"my son's first wife died after christian was born," said the old woman. "i've a sharp tongue, as you know, sybil stanley, and i'm doubtful if she was too happy while she lived; but when she was gone i knew she'd been a good 'un, and i've always spoken of her accordingly.
"you're too young to remember that year; it was a year of slack trade and hard times all over. farmer-folk grudged you fourpence to mend the kettle, and as to broken victuals, there wasn't as much went in at the front door to feed the family, as the servants would have thrown out at the back door another year to feed the pigs.
"when one gets old, my daughter, and sits over the fire at night and thinks, instead of tramping all day and sleeping heavy after it, as one does when one is young—things comes back; things comes back, i say, as they says ghosts does.
"and when we camps near trees with long branches, like them over there, that waves in the wind and confuses your eyes among the smoke, i sometimes think i sees her face, as it was before she died, with a pinched look across the nose. that is christian's mother, my son's first wife; and it comes back to me that i believes she starved herself to let him have more; for he's a man with a surly temper, like my own, is my son george. he grumbled worse than the children when he was hungry, and because she was so slow in getting strong enough to stand on her legs and carry the basket. you see he didn't hold his tongue when things were bad to bear, as she could. men doesn't, my daughter."
"i know, i know," said the girl.
"i thinks i was jealous of her," muttered the old woman; "it comes back to me that i begrudged her making so much of my son, but i knows now that she was a good 'un, and i speaks of her accordingly. she fretted herself about getting strong enough to carry the child to be christened, while we had the convenience of a parson near at hand, and i wasn't going to oblige her; but the day after she died, the child was ailing, and thinking it might require the benefit of a burial-service as well as herself, i wrapped it up, and made myself decent, and took my way to the village. i was half-way up the street, when i met a young gentlewoman in a grey dress coming out of a cottage.
"'good-day, my pretty lady,' says i. 'could you show an old woman the residence of the clergyman that would do the poor tinkers the kindness of christening a sick child whose mother lies dead in a tilted cart at the meeting of the four roads?'
"'i'm the clergyman's wife,' says she, with the colour in her face, 'and i'm sure my husband will christen the poor baby. do let me see it.'
"'it's only a tinker's child,' says i, 'a poor brown-faced morsel for a pretty lady's blue eyes to rest upon, that's accustomed to the delicate sight of her own golden-haired children; long may they live, and many may you and the gentle clergyman have of them!'
"'i have no children,' says she, shortly, with the colour in her face breaking up into red and white patches over her cheeks. 'let me carry the baby for you,' says she, a taking it from me. 'you must be tired.'
"all the way she kept looking at it, and saying how pretty it was, and what beautiful long eyelashes it had, which went against me at the time, my daughter, for i knowed it was like its mother.
"the clergyman was a pleasing young gentleman of a genteel appearance, with a great deal to say for himself in the way of religion, as was right, it being his business. 'name this child,' says he, and she gives a start that nobody sees but myself. so, thinking that the child being likely to die, there was no loss in obliging the gentlefolk, says i, looking down into the book as if i could read, 'any name the lady thinks suitable for the poor tinker's child;' and says she, the colour coming up into her face, 'call him christian, for he shall be one.' so he was named christian, a name to give no manner of displeasure to myself or to my family; it having been that of my husband's father, who was unfortunate in a matter of horse-stealing, and died across the water."
"what did she want with naming the baby, mother?" asked sybil.
"i comes to that, my daughter, i comes to that, though it's hard to speak of. i hate myself worse than i hates the police when i thinks of it. but ten pounds—pieces of gold, my daughter, when half-pence were hard to come by—and small expectation that he would outlive his mother by many days—and a feeling against him then, for her sake, though i thinks differently now—"
"you sold him to the clergy-folks?" said sybil.
"ten pieces of gold! you never felt the pains of starvation, my daughter—nor perhaps those of jealousy, which are worse. the young clergywoman had no children, on which score she fretted herself; and must have fretted hard, before she begged the poor tinker's child out of the woods."
"what did tinker george say?" asked the girl.
"he used a good deal of bad language, and said i might as easily have got twenty pounds as ten, if i had not been as big a fool as the child's mother herself. men are strange creatures, my daughter."
"so you left christian with them?"
"i did, my daughter. i left him in the arms of the young clergywoman with the politest of words on both sides, and a good deal of religious conversation from the parson, which i does not doubt was well meant, if it was somewhat tedious."
"and then—mother?"
"and then we moved to banbury, where my son took his second wife, having made her acquaintance in an alehouse; and then, my daughter, i begins to know that christian's mother had been a good 'un."
"george isn't as happy with this one, then?"
"men are curious creatures, my daughter, as you will discover for your own part without any instructions from me. he treats her far better than the other, because she treats him so much worse. but between them they soon put me a-one-side, and when i sat long evenings alone, sometimes in a wood, as it might be this, where the branches waves and makes a confusion of the shadows—and sometimes on the edge of a hampshire heath where we camps a good deal, and the light is as slow in dying out of the bottom of the sky as he and she are in coming home, and the bits of water looks as if people had drownded themselves in them—when i sat alone, i say, minding the fire and the children—i wondered if christian had lived, till i was all but mad with wondering and coming no nearer to knowing.
"'his mother was a good daughter to you,' i thinks; 'and if you hadn't sold him—sold your own flesh and blood—for ten golden sovereigns to the clergywoman, he might have been a good son to your old age.'
"at last i could bear idleness and the lone company of my own thoughts no longer, my daughter, and i sets off to travel on my own account, taking money at back-doors, and living on broken meats i begged into the bargain, and working at nights instead of thinking. i knows a few arts, my daughter, of one sort and another, and i puts away most of what i takes, and changes it when the copper comes to silver, and the silver comes to gold."
"i wonder you never went to see if he was alive," said sybil.
"i did, my daughter. i went several times under various disguisements, which are no difficulty to those who know how to adopt them, and with servant's jewellery and children's toys, i had sight of him more than once, and each time made me wilder to get him back."
"and you never tried?"
"the money was not ready. one must act honourably, my daughter. i couldn't pick up my own grandson as if he'd been a stray hen, or a few clothes off the line. it took me five years to save those ten pounds. five long miserable years."
"miserable!" cried the gipsy girl, flinging her hair back from her eyes. "miserable! happy, you mean; too happy! it is when one can do nothing—"
she stopped, as if talking choked her, and the old woman, who seemed to pay little attention to any one but herself, went on,
"it was when it was all but saved, and i hangs about that country, making up my plans, that he comes to me himself, as i sits on the outskirts of a wood beyond the village, in no manner of disguisement, but just as i sits here."
"he came to you?" said sybil.
"he comes to me, my daughter; dressed like any young nobleman of eight years old, but bareheaded and barefooted, having his cap in one hand, and his boots and stockings in the other.
"'good-morning, old gipsy woman,' says he. 'i heard there was an old gipsy woman in the wood; so i came to see. nurse said if i went about in the fields, by myself, the gipsies would steal me; but i told her i didn't care if they did, because it must be so nice to live in a wood, and sleep out of doors all night. when i grow up, i mean to be a wild man on a desert island, and dress in goats' skins. i sha'n't wear hats—i hate them; and i don't like shoes and stockings either. when i can get away from nurse, i always take them off. i like to feel what i'm walking on, and in the wood i like to scuffle with my toes in the dead leaves. there's a quarry at the top of this wood, and i should so have liked to have thrown my shoes and stockings and my cap into it; but it vexes mother when i destroy my clothes, so i didn't, and i am carrying them.'
"those were the very words he said, my daughter. he had a swiftness of tongue, for which i am myself famous, especially in fortune-telling; but he used the language of gentility, and a shortness of speech which you will observe among those who are accustomed to order what they want instead of asking for it. i had hard work to summon voice to reply to him, my daughter, and i cannot tell you, nor would you understand it if i could find the words, what were my feelings to hear him speak with that confidence of the young clergywoman as his mother.
"'a green welcome to the woods and the fields, my noble little gentleman,' says i. 'be pleased to honour the poor tinker-woman by accepting the refreshment of a seat and a cup of tea.'
"'i mayn't eat or drink anything when i am visiting the poor people,' says he, 'mother doesn't allow me. but thank you all the same, and please don't give me your stool, for i'd much rather sit on the grass; and, if you please, i should like you to tell me all about living in woods, and making fires, and hanging kettles on sticks, and going about the country and sleeping out of doors.'"
"did you tell him the truth, or make up a tale for him?" asked sybil.
"partly one and partly the other, my daughter. but when persons sets their minds on anything, they sees the truth in a manner according to their own thoughts, which is of itself as good as a made-up tale.
"he asks numberless questions, to which i makes suitable replies. them that lives out of doors—can they get up as early as they likes, without being called? he asks.
"does gipsies go to bed in their clothes?
"does they sometimes forget their prayers, with not regularly dressing and undressing?
"did i ever sleep on heather?
"does we ever travel by moonlight?
"do i see the sun rise every morning?
"did i ever meet a highwayman?
"does i believe in ghosts?
"can i really tell fortunes?
"i takes his shapely little hand—as brown as your own, my daughter, for his mother, like myself, was a pure roman, and looked down upon by her people in consequence for marrying my son, who is of mixed blood (my husband being in family, as in every other respect, undeserving of the slightest mention).
"'let me tell you your fortune, my noble little gentleman,' i says. 'the lines of life are crossed early with those of travelling. far will you wander, and many things will you see. stone houses and houses of brick will not detain you. in the big house with the blue roof and the green carpet were you born, and in the big house with the blue roof and the green carpet will you die. the big house is delicately perfumed, my noble little gentleman, especially in the month of may; at which time there is also an abundance of music, and the singers sits overhead. give the old gipsy woman a sight of your comely feet, my little gentleman, by the soles of which it is not difficult to see that you were born to wander.'
"with this and similar jaw i entertained him, my daughter, and his eyes looks up at me out of his face till i feels as if the dead had come back; but he had a way with him besides which frightened me, for i knew that it came from living with gentlefolk.
"'are you mighty learned, my dear?' says i. 'are you well instructed in books and schooling?'
"'i can say the english history in verse,' he says, 'and i do compound addition; and i know my catechism, and lots of hymns. would you like to hear me?'
"'if you please, my little gentleman,' i says.
"'what shall i say?' he asks. 'i know all the english history, only i am not always quite sure how the kings come; but if you know the kings and can just give me the name, i know the verses quite well. and i know the catechism perfectly, but perhaps you don't know the questions without the book. the hymns of course you don't want a book for, and i know them best of all.'
"'i am not learned, myself,' says i, 'and i only know of two kings—the king of england—who, for that matter, is a queen, and a very good woman, they say, if one could come at her—and the king of the gipsies, who is as big a blackguard as you could desire to know, and by no means entitled to call himself king, though he gets a lot of money by it, which he spends in the public-house. as regards the other thing, my dear, i certainly does not know the questions without the book, nor, indeed, should i know them with the book, which is neither here nor there; so if the hymns require no learning on my part, i gives the preference to them.'
"'i like them best, myself,' he says; and he puts his hat and his shoes and stockings on the ground, and stands up and folds his hands behind his back, and repeats a large number of religious verses, with the same readiness with which the young clergyman speaks out of a book.
"it partly went against me, my daughter, for i am not religious myself, and he was always too fond of holy words, which i thinks brings ill-luck. but his voice was as sweet as a thrush that sits singing in a thorn-bush, and between that and a something in the verses which had a tendency to make you feel uncomfortable, i feels more disturbed than i cares to show. but oh, my daughter, how i loves him!
"'the blessing of an old gipsy woman on your young head,' i says. 'fair be the skies under which you wanders, and shady the spots in which you rests!
"'may the water be clear and the wood dry where you camps!
"'may every road you treads have turf by the wayside, and the patteran[b] of a friend on the left.'
"'what is the patteran?' he asks.
"'it is a secret,' i says, looking somewhat sternly at him. 'the roads keeps it, and the hedges keeps it—'
"'i can keep it,' he says boldly. 'pinch my finger, and try me!'
"as he speaks he holds out his little finger, and i pinches it, my daughter, till the colour dies out of his lips, though he keeps them set, for i delights to see the nobleness and the endurance of him. so i explains the patteran to him, and shows him ours with two bits of hawthorn laid crosswise, for i does not regard him as a stranger, and i sees that he can keep his lips shut when it is required.
"he was practising the patteran at my feet, when i hears the cry of 'christian!' and i cannot explain to you the chill that came over my heart at the sound.
"trouble and age and the lone company of your own thoughts, my daughter, has a tendency to confuse you; and i am not by any means rightly certain at times about things i sees and hears. i sees christian's mother when i knows she can't be there, and though i believes now that only one person was calling the child, yet, with the echo that comes from the quarry, and with worse than twenty echoes in my own mind, it seems to me that the wood is full of voices calling him.
"in my foolishness, my daughter, i sits like a stone, and he springs to his feet, and snatches up his things, and says, 'good-bye, old gipsy woman, and thank you very much. i should like to stay with you,' he says, 'but nurse is calling me, and mother does get so frightened if i am long away and she doesn't know where. but i shall come back.'
"i never quite knows, my daughter, whether it was the echo that repeated his words, or whether it was my own voice i hears, as i stretches my old arms after him, crying, 'come back!'
"but he runs off shouting, 'coming, coming!'
"and the wood deafens me, it is so full of voices.
"christian! christian!—coming! coming!
"and i thinks i has some kind of a fit, my daughter, for when i wakes, the wood is as still as death, and he is gone, as dreams goes."
