‘No, mamma does not love me any longer; and as to papa, I hate him.’
Thus spoke a boy of fourteen, with proud, defiant dark eyes, standing in the middle of a wood. He was hatless, with wind-blown hair, but nevertheless smartly clad. In appearance he was very like the well-known John the Baptist of Andrea del Sarto. He was thinking of many things, indeed of his whole life. His own father he could remember but dimly. He only remembered, when he was quite a little child, a dark man, who was very kind to him, and who, every night, sent him to sleep by a peculiar lullaby, played on a fiddle. Then he remembered a life of tents and caravans and wanderings; then he was suddenly transferred to a luxurious villa on the Adriatic. At first all went fairly well. His step-father was amiable to him, and gave him toys, and his mother rigged him out in elegant sailor suits with gold braid, and he became the pet of all the ladies in the neighbourhood. He heard one time his step-father remark, ‘Really, I don't despair of turning Sandor into a gentleman.’ He did not quite understand what it meant, but somehow, the remark galled him. Then there came a hitch. A baby was born. Then the Graf von Gratheim, having a son and heir, took an aversion to the child of the beautiful gypsy woman, whom he had married in a moment of excessive passion, as the daughters of the gypsies do not give themselves otherwise.
Sandor was passionately fond of music, and, like every gypsy child, could play the fiddle very well. His step-father detested music. Then again, he himself had a particular aversion to the baby, which he erroneously thought supplanted himself in his mother's affection. He would not even be in the same room where the baby was. So things got from bad to worse, and that day, when the baby was about three years old, he was sitting in a nook in the drawing-room, improvising on his fiddle, quite concealed by palm-trees and oleanders—so concealed and inspired, that he did not notice his step-father coming in.
His step-father said furiously, ‘Ah! That's you, Gypsy! Shut up your infernal row! You're really not fit for civilised society. I heartily wish you would go back to your own people.’ His eyes flashed fire, and he went out of the room without a word, and out of the house into the woods, taking nothing with him but his fiddle.
Suddenly he heard through the trees a sound of stringed instruments—a xylophone playing gypsy music. He looked out stealthily, and saw three men. Then they ceased playing. The first man said, ‘Where shall we go to-day; to the right or the left?’ The second said, ‘Perhaps we had better go to the right, for there there's a town.’ The third man said, ‘No, we must be returning home; you know next Sunday is the Day of Shadows, and we have hardly time to get back.’ The first man answered, ‘Oh, of course. I had forgotten that. We must be getting off at once.’
Suddenly the boy darted out from the trees and cried, ‘Oh, take me with you. I can play the fiddle a little too.’
The first man said, very kindly and tenderly, ‘Yes, little one, we'll take you with us, but remember ours is a hard life. We gypsies don't sleep on feather-beds.’
The second man said, ‘Why, I believe he belongs to our race.’
The third man took his sleeve and bared his arm. ‘Why,’ he cried, ‘that is the mark of our clan. What does it all mean?’
The boy fainted with exhaustion and excitement. The first man took him in his arms and carried him along. Then he said, ‘How like he is to Sandor!’ The boy revived for a moment, and murmured, ‘Yes, my name is Sandor. I was called after my father,’ and then fainted again. The second man said, ‘Oh, yes; I understand it all. He must be the son of Gisela, who disgraced our race by marrying an alien.’ The third man said, ‘You see gypsy blood will never be tamed. He has come back to his own people.’
‘Yes,’ said the boy, suddenly vitalised, ‘I will go back to my own people. He called me “gypsy” to-day!’
‘My dear,’ said the first man, ‘do you know that you are my brother's son? I am your uncle Ferencz.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the boy, ‘I thought I had seen you before.’
So Sandor went with the men, and arrived at their more or less permanent quarters, and soon accommodated himself to their life. He was told that if he discovered an owl's nest during that week, and could take one egg from it to bury it under a hazel-tree, after exactly seven years he would find the worm of luck in the same place. Owls’ nests are not easy to find, but for anyone who wishes to find their eggs they have one advantage—that the owl lays a second batch of eggs whilst the former are still in the nest, so by good luck it is possible to secure one whilst she is leaving her nest to procure food for her children. One night he saw some small animal running on the ground, then a great white owl, with a shrill hissing cry, leapt from her nest and seized upon it. Meanwhile, quick as thought, Sandor sprang up the tree, and found one egg still unhatched, and buried it duly under a hazel-tree.
On the 23rd of April he was selected by the clan to represent ‘Green George.’ He was stripped and garlanded with leaves, then he was pursued about the place like Dionysus. He was a little frightened at this; he thought he was going to be sacrificed, but he said to himself, ‘Better be sacrificed for my own people than live there with them.’ But he was not sacrificed, only thrown into the water in effigy.
For seven years he dwelt with his clan. On the day he had buried the owl's egg, on digging, he found a long green caterpillar, which he ate.
He had always played the fiddle remarkably well, but every one was astonished at the manner he played that night. The gypsies themselves were dumfounded by his originality and inspiration.
So the long and short of it was that Sandor should go and wander alone and play the fiddle, and get money for the clan. In one small town he came to, an old Professor came up to him and said, ‘Why, you play wonderfully. I never heard anyone play like you. What is so specially wonderful is that you manage to evoke so much out of an old cracked fiddle like that. Come with me, and I will give you a Stradivarius violin, which has come into my hands as a legacy, and which I cannot play myself. All I ask in recompense is that you should play to me once upon it.’ Sandor accepted. Then for the first time he realised himself his own power. In the next town he came to he boldly advertised a concert. The entertainment was given entirely by himself. It was a small but rather fashionable place during its season. The fashionable people, having little distraction, all came out of curiosity to hear ‘der Grüne Georg,’ who advertised himself for a concert. (He always called himself now by the name of ‘Grüner Georg,’ especially as he was now nearing places where he had been before.) The audience was spellbound, and from that time he created a furore. Money (the greater part of which he remitted to his clan) poured into his hands; he also became a lion of society. Fortunately for him, though a gypsy, he had at one time of his life been familiar with the ways of society—but all this did not turn his head. He sighed for the old wild life again.
One day in his wanderings he came back to the place where he used to live.
‘Ha, ha!’ he said, ‘they don't know that “Grüner Georg” means me!’
Tired of luxuries, he often would go out into the woods, and sleep in the open air. This time he determined he would go and sleep exactly there whence he had run away seven years before. He sat there playing to himself on his violin, thinking again of all his past life, when a boy came out from the trees, and said, ‘Oh, I love music. Will you let me listen to you?’
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘What would you like me to play to you?’
‘Oh, anything you like,’ said the boy, seating himself at his feet. ‘Father hates music, and won't allow any music in the house; but I love music, especially this sort of music.’
He played on and on; then he said to the child, ‘Tell me, what is your name?’
‘Mother calls me Gyula,’ he answered, ‘but father calls me Julius or Jules, because he says he can't bear Hungarian names.’
‘Then who is your mother?’ he asked.
‘Oh! my mother is Countess von Gratheim.’
‘The Countess von Gratheim was my mother
too,’ said Sandor.
‘Then,’ said the child, looking puzzled, ‘you must be my brother.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said he, kissing him. ‘You are indeed my brother.’
‘Then,’ said he, ‘what is your name?’
‘I have no surname,’ he answered, ‘but my Christian name is Sandor.’
‘Sandor?’ said the child. ‘Why, only yesterday mother was saying, “Oh! if I only knew what has become of poor Sandor!” and father said, “Don't mention his name. He is very well named Sandor, as he has brought ‘schande’* on our family.” I don't know in the least what he meant,’ added the child innocently.
‘However,’ said Sandor, somewhat bitterly, ‘it is not poor Sandor now. I have plenty of money. I dare say you may have heard of me. I go generally by the name of Grüner Georg.’
‘Why,’ said the boy, ‘you Grüner Georg! I have been saving up all my pocket-money to hear you, and I was going to slip out on the sly one day and go to one of your concerts. Papa wouldn't let me otherwise, because, I don't know why, he can't bear anything to do with gypsies, and now I have heard you for nothing.’
‘My dear child,’ said the young man, ‘you also have something to do with gypsies. Mother is a gypsy, as perhaps you don't know.’
It was late autumn, and singularly mild; but while they were talking the sun had set, and it was quite dark.
‘Child,’ said Sandor, ‘you cannot possibly go home now, but if you will stay here, I promise to take you home to-morrow morning. I know the way,’ he added, with a trace of bitterness. ‘Look here, I will wrap you up in my fur coat. I can make you a very nice bed and pillow out of dead leaves. I am quite clever at that. It is not very cold after all.’ Then he murmured to himself between his teeth, ‘He shall see that gypsy blood can never be tamed.’
‘But,’ said the child, ‘you will be cold yourself.’
‘Oh dear no!’ said Sandor. ‘I am quite used to lie on the bare ground. We gypsies’ (he said this in the same contemptuous tone that, seven years ago, his step-father had used to him) ‘do not lie upon feather-beds.’ So he wrapped the child in his mantle, and made him a comfortable bed of leaves. The child, who was growing sleepy, said, ‘Sandor, my brother, won't you play me one thing more?’
‘Yes, dear, I will,’ he said. Then he played the lullaby with which his own father used to send him to sleep. It had the same effect upon Gyula; then he himself ultimately lay down by the side of his little brother. A wind arose, a number of leaves were blown upon Grüner Georg, making a complete coverlet.
‘I was once Green George,’ he said, somewhat sadly, ‘now, I suppose, I am Yellow George,’ and he fell asleep.
There was, as there often is in those parts, a quite sudden change of temperature during the night. Thick flakes of snow began to fall, the first of the year, and enveloped the two as in a shroud. Then a sudden hard frost set in. Neither noticed; both were fast asleep, Gyula leaning his head upon his brother's shoulder. But the sudden frost killed both the delicately nurtured child and the strong young man.
If anyone had been there, they would certainly have been much surprised to see on that unprecedentedly cold morning a very elegantly dressed lady wandering distractedly through the woods, crying almost wildly, ‘Gyula! Gyula!’ making distracted appeals, ‘O God! have I not lost one, that I should lose the other too!’
She came upon the place where they were lying, almost armoured with a frozen sheet of snow.
‘Gyula!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then she looked and recognised. ‘Sandor, my own, my firstborn! you here!’ She flung herself upon him and kissed him passionately. ‘I am your mother, don't you know me? Wake up! Speak to me!’ Neither of them moved. Then she gradually realised. She did not weep at all. She took off her cloak of rich sable, and laid it as a pall over the bodies of her two children. Then she took off all her rings and jewellery; and, cutting off a long tress of her black hair, threaded them together with it, then yoked her two sons together with this strange necklace.
‘I will go back to my own people,’ she said, and went forth into the woods.
* Author's note: Sandor is pronounced Shandor, Gyula, Dyula.
À la joyeuse Messe noire.
‘Not that I like it, but one does feel so much better after it— oh, thank you, Mère Yvonne, yes just a little drop more.’ So the old crones fell to drinking their hot brandy and water (although of course they only took it medicinally, as a remedy for their rheumatics), all seated round the big fire and Mère Pinquèle continued her story.
‘Oh, yes, then when they get to the top of the hill, there is an altar with six candles quite black and a sort of something in between, that nobody sees quite clearly, and the old black ram with the man's face and long horns begins to say Mass in a sort of gibberish nobody understands, and two black strange things like monkeys glide about with the book and the cruets—and there's music too, such music. There are things the top half like black cats, and the bottom part like men only their legs are all covered with close black hair, and they play on the bag-pipes, and when they come to the elevation, then———.’ Amid the old crones there was lying on the hearth-rug, before the fire, a boy whose large lovely eyes dilated and whose limbs quivered in the very ecstasy of terror.
‘Is that all true, Mère Pinquèle?’ he said.
‘Oh, quite true, and not only that, the best part is yet to come; for they take a child and ———.’ Here Mère Pinquèle showed her fang-like teeth.
‘Oh! Mère Pinquèle, are you a witch too?’
‘Silence, Gabriel,’ said Mère Yvonne, ‘how can you say anything so wicked? Why, bless me, the boy ought to have been in bed ages ago.’
Just then all shuddered, and all made the sign of the cross except Mère Pinquèle, for they heard that most dreadful of dreadful sounds—the howl of a wolf, which begins with three sharp barks and then lifts itself up in a long protracted wail of commingled cruelty and despair, and at last subsides into a whispered growl fraught with eternal malice.
There was a forest and a village and a brook, the village was on one side of the brook, none had dared to cross to the other side. Where the village was, all was green and glad and fertile and fruitful; on the other side the trees never put forth green leaves, and a dark shadow hung over it even at noon-day, and in the night-time one could hear the wolves howling—the were-wolves and the wolf-men and the men-wolves, and those very wicked men who for nine days in every year are turned into wolves; but on the green side no wolf was ever seen, and only one little running brook like a silver streak flowed between.
It was spring now and the old crones sat no longer by the fire but before their cottages sunning themselves, and everyone felt so happy that they ceased to tell stories of the ‘other side.’ But Gabriel wandered by the brook as he was wont to wander, drawn thither by some strange attraction mingled with intense horror.
His schoolfellows did not like Gabriel; all laughed and jeered at him, because he was less cruel and more gentle of nature than the rest, and even as a rare and beautiful bird escaped from a cage is hacked to death by the common sparrows, so was Gabriel among his fellows. Everyone wondered how Mère Yvonne, that buxom and worthy matron, could have produced a son like this, with strange dreamy eyes, who was as they said ‘pas comme les autres gamins.’ His only friends were the Abbé Félicien whose Mass he served each morning, and one little girl called Carmeille, who loved him, no one could make out why.
The sun had already set, Gabriel still wandered by the brook, filled with vague terror and irresistible fascination. The sun set and the moon rose, the full moon, very large and very clear, and the moonlight flooded the forest both this side and ‘the other side,’ and just on the ‘other side’ of the brook, hanging over, Gabriel saw a large deep blue flower, whose strange intoxicating perfume reached him and fascinated him even where he stood.
‘If I could only make one step across,’ he thought, ‘nothing could harm me if I only plucked that one flow
er, and nobody would know I had been over at all,’ for the villagers looked with hatred and suspicion on anyone who was said to have crossed to the ‘other side,’ so summing up courage he leapt lightly to the other side of the brook. Then the moon breaking from a cloud shone with unusual brilliance, and he saw, stretching before him, long reaches of the same strange blue flowers each one lovelier than the last, till, not being able to make up his mind which one flower to take or whether to take several, he went on and on, and the moon shone very brightly and a strange unseen bird, somewhat like a nightingale, but louder and lovelier, sang, and his heart was filled with longing for he knew not what, and the moon shone and the nightingale sang. But on a sudden a black cloud covered the moon entirely, and all was black, utter darkness, and through the darkness he heard wolves howling and shrieking in the hideous ardour of the chase, and there passed before him a horrible procession of wolves (black wolves with red fiery eyes), and with them men that had the heads of wolves and wolves that had the heads of men, and above them flew owls (black owls with red fiery eyes), and bats and long serpentine black things, and last of all seated on an enormous black ram with hideous human face the Wolf-Keeper on whose face was eternal shadow; but they continued their horrid chase and passed him by, and when they had passed the moon shone out more beautiful than ever, and the strange nightingale sang again, and the strange intense blue flowers were in long reaches in front to the right and to the left. But one thing was there which had not been before, among the deep blue flowers walked one with long gleaming golden hair, and she turned once round and her eyes were of the same colour as the strange blue flowers, and she walked on and Gabriel could not choose but follow. But when a cloud passed over the moon he saw no beautiful woman but a Wolf, so in utter terror he turned and fled, plucking one of the strange blue flowers on the way, and leapt again over the brook and ran home.
Of Kings and Things Page 8