CHAPTER VII—THE OPEN WORLD
That night in the tent I slept soundly, with the fortuneteller’s arm about me and my head nearly touching Ruthita’s across her breast. The soft rise and fall of her bosom made me dream of my mother.
Glimmerings of the early autumn sunrise crept in through holes in the canvas. I raised myself cautiously and gazed at the woman who had cared for me. I call her a woman, for she seemed to me a woman then; she was about seventeen—little more than a girl. Her face was gentle and passionate; her jet black hair streamed down in a torrent across her tawny throat and breast. She smiled in her sleep and murmured to herself; the arm which clasped Ruthita kept twitching, as though to draw her nearer. While I watched, her eyes opened; she said nothing, but lay smiling up at me. Presently she put her free arm about my neck, and drew me down so my cheek rested against hers. She turned her head and I saw that, though she looked happy, there were tears on her long dark lashes. Her lips moved and I knew what she wanted. Putting my arms about her, I kissed her good-morning.
Rousing Ruthita, she raised the flap of the tent and we slipped out. Mists were drifting across the woodland, pink and golden where the sunrise caught them, but lavender in the shadows. It was a quiet fairy world, like the face of a sleeping woman, which was pale with dew upon the forehead and copper and bronze with the streaming hair of faded foliage. Outside the door the grass was blackened in a circle where a gipsy fire had burnt. The yellow caravan stood near. In and out the bracken rabbits were hopping, nibbling at the cool green turf. The gipsy’s lurcher watched them, crouched with his nose between his paws, waiting his opportunity to steal closer. Lilith set about gathering brushwood for the fire and we helped her.
“Ruthie, am I taller?”
She eyed me judicially and shook her curls. “No. But p’raps we shall grow tall quite suddenly, when the honeymoon is ended.”
I was beginning to have my doubts of that, so I changed the subject. “Lilith has a baby. She carries it on her back.”
“Where does she keep it now?” asked Ruthita. “It wasn’t on her back last night in the tent.” Then she commenced to hop about like an eager, excited little bird. “I shall ask her. I shall ask her, Dante, and she’ll let me hold it.”
But when we ran to Lilith her back was straight and unbulgy. And when we asked her where she kept the baby, she dropped the bundle of sticks she was carrying and sank to her knees, with her hands pressed against her breast. She swayed to and fro, with her eyes closed, muttering in a strange language. Then she bent forward, kissing the ground and chanting words which sounded like, “Coroon! Coroon! Oh, dearie, come back. Come back!”