“My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I said,” he burst out. “There was all the world for you, but I had only my music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me. ‘Mi Duvel’, you have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of us in the world! The music I have played for you—that has told you all: the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the First of All. Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the Gorgio, come between, and she will not return to me.”
A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the face—this Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse! It was too monstrous. It was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, and had said it with apparent shame or anxiety. She had given him no promise, had pledged no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in his heart of hearts he thought upon her as his own. Ever since the day he had held her in his arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded in his ears, and a warmth was in his heart which had never been there in all his days. This waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as though he was of the same sphere as herself invited punishment-but to claim her as his wife! It was shameless. An ugly mood came on him, the force that had made him what he was filled all his senses. He straightened himself; contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips.
“I think you lie, Jethro Fawe,” he said quietly, and his eyes were hard and piercing. “Gabriel Druse’s daughter is not—never was—any wife of yours. She never called you husband. She does not belong to the refuse of the world.”
The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung, but two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled across the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair where rested the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he staggered to his feet again, all his senses in chaos.
“You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt it I’d have hurt you, Mr. Fawe,” Ingolby said with a grim smile. “That fiddle’s got too much in it to waste it.”
“Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!” gasped the Romany in his fury.
“You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of your monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck,” Ingolby returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace.
“And look,” he added, “since you are here, and I said what I meant, that I’d help you to get your own, I’ll keep my word. But don’t talk in damned riddles. Talk white men’s language. You said that Gabriel Druse’s daughter was your wife. Explain what you meant, and no nonsense.”
The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. “She was made mine according to Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the son of Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys. Gabriel Druse seized the headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country.”
Ingolby winced, for the man’s words rang true. A cloud came over his face, but he said nothing. Jethro saw the momentary advantage. “You did not know?” he asked. “She did not tell you she was made my wife those years ago? She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King? So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth.”