IT was into the sunshine of a cloudless June morning that Joey and I fared in quest of adventure. Our caravan was well provisioned with necessities, well equipped with cooking utensils, stocked liberally with fishing tackle. And with a lively rattle and bang—we rolled out on to the river road and wheeled away at a goodly pace. I held the reins and Joey alternately piped on his flute and sang a lusty song about a “Quack with a feather on his back.”
Despite the depression that obsessed me my spirits rose as we went on, and by noon when we were well into the heart of the deep lush woods beyond Roselake, I am sure Joey could have had no cause to complain of the gravity of his companion. Surely there is balm for wounded souls in the solitude of the greenwood. We found a spot where bracken waved waist high, where moss was green-gold and flowers were sprouting on rocks, where the very air was dreamful. I felt a sudden electrification. My feet felt young and winged again; I lost all desires, all hopes, all fears; I only realized that I was unweighted. In this meeting with nature I was stripped and unhampered—unexpectedly free from the dragging bondage of the past few days.
We were on the mountain side, and waters poured down into the valley below us, waters that hinted of trout. Heights were to left and right of us, the sky stretched azure-blue between, all about us were sequestered nooks where singing brooks played in and out among the green thickets.
“Shall we camp here, Joey,” I asked, marking the satisfaction on his face.
“Oh, Mr. David, I was ’most afraid to ask! Seems as if we hadn’t gone far enough. I should think gipsies would camp near trout streams, though.”
He was already lifting our cooking kit from the caravan, his small brown face alert, his stout little hands trembling with their eagerness to assist in the unloading. We gave an hour to making camp. I built a fire between two flat stones, and Joey filled a kettle with water and placed it over the blaze, while I put my trout rod together, chose a fly carefully from my meagre home-made assortment and went to the near-by stream.
I whipped the stream carefully for half an hour and succeeded in landing a half dozen trout. They made a meal fit for a king. And afterward Joey and I lay on the grass half dozing and watching a pair of violet-green swallows that had a nest in a hole in a cottonwood tree on the bank of the stream.
“Don’t they like bird houses?” asked the small boy.
“They do,” I replied. “They will welcome almost any tiny opening. They will go through a hole in any gable or cornice. They are industrious and painstaking; they have courage and patience. It is fine to have courage and patience, Joey.” I was almost asleep, but thought it well to point a moral while I had his ear.
“What can you do with those two things, Mr. David, dear?”
“Almost anything, lad.” I thought of Santa Teresa’s book-mark: “Patient endurance attaineth to all things,” and I clenched my hands involuntarily, and sat up.
“I see—it’s going to be a story!”
I shook my head. “It’s warm for stories. Try to rest, Joey.”
He lay back obediently, and a hand stole out and stroked my hand.
“But, what, Mr. David—what can you do with courage and patience?”
The question came again, and found me still unprepared.
“What would you say, Joey?”
“Well,” the clear, light tones ran on, “if you have patience you can make things—like cedar chests and tables and bird houses; you can fix things too—same as you do, Mr. David. Fixing is harder than making, I guess. ’Most anybody can make things—perhaps—I don’t know for sure; but everybody can’t fix things, like you can.”
I gripped the small hand hard.
“What about courage, Joey?”
“Pooh! that’s for fighting lions and—and coyotes. Every big man can kill lions. I’d liever fix boys’ toys.”
I dozed after a time, and from a doze drifted into refreshing slumber. I awoke to see silver shadows drawing in around me, overhead a half-lit crescent moon, tender colors streaking the mountains. There was an appetizing smell of cooking on the air, and casting my eyes about I spied Joey very red-faced and stealthy, kneeling beside the camp fire, holding a forked stick in his hand on which was impaled a generous strip of sizzling bacon. I saw a pan of well-browned potatoes hard by, and I rose on my elbow prepared to shout “Grub-pile,” after the fashion of camp cooks, when I heard a strange, sibilant sound from a clump of aspens on the other side of the stream.
I listened. Tinkle, tinkle went the stream; swish, swish whispered the aspens and young maples; but surely that was a human voice droning a curious, lazy chant. I fixed my eyes on the aspen thicket. Presently there came a strange rustling, a vague movement beyond the leafy screen. I waited. Soon a brown hand parted the branches, two bright eyes peered through. As I rose to my feet a slight wiry figure in the fantastic garb of a gipsy darted from the bushes, leaped the stream, and sprang into the little clearing by the fire. I saw a brown face, poppy red lips, and a pair of dancing eyes, shadowed by hair black as midnight. I bent a sharp scrutiny upon the intruder as she stood there in the uncertain light, but with a petulant movement she drew the peaked scarlet cap she wore lower over her face, and wrapped the long folds of her voluminous cape more closely about her.
“Let the gipsy cook your bacon,” she said in an odd throaty voice to Joey.
Joey with big-eyed wonder relinquished the forked stick and dripping bacon strip, and the gipsy tossed back her cape, freeing her arms, and began a deft manipulation of the primitive implement, turning it round and round, now plunging it almost into the heart of the fire, now drawing it away and waving it just beyond the reach of the leaping flames. When I drew near with the coffee pot in my hand, and essayed another glance at her face, it was too dark for me to see her features plainly. I had only a dizzying glimpse of wonderful liquid orbs, white teeth and wreathed berry-red lips.
THE GYPSY TOSSED BACK HER CAPE
When the meal was ready she ate ravenously, almost snatching at the food with which Joey plied her. The light from the fire played over her picturesque attire, shone in her eyes and danced on the tawdry ornaments she wore. She had seated herself with her back against a log; her cape had fallen away, disclosing a coarse white blouse and short skirt of green; about her slim waist she wore a sash of red. In her ears were hoops of gold; each time she tossed her head they danced riotously; and with every movement of her brown arms the bracelets on her wrists jangled. I glanced at her suspiciously from time to time. But Joey’s delight was beyond bounds. He was so frankly overjoyed at the gipsy’s presence that once or twice he giggled outright when she looked at him. I saw an answering flash in her eyes. Of speech she was chary, and all my efforts to draw her into conversation were futile.
She made no attempt to assist Joey and me with the clearing away of the remains of the repast, watching us from under sleepy lids without changing her position against the log; but when we came back to the fire after our work was finished, and I stretched out with a luxurious yawn, she smiled at me and mumbled:
“The poor gipsy girl can tell your fortune.”
“I don’t believe you’re a Romany,” I said sharply, “you’re much too good looking, and too clean.”
She drew back, resentment in her bearing, and I made haste to placate her by saying:
“The fact is, I have had my fortune told so often by gipsies in the vicinity of Roselake that there is no novelty in it.”
She frowned, and I asked, trying to speak pleasantly, “Where is your encampment?”
She pointed towards the West. “There! Way off,” she grunted.
We sat for a long while in silence. The darkness was like a glorious, blurred, mist-hung web, closing in beyond the circle of light cast by our camp fire. The crescent moon shone palely, but the stars were like crimson fires in the nest of night. There was a smell of honey on the wind, a pungency of pine, a mingling of mellow odors; and over all this the cleanness of the woods that was like a tonic.
Joey yawned finally, his head fell over heavily against my arm, and I said, “Bed-time, Joey!”
“As for me,” the gipsy muttered, rolling over with an indolent, cat-like movement on the soft moss, “I sleep here. This is a good bed. You sleep in the wagon?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Good! The encampment is far away. I will not go through the woods to-night. Not me.” She covered her face with her cape. I heard a prodigious yawn. “Good night,” she said, in a muffled tone.
I stowed Joey away on a bed of hemlock boughs in the wagon, and after I had satisfied myself that he slept, I returned to the fire. I knelt beside the shrouded figure.
“Wanza Lyttle,” I said sternly, “uncover your face and look at me.”
She kicked out ruthlessly with both copper-toed shoes, wriggled angrily beneath her cape, and then lay quiet.
“Do you think, Wanza, you should have followed us in this shameless fashion,—and in this disguise?”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t, if I wanted to,” a surly voice replied from the folds of the cape.
“You are always doing inconceivable, silly things,” I went on. “How did you get here?”
“I followed you on horseback. Rosebud is tethered a ways back in the woods.”
“What will your father say to this? What will the entire village say when the busybodies learn of it?”
“Father isn’t at home; he’s at Harrison. As for the others,—” Wanza sat up, and cast the cape from her—“little I care for their talk.”
“I wish you cared more for public opinion, Wanza.”
“Public fiddlesticks,” Wanza growled, crossly.
Suddenly she laughed with childlike naïveté, her eyes grew bright with roguery.
“You did not know me just at first, now did you? The black wig, and staining my face and hands fooled you all right for awhile. Don’t I look like a gipsy? I did it to please Joey—partly—and partly because—oh, Mr. Dale, I wanted to come with you! It sounded so fine—what you said about the greenwood and the caravan. Do you hate me for following?”
What could I say?
I made her as comfortable as I could there on the soft moss, with a couple of blankets, heaped fresh wood on the fire, and then I crawled in beside Joey and lay pondering on this latest prank of madcap Wanza. I saw the moon grow brighter and pass from my vision, I saw the stars wheel down the sky towards the west, and dawn come up like a delicate mincing lady, and then I slept.
Joey stood beside me when I awakened. He had a scarlet ribbon in his hand.
“The gipsy’s gone, Mr. David,” he said. “I found this hanging on an elder bush.”
I breathed a sigh of thankfulness.
“So she’s gone,” I murmured, not venturing to meet his eyes.
“She was a beautiful gipsy,” he continued regretfully. “Do you know, Mr. David, I think she was almost—not quite—but almost as pretty as Wanza. I guess there never was any one prettier than Wanza, ’cept—” he hesitated.
“Yes, Joey? Except?”
“Is the wonder woman prettier?” He put the question wistfully.
“Perhaps not—I do not know, Joey.” Could I say in truth she was? remembering the face I had seen in the firelight.
But that night after Joey was tucked away in the covered wagon the gipsy came again. I raised my eyes from the fire to see her coming through the long grass toward me. She came springing along, her bare arms thrusting back the low hanging tree branches, her short skirt swirling above her bare feet.
I went to meet her. Her manner was bashful, and her eyes were imploring. And after I had greeted her she was tongue-tied.
“Now that you are here, come to the fire,” I said.
She shrank from me like a tristful child.
“Come,” I said. “And tell me why you have come back.”
“I haven’t come back—exactly. I have been in the woods all day near here.”
“Why have you done this?”
She hung her head and looked up from under her curtain of hair.
I threw a fresh log on the fire and she seated herself. I stood looking down at her half in anger, half in dismay.
“Are you hungry? Have you eaten to-day?” I asked.
“I have all the food I need in the saddle bags.”
I seated myself then, and as there seemed nothing more to say I was silent. But I looked at her in deep perplexity from time to time. She was flushed, and her eyes were burning. Her hair was tangled about her neck and veiled her bosom. She faced me, wide-eyed and silent.
It was deeply dark in the hill-hollows by now, but the sky was a lighter tone, and the stars seemed to burn more brightly than usual. There was no faintest stirring of wind. The silence was intense, bated, you could feel it, vibrating about you. The trees were heavy black masses, shadowing us. I heard a coyote yelp away off on some distant hill side, and the sound but made the ensuing silence more pronounced.
Presently Wanza spoke: “I wish I was a real gipsy,” she said. Her tone was subdued, there was something softened and wistful in it. “All day long I have had the time I’ve always wanted, to do nothing in. I waded in the spring. I slept hours in the shade. I drank milk and ate bread. I bought the milk at a ranch house way up on the side of the mountain. Glory! It was great! I hadn’t a single dish to wash. It’s all right when you’re rich—everything is, I guess. But when you’re squeezy poor and uneducated and of no account, and you’re housekeeper and peddler and Lord knows what! You don’t get no chance to have a good time. Now, do you, Mr. David Dale?”
Her words aroused me somewhat rudely from a reverie into which I had drifted, so that I answered abstractedly: “Perhaps not, girl.”
“Well, you don’t. What chance do I get?” She stared fixedly at the fire. “I have to work, work, work, when all the time I feel like kicking up my heels like a colt in a pasture.” There was a strained, uneven quality in her tone that was foreign to it. I saw that she was terribly in earnest.
“A gipsy’s life isn’t all play, Wanza. It’s all right in poetry! And it’s all right for a gipsy. But Wanza Lyttle is better off in her peddler’s cart.”
“Well, I’d just like to try it for awhile!”
I remembered a song I had heard in Spokane—at Davenport’s roof garden—on a rare occasion when an artist chap who had spent some weeks at my shack had insisted on putting me up for a day or two while I visited the art shops in the city. It was a haunting thing, with a flowing happy lilt. I had been unable to forget it, and without thinking now, I sang it.
“Down the world with Marna!
That’s the life for me!
Wandering with the wandering wind
Vagabond and unconfined!
Roving with the roving rain
Its unboundaried domain!
Kith and kin of wander-kind
Children of the sea!
Petrels of the sea-drift!
Swallows of the lea!
Arabs of the whole wide girth
Of the wind-encircled earth!
In all climes we pitch our tents,
Cronies of the elements
With the secret lords of birth
Intimate and free.”
“Go on,” Wanza breathed tensely, as I paused.
“Have you never heard it?”
“Never!”
I sang lightly:
“Marna with the trees’ life
In her veins astir!
Marna of the aspen heart
Where the sudden quivers start!
Quick-responsive, subtle, wild!
Artless as an artless child,
Spite of all her reach of art!
Oh, to roam with her!”
“Is there more?” Wanza queried as I again paused.
“Oh, yes! It’s rather long.” I bent forward and gave the fire a poke. “That’s about enough for one evening, isn’t it?”
“No, no! I want to hear it all. Oh, go on, Mr. Dale, please!”
“Marna with the wind’s will,
Daughter of the sea!
Marna of the quick disdain,
Starting at the dream of stain!
At a smile with love aglow,
At a frown a statued woe,
Standing pinnacled in pain
Till a kiss sets free!”
Wanza was very silent as I finished. I felt strangely silent, too, and weighted with a slight melancholy. But the singing of the song had put an end to Wanza’s plaint. Her face had lost its peevish lines and grown normal again. The fire burned low, a wind came up from the west and blew the ashes in our faces, there was a weird groaning from the pine trees. The quiet of the night had changed to unrest, overhead the sky had grown darker, the stars brighter. We continued to sit side by side in brooding quiet, until the fire had burnt its heart out, and the air became more chill, and drowsiness began to tug at our eyelids.
I arose then. “Light of my tent,” I said with gay camaraderie, “I will bring the blankets from the wagon for you, and since you are to sleep here you may as well stay and breakfast with Joey and me.”
She looked up at me oddly, sitting cross-legged close to the fire, the light spraying over her dusky carmined cheeks. “Say the words of that gipsy thing again,” she urged.
“I can’t sing any more to-night, girl.”
“Don’t sing—say the words.”
The evening had been so frictionless, that I made haste to comply with this very modest demand; but when I came to the last verse I stumbled, and in spite of myself my voice softened and fired at the witchery of the words:
“Marna with the wind’s will,
Daughter of the sea!
Starting at the dream of stain!
At a smile with love aglow,
At a frown a statued woe,
Standing pinnacled in pain
Till a kiss sets free!”
Wanza rose and came close to me as I finished. Her black elf-locks brushed my shoulder. “If I was a gipsy and you was a gipsy,” she whispered, “things would be different.”
I saw her eyes. Some of the tenderness of the last few lines of the song was in my voice as I whispered back, “How different, child?”
I stood looking down at her, and her eyes—burningly blue—sank into mine. The wind tossed her hair out. A strand brushed my lips. She seemed an unknown alien maid, in her disguise, and in the shifting pink light from the low burning fire. I took a bit of her hair in my hand and I looked into her face curiously. I stood thus for a long moment, catching my breath fiercely, staring, staring—her hands held mine, her scarf of red silk whipped my throat—how strangely beautiful her face, the full lids, the subtle chin, the delicate yet warm lips! Had I ever seen as beautiful a girl-face? The soft wind swept past us sweet with balm o’ Gilead; the brook was awake and singing to the rushes; but the birds were asleep, and a sweet solitude was ours. This girl was of my world, all gipsy she, wilder than most. And I—was I not as wide a wanderer as any gipsy? as homeless? I smiled into the eyes that smiled into mine, and I hummed below my breath:
“Standing pinnacled in pain
Till a kiss sets free!”
Yes, the face of this girl was a marvelous thing, a perfect bit of chiselling. Brow, cheeks, nose, chin, shell-like ears—exquisitely modelled. Had I ever looked at her before? What rare perfection there was in her face. And her nature was rich—rich! Her soul—
Ah, her soul!
Suddenly it was Wanza, my comrade, Joey’s staunch friend and playmate, into whose eyes I looked. The gipsy was gone. The glamour was gone. Enchantment and madness were gone. I stood by a dying fire in a wind-stirred forest, with the roughened hands of a country wench in mine. But though she was only a country wench I admired and respected her. And when she whispered again as I moved away from the touch of her hands: “Things would be different if we was gipsies,” I replied: “Perhaps so, Wanza. But we are not gipsies. So let us not even play at gipsying.”
I went to the wagon for the baskets.
The next morning the gipsy was gone, and that was the last I saw of her.