The Gypsy E-Book

G. P. R. James

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

In the early 1700s, the cultural group now known as Romani had made inroads into much of Europe. In some areas, they were granted special privileges and dispensations; in others, they were mercilessly persecuted and even sold into slavery. British historical novelist G. P. R. James captures the shifting role of the Gypsy people during the period in this remarkably detailed book.

Leseprobe

Copyright

First published in 1855

Copyright © 2022 Classica Libris

VOLUME I

“Ah! what a tangled web we weave,

When first we venture to deceive.”

Sir Walter Scott

Chapter 1

At that time in the world’s history when watches, in their decline from the fat comeliness of the turnip to the scanty meagreness of the half-crown, had arrived at the intermediate form of a biffin—when the last remnant of a chivalrous spirit instigated men to wear swords every day, and to take purses on horseback—when quadrupeds were preferred to steam, and sails were necessary to a ship—when Chatham and Blackstone appeared in the senate and at the bar, and Goldsmith, Johnson, and Burke, Cowper, Reynolds, Robertson Hume, and Smollett, were just beginning to cumber the highways of arts and sciences—at that period of the dark ages, the events which are about to be related undoubtedly took place, in a county which shall be nameless.

It may be that the reader would rather have the situation more precisely defined, in order, as he goes along, to fix each particular incident that this book may hereafter contain to the precise spot and person for which it was intended. Nevertheless, such disclosures must not be; in the first place, because the story, being totally and entirely a domestic one, depends little upon locality; and, in the next place, because greater liberties can be taken with people and things when their identity is left in doubt, than when it is clearly ascertained; for, although:

“When caps into a crowd are thrown,

What each man fits he calls his own,”

yet no one likes to have his name written upon his fool’s cap, and handed down for the benefit of posterity, attached to such an ornament.

It was, then, on an evening in the early autumn, at that particular period of history which we have described, that two persons on horseback were seen riding through a part of the country, the aspect of which was one whereon we delight to dwell; that is to say, it was a purely English aspect. Now, this character is different from all others, yet subject to a thousand varieties; for although England, in its extent, contains more, and more beautiful scenes, of different kinds and sorts of the picturesque, than any other country under heaven, nevertheless there is an aspect in them all that proclaims them peculiarly English. It is not a sameness—far, far from it; but it is a harmony; and whether the view be of a mountain or a valley, a plain or a wood, a group of cottages by the side of a clear, still trout stream, or a country town cheering the upland, there is still to be seen in each a fresh green Englishness, which—like the peculiar tone of a great composer’s mind, pervading all his music, from his requiem to his lightest air—gives character and identity to every object, and mingles our country, and all its sweet associations, with the individual scene.

The spot through which the travellers were riding, and which was a wide piece of forest ground, one might have supposed, from the nature of the scenery, to be as common to all lands as possible; but no such thing! and anyone who gazed upon it required not to ask themselves in what part of the world they were. The road, which, though sandy, was smooth, neat, and well-tended, came down the slope of a long hill, exposing its course to the eye for near a mile. There was a gentle rise on each side, covered with wood; but this rise, and its forest burden, did not advance within a hundred yards of the road on either hand, leaving between—except where it was interrupted by some old sand-pits—a space of open ground covered with short green turf, with here and there an ancient oak standing forward before the other trees, and spreading its branches to the wayside. To the right was a little rivulet gurgling along the deep bed it had worn for itself among the short grass, in its way towards a considerable river that flowed through the valley at about two miles’ distance; and, on the left, the eye might range far amid the tall, separate trees—now, perhaps, lighting upon a stag at gaze, or a fallow deer tripping away over the dewy ground as light and gracefully as a lady in a ballroom—till sight became lost in the green shade and the dim wilderness of leaves and branches.

Amid the scattered oaks in advance of the wood, and nestled into the dry nooks of the sand-pits, appeared about half a dozen dirty brown shreds of canvass, none of which seemed larger than a dinner napkin, yet which—spread over hoops, cross sticks, and other contrivances—served as habitations to six or seven families of that wild and dingy race, whose existence and history is a phenomenon, not among the least strange of all the wonderful things that we pass by daily without investigation or inquiry. At the mouths of one or two of these little dwelling-places might be seen some gipsy women with their peculiar straw bonnets, red cloaks, and silk handkerchiefs; some withered, shrunk, and witch-like, bore evident the traces of long years of wandering exposure and vicissitude; while others, with the warm rose of health and youth glowing through the golden brown of their skins, and their dark gem-like eyes flashing undimmed by sorrow or infirmity, gave the beau idéal of a beautiful nation long passed away from thrones and dignities, and left but as the fragments of a wreck dashed to atoms by the waves of the past.

At one point, amid white wood ashes, and many an unlawful feather from the plundered cock and violated turkey, sparked a fire and boiled a caldron; and, round about the ancient beldam who presided over the pot were placed in various easy attitudes several of the male members of the tribe—mostly covered with long loose great-coats, which bespoke the owners either changed or shrunk. A number of half-naked brats, engaged in many a sport, filled up the scene, and promised a sturdy and increasing race of rogues and vagabonds for after years.

Over the whole—wood, and road, and streamlet, and gipsy encampment—was pouring in full stream the purple light of evening, with the long shadows stretching across, and marking the distances all the way up the slope of the hill. Where an undulation of the ground, about half-way up the ascent, gave a wider space of light than ordinary, were seen, as we have before said, two strangers riding slowly down the road, whose appearance soon called the eyes of the gipsy fraternity upon their movements; for the laws in regard to vagabondism[1] had lately been strained somewhat hard, especially in that part of the country, and the natural consequence was, that the gipsy and the beggar looked upon almost every human thing as an enemy.

With their usual quick perception, however, they soon gathered that the travellers were not of that cast from whom they had anything to fear; and indeed there was nothing of the swaggering bailiff or bullying constable in the aspect of either. The one was a man of about six-and-twenty years of age, with fine features, a slight but well-made person, and a brown but somewhat pale complexion. His eyes were remarkably fine, and his mouth and chin beautifully cut; he rode his horse, too, with skill and grace; and withal he had that air of consequence which is at any time worth the riband of the Bath. His companion was older, taller, stronger. In age he might be thirty-two or three, in height he was fully six feet, and seldom was there ever a form which excelled his in all those points where great strength is afforded without any appearance of clumsiness. He rode his horse, which was a powerful dark-brown gelding, as if half his life were spent on horseback; and as he came down the hill with the peculiar appearance of ease and power which great bodily strength and activity usually give, one might well have concluded that he was as fine-looking a man as one had ever beheld. But when he approached so as to allow his features to be seen, all one’s prepossessions were dispelled, and one perceived that, notwithstanding this fine person, he was in some respects as ugly a man as it was possible to conceive.

Thanks to Jenner and vaccination, we (the English) are nowadays as handsome a people as any, perhaps, in Europe, with smooth skins and features as nature made them; but in the times I talk of, vaccination, alas! was unknown; and whatever the traveller we speak of might have been before he had been attacked by the smallpox, the traces which that horrible malady had left upon his face had deprived it of every vestige of beauty—if, indeed, we except his eyes and eyelashes, which had been spared as if just to redeem his countenance from the frightful. They—his eyes and eyelashes—were certainly fine, very fine; but they were like the beauty of Tadmor in the wilderness, for all was ugliness around them. However, his countenance had a good-humoured expression, which made up for much; neither was it of that vulgar ugliness which robes and ermine but serve to render more low and unprepossessing. But still, when first you saw him, you could not but feel that he was excessively plain; and yet there was always something at the heart which made one—as the ravages of the disease struck the eye—think, if not say, “What a pity!”

The dress of the two strangers was alike, and it was military; but although an officer of those days did not feel it at all scandalous or wrong to show himself in his regimentals, yet such was not the case in the present instance; and the habiliments of the two horsemen consisted, as far as could be seen, of a blue riding-coat, bound round the waist by a crimson scarf, with a pair of heavy boots, of that form which afterward obtained the name of Pendragon. Swords were at their sides, and—as was usual in those days, even for the most pacific travellers—large fur-covered holsters were at their saddlebows; so that, although they had no servants with them, and were evidently of that class of society upon which the more liberal-minded prey and have preyed in all ages, there was about them “something dangerous,” to attack which would have implied great necessity or a very combative disposition.

As the travellers rode on, the gipsy men, without moving from the places they had before occupied, eyed them from under their bent brows, affecting withal hardly to see them; while the urchins ran like young apes by the side of their horses, performing all sorts of antics, and begging hard for halfpence; and at length a girl of about fifteen or sixteen—notwithstanding some forcible injunctions to forbear on the part of the old woman who was tending the caldron—sprang up the bank, beseeching the gentlemen, in the usual singsong of her tribe, to cross her hand with silver, and have their fortunes told; promising them at the same time a golden future, and, like Launcelot, “a pretty trifle of wives.”

In regard to her chiromantic science the gentlemen were obdurate, though each of them gave her one of those flat polished pieces of silver which were sixpences in our young days; and having done this, they rode on, turning for a moment or two their conversation, which had been flowing in a very different channel, to the subject of the gipsies they had just passed, moralizing deeply on their strange history and wayward fate, and wondering that no philanthropic government had ever endeavoured to give them a “local habitation and a name” among the sons and daughters of honest industry.

“I am afraid that the attempt would be in vain,” answered the younger of the two to his companion. “And besides, it would be doing a notable injustice to the profession of petty larceny to deprive it of its only avowed and honourable professors, while we have too many of its amateur practitioners in the very best society already.”

“Nay, nay! Society is not as bad as that would argue it,” rejoined the other. “Thank God, there are few thieves or pilferers within the circle of my acquaintance, which is not small.”

“Indeed!” said his companion. “Think for a moment, my dear colonel, how many of your dearly beloved friends are there who, for but a small gratification, would pilfer from you those things that you value most highly! How many would steal from one the affection of one’s mistress or wife! How many, for some flimsy honour, some dignity of riband or of place, would pocket the reputation of deeds they had never done! How many, for some party interest or political rancour, would deprive you of your rightful renown, strip you of your credit and your fame, and ‘filch from you your good name!’ Good God! those gipsies are princes of honesty compared with the great majority of our dear friends and worldly companions.”

His fellow-traveller replied nothing for a moment or two, unless a smile, partly gay, partly bitter, could pass for answer. The next minute, however, he read his own comment upon it, saying, “I thought, De Vaux, you were to forget your misanthropy when you returned to England.”

“Oh, so I have,” replied the other in a gayer tone, “it was only a single seed of the wormwood sprouting up again. But, as you must have seen throughout our journey, my heart is all expansion at coming back again to my native land, and at the prospect of seeing so many beings that I love: though God knows,” he added, somewhat gloomily, “God knows whether the love be as fully returned. However, imagination serves me for Prince Ali’s perspective glass; and I can see them all, even now, at their wonted occupations, while my vanity dresses up their faces in smiles when they think of my near approach.”

His companion sighed; and as he did not at all explain why he did so, we must take the liberty of asking the worthy reader to walk into the tabernacle of his bosom and examine which of the mind’s gods it was that gave forth that oracular sigh, so that the officiating priest may afford the clear interpretation thereof. But, to leave an ill-conceived figure of speech, the simple fact was, that the picture of home, and friends, and smiling welcome, and happy love, which his companion’s speech had displayed, had excited somewhat like envy in the breast of Colonel Manners. Envy, indeed, properly so called, it was not; for the breast of Colonel Manners was swept out and garnished every day by a body of kindly spirits, who left not a stain of envy, hatred, or malice in any corner thereof. The proper word would have been regret; for regret it certainly was that he felt when he reflected that, though he had many of what the world calls friends, and a milky-way of acquaintances—though he was honoured and esteemed wherever he came, and felt a proud consciousness that he deserved to be so—yet that on all the wide surface of the earth there was no sweet individual spot where dearer love, and brighter smiles, and outstretched arms, glad voices, and sparkling eyes, waited to welcome the wanderer home from battle, and danger, and privation, and fatigue. He felt that there was a vacancy to him in all things; that the magic chain of life’s associations wanted a link; and he sighed—not with envy, but with regret. That it was so was partly owing to events over which he had no control. Left an orphan at an early age, the father’s mansion and the mother’s bosom he had never known; and neither brother nor sister had accompanied his pilgrimage through life. His relations were all distant ones; and though (being the last of a long line) great care had been bestowed upon his infancy and youth, yet all the sweet ties and kindred fellowship which gather thickly round us in a large family were wanting to him.

So far his isolated situation depended upon circumstances which he could neither alter nor avoid; but that he had not created for himself a home, and ties as dear as those which fortune had at first denied him, depended on himself; or rather what in vulgar parlance is called a crotchet, which was quite sufficiently identified with his whole nature, to be considered as part of himself, though it was mingled intimately—woven in and out—with qualities of a very different character.

This crotchet—for that is the only term fitted for it, as it was certainly neither a whim nor a caprice—this crotchet may be considered as a matter of history—of his history, I mean; for it depended upon foregone facts, which must be here explained. It is sad to overturn all that imagination may have already done for the reader on the very first news that Colonel Manners had a foregone history at all. He had not been crossed in love, as may be supposed, nor had he seen the object of his affections swept away by a torrent, burned in a house on fire, killed by an unruly horse, or die by any of those means usually employed for such a purpose. No; he had neither to bewail the coldness nor the loss of her he loved, because, up to the moment when we have set him before the reader, he had unfortunately never been in love at all.

The fact is, that during his youth Colonel Manners had possessed one of the finest faces in the world, and every one of his judicious friends had taken care to impress deeply upon his mind that it was the best portion of all his present possessions or future expectations. By nature he was quite the reverse of a vain man; but when he saw that the great majority of those by whom he was surrounded admired the beauties of his face far more than the beauties of his mind, and loved him for the symmetry of his external person more than for the qualities of his heart, of course the conviction that, however much esteem and respect might be gained by mental perfections, affection was only given to beauty, became an integral part of that fine texture of memories and ideas which, though I do not think it, as some have done, the mind itself, I yet look upon as the mind’s innermost garment. Such was the case when, at the age of about twenty, he was attacked by the smallpox. For a length of time he was not allowed to see a looking-glass, the physicians mildly telling him that his appearance would improve; that they trusted no great traces would remain—but when he did see a looking-glass, he certainly saw the reflection of somebody he had never seen before. In the mean while his relations had too much regard for their own persons to come near him; and when, after having purified in the country, he went to visit an antique female cousin, who had been a card-playing belle in the reign of his majesty of blessed memory, King George the First, the old lady first made him a profound courtesy, taking him for a stranger; and when she discovered who he was, burst forth with, “Good God, Charles! you are perfectly frightful!”

To the same conclusion Charles Manners had by this time come himself; and the very modesty of his original nature now leagued with one of the deceptions of vanity, and made him believe that he could never, by any circumstances, or events, obtain love. Nevertheless he made up his mind to his fate entirely and determined neither to seek for nor to think of a good that could not be his. Indeed, at first, according to the usual extravagance of man’s nature, he flew to the very far extreme, and believed that, putting woman’s love out of the question, even the more intimate friendship and affection of his fellowmen might be influenced by his changed appearance, and that he would be always more or less an object of that pity which touches upon scorn. These ideas his commerce with the world soon showed him to be fallacious; but in the mean time they had a certain effect upon his conduct. Possessing a consciousness of great powers of mind and fine qualities of the heart, he determined to cultivate and employ them to the utmost, and compel esteem and respect, if love and affection were not to be obtained. In his course through the army, too, the sort of animosity which he felt against his own ugliness, which had cut him off from happiness of a sort that he was well calculated to enjoy, together with that mental and corporeal complexion which did not suffer him to know what fear is, led him to be somewhat careless of his own person; and during his earlier years of service he acquired the name of rash Charles Manners. But it was soon found that wherever the conduct of any enterprise was entrusted to his judgment, its success was almost certain, and that skill and intrepidity with him went hand-in-hand.

Gradually he found that, with men at least, and with soldiers especially, personal beauty formed no necessary ingredient in friendship; and with a warm heart and noble feelings—guarded, however, by wisdom and discretion—he soon rendered himself universally liked and esteemed in the different corps with which he served and had an opportunity of selecting one or two of his fellow-officers for more intimate regard. Unfortunately, however, he saw no reason to change his opinion in respect to woman’s love. Indeed, he sought not to change it; for, as we have already said, the belief that female affection could only be won by personal beauty was one of those intimate convictions which were interwoven with all the fabric of his ideas. He ceased to think of it; he devoted himself entirely to his profession; he won honour and the highest renown; he found himself liked and esteemed by his military companions, courted and admired in general society, and he was content: at least, if he was not content, the regrets which would not wholly be smothered—the yearnings for nearer ties and dearer affections, which are principles, not thoughts—only found vent occasionally in such a sigh as that which we have just described.

His companion, though he remarked it, made no comment on his sigh; for, notwithstanding the most intimate relationships of friendship which existed between himself and his fellow-traveller, and which had arisen in mutual services that may hereafter be more fully mentioned, he felt that the length of their acquaintance had not been such as to warrant his inquiring more curiously into those private intricacies of the bosom from which such signs of feeling issued forth. He saw, however, that the proximate cause of the slight shadow that came over his friend lay in something that he himself had said in picturing the happy dreams that checkered his misanthropy; and putting his horse into a quicker pace as they got upon the level ground, he changed the subject while they rode on.

The time, as we have said, was evening; and as the strangers passed by the gipsy encampment, a flood of purple light, pouring from as splendid a heaven as ever held out the promise of bright after-days, was streaming over the road; but as the travellers reached the flat, and turned the angle of the wood where the road wound round the bases of the hills, the sky was already waxing gray, and a small twinkling spot of gold here and there told that darkness was coming fast. At the distance of about half a mile farther, the river was first seen flowing broad and silvery through the valley; and a quarter of an hour more brought the travellers to a spot where the water, taking an abrupt turn round a salient promontory thrown out from the main body of the hills, left hardly room for the road between the margin and the wood. On the other side of the river, which might be a hundred yards broad, was a narrow green meadow, backed by some young fir plantings, and just beyond the first turn of the bank a deep sombre dell led away to the right; while the shadows of the trees over the water, the darkening hue of the sky, and the wild uninhabited aspect of the whole scene, gave a sensation of gloom, which was not diminished by a large raven flapping heavily up from the edge of the water, and hovering with a hoarse croak over some carrion it had found among the reeds.

“This is a murderous-looking spot enough!” said Colonel Manners, turning slightly towards De Vaux, who had been silent for some minutes, “this is a murderous-looking spot enough!”

“Well may it be so!” answered his companion abruptly, “well may it be so; for on this very spot my uncle was murdered twenty years ago.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed his fellow-traveller, “indeed—but on reflection,” he added, “I remember having heard something of it, though I was then a boy, and have forgotten all the circumstances.”

He spoke as if he would willingly have heard them again detailed; but, for a moment or two, De Vaux made no reply; and the next instant the sound of a horse’s feet at a quick trot suddenly broke upon the ear and called the attention of both. In a minute more, a horseman wrapped in a large roquelaure passed them rapidly; and though he neither spoke nor bowed, his sudden appearance was enough to break off the thread of their discourse. When he was gone, Colonel Manners felt that, though De Vaux might take it up again if he would, he himself could not in propriety do so. De Vaux, however, was silent; for he was not one of those men to whom the accidents and misfortunes of their friends and relations furnished matter for pleasant discourse; and the topic of course dropped there. Perhaps, indeed, the younger traveller showed some inclination even to avoid the subject; for he led the conversation almost immediately into another channel, pointing out to his friend the various hills and landmarks which distinguished the grounds of his father from those of his aunt, and dwelling with enthusiasm upon the pleasures that his boyhood had there known, and the hopes which his return had re-awakened in his bosom; and yet there was mingled with the whole a touch of fastidiousness which contrasted strangely enough with the warmth of feeling and expression to which he gave way in other respects. He seemed to doubt the very love, the happiness of which he pictured so brightly; he seemed to distrust the joys to which he was so sensitively alive; he even seemed, in some degree, to sneer at himself for giving the credence that he did to those things which he most desired to believe true.

But Edward de Vaux had been brought up in a fastidious school. He had lived at the acmé of fortune and trod upon circumstances all his life, and this we hold to be the true way of becoming misanthropical. It is nonsense to suppose that a man turns misanthrope in consequence of great misfortunes. No such thing! it is by being fortunate ter et amplius. The spoiled children of the blind goddess are those that kick at her wheel; and those on whom she showers nothing, but misfortunes cling tight to the tire, in hopes of a better turn, till the next whirl casts them off into the wide hereafter.

Edward de Vaux stood at the climax of fortune. Never in his life had he known what a serious reverse or great misfortune is; and consequently he had gathered together all the petty vexations and minor disappointments that he had met with, and, to use the term of Napoleon Bonaparte, had nearly stung himself to death with wasps. Perhaps, too, he might be fastidious by inheritance, for his father was so in a still higher degree than himself; though in the father it showed itself in irritable impatience, and a sort of contempt both tyrannical and insulting towards those whom he disliked; while in the son, mingled with, if not springing from, finer feelings: passing, too, through the purifying medium of a gentler heart, and corrected by a high sense of what is gentlemanly, his fastidiousness seldom showed itself except in a passing sneer at anything that is false, affected, or absurd, in an indignant sarcasm at that which is base or evil, or in petulant irritability at that which is weak.

As he now rode onward to rejoin those friends whom he had not seen for nearly three years, accompanied by a companion who had never seen them at all, the little world of his heart was in a strange commotion. All the joy which an affectionate disposition can feel was rising up at every point against the sway of cold propriety, and yet he tormented himself with a thousand imaginary annoyances. Now he fancied that the delight he felt and expressed was undignified, and might lower him in the eyes of his companion; now he chose to doubt that his reception from those he had left behind would be warm enough to justify the exuberant pleasure that he himself experienced; while, keenly alive to the slightest ridicule, he shrunk from the idea of exposing, even to his dearest friend, one single spot in his heart to which the lash could be applied.

“I was foolish,” he thought, “not to leave Manners in London for a day and get all the joyful absurdities of a first welcome over before he came down. However, my aunt would have it so; and it cannot be avoided now.”

As they proceeded, the purple of the evening died entirely away, and a gray dimness fell over tree, and stream, and hill. Star by star looked out, grew brighter and brighter, as the wandering ball on which we travel through the inconceivable depth turned our hemisphere from the superior light, and at length all was night.

In the lapse of ten minutes more, the road—which, winding about between the hills and the stream, was forced often out of its true direction—had conducted them to a steep bank overhanging a wider part of the valley, and here Colonel Manners divined—for he could scarcely be said to see—that a scattered but considerable village lay before them. Up and down the sides of the hill, a hundred twinkling lights in cottage windows were sprinkled like glow-worms among the darker masses of orchard and copse wood; and now and then, as the travellers advanced, a bright glare suddenly flashed forth from some opening door; and then again was as speedily extinguished, when the entrance or the exit of the visitor was accomplished. Some watchful dog, too, caught the sound of horses’ feet, and, after one or two desultory barks, set up his tongue into a continual peal. His neighbours of the canine race took the signal, and—not at all unlike the human species—ever inclined to clamour, yelped forth in concert, whether they had heard or not the noise that roused their comrade’s indignation, so that the village was soon one continued roar with the efforts of various hairy throats.

The salutation, however, was sweet to Edward de Vaux, for it spoke of home—or at least of a dwelling that was dearer than any other home he might possess; and, pausing a moment, he pointed onward to a spot, where, on the edge of the hill beyond the village, might be seen, cutting sharp upon the pale silvery gray of the western sky, the dark outline of a large house, with a plentiful supply of chimneys, of an architecture somewhat less light and fanciful than that of Palladio, but very well suited to a dwelling in the land of peace and comfort.

“That is my aunt’s house,” said De Vaux, “and, though it is nearly three miles by the road from the spot where that horseman passed us, it is not much more than three-quarters of a mile by the path over the hill. But that path,” he added, “is impracticable for horses, or I should certainly have risked breaking your neck, Manners, rather than take this long tedious round.”

Now, strange to say, the round that they had taken seemed longer and more tedious to Edward de Vaux, when he came within sight of the mansion which was to end his journey, than it had done at any other moment of the ride. But so it was; and without inquiring into things with which we have nothing to do, we may conclude that he felt some of those vague, unreasonable doubts and apprehensions, which almost everyone experiences on the first view of one’s home after a long absence—those fears which are the very children of our hopes—that anxiety which the uncertainty of human fate impresses upon our minds, till we are sure that all is well. Who is there that has not gazed up at his own dwelling-place as he returned from far, and asked himself, with a sudden consciousness of the instability of all things, “Shall I find nothing gone amiss? Has no misfortune trod that threshold? Has disease or sorrow never visited it? Has death turned his steps aside?”

Whatever it was that Edward de Vaux felt, although the round seemed a long one, and the time tedious that it had consumed, he yet drew in his rein, not so as to bring his horse quite up, but to check him into a walk; while he pointed out the house to his companion and gazed at its dark and distant mass himself. At that very moment, a single ray glimmered in one of the windows, passed on into another, and then three windows suddenly streamed forth with light. It looked like a beacon to say that all was well; and though no man in the present day cares a straw for things that in other years, when skilfully applied, have won battles and overthrown dynasties—I mean omens—yet every man has a silent, unacknowledged, foolish little system of augury of his own; and Edward de Vaux and his companion, at the sight of this dexter omen, set spurs to their horses, and rode merrily on their way.

Chapter 2

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. Hitherwards, again, he always turned his course; and anyone 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 visitor 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-colored 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 laborers 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 well-nigh 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 forever,” 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 tablecloth, 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 visitor 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 someone 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 anyone 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 firs 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 anything 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 civilly, 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 anything 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?”