WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE
A single tent stood in a gully running from one of the gravel-pits of
the heath, near an iron-red rillet, and a girl of Kiomi's tribe leaned
over the lazy water at half length, striking it with her handkerchief.
At a distance of about twice a stone's-throw from the new carriage-road
between Durstan and Bulsted, I fancied from old recollections she might
be Kiomi herself. This was not the time for her people to be camping on
Durstan. Besides, I feared it improbable that one would find her in any
of the tracks of her people. The noise of the wheels brought the girl's
face round to me. She was one of those who were babies in the tents
when I was a boy. We were too far apart for me to read her features. I
lay back in the carriage, thinking that it would have been better for
my poor little wild friend if I had never crossed the shadow of her
tents. A life caught out of its natural circle is as much in danger of
being lost as a limb given to a wheel in spinning machinery; so it
occurred to me, until I reflected that Prince Ernest might make the
same remark, and deplore the damage done to the superior machinery
likewise.
My movements appeared to interest the girl. She was up on a mound of
the fast-purpling heath, shading her eyes to watch me, when I called at
Bulsted lodge-gates to ask for a bed under Julia's roof that night. Her
bare legs twinkled in a nimble pace on the way to Durstan Hall, as if
she was determined to keep me in sight. I waved my hand to her. She
stopped. A gipsy girl's figure is often as good an index to her mind as
her face, and I perceived that she had not taken my greeting
favourably; nor would she advance a step to my repeated beckonings; I
tried hat, handkerchief, purse, in vain. My driver observed that she
was taken with a fit of the obstinacy of 'her lot.' He shouted,
'Silver,' and then 'Fortune.' She stood looking. The fellow discoursed
on the nature of gipsies. Foxes were kept for hunting, he said; there
was reason in that. Why we kept gipsies none could tell. He once backed
a gipsy prizefighter, who failed to keep his appointment. 'Heart sunk
too low below his belt, sir. You can't reckon on them for performances.
And that same man afterwards fought the gamest fight in the chronicles
o' the Ring! I knew he had it in him. But they're like nothing better
than the weather; you can't put money on 'em and feel safe.'
Consequently he saw no good in them.
'She sticks to her post,' he said, as we turned into the Durstan
grounds. The girl was like a flag-staff on the upper line of heathland.
Heriot was strolling, cigar in mouth, down one of the diminutive alleys
of young fir in this upstart estate. He affected to be prepossessed by
the case between me and Edbury, and would say nothing of his own
affairs, save that he meant to try for service in one of the
Continental armies; he whose susceptible love for his country was
almost a malady. But he had given himself to women it was Cissy this,
Trichy that, and the wiles of a Florence, the spites of an Agatha,
duperies, innocent-seemings, witcheries, reptile-tricks of the fairest
of women, all through his conversation. He had so saturated himself
with the resources, evasions, and desperate cruising of these light
creatures of wind, tide, and tempest, that, like one who has been
gazing on the whirligoround, he saw the whole of women running or only
waiting for a suitable partner to run the giddy ring to perdition and
an atoning pathos.
I cut short one of Heriot's narratives by telling him that this picking
bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning
parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little
devil!' with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parted,
feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which
indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must
bear the strain of friendship if it can. Heriot had promised to walk
half-way with me to Bulsted, in spite of Lady Maria's childish fears of
some attack on him. He was now satisfied with a good-bye at the
hall-doors, and he talked ostentatiously of a method that he had to
bring Edbury up to the mark. I knew that same loud decreeing talk to be
a method on his own behalf of concealing his sensitive resentment at
the tone I had adopted: Lady Maria's carriage had gone to fetch her
husband from a political dinner. My portmanteau advised me to wait for
its return. Durstan and Riversley were at feud, however, owing to some
powerful rude English used toward the proprietor of the former place by
the squire; so I thought it better to let one of the grooms shoulder my
luggage, and follow him.
The night was dark; he chose the roadway, and I crossed the heath,
meeting an exhilarating high wind that made my blood race: Egoism is
not peculiar to any period of life; it is only especially curious in a
young man beginning to match himself against his elders, for in him it
suffuses the imagination; he is not merely selfishly sentient, or
selfishly scheming: his very conceptions are selfish. I remember
walking at my swiftest pace, blaming everybody I knew for
insufficiency, for want of subordination to my interests, for poverty
of nature, grossness, blindness to the fine lights shining in me; I
blamed the Fates for harassing me, circumstances for not surrounding me
with friends worthy of me. The central 'I' resembled the sun of this
universe, with the difference that it shrieked for nourishment, instead
of dispensing it.
My monstrous conceit of elevation will not suffer condensation into
sentences. What I can testify to is, that for making you bless the legs
you stand on, a knockdown blow is a specific. I had it before I knew
that a hand was up. I should have fancied that I had run athwart a
tree, but for the recollection, as I was reeling to the ground, of a
hulk of a fellow suddenly fronting me, and he did not hesitate with his
fist. I went over and over into a heathery hollow. The wind sang shrill
through the furzes; nothing was visible but black clumps, black cloud.
Astonished though I was, and shaken, it flashed through me that this
was not the attack of a highwayman. He calls upon you to stand and
deliver: it is a foe that hits without warning. The blow took me on the
forehead, and might have been worse. Not seeing the enemy, curiosity
was almost as strong in me as anger; but reflecting that I had injured
no one I knew of, my nerves were quickly at the right pitch. Brushing
some spikes of furze off my hands, I prepared for it. A cry rose. My
impression seemed to be all backward, travelling up to me a moment or
two behind time. I recognised a strange tongue in the cry, but too late
that it was Romany to answer it. Instantly a voice was audible above
the noisy wind: 'I spot him.' Then began some good and fair fighting. I
got my footing on grass, and liked the work. The fellow facing me was
unmistakably gipsy-build. I, too, had length of arm, and a disposition
to use it by hitting straight out, with footing firm, instead of
dodging and capering, which told in my favour, and is decidedly the
best display of the noble art on a dark night.
My dancer went over as neatly as I had preceded him; and therewith I
considered enough was done for vengeance. The thrill of a salmon on the
gut is known to give a savage satisfaction to our original nature; it
is but an extension and attenuation of the hearty contentment springing
from a thorough delivery of the fist upon the prominent features of an
assailant that yields to it perforce. Even when you receive such
perfect blows you are half satisfied. Feeling conqueror, my wrath was
soothed; I bent to have a look at my ruffian, and ask him what cause of
complaint gipsies camping on Durstan could find against Riversley. A
sharp stroke on the side of my neck sent me across his body. He bit
viciously. In pain and desperation I flew at another of the tawny
devils. They multiplied. I took to my heels; but this was the vainest
of stratagems, they beat me in nimbleness. Four of them were round me
when I wheeled breathless to take my chance at fighting the odds. Fiery
men have not much notion of chivalry: gipsies the least of all. They
yelled disdain of my summons to them to come on one by one: 'Now they
had caught me, now they would pay me, now they would pound me; and,
standing at four corners, they commended me to think of becoming a
jelly. Four though they were, they kept their positions; they left it
to me to rush in for a close; the hinder ones held out of arms' reach
so long as I was disengaged. I had perpetually to shift my front,
thinking—Oh, for a stick! any stout bit of timber! My fists ached, and
a repetition of nasty dull knocks on back and neck, slogging thumps
dealt by men getting to make sure of me, shattered my breathing.
I cried out for a pause, offered to take a couple of them at a time: I
challenged three—the fourth to bide. I was now the dancer: left, right,
and roundabout I had to swing, half-stunned, half-strangled with gorge.
Those terrible blows in the back did the mischief. Sickness threatened
to undermine me. Boxers have breathing-time: I had none. Stiff and
sick, I tried to run; I tottered, I stood to be knocked down, I dropped
like a log—careless of life. But I smelt earth keenly, and the damp
grass and the devil's play of their feet on my chin, chest, and thighs,
revived a fit of wrath enough to set me staggering on my legs again.
They permitted it, for the purpose of battering me further. I passed
from down to up mechanically, and enjoyed the chestful of air given me
in the interval of rising: thought of Germany and my father, and Janet
at her window, complacently; raised a child's voice in my throat for
mercy, quite inaudible, and accepted my punishment. One idea I had was,
that I could not possibly fail as a speaker after this—I wanted but a
minute's grace to fetch breath for an oration, beginning, 'You fools!'
for I guessed that they had fallen upon the wrong man. Not a second was
allowed. Soon the shrewd physical bracing, acting momentarily on my
brain, relaxed; the fitful illumination ceased: all ideas faded
out—clung about my beaten body—fled. The body might have been tossed
into its grave, for aught I knew.