The White Gauntlet

Garth was going in the advance, and for a time keeping silence – as if busied with some abstruse calculation.

“There be a tidyish bit o’ night left yet,” he at length remarked, glancing up to the sky, “I shed think I’ve time enough for that business.”

The remark was made to himself, rather than to his companion, and as if to satisfy his mind, about some doubt he had been indulging in.

“Time enough for what?” asked Holtspur, who had overheard the muttered observation.

“Oh! nothin’ muchish, Master Henry – only a little bit o’ business I’ve got to attend to over in the wood there. ’Twon’t take ten minutes; and, as time’s preecious, I can tell ye about it when I gets back. Ah! theear’s the gap I war lookin’ for. If ye’ll just keep on at yer leisure, I’ll overtake you afore you can get to t’other side o’ the wood. If I doan’t, pleeze wait a bit. I’ll be up in three kicks o’ an old cow.”

Saying this, the ex-footpad glided through the gap; and, striking off among the trees, soon disappeared behind their close standing trunks.

Holtspur, slackening his pace, moved on along the road – not without wondering what could be the motive that had carried his eccentric conductor so suddenly away from him.

Soon, however, his thoughts reverted to her from whom he had so late separated; and, as he walked under the silent shadows of the trees, his spirit gave way to indulgence in a retrospect of that sweet scene, with which his memory was still warmly glowing.

From the rain that had fallen, the flowers, copiously bedewed, were giving out their incense on the soft air of the autumn night. The moon had suddenly made her appearance, amid banks of fleecy clouds, that were fantastically flitting across the face of the azure heaven.

Under her cheering light Holtspur sauntered leisurely along, reviewing over and over again the immediate and pleasant past; which, notwithstanding the clouds that lowered over his future, had the effect of tingeing it with a roseate effulgence.

There were perils before, as well as behind him. His liberty, as his life, was still in danger. He knew all this; but in the revel of that fond retrospect – with the soft voice of Marion Wade yet ringing in his ears – her kisses still clinging to his lips – how could he be otherwise than oblivious of danger?

Alas! for his safely he was so – recklessly oblivious of it – forgetful of all but the interview just ended, and which seemed rather a delicious dream than an experience of sober real life.

Thus sweetly absorbed, he had advanced along the road to the distance of some two or three hundred yards, from the place where Garth had left him. He was still continuing to advance, when a sound, heard far off in the wood, interrupted his reflections – at the same time causing him to stop and listen.

It was a human voice; and resembled the moaning of a man in pain; but at intervals it was raised to a higher pitch, as though uttered in angry ejaculation!

At that hour of the night, and in such a lonely neighbourhood – for Holtspur knew it was a thinly-peopled district – these sounds seemed all the stranger; and, as they appeared to proceed from the exact direction in which Garth had gone, Holtspur could not do otherwise than connect them with his companion.

Gregory must be making the noises, in some way or other? But how? What should he be groaning about? Or for what were those exclamations of anger?

Holtspur had barely time to shape these interrogatories, before the sound became changed – not so much in tone as in intensity. It was still uttered in moanings and angry ejaculations; but the former, instead of appearing distant and long-drawn as before, were now heard more distinctly; while the latter, becoming sharper and of more angry intonation, were not pronounced as before in monologue, but in two distinct voices – as if at least two individuals were taking part in the indignant duetto!

What it was that was thus waking up the nocturnal echoes of Wapsey’s Wood was a puzzle to Henry Holtspur; nor did it assist him in the elucidation, to hear one of the voices – that which gave out the melancholy moanings – at intervals interrupted by the other in peals of loud laughter! On the contrary it only rendered the fearful fracas more difficult of explanation.

Holtspur now recognised the laughing voice to be that of Gregory Garth; though why the ex-footpad was giving utterance to such jovial cachinnations, he could not even conjecture.

Lonely as was the road, on which he had been so unceremoniously forsaken, he was not the only one traversing it at that hour. His pursuers were also upon it – not behind but before him – like himself listening with mystified understandings to those strange sounds. Absorbed in seeking a solution of them, Holtspur failed to perceive the half-dozen figures that, disengaging themselves from the tree-trunks, behind which they had been concealed, were closing stealthily and silently around him.

It was too late when he did perceive them – too late, either for flight or defence.

He sprang to one side; but only to be caught in the grasp of the stalwart corporal of the guard.

The latter might have been shaken off; but the sentry Withers – compromised by the prisoner’s escape, and therefore deeply interested in his detention – had closed upon him from the opposite side; and in quick succession, the others of the cuirassier guard had flung themselves around him.

Holtspur was altogether unarmed. Resistance could only end in his being thrust through by their swords, or impaled upon their halberts; and once more the gallant cavalier, who could not have been vanquished by a single antagonist, was forced to yield to that fate which may befall the bravest. He had to succumb to the strength of superior numbers.

Marched afoot between a double file of his captors, he was conducted back along the road, towards the prison from which he had so recently escaped.

The mingled groans and laughter, still continued to wake up the echoes of Wapsey’s Wood.

To Holtspur they were only intelligible, so far as that the laughing part in the duet was being performed by the ex-footpad – Gregory Garth. The soldiers, intent upon retaining their prisoner, gave no further heed to them, than to remark upon their strangeness. But for the merry peals at intervals interrupting the more lugubrious utterance, they might have supposed that a foul murder was being committed. But the laughter forbade this supposition; and Holtspur’s guard passed out of hearing of the strange noises, under the impression that they came from a camp of gipsies, who, in their nocturnal orgies, were celebrating some ceremony of their vagrant ritual.

She who had been the instrument of Holtspur’s delivery, had also played the chief part in his recapture. Following his captors under the shadow of the trees, unseen by him and them, she had continued a spectator to all that passed; for a time giving way to the joy of her jealous vengeance.

Soon, however, on seeing the rude treatment to which her victim was subjected – when she witnessed the jostling, and heard the jeers of his triumphant captors, her spirit recoiled from the act she had committed; and, when, at length, the courtyard gate was closed upon the betrayed patriot, the daughter of Dick Dancey fell prostrate upon the sward, and bedewed the grass with tears of bitter repentance!

Volume Three – Chapter Seven

About an hour after the recapture of Henry Holtspur, two men might have been seen descending the long slope of Red Hill, in the direction of Uxbridge.

They were both men of large stature – one of them almost gigantic. They were on horseback: the younger of the two bestriding a good steed, while his older and more colossal companion was mounted upon as sorry a jade as ever set hoof upon a road.

The first, booted and spurred, with a plumed hat upon his head, and gauntlets upon his wrists, in the obscure light might have been mistaken for a cavalier. When the moon made its appearance from behind the clouds – which happened at intervals – a certain bizarrerie about his costume forbade the supposition; and the stalwart form and swarth visage of Gregory Garth were then too conspicuous to escape recognition, by any acquaintance he might have encountered upon the road.

The more rustic garb of his travelling companion – as well as the figure it enveloped – could with equal facility be identified as belonging to Dick Dancey, the deer-stealer.

The presence of these two worthies on horseback, and riding towards Uxbridge, was not without a purpose, presently to be explained.

The cuirassiers had been astray in conjecturing that the noises heard in Wapsey’s Wood proceeded from a gang of gipsies. It was nothing of the kind. What they heard was simply Gregory Garth engaged in the performance of that promise he had made in the morning. Although he did not carry out his threat to the exact letter, he executed it in the spirit; taking his departure from the bedside of Will Walford, only after every bone in the woodman’s body had been made to taste the quality of the cudgel expressly cut for the occasion.

It is possible that Will Walford’s punishment might have been still more severe, but that his castigator was pressed for time – so much so, that he left the wretch without releasing him, with a set of suffering bones, and a skin that exhibited all the colours of the rainbow.

After thus settling accounts with the “tree-tur,” as he called him, Garth had thrown away his holly stick, and hastened back to the road.

Under the supposition that Holtspur was by that time advanced some distance towards Beaconsfield, he hurried on to overtake him.

The moon was shining full upon the track; and in the dust, which the rain had recently converted into mud, the ex-footpad did not fail to perceive a number of footprints. In the exercise of his peculiar calling, he had been accustomed to note such signs, and had acquired a skill in their interpretation equal to that of a backwoods hunter.

Instantly he stopped, and commenced scrutinising the sign.

He was upon the spot where the capture had been accomplished. The footmarks of six or seven men – who had been springing violently from side to side – had left long slides and scratches in the damp dust. The tracks of the troopers were easily distinguished; and in their midst the more elegant imprint of a cavalier’s boot.

Garth needed no further evidence of the misfortune that had befallen. Beyond doubt his master had been once more made prisoner; and, cursing himself for being the cause, he mechanically traced the backward tracks – his despondent air proclaiming that he had but little hope of being able to effect a rescue.

Returning upon the traces of the cuirassier guards, he re-entered the park, and advanced towards the mansion – which the darkness enabled him to do with safety. There he had discovered Bet Dancey – a sorrowing penitent – prostrate upon the ground – where, in her distraction, she had thrown herself.

From the girl he had obtained confirmation of the recapture – though not the true cause either of that, or her own grief.

Her statement was simple. The guards had followed Master Holtspur; they had overtaken, overpowered, and brought him back; he was once more locked up within the store-room.

The hope, of again delivering him out of the hands of his enemies, might have appeared too slender to be entertained by any one; and for a time it did so – even to the unflinching spirit of his old retainer.

But the ex-footpad, when contemplating the chances of getting out of a prison, was not the man to remain the slave of despair – at least for any great length of time; and no sooner had he satisfied himself, that his master was once more encaged, than he set his wits freshly to work, to contrive some new scheme for his deliverance.

From the store-room, in which Holtspur was again confined, it would be no longer possible to extricate him. The trick, already tried, could not succeed a second time. Withers was the only one of the guards who might have been tempted; but after his affright, it was not likely that either the promise of kisses, or the proffer of gold pieces, would again seduce the sentry from the strict line of his duty.

But Garth did not contemplate any such repetition. An idea that promised a better chance of success had offered itself to his mind. To set free his master by strategy was henceforth plainly impracticable. Perhaps it might be done by strength?