Ortho reported at the gypsy camp shortly after sun-up next morning; he was wasting no time. Questioned, he swore he had Teresa’s leave, which was a lie, as Pyramus knew it to be. But he had covered himself; did trouble arise he could declare he understood the boy had got his mother’s permission.
Ortho did not expect to be discovered. Teresa was used to his being out day and night with either Bohenna or Jacky’s George and would not be curious. The gypsies had the head of the valley to themselves; nobody ever came that way except the cow-girl Wany, and she had no eyes for anything but the supernatural.
The riding lessons began straightway on Lussha’s red pony “Cherry.” The chestnut was by no means as perfect a mount as the black mare, but for all that a creditable performer, well-schooled, speedy and eager, a refreshing contrast to the stiff-jointed, iron-mouthed farm horses. Pyramus took pains with his pupil. Half of what he had said was true; the boy was shaped to fit a saddle and his hands were sensitive. There was a good deal of the artist in King Herne. It pleased him to handle promising material for its own sake, but above all he sought to infect the boy with horse-fever to his own material gain.
The gypsy camp saw Ortho early and late. He returned to Bosula only to sleep and fill his pockets with food. Food in wasteful plenty lay about everywhere in that slip-shod establishment; the door was never bolted. He would creep home through the orchard, silence the dogs with a word, take off his shoes in the kitchen, listen to Teresa’s hearty snores in the room above, drive the cats off the remains of supper, help himself and tiptoe up to bed. Nobody, except Eli, knew where he spent his days; nobody cared.
The gypsies attracted him for the same reason that they repelled his brother; they were something new, something he did not understand.
Ortho did not find anything very elusive about the males; they were much like other men, if quicker-witted and more suave. It was the women who intrigued and, at the same time, awed him. He had watched them at work with the cards, bent over the palm of a trembling servant girl or farm woman. What did they know? What didn’t they know? What virtue was in them that they should be the chosen mouthpieces of Destiny? He would furtively watch them about their domestic duties, stirring the black pots or nursing their half-naked brats, and wonder what secrets the Fates were even then whispering into their ringed ears, what enigmas were being made plain to those brooding eyes. He felt his soul laid bare to those omniscient eyes.
But it was solely his own imagination that troubled him. The women gave him no cause; they cast none but the gentlest glances at the dark boy. Sometimes of an evening they would sing, not the green English ballads and folk-songs that were their stock-in-trade, but epics of Romany heroes, threnodies and canzonets.
Pyramus was the principal soloist. He had a pliant, tuneful voice and accompanied himself on a Spanish guitar.
He would squat before the fire, the women in a row opposite him, toss a verse across to them, and they would toss back the refrain, rocking to the time as though strung on a single wire.
The scene stirred Ortho—the gloomy wood, the overhanging rocks, the gypsy king, guitar across his knees, trumpeting his wild songs of love and knavery; and the women and girls, in their filthy, colorful rags, seen through a film of wood smoke, swaying to and fro, to and fro, bright eyes and barbaric brass ornaments glinting in the firelight. On the outer circle children and men lay listening in the leaf mold, and beyond them invisible horses stamped and shifted at their pickets, an owl hooted, a dog barked.