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.
Vincent Brooks. Day & Son, Lith. London.
THE LESSON LEARNT.
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.
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?