Читать книгу The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II) - G. P. R. James - Страница 9

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The reader, who loves variety, will not be displeased, perhaps, to find that this story, leaving the two horsemen whom we have conducted a short stage on their way, now turns to another of our characters not less important to our tale.

In the same wood, which we have already described as clothing the hills and skirting the road over which De Vaux and his companion were travelling, but in a far more intricate part thereof than that into which the reader's eye has hitherto penetrated, might be seen, at the hour which we have chosen for the commencement of our tale, the figure of a man creeping quietly, but quickly, along a path so covered by the long branches of the underwood, that it could only be followed out by one who knew well the deepest recesses of the forest.

This personage was spare in form, and without being tall, as compared with other men, he was certainly tall in reference to his other proportions. His arms were long and sinewy, his feet small, his ankles well turned, and his whole body giving the promise of great activity, though at a time of life when the agile pliancy of youth is generally past and gone. He was dressed in an old brown long coat, "a world too wide" for his spare form, so that, as he crept along with a quiet, serpentine turning of his body, he looked like an eel in a great coat, if the reader's imagination be vivid enough to call up such an image. A hat, which had seen other days, and many of them, covered his brows; but under that hat was a countenance, which, however ordinary might be the rest of his appearance, redeemed the whole from the common herd. The complexion spoke his race: it was of a pale, greenish tint, without any rosier hue in the cheeks to enliven the pure gipsy colour of his skin. His nose was small, and slightly aquiline, though of a peculiar bend, forming, from the forehead to the tip, what Hogarth drew for the line of beauty. The eyebrows were small, and pencilled like a Circassian's, and the eyes themselves, shining through their long, thick, black eyelashes, were full of deep light, and--to use a very anomalous crowd of words--of wild, dark, melancholy fire. His forehead was broad and high; and the long, soft, glossy, black hair that fell in untrimmed profusion round his face had hardly suffered from the blanching hand of time, although his age could not be less than fifty-five or fifty-six, and might be more. His teeth, too, were unimpaired, and of as dazzling a whiteness as if beetle and recca had all possessed the properties their venders assert, and had all been tried on them in their turn.

Such was his appearance, as, creeping along through the brushwood with a stealthy motion, which would hardly have disturbed the deer from their lair, he made his way towards the spot where we have seen that his fellows were encamped. He was still far distant from it, however; and although it was evident that he was, or had been, well acquainted with the intricacies of the wood, yet it appeared that some leading marks were necessary to guide him surely on his way; for, ever and anon, when he could find a round knob of earth, raising itself above the rest of the ground, he would climb it, and gaze for several moments over the world of wood below him, rich in all the splendid hues of autumn, and flooded by the purple light of the evening.

Ever, as he thus looked out, there might be seen a column of bluish-white smoke rising from a spot at a mile's distance; and, after towering up solemnly in the still air for several hundred feet, spreading into light rolling clouds, and drifting among the wood. Thitherward, again, he always turned his course; and any one who has remarked the fondness of gipsies for a fire, even when they have no apparent necessity for it, will little doubt that the smoke, or the flame, serves them, on many occasions, for a signal or a guide.

As progression through thick bushes can never be very rapid, the evening had faded nearly into twilight ere the gipsy reached the encampment of his companions. The hearing of those whose safety often depends upon the sharpness of their ears is, of course, sufficiently acuminated by habit; and although his steps were, as we have shown, stealthy enough, his approach did not escape the attention of the party round the fire. We have seen that they had taken but little apparent notice of the two travellers, who had passed them about a quarter of an hour before; but the sound of quiet footsteps from the side of the wood, the moving of the branches, and the slight rustle of the autumn leaves, caused a far greater sensation. Two or three of the stoutest started instantly on their feet, and watched the spot whence those sounds proceeded, as if not quite sure what species of visiter the trees might conceal. The moment after, however, the figure we have described, emerging into the more open part of the wood, seemed to satisfy his comrades that there was no cause for apprehension; and those who had risen turned towards the others, saying, "It is Pharold," in a tone which, without expressing much pleasure, at all events announced no alarm.

Several of the young gipsies sprang up, shaking their many-coloured rags--for, like the goddess of the painted bow, their clothing was somewhat motley--and ran on to meet the new comer; while the elder members of the respectable assemblage congregated under the oaks, though they did not show the same alacrity, perhaps, as the younger and more volatile of the party, received him with an air in which reverence was mingled with a slight touch of sullenness.

"Who has passed since I left you, William?" was the first question of the gipsy on his return, addressing one of the young men who had been lying nearer than the others to the high-road, and by whose side appeared, as he rose, a most portentous cudgel.

"A woman with eggs from the market; three labourers from the fields; a gamekeeper, who damned us all, and said, if he had his will, he would rid the country of us: and two gentlemen on horseback, who gave Leena a shilling," was the accurate reply of the young gipsy, whose face, we must remark, assumed not the most amiable expression that ever face put on, as he recorded the comments of the gamekeeper upon his race and profession. The other, who has been called Pharold, at first paid no attention to any part of the account, except the apparition of the two gentlemen on horseback; but in regard to them, he asked many a question--were they old or young--what was their appearance--their size--their apparent profession?

To all these inquiries he received such correct and minute replies, as showed that the seeming indifference with which the gipsy had regarded the two travellers was anything but real; and that every particular of their dress and circumstances which eye could reach or inference arrive at, had been carefully marked, and, as it were, written down on memory.

The language which the gipsies spoke among themselves was a barbarous compound of some foreign tongue, the origin and structure of which has, and most likely ever will, baffle inquiry, and of English, mingled with many a choice phrase from the very expressive jargon called slang. Thus, when the gipsy spoke of gentlemen he called them raye, when he spoke of the peasant, he termed him gazo: but as the gipsy tongue may, probably, be not very edifying to the reader, the conversation of our characters shall continue to be carried on in a language which is more generally intelligible.

The account rendered by the young man, however, did not seem satisfactory to the elder, who twice asked if that were all; and then made some more particular inquiries concerning the gamekeeper who had expressed such friendly sentiments towards his tribe.

"Keep a good watch, my boys," he said, after musing for a moment or two on the answers he received; "keep a good watch. There is danger stirring abroad; and I fear that we shall be obliged to lift our tents, and quit this pleasant nook."

"The sooner we quit it the better, I say," cried the beldam who had been tending the pot. "What the devil we do here at all, I don't know. Why, we are wellnigh four miles from a farm yard, and five from the village; and how you expect us to get food I don't understand."

"Are there not plenty of rabbits and hares in the wood?" said the other, in reply; "I saw at least a hundred run as I crossed just now."

"But one cannot eat brown meat for ever," rejoined the dame; "and tiny Dick was obliged to go five miles for the turkey in the pot; and then had very near been caught in nimming it off the edge of the common."

"Well, give me the brown meat for my share," answered Pharold; "I will eat none of the white things that they have fattened and fed up with their hoarded corn, and have watched early and late, like a sick child. Give me the free beast that runs wild, and by nature's law belongs to no one but him who catches it."

"No, no, Pharold, you must have your share of turkey too," cried the old lady; for although it may appear strange, yet as there is honour among thieves, so there may be sometimes that sort of generosity among gipsies which led the good dame who, on the present occasion, presided over the pot--though, to judge by her size and proportions, and to gauge her appetite by the Lavater standard of her mouth, she could have eaten the whole turkey of which she spoke herself--which led her, I say, to press Pharold to his food with hospitable care, declaring that he was a "king of a fellow, though somewhat whimsical."

The gipsies now drew round their fire, and scouts being thrown out on either side to guard against interruption, the pot was unswung from the cross bars that sustained it, trenchers and knives were produced, and, with nature's green robe for a table-cloth, a plentiful supper of manifold good things was spread before the race of wanderers. Nor was the meal unjoyous, nor were their figures--at all times picturesque--without an appearance of loftier beauty and more symmetrical grace, as, reclining on triclinia of nature's providing, with the fire and the evening twilight casting strange lights upon them, they fell into those free and easy attitudes which none but the children of wild activity can assume. The women of the party had all come forth from their huts, and among them were two or three lovely creatures as any race ever produced, from the chosen Hebrew to the beauty-dreaming Greek. In truth, there seemed more women than men of the tribe, and there certainly were more children than either; but due subordination was not wanting; and the urchins who were ranged behind the backs of the rest, though they wanted not sufficient food, intruded not upon the circle of their elders.

Scarcely, however, had the first mouthfuls been swallowed, and the cup passed its round, when the farthest scout--a boy of about twelve years of age--ran in, and whispered the mystical words, "A horse's feet!"

"One--or more than one?" was the instant question of Pharold, while his companions busied themselves in shovelling away the principal portions of their supper, and leaving nothing but what might pass for very frugal fare indeed. "Only one!" replied the boy, running back to his post; and the next instant another report was made to the effect, that a single horseman was coming up the road at full speed, together with such personal marks and appearances as the dim obscurity of the hour permitted the scouts to observe. All this, be it remarked, was carried on with both speed and quietude. The motions of the scouts were all as stealthy as those of a cat over a dewy green, and their words were all whispered; but their steps were quick, and their words were few and rapid.

The motions of the horseman, however, were not less speedy; and ere much counsel could be taken, he was upon the road, exactly abreast of the spot where the gipsies' fire was lighted. There he drew in his reins at once; and, springing to the ground, called aloud to one of the boys, who was acting sentinel, bidding him hold his horse.

"It is he!" said Pharold, "it is he!" and, rising from the turf, he turned to meet the stranger, who, on his part, approached directly to the fire, and at once held out his hand to the gipsy. Pharold took it, and wrung it hard, and then stood gazing upon the countenance of the stranger, as the fitful firelight flashed upon it, while his visiter fixed his eyes with equal intensity upon the dark features of the gipsy; and each might be supposed to contemplate the effect of time's blighting touch upon the face of the other, and apply the chilling tidings such an examination always yields to his own heart.

It is probable, indeed, that such was really the case; for the first words of the gipsy were, "Ay, we are both changed indeed!"

"We are so, truly, Pharold," replied the stranger; "so many years cannot pass without change. But did my last letter reach you?"

"It did," replied the gipsy, "and I have done all that you required."

"Did you obtain a sight of him?" demanded the other, eagerly.

"I did," answered the gipsy, "in the park, as he walked alone--I leaped the wall, and--"

Hitherto, all those first hurried feelings which crowd upon us, when, after a long lapse of years, we meet again with some one whom circumstances have connected closely with us in the past, had prevented the gipsy and his companion from remarking--or rather from remembering--the presence of so many witnesses. In the midst of what he was saying, however, the eye of Pharold glanced for a moment from the face of his companion to the circle by the fire, and he suddenly stopped. The other understood his motive at once, and replied, "True, true; let us come away for a moment, for I must hear it all."

"Of course," answered Pharold, "though you will hear much, perhaps, that you would rather not hear. But come, let us go into the road; we shall be farther there from human ears than anywhere else."

As they walked towards the highway both were silent; for there is not such a dumb thing on the face of the earth as deep emotion; and for some reason, which may, or may not, be explained hereafter, both the stranger and the gipsy were more moved by their meeting in that spot than many less firm spirits have been on occasions of more apparent importance.

After thus walking on without a word for two or three hundred yards, the gipsy abruptly resumed his speech. "Well, well," he said, "when we are young we think of the future, and when we are old we think of the past; and, by my fathers, there is no use of thinking of either! We cannot change what is coming, nor mend what is gone; but, as I was saying, I have seen him: I found that he walked every day in the park by himself, and I watched his hour from behind the wall, and saw him come up the long avenue that leads to the west gate--you remember it?"

"Well, well," answered the other; "but how did he look?--Tell me, Pharold, how did he look?"

"Dark enough, and gloomy," answered the gipsy: "he came with his hands behind his back, and his hat over his brows, and his eyes bent upon the ground; and ever as he walked onward, his white teeth--for he has fine teeth still--gnawed his under lip; and, for my part, if my solitary walk were every day to be like that, I would not walk at all; but would rather lie me down by the roadside and die at once. Well then, often too as he came, he would stop and fix his eyes upon one particular pebble in the gravel, and stare at it, as if it had been enchanted; and then, with a great start, would look behind him to see if there was anyone watching his gloomy ways; or would suddenly whistle, as if for his dogs, though he had no dog with him."

His companion drew a deep sigh, and then asked, "But how seemed he in health, Pharold? Is he much changed? He was once as strong a man as any one could see--does he still seem vigorous and well?"

"You would not know him," replied the gipsy, and was going on, but the other broke in vehemently.

"Not know him? That I would!" he exclaimed, "though age might have whitened his hair and dimmed his eye--though suffering might have shrivelled his flesh and bowed his stature--though death itself, and corruption in its train, might have wrought for days upon him, I would know him so long as the dust held together.--What, Pharold, not know him?--I not know him?"

"Well, well," answered the gipsy, "I meant that he was changed--far, far more changed than you are--you were a young man when last we met, at least in your prime of strength, and now you are an old one, that is all. But he--he does not seem aged but blighted. It is not like a flower that has blown, and bloomed, and withered, but one that with a worm in its heart has shrunk, and shrivelled, and faded. He is yellower than I am, though I gain my colour from a long race who brought it centuries ago from a land of sunshine, and he has got it in less than twenty years from the scorching of a heart on fire. He is bent, too; and his features are as thin as a heron's bill."

"Sad--sad--sad," said his companion; "but how could it be otherwise? Well, what more? Tell me what happened when you met him? Did he know you?"

"At once," answered the gipsy; "no, no; I have seen one of my tribe with a hot iron and an oaken board make painting of men's faces that no water could wash out; and none should know better than you, that my face has been burnt in upon his heart in such a way that it would take a river of tears to sweep away the marks of it. But let me tell my tale. When I saw that he was near, I sprang over the wall into the walk, and stood before him at once. When first he saw me he started back, as if it had been a snake that crossed him; but the moment after, I could see him recollect himself; and I knew that he was calculating whether to own he knew me, or to affect forgetfulness. He chose the first, and asked mildly enough what I did there. 'I thought you were out of the kingdom,' he said, 'and had promised Sir William Ryder never to return.' I replied that he said true, and that I had not returned till Sir William Ryder had told me to do so."

"What said he then?" asked the other, eagerly; "what said he to that?"

"He started," replied the gipsy, "and then muttered something about a villain and betraying him; but the moment after, as you must have seen him to do long ago, he gathered himself up, and looking as proud and stern as if the lives of a whole world were at his disposal, he asked, what was Sir William Ryder's motive in bidding me return. 'Some motive of course, he has,' he added, looking at me bitterly. 'Does he intend to play villain, or fool, or both,--for whatever folly his knavery may tempt him to commit, he will only injure himself; for at this time of day it is somewhat too late to try to injure me;' and as he spoke," continued the gipsy, "he nodded his head gravely but meaningly, as if he would have said, 'You know that I speak truth.'"

The lip of the stranger curled as his companion related this part of a conversation in which he seemed to take no slight interest; but as we do not choose to know any thing of what was passing in his bosom, we must leave that somewhat bitter smile to interpret itself.

"I told him," continued the gipsy, "as you directed me, that his friend stood in some need of five thousand pounds, and trusting to his lordship's kindness and generosity, had directed me to come back and apply to him for that sum. So when he heard that, his face grew very dark; and after thinking for a minute of two, he looked up two of the walks, for he stood in the crossing, to see if he could see any of the park-keepers, to give me into their hands--I know that was what he wanted. However there was no one there; and he answered, looking at me as if he would have withered me into dust, 'Tell Sir William Ryder, wherever he is, that he shall ring no more from me. I have sent him his thousand a year regularly, and if any of the packets missed him, he should have let me know; but I will be no sponge to be squeezed by any man's pleasure; nor do I care,' he went on, 'who conspires to bring any false accusation against me. I am prepared to meet every charge boldly, and to prove my innocence before the whole world, if any one dare to accuse me.' He spoke very firmly," added the gipsy; "and as long as he continued speaking I kept my eyes upon the ground, though I felt that his were bent upon me: but the moment he had done, I raised mine and looked full upon his face, and his lip quivered and his eye fell in a moment."

"Did he hold his resolution of refusing?" demanded the other, over whose countenance, as he listened, had been passing emotions as various as those which the gipsy had depicted; "did he hold his resolution to the end?"

"Firmly!" replied Pharold, "though he softened his tone a great deal towards me. He said he was only angry with Sir William Ryder, not with me, and asked where I had been during so many years; and when I told him in Ireland, he replied, that it was a poor country: I could not have made much money there; and then he talked of other days, when the old lord took me to the hall because I was a handsome boy, and kept me for two years and more, and would have had me educated; and he vowed I did mighty wrong to run away and join my own people again; and he took out his purse and gave me all that it contained, and was sorry that it was no more; but if I would tell him, he said, where we were lying, he would send me more, for old acquaintance sake; and all the while he talked to me he looked up the walks to see if he could see the park-keepers, to have me taken up, and to accuse me of robbing him, or of some such thing. I could see it all in his eye; and so I told him that we were lying five miles to the east; and took leave of him civily, and came away, laughing that he should think I was fool enough to fancy he and I could ever do anything but hate each other to our dying day."

His companion mused for several minutes; and even when he did speak, he took no notice either of the gipsy's suspicions or of the news he gave him, but rather,--as one sometimes does when one wishes any thing just heard to mature itself in the mind, ere further comment be made upon it,--he linked on what he next said, to that part of Pharold's speech which might have seemed the least interesting, namely, the gipsy's own history; and yet, although he certainly did this, in order to avoid, for the time, the most important parts of his narrative, he did not do it with the commonplace tone of one who speaks of feelings with which he has no sympathy: on the contrary, he spoke with warmth, and kindness, and enthusiasm; and expressed profound regret that the gipsy had, in his boyhood, thrown away advantages so seldom held out to one of his tribe.

"Why? why?" cried the gipsy, "why should you grieve? I did but what you have done yourself. I quitted a life of sloth, effeminacy, and bondage, for one of ease, freedom, and activity. I left false forms, unnatural restraints, enfeebling habits--ay! and sickness too, for the customs of my fathers, for man's native mode of life, for a continual existence in the bosom of beautiful nature, and for blessed health. We know no sickness but that which carries us to our grave; we feel no vapours; we know no nerves. Go, ask the multitude of doctors,--a curse which man's own luxurious habits have brought upon him,--go, ask your doctor's whether a gipsy be not to be envied, for his exemption from the plagues that punish other men's effeminate habits."

"True, Pharold! true!" replied his companion; "but still, even the short time that you lived in other scenes must have given your mind a taste for very different enjoyments from those that you can now find. You must have seen the beauty of law and order; you must have learned to delight in mental pleasures; you must long for the society of those of equal intellect and knowledge with yourself."

"And do I not find them?" cried the gipsy, warming in defence of his race; "to be sure I do. Think not that we have none among us as learned and as thoughtful as yourselves, though in another way. But you cannot understand us. You think that it is in our habits alone that we are different; but, remember, that when you speak to a true gipsy, who follows exactly the path of his fathers, you speak to one different in race, and creed, and mind, and feeling, and law, and philosophy, from you and yours. You think us all ignorant, and either bound as drudges to some low rejected trade, or plundering others, because we do not comprehend the excellence of laws. But let me tell you again, that there are men among us deeply read in sciences which you know not; speaking well a language, for a hundred words of which your schools have laboured long years in vain. Have we not laws, too, of our own? laws better observed than your boasted codes? But you choose to doubt that we have them, because we put you beyond our code, as you put us beyond yours. When was ever justice shown to a gipsy? and therefore we look upon you as things to pillage. You speak, too, of the pleasures of the mind. Do you think my mind finds no exercise in scenes like these? I walk hand in hand with the seasons through the world. Winter, your enemy, is my friend and companion. Gladly do I see him come, with his white mantle, through the bare woods and over the brown hills. I watch the budding forth of spring, too, and her light airs and changing skies, as I would the sports of a beloved child. I hail the majestic summer, as if the God of my own land had come to visit our race, even here; and in the yellow autumn, too, with the rich fruit and the fading leaf, I have a comrade full of calmer thoughts. The sunrise, and the sunset, and the midday, to me, are all eloquence. The storm, the stream, the clouds, the wind, for me have each a voice. I talk with the bright stars as they wander through the deep sky, and I listen to the sun and moon, as they sing along their lonely pilgrimage. Is not this enough? What need I more than nature?"

Perhaps his companion, whose mind was in no degree wanting in acuteness, might imagine that in all the very enjoyments which the gipsy enumerated, as well as in the tone he used, were to be traced some remains of a better education than that of his race in general; and might believe, that had that education been continued, every pleasure that he felt would have been doubled by refinement. But all this came upon his mind as impression rather than as thought; and the reader will please to observe, that there is an immense difference between the two. The truth was, that ever since the conversation had turned to the gipsy himself, his companion had been doing what is oftener done than the world imagines; that is to say, talking without thinking, and listening without attending. In short, he was thinking of other things; and yet, as we have said, he spoke with kindness, and zeal, and real feeling; but the fact is, that the language he was talking was memory. Years before, he had come to the same conclusions, and held the same arguments in his own mind, regarding the very person in whose company he was now once more; so that--having, in all the news he had heard, greater calls upon present thought than he could well satisfy,--as soon as the gipsy began to speak of gipsy-life, he turned that topic over to memory, well knowing that she had a plentiful stock of ideas prepared to supply any demand upon such a subject; while intellect went on, quietly thinking of himself and of the present. This plan, when skilfully executed, has a collateral advantage, which, by-the-way, is often turned into a principal one; namely, that while you let memory go on with the conversation--unless she trips, or something of that kind--your companion does not perceive that you are thinking at all; and thus the stranger, apparently listened to, and took part in the gipsy's conversation about himself, while his inner soul was busy, most busy, with the other tidings which he had received. By the time that the enumeration of wild pleasures, afforded by a wandering life was over, he had settled his plans in his own mind; and, breaking off the subject there, demanded abruptly,--

"When, Pharold--tell me, when did you see him?"

He mentioned no name; and the gipsy, at once dropping the high and enthusiastic tone in which he had been speaking, answered, as to a common question, "It was but to-day--not four hours ago, or you had not found me here."

"And why not?" demanded the other. "Whither would you go?"

"Far away," answered the gipsy, "far away! I love not his neighbourhood; nor is it safe for me and mine. He thinks evil against us, and he will not be long ere he tries to bring his thoughts to pass."

"But he cannot injure you," replied the other; "in all the things wherein you and he have borne a part, he has more cause to fear you than you have to fear him."

"True! true!" said the gipsy; "and yet I love not his neighbourhood. I may have done things in this land in my youth, when passion and revenge were strong, and wisdom and forbearance weak, that I should little like to have investigated in my middle age. Not that I fear for myself; for, from the dark leap that all men must take, I have never shrunk through life. But I fear the sorrow of those that would weep for me, and the unjust mingling of the innocent with the guilty, for which your laws are infamous."

His companion mused for a moment; and then, laying his hand upon the arm of the gipsy, he replied, in a tone where kindness mingled with authority: "Mark me, Pharold!" said he; "you know that I am not one either to counsel you amiss, or to fall from you at a moment of need: base, indeed, should I be, were I to do so, after all you have done for me. But my resolutions are not yet fixed--my mind is not yet made up; and I must hear more, and examine deeply, ere I execute my half-formed purpose. Still you have no cause to fear; call upon me whenever you need me; and, in the meantime, if you please, you can remove from the spot where you now are, but not so far that I cannot find you, for you must help me to the end of all this."

"To the common, at the back of Mrs. Falkland's woods?" asked the gipsy: "they will hardly seek us there."

"As good a spot as any," replied his companion; "and in the case of necessity, Pharold, here, I have written down where you may always find me in this immediate neighbourhood; remembering, in the meantime, all that you have promised."

"I have promised--I have promised!" replied the gipsy; "and you never knew me break my word. But what is this you give me with the paper? I want not gold--and from you, William."