CHAPTER XLVI
AMONG GIPSY WOMEN
I cannot say how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness. Gifted with a pair of enormous eyes, which threw surrounding objects to a distance of a mile away, I could not induce the diminutive things to approach; and shutting eyes led to such a rolling of mountains in my brain, that, terrified by the gigantic revolution, I lay determinedly staring; clothed, it seemed positive, in a tight-fitting suit of sheet- lead; but why? I wondered why, and immediately received an extinguishing blow. My pillow was heavenly; I was constantly being cooled on it, and grew used to hear a croon no more musical than the unstopped reed above my head; a sound as of a breeze about a cavern's mouth, more soothing than a melody. Conjecture of my state, after hovering timidly in dread of relapses, settled and assured me I was lying baked, half-buried in an old river-bed; moss at my cheek, my body inextricable; water now and then feebly striving to float me out, with horrid pain, with infinite refreshingness. A shady light, like the light through leafage, I could see; the water I felt. Why did it keep trying to move me? I questioned and sank to the depths again.
The excruciated patient was having his wet bandages folded across his bruises, and could not bear a motion of the mind.
The mind's total apathy was the sign of recovering health. Kind nature put that district to sleep while she operated on the disquieted lower functions. I looked on my later self as one observes the mossy bearded substances travelling blind along the undercurrent of the stream, clinging to this and that, twirling absurdly.
Where was I? Not in a house. But for my condition of absolute calm, owing to skilful treatment, open air, and physical robustness, the scene would have been of a kind to scatter the busy little workmen setting up the fabric of my wits. A lighted oil-cup stood on a tripod in the middle of a tent-roof, and over it the creased neck and chin of a tall old woman, splendid in age, reddened vividly; her black eyes and grey brows, and greyishblack hair fell away in a dusk of their own. I thought her marvellous. Something she held in her hands that sent a thin steam between her and the light. Outside, in the A cutting of the tent's threshold, a heavy-coloured sunset hung upon dark land. My pillow meantime lifted me gently at a regular measure, and it was with untroubled wonder that I came to the knowledge of a human heart beating within it. So soft could only be feminine; so firm still young. The bosom was Kiomi's. A girl sidled at the opening of the tent, peeping in, and from a mufed rattle of subpectoral thunder discharged at her in quick heated snaps, I knew Kiomi's voice. After an altercation of their monotonous gipsy undertones, the girl dropped and crouched outside.
It was morning when I woke next, stronger, and aching worse. I was lying in the air, and she who served for nurse, pillow, parasol, and bank of herbage, had her arms round beneath mine cherishingly, all the fingers outspread and flat on me, just as they had been when I went to sleep.
'Kiomi!'
'Now, you be quiet.'
'Can I stand up a minute or two?'
'No, and you won't talk.'
I submitted. This was our duel all day: she slipped from me only twice, and when she did the girl took her place.
I began to think of Bulsted and Riversley.
'Kiomi, how long have I been here?'
'You 'll be twice as long as you've been.'
'A couple of days?'
'More like a dozen.'
'Just tell me what happened.'
'Ghm-m-m,' she growled admonishingly.
Reflecting on it, I felt sure there must have been searching parties over the heath.
'Kiomi, I say, how was it they missed me?'
She struck at once on my thought.
'They're fools.'
'How did you cheat them?'
'I didn't tie a handkercher across their eyes.'
'You half smothered me once, in the combe.'
'You go to sleep.'
'Have you been doctor?'
The growling tigerish 'Ghm-m-m' constrained me to take it for a lullaby.
'Kiomi, why the deuce did your people attack me?' She repeated the sound resembling that which sometimes issues from the vent of a mine; but I insisted upon her answering.
'I 'll put you down and be off,' she threatened.
'Brute of a girl! I hate you!'
'Hate away.'
'Tell me who found me.'
'I shan't. You shut your peepers.'
The other and younger girl sung out: 'I found you.'
Kiomi sent a volley at her.
'I did,' said the girl; 'yes, and I nursed you first, I did; and mother doctored you. Kiomi hasn't been here a day.'
The old mother came out of the tent. She felt my pulse, and forthwith squatted in front of me. 'You're hard to kill, and oily as a bean,' said she. 'You've only to lie quiet in the sun like a handsome gentleman; I'm sure you couldn't wish for more. Air and water's the doctor for such as you. You've got the bound in you to jump the ditch: don't you fret at it, or you'll lose your spring, my good gentleman.'
'Leave off talking to me as a stranger,' I bawled. 'Out with it; why have you kept me here? Why did your men pitch into me?'
'OUR men, my good gentleman!' the old woman ejaculated. There was innocence indeed! sufficient to pass the whole tribe before a bench of magistrates. She wheedled: 'What have they against a handsome gentleman like you? They'd run for you fifty mile a day, and show you all their tricks and secrets for nothing.'
My despot Kiomi fired invectives at her mother. The old mother retorted; the girl joined in. All three were scowling, flashing, showing teeth, driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver string of the fiddle.
I sang out truce to them; they racked me with laughter; and such laughter!—the shaking of husks in a half-empty sack.
Ultimately, on a sudden cessation of the storm of tongues, they agreed that I must have my broth.
Sheer weariness, seasoned with some hope that the broth would give me strength to mount on my legs and walk, persuaded me to drink it. Still the old mother declared that none of her men would ever have laid hands on me. Why should they? she asked. What had I done to them? Was it their way?
Kiomi's arms tightened over my breast. The involuntary pressure was like an illumination to me.
No longer asking for the grounds of the attack on a mistaken person, and bowing to the fiction that none of the tribe had been among my assailants, I obtained information. The girl Eveleen had spied me entering Durstan. Quite by chance, she was concealed near Bulsted Park gates when the groom arrived and told the lodge-keeper that Mr. Harry Richmond was coming up over the heath, and might have lost his way. 'Richmond!' the girl threw a world of meaning into the unexpected name. Kiomi clutched me to her bosom, but no one breathed the name we had