Part 35 (2/2)
She was, indeed, a very great lady, but she was a flirtatious and headstrong girl. She was one of the few modern gypsies who still hold to the unadulterated wors.h.i.+p of ”those.” All the members of John Lane's tribe were Methodists--had been since before they had migrated from England. In every wagon, save Dora's, a large ill.u.s.trated Bible lay on a little table, and those who could, read them aloud to the rest of a Sunday afternoon. This did not mean, however, that the Romanys had descended to gorgio ways, or that they had wholly left off their attentions to ”those”. They combined the two. Old John was known as a fervent and eloquent leader in prayer at the Wednesday-night prayer meetings in the Maryland town where his church members.h.i.+p was held, but he had not ceased to carry the ”box of meanings,” as befitted the chief of the tribe.
This was a very beautifully worked box of pure gold, made by the great Nikola of Budapest, whose boxes can be found inside the s.h.i.+rt of every gypsy chief, where they are always carried. In them are some grains of wheat, garnered by moonlight, a peac.o.c.k's feather, and a small silver bell with a coiled snake for a handle. When anything is to be decided, a few of the grains are taken out and counted. If they are even, the omen is bad, but if they are odd, all is well. Old John had an elastic and accommodating mind, like all Romanys, so he never thought it strange that he should ask the ”box of meanings” whether or not it was going to storm on prayer-meeting nights.
Dora Pa.r.s.e thought of the box now, and wished that she might have the peac.o.c.k's feather for a minute, so that her uneasy sense of impending bad luck would leave her. Then she stopped beside a cross-barred gate where an old man was evidently waiting for her.
”Lane was gettin' troubled about yuh,” he said, as he turned the horses and peered curiously up at her. He knew who she was, not only because John Lane had said who it was who was late, but because Dora Pa.r.s.e's appearance was well known to the whole countryside. She was the only member of the tribe who kept to the full Romany dress. There were big gold loops in her small ears, and on her arms, many gold bracelets, whose lightness testified to their freedom from alloy. Her skirt was of red, heavily embroidered in blue, and her waist, with short sleeves, was of sheer white cloth, with an embroidered bolero. Her hair she wore in the ancient fas.h.i.+on, in two braids on either side of her face. She could well afford to, the chis muttered among themselves. Any girl with hair like that--
There was a long lane leading to the barns and to the meadow back of them, and there, said Jan, the tribe was to camp. As the princess drove along the short distance, she swiftly s.n.a.t.c.hed off her little bolero, put it on wrong side out, and then s.n.a.t.c.hed it off and righted it. That much, at least, she could do to avert ill luck. And her heart bounded as she drove in among the other wagons, for her husband came running to meet her and held out his arms.
She dropped into them and laid each finger tip, delicately, in succession, upon his eyes and his ears and his mouth, the seal of a betrothal and the sign whereby a Romany chal may know that a chi intends to accept him when he speaks for her before the tribe; a sign that lovers repeat as a sacred and intimate caress. She leaned, hard, into his arms, and he held her, pressing the tender, confidential kiss that is given to children behind her little ear.
Dora Pa.r.s.e suddenly ran both hands through his thick hair and gave it a little pull. She always did that when her spirits rose. Then she turned and looked at the scene, and at once she knew that there was to be some special occasion. Aunty Alice Lee was seated by a cooking fire, on which stood the enormous iron pot in which the ”big meals” were prepared, when the tribe was to eat together and not in separate groups, as it usually did. There were some boards laid on wooden horses, and Pyramus Lee, aunty's grandson, was bringing blocks of wood from the woodshed for seats. Dora Pa.r.s.e clapped her hands with delight and looked at her man.
”_Tetcho_!” she exclaimed, approvingly, using the word that spells all degrees of satisfaction. ”And what is it for, stickless one? Is it a talk over silver?”
”Yes, it is some business,” George Lane replied, ”but first there will be a _gillie shoon_.”
A _gillie shoon_ has its counterpart in the English word ”singsong,” as it is beginning to be used now, with this exception: Romanys have few ”fixed” songs. They have strains which are set, which every one knows, but a _gillie shoon_ means that the performers improvise coninually; and in this sense it is a mystic ceremony, never held at an appointed time, except a ”time of Mul-cerus,” which really means a sort of religious wave of feeling, which strikes tribe after tribe, usually in the spring.
”Marda has come back,” Aunty Lee called out to Dora Pa.r.s.e. No one ever called her by her full name of Marda Lee, because she was a Lee only by courtesy, having been adopted from a distant wagon when both her parents were killed in a thunderstorm. Marda, wearing the trim tailored skirt and waist that were her usual costume, was putting the big red tablecloth of the ”big meals” on the boards. Dora went quickly toward the young girl and embraced her.
”How is our little scholar?” she asked affectionately.
”I am very well, Dora Pa.r.s.e, but a little tired,” Marda answered.
”And did you receive another paper?”
”Yes. I pa.s.sed my exams. It will save me half a year in Dover.”
”That is good,” Dora Pa.r.s.e replied, although she had only the dimmest idea of what Marda meant. The young girl knew that. She had just come from taking a special course in Columbia, and she was feeling the breach between herself and her people to be especially wide. Because of that, perhaps, she also felt more loving toward all of them than she ever had, and especially toward Dora about whom she knew something that was most alarming. Dora Pa.r.s.e noted the pale, grave face of her favourite friend with concern.
”Smile, bird of my heart,” she entreated, ”for we are to have a _gillie shoon_. Sit near me, that I may follow your heaven voice.”
There was no flattery meant. The Romanys call the soprano ”the heaven voice,” the tenor ”the sky voice,” the contralto ”the earth voice,” and the ba.s.so ”the sea voice.” Dora had a really wonderful earth voice, almost as wonderful as Marda's heaven voice, which would have been remarkable even among opera singers, and the two were known everywhere for their improvisations. In answer to the remark of the princess, Marda gave her a strange look and said:
”I shall be near you, Dora Pa.r.s.e. Do not forget.”
Her manner was certainly peculiar, the princess thought, as she walked away. But then one never knew what Marda was thinking about. Her great education set her apart from others. Any chi who habitually read herself to sleep over those most _puro libros_, ”The Works of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes, Complete, with Glossary and Appendix,”
must not be judged by ordinary standards. The princess knew the full t.i.tle of those _puro libros_, having painfully spelled it out, all one rainy afternoon, in Marda's mother's wagon, with repeated a.s.sitance and explanations from Marda, which had left the princess with a headache.
Now Aunty Lee took off the heavy iron cover of the pot and the odour of Romany duck stew, than which there is nothing in the world more appetizing, mingled with the sweet fragrance of the drying hay. Aunty thrust a fork as long as a poker into the bubbling ma.s.s and then gave the call that brings the tribe in a hurry.
”Empo!” she said in her shrill, cracked voice. ”Empo! Empo!”
Laughing, teasing, jostling, talking, they all came, spilling out from the wagons, running from the barn, sauntering in, the lovers, by twos, and sat down before the plates heaped high with the duck and the vegetables with which it was cooked and the big loaves of Italian bread which the Romanys like and always buy as they pa.s.s through towns where there are Italian bakeries.
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