The Gravosa Road.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 13, 26 March 1913, Page 47

The Gravosa Road.

By

JUSTUS MILES FORMAN.

■W"N OW I am getting on for an old I * man, 1 suppose, and 1 have been 1 J everywhere in the world, and seen all the things there are to see, and all the different ways of doing the same thing; and looking baek upon them from the mountain of my accumulated wisdom I am surprised to find how very little the ways matter.' 'After all, there are but three essentials in a man’s life. He is born, he breeds his kind, and then he dies and gets out of the way. But the fashion in which he accomplishes these three very commonplace acts is, in spite of the absurd fuss he makes over it, of singularly small importance. The above is theory. I know it is true for I am very wise, but I cheerfully grant you that when it comes to practise it is like all other theories. It won’tdo at all. We’ve all got to live together —no! not all. thank God! If I had to live with some of the people" T know I’d end in the criminal courts—but what I mean is, we’re a gregarious lot and, if we don’t file down, our corners and curb our occasional taste for murder and such, the whole lot is made uncomfortable. Society is a number of people who’ve agreed to do the same things in more or less the same way. That was the trouble with young Waring. He wouldn’t do things in the way we have agreed they must be done, and while, as I have said before, that theoretically does not in the least matter, practically it—well, it simply won’t do, you know. It won’t do. The reason I happen to be thinking about Waring is that I had to lunch to-day at my club with an elderly ass called Benson, who tried to pump me about the lad, knowing that I’d known him and his people forever. Popped out at me with a line from What’s-his-name’s poem, about: “ ‘What’s become of Waring (Since lie gave us all the slip?' I told him I didn’t know, which was in part a lie (as old Benson politely intimated), but he put me in a temper that I shall have to sleep off What’s become of Waring, indeed? The romantic young fool! As I say, I had known the lad ever since he could toddle—and long before that; I used to bring him gewgaws ami hold him on my Knee, Lie wing open the back of my watch to make him gurgle and beat his foolish little fists together. Why, if a pair of solemn young idiots hadn’t quarrelled and turned their backs on each other a few years before that f •night have been his father! Eh, well. I'm not—and glad of it! But for all tint I took i huge liking to the lad—l’d liked his’mother, you understand. Fino woman, though hasty! 'And I watched him grow up, watched him go through school, bragged about him to all my friends when he took a first at Oxford, got him into the way of coming to me with all his silly little troubles. Oh. yes, I was fond of him. I kept on being fond of him even after he had come down and was playing about with the other youngsters of bis sort. I used to meet him at one of tils clubs which we both frequented, and I gave him a great deal of good advice which he laughed at. Then it happened that I went away to China, and so I didn’t see the boy again for nearly two years, but 1 heard of him often in people’s letters/ and aecasiomiil ~’ from him in letters of his own. He wasn’t breaking into harness as I had hoped. He seemed to have outlandish and romantic ideas—a reversion to some old family type. I expect. For that matter, though, not so old after all. His mother, I remember, used to have idea’s too. But she lived them down. At last I bear I rvmom’s««bout a very nice sort of girl in bis on countynothing definite lit all. Imt it looked as if the young fool meant to settle down in the proper, fashion with the proper iiousehold gilds about him. That was the last 1 heard. The next, time he came before me was several months later, and then not by hearsay. I saw liim with my own eyes. t , It was t of all strange places. in Ragusa, wliit'li Jfeople used to call the

Pearl of the Adriatic. It does not matter what I was doing at that walled and guarded and portentously fortified little city. I was there for reasons of my Own. I was sitting on the terrace of the Opcinska Kafana, where is to be found the only ice for many miles, and drinking a brownish liquid nicknamed by the local humorists brandy. Somewhere I read once that a sort of brandy is made out of potatoes, I think they send it to Ragui-i. I was drinking this, as I say, in cool and comfort, surrounded by corseted Austrian officers who. wiser than I, were eating chocolate-ice, and I was blinking, across the sun-baked piazza at the facehini who squat all day long in the shade about the cathedral steps, and at the congress of nations which filters in through the Porta

Ploce and up the Corso —Morlacchi front the north, Herzegovinians from over the near border. Canalesi all in starched and fluted white, market-women from Breno, very Italian looking with their gay silk handkerchiefs and gold filigree beads, huge Montenegrins . with an armoury of weapons in their sashes, white breeched Albanians, dews, Turks, Greeks, and all manner of strange vermin—when all at once’ I sat up and stared hard at a young man who came out of the market-place in the Piazza del’ Erbe ami. crossing before the cafe, went on past the cathedral toward the water-gate. The young man was in the usual southern Dalmatian dress, with wide Turkish breeches, a much braided and ornamented waistcoat, ami a low red kitpa. 'Also his face was tanped to a very dark brown, and Tie wore a little, upturned black moustache, but he: walked like an Englishman. ; You who go among the nations know that each has its own walk. An Englishman cannot, walk like u Chinaman or a Turk or a Cingalee'. not though ho devote his life to the attempt. This young 'man walked like an Englishman

and so I stared at him thinking how very odd that. was. Then when he was iiear he turned to speak to a”'jypsyishlooking young woman who was with him and 1 saw his face. It was Cecil Waring!

I could not have called out to him if I had wanted to for I was knocked quite speechless. You will admit that the thing was a bit of a facer. I expect I sat there quite still for half an hour and let the flies drink my potato brandy and the precious ice in it melt away to nothing. Young Cecil Waring, who ought to have been making love to a nice pink girl in a Sussex garden, Cecil Waring whose father I had narrowly escaped being myself, that lad wandering about the streets of Ragusa, got up like a comic-opera brigand and accompanied by a young woman who looked as if she had left her street-organ somewhere just round the corner! It so harrowed me up that 1 left the cafe without payjug for my potato brandy, and a waiter had to chase me half-way across the piazza while the Austrian officers and the facehini laughed.

I lunched, after a fashion, at the Sarajevska Pivara, and afterward, though the day was hot, took my troubles —I

was by now in a fine rage at that miserable youth—out of the land-gate, the Porta Pille. to the Gravosa highroad, and walked there. It is a very line walk, the Gravosa highroad. It begins in a long shaded avenue of mulberry trees, ami mounts gently. After a bit there are high stone walls to either side, and. over the.se walls, fig-trees and myrtle and almonds and date-palms lean, and enormous azaleas in full blossom — the whole, roadside is ablaze with them, a gorgeous double bank of -flowering fire. Over th? tops of the azaleas and fig-trees, the roofs and chimney-pots of stucco villas show themselves. and you know that that flaming paradise is a peopled paradise. amt you feel envy ami hatred and ■imulice. Presently the gardens and the walla to the left drop away and the road skirts the sea-cliff, two hundred. tw</ hundred and fifty feet above the placid tide which lap? among the rocks at the cliff’s foot. It is open sea as fifr as your eye can reach to tihe westward, but away Iteybnd that line of pearly haze which is your horizon the marshy -holes of Italy

lie, squat and foul, and a muddy tide islouolies in and out over them as if it were ashamed ■of ’ its own unclcanaeee. And so you come at last to a spur of the coast-line—the peninsula of La-pad--and a. foot-path, leaving the highroad, mounts among pines to the height whore is the little votice chapel of St. Biagio, and where standing you •may see three countries. Below your feet. stretching southward, tlierc are the beautiful Dalmatian guldens with Ragusa thrust grim and bare, a stern mailed fist, out into the sea: ibeside it, green-blossomed, the island of Lacroma, where those two men of tragedy, the Emperor Maximilian and tho Crown Prince Rudolf, lived and left the.r impress. To the east, above Gravosa. rise the naked hills of the Herzegovina; and far south, as far as eye can reach, the great Montenegrin peaks loom to tho slcv.

I toiled up the little shaded path, where the air was keen with the a i d scent of pine, not because 1 was eager to see three countries at once, but from sheer force of habit, and heoac.se 1 had to go somewhere. 1 was thinking about Cecil Waring's mother and how. when I was back in England once more, 1 should ilvivc to tell her what I had seen. 1 came out upon the tiny cleared space beside tike chapel, and there, hanging 'his heels over the edge of the cliff and singing a little Slavic song in a minor key. sat the, young man who had crossed the Cathedral Place before me in the morning. He looked up over his shoulder and abandoned his little Slavic song. ‘•Hullo, Coppy! — I thought you’d be out here some time during the day." he said. “All the trippers come here to see the view.” Then he began to sing again. “I am not a tripper!” said I with some heat. “I used to come to this place, young man, before you wore born- ’ “Ah’?” he said. “Get the habit, eh? Well, anyhow, it’s far better for you than drinking. I saw you drinking brown stuff out of a glass at the Kafana this morning-. Coppy. Naughty!” I ymembered that he had a mother an I so did not push him off into the sea as all my members cried out to do. "Can you offer me any explanation,” said I, "for walking about in the -face •of mankind with those —those operalie garments on yon—and in the company of a lady whom I take to be a fortuneteller?” The lad scrambled to his feet beside me ami looked anxiously down at his -absurd breeches. ' • “What’s wrong with my. clothes?” I:e demanded. “I can't -ee anything the matter with 'em. No one but you lias found fault with my clothes. They're rather superior, as a matter of fact." “And the lady?" I said. lie flushed ■a bit at that. “I think we won't talk about the lady." said he. "That is. if you don’t mind" “Well, 1 do mind," 1 cried. “Great heaven, boy, are you quite mad? This—this sort of thing, you know why, damme, it won't do. you know! It won't do! How about that girl in Sussex I used to hear about ?" lie took me by the shoulders ;s one. who imparts a confidence to his fellow. "Between you and me, l oppy.” he said with fl little whimsical one sided grin, “between you and me, I lied. .As eno man to another, Coppy. I couldn't -tan I it. 1 was bored to the verge of erime. 1 ran away.” “Were you engaged to her'.’" I <’emanded. “Oh, no!” he said. “Oh, hires you, no!” He gave me another of those whimsical shamefaced little grins of his. “I’m not quite that much of a rotter, Coppy,” he said. “I just got bored with it. Aggressive respectability always bored me, you know. I wasn't meant to be respect able. I was meant to be a pirate and sail the ocean blue.” The lad's tone was as flippant as you like, but he ■turned his head a little to stare out over the sea, and I didn't like his face nor the things tJiat had come into it in the two years since 1 had seen him la-t. I don't mean that it was bid. Them was nothing bad in it or menn, but it had an odd look that one very -c!dom sines in an Englishman's face. I camiot tell what it is, but you will orc it in the faces of all Gypoieo, and it doe? n >t mean either peace or happiness. “‘Respectable’?” said I. " ’Re-peel-able'? No. I should think'n it! I can't just connect respectability «;• d< ceiiey. either—With the company I i-aw joi in this morning. Come, my deni boy. there are certain limits, you know!" That brought the red to his faic, but I'm afraid it wasn't u red of shine. For •

minute I thought he’d strike me. He looked at me a long time and lie gave an odd little sigh. "You don't know her, Coppy,” he said very gently. Then I knew that the matter was really serious and that 1 sihould have a had time with the boy. I’d been afraid of it and that was why I had made my silly little speech- 1 wanted to try him. If only he had sniggered then or laughed or looked man-of-the-worldish, I could have got him away with no trouble. There was a bit of low stone wall near where we were, and I sat down upon it and relighted the pipe I’d been smoking. After a moment young Waring sat down opposite me, squatting on the turf in his abominable Turkish fashion, his face turned out to sea. So we drew up our forces, as it were, to battle. I sha'n t ever forget it, not if I should live to a hundred—which God forbid! I remember

everything about it, the hot still afternoopi, the still blue sky, and the still blue sea, where a sort of dim haze was creeping in from the west. I remember that the air was full of a scent of thyme —there must have been some growing near. And I remember some odd little yellow flowens that had taken root in the cracks of the bit of stone wall where I was sitting. A floek of gulls mewed, far down toward the foot of that high cliff, and once Waring threw a pebble down at them, which didn’t hit anything. The lad began to speak first. "It bored me, Coppy,” lie said quite gravely. “It bored me until I could bear it no longer- I had to come away. And it would bore me if I should go back.” He turned h:s head and looked up at me. “I expect Tm different to the rest of you, somehow',” he said, speaking half in question. “The rest of you seem to take quite naturally to harness. You seem to like the round and the —conventions and the sane orderly way of doing things. But it drives me nrad. I wonder why. Coppy,” he said, “have you ever seen a cageful of tame rats’ There’s always a wheel in -one end of it, you know', where the poor little beasts can get a bit of exercise, but most of them never use it. ’They’re frightened at first, but after a few days most of them will settle down quite passively—contentedly, I dare say —and live their lives out with all the cheerfulness a rat can show. But there’s always one or two in the lot, Coppy, who rave and tear about and fight with the bars, who spin that wretched wheel for hours together till they’re so exhausted that you see their poor little hearts beat through their hides; and in a few days they die. They couldn’t bear it.” He threw out his arms in a queer spent gesture.

“I’m the exceptional rat, Coppy,” he said- "There’s a touch of madness, a pagan-streak, a stone-age molecule in me somewhere. I can’t bear the dull, gray commonplace of that imitation marionette show yonder. Y'ou really good and proper rats like it. It seems to you only decent. But it would break my heart in a few years.”

“You’re not well, my boy,” said I. “There's something wrong with your nerves. Harley Street is where you ought to go, not Dalmatia. I suppose you know you’re talking like an hysterical .sOhoolgirT;”

"I suppose I am,” he said quiet quietly, “but it’s not nerves. It’s deeper than that. It has always been in me.” His face Changed and took on that odd Hypsy look that I didn't like, and he made as if he would speak again. Then, after a moment, he laughed and shook his head.

“XVhats the use?” he said. “I’d like to explain to you, Coppy, how I feel about it all, but you wouldn’t understand. You’re one of the properest and best-behaved rats of the lot. You never rage and fight with the bars, do you? You think it’s foolish because you know you can’t break them down, and you know that if you stop in the cage your feed will be brought you regularly and you’ll never be hungry or wet or cold.” He gave another little laugh. Did you ever long to be hungry or wet or cold, Coppy?” he asked. “No, I didn't,” said I. “Comfort suits me very well, thank you.” “Of course,” said he. “Of course it docs. That’s what I said you’d say. And you never longed to be free, either, did you? tree as the W’ind or the sea, free to go where you want and stay as long as you like and come back to-morrow or never, as you please- You never wanted to be like tliat. You always wanted a family and a circle of friends about you and a regular life to lead. Y’ou’ve always wanted to know what you were to do to-morrow and a week from to-day and a year. Coppy, Coppy, I can’t talk to you at all! \Ve don’t speak the same language.”

“No, we don’t,S’ said I. “No, we don’t, 'but we shall before we’ve done. You’ll come back to your own tongue, my lad. Y’ou may think you’ve forgotten it, but you haven’t. You’ll come 'back. They all do. Oh, I've knowm others who have broken their bars just as you’ve done, and taken to the wild. I’ve known ’em in India, and in the Islands, and in a dozen places. And they all come baek. You can’t get out of your breed and stay out; or what’s civilization for? Aye, you’ll come trailing hack very ashamed and sorry. Look here!” I leaned down and wagged a stern finger at him. I felt that I had him now. It seemed to me that I was talking extremely well. “Look here!” said I, “you rave on about rat-cages and marionette allow*

and gray routines. That’s all rot. Nobody nowadays, no man anyhow, has to see any more of the regular round of life than he wants to. You don’t have to live at home. There’s travelling and exploration and sailing and shooting to do. What’s the matter with those things ?” “I don't seem to care so much for shooting things as I used,” the boy said. ‘‘lt’s hardly playing fair, somehow —this killing birds and beasts because you’re stronger and cleverer than they are. It’s jolly little better- than going out and .potting at the poor in the East End. Not so good, as a matter of fact. Some of the poor’ud thank you for it. The animals don’t. “No, killing helpless beasts doesn’t seem to amuse me any more. And "the other things aren’t amusing either. They're just doing in harness what a man might as well do in freedom. They’re half-way measures, and I don’t like half-way measures. No, Coppy, it’s no good arguing. We’ll get nowhere. I’ve thrown off the shackles, and I’m free. Let me alone!” “Oh, my dear ehap,” said I, “you can't east off your shackles in that lighthearted .barbaric fashion. None of us can. They’re on to stay. We don’t live to ourselves, niy lad". We’ve got responsibilities— a whole network of them, that binds us down, each one in his place.” “I’ve cut my net and got out of it,” he said stubbornly. “Let me alone! What responsibilities have I?” “For one thing,” eaid I, “you’ve got a mother.” You will observe that I had not brought in his mother before this. I was saving her for a telling stroke—the matador's thrust. And the thrust went home, too. His face twisted, and the colour left it for a moment. He gave me a quick glance and looked away. Arid he gave something like a sob. He said: “Don’t. Coppy! don't! Please! It isn't as if I were leaving her alone,” he said, after a bit. “She has the girls—and besides, she understands, partly. We talked it over before I came away. She partly understands.” "Girls aren’t an only son,” said I. “And she. isn’t as young as she used to be, lad. Ami she’s a widow. No, we ean't cast off our shackles. They’re riveted too fast.” The boy had put up his hands over his & ee, and he sat like that, quite still, for a long time. I spoke to him presently, but I don't think he heard me, for he paid no heed. That had been » shrewd stroke of mine, that bit about the mother. It must have been some minutes later, that he took his hands down and his face gave me quite a jump, it had gone so white and worn. He gave a sort of groan. “If I could only make yOu understand, Coppy!” he said. And after a littly, when I’d made no answer to that: “I couldn't stick it out, you know—even if I were to go back. I'd bolt again. I promise you.” I almost laughed out with sheer delight. The mother had done the trick. I had him. “That's as may be,” I said. “That’s for the future to settle. At least you'll come back with me and give it a trial. That’s no more than fair.” I jumped to my feet, determined to have the thing settled before he eould change his mind. “Come!” said I. “I must be getting Ibaek -to the Imperial. We can get off on the night boat for Trieste.” The lad did not answer at once. He had got to bls feet when I did, but stood looking down, with his hands twisted behind ■him. “Come!” I said again, and clapped him on the shoulder. He looked up at me. “Coppy,” said he, “will you come a little way with me —not far—for only a few minutes? Just over to the other side of the cape here? I want—you to see something.” “Why—yes, yes. of course!” said I. I didn't like it. I was afraid. But I couldn't welt refuse him just then. He might have baulked. He turned about without another work, and led the. way straight up over the rocky, braanbly height of La pad and down the farther slope. There was a sort of rough path such «* goatherds sometimes make. And presently we same to a broad shelf of the cliff where trees stood about, and one looked out over the sea, north ami west. There were two or three rough huts in the place, and a dog barked as we approached, and ran at us, then dropped its

ears and trotted up to Waring, licking his hand and jumping about him. Two men and an old, woman, decently dressed peasantry, I should think, were chopping up brushwood beyond the huts. They turned, and, when they saw Waring, spoke to him, and the woman courtesied. Then she went to the door of one of the huts and called to someone inside. Of course by this time I understood, and I was prepared when the young woman whom I had seen earlier in the day came out of the hut. She was singing a gay little song under her breath, I remember, but when she saw me she stopped short, and the smile on her face went away, and she stood looking at me very gravely. .After a moment she moved up beside Waring and said something to him in a language I didn’t know. It wasn’t Italian or Greek or any Slav tongue, or Magyar either, and the girl wasn’t of any of those races. I’ll swear to that. I don’t know what she was, unless possibly Gypsy. And if yon know what that is, you know more than most people. She had brownish black hair, I believe, and very straight eyebrows, uncommonly straight, and a straight nose, and lip-s too full for my fancy, and a rather dark skin —Hot darker than many brunettes of our own land. Yes, and she had fine eyes, I must admit, very fine eyes; and, oddly enough, long, slim, tapering hands. Many Gypsies have, though. Altogether I suppose she was a very handsome girl in her outlandish fashion, too handsome by half for young Waring to be about with. 1 was glad the Trieste boat was to sail that night, for, of course, I understood now where the lad had got all his absurd madness. “ Freedom ” indeed! A pretty sort of “ freedom ” he was pining for. Waring waved a hand toward me and spoke to his Gypsyisn girl, who immediately made a sort of salaaming obeisance. I felt like a heathen god, and said crossly: “What’s she about? What's she doing that for?” “ I told her your title, Coppy,” said young . Waring, “ and she’s mueh impressed. She's not used to titles.” “Does she speak any Christian tongue?” I demanded. “Or must I make signs to her?” " Oh, yes,” he said, “several. Italian among them, if Italian’s good enough for you.” So I spoke to the girl civilly enough in Italian, and she answered me. She . must have been in Rome some time in the course of her wanderings, for now and then she dropped into strong Roman dialect. I told her, plump, that I was going to take Waring to England with me on the night boat—l thought it best to have the thing clearly understood at the outset—and at that she gave a little low, fierce sort of cry and caught the lad by the shoulders, staring up into his face. It was only decent of me to look away, and I did. I don’t like to see people hurt. The two of them talked back and forth for a little while, very fast and low in their heathen jargon, and I could see that it wasn’t easy for poor Waring. His forehead was damp and his face looked white and thin. Eh, well, it was a handsome girl. I’ll grant that. She was handsome. Then presently the three of us moved over to the edge of that great shelf and sat down on the turf there where it was shady and where a cool breath came up from the sea below. I am not going to repeat the things we said, for I should be wearisome, and besides it was little else than a repetition of the struggle 1 had already gone through with Waring alone. Only this time I had a woman to deal with and—to do her justice—a woman who loved. Aye, she loved the boy after her fashion. I cannot doubt that she loved him. And her fashion was not a mi|d one either. She loved him very hard, as sueh half-savage people do. I had no pleasant task, but the right was on mv side and I couldn’t give in to her.

Waring himself acted very decently. Ho took no part in the discussion, but sat quite silent, his head turned away and his telltale hands hidden behind him. 1 saw him show feeling only once. A Hight of white seagulls wheeled past the brow of the cliff where we sat, and tho girl called out. One of the birds left tho others, fluttered in air for a moment, and then alighted upon the girl's knee, stretching out its head to her hand with a little throaty croaking like a dove. Then Waring began to tremble, and ho turned hits bead to look, and oue of Ins hands went out to her.

“Even the birds of the air!” he said with a sort of sob. “ Even the birds of the air!” And though I am an old man my eyelids stung for an instant. It was a poignant little scene. Well, I got him away. It was not easy, and I expect the look of that Gypsy girl’s eyes will always haunt me, but I got him away. At the last they stood together for a moment, and the girl looked into his fave. Her own face was white. All the rich, warm colour had gone out of it. She put up her two hands to the lad’s head and drew them very slowly-

down over his faee and over.his throat till they lay at his heart. I expect the heart was beating fast. Also for an instant she laid her head where her bauds lay, and even I. who stood at a distance, eould see her shake, as if she were sob bi ng. When we reached the erest of the rocky height I looked back, and the girl was still there where we nad left her, Iter hands half raised in air as if she wanted to stretch them out toward the man who was leaving her, but would not. Waring did not look back at all.

It was by this time near 6 o'clock. 1 remember that, as we came out from the trees into the open-, the sun was low over the sea to the west, and eastward the high, sheer, naked cliffs of the Herzegovina glowed against a dull sky with astonishing clearness. They looked not a mile distant.

Waring left me on the Gravosa highroad, promising to be at the Hotel Imperial by the Porta I’ille at 11. He was an honest lad. and 1 knew that he would not bolt or play me false. He could be trusted to keep his word. It was only when I had reached the hotel and was packing my valises that I remembered he had never given his word, had never really said he would go with me. 1 had a bad quarter-hour over that, for I was nervous and wanted to be off, but even then I did not doubt the outcome, and 1 need not have doubted it, on Wiring’s ■account, for he turned up promptly enough at 11. in the garments of civilisation and with a pair of Gladstone bags. You have to drive to Gravosa to take the big express steamers of the Austrian Lloyd or the Ungara-Croata. Only the smaller vessels land at Ragusa. But it is a journey of no more than half or three-quarters of an hour, and beautiful at any time of the day or night. It was beautiful. 1 remember, on that soft moonlit night when Waring and 1 traversed it, jogging slowly along in a sort of victoria behind a single shambling horse. I have an odd memory for smells, and I well remember the odours that were abroad that night- They came from the sea —that ever-fresh salt savour which is sweeter than all else in the world—from the bruised weeds and turf by the roadside, from the dust our sorry nag shuffled into the still air, from the wonderful gardens behind those high stone walls whence figs and oleanders and myrtles peeped. The night was that sort of sweet, enthralling night which sets a magic spell about all your being, transports you to those far-off enchanted gardens of your young days when you walked with love, and the breeze was Jove, and the soft sky was love, and the moon and the stars and the sweet night odours; and hope was fresh in you and courage was high and all the world was moonlight and madness. It was something like that that the night did to me as we rolled lazily along the Gravosa Road. I do not know what it did to Waring, for he sat quite still beside me. chin on breast, hands in his pockets, but that’s what it did to me.

And so I expect, buried in my silly fancies, I did not look about me. 1 had no thought of danger.

What first recalled me to this earth was, I remember, Waring’s saying all at onee:

“What’s that chap standing in the middle of the road for?” 1 think he called out then, but 1 am not sure, for quite suddenly our half-asleep nag reared straight up in the air—l saw him sprawled most grotesquely against the bright sky above me—hung so an instant, and then, screaming, as a horse sometimes screams for fear, begin to fall back. I had just time to leap aside and out of danger.

I remember next that great thrashing, struggling body entangled in the wrecked victoria at my feet. I remember I shouted out Waring’s name again and again in an agony of fear lest lie had been caught and crushed. I remember at length his rising out of the melee before me. and staggering a few paces away, his hands to his head, unharmed but half stunned with his fall. 1 remember his crying out: “’S f all right. Coppy! All right! Only bumped my head!” And that is about the last I know of the matter, for some one caught me about the arms from behind, some one cast a cloak or other heavy thing over my head, 1 smelt the reek of a strong, volatile drug, tried not to breathe it, had to finally or cease breathing at all. Then some hour's later I came to my senses in the Hotel Imperial by the Porta Pille. Waring wa.s clean gone with no trace, and no trace of him appeared in the subsequent search which I and the constabulary -of Ragusa prosecuted together. Only, thrust into an outer pocket of the coat I wore that night I found afterward a crumpled bit of paper scrawled with the words of an ancient proverb of the Roman Campagna. The proverb says, freely rendered, that it is no dishonour to steal from a thief. There was no signature, but none was needed, as Waring’s Gypsy girl was as clean gone as the lad himself. The day after my return to London I went down to ' Sussex to Waring’s another. I had not seen her for two years, and she made me welcome. Her three girls were there —pretty, pink, very commonplace young creatures'as girls should be. But after liuieh they went about their own affairs, and we two oldsters repaired to the garden lawn, to the shade of a great beech where cane chairs,

meet for particular old bones, bad been set snugly arm to arm. And there I told her all I knew, all I • had seen, and something of what I had guessed about the boy and his madness and about the youiig Gypsy creature at Ragusa. She heard me through quite quietly, without comment of any sort, and 'when I had finished she nodded and said: “Thank you, Charles! You did what you could.” She fell silent 'then -for a space, but at last a touch of colour’ came into her cheeks and she looked up at me oddly with something I'rke a gentle defiance. ■ “I think I am glad of it all,” she said, and more colour came into her cheeks. I only stared, for I could find no words. “I think I am glad,” she said again, “for he is probably happy. It may not last —I don’t know about .that, but now he is happy and—that’s something. Some of us, Charles, never— — Oh, I do not think happiness ought to be thrown away! It is too precious and too rare. Yes,” she said after a pause, “I expect I have lost him, but if he is happy I am content. He has something, Charles, that we, in our cage—as he would put it—have not. I wonder if, after, all, it’s not worth while. Sometimes, you know, long, long ago I—even I, Charles, even I • Ah, well, I’m an old woman!” Presently, when she had been for a time silent, she laughed. “I rather.like -that girl’s attacking you by night and carrying .him off,” she said. “There’s something in that that I like.” And I had to join in 'her laugh, for, in a. shamefaced fashion, I rather liked it too. . - • “And, of couYse,” she went 'on, “after a woman had done all that for his sake he’d feel his obligation to her was stronger than io us. He’d feel free of any promise he had made to go away -with you.” “He .hadn’t made any promise to me,” T admitted handsomely, .“but even if he had that would fairly free him. Oh, yes, the Gypsy girl , won him fairly enough. He’d have been a blackguard to leave her after that. Still ” •Waring’s mother put up her hand to stop me..- ■ • *- ' ’’ “Let’s hope he is happy, Charles,” she said, “happier than we know anything about—and let’s leave it at that.” So I’ll leave ‘ it at that. Indeed, I must, for .’.that is all I know of the matter. Still I should like to find out where that young madman and-his?— I was called away from my 'writing

just then fo receive a parcel which had come in the evening post—a flat parcel with a Roumanian postmark and Roumanian stamps on it. The contents, of the parcel stand propped up before me now, here on my table—a large photograph of two people. One of the two is my mad young friend Cecil Waring. He is in a very smart-looking uniform of cavalry.. I don’t know where he got it; it is a uniform strange to me. Standing beside him is the Gypsy lass with the straight eyebrows and the straight Greek nose, but she would seem to have put away her coarse peasant’s garments, forshe is in silks and furbelows, she wears orange blossoms in .her hair, and a bridal veil hangs down her back. Above the orange blossoms and the veil there is a coronet, and the name scrawled at the bottom of the picture is a double-barrelled name at which I am still gasping. I shall not tell you what it is, for it is well known not only on the Continent, but even here in England. It is an astounding name. I am left speechless—without words or the strength to use them. Nothing could amaze me now, not the fall of the Bank of England, not .the turning of the Athenaeum into a Temple of Liberty. That shock-headed, brown-skinned Gypsy girl! That strolling Well, well!