The World for Sale Part 9

"I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm," she persisted.

"Personal harm?"

"Yes."

He laughed sarcastically again. "We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily," he rejoined, his jaw hardening; "and I can take care of myself. What makes you say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?"

"No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete he looked at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are given to some people and some races. You read books--I read people. I wanted to warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting.

Please don't treat what I've said lightly. Your plans are in danger and you also." Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany alive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her people did so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feeling had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness not in keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek.

"Would you mind telling me where you got your information?" he asked presently.

"My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than with any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, but she teaches me many other things, too."

"I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know a lot, that woman."

He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily said: "A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or something like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or--do you mind my asking? Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--"

She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She was unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking her as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would have been considered pure English among the polyglot population of Manitou.

What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the life of a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as this man be side her. Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousand times more home--than the s.h.i.+fting habitat of the days when they wandered from the Caspians to John o' Groat's.

For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as though the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until the fateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her whole horizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of her life. And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past and demanded her return.

That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, tempestuous longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and faced it, who had a fight to make and would make it.

What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the daughter of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan of the world's transients, the leader of the world's nomads. Money--her father had that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear the light at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; for more than one great minister in a notable country in Europe had commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when "there was trouble in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe"

was worse, or the Russian Bear came prowling. His service had ever been secret service, when he lived the life of the caravan and the open highway. He had no stable place among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and mysteries and a language which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, and from Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a kind, clothed him with importance.

Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see what he would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she a right to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep to that secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until Jethro Fawe's coming.

At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her face.

"I'm not Irish--do I look Irish?" she asked quietly, though her heart was beating unevenly.

"You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or Hungarian--or Gipsy," he said admiringly and unwittingly.

"I have Gipsy blood in me," she answered slowly, "but no Irish or Hungarian blood."

"Gipsy--is that so?" he said spontaneously, as she watched him so intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples.

A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now her courage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against her.

"Well, well," he added, "I only just guessed at it, because there's something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark and your hair so brown."

"Not because of my 'wild beauty'--I thought you were going to say that,"

she added ironically and a little defiantly. "I got some verses by post the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I think he was, and they said I had a 'wild beauty' and a 'savage sweetness.'"

He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her than he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar.

"Men do write that kind of thing," he added cheerfully, "but it's quite harmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your poet friend had it. He could have left out the 'wild' and 'savage' and he'd have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize."

He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put it right.

"I loved a Gipsy once," he added whimsically to divert attention from his mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was disarmed. "I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman!

I had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name was Charley Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through the town people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and her manner--oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot--she had more money than any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind of a holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, but it was white--to visit her! We didn't eat much the day before we went to see her; and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to feed us--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes following us about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her.

She'd had one girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather. Aunt Cynthy--that was what we called her, her name being Cynthia--never got over her girl's death. She blamed herself for it. She had had those fits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time. The girl oughtn't to have been taken to camp out. She was never strong, and it was the wrong place and the wrong time of year--all right in August and all wrong in October.

"Well, always after her girl's death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, being good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. Her tea-table was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. The first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, just before you came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the path here, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy and all. Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy's house. Hi-yi, as old Tekewani says, but it was good!"

"What is the Romany word for hedgehog?" Fleda asked in a low tone.

"Hotchewitchi," he replied instantly. "That's right, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is right," she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, but there was a kind of trouble at her mouth.

"Do you speak Romany?" she added a little breathlessly.

"No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then when she was in the mood."

"What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?"

"I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughter of a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at the time--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van as comfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm of Charley's uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought him thirty thousand dollars."

Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm between them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes that stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life.

She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where the new trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her like the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it a.s.serted its power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her.

She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She had set out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would have been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in the Wood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe's prison was that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life which must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and not of the Saracen.

After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment or two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At that instant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound.

Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, having turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in her face, and she quickly regained her self-control.

"I heard that sound before," he said, "and I thought from your look you heard it, too. It's funny. It is singing, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's singing," she answered.

"Who is it--some of the heathen from the Reservation?"

"Yes, some of the heathen," she answered.

"Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?"

"He had one here in the old days."

"And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I broke in on you?"

"Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know."