I CONVERSE WITH THE GIPSY
A few days of sultry oppressive calm were followed by a violent storm.
I was sitting with Alice Lee in her cabin when her mother entered and
said:
‘Such a marvellous sunset everybody declares never was seen. Go and
look at it, Agnes; I will sit with Alice.’
‘I will go with Agnes,’ said her daughter.
She arose, but her cough obliged her to sit. When her cough had ceased
she arose again, but slowly and painfully, with a heart-rending
suggestion of weakness and exhaustion in her whole manner.
‘Do not go on deck, dearest,’ said her mother; ‘the cabin steps will
try you.’
‘Oh, mother! let me go and let me go quickly,’ exclaimed Alice. ‘I love
to look at a glorious sunset, and the sunsets here are soon gone.’
Mrs. Lee gazed at her child with a pleading face, but made no further
objection, and the three of us went on deck, the girl supported by her
mother and me. Twice whilst ascending the short flight of cabin stairs
Alice paused for breath. There is much that I have cause to remember
in this time, but nothing do I see after all these years more clearly
than the anguish in the mother’s eyes, as she looked at me on her child
pausing for a second time during the ascent of that short flight of
steps.
The sunset was indeed a magnificent spectacle. The western sky seemed
in flames. Deep purple lines of cloud barred the fiery splendour, and
the heavens resembled a mighty furnace burning in a grate that half
filled the sky. In the immediate neighbourhood of the sun the light
round about was blood red, but on either hand were vast lovely spaces
resembling lagoons of silver and gold; spikes of glory shot up to the
zenith, and the countless lines of them resembled giant javelins of
flame arrested in their flight, with their barbed ends glowing like
golden stars in the dimly crimsoned blue over our ship’s mast-heads.
The ship’s sails reflected the light, and she seemed to be clothed
in cloth of gold. Her rigging and masts were veined with gold, and
our glass and brass-work blazed with rubies. The swell of the sea was
flowing from the west, and the distant glory came running to us from
brow to brow, steeping in splendour to the ship and washing the side
of her with liquid crimson light. The calm was as profound as ever it
had been; there was not a breath of air to be felt save the eddying
of draughts from the swinging of the lower sails. The sea floated in
undulations of quicksilver into the east, where, on the dark-blue
horizon, there hung a red gleam of sail, showing like a little tongue
of fire in the far ocean recess. I placed a chair for Alice, but she
refused to sit.
‘We will return to the cabin in a few minutes,’ she exclaimed, and she
stood looking into the west, holding by her mother’s and my arm.
She had put on a veil, but she lifted it to look at the sun, and
the western splendour lay full on her face as I gazed at her. Never
so painfully thin and white had she appeared as she now did in this
searching crimson glare. But an expression rested upon her countenance
that entirely dominated all physical features of it; it was, indeed,
to my mind then, and it still is as I think of it whilst I write, a
revelation of angelic spiritual beauty. You would have thought her
hallowed, empowered by Heaven to witness the invisible, for there was
a look in her gaze, whilst she directed her sight into the west, that
would have made you think she saw something beyond and behind those
flaming gates of the sinking sun, that filled her soul with joy. Her
expression was full of solemn delight, and her smile was like that
which glorifies the face of one who, in dying, has beheld a vision of
the Heaven of God and of the angels opening to him. Such a smile, I
have read, sweetened the mouth of the poet Pope in his dying hour. Many
who have stood beside the bed of death will know the entranced look.
Captain Ladmore, who was walking the deck close by, approached us.
‘That is a very noble sunset,’ said he.
‘Noble indeed!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee. ‘I have seen many splendid sunsets
in Newcastle, and there is no part of the world where you will witness
grander sunsets, but never did I see such a sublime picture as yon.’
‘Sunsets of that sort are rare in the Tropics,’ said the captain. ‘It
is noble, as I have said, but I do not like the look of it. It has a
peculiar, smoky, thunderous appearance, which in plain English means
change of weather.’
‘And I hope the change will soon come,’ said Mrs. Lee, looking from
her daughter to Captain Ladmore, as though she would have him read her
thoughts; ‘these prolonged calms are cruelly trying in this part of the
world.’
‘God knows I do not love prolonged calms in any part of the world,’
said Captain Ladmore.
‘The captains who visited my husband used to have much to tell about
the calms down here,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘They called them the Doldrums.’
Captain Ladmore smiled. ‘I assure you,’ she continued, ‘I would rather
meet with a fierce hurricane, to drive us into cool weather at the risk
of our lives, than suffer a continuance of such a calm as this.’
Alice and I watched the sunset whilst Captain Ladmore and Mrs. Lee
discoursed upon the weather. Even whilst we looked dark smoke-like
masses of cloud had gathered about the huge rayless orb, and the
splendour went out on a sudden in a sort of dingy flare, that floated
in rusty streaks up into the darkling sky, and swiftly vanished as
though they had been the luminous trails of rockets. I looked at Alice.
The last faint gleam of red touched her face, and then the rapid tropic
twilight swept westward in an eclipse, and the girl in it grew wan as a
phantom. I felt her shiver.
‘Let us return to the cabin,’ said I, and, supported by her mother and
me, she descended. It was the last time that Alice Lee was ever on deck.
The night fulfilled the stormy threat of the sunset. It came on to blow
fresh shortly after the night had settled down upon the sea. The stars
were shrouded by flying clouds, but the moon glanced through the many
rifts of the winging shadows, and when I took a peep at the ocean at
half-past nine that night it was already a wild scene of stormy ocean
rolling in snow, the wilder for the flash of the darting moonbeam.
At ten o’clock it was blowing very hard indeed, and by midnight the
gale had risen to half a hurricane, with much lightning and thunder. I
cannot remember whether or not the wind blew fair for our course; the
gale was so heavy that the captain was forced to heave the ship to,
and all through the night we lay in the trough rolling and pitching
furiously, with no more canvas set than served to keep the vessel in
the situation the captain had put her into.
I got no sleep that night. The noises within and without were
distracting. The steerage passengers took fright, believed the ship was
going down, lighted the lantern and sat at the table--that is to say,
most of the men and two or three of the women; and then, by-and-by,
taking courage perhaps from the discovery that the ship continued to
swim, though still not being easy enough in their minds to return to
their beds, they produced a bottle of spirits and drank and made merry
after their fashion, and the noise of their singing was more dreadful
to hear than the sound of the storm. Nobody interfered with them;
probably nobody with power to control them knew that they were awake
and drinking and singing.
So, as I have said, I got no sleep that night. As the ship lifted the
cabin window out of the foaming water the black interior in which I
lay would be dazzlingly illuminated by violet lightning striking on
the snow-like froth upon the glass of the port-hole. The sight was
beautiful and terrifying. The port-hole looked like a large violet eye
winking in the blackness. I could trace the crystals of the brine and
the froth upon the glass as the window came soaring out of the seething
foam into the fiery flash from the clouds. The flaming, blinking disk
was as if some huge sea monster clung to the side of the ship, trying
to peer into my cabin and unable to keep his eye steady at the aperture.
It blew hard all next day; too hard to allow the ship to resume her
course. The captain said it was strange weather to encounter near the
equator. He had crossed the line I know not how many times; but, said
he, never had he fallen in with such weather hereabouts. We were all
willing, however, to endure the stormy buffeting for the sake of the
respite it gave us from the overpowering heat. The gale was a hot
wind, but the spray that clouded cooled it as the dew refreshes the
breath of the Indian night. The sensation of putting one’s head into
the companion-way and feeling the sweep of the spray-laden blast was
delicious after the motionless atmosphere that had pressed like hot
metal against the cheek and brow.
Alice Lee seemed to rally. The saloon was full of air that rushed
through it in draughts purposely contrived by leaving open one of the
doors which conducted to the quarter-deck; the breeze filled the girl’s
berth, and she appeared to revive in it as a languishing flower lifts
its head and sweetens its fragrance when watered.
‘Sometimes I think--sometimes I _dare_ believe, Agnes,’ poor Mrs. Lee
said to me, ‘that if Alice has strength enough to survive the ordeal
of the horrid equinoctial belt she will recover. Did not you fancy she
was looking much better this morning? Her eyes have not the bright,
glassy appearance which shocked me every time I looked at her. And did
not you notice that she breathed with less labour, and that the red of
her lips was more lifelike and healthy? Oh, my dear! God may yet hear
my prayers, and my heart is seldom silent. If this gale will blow us
to the south of the equator and drive us into cooler latitudes I shall
live in hope. But now we are stationary, the ship is merely tossing up
and down and making no real progress, and my dread is that when the
weather breaks the calm will come again and leave us roasting.’
These observations Mrs. Lee addressed to me in the saloon as I was
passing through it on my way from Alice’s cabin to my own berth; her
words were running in my head when, after having occupied myself for
a short time in my berth, I was returning to Alice. As I cautiously
passed through the steerage, carefully providing against a dangerous
fall by keeping my arms outstretched and touching or holding whatever
was nearest to me, I saw Mr. McEwan standing at the foot of the stairs
grasping the thick brass banisters, and peering about as though in
search of somebody.
‘Seen Mrs. Richards?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I answered.
‘Mrs. Richards,’ said he, ‘answers to the descreeption of a
midshipman’s chest; everything is on top and nothing at bottom. She’s
always aboot--she’s to be seen everywhere--and is never to be found.
And how are you this roaring day?’
I told him that I was pretty well.
‘D’ye know that you’ll be getting an eyebrow yet?’ said he.
‘I hope so,’ I said.
‘Gi’ us hold of your arm,’ said he; ‘I’ll take ye above.’
Without giving him hold of my arm, as he called it, I said, ‘The
improvement in Miss Lee has greatly heartened her poor mother. Her hope
is----’ and I told him what Mrs. Lee’s hope was.
‘Ye’re no talker, I trust,’ said he.
‘I can keep a secret,’ I replied.
He put one hand on my shoulder, swinging by the other hand that grasped
the banister: ‘Your poor friend, Alice Lee,’ he exclaimed, ‘will not
live another fortnight.’
‘Oh, do not say so!’ I cried.
‘One lung is useless; the other is so hampered that it scarcely enables
her to pump in air enough for life. How can she live? And why are
these puir creatures--men and women--girls and boys--brought to sea
to die, that they may be thrown overboard in mid-ocean? Of course
no cruelty is meant--not likely that any cruelty can be meant; but
what greater cruelty would ye have people guilty of than to wait till
a puir consumptive creature is past all hope, and then bring her to
sea in a ship that is never steady, with food that she may not fancy
but that they cannot replace by what she can eat, subjecting her to
twenty climates in a month when one climate may prove too much for
her? I am very sorry to say that medical men are much too much given
to recommending sea voyages for consumptive people when they know
that a sea voyage can do them no good. But the doctor comes to the
end of his tether: “I canna save this patient,” says he to himself,
and so he sends the puir thing on a voyage. Mark you now the rolling
of this ship. D’ye feel how she heaves and bounds, and d’ye hear how
the wind roars in the rigging, and how all those bulkheads yawl and
squall as though there was another massacre of the innocents going on
down here? Yes, ye hear it and ye feel it: ask yourself then if your
friend Alice Lee should be here instead of ashore--here instead of
lying in a pleasant room upon a steady couch, with every comfort which
her mother’s purse could command within reach of her? She’ll not live
another fortnight, I tell you. Where’s that d----d Mrs. Richards? No
matter. Gi’ us hold of your arm, that I may save ye a broken neck.’
His language so disquieted me that when I had gained the saloon I was
without heart to immediately enter Alice’s berth. Mr. McEwan was a
man of intelligence, and I might be sure he knew what he was talking
about. His roughness, amounting almost to brutality, seemed like the
strong language and violent demeanour of that fine creation Matthew
Bramble, assumed to conceal a thoroughly kind heart; and the note of
true sympathetic feeling which ran through his rough words and harsh
pronunciation accentuated his prediction to my fears and to my love for
Alice Lee.
I seated myself on a sofa at the end of the saloon, where I found
a book, which I placed on my lap and feigned to read. A few of the
passengers sat here and there; most of the people were in their berths,
and those who were present were clearly in no humour for conversation.
Half an hour passed in this way, by which time I had somewhat settled
my spirits; and, walking with exceeding caution to the Lees’ berth, I
lightly tapped upon the door of it.
The door was opened by Mrs. Lee, who put her finger upon her lip. The
gesture signified that Alice was sleeping, and, giving her a nod, I
passed on to the forward end of the saloon that I might obtain a view
of the rolling, straining ship, and the huge frothing sea rushing
from under her. I stepped out into a recess on the quarter-deck formed
by the projection of the cabin on either hand, and by the overshot
extremity of the poop-deck. This recess provided a shelter from the
gale which was howling over the bulwarks, and splitting in ringing,
piercing whistlings upon the complicated shrouds and gear; and in a
corner of it--of the recess I mean--squatted the gipsy woman. She was
smoking a little sooty clay pipe, the bowl of which was upside down.
She was alone; a few of the emigrants were crouching on the lee or
sheltered side of the house, called the galley, in which the food
was cooked; otherwise the decks were deserted. As the ship rolled to
the wind the huge seas in masses of cloudy grey water charged at her
as though they must thunder in mighty falls over the rail; but the
noble fabric rose with dry decks and screaming rigging to the wash of
each foaming mountain, letting it run away from under her in a huge
streaming sheet of white, and the wild, expiring foam hissed into the
gale with the noise of an electric storm of wet and hail falling upon a
calm sea.
The gipsy woman pulled the pipe out of her mouth and gave me a nod,
with a wide grin of her white, strong teeth. Though her appearance was
sufficiently fierce and disagreeable to occasion an instinctive recoil,
yet, remembering what she had told me, and how what she had told me
seemed confirmed by some strong secret instinct or feeling within me,
and by Mrs. Lee’s conjectures or suspicions, I resolved to talk with
her awhile; and, giving her a nod by way of returning her salutation,
I made my way to her side, motioning with my hand that she should keep
seated; and when I had drawn close enough to hear her speak I crouched
against the saloon front to prevent myself from being thrown.
‘Do you want some more of your fortune told, my pretty lady?’ said the
woman, knocking the ashes out of her pipe and putting it in her pocket.
‘No, I wish to hear no more of my fortune,’ I answered.
‘I am glad of that,’ said she; ‘I have told you all I know, and if I
was to tell you more I should have to speak what is not the truth.’
‘I do not want any more of my fortune told,’ said I, ‘but I wish to
ask you certain questions, which I dare say you will answer,’ and as I
spoke I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my purse, from which I
extracted a shilling.
She took the shilling, and looked at the purse and said, speaking
naturally--that is to say, without the drawling and whining tone which
she had employed when addressing the passengers:
‘Is that your purse, lady?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘Did it come with you into the ship?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me look at it, lady.’
She turned it about, examined the money in it, looked at the purse
again, then returning it to me exclaimed, ‘This is English.’
‘How do you know?’ said I.
‘I know many things,’ she answered, ‘and one thing I know is that that
purse was made in England.’
‘Well!’ said I, finding that she did not proceed in her speech.
‘Well!’ she echoed. ‘What would you think, lady, if you was to meet
out upon the sea with a woman who did not know from what country she
came, and who had in her pocket a purse made in England with English
money in it, and who likewise had in her mouth good English such as you
speaks? What would you think?’
‘I would think that she was English,’ said I.
‘And you are English,’ she exclaimed.
‘It does not help me to know that,’ cried I.
She stared into my eyes, but made no answer.
‘When you told my fortune,’ said I, ‘you said that I was a married
woman. Since then feelings and fancies have visited me which make me
believe you to be right. Now I want to know how you guessed that I was
a married woman.’
‘We do not guess; we see,’ answered the gipsy.
‘Pray do not talk nonsense, but converse with me without any idea of
fortune-telling. You looked at me, and knew me to be married woman.
Plenty of others had looked at me, but none declared me to be a married
woman, saving you. Tell me, then, what you saw in me to enable you to
decide that I was a married woman?’
‘You are not only a married woman,’ she answered; ‘you are also a
mother.’
‘How can you tell that by looking at me?’ I cried passionately.
She smiled, but with nothing of her former cringing and fawning
expression. Her brilliant eyes seemed to flame into mine as she fixed
them upon me.
‘Why should I teach you my art?’ said she. ‘But even if I was willing
to teach it I could not make you understand it. There are some who can
see clear writing upon what would be white paper to you, and to the
likes of you, lady. There is that in your face which makes me know what
I tell you. But look at yourself in a looking-glass whilst I stand
behind and point to what I see, and what will you behold? Nothing but
your face, just as it is.’
‘And you can read that I am a mother?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she answered, with such energy as made the nod she gave
fierce.
‘Tell me all that you can read!’ said I, questioning her not, believe
me, because I was credulous enough to conceive that she was anything
more than a commonplace lying fortune-teller, but because I hoped she
would be able to say something to strengthen my own secret growing
fancies and feelings.
‘You want me to tell you your fortune again, lady,’ said she; ‘but have
I not said I must invent if I speaks more?’
‘I do not want my fortune told. I wish you to make certain guesses. You
are shrewd, and a single guess of yours might throw a light upon my
mind; and if you can give me back my memory, whatever it may be in my
power to do for you shall be done.’
She glared at me as though she was used to promises and disdained them.
‘What shall I _guess_, lady?’ she asked.
‘If I have children, what will be their age?’
She stared close into my face with so fierce and piercing a gaze that
nothing but the _excitement_ of my curiosity hindered me from rising
and widening my distance from her.
‘What will be their age? What will be their age?’ she muttered, passing
her hand over my face without touching it; ‘why, whether they are
living or dead, they will be young, and the youngest will be an infant
that is not eighteen months old, and the eldest will not yet be six.
You will find that right.’
She watched me with a surly smile whilst I turned my eyes inwards and
underwent one of my old terrible, dark conflicts. Presently I raised my
eyes to her face, and said, ‘How many children do you guess I have?’
‘Guess! Guess!’ she answered; then, once more advancing her face close
to mine, she looked at me, drew back, and said, ‘You have two children.’
‘If I am a married woman, why do I not wear a wedding ring?’ said I,
not choosing to venture the word _guess_ again.
‘That was a part of the fortune I told you,’ said she. ‘There are
thieves at sea as there are thieves on land. Your rings were stolen.’
‘Why did the thieves leave my purse?’
‘Was I there to see?’ she exclaimed, hunching her shoulders. ‘Why did
they not steal your clothes? Why did not they take your life? You are a
married woman, I say, and you should wear a wedding ring according to
the custom of your country; and if you have not a ring it is because it
was stolen.’
She spoke with as much emphasis as though she positively _knew_ that
what she stated was the fact. I was influenced by her; I could not help
myself. Had she possessed a plain English face my good sense must have
ridiculed her pretensions as a sibyl, even though she spoke things
which seemed to find a dull, hollow echo in the dark recesses of my
mind; but her black, eastern eyes were full of fire, and eager and
piercing, with a sort of wild intelligence that was scarcely human; her
speech took weight and significance from the strange, fierce, repellent
expression of her face; there was a kind of fascination too in her very
adjacency, in her manner of staring into my eyes, in her way of passing
her hand over my face.
‘If I have a husband and children, shall I ever see them again?’ said I.
‘You forget what I said when I told you your fortune, lady,’ she
answered.
‘You spoke without knowing,’ said I. ‘You have a set of tales by heart,
and you call them fortunes.’
‘I am a gipsy and can read _baji_,’ cried the woman, with her eyes
beginning to flash. ‘Many fortunes have I told in my time and many
prophecies have I uttered which have come to pass. Do not I read what
you are? When you were walking the deck with the lady and I was sitting
there,’ said she, pointing, ‘I looked at you and said to myself, “Let
me see into her eyes and let me look at her hand, and I will tell her
much that is not in her memory.”’
‘Are you a mother?’ said I.
‘I have had my bantlings,’ she answered sullenly. ‘They went home long
ago.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They lies dead and buried,’ said she. ‘What other homes have us poor
gipsies and our bantlings got but the grave? The likes of you goes to
Heaven, lady; the likes of us don’t carry our thoughts so high. I wish
I was at home with my bantlings, I do, instead of living to be a lone
woman crossing the seas----’ Her voice failed her; and, pulling her
little black pipe from her pocket, she dashed it on to the deck with a
face of fury, and then, with a harsh and hideous voice, began to sing
some strange gibberish, which, to judge by the expression in her eye,
might very well have been a string of curses.
Her looks and behaviour alarmed me; and, without exchanging another
word with her, I rose and re-entered the saloon.