The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v7

G >> George Meredith >> The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v7

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

This etext was produced by David Widger

THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND

By George Meredith

BOOK 7.

XLV. WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE .
XLVI. AMONG GIPSY WOMEN
XLVII. MY FATHER ACTS THE CHARMER AGAIN
XLVIII. THE PRINCESS ENTRAPPED
XLIX. WHICH FORESHADOWS A GENERAL GATHERING
L. WE ARE ALL IN MY FATHER'S NET
LI. AN ENCOUNTER SHOWING MY FATHER'S GENIUS IN A STRONG LIGHT

CHAPTER XLV

WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE

A single tent stood in a gully running from one of the gravel-pits of the
heath, near an iron-red rillet, and a girl of Kiomi's tribe leaned over
the lazy water at half length, striking it with her handkerchief. At a
distance of about twice a stone's-throw from the new carriage-road
between Durstan and Bulsted, I fancied from old recollections she might
be Kiomi herself. This was not the time for her people to be camping on
Durstan. Besides, I feared it improbable that one would find her in any
of the tracks of her people. The noise of the wheels brought the girl's
face round to me. She was one of those who were babies in the tents when
I was a boy. We were too far apart for me to read her features. I lay
back in the carriage, thinking that it would have been better for my poor
little wild friend if I had never crossed the shadow of her tents. A
life caught out of its natural circle is as much in danger of being lost
as a limb given to a wheel in spinning machinery; so it occurred to me,
until I reflected that Prince Ernest might make the same remark, and
deplore the damage done to the superior machinery likewise.

My movements appeared to interest the girl. She was up on a mound of the
fast-purpling heath, shading her eyes to watch me, when I called at
Bulsted lodge-gates to ask for a bed under Julia's roof that night. Her
bare legs twinkled in a nimble pace on the way to Durstan Hall, as if she
was determined to keep me in sight. I waved my hand to her. She
stopped. A gipsy's girl's figure is often as good an index to her mind
as her face, and I perceived that she had not taken my greeting
favourably; nor would she advance a step to my repeated beckonings; I
tried hat, handkerchief, purse, in vain. My driver observed that she was
taken with a fit of the obstinacy of 'her lot.' He shouted, 'Silver,' and
then 'Fortune.' She stood looking. The fellow discoursed on the nature
of gipsies. Foxes were kept for hunting, he said; there was reason in
that. Why we kept gipsies none could tell. He once backed a gipsy
prizefighter, who failed to keep his appointment. 'Heart sunk too low
below his belt, sir. You can't reckon on them for performances. And
that same man afterwards fought the gamest fight in the chronicles o' the
Ring! I knew he had it in him. But they're like nothing better than the
weather; you can't put money on 'em and feel safe.' Consequently he saw
no good in them.

'She sticks to her post,' he said, as we turned into the Durstan grounds.
The girl was like a flag-staff on the upper line of heathland.

Heriot was strolling, cigar in mouth, down one of the diminutive alleys
of young fir in this upstart estate. He affected to be prepossessed by
the case between me and Edbury, and would say nothing of his own affairs,
save that he meant to try for service in one of the Continental armies;
he whose susceptible love for his country was almost a malady. But he
had given himself to women it was Cissy this, Trichy that, and the wiles
of a Florence, the spites of an Agatha, duperies, innocent-seemings,
witcheries, reptile-tricks of the fairest of women, all through his
conversation. He had so saturated himself with the resources, evasions,
and desperate cruising of these light creatures of wind, tide, and
tempest, that, like one who has been gazing on the whirligoround, he saw
the whole of women running or only waiting for a suitable partner to run
the giddy ring to perdition and an atoning pathos.

I cut short one of Heriot's narratives by telling him that this picking
bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning
parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little
devil!' with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parted,
feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which
indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must bear
the strain of friendship if it can. Heriot had promised to walk half-way
with me to Bulsted, in spite of Lady Maria's childish fears of some
attack on him. He was now satisfied with a good-bye at the hall-doors,
and he talked ostentatiously of a method that he had to bring Edbury up
to the mark. I knew that same loud decreeing talk to be a method on his
own behalf of concealing his sensitive resentment at the tone I had
adopted: Lady Maria's carriage had gone to fetch her husband from a
political dinner. My portmanteau advised me to wait for its return.
Durstan and Riversley were at feud, however, owing to some powerful rude
English used toward the proprietor of the former place by the squire; so
I thought it better to let one of the grooms shoulder my luggage, and
follow him.

The night was dark; he chose the roadway, and I crossed the heath,
meeting an exhilarating high wind that made my blood race: Egoism is not
peculiar to any period of life; it is only especially curious in a young
man beginning to match himself against his elders, for in him it suffuses
the imagination; he is not merely selfishly sentient, or selfishly
scheming: his very conceptions are selfish. I remember walking at my
swiftest pace, blaming everybody I knew for insufficiency, for want of
subordination to my interests, for poverty of nature, grossness,
blindness to the fine lights shining in me; I blamed the Fates for
harassing me, circumstances for not surrounding me with friends worthy of
me. The central 'I' resembled the sun of this universe, with the
difference that it shrieked for nourishment, instead of dispensing it.

My monstrous conceit of elevation will not suffer condensation into
sentences. What I can testify to is, that for making you bless the legs
you stand on, a knockdown blow is a specific. I had it before I knew
that a hand was up. I should have fancied that I had run athwart a tree,
but for the recollection, as I was reeling to the ground, of a hulk of a
fellow suddenly fronting me, and he did not hesitate with his fist. I
went over and over into a heathery hollow. The wind sang shrill through
the furzes; nothing was visible but black clumps, black cloud.
Astonished though I was, and shaken, it flashed through me that this was
not the attack of a highwayman. He calls upon you to stand and deliver:
it is a foe that hits without warning. The blow took me on the forehead,
and might have been worse. Not seeing the enemy, curiosity was almost as
strong in me as anger; but reflecting that I had injured no one I knew
of, my nerves were quickly at the right pitch. Brushing some spikes of
furze off my hands, I prepared for it. A cry rose. My impression seemed
to be all backward, travelling up to me a moment or two behind time. I
recognised a strange tongue in the cry, but too late that it was Romany
to answer it. Instantly a voice was audible above the noisy wind: 'I
spot him.' Then began some good and fair fighting. I got my footing on
grass, and liked the work. The fellow facing me was unmistakably gipsy-
build. I, too, had length of arm, and a disposition to use it by hitting
straight out, with footing firm, instead of dodging and capering, which
told in my favour, and is decidedly the best display of the noble art on
a dark night.

My dancer went over as neatly as I had preceded him; and therewith I
considered enough was done for vengeance. The thrill of a salmon on the
gut is known to give a savage satisfaction to our original nature; it is
but an extension and attenuation of the hearty contentment springing from
a thorough delivery of the fist upon the prominent features of an
assailant that yields to it perforce. Even when you receive such perfect
blows you are half satisfied. Feeling conqueror, my wrath was soothed; I
bent to have a look at my ruffian, and ask him what cause of complaint
gipsies camping on Durstan could find against Riversley. A sharp stroke
on the side of my neck sent me across his body. He bit viciously. In
pain and desperation I flew at another of the tawny devils. They
multiplied. I took to my heels; but this was the vainest of stratagems,
they beat me in nimbleness. Four of them were round me when I wheeled
breathless to take my chance at fighting the odds. Fiery men have not
much notion of chivalry: gipsies the least of all. They yelled disdain
of my summons to them to come on one by one: 'Now they had caught me, now
they would pay me, now they would pound me; and, standing at four
corners, they commended me to think of becoming a jelly. Four though
they were, they kept their positions; they left it to me to rush in for a
close; the hinder ones held out of arms' reach so long as I was
disengaged. I had perpetually to shift my front, thinking--Oh, for a
stick! any stout bit of timber! My fists ached, and a repetition of
nasty dull knocks on back and neck, slogging thumps dealt by men getting
to make sure of me, shattered my breathing.

I cried out for a pause, offered to take a couple of them at a time: I
challenged three-the fourth to bide. I was now the dancer: left, right,
and roundabout I had to swing, half-stunned, half-strangled with gorge.
Those terrible blows in the back did the mischief. Sickness threatened
to undermine me. Boxers have breathing-time: I had none. Stiff and
sick, I tried to run; I tottered, I stood to be knocked down, I dropped
like a log-careless of life. But I smelt earth keenly, and the damp
grass and the devil's play of their feet on my chin, chest, and thighs,
revived a fit of wrath enough to set me staggering on my legs again.
They permitted it, for the purpose of battering me further. I passed
from down to up mechanically, and enjoyed the chestful of air given me in
the interval of rising: thought of Germany and my father, and Janet at
her window, complacently; raised a child's voice in my throat for mercy,
quite inaudible, and accepted my punishment. One idea I had was, that I
could not possibly fail as a speaker after this--I wanted but a minute's
grace to fetch breath for an oration, beginning, 'You fools!' for I
guessed that they had fallen upon the wrong man. Not a second was
allowed. Soon the shrewd physical bracing, acting momentarily on my
brain, relaxed; the fitful illumination ceased: all ideas faded out-clung
about my beaten body-fled. The body might have been tossed into its
grave, for aught I knew.

CHAPTER XLVI

AMONG GIPSY WOMEN

I cannot say how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to
grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the
slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of
climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms
below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness. Gifted
with a pair of enormous eyes, which threw surrounding objects to a
distance of a mile away, I could not induce the diminutive things to
approach; and shutting eyes led to such a rolling of mountains in my
brain, that, terrified by the gigantic revolution, I lay determinedly
staring; clothed, it seemed positive, in a tight-fitting suit of sheet-
lead; but why? I wondered why, and immediately received an extinguishing
blow. My pillow was heavenly; I was constantly being cooled on it, and
grew used to hear a croon no more musical than the unstopped reed above
my head; a sound as of a breeze about a cavern's mouth, more soothing
than a melody. Conjecture of my state, after hovering timidly in dread
of relapses, settled and assured me I was lying baked, half-buried in an
old river-bed; moss at my cheek, my body inextricable; water now and then
feebly striving to float me out, with horrid pain, with infinite
refreshingness. A shady light, like the light through leafage, I could
see; the water I felt. Why did it keep trying to move me? I questioned
and sank to the depths again.

The excruciated patient was having his wet bandages folded across his
bruises, and could not bear a motion of the mind.

The mind's total apathy was the sign of recovering health. Kind nature
put that district to sleep while she operated on the disquieted lower
functions. I looked on my later self as one observes the mossy bearded
substances travelling blind along the undercurrent of the stream,
clinging to this and that, twirling absurdly.

Where was I? Not in a house. But for my condition of absolute calm,
owing to skilful treatment, open air, and physical robustness, the scene
would have been of a kind to scatter the busy little workmen setting up
the fabric of my wits. A lighted oil-cup stood on a tripod in the middle
of a tent-roof, and over it the creased neck and chin of a tall old
woman, splendid in age, reddened vividly; her black eyes and grey brows,
and greyishblack hair fell away in a dusk of their own. I thought her
marvellous. Something she held in her hands that sent a thin steam
between her and the light. Outside, in the A cutting of the tent's
threshold, a heavy-coloured sunset hung upon dark land. My pillow
meantime lifted me gently at a regular measure, and it was with
untroubled wonder that I came to the knowledge of a human heart beating
within it. So soft could only be feminine; so firm still young. The
bosom was Kiomi's. A girl sidled at the opening of the tent, peeping in,
and from a mufed rattle of subpectoral thunder discharged at her in quick
heated snaps, I knew Kiomi's voice. After an altercation of their
monotonous gipsy undertones, the girl dropped and crouched outside.

It was morning when I woke next, stronger, and aching worse. I was lying
in the air, and she who served for nurse, pillow, parasol, and bank of
herbage, had her arms round beneath mine cherishingly, all the fingers
outspread and flat on me, just as they had been when I went to sleep.

'Kiomi!'

'Now, you be quiet.'

'Can I stand up a minute or two?'

'No, and you won't talk.'

I submitted. This was our duel all day: she slipped from me only twice,
and when she did the girl took her place.

I began to think of Bulsted and Riversley.

'Kiomi, how long have I been here?'

'You 'll be twice as long as you've been.'

'A couple of days?'

'More like a dozen.'

'Just tell me what happened.'

'Ghm-m-m,' she growled admonishingly.

Reflecting on it, I felt sure there must have been searching parties over
the heath.

'Kiomi, I say, how was it they missed me?'

She struck at once on my thought.

'They're fools.'

'How did you cheat them?'

'I didn't tie a handkercher across their eyes.'

'You half smothered me once, in the combe.'

'You go to sleep.'

'Have you been doctor?'

The growling tigerish 'Ghm-m-m' constrained me to take it for a lullaby.

'Kiomi, why the deuce did your people attack me?' She repeated the sound
resembling that which sometimes issues from the vent of a mine; but I
insisted upon her answering.

'I 'll put you down and be off,' she threatened.

'Brute of a girl! I hate you!'

'Hate away.'

'Tell me who found me.'

'I shan't. You shut your peepers.'

The other and younger girl sung out: 'I found you.'

Kiomi sent a volley at her.

'I did,' said the girl; 'yes, and I nursed you first, I did; and mother
doctored you. Kiomi hasn't been here a day.'

The old mother came out of the tent. She felt my pulse, and forthwith
squatted in front of me. 'You're hard to kill, and oily as a bean,' said
she. 'You've only to lie quiet in the sun like a handsome gentleman; I'm
sure you couldn't wish for more. Air and water's the doctor for such as
you. You've got the bound in you to jump the ditch: don't you fret at
it, or you'll lose your spring, my good gentleman.'

'Leave off talking to me as a stranger,' I bawled. 'Out with it; why
have you kept me here? Why did your men pitch into me?'

'OUR men, my good gentleman!' the old woman ejaculated. There was
innocence indeed! sufficient to pass the whole tribe before a bench of
magistrates. She wheedled: 'What have they against a handsome gentleman
like you? They'd run for you fifty mile a day, and show you all their
tricks and secrets for nothing.'

My despot Kiomi fired invectives at her mother. The old mother retorted;
the girl joined in. All three were scowling, flashing, showing teeth,
driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to
one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver string of the
fiddle.

I sang out truce to them; they racked me with laughter; and such
laughter!--the shaking of husks in a half-empty sack.

Ultimately, on a sudden cessation of the storm of tongues, they agreed
that I must have my broth.

Sheer weariness, seasoned with some hope that the broth would give me
strength to mount on my legs and walk, persuaded me to drink it. Still
the old mother declared that none of her men would ever have laid hands
on me. Why should they? she asked. What had I done to them? Was it
their way?

Kiomi's arms tightened over my breast. The involuntary pressure was like
an illumination to me.

No longer asking for the grounds of the attack on a mistaken person,
and bowing to the fiction that none of the tribe had been among my
assailants, I obtained information. The girl Eveleen had spied me
entering Durstan. Quite by chance, she was concealed near Bulsted Park
gates when the groom arrived and told the lodge-keeper that Mr. Harry
Richmond was coming up over the heath, and might have lost his way.
'Richmond!' the girl threw a world of meaning into the unexpected name.
Kiomi clutched me to her bosom, but no one breathed the name we had in
our thoughts.

Eveleen and the old mother had searched for me upon the heath, and having
haled me head and foot to their tent, despatched a message to bring Kiomi
down from London to aid them in their desperate shift. They knew Squire
Beltham's temper. He would have scattered the tribe to the shores of the
kingdom at a rumour of foul play to his grandson. Kiomi came in time to
smuggle me through an inspection of the tent and cross-examination of its
ostensible denizens by Captain Bulsted, who had no suspicions, though he
was in a state of wonderment. Hearing all this, I was the first to say
it would be better I should get out of the neighbourhood as soon as my
legs should support me. The grin that goes for a laugh among gipsies
followed my question of how Kiomi had managed to smuggle me. Eveleen was
my informant when the dreaded Kiomi happened to be off duty for a minute.
By a hasty transformation, due to a nightcap on the bandages about the
head, and an old petticoat over my feet, Captain William's insensible
friend was introduced to him as the sore sick great-grandmother of the
tribe, mother of Kiomi's mother, aged ninety-one. The captain paid like
a man for doctor and burial fees; he undertook also to send the old lady
a pound of snuff to assist her to a last sneeze or two on the right side
of the grave, and he kept his word; for, deeming it necessary to paint
her in a characteristic, these prodigious serpents told him gravely that
she delighted in snuff; it was almost the only thing that kept her alive,
barring a sip of broth. Captain William's comment on the interesting
piece of longevity whose well-covered length and framework lay exposed to
his respectful contemplation, was, that she must have been a devilish
fine old lady in her day. 'Six foot' was given as her measurement.

One pound of snuff, a bottle of rum, and five sovereigns were the fruits
of the captain's sensibility. I shattered my ribs with laughter over the
story. Eveleen dwelt on the triumph, twinkling. Kiomi despised laughter
or triumph resulting from the natural exercise of craft in an emergency.
'But my handsome gentleman he won't tell on us, will he, when we've
nursed him and doctored him, and made him one of us, and as good a stick
o' timber as grows in the forest?' whined the old mother. I had to swear
I would not.

'He!' cried Kiomi.

'He may forget us when he's gone,' the mother said. She would have liked
me to kiss a book to seal the oath. Anxiety about the safety of their
'homes,' that is, the assurance of an untroubled reception upon their
customary camping-ground, is a peculiarity of the gipsies, distinguishing
them, equally with their cleanliness and thriftiness, from mumpers and
the common wanderers.

It is their tribute to civilization, which generally keeps them within
the laws.

Who that does not know them will believe that under their domestic system
I had the best broth and the best tea I have ever tasted! They are very
cunning brewers and sagacious buyers too; their maxims show them to
direct all their acuteness upon obtaining quality for their money. A
compliment not backed by silver is hardly intelligible to the pretty
ones: money is a really credible thing to them; and when they have it,
they know how to use it. Apparently because they know so well, so
perfectly appreciating it, they have only vague ideas of a corresponding
sentiment on the opposite side to the bargain, and imagine that they fool
people much more often than they succeed in doing. Once duped
themselves, they are the wariest of the dog-burnt; the place is notched
where it occurred, and for ever avoided. On the other hand, they repose
implicit faith in a reputation vouched for by their experience. I was
amused by the girl Eveleen's dotting of houses over the breadth of five
counties, where for this and that article of apparel she designed to
expend portions of a golden guinea, confident that she would get the very
best, and a shilling besides. The unwonted coin gave her the joy of
supposing she cheated the Mint of that sum. This guinea was a present to
the girl (to whom I owed my thrashing, by the way) that excused itself
under cover of being a bribe for sight of a mirror interdicted by the
implacable Kiomi. I wanted to have a look at my face. Now that the
familiar scenes were beginning to wear their original features to me, my
dread of personal hideousness was distressing, though Eveleen declared
the bad blood in my cheeks and eyes 'had been sucked by pounds of red
meat.' I wondered, whether if I stood up and walked to either one of the
three great halls lying in an obtuse triangle within view, I should
easily be recognized. When I did see myself, I groaned verily. With the
silence of profound resignation, I handed back to Eveleen the curious
fragment of her boudoir, which would have grimaced at Helen of Troy.

'You're feeling your nose--you've been looking at a glass!' Kiomi said,
with supernatural swiftness of deduction on her return.

She added for my comfort that nothing was broken, but confessed me to be
still 'a sight'; and thereupon drove knotty language at Eveleen. The
girl retorted, and though these two would never acknowledge to me that
any of their men had been in this neighbourhood recently, the fact was
treated as a matter of course in their spiteful altercation, and each
saddled the other with the mistake they had committed. Eveleen snatched
the last word. What she said I did not comprehend, she must have hit
hard. Kiomi's eyes lightened, and her lips twitched; she coloured like
the roofing smoke of the tent fire; twice she showed her teeth, as in a
spasm, struck to the heart, unable to speak, breathing in and out of a
bitterly disjoined mouth. Eveleen ran. I guessed at the ill-word
spoken. Kiomi sat eyeing the wood-ashes, a devouring gaze that shot
straight and read but one thing. They who have seen wild creatures die
will have her before them, saving the fiery eyes. She became an ashen-
colour, I took her little hand. Unconscious of me, her brown fingers
clutching at mine, she flung up her nostrils, craving air.

This was the picture of the woman who could not weep in her misery.

'Kiomi, old friend!' I called to her. I could have cursed that other
friend, the son of mischief; for she, I could have sworn, had been
fiercely and wantonly hunted. Chastity of nature, intense personal
pride, were as proper to her as the free winds are to the heaths: they
were as visible to dull divination as the milky blue about the iris of
her eyeballs. She had actually no animal vileness, animal though she
might be termed, and would have appeared if compared with Heriot's
admirable Cissies and Gwennies, and other ladies of the Graces that run
to fall, and spend their pains more in kindling the scent of the huntsman
than in effectively flying.

There was no consolation for her.

The girl Eveleen came in sight, loitering and looking, kicking her idle
heels.

Kiomi turned sharp round to me.

'I'm going. Your father's here, up at Bulsted. I'll see him. He won't
tell. He'll come soon. You'll be fit to walk in a day. You're sound as
a nail. Goodbye--I shan't say good-bye twice,' she answered my attempt
to keep her, and passed into the tent, out of which she brought a small
bundle tied in a yellow handkerchief, and walked away, without nodding or
speaking.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7