Two lonely figures, breaking the solitude of a wide level sea-board, if they have ever met before, cannot avoid each other, without rudeness. A start--a stop--a bow--a little hesitation on one side, a little blus.h.i.+ng on the other, and John Garnet found himself seated on a slab of rock at Nelly Carew's feet, looking dreamily out to seaward, exceedingly well satisfied with his place.

The exploit and accompanying outrage, of which Galloping Jack must henceforth bear the blame, had been thoroughly carried out. The warrants were burnt, the attainted persons warned in time to escape. Some had fled the country--all had taken precautions for their own safety; and, thanks to Katerfelto's speed and endurance, so quickly had this been done, so suddenly had the a.s.sailant of Marlborough Downs shown himself in the market-place at Taunton, that, like d.i.c.k Turpin of immortal memory, he might have proved an _alibi_ in any court of law, thanks to the extraordinary powers of his steed. Many an honest West-country gentleman made it an excuse for an extra gla.s.s now, that, after the king's health (not specified by name), he must devote a b.u.mper to Galloping Jack and the good grey horse! But John Garnet was acute enough to leave on the shoulders of that mysterious highwayman the whole burden of guilt he had incurred in the eyes of justice. From his neighbours over the border, in his own North country, he had learnt the wisdom of an excellent maxim, "Jouk an' let the jaw gae bye!" In other words, "Duck your head, and keep under shelter till the storm be past."

He might remain in hiding, he thought, among these western wilds till the indignation of the Government had blown over, the hue and cry become somewhat dulled. Then he hoped to get quietly on board a fis.h.i.+ng-boat, put out into the wide Atlantic, and so, working his way back again up Channel, land in safety at some port on the coast of France. In the mean time, all he had to do was to keep quiet, and leave the grey horse shut up in the stable as much as possible. Casting about for a harbour of refuge, he hit upon the little village of Porlock, a cl.u.s.ter of houses embosomed in wooded hills, washed by silver waves, shut in from all the world by moor and mountain, purple peak, and bare grey headland, clothed in tropical vegetation, calm, beautiful, and secluded as the first paradise of mankind. Here he thought he would be secure and tranquil.

Here he determined to take refuge for days and weeks, if only he could endure the dull, cheerless monotony to which he must make up his mind.

That he should find a soul to speak to, he had never antic.i.p.ated, much less did he dream that here was his Fate, waiting for him with her soft blue eyes, in this peaceful little hamlet, down by the Severn Sea.

For exercise of the good horse, he would ride Katerfelto on the sands at midnight, but a man of his habits could not remain indoors all day. Soon gathering courage from impunity, he would leave his humble lodgings betimes to wander about the neighbourhood, drinking in its beauty, making himself familiar with every winding coombe, darkling forest, and stretching moorland for half-a-score of miles around.

Thus it fell out that, returning from one of these expeditions at sunset, he overtook Nelly's grandfather, very infirm and feeble now, toiling painfully down a steep incline towards his home.

John Garnet was essentially good-natured, with that good-nature which springs from a good heart. In an instant he had offered the old man his arm, and Nelly, who went out to meet him, was not a little surprised to see her grandfather leaning on a straight-made, handsome young fellow, in an embroidered waistcoat and laced hat, talking volubly, and to all appearance much pleased with his new acquaintance.

If she thought the stranger good-looking (she declared afterwards she never thought about it at all) be sure she did not admit so much, even to herself, though conscious she was pleased--a feeling she attributed to the improvement in her grandfather's spirits, and his obvious delight in his new friend's society.

Old Carew, shut out for so many years from the conversation of such men as himself, men of action and adventure, men of the busy world, felt like the blind restored to sight, when he heard once more the familiar tones, the familiar terms, that took him back a score of years at least.

It was pleasant to recognise the well-remembered trick of phrase and gesture, that is not to be caught by imitation, nor purchased second-hand. "The man's a gentleman," thought old Carew, "a _real_ gentleman; and how unlike Parson Gale!"

He bade him stay to supper of course. He opened in his honour one of the dozen bottles of choice Rhine wine that had lasted as many years. He chatted, he chuckled, he coughed and wheezed, and told his stories, and fought his battles, and enjoyed his evening thoroughly, while Nelly sat silent at her needle-work, grateful to the visitor who made grandfather so happy.

John Garnet was a good listener, none the less perhaps that his attention often wandered to the blue eyes in the corner of the room, eyes that rarely met his own, and when they did were immediately cast down; but he put in his exclamations of astonishment, admiration, and approval at the right places, sympathising with the old man's memories, gentle to his foibles, tolerant of his garrulity--and all honour to him for it, say I.

You do not know what it is to live in the past, you young men who still possess the illimitable inheritance of the future, an account that it seems impossible to overdraw. Even the present is hardly good enough to satisfy you, and you cheat yourselves out of no little happiness by antic.i.p.ating to-morrow, when you should be content with the enjoyment of to-day. But wait a few years, wait till the to-morrows begin to look scantier and scantier, while the yesterdays are counted by thousands--wait till all that made the pride, the excitement, the happiness of life, is an experience, and not a hope--till the good horse has been forgotten by all but yourself--the true love has been cold in her grave for years--the very laurels you have won are become withered garlands, put away in some neglected hiding-place, only to be brought out again when the mourners hang them round your tomb! Then you will know the happiness of living once more, if only for an hour, if only till the gla.s.s is empty, or the tobacco burnt to ashes, in the glowing, thrilling memories of an imperishable past. Imperishable, for is it not, in truth, the only reality? Imperishable, for it cleaves to us during life. Imperishable, for we are taught to believe that it goes with us into eternity.

You may make an old man happy at trifling cost, if you will only yield a few minutes of patient attention, while he wanders back through its well-remembered maze, and loses himself dreamily in the labyrinth we call life.

Nelly never knew her grandfather so communicative. He talked till he was thoroughly tired out. Marlborough, Prince Eugene, the vineyards of France, the swamps of the low countries, London coffee-houses, foreign theatres, dice, duelling, midnight revels, and the fierce joys of the old roaring Mohock days--he had something to recall of each, and seemed nothing loth to embark on his adventurous G.o.dless career once again.

But his voice grew weaker, his chin sank on his breast, the light in his eye, that had flickered up in transient gleams, dimmed visibly, and the guest resisting his host's quavering entreaties to remain, discreetly took leave, thereby earning golden opinions of Nelly Carew. She opened the door for him herself. She even condescended to shake hands, and wished him good-night, with a grateful smile. Walking home to his lodgings, through the balmy summer air, with slow and lingering steps, John Garnet began to think that his term of retirement would be no such dreary penance after all, that, under certain conditions, a man might do worse than settle down to vegetate at Porlock for the rest of his life.

Had he forgotten Waif? No! he told himself. A thousand times, No! He was grateful to her; he was interested in her; he pitied the girl from his heart; but hers was not the whisper that seemed floating on the night breeze in his ear, and it was a pair of blue eyes that peered at him out of the twilight gloom whichever way he turned. Blue eyes, calm, deep, and beautiful as the summer sky and the summer sea.

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, but, alas! there is too much truth in the adage, "We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first!"

John Garnet was like the rest of mankind. Still, it had not come to that yet.

So pleasant an introduction, and under such conditions, soon ripened into something more than acquaintance. It was not long before John Garnet and Nelly Carew became fast friends. They were surprised to find how many tastes they had, how many sympathies and ideas, in common.

Sitting together on that bare ledge of rock amongst the sand, though a week ago they had been utter strangers, each seemed to have known the other for years.

When a man and his wife are silent while together, they have generally quarrelled and are not going to make up; but when two young people of opposite s.e.xes, who have never broached the subject of matrimony, sit together out-of-doors without opening their lips, there is strong likelihood that they are progressing insensibly towards that holy state in which they will have a legal right to hate each other as much as they please!

It may be that she was the one who felt their silence most irksome, but the girl broke it at last with the following feminine piece of injustice:

"How dull you _must_ find it here, after the life you've been accustomed to! I'm sure I wonder you don't have a fit of the spleen. I've heard grandfather say he felt it dreadfully at first."

"Mistress Carew," he answered--while the blue eyes shot a reproachful glance, that almost said, why don't you call me Nelly?--"Mistress Carew, I am _not_ your grandfather!"

"You've been grave enough," she replied, with a little nervous laugh, "this while past, to be anybody's grandfather. I've been wondering what you could see down Channel yonder that seemed to take up all your attention!"

This ought to have been encouraging. She was watching him, then, following the direction of his eyes, trying to make out his thoughts.

Strange to say, John Garnet, usually so debonair and ready of speech, seemed at a loss for a reply.

"I was wondering"--he hesitated and looked down, while Nelly, whose work had been idly folded in her lap, began plying her needle very fast--"I was wondering whether it could really be less than a week since I first came to Porlock?"

She had been pondering the same marvel herself, but took care not to express her astonishment.

"It's not--not at all the kind of place you expected, is it?"

Nelly thought it strange that her heart should beat, and her breath come quick, in asking so simple a question.

He tried to catch her eye, but she steadily refused to look at him, while he answered, "I thought it would be a prison and a purgatory. I never dreamed it was to prove a Para--"

He stopped short without finis.h.i.+ng the word, for she had grown deadly pale, and her blue eyes, looking over his head at something beyond and behind him, were dilated with actual fear. Turning in the same direction, he could detect no more alarming object than a stout square-built man, in a black riding suit, walking leisurely towards them through the soft sand.

"Good-morrow, Mistress Carew," said Abner Gale's harsh voice, while the scowl that accompanied his greeting gave it more the character of a ban than a blessing. "They told me in the village I should find you here or hereabouts, but I didn't think to see you so well attended. My service to _you_, sir," scanning John Garnet from head to foot. "A warm day this, but pleasant enough to be taking a young woman a walk by the sea-sh.o.r.e."

There was something offensive in the man's tone and manner. At any other time John Garnet would probably have resented his intrusion on the spot, but his attention was now so entirely taken up with Nelly's discomposure, that he failed to notice those indications of a wish to brawl, which he was generally only too ready to indulge.

Parson Gale was indeed in the worst of humours. Only the night before he had reached his home, and yet no sooner had he broken his morning fast, than, after a visit to his Spanish pointer, a cursory glance at his Irish pigs, but taking no thought whatever for his Devons.h.i.+re parish, he was in the saddle again to get a glimpse of Nelly Carew. Following the devious tracks of Exmoor, with the instinct of the wild sheep, the wild ponies, or the wilder red-deer, he threaded the coombe into Badgeworthy, crossed its foaming waters at his accustomed ford, climbed and clattered amongst the rocks, cantered freely over the heather, and paced down the hill into Porlock like a man in a dream--for his whole mind was filled with the fair face and the blue eyes that he had hungered to look on for weeks. Though familiar with every acre of the forest and the moor, he would never have reached his destination, but that his horse knew the way as well as his master, having travelled it many a time of late.

It was characteristic of the man that he should not have ridden straight to old Carew's cottage, and gone frankly in to see his friends. He stabled his horse instead at a little farm on the outskirts of the village, and hovered stealthily about its vicinity, hoping to meet some one who would tell him how matters had been going on in his absence.

He did not remain long in suspense. Ere half an hour elapsed, a shambling, ill-looking youth, wearing "poacher" written in every line of his face as plain as print, slouched up and touched his hat, waiting however to be questioned, with an awkward grin that denoted how his natural insolence was kept in check by the Parson's quick temper and reputation for physical prowess. "He be soon up, be wor Pa'yson," was the verdict of his paris.h.i.+oners, "and main ready with his hands, right or w'hrong."

"What, Ike!" said Mr. Gale, a.s.suming a cordiality he did not feel, for to do him justice he hated a poacher, especially in the vicinity of deer; "not hanged yet, nor even sent to Botany Bay? What hast been doing then these so many weeks? Has it been slack time with thee while I've been away?"

"Much as usual, Pay'son," answered Ike, in the broadest dialect of West Somerset, which it is needless to reproduce here. "It's you gentlefolk that knows what change means. Frolics, too. There's not much of that for poor chaps like us!"

"What, is there no news in the place, then?" asked the Parson. "Never a fresh nag in Farmer Veal's stable? Never a strange face stopped to take a drink of cider at the Wheat Sheaf or the Crown?"

Small as it was, Porlock boasted two beershops, and Ike was familiar with both.

"There be one strange face," answered the latter, with a cunning leer; "but it's little cider that gets inside of _he_--beer neither. The best of wine in his gla.s.s, and the best of nags in his stable, gold lace on his coat, fine linen on his back, a sword in his belt, and a warm welcome from the likeliest la.s.s in the West Country--that's what _he_ has. Folks like me must put up with a drink of cider, when they can get it. I'm main thirsty now, Pa'yson."