My ancestor's artifice was very successful when the race was run on two
sides of a hedge, backwards and forwards; but if a louis d'or and a
bottle of brandy had depended on my reaching the tinker-mother before
the clergywoman, I should have lost the wager. We hurried after her,
however, as fast as we were able, keeping well under the brushwood.
When we could see our neighbours again, the tinker-mother was standing
up, and speaking hurriedly, with a wild look in her eyes.
"Let me be, Sybil Stanley, and let me speak. I says again, what has fine
folk to do with coming and worriting us in our wood? If I did sell him,
I sold him fair--and if I got him back, I bought him back fair. Aye my
delicate gentlewoman, you may look at me, but I did!
"Five years, five years of wind and weather, and hard days and lonely
nights:--
"Five years of food your men would chuck to the pigs, and of clothes
your maids would think scorn to scour in:--
"Five years--but I scraped it together, and _then_ they baulked me. You
shuts the door in the poor tinker-woman's face; you gives the words of
warning to the police.
"Five more years--it was five more, wasn't it, my daughter?--Sometimes I
fancies I makes a mistake and overcounts. But, _he'll_ know. Christian,
my dear! Christian, I say!"
"Sit down, Mother, sit down," said the gipsy girl; and the old woman sat
down, but she went on muttering,--
"I will speak! What has they to do, I say, to ask me where he has gone
to? A fine place for the fine gentleman they made of him. What has such
as them to say to it, if I couldn't keep him when I got him--that they
comes to taunt me and my grey hairs?"
She wrung her grey locks with a passionate gesture as she spoke, and
then dropped her elbows on her knees and her head upon her hands.
The clergywoman had been standing very still, with her two white hands
folded before her, and her eyes, that had dark circles round them which
made them look large, fixed upon the tinker-mother, as she muttered;
but when she ceased muttering the clergywoman unlocked her hands, and
with one movement took off her hat. Her hair was smoothly drawn over the
roundness of her head, and gathered in a knot at the back of her neck,
and the brown of it was all streaked with grey. She threw her hat on to
the grass, and moving swiftly to the old woman's side, she knelt by her,
as we had seen Sybil kneel, speaking very clearly, and, touching the
tinker-mother's hand.
"Christian's grandmother--you are his grandmother, are you not?--you
must be much, much older than me, but look at _my_ hair. Am I likely to
taunt any one with having grown grey or with being miserable? It takes a
good deal of pain, good mother, to make young hair as white as mine."
"So it should," muttered the old woman, "so it should. It is a plaguy
world, I say, as it is; but it would be plaguy past any bearing for the
poor, if them that has everything could do just as they likes and never
feel no aches nor pains afterwards. And there's a many fine gentlefolk
thinks they can, till they feels the difference.
"'What's ten pound to me?' says you. 'I wants the pretty baby with the
dark eyes and the long lashes,' says you.
"'Them it belongs to is poor, they'd sell anything,' says you.
"'I wants a son,' you says; 'and having the advantages of gold and
silver, I can buy one.'
"You calls him by a name of your own choosing, and puts your own name at
the end of that. His hands are something dark for the son of such a
delicate white lady-mother, but they can be covered with the kid gloves
of gentility.
"You buys fine clothes for him, and nurses and tutors and schools for
him.
"You teaches him the speech of gentlefolk, and the airs of gentlefolk,
and the learning of gentlefolk.
"You crams his head with religion, which is a thing I doesn't hold with,
and with holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck.
"You has the advantages of silver and gold, to make a fine gentleman of
him, but the blood that flies to his face when he hears the words of
insult is gipsy blood, and he comes back to the woods where he was born.
"Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak--(Heaven keep my head
cool!)--it's good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way.
She's a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides
religion, which I sets my face against. Tell her she took mighty good
care of him--Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of
teaching him anything--_but she taught him the patteran_!"
The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother
shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as
before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked
beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the
bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow
thick. But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she
spoke very earnestly.
"Good mother, listen to me. If I bought him, you sold him. Perhaps I did
wrong to tempt you--perhaps I did wrong to hope to buy for myself what
GOD was not pleased to give me. I was very young, and one makes
many mistakes when one is young. I thought I was childless and unhappy,
but I know now that only those are childless who have had children and
lost them.
"Do you know that in all the years my son was with me, I do not think
there was a day when I did not think of you? I used to wonder if you
regretted him, and I lived in dread of your getting him back; and when
he ran away, I knew you had. I never agreed with the lawyer's plans--my
husband will tell you so--I always wanted to find you to speak to you
myself. I knew what you must feel, and I thought I should like you to
know that I knew it.
"Night after night I lay awake and thought what I would say to you when
we met. I thought I would tell you that I could quite understand that
our ways might become irksome to Christian, if he inherited a love for
outdoor life, and for moving from place to place. I thought I would say
that perhaps I was wrong ever to have taken him away from his own
people; but as it was done and could not be undone, we might perhaps
make the best of it together. I hope you understand me, though you say
nothing? You see, if he is a gipsy at heart, he has also been brought up
to many comforts you cannot give him, and with the habits and ideas of a
gentleman. You are too clever, and too fond of him, to mind my speaking
plainly. Now there are things which a gentleman might do if he had the
money, which would satisfy his love of roving as well. Many rich
gentlemen dislike the confinement of houses and domestic ways as much as
Christian, and they leave their fine homes to travel among dangers and
discomforts. I could find the money for Christian to do this by and by.
If he likes a wandering life, he can live it easily so--only he would be
able to wander hundreds of miles where you wander one, and to sleep
under other skies and among new flowers, and in forests to which such
woods as these are shrubberies. He need not fall into any of the bad
ways to which you know people are tempted by being poor. I have thought
of it all, night after night, and longed to be able to tell you about
it. He might become a famous traveller, you know; he is very clever and
very fond of books of adventure. This young gentleman will tell you so.
How proud we should both be of him! That is what I have thought might be
if you did not hide him from me, and I did not keep him from you.
"And as to religion--dear good mother, listen to me. Look at me--see if
religion has been a fashion or a plaything to _me_. If it had not stood
by me when my heart was as heavy as yours, what profit should I have in
it?
"Christian's grandmother--you are his grandmother, I know, and have the
better right to him--if you cannot agree to my plans--if you won't let
me help you about him--if you hide him from me, and I must live out my
life and never see his dear face again--spare me the hope of seeing it
when this life is over.
"If I did my best for your grandson--and you know I did--oh! for the
love of Christ, our only Refuge, do not stand between him and the Father
of us all!
"If you have felt what he must suffer if he is poor, and if you know so
well how little it makes sure of happiness to be rich--if in a long life
you have found out how hard it is to be good, and how rare it is to be
happy--if you know what it is to love and lose, to hope and to be
disappointed in one's hoping--let him be religious, good mother!
"If you care for Christian, leave him the only strength that is strong
enough to hold us back from sin, and to do instead of joy."
The tinker-mother lifted her head; but before she could say a word, the
young gentleman burst into indignant speech.
"Gertrude, I can bear it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the
chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish
to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for
you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding
my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that
sulky old gipsy hag."
Whilst he was speaking the tinker-mother had risen to her feet, and when
she stood quite upright she was much taller than I had thought. The
young gentleman had moved to take his cousin by the hand, but the old
woman waved him back.
"Stay where you are, young gentleman," she said. "This is no matter for
boys to mix and meddle in. Sybil, my daughter--Sybil, I say! Come and
stand near me, for I gets confused at times, and I fears I may not
explain myself to the noble gentlewoman with all the respect that I
could wish. She says a great deal that is very true, my daughter, and
she has no vulgar insolence in her manners of speaking. I thinks I shall
let her do as she says, if we can get Christian out, which perhaps, if
she is cousin to any of the justiciary, she may be able to do.
"The poor tinker-folk returns you the deepest of obligations, my gentle
lady. If she'll let me see him when I wants to, it will be best, my
daughter; for I thinks I am failing, and I shouldn't like to leave him
with George and that drunken slut.
"I thinks I am failing, I say. Trouble and age and the lone company of
your own thoughts, my noble gentlewoman, has a tendency to confuse you,
though I was always highly esteemed for the facility of my speech,
especially in the telling of fortunes.
"Let the poor gipsy look into your white hand, my pretty lady. The lines
of life are somewhat broken with trouble, but they joins in peace.
There's a dark young gentleman with a great influence on your happiness,
and I sees grandchildren gathered at your knees.
"What did the lady snatch away her hand for, my daughter? I means no
offence. She shall have Christian. I have told her so. Tell him to get
ready and go before his father gets back. He's a bad 'un is my son
George, and I knows now that she was far too good for him.
"Come a little nearer, my dear, that I may touch you. I sees your face
so often, when I knows you can't be there, that it pleases me to be able
to feel you. I was afraid you bore me ill-will for selling Christian;
but I bought him back, my dear, I bought him back. Take him away with
you, my dear, for I am failing, and I shouldn't like to leave him with
George. Your eyes looks very hollow and your hair is grey. Not, that I
begrudges your making so much of my son, but he treats you ill, he
treats you very ill. Don't cry, my dear, it comes to an end at last,
though I thinks sometimes that all the men in the world put together is
not worth the love we wastes upon one. You hear what I say, Sybil? And
that rascal, Black Basil, is the worst of a bad lot."
"Hold your jaw, Mother," said Sybil sharply; and she added, "Be pleased
to excuse her, my lady: she is old and gets confused at times, and she
thinks you are Christian's mother, who is dead."
The old woman was bursting out again, when Sybil raised her hand, and we
all pricked our ears at a sound of noisy quarrelling that came nearer.
"It's George and his wife," said Sybil. "Mother, the gentlefolks had
better go. I'll go to the inn afterwards, and tell them about Christian.
Take the lady away, sir. Come, Mother, come!"
I've a horror of gipsy men, and even before our neighbours had
dispersed I hustled away with Mrs. Hedgehog into the bushes.