"Their leader is a perfect gentleman," she replied, "and would no more rob a lady of her trinkets than he would allude to her misfortunes.

There are n.o.blemen of position who might take example by the gracious manners and high bearing of this mysterious gipsy."

The taunt, if meant for such, was lost on her husband. "Two hours," he yawned; "two hours all but five minutes at the best. How shall we get through two mortal hours? There is moonlight--that's a comfort; and our friends have left us the cards. I will sit in the coach, and play your ladyship a game at picquet."

"What shall we play for?" said my lady.

"For love!" said my lord, and began to deal.

CHAPTER XII.

MARY LEE.

Threading like a herd of red deer the slight undulations of the down, it took the gipsies but a few minutes to withdraw from the scene of their late outrage. In less than an hour they had approached their own camping-ground, where the tents were already pitched by wives and comrades, the kettles already singing over the twinkling fires of their bivouac. They travelled fast, at a long swinging trot, shifting their bundles from one to another as they went. Fin Cooper and Waif remained in rear of the party, the former arguing that it was the post of danger, and, on this consideration, though she seemed unwilling to lag behind the others, insisting that the girl should bear him company.

Waif was anxious and preoccupied, strangely unlike herself. The black Vardo-mescro had not failed to notice the change, nor was it in his nature to keep silence when aroused. Looking suspiciously in his companion's face, he sang a sc.r.a.p of an old Romany ditty, that may be thus rendered:--

"In the month of flowers, between the showers, the cuckoo sings all day.

But the maiden weeps, while the Romany sleeps, and the Gorgio gallops away.

Too soon, too soon, they are fading in June, and the cuckoo has changed his say.

And the maiden is dead, and the spring-time fled, when the Gorgio galloped away."

His voice was rich and mellow, yet something of harshness in its tones betrayed the discord within.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Waif, her black eyebrows coming down in an angry scowl over her black eyes.

"You can interpret it for yourself," was his answer. "Thyra, do you remember the red Quantock hills, and the deep leafy coombes in the 'broom-pickers' country' long ago?"

He spoke in Romany, and she replied in the same language. It stung him to observe that she could not express herself so readily in their own gipsy tongue as in that of the Gentiles, with whom she had pa.s.sed so many years.

"I remember," said Waif, carelessly. "What of that?"

He looked hurt, and a fierce gleam shot from his dark eyes.

"There was a little gipsy-girl on those red hills," he answered, "who came to her gipsy-boy for every earthly thing she wanted, from a bunch of violets in the ditch to a bit of mistletoe on the topmost branch of the old oak-tree, who stretched her little arms for him to carry her on the tramp when she was tired, who stroked his face every morning at sunrise, and kissed him every night when he lay down to sleep.

"For that little la.s.s the gipsy-boy would have shed all the blood in his young body, and he was but ten years old and five--not yet a man, nor grown to man's stature, but a man in heart, and a giant in his love for the comely, delicate gipsy-girl. So he begged hard of father and mother, uncles and aunts, and he went into her tent with a gift, and prayed of her people that they would give him Thyra to be his wife. They promised, Thyra, do you remember? They promised. They were of the old black race, and the promise of a Lovel is like the oath of a Stanley or a Lee."

"It was so long ago!" pleaded Waif, in rather a trembling voice. "You were always very good to me, Fin. I won't deny it; but it was so long ago!"

His face softened; his voice was very sad and tender, while he repeated her words.

"So long ago! and yet I see it as clear as if it had been but yesterday--the fire smouldering at the tent-door--the moonshine, silver-white on the Severn Sea--the old grandfather sitting within, shaping a wooden peg with his knife--and my little wife crouching in the corner with her black eyes wide open, like the red hind's calf I had noosed a week before in Cloutsham Ball. Long ago! Yes, Thyra, it _is_ long ago; and every day that has gone by, every night that I have seen it all again in my dreams, scores and brands it deeper and deeper in my true gipsy heart. There is no 'long ago' for you and me, Thyra. We have been one ever since that night when you were promised me by the comely Lovels over the camp-fire. Nothing but death can part us now. My sweet la.s.s, I will be kind and true, for mine you surely are, and always will be."

To a woman whose heart was still in her own keeping, there would have been something inexpressibly touching in the tender glance of those eyes, naturally so fierce and keen; in the gentle tones of that voice, usually so hard, imperious, and clear. She could not but contrast the gipsy's absorbing devotion with John Garnet's joyous, good-humoured carelessness, and shuddered to think how she loved the first and how she was beloved by the second! She temporised--she prevaricated--she said one thing and meant another. Was she not a woman, though a gipsy?

"There would be time enough," she protested, "to consider all these matters when the tribe moved farther West to take up their winter quarters in the 'wrestlers' country,' amongst the Cornish tors and valleys. There was much to be done first; tents to strike, a long journey to be made, to-night's job to be effaced by a speedy change of quarters; and you know as well as I do, Fin," she added, smiling sweetly in his face, "that a storm is brewing down in the West where we are bound, and the same wind that brings the Kaulo-chiriclo--the blackbird, as the Gorgios call him--back to his own nest, will blow many a 'balanser' of good red gold into the pockets of the Romany lad who runs his errands. For my part, I hope with all my heart he'll win!"

"What matters it to us?" he replied. "Let the Gorgios fight it out among themselves, and cut each other's throats for a name, like fools as they are! King George, or King Charles, or King James, none of them will put a fowl in the Romany's kettle, nor a broad piece in his palm, but for service rendered and risk run. We must help ourselves, Thyra, take what we want, and keep all we can. Our hand may well be against every man, for is not every man's hand against us? For ages we have been a race apart, and we must continue so for ever. No Romany lad may wed with the n.o.blest lady of the Gorgios; and for the Romany la.s.s who listens to love in another tongue, we do not shame her before our people, but we conceal her, Thyra, we hide her away, where neither father nor mother, uncle nor aunt, Romany nor Gorgio, shall ever find her again!"

His voice had grown thick and hoa.r.s.e, while drops of sweat stood on the tawny face, now turned to ashen grey. Waif trembled like a leaf.

"I know it," she said; "our people never forgive, Fin, and they never forget."

There was a ring of pride in the last sentence--tribute to the absent lover, whom even now she could not bring herself to wish she might put out of her mind.

They walked on in silence. She had taken his bundle, and thus laden carried it with a step as free and untiring as his own. They were half a mile behind the other gipsies, pacing side by side in the moonshine over the lonely down. A light twinkled from a solitary farm many a mile away, and once only was the stillness broken by the honest bark of a sheep-dog. The calm pure air, the sweet summer night, the quiet, the expanse, were all suggestive of those dreams which have so large a portion in life's reality. Her thoughts were far away beyond that western horizon, with the grey horse and its rider. She absolutely started when her companion's voice roused her from the abstraction in which she was plunged.

He had been watching her narrowly. Fin Cooper was as dexterous a gipsy as ever stalked a red-deer, noosed a hare, or swung a kettle. Versed in the lore, as in the malpractices of his people, he knew how to tell fortunes by cards or palmistry; to interpret the _patrin_ of his comrades, the signs of the zodiac, even the stars of heaven; but he could not read a woman's heart. This was the last moment he should have chosen to inculcate a lesson of fidelity and obedience on his promised wife.

"Thyra," said he, while she turned on him a pale and dreamy face, "did your people never tell you the story of Mary Lee?"

"I have heard something about her," she stammered, with a frightened look. "She died, didn't she? or was lost? I--I forget the rights of it."

"I will tell it you now," said he. "Take every word to heart, Thyra, and forget rather the mother that bore you, than Mary Lee's fault and its punishment.

"She was a beautiful gipsy-girl, sister, such another as yourself, with eyes like stars, and a voice to coax the bird off a tree. She lived with her grandam, old Mother Lee, and her uncle, a stern, thick-set Romany, who seldom spoke, and never smiled. They said he killed a squire's keeper before their tribe came south out of the potato-country, and knew Norwich gaol, inside and out, as well as I know the knife in my belt.

Many a time, when I was a little lad, I've seen Mary lifting the kettle off its hook before their tent; and if it hadn't been for _you_, Thyra, and the word of the Lovels, I should have thought her the likeliest la.s.s that ever put a bodkin in a knot of black hair; so did a good many more--Stanleys, Hearnes, Coopers; she might have had the pick of them, besides the best of her own tribe, and the comeliest of the comely Lovels to boot. I've seen many a good round fought, aye, and knives drawn, too, for a chance word from Mary Lee.

"And she wouldn't so much as throw away a look on the best of us! When Jack Marshall beat the Gorgio light-weight in fifty minutes, and brought her the battle-money before he had scarce washed his face or pulled his shirt on, she called him a fighting blackguard for his pains. We said in the tents that, gipsy or gentile, the man wasn't born yet who could put the charm on Mary Lee.

"She did little work at home; and, except for lifting a kettle, or setting a tent-peg, kept her hands as clean as a lady's; but she went out by herself to fairs and races, _dukkering_ for the Gorgios and those who tell fortunes to the gentlefolks, and came back with gold in both hands. The old grandmother's kettle was never empty, and they gave her plenty of liberty to do what she liked. Sometimes she would stay away a month at a time.

"One summer afternoon a little boy, who had been stealing nuts in a wood a mile or two from the camp, came back with a gentleman's riding-glove that he had picked up amongst the hazels. Mary laughed when she saw it, and bought it of the child for a crooked sixpence and a whistle. A week after, when they asked her what she had done with the glove, she said it was lost. That set some of our people thinking.

"Then she went off again about harvest; and after she'd been gone a week, Barney Smith came into the camp, with a strange story that he had seen a Gorgio lady, the living image of Mary Lee, sitting at an open window in 'the book-fellows' town' at the time of Oxford Races. Barney was doing a little business there with a pedlar's box on his own account. Though it was a hundred miles off, he came back directly; but when he talked of the pearls and satins she wore, and the black spots on her face, with powder in her hair, we all said Barney must have been drunk or dreaming. That night her uncle sat up to put new soles on his shoes, and next morning he left the camp at daybreak.

"I was but a lad, Thyra, and as busy as a squirrel. When a week pa.s.sed, then a month, and still no tidings came of Mary Lee, I went across the Vinney Ridge to the tents of her people and watched. We were lingering in the 'swine-herds' country,' among the deer in the New Forest, and good times we had, I can tell you, with fat venison in the kettles, and firewood for the cutting. I harboured a buck in Bolderwood once, and watched him for seven hours on a stretch. I've watched longer than that for _you_, Thyra. I watched nearly as long on behalf of Mary Lee.

"The moon had gone down, and the false dawn was peeping between the stems of the old oaks, when I caught sight of a square, thick figure threading the track among the trees that led to the Lees' camp. I leaped up, and took him by the hand. He was trembling all over. 'You are welcome back, Uncle Ryley,' says I. 'You have made a long journey, uncle; have you returned empty-handed, or did you find what you went to seek?'

"'The shoes are worn from my feet, brother,' was his answer. 'For three days and three nights I have gone without food or rest; but I took what I wanted, Fin, and I can hold up my head once more among my people.'

"'Did you hear any news of Mary?' was my next question, and my heart rose to my mouth while I asked it, for he was a strong, fierce man, who would strike with fist or steel if he was angered, and never give you a chance. I could scarce believe it was Ryley Lee who answered in that weak, low voice, with a cheek that had turned grey, like the ashes of a wood-fire in the dim morning light.

"'It is well with her,' was all he said, 'but you will see Mary in our tents no more.'

"'She is dead!' burst from my lips, for there seemed a smell of blood in my nostrils, and the pale streaks of dawn grew crimson between the trees.

"'It is well with her,' he repeated, turning from me into his tent.

'Mary Lee has left her people--dead or alive we shall see her no more.'

"Then I knew she had paid the price it costs the Romany maiden who loves a Gorgio too well!"

Waif had changed colour more than once during the above recital; but though she looked very pale now, there was a firm, hard expression in her face that denoted some fixed purpose no consideration should set aside.