The Romany Rye | Page 6

"Kingfisher brook," and when they reached it they sat down on a fallen tree.
Nothing delights a gypsy girl so much as to listen to a story either told or read to her, and when Borrow's friend pulled his book from his pocket the gypsy girl began to clap her hands. Her anticipation of enjoyment sent over her face a warm glow, and I can assure Dr. Jessopp that Borrow (notwithstanding that his admiration of women was confined as a rule to blondes of the Isopel Berners type) seemed as much struck by her beauty as ever the Doctor could be himself. To say the truth, he frequently talked of it afterwards. Her complexion, though darker than an English girl's, was rather lighter than any ordinary gypsy's. Her eyes were of an indescribable hue, but an artist who has since then painted her portrait for Borrow's friend described it as a mingling of pansy-purple and dark tawny. The pupils were so large that, being set in the somewhat almond-shaped and long-eyelashed lids of her race, they were partly curtained both above and below, and this had the peculiar effect of making the eyes seem always a little contracted and just about to smile. The great size and deep richness of the eyes made the straight little nose seem smaller than it really was, they also lessened the apparent size of the mouth, which, red as a rosebud, looked quite small until she laughed when the white teeth made quite a wide glitter.
"The beauty of that girl," murmured Borrow, "is really quite--quite--"
I don't know what the sentence would have been had it been finished.
Before three lines of the poem had been read she jumped up and cried, "Look at the Devil's needles. They're come to sew my eyes up for killing their brothers."
And surely enough a gigantic dragon-fly, whose body-armour of sky-blue and jet black, and great lace-woven wings, shining like a rainbow gauze, caught the sun as he swept dazzling by, did really seem to be attracted either by the wings of his dead brothers or by the lights shed from the girl's eyes.
"I dussn't set here," said she. "Us Romanies call this 'Dragon-fly brook.' And that's the king o' the dragon-flies: he lives here."
As she rose she seemed to be surrounded by dragon-flies of about a dozen different species of all sizes, some crimson, some bronze, some green and gold, whirling and dancing round her as if they meant to justify their Romany name and sew up the girl's eyes.
"The Romanies call them the Devil's needles," said Borrow; "their business is to sew up pretty girl's eyes."
In a second, however, they all vanished, and the girl after a while sat down again to listen to the "lil," as she called the story.
Glanville's prose story, upon which Arnold's poem is based, was read first. In this the girl was much interested. She herself was in love with a Romany Rye. But when the reader went on to read to her Arnold's poem, though her eyes flashed now and then at the lovely bits of description--for the country about Oxford is quite remarkably like the country in which she was born--she looked sadly bewildered, and then asked to have it all read again. After a second reading she said in a meditative way, "Can't make out what the lil's all about--seems all about nothink! Seems to me that the pretty sights what makes a Romany fit to jump out o' her skin for joy makes this 'ere gorgio want to cry. What a rum lot gorgios is surely!"
And then she sprang up and ran off towards the camp with the agility of a greyhound, turning round every few moments, pirouetting and laughing aloud.
"The beauty of that girl," Borrow again murmured, "is quite--quite--"
Again he did not finish his sentence, but after a while said--
"That was all true about the nicotine?"
"Partly, I think," said his friend, "but not being a medical man I must not be too emphatic. If it is true it ought to be a criminal offence for any woman to smoke in excess while she is suckling a child."
"Say it ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all," growled Borrow. "Fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale tobacco--pheugh!"
Now, so far from forgetting this incident, Borrow took quite as much interest in the case as though the child had been his own. He went at short intervals to the camp to see Perpinia, who had abandoned her pipe, for the time being. And when after a fortnight the child, either from Perpinia's temporary abstention from nicotine, or through the "good luck" sent by the magpie, or from some other cause began to recover from its illness, he reported progress with the greatest gusto to his