by Ouida
The twilight fell; still the wind served, and still they held on; the mists came, white and thick, and stars rose, and the voices from the shores sounded strangely, with here and there a note of music or the deep roll of a drum.
So she drifted out of the old life into an unknown world. But she never once looked back. Why should she? — He had gone before.
When it was quite night, they drew near to a busy town, whose lights glittered by hundreds and thousands on the bank. There were many barges and small boats at anchor in its wharves, banging out lanterns at their mast-heads. The old man bade her steer his boat among them, and with a cord he made it fast.
“This is Paris?” she asked breathlessly
The old man laughed:
“Paris is days’ sail away.”
“I asked you if you went to Paris?”
The old man laughed again:
“I said I came the Paris way. So I have done. Land.”
Her face set with an anger that made him wince, dull though his conscience was.
“You cheated me,” she said, briefly; and she climbed the boat’s side, and, shaking the violets off her, set her foot upon the pier, not stopping to waste more words.
But a great terror fell on her.
She had thought that the boat would bring her straight to Paris; and, once in Paris, she had thought that it would be as easy to trace his steps there as it had been in the little town that she had left. She had had no sense of distance — no knowledge of the size of cities; the width, and noise, and hurry, and confusion of this one waterside town made her helpless and stupid.
She stood like a young lost dog upon the flags of the landing-place, not knowing whither to go, nor what to do.
The old man, busied in unlading his violets into the wicker creels of the women waiting for them, took no notice of her; why should he? He had used her so long as he had wanted her.
There were incessant turmoil, outcry, and uproar round the landing-stairs, where large cargoes of beetroot, cabbages, and fish were being put on shore. The buyers and the sellers screamed and swore; the tawny light of oil-lamps flickered over their furious faces; the people jostled her, pushed her, cursed her, for being in the way. She shrank back in bewilderment and disgust, and walked feebly away from the edge of the river, trying to think, trying to get back her old health and her old force.
The people of the streets were too occupied to take any heed of her. Only one little ragged boy danced before her a moment, shrieking, “The gypsy! the gypsy! Good little fathers, look to your pockets!”
But she was too used to the language of abuse to be moved by it. She went on, as though she were deaf, through the yelling of the children and the chattering and chaffering of the trading multitude.
There was a little street leading off the quay, picturesque and ancient, with parquetted houses and quaint painted signs; at the corner of it sat an old woman on a wooden stool, with a huge fan of linen on her head like a mushroom. She was selling roasted chestnuts by the glare of a little horn lantern.
By this woman she paused, and asked the way to Paris.
“Paris! This is a long way from Paris.”
“How far — to walk?”
“That depends. My boy went up there on foot last summer; he is a young fool, blotting and messing with ink and paper, while he talks of being a great man, and sups with the rats in the sewers! He, I think, was a week walking it. It is pleasant enough in fair weather. But you — you are a gypsy. Where are your people?”
“I have no people.”
She did not know even what this epithet of gypsy, which they so often cast at her, really meant. She remembered the old life of the Liebana, but she did not know what manner of life it had been; and since Phratos had left her there, no one of his tribe or of his kind had been seen in the little Norman town among the orchards.
The old woman grinned, trimming her lantern.
“If you are too bad for them, you must be bad indeed! You will do very well for Paris, no doubt.”
And she began to count her chestnuts, lest this stranger should steal any of them.
Folle-Farine took no notice of the words.
“Will you show me which is the road to take?” she asked. Meanwhile the street-boy had brought three or four of his comrades to stare at her; and they were dancing round her with grotesque grimace, and singing, “Houpe là, Houpe là! Burn her for a witch!”
The woman directed her which road to go as well as she could for the falling darkness, and she thanked the woman and went. The street-children ran at her heels like little curs, yelling and hissing foul language; but she ran too, and was swifter than they, and outstripped them, the hardy training of her limbs standing her in good service.
How far she ran, or what streets she traversed, she could not tell; the chestnut-seller had said “Leave the pole-star behind you,” and the star was shining behind her always, and she ran south steadily.
Great buildings, lighted casements, high stone walls, groups of people, troopers drinking, girls laughing, men playing dominoes in the taverns, women chattering in the coffee-houses, a line of priests going to a death-bed with the bell ringing before the Host, a line of soldiers filing through great doors as the drums rolled the rentrée au caserne, — thousands of these pictures glowed in her path a moment, with the next to fade and give place to others. But she looked neither to the right nor left, and held on straightly for the south.
Once or twice a man halloed after her, or a soldier tried to stop her. Once, going through the gateway in the southern wall, a sentinel challenged her, and leveled his bayonet only a second too late. But she eluded them all by the swiftness of her flight and the suddenness of her apparition, and she got out safe beyond the barriers of the town, and on to the road that led to the country, — a road quiet and white in the moonlight, and bordered on either side with the tall poplars and the dim bare reapen fields which looked to her like dear familiar friends.
It was lonely, and she sat down on a stone by the wayside and rested. She had no hesitation in what she was doing. He had gone south, and she would go likewise; that she might fail to find him there, never occurred to her. Of what a city was she had not yet any conception; her sole measurement of one was by the little towns whither she had driven the mules to sell the fruits and the fowls.
To have been cheated of Paris, and to find herself thus far distant from it, appalled her, and made her heart sink.
But it had no power to make her hesitate in the course she took. She had no fear and no doubt: the worst thing that could have come to her had come already; the silence and the strength of absolute despair were on her.
Besides, a certain thrill of liberty was on her. For the first time in all her life she was absolutely free, with the freedom of the will and of the body both.
She was no longer captive to one place, bond-slave to one tyranny; she was no longer driven with curses and commands, and yoked and harnessed every moment of her days. To her, with the blood of a tameless race in her, there was a certain force and elasticity in this deliverance from bondage, that lifted some measure of her great woe off her. She could not be absolutely wretched so long as the open sky was above her, and the smell of the fields about her, and on her face the breath of the blowing winds.
She had that love which is as the bezoar stone of fable — an amulet that makes all wounds unfelt, and death a thing to smile at in derision.
Without some strong impulsion from without, she might never have cut herself adrift from the tyranny that had held her down from childhood; and even the one happiness she had known had been but little more than the exchange of one manner of slavery for another.
But now she was free — absolutely free; and in the calm, cool night — in the dusk and the solitude, with the smell of the fields around her, and above her the stars, she knew it and was glad, — glad even amidst the woe of loneliness and the agony of abandonment. The daughter of Taric could not be absolutely wretched so long as the open air
was about her, and the world was before her wherein to roam.
She sat awhile by the roadside and counted his gold by the gleam of the stars, and put it away securely in her girdle, and drank from a brook beside her, and tried to eat a little of the bread which the old boatman had given her as her wages, with three pieces of copper money.
But the crust choked her; she felt hot with fever, and her throat was parched and full of pain.
The moon was full upon her where she sat; the red and white of her dress bore a strange look; her face was colorless, and her eyes looked but the larger and more lustrous for the black shadows beneath them, and the weary swollen droop of their lids.
She sat there, and pondered on the next step she had best take.
A woman came past her, and stopped and looked.
The moonlight was strong upon her face.
“You are a handsome wench,” said the wayfarer, who was elderly and of pleasant visage; “too handsome, a vast deal, to be sitting alone like one lost. What is the matter?”
“Nothing,” she answered.
The old reserve clung to her and fenced her secret in, as the prickles of a cactus-hedge may fence in the magnolia’s flowers of snow.
“What, then? Have you a home?”
“No.”
“Eh! You must have a lover?”
Folle-Farine’s lips grew whiter, and she shrunk a little; but she answered steadily, —
“No.”
“No! And at your age; and handsome as a ripe, red apple, — with your skin of satin, and your tangle of hair! Fie, for shame! Are the men blind? Where do you rest to-night?”
“I am going on — south.”
“And mean to walk all night? Pooh! Come home with me, and sup and sleep. I live hard by, just inside the walls.”
Folle-Farine opened her great eyes wide. It was the first creature who had ever offered her hospitality. It was an old woman, too; there could be nothing but kindness in the offer, she thought; and kindness was so strange to her, that it troubled her more than did cruelty.
“You are good,” she said, gratefully,— “very good; but I cannot come.”
“Cannot come? Why, then?”
“Because I must go on to Paris; I cannot lose an hour. Nevertheless, it is good of you.”
The old woman laughed roughly.
“Oh-ho! the red apple must go to Paris. No other market grand enough! Is that it?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“But stay with me to-night. The roads are dangerous. There are vagrants and ill-livers about. There are great fogs, too, in this district; and you will meet drunken soldiers and beggars who will rob you. Come home with me. I have a pretty little place, though poor; and you shall have such fare as I give my own daughters. And maybe you will see two or three of the young nobles. They look in for a laugh and a song — all innocent: my girls are favorites. Come, it is not a stone’s throw through the south gate.”
“You are good; but I cannot come. As for the road, I am not afraid. I have a good knife, and I am strong.”
She spoke in all unconsciousness, in her heart thankful to this, the first human creature that had ever offered her shelter or good nature.
The woman darted one sharp look at her, venomous as an adder’s bite; then bade her a short good-night, and went on her way to the gates of the town.
Folle-Farine rose up and walked on, taking her own southward road.
She was ignorant of any peril that she had escaped. She did not know that the only animals which prey upon the young of their own sex and kind are women.
She was very tired; long want of sleep, anguish, and bodily fatigue made her dull, and too exhausted to keep long upon her feet. She looked about her for some place of rest; and she knew that if she did not husband her strength, it might fail her ere she reached him, and stretch her on a sick-bed in some hospital of the poor.
She passed two or three cottages standing by the roadside, with light gleaming through their shutters; but she did not knock at any one of them. She was afraid of spending her three copper coins; and she was too proud to seek food or lodging as an alms.
By-and-by she came to a little shed, standing where no house was. She looked into it, and saw it full of the last season’s hay, dry and sweet-smelling, tenanted only by a cat rolled round in slumber.
She crept into it, and laid herself down and slept, the bright starry skies shining on her through the open space that served for entrance, the clatter of a little brook under the poplar-trees the only sound upon the quiet air.
Footsteps went past twice or thrice, and once a wagon rolled lumbering by; but no one came thither to disturb her, and she sank into a fitful heavy sleep.
At daybreak she was again afoot, always on the broad road to the southwest.
With one of her coins she bought a loaf and a draught of milk, at a hamlet through which she went. She was surprised to find that people spoke to her without a curse or taunt, and dealt with her as with any other human being.
Insensibly with the change of treatment, and with the fresh, sweet air, and with the brisk movement that bore her on her way, her heart grew lighter, and her old dauntless spirit rose again.
She would find him, she thought, as soon as ever she entered Paris; and she would watch over him, and only go near him if he needed her. And then, and then ——
But her thoughts went no further. She shut the future out from her; it appalled her. Only one thing was clear before her — that she would get him the greatness that he thirsted for, if any payment of her body or her soul, her life or her death, could purchase it.
A great purpose nerves the life it lives in, so that no personal terrors can assail, nor any minor woes afflict it. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, hardship, danger, — these were all in her path, and she had each in turn; but not one of them unnerved her.
To reach Paris, she felt that she would have walked through flames, or fasted forty days.
For two days and nights she went on — days cloudless, nights fine and mild; then came a day of storm — sharp hail and loud thunder. She went on through it all the same; the agony in her heart made the glare of lightning and the roar of winds no more to her than the sigh of an April breeze over a primrose bank.
She had various fortunes on her way.
A party of tramps crossing a meadow set on her, and tried to insult her; she showed them her knife, and, with the blade bare against her throat, made them fall back, and scattered them.
A dirty and tattered group of gypsies, swatting in a dry ditch under a tarpaulin, hailed her, and wanted her to join with them and share their broken food. She eluded them with disgust; they were not like the gitanos of the Liebana, and she took them to be beggars and thieves, as, indeed, they were.
At a little wayside cabin, a girl, with a bright rosy face, spoke softly and cheerily to her, and bade her rest awhile on the bench in the porch under the vines; and brought out some white pigeons to show her; and asked her, with interest, whence she came. And she, in her fierceness and her shyness, was touched, and wondered greatly that any female thing could be thus good.
She met an old man with an organ on his back, and a monkey on his shoulder. He was old and infirm. She carried his organ for him awhile, as they went along the same road; and he was gentle and kind in return, and made the route she had to take clear to her, and told her, with a shake of his head, that Paris would be either hell or heaven to such as she. And she, hearing, smiled a little, for the first time since she had left Yprès, and thought — heaven or hell, what would it matter which, so long as she found Arslàn?
Of Dante she had never heard; but the spirit of the “questi chi mai da me non piu diviso” dwells untaught in every great love.
Once, at night, a vagrant tried to rob her, having watched her count the gold and notes which she carried in her girdle. He dragged her to a lonely place, and snatched at the red sash, grasping the money with it; but she was too quick for him, and beat him off in such a fashion that
he slunk away limping, and told his fellows to beware of her; for she had the spring of a cat, and the stroke of a swan’s wing.
On the whole, the world seemed better to her than it had done: the men were seldom insolent, taking warning from the look in her flashing eyes and the straight carriage of her flexile frame; and the women more than once were kind.
Many peasants passed her on their market-mules, and many carriers’ carts and farm-wagons went by along the sunny roads.
Sometimes their drivers called to her to get up, and gave her a lift of a league or two on their piles of grass, of straw, or among their crates of cackling poultry, as they made their slow way between the lines of the trees, with their horses nodding heavily under the weight of their uncouth harness.
All this while she never touched the gold that he had given her. Very little food sufficed to her: she had been hardily reared; and for the little she had she worked always, on her way.
A load carried, a lost sheep fetched in, some wood hewn and stacked, a crying calf fed, a cabbage-patch dug or watered, these got her the simple fare which she fed on; and for lodging she was to none indebted, preferring to lie down by the side of the cows in their stalls, or under a stack against some little blossoming garden.
The people had no prejudice against her: she found few foes, when she had left the district that knew the story of Reine Flamma; they were, on the contrary, amused with her strange picture-like look, and awed with the sad brevity of her speech to them. Sometimes it chanced to her to get no tasks of any sort to do, and at these times she went without food: touch his gold she would not. On the road she did what good she could; she walked a needless league to carry home a child who had broken his leg in a lonely lane; she sought, in a foggy night, for the straying goat of a wretched old woman; she saved an infant from the flames in a little cabin burning in the midst of the green fields: she did what came in her path to do. For her heart was half broken; and this was her way of prayer.