II.
A SHADOW'S SLANT.
It is a sunny afternoon in mid-summer. A phaeton drawn by a pair of sturdy gray Stavanger horses, whose dainty heads and the mark of Saint Olav's thumb on their throats tell their race, is dashing along at a break-neck pace. The whip curls over them, and the vehicle sways a little to one side. Two great hounds bound along on the right of it.
A strip of blue fjord and a background of dark mountains, with the cool ice-kisses of the snow queen still resting on their dusky heads, can be seen at intervals through the fir and pine trees. A squirrel scrambles up a rowan-tree, and a cattle-bell tingles far in the woods. Nature has ever a discordant note in its symphony. A little brown bird is fluttering in helpless, terrified jerks; it emits, as it rises and falls, a sharp sound between a chirp and a squeak. A hawk is swooping over it: a poise—a dip—a few feathers float with the breeze, and hawk soars up with its prey in its claws.
The red-brown eyes that gleam out of the small, sallow face of the woman who sits on the left side of the phaeton close for a second; the delicate nostrils quiver, the lips tighten over a sigh; then the lids rise again, the eyes are darker, the pupils have a trick of dilating; a smile subtle in meaning, for much of mocking pain and bitterness is expressed in its brief passage, flits across her face.
A savage jerk! the horses stop.
"Kiss me!" says the man who is driving. His voice is harsh, and the eyes that scan her face have a lurid light in them; and as he speaks a smell of spirit mingles with the smell of the pine chips. Her lips tighten still more; she turns to obey. She has to rise up a little; he is very tall. His nose is powerful like a hawk's beak, and his beard is stirred by the breeze, and his eyes peer out from under their fringe of black lashes with a cruel, passionate gleam. She almost touches his face, but falls back from a rough shove:—
"No! keep your kiss and be damned to you!"
A savage whoop, the whip curls out and the reins jerk, and the quivering horses that know the voice too well dash on; and the hounds that have felt the whip-cord sting, as the strike of a snake on their flanks, bay savagely as they join in the race.
On the right of the narrow, winding road a great lake lies hundreds of feet below; the wheel is not half a foot from the edge, and the vehicle jolts and leans that way, and the lash coils round and flicks her cheek, and leaves a sorry sting,—and she never winces at it, but her small hands clinch, and her lips part, and the red light flashes in her eyes, and something akin to exultant expectation steals over the thin small face as they court death each wheel-turn in their mad career.
The stable-door opens, and the horses turn their heads. She—it is she—goes and passes her fingers gently over the swollen stripes that make little ridges in the close-clipped hair. Once she lays her cheek caressingly upon a cruel furrow, and whispers, "Poor little Ola! if I had only governed my face better, you would not have been so punished!" and Ola turns his satiny muzzle, softer than the daintiest lady's breast, and rubs it against her, to coax for the apples that always follow. She goes from one to the other, and cooes to them, and rubs her chin against their soft noses; and when the stripes are very bad her jaws set, and one can see the mark of the teeth through her thin cheeks.
"Come here! I want some brandy!... Now put the glass down and come back. What's that mark on your cheek?"
"Only the whip touched me."
"And you were too damned proud to say so, eh? By the way, I saw some gypsies in the park. Johann can do the translating, they are coming here to play. One of them is a thundering fine girl; I'd like to—What! what's that you said?"
"I did not make any remark!" a fine scorn trembles about her pale lips, and her face is a shade grayer.
A pause.
"Where are your rings?"
"Upstairs."
"Go and fetch them! Blast it! I don't buy you rings to leave them upstairs."
She comes back with them on, and he takes up the slim fingers laden with jewelled bands, spreads them out on his palm, then closes his thumb and finger round her wrist, and laughs a rasping laugh.
"Did any mortal man ever see such a hand? You witch! with eyes that probe into a fellow's soul, and shame him and fear nothing!" and he tightens his grip, and she winces at his roughness. "There [with a softening of voice], did I hurt you, you poor little thing, you queer little womany? Come closer [with fierce, impatient tenderness]; put down your little old head, a head like a snipe, on my breast! There, great God, I'm very fond of you!" A tremor runs through his voice. "You queer little thing! You are no beauty, but you creep in, and I, I love every inch of you. I'd kiss the ground under your feet, I know every turn of your little body, the slope of your shoulders,—I that always liked women to have square shoulders!—the swing of your hips when you walk. Hips! ha, ha! you haven't got any, you scrap! And yet, by the Lord, I'd lick you like a dog [slower, with emphasis]! And you don't care for me! You obey me, no matter what I ask." He is holding her face against his breast, and stroking her head with clumsy touch. "You wait on me,—ay, no slave better,—and yet I can't get at you, near you; that little soul of yours is as free as if I hadn't bought you, as if I didn't own you, as if you were not my chattel, my thing to do what I please with—do you hear [with fury]—to degrade, to—to treat as I please? No, you are not afraid, you little white-faced thing; you obey because you are strong enough to endure, not because you fear me. And I know it; don't you think I don't see it! You pity me, great God! pity me,—me that could whistle any woman to heel! Yes, you pity me with all that great heart of yours because I am just a great, weak, helpless, drunken beast, a poor wreck!" And the tears jump out of his eyes, eyes that are limpid and blue and unspoiled; and he sobs out: "Kiss me! take my head in your arms! I am a brute, an infernal brute, but I'm awfully fond of you, you queer little gypsy, with your big heart and your damnable will! I! I! I who hated women like poison, who always treated them as such,—I could cry when I look at you, like a great puling boy, because your spirit is out of my grasp. Smooth my head! no other little hand in the world has such a touch as yours. I'd know it among a thousand, my poor little thing! Don't ever leave me! promise even if I go mad, promise you'll stay! Get a man to mind me, but stay, won't you? Stay!"
"I'll stay."
"Did any Christian man ever have such an atom for a wife? I believe you are a gypsy; your hair curls at the ends like a live thing, and there are red lights in its black, and your eyes have a flash in them at times and a look as if you were off in other lands! Oh, oh! get me a little brandy, quick, quick!"
Merrily twang the guitars, and the tambourines rattle as they are swung aloft by slender curving wrists. The wild cries of a Zingari dance ring out. Black eyes gleam, and brown skins shine under orange and scarlet kerchiefs. The grace of panthers and the charm of wild, untamed, natural things is revealed in every movement. Color, vivacity, dirt, and rhythm.
Wild the music, wilder the dance; and he sits in his chair on the veranda, the clean, clear air and the fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, stirring the white hairs in the curls at his temples, and listens and looks with no eye or ear for aught of its beauty,—only a ribald jest as their petticoats rise, or their bosoms quiver in the fling of the dance. And she, with a crimson shawl drawn round her spare shoulders and a splash of color in her thin cheeks, holds one hand tightly pressed over her breast—to still what? What does the music rouse inside that frail frame? What parts her lips and causes her eyes to glisten and the thin nostrils to quiver? Is there aught in common between that slight figure, with its jewelled hands and its too heavy silken gown, and those tattered healthy Zingari vagabonds? Who knows?
The whole tribe are gathered round him, begging and screaming with one voice, and he throws silver lavishly to them, and thrusts his hand with a coarse jest into the open bodice of the girl nearest him. A brown hand goes to the knife of a swarthy youth with gold rings in his ears; but at a few strange words from the oldest woman in the group the girl steps back, and with the quickness of lightning the hag takes her place and answers his jest in his own tongue. The girl looks curiously, pityingly, respectfully at the other girl: she is a little more than a girl as she stands dumbly by during all this scene. Eye seeks eye, sympathy meets sympathy. What affinity is between these two creatures?
"Kan de rokra Romany?" she asks, with a smile that visits her face as the ghost of a vanished beauty; and her voice is sweetly soft as she asks it. A flash of eye, a hurried backward word thrown to the old woman who joins them on hearing it. She stands between, with a smile at their wonder, and she holds out her hand, and one slim ivory-tinted hand rests palm upward in a no less slim but browner one. The old woman peers into the lines and crosses, and as she scans them a look of wonder creeps up to her usually inscrutable face. She exchanges words in an undertone with the gypsy girl at her side.
"I speak Romany too, Deya! An evil fate, isn't it, mother?"
"A mole on your cheek, and a free Romany heart in your breast, your spirit fights to be free as the Romany chai. Seven suns rise and seven moons, and the flag is half-mast, and the cage opens and the bird—"
An impatient curse cuts short her words, and they turn to him.
"Here, you old Jezebel! Send these vagabonds of yours down there; there's plenty to eat."
The servants are bearing beer and food to the lawn.
"Shall I go blind? I dare say you know as much as those infernal doctors, eh?"
"No; your eyes, and pretty eyes they are, and many a soul they've lost, they'll last your time, my lord! I see a journey to England; it lies before you, and no return. Seven times the moon will rise, and the Romanies go to the South, but the bird—"
"Get to blazes out of this! Help me in, ducky; oh, damn it, be quick! Get me some brandy, quick, quick! not all brandy, a little milk in it!"
The moon is high in the heavens, and the sea is running into the creek with a silver sheen on its back; the blinds are drawn up in the four windows of the bedroom, and the northern night is like unto day disguised in a domino of silver-gray crape.
He is sleeping. She is standing motionless at the window. The red of her dressing-gown and the moonlight make her face look more ghostlike, as she leans her head wearily against the window-frame. She is gazing sea-ward; a steamer has just passed, and the beacon in the lighthouse on Jomfru-land gleams like a great bright eye. In how many dreary vigils has it not greeted her and seemed to say: "Courage! I too am watching; you are not alone!"
At the end of the wood two tents are pitched, and she can see two figures outlined against the white palings,—the Romany girl and the youth with the gold ear-rings. He is holding her in his arms. The dog-chains rattle now and then; something brown and stealthy creeps about the duck-house; the white mists in the marshy bit of meadow lying next the creek dance like spirits, and beckon to her with shadowy arms, and a faint yellow streak appears in the east. How many more nights must she stand alone, and watch the morning herald a new day of bondage?
She moves noiselessly away, and goes into the dressing-room, and walks over to the mirror. She shakes her dusky elf-locks round her face, and catching up a yellow scarf lying on a chair winds it round her head, and then peers at herself in the glass. A deft twist turns down the white frills of her nightgown; she has a gold chain round her neck, and she laughs a childish, noiseless laugh at her own image. "How strangely my eyes gleam, and what a gypsy I look! No one would know, no one would dream of it. I would soon get brown!" and she looks wistfully out toward the camp again. "In an hour they will go. A heap of fern to lie on, scant fare, and weary feet; but the freedom, ah, the freedom! The woods with their wealth of shy, wild things, and the mountains that make one yearn to soar up over their heights to the worlds above! Free to follow the beck of one's spirit, a-ah to dream of it!" and the red light glows in her eyes again. They have an inward look; what visions do they see? The small thin face is transformed, the lips are softer, one quick emotion chases the other across it, the eyes glisten and darken deeply, and the copper threads shine in her swart hair. What is she going to do, what resolve is she making?
A muttered groan, a stir in the bed rouses her, and throwing aside the scarf she glides swiftly to his side. She stands and looks down. What a magnificent head it is, and how repellent! The tossed black locks with their silver streaks lie scattered on the pillow. The ear suggests vigorous animalism, the nose is powerful, the broad forehead shines whitely, and the long lashes curl upward as those of a child. The sensual-lipped mouth with its cruel lines shows more cruel as the head is thrown back. She looks at it steadily; no line escapes her,—looks from it to the hands, nerveless, white; the long, thin thumbs have a hateful expression, and the backs are short with an ugly joining to the wrists. He stirs, and a lewd word escapes his lips. She shudders! Again her eyes wander out with an appealing look (to whom do they appeal,—to part of herself, to some God of convention?) toward the camp. They are stirring; she can see the Finn dog run to and fro. She steps away; irresolution is expressed in her face; her head is thrust forward, her fingers spread out unconsciously. She glances across the floor; some shelves are to be nailed up, one of them is leant against the wardrobe door. As she hesitates, she notices that the shadow of it and the half-closed door throws a long cross almost to her feet. She folds her hands involuntarily: a whimper from the bed, a frightened call,—
"Come to me! Where are you? Don't leave me a second! oh, God! don't leave me! What's that there? Give me a drop of brandy! quick, oh quick! Kneel down, dearie, close, close to me; lay your little old cheek against mine, and say a little prayer,—no psalm business, just one out of your own little head [sob] to suit a poor devil like me!"
The sun is saying good-morning to the moon; she is wan from watching. The birds are awake, but the man still sleeps; and the little red-gowned figure crouched at the bed-side, her left hand, with its heavy gold band, clasped lightly in his, is sleeping too. A half-dried tear is held in the dark hollow under the closed eyes; the nose looks pinched in the morning light, and a gray-green shadow stains mouth and chin, but a smile plays round the dry lips.
The caravan is winding slowly round the curve of the road, and three plump geese are stowed inside. The Romany lass is humming a song,—a song about love and dance and song,—and the soul of the sleeping girl floats along at her side in a dream of freedom. She of the song looks up: "Six moons will rise, then you will be free!" she mutters to herself as she passes on; and the sun mounts higher, and the shadow of the cross is lightening with the coming dawn—who knows?