"Let me be, Sybil Stanley, and let me speak. I says again, what has fine folk to do with coming and worriting us in our wood? If I did sell him, I sold him fair--and if I got him back, I bought him back fair. Aye my delicate gentlewoman, you may look at me, but I did!

"Five years, five years of wind and weather, and hard days and lonely nights:--

"Five years of food your men would chuck to the pigs, and of clothes your maids would think scorn to scour in:--

"Five years--but I sc.r.a.ped it together, and _then_ they baulked me. You shuts the door in the poor tinker-woman's face; you gives the words of warning to the police.

"Five more years--it was five more, wasn't it, my daughter?--Sometimes I fancies I makes a mistake and overcounts. But, _he'll_ know. Christian, my dear! Christian, I say!"

"Sit down, Mother, sit down," said the gipsy girl; and the old woman sat down, but she went on muttering,--

"I will speak! What has they to do, I say, to ask me where he has gone to? A fine place for the fine gentleman they made of him. What has such as them to say to it, if I couldn't keep him when I got him--that they comes to taunt me and my grey hairs?"

She wrung her grey locks with a pa.s.sionate gesture as she spoke, and then dropped her elbows on her knees and her head upon her hands.

The clergywoman had been standing very still, with her two white hands folded before her, and her eyes, that had dark circles round them which made them look large, fixed upon the tinker-mother, as she muttered; but when she ceased muttering the clergywoman unlocked her hands, and with one movement took off her hat. Her hair was smoothly drawn over the roundness of her head, and gathered in a knot at the back of her neck, and the brown of it was all streaked with grey. She threw her hat on to the gra.s.s, and moving swiftly to the old woman's side, she knelt by her, as we had seen Sybil kneel, speaking very clearly, and, touching the tinker-mother's hand.

"Christian's grandmother--you are his grandmother, are you not?--you must be much, much older than me, but look at _my_ hair. Am I likely to taunt any one with having grown grey or with being miserable? It takes a good deal of pain, good mother, to make young hair as white as mine."

"So it should," muttered the old woman, "so it should. It is a plaguy world, I say, as it is; but it would be plaguy past any bearing for the poor, if them that has everything could do just as they likes and never feel no aches nor pains afterwards. And there's a many fine gentlefolk thinks they can, till they feels the difference.

"'What's ten pound to me?' says you. 'I wants the pretty baby with the dark eyes and the long lashes,' says you.

"'Them it belongs to is poor, they'd sell anything,' says you.

"'I wants a son,' you says; 'and having the advantages of gold and silver, I can buy one.'

"You calls him by a name of your own choosing, and puts your own name at the end of that. His hands are something dark for the son of such a delicate white lady-mother, but they can be covered with the kid gloves of gentility.

"You buys fine clothes for him, and nurses and tutors and schools for him.

"You teaches him the speech of gentlefolk, and the airs of gentlefolk, and the learning of gentlefolk.

"You crams his head with religion, which is a thing I doesn't hold with, and with holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck.

"You has the advantages of silver and gold, to make a fine gentleman of him, but the blood that flies to his face when he hears the words of insult is gipsy blood, and he comes back to the woods where he was born.

"Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak--(Heaven keep my head cool!)--it's good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way.

She's a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides religion, which I sets my face against. Tell her she took mighty good care of him--Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of teaching him anything--_but she taught him the patteran_!"

The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow thick. But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she spoke very earnestly.

"Good mother, listen to me. If I bought him, you sold him. Perhaps I did wrong to tempt you--perhaps I did wrong to hope to buy for myself what G.o.d was not pleased to give me. I was very young, and one makes many mistakes when one is young. I thought I was childless and unhappy, but I know now that only those are childless who have had children and lost them.

"Do you know that in all the years my son was with me, I do not think there was a day when I did not think of you? I used to wonder if you regretted him, and I lived in dread of your getting him back; and when he ran away, I knew you had. I never agreed with the lawyer's plans--my husband will tell you so--I always wanted to find you to speak to you myself. I knew what you must feel, and I thought I should like you to know that I knew it.

"Night after night I lay awake and thought what I would say to you when we met. I thought I would tell you that I could quite understand that our ways might become irksome to Christian, if he inherited a love for outdoor life, and for moving from place to place. I thought I would say that perhaps I was wrong ever to have taken him away from his own people; but as it was done and could not be undone, we might perhaps make the best of it together. I hope you understand me, though you say nothing? You see, if he is a gipsy at heart, he has also been brought up to many comforts you cannot give him, and with the habits and ideas of a gentleman. You are too clever, and too fond of him, to mind my speaking plainly. Now there are things which a gentleman might do if he had the money, which would satisfy his love of roving as well. Many rich gentlemen dislike the confinement of houses and domestic ways as much as Christian, and they leave their fine homes to travel among dangers and discomforts. I could find the money for Christian to do this by and by.

If he likes a wandering life, he can live it easily so--only he would be able to wander hundreds of miles where you wander one, and to sleep under other skies and among new flowers, and in forests to which such woods as these are shrubberies. He need not fall into any of the bad ways to which you know people are tempted by being poor. I have thought of it all, night after night, and longed to be able to tell you about it. He might become a famous traveller, you know; he is very clever and very fond of books of adventure. This young gentleman will tell you so.

How proud we should both be of him! That is what I have thought might be if you did not hide him from me, and I did not keep him from you.

"And as to religion--dear good mother, listen to me. Look at me--see if religion has been a fashion or a plaything to _me_. If it had not stood by me when my heart was as heavy as yours, what profit should I have in it?

"Christian's grandmother--you are his grandmother, I know, and have the better right to him--if you cannot agree to my plans--if you won't let me help you about him--if you hide him from me, and I must live out my life and never see his dear face again--spare me the hope of seeing it when this life is over.

"If I did my best for your grandson--and you know I did--oh! for the love of Christ, our only Refuge, do not stand between him and the Father of us all!

"If you have felt what he must suffer if he is poor, and if you know so well how little it makes sure of happiness to be rich--if in a long life you have found out how hard it is to be good, and how rare it is to be happy--if you know what it is to love and lose, to hope and to be disappointed in one's hoping--let him be religious, good mother!

"If you care for Christian, leave him the only strength that is strong enough to hold us back from sin, and to do instead of joy."

The tinker-mother lifted her head; but before she could say a word, the young gentleman burst into indignant speech.

"Gertrude, I can bear it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish to G.o.d I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky old gipsy hag."

Whilst he was speaking the tinker-mother had risen to her feet, and when she stood quite upright she was much taller than I had thought. The young gentleman had moved to take his cousin by the hand, but the old woman waved him back.

"Stay where you are, young gentleman," she said. "This is no matter for boys to mix and meddle in. Sybil, my daughter--Sybil, I say! Come and stand near me, for I gets confused at times, and I fears I may not explain myself to the n.o.ble gentlewoman with all the respect that I could wish. She says a great deal that is very true, my daughter, and she has no vulgar insolence in her manners of speaking. I thinks I shall let her do as she says, if we can get Christian out, which perhaps, if she is cousin to any of the justiciary, she may be able to do.

"The poor tinker-folk returns you the deepest of obligations, my gentle lady. If she'll let me see him when I wants to, it will be best, my daughter; for I thinks I am failing, and I shouldn't like to leave him with George and that drunken s.l.u.t.

"I thinks I am failing, I say. Trouble and age and the lone company of your own thoughts, my n.o.ble gentlewoman, has a tendency to confuse you, though I was always highly esteemed for the facility of my speech, especially in the telling of fortunes.

"Let the poor gipsy look into your white hand, my pretty lady. The lines of life are somewhat broken with trouble, but they joins in peace.

There's a dark young gentleman with a great influence on your happiness, and I sees grandchildren gathered at your knees.

"What did the lady s.n.a.t.c.h away her hand for, my daughter? I means no offence. She shall have Christian. I have told her so. Tell him to get ready and go before his father gets back. He's a bad 'un is my son George, and I knows now that she was far too good for him.

"Come a little nearer, my dear, that I may touch you. I sees your face so often, when I knows you can't be there, that it pleases me to be able to feel you. I was afraid you bore me ill-will for selling Christian; but I bought him back, my dear, I bought him back. Take him away with you, my dear, for I am failing, and I shouldn't like to leave him with George. Your eyes looks very hollow and your hair is grey. Not, that I begrudges your making so much of my son, but he treats you ill, he treats you very ill. Don't cry, my dear, it comes to an end at last, though I thinks sometimes that all the men in the world put together is not worth the love we wastes upon one. You hear what I say, Sybil? And that rascal, Black Basil, is the worst of a bad lot."

"Hold your jaw, Mother," said Sybil sharply; and she added, "Be pleased to excuse her, my lady: she is old and gets confused at times, and she thinks you are Christian's mother, who is dead."

The old woman was bursting out again, when Sybil raised her hand, and we all p.r.i.c.ked our ears at a sound of noisy quarrelling that came nearer.

"It's George and his wife," said Sybil. "Mother, the gentlefolks had better go. I'll go to the inn afterwards, and tell them about Christian.

Take the lady away, sir. Come, Mother, come!"

I've a horror of gipsy men, and even before our neighbours had dispersed I hustled away with Mrs. Hedgehog into the bushes.

CHAPTER VIII.

Good Mrs. Hedgehog hurt one of her feet slightly in our hurried retreat, and next day was obliged to rest it; but as our curiosity was more on the alert than ever, I went down in the afternoon to the tinker camp.

The old woman was sitting in her usual position, and she seemed to have recovered herself. Sybil was leaning back against a tree opposite; she wore a hat and shawl, and looked almost as wild as the tinker-mother had looked the day before. She seemed to have been at the inn with the clergywoman, and was telling the tinker-mother the result.

"You told her he had got two years, my daughter? Does she say she will get him out?"