CHAPTER II
They wended their way slowly down the steep path, the girl giving little gasps of pain at every few steps.
"Look here!" he said, "you're damaged. Let me carry you."
"I'm all right. I've got a pain, that's all."
"Rot!" he said, and without more ado he picked her up in his arms. She was very light considering the strength she had displayed. "Say how you are easiest," he said.
"Quite easy like this," she answered.
So they proceeded slowly down the stony, rocky hillside, the girl cradled in his arms with her arms round his neck easing her weight as much as possible.
He had to stop and rest frequently, laying her gently on a bed of pine needles or moss.
"You're very strong," she said.
"Yes, by God, too strong sometimes," he said, bitterly.
She put her fingers gently on his wrist and felt his pulse. "You're a winner," she said.
"Meaning that I shall out distance the constable," he asked with a grim humour.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Carstairs. Jack Carstairs. It'll be in all the papers soon. Can you read?"
"No."
"Lucky girl."
So carrying on a disjointed conversation they worked their way round to the foot of the cliff.
"Shall I take you back to the camp or shall I have a look for the—man, first?"
"We'll have a look for Sam first. I'm all right on level ground."
"No, you're not. You stay there." He put her down on the ground, and made his way through the trees to the cliff.
He searched up and down; there was no sign of a body dead or alive, no sign of derangement, nothing to indicate tragedy. There was a rustle of bird life all round him and a cheerful chorus of early morning song in the bushes outside, for this was just on the edge of the wood. He went up and down gazing over head and under foot; the trees here were mostly firs, young spruce firs with heavy, carpety foliage interlocking, shutting out the light.
He went back to the girl. "I'll take you back and go for a doctor while your people come and look for him."
"He's gone home," she said.
That one word "home" is used to describe a vast number of widely differing places.
"I hope to God he has—to the camp, I mean."
Picking her up in his arms again, he carried her out across the strip of moorland to the camp.
The gipsies were out and astir, there seemed to be a sort of meeting going on among the tents and caravans. Jack Carstairs walked into the centre of them and deposited his burden on the ground.
The girl sat up. "There's Sam," she said, pointing to a young gipsy sitting propped up against the wheel of a caravan. His face was deathly pale, and one eye was bulged out like a small balloon.
The young engineer's heart gave a great bound at the sight of him.
"So you were not killed," he said.
"'Taint no fault of yours," the man growled. The gipsies gathered round.
"Where's mother?" the girl asked.
A woman of about fifty, eagle-eyed, black-haired, descended the steps of a particularly well-appointed caravan and went over to the girl, and felt her carefully all over. "Who did it?" she asked.
"Sam kicked me," the girl answered.
The gipsies made no sound, but dark glistening eyes rolled from the recumbent gipsy to the tall, fair-haired young Englishman.
"Who's this?" the mother asked.
"The man at the electric light, that gave me the coal."
The young man felt a pair of piercing black eyes gazing searchingly into his, they seemed to see right into his brain: he was aware of a strange tingling sensation in his blood as the woman looked at him.
"Are you going to marry the girl?" she asked,
"No!" he said, simply.
The gipsies gathered in closer.
"Come here," the woman said.
He advanced and looked her squarely in the eyes.
She caught hold of his wrist, and lifting his hand examined his palm. She gazed at it long and earnestly, ever and anon glancing up into his eyes. She dropped it suddenly.
"Alright! Go away," she said.
The little circle of gipsy men fell back and opened out for him to go his way.
"What's the matter with that man?" he asked, pointing to Sam.
"Broke his leg," a gipsy man answered.
"What saved him?"
"The trees—he fell on the fir trees."
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out all the money he had, about seven shillings. "Here, get the girl whatever you can. Shall I send a doctor?
"Doctor?" the woman repeated in scorn, "no!"
"Alright," he said, and made his way unmolested past the silent, fierce-eyed men.
He went back to the little works and fired up the boilers and got steam ready for the day man to start the engine when he came in.
That night he went down about ten o'clock and crossed over to the gipsies. The whole camp was gathered in a circle round the embers of a fire.
He stopped on the outside edge. "How's the girl?" he asked.
"Alright," the old woman answered.
"And the man?"
"Alright," she repeated.
He was turning to go away when she spoke again in singularly sweet and winning tones. "Won't you come and sit down, sir?"
"Thanks," he answered, stopping in doubt.
"And father'll play."
A young gipsy immediately got up and disappeared into the flashy looking caravan, to reappear with a violin and bow in his hands.
An old man who had lain stretched out before the fire arose and took the instrument; he fingered it lovingly. Carstairs looked at him with curiosity; he was attired in an old frock coat, green with age, and the silk facings threadbare; straightened out he would have been as tall as Carstairs himself, but he was bent and bowed, his knees tottered, his face was the uniform purple-red of the confirmed drunkard. He tried the strings with his fingers, tuning up. They brought forward a chair, and he sat down. The face, Carstairs thought, showed something of refinement and good breeding even in its bloated, blotched condition. He pushed back his greasy cap and showed a head of fine silver-grey hair; the mouth was in constant motion, twitching, compressing, relaxing. He passed the bow across the strings, making a harsh, jarring scream; then he seemed to settle down, and Carstairs was entranced.
He dropped down beside one of the gipsies and sat silent, lost in beautiful, entrancing thought. All that was best in his life came back to him, his highest thoughts and loftiest ambition were stirred and enlarged, his resolution strengthened, his soul uplifted. He glanced round the circle of rough, mahogany-coloured faces. Dark eyes glistened like precious jewels in the flickering firelight, the rough lines of the features seemed softened.
And all this achieved by a tottering, degraded old drunkard.
The player passed on from tune to tune, only pausing to take a drink from a bottle that the old woman handed him. Many of the strains were familiar to the young engineer; he understood they were "masterpieces" difficult to render. And wonder and a great pity stirred in him side by side at the awful contrast, the inexpressible beauty of the music and the despicable condition of the player. But he, too, seemed to straighten out and grow taller; he stood up, the mouth became steadier, the bleared eyes seemed quite brilliant in the dim light.
Slowly dying down, growing gradually less, the music stopped. Then dropping bow and fiddle the musician made straight for the brass-finished, leather-upholstered caravan, and disappeared inside.
There was silence round the little circle of the gipsies, no one stirred; Carstairs was lost in reverie, ideas thronged through his brain; he was lost to the present, his soul seemed free of his body, delving about in the unknown depths of the future.
A young gipsy started up from the circle and picked up the fiddle and bow. For Carstairs that broke the spell, he looked up and found the gipsy woman's eyes upon him.
He arose and went over to her. "What lovely music," he said. "Who is he?"
"My husband," she answered.
"Oh!" he said. He held out his hand. "Good-bye! you must thank him very much for me."
She took his hand and looked into his eyes in the fixed firelight. "You like music?" she asked.
"Very much," he answered.
He felt a strange feeling of friendliness for this woman, her presence seemed to give him a sensation of comfort, of hope.
Wending his way out of the gipsy camp he crossed to the little works.
"Sorry I'm late."
"Oh, it's alright."
They passed the technical news of the day, then the bearded Scotsman and the other young engineer departed.
Carstairs stood at the door watching them go away along the winding path beside the river, towards the little town. He hadn't altogether shaken off the reverie induced by the music; he gazed out into the silence of the night; in the beautiful half light of the northern night, he could see far up the valley. Long after his companions had disappeared from view he stood there gazing out over the silent landscape, and for once his thoughts were not entirely of himself, of his ambitions and resolves: he wondered at the old man who played the beautiful music, the old woman and the girl, their offspring; it seemed incredible, the girl was so different from either of them. He went inside, closing the wicket gate in the big doors behind him, then going into the little office he produced a drawing-board and instruments and settled down resolutely to work; for he had ideas, many of them, and his occupation gave him ample time for thought.
Next night he went down early to call at the camp again, but when he got there, he found, with a disappointment he was astonished at, the gipsies were gone.
"Cancelled out," he said to himself, for Carstairs thought mathematically. Still, as he spoke, he felt a doubt if the factor were really eliminated.
So time, relentless time, passed away, and Carstairs went his daily round, working and studying, planning and dreaming. Very often in the early summer mornings when he had been on all night, and found it impossible to study any more, he would take his pistol and wander out along the river bank looking for rats or water voles. Always the vision of the gipsy girl came back to him. Her verdict "you're a winner," occurred to him as he fired at the rats or selected some inanimate mark to aim at, and always hit, for his hand was strong and steady and his eye very keen. One day as he wandered so, pistol in hand, there was a sudden swirl in the water, a gleam of silver shot heavenwards, he pointed the pistol and pulled just as the salmon touched the water again, it dived instantly, but there was something wrong with it, the white belly seemed unduly prominent, it was obviously impeded by something.
"Hit! by Jove!" Carstairs said, as the big fish came to the surface and lay quite still floating down with the stream. "A winner," he said, and he wondered thoughtfully if it would always be so.
Then he went on holiday, ten days, back to his home in Gloucestershire, the country vicarage and the Cotswold hills, where the pick of the old prize fighters came from; and there was much of the prize fighter in Carstairs' composition, perhaps it was in the air.
The Reverend Hugh Carstairs was tall and well built, silver haired and clean shaven; his religion was of the comfortable order; he did not consider it necessary to be miserable in order to be good. He was clean in mind and body, rather sporting and rather intellectual. His good lady was somewhat similar, less sporting and less intellectual, more homely and more pious. The product of the union was six well-grown, healthy Englishmen. Jack was the youngest.
His parents received him with undemonstrative but deep-felt pleasure. Up to the present Jack had been, if not the most prosperous, the least expensive of the six; engineering to him had been more or less compulsory because cheap, or comparatively so. The other five had absorbed large sums in their education, and up to the present made small return on capital invested. Jack didn't gamble or drink expensive drinks; he didn't paint pictures or play any musical instrument. As far as his parents knew he had had no love affairs. He was a very sober young man. His mother said he feared God. His father, that he respected himself. The truth was that he had an ambition to bulk very big at some future date, and so had not the time for indulgence in the ordinary common or garden vices and pastimes.
He kissed his mother and shook hands solemnly with his father.
"I want to take some of your books away with me when I go, guv'nor," he said.
His parents looked at him with approval. "What sort of books?"
"Oh! 'maths.' I find I don't know as much mathematics as I thought I did."
His mother looked somewhat disappointed, his father pleased. The dividends on classics did not pan out very well in his experience.
"I'm working out an idea, you know; rather good thing if it's workable. Want some more 'maths,' to read up the authorities on the subject."
"A patent?"
"Yes."
"Ah," his mother sighed, something seemed to touch a sensitive chord. "You know Phillip is going out to India?"
"Yes. Plantation, isn't it?"
"Yes, in a very nice part of the country, I believe."
"What's he going to get?"
"Twenty pounds a month," his father answered.
"That isn't much for a man twenty-four years old, is it? Fitters get that out there."
"My dear boy!" His mother was grieved.
"What's the matter, mater?"
"You have such a sordid way of looking at things."
"Have I? I'm sorry. The aim and object of life at present is to make money."
The Rev. Hugh regarded his son with quiet approval. "It keeps you occupied," he said, "and as long as you're honest."
Jack was silent. "As a general rule I am," he said, at length. "Stole a basketful of coal the other day, though."
"Coal? Whatever for?"
"Gave it away to the poor." He waved his arm lightly with a smile.
His father smiled too, he had Jack's eyes, grey and shrewd. "To a certain extent the end justified the means," he said, "That is, in the common court of our conscience. I suppose it was very cold up in Scotland?"
"On that particular day it was, I think, if anything warmer than it is down here to-day. I should like to be whitewashed, but—the end was a very pretty gipsy girl, whom I afterwards kissed, and punched her affianced husband—broke his leg."
"Good gracious! you're joking."
"Not a bit, mater. I'm going to shine as the villain of the family; it's in me, for under the given circumstance, I'd do the same again." He gave them the main outlines of the case, concisely, hiding nothing.
"I think you'd better leave Scotland," his mother said.
"So do I, mater," he agreed. "I want more money."
The Rev. Hugh's grey eyes twinkled merrily. "Everything comes to him who goes and fetches it," he said.
"That's an engineering precept, guv'nor. An engineer is a man who fetches things. You ought to have been an engineer, not a bally old parson."
"Jack!"
"Sorry, mater, that's a lapsus fungus, or words to that effect."
"Lapsus linguæ, you mean."
"Is it? Oh! fungus seemed to me rather suggestive of the tongue."
Jack was standing up with his back to the mantel-piece. His father smiled, then he stood up, too, and, laying a hand on his son's broad shoulder, looked with solemn, benevolent eyes into the eyes that were level with, and so like, his own. "Go on fetching things, my boy, but never forget that the object of life is happiness. And happiness is only possible to an easy conscience. It is nice to win the match, but better to lose than cheat. I should leave these gipsy girls alone, if I were you."
"Singular, if you please, guv'nor, it's only one, and she's gone away."
"Quite so. I was generalizing."
Jack was thoughtful. "Up to the present," he said, "it is not necessary to generalize, but thanks all the same."
The Rev. Hugh looked at his son, at the steady eyes and close, firm mouth; the lines were very definite, almost cruel; such men do not have many love affairs. "I think you can take care of yourself," he said.
Jack was perfectly sober. "I think so, too," he agreed.