I thought that as the dancing, restless, and broken sparkles were to their serene types above, such were the wandering and wild Romany to the men of culture in their settled homes. It is from the house-dweller that the men of the roads and commons draw the elements of their life, but in that life they are as shaken and confused as the starlight in the rippling river. But if we look through our own life we find that it is not the gypsy alone who is merely a reflection and an imitation of the stars above him, and a creature of second-hand fashion.
I found in the camp an old acquaintance, named Brown, and also perceived at the first greeting that the woman Stanley had told Mrs. Brown that I would not be mongerdo, or begged from, and that the latter, proud of her power in extortion, and as yet invincible in mendicancy, had boasted that she would succeed, let others weakly fail. And to lose no time she went at me with an abruptness and dramatic earnestness which promptly betrayed the secret. And on the spot I made a vow that nothing should get a farthing from me, though I should be drawn by wild horses. And a horse was, indeed, brought into requisition to draw me, or my money, but without success; for Mr. Brown, as I very well knew,—it being just then the current topic in the best society on the road,—had very recently been involved in a tangled trouble with a stolen horse. This horse had been figuratively laid at his door, even as a “love-babe” is sometimes placed on the front steps of a virtuous and grave citizen,—at least, this is what White George averred,—and his very innocence and purity had, like a shining mark, attracted the shafts of the wicked. He had come out unscathed,
with a package of papers from a lawyer, which established his character above par; but all this had cost money, beautiful golden money, and brought him to the very brink of ruin! Mrs. Brown’s attack was a desperate and determined effort, and there was more at stake on its success than the reader may surmise. Among gypsy women skill in begging implies the possession of every talent which they most esteem, such as artfulness, cool effrontery, and the power of moving pity or provoking generosity by pique or humor. A quaint and racy book might be written, should it only set forth the manner in which the experienced matrons give straight-tips or suggestions to the maidens as to the manner and lore of begging; and it is something worth hearing when several sit together and devise dodges, and tell anecdotes illustrating the noble art of mendicity, and how it should be properly practiced.
Mrs. Brown knew that to extort alms from me would place her on the pinnacle as an artist. Among all the Cooper clan, to which she was allied, there was not one who ever begged from me, they having all found that the ripest nuts are those which fall from the tree of their own accord, or are blown earthward by the soft breezes of benevolence, and not those which are violently beaten down. She began by pitiful appeals; she was moving, but I did not budge. She grew pathetic; she touched on the stolen horse; she paused, and gushed almost to tears, as much as to say, If it must be, you shall know all. Ruin stared them in the face; poverty was crushing them. It was well acted,—rather in the Bernhardt style, which, if M. Ondit speaks the truth, is also employed rather extensively for acquiring “de monish.”
I looked at the van, of which the Browns are proud, and inquired if it were true that it had been insured for a hundred pounds, as George had recently boasted. Persuasion having failed, Mrs. Brown tried bold defiance, saying that they needed no company who were no good to them, and plainly said to me I might be gone. It was her last card, thinking that a threat to dissolve our acquaintance would drive me to capitulate, and it failed. I laughed, went into the van, sat down, took out my brandy flask, and then accepted some bread and ale, and, to please them, read aloud all the papers acquitting George from all guilt as concerned the stolen horse,—papers which, he declared, had cost him full five pounds. This was a sad come-down from the story first told. Then I seriously rated his wife for begging from me. “You know well enough,” I said, “that I give all I can spare to your family and your people when they are sick or poor. And here you are, the richest Romanys on the road between Windsor and the Boro Gav, begging a friend, who knows all about you, for money! Now, here is a shilling. Take it. Have half a crown? Two of ’em! No! Oh, you don’t want it here in your own house. Well, you have some decency left, and to save your credit I won’t make you take it. And you scandalize me, a gentleman and a friend, just to show this tramp of a Stanley juva, who hasn’t even got a drag [wagon], that you can beat her a mongerin mandy [begging me].”
Mrs. Brown assented volubly to everything, and all the time I saw in her smiling eyes, ever agreeing to all, and heard from her voluble lips nothing but the lie,—that lie which is the mental action and
inmost grain of the Romany, and especially of the diddikai, or half-breed. Anything and everything—trickery, wheedling or bullying, fawning or threatening, smiles, or rage, or tears—for a sixpence. All day long flattering and tricking to tell fortunes or sell trifles, and all life one greasy lie, with ready frowns or smiles: as it was in India in the beginning, as it is in Europe, and as it will be in America, so long as there shall be a rambler on the roads, amen!
Sweet peace again established, Mrs. Brown became herself once more, and acted the hospitable hostess, exactly in the spirit and manner of any woman who has “a home of her own,” and a spark of decent feeling in her heart. Like many actors, she was a bad lot on the boards, but a very nice person off them. Here in her rolling home she was neither a beggar nor poor, and she issued her orders grandly. “Boil some tea for the rye—cook some coffee for the rye—wait a few minutes, my darling gentleman, and I’ll brile you a steak—or here’s a fish, if you’d like it?” But I declined everything except the corner of a loaf and some ale; and all the time a little brown boy, with great black eyes, a perfect Murillo model, sat condensed in wondrous narrow space by the fire, baking small apples between the bars of the grate, and rolling up his orbs at me as if wondering what could have brought me into such a circle,—even as he had done that morning in the greenwood.
Now if the reader would know what the interior of a gypsy van, or “drag,” or wardo, is like, he may see it in the following diagram.
