Читать книгу The Redemption of David Corson - Charles Frederic Goss - Страница 9

"Steal! to be sure they may; and egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children—disfigure them to make them pass for their own."

—Sheridan.

In order to comprehend the relationship of this strangely mated pair, we must go back five or six years to a certain day when this same Doctor Aesculapius rode slowly down the main street of a small city in Western Pennsylvania, and then out along a rugged country highway. A couple of miles brought him to the camp of a band of gypsies.

A thin column of smoke ascending from a fire which seemed almost too lazy to burn, curled slowly into the air.

Around this campfire was a picturesque group of persons, all of whom, with a single exception, vanished like a covey of quail at the approach of the stranger. The man who stood his ground was a truly sinister being. He was tall, thin and angular; his clothing was scant and ragged, his face bronzed with exposure to the sun. A thin moustache of straggling hairs served rather to exaggerate than to conceal the vicious expression of a hare-lipped mouth. He stood with his elbow in the palm of one hand and his chin in the other, while around his legs a pack of wolf-like dogs crawled and growled as the traveler drew near. Throwing himself lightly to the ground the intruder kicked the curs who sprang at him, and as the terrified pack went howling into the door of the tent, said cheerily.

"Good-morning, Baltasar."

The gypsy acknowledged his salutation with a frown.

"I wish to sell this horse," the traveler added, without appearing to notice his cold reception.

The gypsy swept his eye over the animal and shook his head.

"If you will not buy, perhaps you will trade," the traveler said.

"Come," was the laconic response, and so saying, the gypsy turned towards the forest which lay just beyond the camp. The "doctor" obeyed, and the dogs sneaked after him, still growling, but keeping a respectful distance. A moment later he found himself in a sequestered spot where there was an improvised stable; and a dozen or more horses glancing up from their feed whinnied a welcome.

"Look zem over," said the gypsy, again putting his elbow in his left hand and his chin in his right—a posture into which he always fell when in repose.

The quack, moving among the animals with an easy, familiarity, glanced them over quickly but carefully, and shook his head.

"What!" exclaimed the gypsy with well feigned surprise; "ze señor doez not zee ze horse he wanz?"

"Horses!" exclaimed the quack; "these are not horses. These are boneyards. Every one of them is as much worse than mine as mine is than the black stallion you stole in Pittsburg on the twenty-first day of last October."

"Worze zan yourz! It eez impozzeeble!" answered the gypsy, as if he had not heard the accusation. "Ziz horze ov yourz eez what you call a crow-zcare! Zhe eez two hunner year ol'. Her teeth are fell oud. Zhe haz ze zpavins. Zhe haz ze ringa bonze. But, señor," growing suddenly respectful, and spreading out his hands in open and persuasive gestures, "ere eez a horze zat eez a horze. Ee knowz more zan a man! Ee gan work een ze arnez, ee gan work een ze zaddle; ee gan drot; ee can gallop; ee gan bead ze winz!"

The gypsy had played his part well and concealed with consummate art whatever surprise he might have felt at the charge of theft. His attitude was free, his look was bold and his manner full of confidence.

The demeanor of the quack suddenly altered. From that of an easy nonchalance, it turned to savage determination.

"Baltasar," he said, his face white and hard; "let us stop our acting. Where is that stallion?"

"Whad ztallion?" asked the imperturbable gypsy, with an expression of child-like innocence.

"I will not even take time to tell you, but if you do not take me to him this instant there will be a dead gypsy in these woods," said the quack fiercely.

"Ze zdranger jesz!" the gypsy answered blandly, showing his teeth and spreading out the palms of his hands.

The quack reached into his bosom, drew forth a pistol, pointed it at the right eye of the gypsy, and said: "Look into the mouth of that and tell me whether you see a bullet lying in its throat!"

"I zink zat ze señor an' heez piztol are boz lying in zeir zroats," he answered with easy irony.

"Good! But I am not here to match wits with you. I want that horse, and lie or no lie, I will have it. Take me to it, or I swear I will blow out your brains as sure as they are made of bacon and baby flesh!"

The gypsy vouchsafed no reply, but turned on his heel and led the way into the forest.

After a walk of a hundred yards or more they came to a booth of boughs, through the loose sides of which could be seen a black stallion.

"Lead him out," said the doctor imperatively; and the gypsy obeyed.

The magnificent animal came forth snorting, pawing the ground and tossing his head in the air.

The eye of the quack kindled, and after regarding the noble creature for a moment in silent admiration he turned to the gypsy and said, "Baltasar, do not misunderstand me, I am neither an officer of the law nor in any other way a minister of justice. I have as few scruples as you as to how I get a horse; but we differ from each other in this, that if you were in my place you would take the horse without giving an equivalent. Now I am a man of mercy, and if you will ask a fair price you shall have it. But mark me! Do not overreach yourself and kill the goose that is about to lay the golden egg."

"Wat muz be, muz be," the gypsy answered, shrugging his shoulders as if in the presence of an inexorable fate, and added: "Ze brice iz zwo hunner and viftee dollars, wiz ze mare drown een."

Putting his pistol back into his pocket with an air of triumph, the doctor said: "There seems to be persuasive power in cold lead. Stretch forth your palm and I will cross it for you."

The gypsy did so, and into that tiger-like paw he counted the golden coin; at the musical clink of each piece the eye of the gypsy brightened, and when he closed his hand upon them and thrust them into his pocket his hair-lip curled with a cynical smile.

The stranger took the bridle and saddle from his mare, placed them on the stallion and mounted.

As they moved forward through the silent forest the gypsy sang softly to himself:

"The Romany chal to his horse did cry

As he placed the bit in his jaw,

Kosko gry, Romany gry,

Muk, man, kuster, tute knaw."

He was still humming this weird tune when they emerged into the open fields, and there the traveler experienced a surprise.

A little rivulet lay across their path, and up from the margin of it where she had been gathering water cresses there sprang a young girl, who cast a startled glance at him, then bounded swiftly toward the tent and vanished through the opening.

Now it happened that this keen admirer of horses was equally susceptible to the charms of female beauty, and the loveliness of this young girl made his blood tingle. In her hand she carried a bunch of cresses still dripping with the water of the brook. A black bodice was drawn close to a figure which was just unfolding into womanhood. The color of this garment formed a striking contrast to a scarlet skirt which fell only a little below her knees. On her feet were low-cut shoes, fastened with rude silver buckles. A red kerchief had become untied and let loose a wave of black hair, which fell over her half bare shoulders. Her face was oval, her complexion olive, her eyes large, eager and lustrous.

All this the man who admired women even more than he admired horses, saw in the single instant before the girl dashed toward the tent and disappeared. So swift an apparition would have bewildered rather than illumined the mind of an ordinary man. But the quack was not an ordinary man. He was endowed with a certain rude power of divination which enabled him to see in a single instant, by swift intuition, more than the average man discovers by an hour of reasoning. By this natural clairvoyance he saw at a glance that this face of exquisite delicacy could no more have been coined in a gypsy camp than a fine cameo could be cut in an Indian wigwam. He knew that all gypsies were thieves, and that these were Spanish gypsies. What was more natural than that he should conclude with inevitable logic that this child had been stolen from people of good if not of noble blood!

He who had coveted the horse with desire, hungered for the maiden with passion; and with him, to feel an appetite, was to rush toward its gratification, as fire rushes upon tow.

"Baltasar!" he said.

The gypsy turned.

"You are a girl-thief as well as a horse-thief."

If the gypsy had felt astonished before, he was now terrified in the presence of a man who seemed to read his inmost thoughts; and for the first time in his life acknowledged to himself that he had met his master in cunning.

Bewildered as he was by this new charge, he still remembered that if speech was silver, silence was golden, and answered not a word.

"Baltasar," continued the strange man on horseback, rightly judging from the gypsy's confusion that he had hit the mark and determining to take another chance shot; "you stole this girl from the family of a Spanish nobleman. I am the representative of this family and have followed your trail for years. You thought I had come to get the horse. You were mistaken; it was the girl!"

"Perdita!" exclaimed the gypsy, taken completely off his guard.

"Lost indeed," responded the quack, scarcely able to conceal his pride in his own astuteness. And then he added slowly: "She must be a burden to you, Baltasar. You evidently never have been able or never have dared to take her back and claim the ransom which you expected. I will pay you for her and take her from your hands. It is the child I want and not vengeance."

"Ze Caballero muz be a Duquende (spirit)," gasped the gypsy.

"At any rate I want the child. You were reasonable about the horse. Be reasonable about her, and all will be well."

"Ze Caballero muz be made of gol'."

The horseman drew a silver coin from his pocket and flipped it into the waters of the brook.

The gypsy's face gleamed with avarice and springing into the water he began to scrape among the stones where it had fallen.

The stranger watched him for awhile with an expression of mingled amusement and contempt, and finally said: "Baltasar, I am in haste. You can search for that trifle after I am gone. Let us finish our business. What will you take for the girl?"

Still standing in the water, which he seemed reluctant to leave, he shrugged his shoulders and replied: "We muz azk Chicarona. Zhe eez my vife."

"And master?" asked the quack, smiling sardonically.

The gypsy did not answer, but, stepping from the brook and looking backward, reluctantly led the way to the tent.

"Chicarona! Chicarona!" he cried as they approached it.

The flap of the tent was thrown suddenly backward, and three figures emerged—a tall and stately woman, a little elfish child; and an old hag, wrinkled, toothless and bent with the weight of unrecorded years. The woman was the mother of the little child and the daughter of the old hag.

"Chicarona," said the gypsy, "ze Gacho az byed ze ztallion for zwo hunner an' viftee dollars, an' now he wanz to buy Pepeeta."

"Wad vor?" she asked.

"Berhabs he zinkz zhe eez a prinzez, I dunno," he answered, digging the toe of his bare foot nervously into the sand.

"Zen dell 'im zat he zhold not look vor ztrawberries in ze zea, nor red herring in ze wood," she said with a look of scorn.

The eyes of the stranger and the gypsy met. They confronted each other like two savage beasts who have met on a narrow path and are about to fight for its possession. It was not an unequal match. The man's eyes regarded the woman with a proud and masterful determination. The woman's seemed to burn their way into the inmost secrets of the man's soul.

Chicarona was a remarkable character. In her majestic personality, the virtues and the vices of the Spanish Gypsy fortune-teller were incarnate. The vices were legion; the virtues were two—the love of kindred, and physical chastity—the chastity of the soul itself being unknown.

"We are wasting time gazing at each other like two sheep in a pasture. Will you sell the girl?" the horseman asked, impatiently.

"I will nod!" she answered, with proud defiance.

"Then I will take her by force!"

"Ah! What could nod ze monkey do, if he were alzo ze lion!"

"I am the lion, and therefore I must have this lamb!"

"Muz? Say muz to ze clouds; to ze winz; to ze lightningz; but not to Chicarona!"

"If you do not agree to accept a fair offer for this girl, you will be in jail for kidnapping her in less than one hour!"

At this threat, the brilliant black eyes emitted a shower of angry sparks, and she exclaimed in derision, "Ze Buzno will dake us do brizon, ha! ha! ha!"

"Ze Buzno will dake us do brizon, hee! hee! hee!" giggled the little impish child who tugged at her skirts.

The old woman pressed forward and mumbled, "'Ol' oud your 'an', my pretty fellow. Crozz ze ol' gypsy's palm, and zhe will dell your fortune."

With every new refusal, the resolute stranger became still more determined. "Pearls are not to be had without a plunge," he murmured to himself, and dismounted.

Throwing the bridle of his horse over the limb of a tree, he approached the woman with a threatening gesture.

As he did so, the three female figures began to revolve around him in a circle, pointing their fingers at him and hissing like vipers. As the old woman passed before his face she threw a handful of snuff in his eyes—an act which has been, from time immemorial, the female gypsy's last resort.

Had he been less agile than he was, it would have proved a finishing stroke, but there are some animals that can never be caught asleep, or even napping, and he was one. He winked and dodged, and, quicker than a flash, brought the old crone a sharp cut across her knuckles with his riding whip.

As he did so, Baltasar sprang at his throat, but he once more drew his pistol and leveled it at the gypsy's head. His patience had been exhausted.

"Fool!" he cried, "Bring this woman to reason. This is a wild country, and a family of gypsies would be missed as little as a litter of blind puppies! Bring her to reason, I say, or I will murder every one of you!"

Once more shrugging those expressive shoulders which seemed to have a language of their own, the gypsy said "Chicarona, you do not luf ze leedle pindarri. Zell 'er to ze Buzno. Ee eez made of gol'."

As Baltasar uttered these words, he approached his wife and whispered something in her ear at which she started. Turning with a sudden motion to the stranger, she fixed her piercing eyes upon him and exclaimed, "You zay you know ze parenz of zis chil'?"

"I do."

"You lie!"

"How, then, did I know that you had stolen her?"

"You guezz zat! Any vool gan guezz zat! I zdole 'er, but who I zdole 'er vrom, you do not know any more zan you know why ze frogs zdop zinging when ze light zhines."

"Ah! You did steal her, did you? Why do gypsies steal children when they have so many of their own, and it is so easy to raise more, Chicarona?"

"Azk ze tiger why it zpringz, or ze lightning why it zdrikes! I will alzo azk ze Caballero a queztion. What doez he wan' wiz zis leedle gurrl?"

"To be a father to her!" he answered, with a sly wink at Baltasar.

"Alzo' I am dressed in wool, I am no sheep! Tell me," she cried, stamping her foot.

"Why should I tell secrets to one who can read the future?" he asked banteringly.

Chicarona's mood was changing. It was evident from her looks, either that she was defeated in the contest by this wily and resistless combatant or that she had succumbed to the temptation of his money.

"How much will you gif vor zis chil'?" she asked.

"One hundred dollars," he replied.

"One hunner dollars! You paid more zan twize as much vor ze horze! Eez nod a woman worth more zan a horze?"

"She will be, when she is a woman. She is a child now."

"Let me zee ze color of your money!"

He drew a leather wallet from his pocket and held it tantalizingly before her eyes.

Its influence was decisive upon her avaricious soul, and she clutched at it wildly.

"Put it into my han'!" she cried.

"Put Pepeeta into mine," he said.

"Pepeeta! Pepeeta!" she called.

"Pepeeta! Pepeeta!" shrilled the old crone.

Out of the door of the tent she came, her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her fingers picking nervously at the tinsel strings which fastened her bodice.

"Gif me ze money and take her," said Chicarona.

He counted out the gold, and then approached the child. For the first time in his life he experienced an emotion of reverence. There was something about her beauty, her helplessness and his responsibility that made a new appeal to his heart.

Yielding to the gentle pressure of his hand, she permitted herself to be led away. Not a goodbye was said. Chicarona's feeling toward her had been fast developing from jealousy into hatred as the child's beauty began to increase and attract attention. The others loved her, but dared not show it. Not a sign of regret was exhibited, except by the old crone, who approached her, gave her a stealthy caress, and secretly placed a crumpled parchment in her hand.

The Doctor lifted the child upon the horse's back and climbed into the saddle. As they turned into the highway, he heard Chicarona say, "Bring me my pajunda, Baltasar, and I will sing a grachalpa."

The beautiful child trembled, for the words were those of hatred and triumph. She trembled, but she also wept. She was parting from those whose lives were base and cruel; but they were the only human beings that she knew. She was leaving a wagon and a tent, but it was the only home that she could remember. In a vague and childish way, she felt herself to be the sport of mysterious powers, a little shuttlecock between the battledores of Fortune. Whatever her destiny was to be, there was no use in struggling, and so she sobbed softly and yielded to the inevitable. Her little hands were folded across her heart in an instinctive attitude of submission. Folded hands are not always resigned hands; but Pepeeta's were. She submitted thus quietly not because she was weak, but because she was strong, not because she was contemptible, but because she was noble. In proportion to the majesty of things, is the completeness of their obedience to the powers that are above them. Gravitation is obeyed less quietly by a grain of dust than by the rivers and planets. Those half-suppressed sobs and hardly restrained sighs would have softened a harder heart than that of this young man of thirty years. He was rude and unscrupulous, but he was not unkind. His breast was the abiding place of all other passions and it was not strange that the gentlest of all should reside within it, nor that it should have been so quickly aroused at the sight of such loveliness and such helplessness.

To have a fellow-being completely in our power makes us either utterly cruel or utterly kind, and all that was gentle in that great rough nature went out in a rush of tenderness toward the little creature who thus suddenly became absolutely dependent upon his compassion. After they had ridden a little way, he began in his rough fashion to try to comfort her.

"Don't cry, Pepeeta! You ought to be thankful that you have got out of the clutches of those villains. You could not have been worse off, and you may be a great deal better! They were not always kind to you, were they? I shouldn't wonder if they beat you sometimes! But you will never be beaten any more. You shall have a nice little pony, and a cart, and flowers, and pretty clothes, and everything that little girls like. I don't know what they are, but whatever they are you shall have them. So don't cry any more! What a pretty name Pepeeta is! It sounds like music when I say it. I have got the toughest name in the world myself. It's a regular jaw-breaker—Doctor Paracelsus Aesculapius! What do you think of that, Pepeeta! But then you need not call me by the whole of it! You can just call me Doctor, for short. Now, look at me just once, and give me a pretty smile. Let me see those big black eyes! No? You don't want to? Well, that's all right. I won't bother you. But I want you to know that I love you, and that you are never going to have any more trouble as long as you live."

These were the kindest words the child had ever had spoken to her, or at least the kindest she could remember. They fell on her ears like music and awakened gratitude and love in her heart. She ceased to sigh, and before the ride to town was ended had begun to feel a vague sense of happiness.

The next few years were full of strange adventures for these singular companions. The quack had discovered certain clues to the past history of the child whom he had thus adopted, and was firmly persuaded that she belonged to a noble family. He had made all his plans to take her to Spain and establish her identity in the hope of securing a great reward. But just as he was about to execute this scheme, he was seized by a disease which prostrated him for many months, and threw him into a nervous condition in which he contracted the habit of stammering. On his recovery from his long sickness he found himself stripped of everything he had accumulated; but his shrewdness and indomitable will remained, and he soon began to rebuild his shattered fortune.

During all these ups and downs, Pepeeta was his inseparable and devoted companion. The admiration which her childish beauty excited in his heart had deepened into affection and finally into love. When she reached the age of sixteen or seventeen years, he proposed to her the idea of marriage. She knew nothing of her own heart, and little about life, but had been accustomed to yield implicit obedience to his will. She consented and the ceremony was performed by a Justice of the Peace in the city of Cincinnati, a year or so before their appearance in the Quaker village. An experience so abnormal would have perverted, if not destroyed her nature, had it not contained the germs of beauty and virtue implanted at her birth. They were still dormant, but not dead; they only awaited the sun and rain of love to quicken them into life.

The quack had coarsened with the passing years, but Pepeeta, withdrawing into the sanctuary of her soul, living a life of vague dreams and half-conscious aspirations after something, she knew not what, had grown even more gentle and submissive. As she did not yet comprehend life, she did not protest against its injustice or its incongruity. The vulgar people among whom she lived, the vulgar scenes she saw, passed across the mirror of her soul without leaving permanent impressions. She performed the coarse duties of her life in a perfunctory manner. It was her body and not her soul, her will and not her heart which were concerned with them. What that soul and that heart really were, remained to be seen.