CHAPTER V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE... IT WAS SO DONE"
There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed theirgaze upon the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passedsuddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterdaythis will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since thenshe had been passed through the tests which her own soul, orDestiny, had set for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident andunderstanding, if tremulous. In days gone by her adventurous, lonelyspirit had driven her to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian ponythrough the streets of Manitou and out on the North Trail, or souththrough coulees, or westward into the great woods, looking for what: shenever found.
Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there withpleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folkcall its own 'tan', its home, though it be but home of each day's trek.That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new ifuncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard.
The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance ofan unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hoursago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, hadtaught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taughther even more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and herfather's uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick,fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistfulwaywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities inhim which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she hademerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had foundherself.
Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman's world wherethe eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues inthe future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind backagain to a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim,distant time when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the fieldor the vale, in the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge ofharvest-fields; when she was carried in strong arms, or sat in theshelter of a man's breast as a horse cantered down a glade, under anardent sky, amid blooms never seen since then. She was whisked backinto that distant, unreal world by the figure of a young Romany standingbeside a spruce-tree, and by her father's voice which uttered thestartling words: "He says he is your husband!"
Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard thepreposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the junglebeing called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken.
"Since when were you my husband?" she asked Jethro Fawe composedly.
Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a peopleto whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, itsstimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual.
His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. "Seventeen yearsago by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done," hereplied stubbornly. "You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and asyou will remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the cityof Starzke three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills.It was in the morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. Ithappened before my father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you andI were sealed before our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which myfather gave to your father, you--"
With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, shelooked him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her facewhich forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily.
He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would haveregulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composureembarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but hehad rather more determination than most of his class and people, and hisspirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who washis own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred timesjustified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge andbond of so many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and hehad risked that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, hadthe bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's and he had thelogic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with thegirl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was askingmore than a Romany lass to share his 'tan', to go wandering from Romanypeople to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Drusehad passed away. Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there wasthat queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which wasGorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering distance between them.
As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily,the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years hadfilmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river andhigh crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, anda lad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, andgalloping and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and womengathered about a tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, inher faint remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space ofblankness, and then a starting up from a bed, and looking out of thedoors of a tent, where many people gathered about a great fire, whoseflames licked the heavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standingalone with a Romany wagon full of its household things.
As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become livingmemories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that thesefleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and thedeath of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him inthat last ritual of Romany farewell to the dead.
She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for threethousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting!Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to bear heraway into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded andgraded above the lowest vagabondage.
Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage,the passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtiveevasion of the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and herfather moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but notby suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization andflexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in thisexpansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have beenaccomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. Shehad had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deepwoods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees,the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communingsof stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of themarket-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms andwild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts,the wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies ofsome lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlightafter, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinkingblithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had herewithout anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, itsdiscordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community.
Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the facesof Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drewall hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy orChristo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang tothe harpist's strings:
"Cold blows the wind over my true love, Cold blow the drops of rain; I never, never had but one sweetheart; In the green wood he was slain,"
and to cries of "Again! 'Ay bor'! again!" the blackeyed lover,hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and warwith the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania toYetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver:
"Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to
me--"
The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawewould not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in aGorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still aGorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best buta man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and thewood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now apart of--organized, collective existence, the life of the house-dweller,not the life of the 'tan', the 'koppa', and the 'vellgouris'--the tent,the blanket, and the fair.
"I was never bought, and I was never sold," she said to Jethro Fawe atlast "not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Lookat me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so.Look at me well, Jethro Fawe."
"You are mine--it was so done seventeen years ago," he answered,defiantly and tenaciously.
"I was three years old, seventeen years ago," she returned quietly,but her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as thoughtheir light hurt him.
"It is no matter," he rejoined. "It is the way of our people. It hasbeen so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing ormoving on."
In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer.
"Rogue, what have you to say of such things?" he growled. "I am the headof all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and by last,if I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, myRomany 'chal'."
His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from herfather--"Hush!" she said maliciously, "he has come a long way fornaught. It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. It is hiscapital. He has only breath and beauty."
Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not haveshrunk before her father's violence. Biting rejection was in her tones.He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romanyin her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept theRomany outside the social pale.
"Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that she could laugh at hishandsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejectedhis claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been inthat of Gabriel Druse.
"I have come a long way for a good thing," he said with head thrownback, "and if 'breath and beauty' is all I bring, yet that is becausewhat my father had in his purse has made my 'Ry' rich"--he flung a handout towards Gabriel Druse--"and because I keep to the open road asmy father did, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and thefatness of the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had Ian ache or a pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you havethe gold also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romanylaw, and it will come to me, by long and by last."
Fleda turned quietly to her father. "If it is true concerning the threethousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what hewould never get by what he is."
The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. "He came empty, he shallgo empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. Andlet him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which toreturn. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all theworld from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; andmy will shall be done."
He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shutin anger. "This much I will do," he added. "When I return to my peopleI will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By theplace called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only."
"When?" asked the young man eagerly.
Gabriel Druse's eyes flashed. "When I return as I will to return." Thensuddenly he added: "This much I will say, it shall be before--"
The girl stopped him. "It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel tobe bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with anyRomany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here bythe River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own;I myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be aRomany."
The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look,submerging the sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed tospeak, but faltered. At last, with an air, he said:
"For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, andI hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In mythoughts I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day.I saw you as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in thenest; and the thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I sawyou again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips wouldbe sweeter--and so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. Iwas ever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you were when Romanylaw made you mine for ever. I looked forward to the day when I wouldtake you to my 'tan', and there we two would--"
A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded,leaving it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him.
"They should have called you Ananias," she said scornfully. "My fatherhas called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard,but I know--I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been trueto none. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgiofly-aways would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world."
At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as sheproceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up againwith sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He had gonetoo far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, but herinstinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception had piercedto the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded than wascommon among his fellows, made possible by his position as the successorto her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had dissipated.
He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing whichmight at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now thathis adventure was in grave peril.
He laughed in his anger. "Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass?One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That's theway it goes! The old song tells the end of it:
"'But the Gorgio lies 'neath the beech-wood tree; He'll broach my tan no more; And my love she sleeps afar from me, But near to the churchyard door.
'Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to me--'"
He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tightto his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. Theold man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger dayswas greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the "breath andbeauty" of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple anddistorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on theground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat.
"Don't kill him--father, don't!" cried the girl, laying restraininghands on the old man's shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released thebody from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still.
"Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken. "Dead?" The old man felt thebreast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. "He is lucky not to bedead."
"What shall we do?" the girl asked again with a white face.
The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his armsas though it was that of a child. "Where are you going?" she askedanxiously, as he moved away.
"To the hut in the juniper wood," he answered. She watched till he haddisappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then sheturned and went slowly towards the house.
The World for Sale, Complete Page 7