CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE
As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the thingswhich had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colourcame and went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long andintimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life.
Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her placeapart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even asa child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when shefell under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by theSagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance ofher own separateness which was the position of every girl in the West,but developed in her own case to the nth degree.
Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerneda man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned herinmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--thesealways attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for longshe had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; andthe secrecy and strangeness of her father's course had made this notonly possible, but in a sense imperative.
The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression,were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handfulof days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had comeinto her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolbycame for good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revoltedat the suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good.
Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and againtowards the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger thanherself had ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimantof herself awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towardshim, he had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in thedistance. He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting theattention of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusionand perhaps punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible tohim. First and last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty toobey his Ry of Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. "Thoughhe slay me, yet will I trust him," he would have said, if he had everheard the phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of thephrase the pivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face toface, he made no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. Hewould not give up the hunt without a struggle.
Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door ofthe hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once,and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro'sreply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what hecame to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God ordevil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of theworld.
He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a songhe had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard,because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrinpeople, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsyworkmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at workto supply them.
This was the song he sang
"He gave his soul for a thousand days, The sun was his in the sky, His feet were on the neck of the world He loved his Romany chi.
"He sold his soul for a thousand days, By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi."
He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation:
"His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi."
The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last wordsof the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closingthe door behind her.
"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" heasked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showedhis teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had aninvoluntary malice.
"I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come herebecause I'm called."
"But I do," he rejoined. "You called me from over the seas, and I came.I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austriawere rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father wasbefore me. But I heard you calling, and I came."
"You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she returned quietly. "Mycalling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you areconcerned. And the stars do not sing."
"But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," he responded witha twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. "I've heardthe stars sing. What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's notsinging? You don't hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It's onlya manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do thesame as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all.When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And bylong and by last, but I was right in coming."
His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. Sheknew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with himas the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to hisimprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by thefact that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart fromhis monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainlessor sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animalgrace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganieswho fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was notdistinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring athis lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions oforganized society, would have made him superior. Now, with all hissleek handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and achevalier of industry.
She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked athim. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the worldin a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousandthings which make up civilization: it was personality got from life andpower in contest with the ordered world.
Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who livedon the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air ofcommand. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place,settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she waswrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was asfixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a peoplewho had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities movinghere and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws andtheir national feeling.
There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility,the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left oneplace in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry,threw it away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for everfleeing from yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground.Suddenly, however, she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father,Gabriel Druse, was of the same race as this man, the same unorganized,irresponsible, useless race, with no weight of civic or social duty uponits shoulders--where did he stand? Was he no better than such as JethroFawe? Was he inferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani?
She realized that in her father's face there was the look of one who hadno place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, buta wayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never readit until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness ofpossession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had itsvictories.
She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him asfrom some noisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay andanger--understood him, and did not resent him. It was the Past draggingat her life. It was inherited predisposition, th
e unregulated passionsof her forebears, the mating of the fields, the generated dominance ofthe body, which was not to be commanded into obscurity, but must tauntand tempt her while her soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. Shemust make this man realize once and for all that they were as far apartas Adam and Cagliostro. "I never called to you," she said at last."I did not know of your existence, and, if I had, then I certainlyshouldn't have called."
"The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you'd understand," he repliedcoolly. "Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn't thatyou know who hears or who is coming--till he comes."
"A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully. "Do you think youcan impress me by saying things like that?"
"Why not? It's true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory ofyou kept calling me, my little 'rinkne rakli'--my pretty little girl,made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country."
"You heard what my father said--"
"I heard what the Duke Gabriel said--'Mi Duvel', I heard enough what hesaid, and I felt enough what he did!"
He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyesfixed on her, however.
"You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn thatit is true, if you live long enough," she added meaningly.
A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. "If I live longenough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and theblessing of my 'tan'."
"Don't mistake what I mean," she urged. "I shall never be ruler of theRomanys. I shall never hear--"
"You'll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathenplaces--at your second wedding with Jethro Fawe," he rejoinedinsolently, lighting his cigarette. "Home you'll come with me soon--'aybor'!"
"Listen to me," she answered with anger tingling in every nerve andfibre. "I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedgeand the wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home--ina tent by the roadside or--"
"As your mother lived--where you were bornwell, well, but here's aRomany lass that's forgot her cradle!"
"I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen thatthere is a better road to walk than that where people, always lookingbehind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to findrefuge, drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes forothers to follow after--always going on and on because they dare not goback."
Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon itin fury real or assumed. "Great Heaven and Hell," he exclaimed, "here'sa Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter ofGabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor KingPanuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great,and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a taleto tell to the Romanys of the world!" For reply she went to the doorand opened it wide. "Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world.Tell them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of themall. Tell them there is no fault in him, and that he will return tohis own people in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will neverreturn--never! Now, get you gone from here."
The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of lightupon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radianceand came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in theashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken andfern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer wasupon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but inthis hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the placeand the time were all entitled.
After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood fora moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. Duringtheir talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpowerany check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at adisadvantage; but he drove the thought from him. In the first place,he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at anyrate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along thesubterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish,he would not long cumber the ground.
Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held himback; it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been givento him in marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in hisadventures and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung morethan one Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them bythe splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighteda face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He hadfared far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized hisimagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the oldhot desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and gotravelling down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for allhis days.
As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of ahundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days goneby--in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, inAustralia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions hehad seen her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringingout the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground tomake a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as theday, radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsideswhere abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawkgave shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when thewild winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and asense of homeliness among the companionable trees.
He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 'chi' at some villagefair, while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and soldhorses, and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he hadseen them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girtharness on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant andadmired. In his visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in hisarms to a Christian church and there baptized in grandeur as became thechild of the head of the people. His imagination had also seen his owntombstone in some Christian churchyard near to the church porch, wherehe would not be lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip ofthe people as they went in and out of church; and on the tombstone somesuch inscription as he had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-bornLord Johann, Earl of Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious andmerciful."
To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in aGorgio churchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of theRomanys, such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter ofKleinschild at Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monumentsin Christian churches, just to show that in all-levelling death theycondescended from high estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of theGorgio.
He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit ofadventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but heacknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights whenGabriel Druse's strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life andconsciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelledhim to the earth. That force was this woman's spirit which now gave himhis freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their peopleeverywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, nodoubt--a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to theswaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac.
She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse hisfreedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him.
"You have no right to set me free," he said coolly now. "I am not yourprisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that youleave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romanyyou must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, youwould still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine andthe dance--"
"And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup,and the dir
ty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the roadbehind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--"
"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgiossleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added."But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again."
He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more.
"You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like aGorgio countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that'snothing; it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneathis the Romany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we'vestripped off the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting,always imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's abeggar fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herselfa flower-girl. 'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!"
Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in whathe said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant toconquer it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, andshe would not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romanylife, and to go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A monthago it was a vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-dayit was the vow and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in thewoods, gazing after her with the look which a woman so well interprets.
"You mean you won't go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wishyou no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to goback to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I setyou free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You havea cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall nottorture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could havelet you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. Iopen the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more toyou than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile breadof the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf."
He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that itseemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, butthey choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He becamecool and deliberate.
"You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skinaway, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before thefirst day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalaclooking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into thesun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony.I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked atyou, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look atthe world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look.You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand,and when I left what I'd struck down I never looked back. But I saw you,and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alonewith me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgioduke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I marriedyou by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here youwere alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfootby your father--"
"By your Chief."
"'Ay bor', by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and youwere mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you--here where aRomany and his wife were alone together!"
His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read theeffect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious,rough note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him."I have my rights, and you had spat upon me," he said with ferocioussoftness.
She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes.
"I knew what would be in your mind," she answered, "but that did notkeep me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free."
"You called me a wolf a minute ago."
"But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet ifsuch shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should haveshot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold."
He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to apin-point. "You would have shot me--you are armed?" he questioned.
"Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you?Do you not see?"
"Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!" he said hoarsely.
His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thoughtthat, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her;that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declinedto see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech,of her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its socialdistinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whomshe was surrounded. A fatuous belief in himself and in his personalpowers had deluded him. He had told the truth when he said that no womanhad ever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all otherwomen from the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he haddreamed a dream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to himthe key of the situation. Did not the beautiful Russian countess on theVolga flee from her liege lord and share his 'tan'? When he playedhis fiddle to the Austrian princess, did she not give him a key tothe garden where she walked of an evening? And this was a Romany lass,daughter of his Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; andwhat marvel could there be that she who had been made his child wife,should be conquered as others had been!
"'Mi Duvel', but I see!" he repeated in a husky fierceness. "I am yourhusband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from yourlips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine."
"My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marrya man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany," she replied witha look of resolution which her beating heart belied. "I'm not a pedlar'sbasket."
"'Kek! Kek'! That's plain," he retorted. "But the 'wolf' is no lambeither! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since youhad no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and herhusband should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose infierce irony--"and so I will now go free. But I will not take the wordto the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. Idisobeyed my 'Ry' in coming here because my wife was here, and I wantedher. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to herpeople; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to hishome. She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there."
Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. "If I donot take you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead," he said, and hiswhite teeth showed fiercely.
"I have set you free. You had better go," she rejoined quietly.
Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes.His voice became soft and persuasive. "I would put the past behind me,and be true to you, my girl," he said. "I shall be chief over all theRomany people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine.I am yours--and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together."
A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there wasa moment's truth in his words. "Go while you can," she said. "You arenothing to me."
For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out intothe bracken, and was presently lost among the trees.
For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyesfilled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. Atlast there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Drusecame through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding.
"You have set him free?" he asked.
She nodded. "It was madness keeping him here," she said.
"It is madness letting him go," he answered morosely. "He will do harm.'Ay bor', he will! I might have known--women are chicken-hearted. Iought to have put him out of the way, but I have no he
art any more--noheart; I have the soul of a rabbit."
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