The World for Sale Part 23

"A drunken Gorgio," he replied. "The horseshoe is for luck all the world over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night. It struck down a young Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying."

She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. "He is dead?" she asked in a voice that had a strange quietness.

"Not yet," he answered. "There is time to wish him luck."

She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing. "The hand that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but behind the hand was Jethro Fawe," she said in a voice grown pa.s.sionate again. "Where is he?" she added.

"At his own house. I watched them take him there. It is a nice house--good enough for a Gorgio house-dweller. I know it well. Last night I played his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all about you and me, and what happened at Starzke, and then--"

"You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?" she asked in a low voice.

"I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had held from him the truth. He was angry and tried to kill me."

"That is a lie," she answered. "If he had tried to kill you he would have done so."

Suddenly she realized the situation as it was--that she was standing at her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to the wild places which she had left so far behind.

It flashed into her mind--what would Max Ingolby think of such a thing?

She flushed. The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Romany self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of the strangeness of this situation. It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he had been in her room itself, she would have felt no t.i.the of the shame that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think, if he knew. It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of s.e.x was in her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life she had once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, and something of it stayed.

"Listen," Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor's gift, but also in large degree a pa.s.sion now eating at his heart, "you are my wife by all the laws of our people. Nothing can change it. I have waited for you, and I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night--'Mi Duvel', you see that fate is with me! The Gorgio has bewitched you. He goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and the Romany has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and I will be the gift of the G.o.ds to the woman that takes me. The luck is mine always. It will be always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow. I was rich, and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again. Ah, yes, there are ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a prince that wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and money fills his pockets. I am here, poor, because last year when I lost all, I said, 'It is because my Romany la.s.s is not with me. I have not brought her to my tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as before, and more when it is wanted.' So, I came, and I hear the road calling, and all the camping places over all the world, and I see the patrins in every lane, and my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. My heart burns with love. I will forget everything, and be true to the queen of my soul. Men die, and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and when the time comes, then it would be that you and I would beckon, and all the world would come to us."

He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness. "I send the blood of my heart to you," he continued. "I am a son of kings. Fleda, daughter of the Ry of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can be good. I have killed, but I will live at peace. I have cursed, but I will speak the word of blessing. I have trespa.s.sed, but I will keep to my own, if you will come to me."

Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal with a soft rebound. Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of endearment.

She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning of his words. She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant; and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life, offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and pa.s.sion of a kind. It was a pa.s.sion natural to the people from whom she came, and to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and the aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that this man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at once a human being torn by contending forces.

Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost like gentleness:

"Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off from me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the vicious and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the thing that the beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever.

Find a Romany who will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than do so, and I should die before it could come to pa.s.s. If you stay here longer I will call the Ry."

Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster to Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had softened towards this man she hardened again.

"Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve," she added, and turned away.

At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there emerged from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure of old Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few feet of where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been m.u.f.fled in the dust of the pathway.

The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window.

"Fleda!" he called.

She came to the window again.

"Has this man come here against your will?" he asked, not as though seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding.

"He is not here by my will," she answered. "He came to sing the Song of Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--"

"That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground," said Jethro, who now stood with sullen pa.s.siveness looking at Gabriel Druse.

"From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come," returned the old man. "When I heard the news, I went to him. It was you who betrayed him to the mob, and--"

"Wait, wait," Fleda cried in agitation. "Is--is he dead?"

"He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die," was the reply.

Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and determination in his face. He stretched out an arm, making a sign as cabalistic as that which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the bedroom.

"Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes," he said. "Go, and may no patrins mark your road!"

Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend himself from a blow.

The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before.

It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust the ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and belonged to the a.s.syrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and for the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany, for thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him harm.

It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment. Fleda raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse.

"No, no, not that," Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes that looked the pain and horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond by which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner voice that said to her: "What was done by the Starzke River was the seal of blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from shame, danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him."

She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She felt that this Other Self of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far paths, had spoken truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw the sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night was the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio seeking embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached itself from his body to persecute her.

At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage came back, the old insolent self-possession took hold of him again. The sentence which the Ry had pa.s.sed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it made him an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown into the abyss. It was as though a man without race or country was banished into desolate s.p.a.ce. In a vague way he felt its full significance, and the shadow of it fell on him.

"No, no, no," Fleda repeated hoa.r.s.ely, with that new sense of responsibility where Jethro was concerned.

Jethro's eyes were turned upon her now. In the starlit night, just yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could feel, as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that while he lived she was not wholly free. She realized that the hand of nomad, disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was inhuman, or, maybe, superhuman.

Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his daughter's soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had brought Ingolby low. He had shut his eyes to the man's unruliness and his daughter's intervention to free him; but now he was without pity. He had come from Ingolby's bedside, and had been told a thing which shook his rugged nature to its centre--a thing sad as death itself, which he must tell his daughter.

To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage in his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly and inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable, fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes over which s.h.a.ggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power which, in pa.s.sion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice or doom would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon the dust-heap.

As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his tongue was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her to Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that old enemy himself.

"I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be done to him and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak there is no more to be said. When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will vanish from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the burning. I have spoken. Go! And no patrins shall lie upon your road."

A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro Fawe's face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence of his master. The strain of generations, the tradition of the race without a country was stronger than the revolt in his soul. He was young, his blood was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, with the superior intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was stronger than all. He knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not far, his doom would fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine from the desert, or a nightbird rises from the dark.

He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical eyes. The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his features showed plainly.

"I am your daughter's husband," he said. "Nothing can change that. It was done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. It stands for ever. There is no divorce except death for the Romany."

"The patrins cease to mark the way," returned the old man with a swift gesture. "The divorce of death will come."

Jethro's face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw back into the darkness of her room.

He made a motion of pa.s.sion and despair. His voice was almost shrill when he spoke. "Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys is mine!" he cried sharply. "I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief.

His hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her--"