The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II). G. P. R. James

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СКАЧАТЬ in the plenitude of power and the majesty of victory, thought of a low grave beneath a willow on a rock in the Atlantic.

      In regard to any belief in the gipsies' fortune-telling, there were little use of investigating closely, whether some thin fibre of the root of superstition had or had not been left in the bosom of Charles Manners. If any particle thereof did remain, it went no farther than to excite, perhaps, a slight degree of curiosity in regard to what the people would predict, more, perhaps, from feeling that it must be absurd, than from expecting any point of coincidence with his real fate; and certain it is that, whatever the gipsies might have told to Colonel Manners, he would have thought no more of after the immediate moment, except as a matter for jest, than he would of any other kind of sortes, whether drawn from Virgil or Joe Miller.

      It was just a quarter to six on the morning after that which had seen the walk in Morley Wood, when Manners, who was, as we have said, an early riser, gave some orders to his servant concerning his horses, and went out into the new wakened world. Having observed on the preceding day, for the purpose of carrying on the jest, the exact position of the hill on which Miss Falkland conjectured that the gipsies might have quartered themselves, he took his way across the park from that side which formed, in fact, the back of Morley House; and, having assured himself beforehand that he could find means of egress in that direction, he was soon beyond the walls, and winding up a small cart-road towards the summit.

      The hill itself was somewhat singular in form; and as it is rather characteristic of that particular county, we may as well endeavour to give the reader some idea of its appearance. It formed a portion of that steep range of upland which we have before described as principally covered with fine wood; but this particular point, projecting towards the river in the form of very nearly a right angle, seemed to have cast behind it the mass of forest which still continued over the ridge of the other hills. Vestiges of the wood, too, hung in broken patches on the flanks of even this protuberance, but the summit offered nothing but a bare, open plain, full of pits and ravines, and only further diversified by a few stunted hawthorns, and one single group of tall beeches, gathered together upon a tumulus, which covered the bodies of some of those invading warriors to whom our island was once a prey. The ascent to this plain from the small gate in the park wall, by which Colonel Manners issued forth, was in length somewhat more than a mile; but it consisted of two distinct grades, or steps, the first of which was formed by a little peninsula, jutting out from the salient angle of the main hill, and completely surrounded by the river on all sides except the one which served to unite it, by a narrow neck not above three hundred yards in breadth, to the high ground we have mentioned. This small peninsula, which was itself covered with wood, rose in a rocky bank to the height of about a hundred and fifty yards above the stream; and over the narrow isthmus was carried the road which passed the park; while the wall of the park itself, just excluding the wooded banks from the grounds of Morley House, was lowered in that part, so as to leave a full view of the picturesque little promontory from the windows of the mansion. Let the reader remember all this, for his memory may be taxed hereafter.

      Branching off from the right of the high-road lay the path up which Colonel Manners took his way, and which passed over a track upon the side of the hill, partly hedged in and cultivated, and partly left to its own ungrateful sterility. It was steep also, but Manners was a good climber; and, knowing that Mrs. Falkland's breakfast hour was half-past nine, he did not linger by the way, but soon found himself at the summit of the hill, and on the piece of waste ground which will be found in the county map under the name of Morley Common, or Morley Down. A good deal of dew had fallen in the night; and as the sun, who had not yet pursued his bright course far up the arch of heaven, poured the flood of his morning light upon the short blades of grass covering the common, the whole would have seemed crisp with hoarfrost, had not, every here and there, a tuft of longer leaves caught the rays more fully, and twinkled as if sprinkled with living diamonds, as the early air moved it gently in the beams. In different directions across the common might be seen a hundred small foot-roads, winding in that tortuous and unsteady manner which is sure to mark a path trodden out by man's unguided feet, and which offers no bad comment on his uncertain and roundabout way of arriving at his object; but, as the ground comprised many hundred acres, Colonel Manners might have been puzzled which way to take, had not his military habits at once sent him to the small planted tumulus which we have mentioned, in order to obtain a general view of the place.

      Climbing up the sides of the little mound, therefore, he gazed round him; but neither gipsies nor tents were visible; and he might have returned to Mrs. Falkland's, satisfied that they were not there, had not a small column of faint blue smoke, rising from behind some bushes, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, marked the presence of human beings in that direction, and shown that the bushes, though apparently not higher than a man's hat, masked some fall in the ground where the fire was kindled. Thither, then, Manners turned his steps, and soon perceived that another old sand-pit, with some bushes climbing up one of the sides, had given shelter to those of whom he was now in search.

      Before he could even discover so much, he became aware, by two low whistles, that his own approach had been perceived; and, as he was advancing directly towards the sand-pit, where a number of the gipsies had paused in their various occupations to watch him, he saw a man issue forth from one of the huts, put something hastily into the bosom of his long wrapping coat, and then come forward to meet him. The gipsy, as he came nearer, gazed at him from head to foot, with a clear dark eye, which had in it nothing either of the dogged sullenness or cunning stealthiness that sometimes marks the male part of the race,--often the fruit both of their own vices and the world's harshness. There was something in the air and manner of the man, that to so accurate an observer as Manners, spoke a great difference between him and the general class of his people; but, to save a repetition of description, it may be as well to say at once, that the gipsy who now appeared was the same whom we have designated Pharold.

      "Good-morning!" said Colonel Manners, as the other came near; "you have hid your tents very completely here."

      "Good-morning!" replied the gipsy, slightly knitting his brow, as he saw the soldier's eye running over every part of their encampment with some degree of curiosity; "Good-morning! It seems you were seeking me or mine."

      "I was so," replied Manners, still gazing with some interest upon the old sand-pit and its picturesque tenants, with their blazing fire of sticks, and its white smoke curling through the broken ground and amid the scattered bushes.

      "And what did you want with us, then?" asked Pharold, somewhat impatiently; "you wanted something, or you would not have come here."

      "I wish to have my fortune told," replied Manners with a smile, excited equally by the impatience of the gipsy's tone, and by the nature of his own errand.

      The gipsy looked at him steadily, and then shook his head. "No, no, no," said he; "you did not come for that. Never tell me, that you would get out of your bed by daybreak, and climb a high hill, and seek a bare common, at this hour, to have your fortune told--never tell me that, Colonel Manners."

      Manners started at hearing his own name pronounced familiarly by the gipsy, though he knew the world, and all the tricks that accident and confederacy can put upon us, too well to suppose that he who is emphatically termed in Scripture "the prince of the power of the air" had taken the trouble to send an account of his name and quality to a gipsy on a common. Still, as it was unexpected, he was surprised, and expressed it; but not in such a way as to make the gipsy believe more fully than he had done at first, that he really gave credit to the supernatural pretensions of his nation, and came there for the purpose of consulting them upon his destiny.

      "Pray how did you become acquainted with my name?" demanded Colonel Manners, calmly. "I do not know that I ever saw you before?"

      "Perhaps not," replied the gipsy; "but if you believe that I can tell you what you will become hereafter, why should you be surprised that I know what you are now?"

      "I СКАЧАТЬ