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's 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.