MARY LEE.
Threading like a herd of red deer the slight undulations of the down, it
took the gipsies but a few minutes to withdraw from the scene of their
late outrage. In less than an hour they had approached their own
camping-ground, where the tents were already pitched by wives and
comrades, the kettles already singing over the twinkling fires of their
bivouac. They travelled fast, at a long swinging trot, shifting their
bundles from one to another as they went. Fin Cooper and Waif remained
in rear of the party, the former arguing that it was the post of danger,
and, on this consideration, though she seemed unwilling to lag behind
the others, insisting that the girl should bear him company.
Waif was anxious and preoccupied, strangely unlike herself. The black
Vardo-mescro had not failed to notice the change, nor was it in his
nature to keep silence when aroused. Looking suspiciously in his
companion's face, he sang a scrap of an old Romany ditty, that may be
thus rendered:--
"In the month of flowers, between the showers, the cuckoo sings
all day.
But the maiden weeps, while the Romany sleeps, and the Gorgio
gallops away.
Too soon, too soon, they are fading in June, and the cuckoo has
changed his say.
And the maiden is dead, and the spring-time fled, when the Gorgio
galloped away."
His voice was rich and mellow, yet something of harshness in its tones
betrayed the discord within.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Waif, her black eyebrows coming down
in an angry scowl over her black eyes.
"You can interpret it for yourself," was his answer. "Thyra, do you
remember the red Quantock hills, and the deep leafy coombes in the
'broom-pickers' country' long ago?"
He spoke in Romany, and she replied in the same language. It stung him
to observe that she could not express herself so readily in their own
gipsy tongue as in that of the Gentiles, with whom she had passed so
many years.
"I remember," said Waif, carelessly. "What of that?"
He looked hurt, and a fierce gleam shot from his dark eyes.
"There was a little gipsy-girl on those red hills," he answered, "who
came to her gipsy-boy for every earthly thing she wanted, from a bunch
of violets in the ditch to a bit of mistletoe on the topmost branch of
the old oak-tree, who stretched her little arms for him to carry her on
the tramp when she was tired, who stroked his face every morning at
sunrise, and kissed him every night when he lay down to sleep.
"For that little lass the gipsy-boy would have shed all the blood in his
young body, and he was but ten years old and five--not yet a man, nor
grown to man's stature, but a man in heart, and a giant in his love for
the comely, delicate gipsy-girl. So he begged hard of father and mother,
uncles and aunts, and he went into her tent with a gift, and prayed of
her people that they would give him Thyra to be his wife. They promised,
Thyra, do you remember? They promised. They were of the old black race,
and the promise of a Lovel is like the oath of a Stanley or a Lee."
"It was so long ago!" pleaded Waif, in rather a trembling voice. "You
were always very good to me, Fin. I won't deny it; but it was so long
ago!"
His face softened; his voice was very sad and tender, while he repeated
her words.
"So long ago! and yet I see it as clear as if it had been but
yesterday--the fire smouldering at the tent-door--the moonshine,
silver-white on the Severn Sea--the old grandfather sitting within,
shaping a wooden peg with his knife--and my little wife crouching in the
corner with her black eyes wide open, like the red hind's calf I had
noosed a week before in Cloutsham Ball. Long ago! Yes, Thyra, it _is_
long ago; and every day that has gone by, every night that I have seen
it all again in my dreams, scores and brands it deeper and deeper in my
true gipsy heart. There is no 'long ago' for you and me, Thyra. We have
been one ever since that night when you were promised me by the comely
Lovels over the camp-fire. Nothing but death can part us now. My sweet
lass, I will be kind and true, for mine you surely are, and always will
be."
To a woman whose heart was still in her own keeping, there would have
been something inexpressibly touching in the tender glance of those
eyes, naturally so fierce and keen; in the gentle tones of that voice,
usually so hard, imperious, and clear. She could not but contrast the
gipsy's absorbing devotion with John Garnet's joyous, good-humoured
carelessness, and shuddered to think how she loved the first and how she
was beloved by the second! She temporised--she prevaricated--she said
one thing and meant another. Was she not a woman, though a gipsy?
"There would be time enough," she protested, "to consider all these
matters when the tribe moved farther West to take up their winter
quarters in the 'wrestlers' country,' amongst the Cornish tors and
valleys. There was much to be done first; tents to strike, a long
journey to be made, to-night's job to be effaced by a speedy change of
quarters; and you know as well as I do, Fin," she added, smiling sweetly
in his face, "that a storm is brewing down in the West where we are
bound, and the same wind that brings the Kaulo-chiriclo--the blackbird,
as the Gorgios call him--back to his own nest, will blow many a
'balanser' of good red gold into the pockets of the Romany lad who runs
his errands. For my part, I hope with all my heart he'll win!"
"What matters it to us?" he replied. "Let the Gorgios fight it out among
themselves, and cut each other's throats for a name, like fools as they
are! King George, or King Charles, or King James, none of them will put
a fowl in the Romany's kettle, nor a broad piece in his palm, but for
service rendered and risk run. We must help ourselves, Thyra, take what
we want, and keep all we can. Our hand may well be against every man,
for is not every man's hand against us? For ages we have been a race
apart, and we must continue so for ever. No Romany lad may wed with the
noblest lady of the Gorgios; and for the Romany lass who listens to love
in another tongue, we do not shame her before our people, but we conceal
her, Thyra, we hide her away, where neither father nor mother, uncle nor
aunt, Romany nor Gorgio, shall ever find her again!"
His voice had grown thick and hoarse, while drops of sweat stood on the
tawny face, now turned to ashen grey. Waif trembled like a leaf.
"I know it," she said; "our people never forgive, Fin, and they never
forget."
There was a ring of pride in the last sentence--tribute to the absent
lover, whom even now she could not bring herself to wish she might put
out of her mind.
They walked on in silence. She had taken his bundle, and thus laden
carried it with a step as free and untiring as his own. They were half a
mile behind the other gipsies, pacing side by side in the moonshine over
the lonely down. A light twinkled from a solitary farm many a mile away,
and once only was the stillness broken by the honest bark of a
sheep-dog. The calm pure air, the sweet summer night, the quiet, the
expanse, were all suggestive of those dreams which have so large a
portion in life's reality. Her thoughts were far away beyond that
western horizon, with the grey horse and its rider. She absolutely
started when her companion's voice roused her from the abstraction in
which she was plunged.
He had been watching her narrowly. Fin Cooper was as dexterous a gipsy
as ever stalked a red-deer, noosed a hare, or swung a kettle. Versed in
the lore, as in the malpractices of his people, he knew how to tell
fortunes by cards or palmistry; to interpret the _patrin_ of his
comrades, the signs of the zodiac, even the stars of heaven; but he
could not read a woman's heart. This was the last moment he should have
chosen to inculcate a lesson of fidelity and obedience on his promised
wife.
"Thyra," said he, while she turned on him a pale and dreamy face, "did
your people never tell you the story of Mary Lee?"
"I have heard something about her," she stammered, with a frightened
look. "She died, didn't she? or was lost? I--I forget the rights of it."
"I will tell it you now," said he. "Take every word to heart, Thyra, and
forget rather the mother that bore you, than Mary Lee's fault and its
punishment.
"She was a beautiful gipsy-girl, sister, such another as yourself, with
eyes like stars, and a voice to coax the bird off a tree. She lived with
her grandam, old Mother Lee, and her uncle, a stern, thick-set Romany,
who seldom spoke, and never smiled. They said he killed a squire's
keeper before their tribe came south out of the potato-country, and knew
Norwich gaol, inside and out, as well as I know the knife in my belt.
Many a time, when I was a little lad, I've seen Mary lifting the kettle
off its hook before their tent; and if it hadn't been for _you_, Thyra,
and the word of the Lovels, I should have thought her the likeliest lass
that ever put a bodkin in a knot of black hair; so did a good many
more--Stanleys, Hearnes, Coopers; she might have had the pick of them,
besides the best of her own tribe, and the comeliest of the comely
Lovels to boot. I've seen many a good round fought, aye, and knives
drawn, too, for a chance word from Mary Lee.
"And she wouldn't so much as throw away a look on the best of us! When
Jack Marshall beat the Gorgio light-weight in fifty minutes, and brought
her the battle-money before he had scarce washed his face or pulled his
shirt on, she called him a fighting blackguard for his pains. We said in
the tents that, gipsy or gentile, the man wasn't born yet who could put
the charm on Mary Lee.
"She did little work at home; and, except for lifting a kettle, or
setting a tent-peg, kept her hands as clean as a lady's; but she went
out by herself to fairs and races, _dukkering_ for the Gorgios and those
who tell fortunes to the gentlefolks, and came back with gold in both
hands. The old grandmother's kettle was never empty, and they gave her
plenty of liberty to do what she liked. Sometimes she would stay away a
month at a time.
"One summer afternoon a little boy, who had been stealing nuts in a wood
a mile or two from the camp, came back with a gentleman's riding-glove
that he had picked up amongst the hazels. Mary laughed when she saw it,
and bought it of the child for a crooked sixpence and a whistle. A week
after, when they asked her what she had done with the glove, she said it
was lost. That set some of our people thinking.
"Then she went off again about harvest; and after she'd been gone a
week, Barney Smith came into the camp, with a strange story that he had
seen a Gorgio lady, the living image of Mary Lee, sitting at an open
window in 'the book-fellows' town' at the time of Oxford Races. Barney
was doing a little business there with a pedlar's box on his own
account. Though it was a hundred miles off, he came back directly; but
when he talked of the pearls and satins she wore, and the black spots on
her face, with powder in her hair, we all said Barney must have been
drunk or dreaming. That night her uncle sat up to put new soles on his
shoes, and next morning he left the camp at daybreak.
"I was but a lad, Thyra, and as busy as a squirrel. When a week passed,
then a month, and still no tidings came of Mary Lee, I went across the
Vinney Ridge to the tents of her people and watched. We were lingering
in the 'swine-herds' country,' among the deer in the New Forest, and
good times we had, I can tell you, with fat venison in the kettles, and
firewood for the cutting. I harboured a buck in Bolderwood once, and
watched him for seven hours on a stretch. I've watched longer than that
for _you_, Thyra. I watched nearly as long on behalf of Mary Lee.
"The moon had gone down, and the false dawn was peeping between the
stems of the old oaks, when I caught sight of a square, thick figure
threading the track among the trees that led to the Lees' camp. I leaped
up, and took him by the hand. He was trembling all over. 'You are
welcome back, Uncle Ryley,' says I. 'You have made a long journey,
uncle; have you returned empty-handed, or did you find what you went to
seek?'
"'The shoes are worn from my feet, brother,' was his answer. 'For three
days and three nights I have gone without food or rest; but I took what
I wanted, Fin, and I can hold up my head once more among my people.'
"'Did you hear any news of Mary?' was my next question, and my heart
rose to my mouth while I asked it, for he was a strong, fierce man, who
would strike with fist or steel if he was angered, and never give you a
chance. I could scarce believe it was Ryley Lee who answered in that
weak, low voice, with a cheek that had turned grey, like the ashes of a
wood-fire in the dim morning light.
"'It is well with her,' was all he said, 'but you will see Mary in our
tents no more.'
"'She is dead!' burst from my lips, for there seemed a smell of blood in
my nostrils, and the pale streaks of dawn grew crimson between the
trees.
"'It is well with her,' he repeated, turning from me into his tent.
'Mary Lee has left her people--dead or alive we shall see her no more.'
"Then I knew she had paid the price it costs the Romany maiden who loves
a Gorgio too well!"
Waif had changed colour more than once during the above recital; but
though she looked very pale now, there was a firm, hard expression in
her face that denoted some fixed purpose no consideration should set
aside.
"'The hawk does not mate with the barn-door fowl,' said she, 'and the
Romany chal marries with the Romany chi, for surely we are one people;
but this affects neither you nor me, Fin. If gipsies cannot trust each
other, how shall we hold our own against the Gentiles? Mary Lee was a
good-for-nothing hussey; Uncle Ryley a cruel, blood-thirsty monster; and
here we are at the camp. Take your bundle, Fin, I've carried it till I'm
tired. Yes; I'll shake hands with you. Good-night.'"
Extricating herself impatiently from the embrace of her affianced
husband, who succeeded, however, in pressing his lips against her brow,
she disappeared within one of the tents, leaving Fin Cooper outside, a
prey to contending feelings, among which jealousy and suspicion were in
the ascendant. He loved the girl: of that he was quite sure, and in such
a character, love is a fearful motive power for good or evil. It
possesses also a keen instinct of reciprocity, not to be deceived, and
few conditions are more pitiable than that of a strong wilful
temperament, persuading itself, against its own convictions, that it is
not exchanging gold for silver, that the ship which carries its whole
freight is not sinking hourly beneath its feet.
The gipsy would have been angered, even to baring of steel, by any
comrade who had warned him of that which his heart began to tell him too
plainly, though he dared not admit it to himself, who had hinted that
Thyra loved another, and that other, one of the forbidden race--which,
for all his Romany pride and Romany prejudices, he could not but
acknowledge superior in every respect to his own. But he knew it,
nevertheless, and only waited an opportunity to avenge himself on the
rival, whom he had identified, almost to certainty, with John Garnet,
_alias_ Galloping Jack, the highwayman. Even now, he thought it might
not be too late to detach Waif from her unworthy and impossible
attachment. Far into the night Fin Cooper tossed and turned from side to
side, restless and sleepless, because of his wrongs, his memories, and
his feverish longing to have his hand on John Garnet's throat.
Waif, too, was uneasy and wakeful. She had not listened to the tale of
Mary Lee, without accepting its moral for a warning to herself. Well she
knew that in the bloody code of her people, to love a Gorgio was an
offence punished by death. And she loved a Gorgio! Aye, loved him, as
she thought with a thrill of pride, essentially womanly in the exquisite
pleasure it evoked, the more deeply and dearly for the penalty. No
pale-faced girl could care for him like that! When the time came, she
would give him her life, as she had given him her love, without a murmur
or a reproach.
Perhaps, at that moment, he was looking at the very star on which her
eyes were fixed, as it twinkled through the gaps in her brown
weather-worn tent. Perhaps, who knows, in another life, to be spent up
there amongst those stars, they might find themselves together? and so
Waif's dark eyes closed in that other life, on which we enter every
night, and the girl sank into a peaceful sleep, dreaming calmly of her
love.