Chapter Twenty-Nine.
STORY OF THE EGYPTIAN.
God gives us more than, were we not overbold, we should dare to askfor, and yet how often (perhaps after saying "Thank God" so curtlythat it is only a form of swearing) we are suppliants again within thehour. Gavin was to be satisfied if he were told that no evil hadbefallen her he loved, and all the way between the school-house andWindyghoul Babbie craved for no more than Gavin's life. Now they hadgot their desires; but do you think they were content?
The Egyptian had gone on her knees when she heard Gavin speak of her.It was her way of preventing herself from running to him. Then, whenshe thought him gone, he opened the door. She rose and shrank back,but first she had stepped toward him with a glad cry. His disappointedarms met on nothing.
"You, too, heard that I was dead?" he said, thinking her strangenessbut grief too sharply turned to joy.
There were tears in the word with which she answered him, and he wouldhave kissed her, but she defended her face with her hand.
"Babbie," he asked, beginning to fear that he had not sounded herdeepest woe, "why have you left me all this time? You are not glad tosee me now?"
"I was glad," she answered in a low voice, "to see you from thewindow, but I prayed to God not to let you see me."
She even pulled away her hand when he would have taken it. "No, no, Iam to tell you everything now, and then----"
"Say that you love me first," he broke in, when a sob checked herspeaking.
"No," she said, "I must tell you first what I have done, and then youwill not ask me to say that. I am not a gypsy."
"What of that?" cried Gavin. "It was not because you were a gypsy thatI loved you."
"That is the last time you will say you love me," said Babbie. "Mr.Dishart, I am to be married to-morrow."
She stopped, afraid to say more lest he should fall, but except thathis arms twitched he did not move.
"I am to be married to Lord Rintoul," she went on. "Now you know who Iam."
She turned from him, for his piercing eyes frightened her. Neveragain, she knew, would she see the love-light in them. He pluckedhimself from the spot where he had stood looking at her and walked tothe window. When he wheeled round there was no anger on his face, onlya pathetic wonder that he had been deceived so easily. It was athimself that he was smiling grimly rather than at her, and the changepained Babbie as no words could have hurt her. He sat down on a chairand waited for her to go on.
"Don't look at me," she said, "and I will tell you everything." Hedropped his eyes listlessly, and had he not asked her a question fromtime to time, she would have doubted whether he heard her.
"After all," she said, "a gypsy dress is my birth-right, and so theThrums people were scarcely wrong in calling me an Egyptian. It is apity any one insisted on making me something different. I believe Icould have been a good gypsy."
"Who were your parents?" Gavin asked, without looking up.
"You ask that," she said, "because you have a good mother. It is nota question that would occur to me. My mother--If she was bad, may notthat be some excuse for me? Ah, but I have no wish to excuse myself.Have you seen a gypsy cart with a sort of hammock swung beneath it inwhich gypsy children are carried about the country? If there are nochildren, the pots and pans are stored in it. Unless the roads arerough it makes a comfortable cradle, and it was the only one I everknew. Well, one day I suppose the road was rough, for I was capsized.I remember picking myself up after a little and running after thecart, but they did not hear my cries. I sat down by the roadside andstared after the cart until I lost sight of it. That was in England,and I was not three years old."
"But surely," Gavin said, "they came back to look for you?"
"So far as I know," Babbie answered hardly, "they did not come back. Ihave never seen them since. I think they were drunk. My onlyrecollection of my mother is that she once took me to see the deadbody of some gypsy who had been murdered. She told me to dip my handin the blood, so that I could say I had done so when I became a woman.It was meant as a treat to me, and is the one kindness I am sure I gotfrom her. Curiously enough, I felt the shame of her deserting me formany years afterwards. As a child I cried hysterically at thought ofit; it pained me when I was at school in Edinburgh every time I sawthe other girls writing home; I cannot think of it without a shuddereven now. It is what makes me worse than other women."
Her voice had altered, and she was speaking passionately.
"Sometimes," she continued, more gently, "I try to think that mymother did come back for me, and then went away because she heard Iwas in better hands than hers. It was Lord Rintoul who found me, and Iowe everything to him. You will say that he has no need to be proudof me. He took me home on his horse, and paid his gardener's wife torear me. She was Scotch, and that is why I can speak two languages. Itwas he, too, who sent me to school in Edinburgh."
"He has been very kind to you," said Gavin, who would have preferredto dislike the earl.
"So kind," answered Babbie, "that now he is to marry me. But do youknow why he has done all this?"
Now again she was agitated, and spoke indignantly.
"It is all because I have a pretty face," she said, her bosom risingand falling. "Men think of nothing else. He had no pity for thedeserted child. I knew that while I was yet on his horse. When he cameto the gardener's afterwards, it was not to give me some one to love,it was only to look upon what was called my beauty; I was merely apicture to him, and even the gardener's children knew it and sought toterrify me by saying, 'You are losing your looks; the earl will notcare for you any more.' Sometimes he brought his friends to see me,'because I was such a lovely child,' and if they did not agree withhim on that point he left without kissing me. Throughout my wholegirlhood I was taught nothing but to please him, and the only way todo that was to be pretty. It was the only virtue worth striving for;the others were never thought of when he asked how I was getting on.Once I had fever and nearly died, yet this knowledge that my face waseverything was implanted in me so that my fear lest he should think meugly when I recovered terrified me into hysterics. I dream still thatI am in that fever and all my fears return. He did think me ugly whenhe saw me next. I remember the incident so well still. I had run tohim, and he was lifting me up to kiss me when he saw that my face hadchanged. 'What a cruel disappointment,' he said, and turned his backon me. I had given him a child's love until then, but from that day Iwas hard and callous."
"And when was it you became beautiful again?" Gavin asked, by no meansin the mind to pay compliments.
"A year passed," she continued, "before I saw him again. In that timehe had not asked for me once, and the gardener had kept me out ofcharity. It was by an accident that we met, and at first he did notknow me. Then he said, 'Why, Babbie, I believe you are to be a beauty,after all!' I hated him for that, and stalked away from him, but hecalled after me, 'Bravo! she walks like a queen'; and it was because Iwalked like a queen that he sent me to an Edinburgh school. He used tocome to see me every year, and as I grew up the girls called me LadyRintoul. He was not fond of me; he is not fond of me now. He would assoon think of looking at the back of a picture as at what I am apartfrom my face, but he dotes on it, and is to marry it. Is that love?Long before I left school, which was shortly before you came toThrums, he had told his sister that he was determined to marry me, andshe hated me for it, making me as uncomfortable as she could, so thatI almost looked forward to the marriage because it would be such ahumiliation to her."
In admitting this she looked shamefacedly at Gavin, and then went on:
"It is humiliating him too. I understand him. He would like not towant to marry me, for he is ashamed of my origin, but he cannot helpit. It is this feeling that has brought him here, so that the marriagemay take place where my history is not known."
"The secret has been well kept," Gavin said, "for they have failed todiscover it even in Thrums."
"Some of the Spittal servants suspect it, nevertheless," Babbieanswered, "t
hough how much they know I cannot say. He has not aservant now, either here or in England, who knew me as a child. Thegardener who befriended me was sent away long ago. Lord Rintoul looksupon me as a disgrace to him that he cannot live without."
"I dare say he cares for you more than you think," Gavin saidgravely.
"He is infatuated about my face, or the pose of my head, or somethingof that sort," Babbie said bitterly, "or he would not have endured meso long. I have twice had the wedding postponed, chiefly, I believe,to enrage my natural enemy, his sister, who is as much aggravated bymy reluctance to marry him as by his desire to marry me. However, Ialso felt that imprisonment for life was approaching as the day drewnear, and I told him that if he did not defer the wedding I should runaway. He knows I am capable of it, for twice I ran away from school.If his sister only knew that!"
For a moment it was the old Babbie Gavin saw; but her glee wasshort-lived, and she resumed sedately:
"They were kind to me at school, but the life was so dull and primthat I ran off in a gypsy dress of my own making. That is what it isto have gypsy blood in one. I was away for a week the first time,wandering the country alone, telling fortunes, dancing and singing inwoods, and sleeping in barns. I am the only woman in the world wellbrought up who is not afraid of mice or rats. That is my gypsy bloodagain. After that wild week I went back to the school of my own will,and no one knows of the escapade but my schoolmistress and LordRintoul. The second time, however, I was detected singing in thestreet, and then my future husband was asked to take me away. Yet MissFeversham cried when I left, and told me that I was the nicest girlshe knew, as well as the nastiest. She said she should love me as soonas I was not one of her boarders."
"And then you came to the Spittal?"
"Yes; and Lord Rintoul wanted me to say I was sorry for what I haddone, but I told him I need not say that, for I was sure to do itagain. As you know, I have done it several times since then; andthough I am a different woman since I knew you, I dare say I shall goon doing it at times all my life. You shake your head because you donot understand. It is not that I make up my mind to break out in thatway; I may not have had the least desire to do it for weeks, and thensuddenly, when I am out riding, or at dinner, or at a dance, thecraving to be a gypsy again is so strong that I never think ofresisting it; I would risk my life to gratify it. Yes, whatever mylife in the future is to be, I know that must be a part of it. I usedto pretend at the Spittal that I had gone to bed, and then escape bythe window. I was mad with glee at those times, but I always returnedbefore morning, except once, the last time I saw you, when I was awayfor nearly twenty-four hours. Lord Rintoul was so glad to see me comeback then that he almost forgave me for going away. There is nothingmore to tell except that on the night of the riot it was not my gypsynature that brought me to Thrums, but a desire to save the poorweavers. I had heard Lord Rintoul and the sheriff discussing thecontemplated raid. I have hidden nothing from you. In time, perhaps, Ishall have suffered sufficiently for all my wickedness."
Gavin rose weariedly, and walked through the mudhouse looking at her.
"This is the end of it all," he said harshly, coming to a standstill."I loved you, Babbie."
"No," she answered, shaking her head. "You never knew me until now,and so it was not me you loved. I know what you thought I was, and Iwill try to be it now."
"If you had only told me this before," the minister said sadly, "itmight not have been too late."
"I only thought you like all the other men I knew," she replied,"until the night I came to the manse. It was only my face you admiredat first."
"No, it was never that," Gavin said with such conviction that hermouth opened in alarm to ask him if he did not think her pretty. Shedid not speak, however, and he continued, "You must have known that Iloved you from the first night."
"No; you only amused me," she said, like one determined to stintnothing of the truth. "Even at the well I laughed at your vows."
This wounded Gavin afresh, wretched as her story had made him, and hesaid tragically, "You have never cared for me at all."
"Oh, always, always," she answered, "since I knew what love was; andit was you who taught me."
Even in his misery he held his head high with pride. At least she didlove him.
"And then," Babbie said, hiding her face, "I could not tell you what Iwas because I knew you would loathe me. I could only go away."
She looked at him forlornly through her tears, and then moved towardthe door. He had sunk upon a stool, his face resting on the table, andit was her intention to slip away unnoticed. But he heard the latchrise, and jumping up, said sharply, "Babbie, I cannot give you up."
She stood in tears, swinging the door unconsciously with her hand.
"Don't say that you love me still," she cried; and then, letting herhand fall from the door, added imploringly, "Oh, Gavin, do you?"