"Yes, and that"s how they fool people," said I. I enjoyed seeing the flash of her teeth. But my daring of her to look me in the eyes and swear on her oath she believed the fortunes true ones, sent her into a fit of sullenness.
"Go along, you nasty little fellow, your shadow isn"t half a yard," she said, and I could smile at that; my shadow stretched half across the road. We had a quarrelsome day wherever we went; rarely walking close together till nightfall, when she edged up to my hand, with, "I say, I"ll keep you warm to-night, I will." She hugged me almost too tight, but it was warm and social, and helped to the triumph of a feeling I had that nothing made me regret running away from Rippenger"s school.
An adventure befell us in the night. A farmer"s wife, whom we asked for a drink of water after dark, lent us an old blanket to cover us in a dry ditch on receiving our promise not to rob the orchard. An old beggar came limping by us, and wanted to share our covering. My companion sank right under the blanket to peer at him through one of its holes. He stood enormous above me in the moonlight, like an apparition touching earth and sky.
"Cold, cold," he whined: "there"s ne"er a worse off but there"s a better off. Young un!" His words dispersed the fancy that he was something horrible, or else my father in disguise going to throw off his rags, and shine, and say he had found me. "Are ye one, or are ye two?" he asked.
I replied that we were two.
"Then I"ll come and lie in the middle," said he.
"You can"t; there"s no room," I sang out.
"Lord," said he, "there"s room for any reckoning o" empty stomachs in a ditch."
"No, I prefer to be alone: good-night," said I.
"Why!" he exclaimed, "where ha" you been t" learn language? Halloa!"
"Please, leave me alone; it"s my intention to go to sleep," I said, vexed at having to conciliate him; he had a big stick.
"Oho!" went the beggar. Then he recommenced:
"Tell me you"ve stole nothing in your life! You"ve stole a gentleman"s tongue, I knows the ring o" that. How comes you out here? Who"s your mate there down below? Now, see, I"m going to lift my stick."
At these menacing words the girl jumped out of the blanket, and I called to him that I would rouse the farmer.
"Why... because I"m goin" to knock down a apple or two on your head?" he inquired, in a tone of reproach. "It"s a young woman you"ve got there, eh? Well, odd grows odder, like the man who turned three shillings into five. Now, you gi" me a lie under your blanket, I "ll knock down a apple apiece. If ever you"ve tasted gin, you "ll say a apple at night"s a cordial, though it don"t intoxicate."
The girl whispered in my ear, "He"s lame as ducks." Her meaning seized me at once; we both sprang out of the ditch and ran, dragging our blanket behind us. He pursued, but we eluded him, and dropped on a quiet sleeping-place among furzes. Next morning, when we took the blanket to the farm-house, we heard that the old wretch had traduced our characters, and got a breakfast through charging us with the robbery of the apple-tree. I proved our innocence to the farmer"s wife by putting down a shilling. The sight of it satisfied her. She combed my hair, brought me a bowl of water and a towel, and then gave us a bowl of milk and bread, and dismissed us, telling me I had a fair face and dare-devil written on it: as for the girl, she said of her that she knew gipsies at a glance, and what G.o.d Almighty made them for there was no guessing.
This set me thinking all through the day, "What can they have been made for?" I bought a red scarf for the girl, and other things she fixed her eyes on, but I lost a great deal of my feeling of fellowship with her.
"I dare say they were made for fun," I thought, when people laughed at us now, and I laughed also.
I had a day of rollicking laughter, puzzling the girl, who could only grin two or three seconds at a time, and then stared like a dog that waits for his master to send him off again running, the corners of her mouth twitching for me to laugh or speak, exactly as a dog might wag his tail. I studied her in the light of a harmless sort of unaccountable creature; witness at any rate for the fact that I had escaped from school.
We loitered half the morning round a cricketers" booth in a field, where there was moderately good cricketing. The people thought it of first-rate quality. I told them I knew a fellow who could bowl out either eleven in an hour and a half. One of the men frightened me by saying, "By Gearge! I"ll in with you into a gig, and off with you after that ther" faller." He pretended to mean it, and started up. I watched him without flinching. He remarked that if I "had not cut my lucky from school, and tossed my cap for a free life, he was ----" whatever may be expressed by a slap on the thigh. We played a single-wicket side game, he giving me six runs, and crestfallen he was to find himself beaten; but, as I let him know, one who had bowled to Heriot for hours and stood against Saddlebank"s bowling, was a tough customer, never mind his age.
This man offered me his friendship. He made me sit and eat beside him at the afternoon dinner of the elevens, and sent platefuls of food to the girl, where she was allowed to squat; and said he, "You and I"ll tie a knot, and be friends for life."
I replied, "With pleasure."
We nodded over a gla.s.s of ale. In answer to his questions, I stated that I liked farms, I would come and see his farm, I would stay with him two or three days, I would give him my address if I had one, I was on my way to have a look at Riversley Grange.
"Hey!" says he, "Riversley Grange! Well, to be sure now! I"m a tenant of Squire Beltham"s, and a right sort of landlord, too."
"Oh!" says I, "he"s my grandfather, but I don"t care much about him."
"Lord!" says he. "What! be you the little boy, why, Master Harry Richmond that was carried off in the night, and the old squire shut up doors for a fortnight, and made out you was gone in a hea.r.s.e! Why, I know all about you, you see. And back you are, hurrah! The squire "ll be hearty, that he will. We"ve noticed a change in him ever since you left.
Gout"s been at his leg, off and on, a deal shrewder. But he rides to hounds, and dines his tenants still, that he does; he"s one o" th" old style. Everything you eat and drink"s off his estate, the day he dines his tenants. No humbug "bout old Squire Beltham.
I asked him if Sewis was alive.
"Why, old Sewis," says he, "you"re acquainted with old Sewis? Why, of course you are. Yes, old Sewis "s alive, Master Harry. And you bet me at single-wicket! That "ll be something to relate to "em all. By Gearge, if I didn"t think I"d got a nettle in my fist when I saw you pitch into my stumps. Dash it! thinks I. But th" old squire "ll be proud of you, that he will. My farm lies three miles away. You look at a crow flying due South-east five minutes from Riversley, and he"s over Throckham farm, and there I "ll drive ye to-night, and to-morrow, clean and tidy out o" my wife"s soap and water, straight to Riversley. Done, eh? My name"s Eckerthy. No matter where you comes from, here you are, eh, Master Harry? And I see you last time in a donkey-basket, and here you come in breeches and defy me to singlewicket, and you bet me too!"
He laughed for jollity. An extraordinary number of emotions had possession of me: the most intelligible one being a restless vexation at myself, as the princ.i.p.al person concerned, for not experiencing anything like the farmer"s happiness. I preferred a gipsy life to Riversley.
Gipsies were on the road, and that road led to my father. I endeavoured to explain to Farmer Eckerthy that I was travelling in this direction merely to have a short look at Riversley; but it was impossible; he could not understand me. The more I tried, the more he pressed me to finish my gla.s.s of ale, which had nothing to do with it. I drank, nevertheless, and I suppose said many funny things in my anxiety that the farmer should know what I meant; he laughed enough.
While he was fielding against the opposite eleven, the tramp came into the booth, and we had a match of cunning.
"Schoolmaster"s out after you, young gentleman," said he, advising me to hurry along the road if I sought to baffle pursuit.
I pretended alarm, and then said, "Oh, you"ll stand by me," and treated him to ale.
He a.s.sured me I left as many tracks behind me as if I went spilling a box of lucifer-matches. He was always for my hastening on until I ordered fresh ale for him. The girl and he grimaced at one another in contempt. So we remained seeing the game out. By the time the game ended, the tramp had drunk numbers of gla.s.ses of ale.
"A fine-flavoured fat goose," he counted his gains since the commencement of our acquaintance, "bottles of ale and ginger-pop, two half-crowns, more ale, and more to follow, let"s hope. You only stick to your friends, young gentleman, won"t you, sir? It"s a hard case for a poor man like me if you don"t. We ain"t got such chances every morning of our lives. Do you perceive, sir? I request you to inform me, do you perceive, sir? I"m muddled a bit, sir, but a man must look after his interests."
I perceived he was so muddled as to be unable to conceal that his interests were involved in my capture; but I was merry too. Farmer Eckerthy dealt the tramp a scattering slap on the back when he returned to the booth, elated at having beaten the enemy by a single run.
"Master Harry Richmond go to Riversley to his grandfather in your company, you scoundrel!" he cried in a rage, after listening to him. "I mean to drive him over. It "s a comfortable ten-mile, and no more. But I say, Master Harry, what do you say to a peck o" supper?"
He communicated to me confidentially that he did not like to seem to slink away from the others, who had made up their minds to stop and sup; so we would drive home by moonlight, singing songs. And so we did. I sat beside the farmer, the girl scrambled into the hinder part of the cart, and the tramp stood moaning, "Oh dear! oh dear! you goes away to Riversley without your best friend."
I tossed him a shilling. We sang beginnings and ends of songs. The farmer looked at the moon, and said, "Lord! she stares at us!" Then he sang:
"The moon is shining on Latworth lea, And where"ll she see such a jovial three As we, boys, we? And why is she pale?
It"s because she drinks water instead of ale."
"Where "s the remainder? There"s the song--!
"Oh! handsome Miss Gammon Has married Lord Mammon, And jilted her suitors, All Cupid"s sharpshooters, And gone in a carriage And six to her marriage, Singing hey! for I"ve landed my salmon, my salmon!"
Where"s the remainder? I heard it th" only time I ever was in London town, never rested till I"d learnt it, and now it"s clean gone. What"s come to me?"
He sang to "Mary of Ellingmere" and another maid of some place, and a loud song of Britons.
It was startling to me to wake up to twilight in the open air and silence, for I was unaware that I had fallen asleep. The girl had roused me, and we crept down from the cart. Horse and farmer were quite motionless in a green hollow beside the roadway. Looking across fields and fir plantations, I beheld a house in the strange light of the hour, and my heart began beating; but I was overcome with shyness, and said to myself, "No, no, that"s not Riversley; I"m sure it isn"t"; though the certainty of it was, in my teeth, refuting me. I ran down the fields to the park and the bright little river, and gazed. When I could say, "Yes, it is Riversley!" I turned away, hurt even to a sense of smarting pain, without knowing the cause. I dare say it is true, as the girl declared subsequently, that I behaved like one in a fit. I dropped, and I may have rolled my body and cried. An indefinite resentment at Riversley was the feeling I grew conscious of after very fast walking. I would not have accepted breakfast there.
About mid-day, crossing a stubble-field, the girl met a couple of her people-men. Near evening we entered one of their tents. The women set up a cry, "Kiomi! Kiomi!" like a rising rookery. Their eyes and teeth made such a flashing as when you dabble a hand in a dark waterpool. The strange tongue they talked, with a kind of peck of the voice at a word, rapid, never high or low, and then a slide of similar tones all round,--not musical, but catching and incessant,--gave me an idea that I had fallen upon a society of birds, exceedingly curious ones. They welcomed me kindly, each of them looking me in the face a bright second or so. I had two helps from a splendid pot of broth that hung over a fire in the middle of the tent.
Kiomi was my companion"s name. She had sisters Adeline and Eveleen, and brothers Osric and William, and she had a cousin a prizefighter. "That"s what I"ll be," said I. Fiddling for money was not a prospect that charmed me, though it was pleasant lying in Kiomi"s arms to hear Osric play us off to sleep; it was like floating down one of a number of visible rivers; I could see them converging and breaking away while I floated smoothly, and a wonderful fair country nodded drowsy. From that to c.o.c.k-crow at a stride. Sleep was no more than the pa.s.sage through the arch of a ca.n.a.l. Kiomi and I were on the heath before sunrise, jumping gravel-pits, chasing sandpipers, mimicking pewits; it seemed to me I had only just heard the last of Osric"s fiddle when yellow colour filled in along the sky over Riversley. The curious dark thrill of the fiddle in the tent by night seemed close up behind the sun, and my quiet fancies as I lay dropping to sleep, followed me like un.o.btrusive shadows during daylight, or, to speak truthfully, till about dinner-time, when I thought of nothing but the great stew-pot. We fed on plenty; nicer food than Rippenger"s, minus puddings. After dinner I was ready for mischief.
My sensations on seeing Kiomi beg of a gentleman were remarkable. I reproached her. She showed me sixpence shining in the palm of her hand.
I gave her a shilling to keep her from it. She had now got one and sixpence, she said: meaning, I supposed upon reflection, that her begging had produced that sum, and therefore it was a good thing. The money remaining in my pocket amounted to five shillings and a penny.
I offered it to Kiomi"s mother, who refused to accept it; so did the father, and Osric also. I might think of them, they observed, on my return to my own house: they pointed at Riversley. "No," said I, "I shan"t go there, you may be sure." The women grinned, and the men yawned. The business of the men appeared to be to set to work about everything as if they had a fire inside them, and then to stretch out their legs and lie on their backs, exactly as if the fire had gone out.
Excepting Osric"s practice on the fiddle, and the father"s bringing in and leading away of horses, they did little work in my sight but brown themselves in the sun. One morning Osric"s brother came to our camp with their cousin the prizefighter--a young man of lighter complexion, upon whom I gazed, remembering John Thresher"s reverence for the heroical profession. Kiomi whispered some story concerning her brother having met the tramp. I did not listen; I was full of a tempest, owing to two causes: a studious admiration of the smart young prizefighter"s person, and wrathful disgust at him for calling Kiomi his wife, and telling her he was prepared to marry her as soon as she played her harp like King David. The intense folly of his asking a girl to play like David made me despise him, but he was splendidly handsome and strong, and to see him put on the gloves for a spar with big William, Kiomi"s brother, and evade and ward the huge blows, would have been a treat to others besides old John of Dipwell Farm. He had the agile grace of a leopard; his waistcoat reminded me of one; he was like a piece of machinery in free action. Pleased by my enthusiasm, he gave me a lesson, promising me more.
"He"ll be champion some day," said Kiomi, at gnaw upon an apple he had given her.
I knocked the apple on the ground, and stamped on it. She slapped my cheek. In a minute we stood in a ring. I beheld the girl actually squaring at me.