“All right, brother,” a voice said huskily. “I’m meaning you no hurt.”
A woman’s face pushed itself out of the blackness; by the light of the fire I saw that it was Lilith’s.
“Now you’re here, brother, we’ve come back to Woadley.”
She spoke as though our meeting had been pre-arranged.
Gazing through the trees I saw the old yellow caravan: and G’liath; the gaudy woman was there, and the hag who had tried to tell Vi’s fortune on the marshes.
The huddled gipsy tents became an accustomed sight and the center of a new interest in my landscape. The proud lawlessness of the gipsies appealed to my own suppressed wildness. They opened a door of escape from commonplace environment. Their unannounced comings and goings had an atmosphere of mystery and stealth which filled me with excitement. Of a night I would look out from my bedroom windows and see the red glow of their camp across the park-land; in the morning nothing would remain but blackened turf and silence.
I went on many tramping expeditions with Lilith. She had become curiously elflike and wilful since those early days. She seemed to live wholly in the moods and sensations of the present; of the past she would speak only in snatches. Sometimes, when she softened, she would mention Ruthita; but it was long before I discovered her secret and the reason why for so many years the gipsies had refused to camp at Woadley.
All one day in the height of summer we had wandered, across meadows and by unfrequented by-roads, too content to pay heed to where we were going; when evening overtook us we were miles from home. It was too late to turn back, unless we walked on to the nearest village and hired a trap and drove. Lilith scouted the proposal with scornful eyes as too utterly conventional. We would make a camp for the night and return to-morrow.
There, alone in the open, with great clouds thumbing the western sky, and birds sinking into tree-tops singing, “Home, home, home,” life liberated itself and rose in the throat as though it had never been bound and civilized. We spoke only in monosyllables; even words were a form of captivity. Collecting brushwood, we built our fire and ate our meal between the walls of bushes. Slowly the silver trumpet of the moon rose above leafy spires.
We made a strange pair, Lilith and I—she the untamed savage, gloriously responsive, and I, for all my attitudes of mind, outwardly the sluggish product of reserve and education. Through the gray smoke I watched her, with her red shawl falling from her splendid shoulders, her glittering ear-rings and her large soft eyes. I told myself stories about her quite in the old childish vein. I recalled how the Bantam and I had always been hoping to find her. What fun it would be to vanish for a time, leaving responsibilities behind, and to take to the road together! White mists, rising from the meadows, erected a tent about us which towered to the sky. Here in the open was privacy from the impertinent knocking of destiny.