He wanted us to draw lots again. His fun had entirely departed from him; all he thought of was seeing the goose out of the pot. I had a feeling next to hatred for one who could talk of goose. Temple must have shared it.
We ve no real captain now dear old Heriot s gone, he said. The schools topsy-turvy: were like a lot of things rattled in a box. Oh, dear! how I do like a good commander. On he goes, you after him, never mind what happens.
A pair of inseparable friends, Happitt and Larkins, nicknamed Happy-go-Lucky, were rolling arm-in-arm, declaring they were perfectly sober, and, for a proof of it, trying to direct their feet upon a lump of chalk, and marching, and missing it. Up came Chaunter to them: Fat goose? he said-no more. Both the boys rushed straight as far as they could go; both sung out, Im done! and they were.
Temple and I contemplated these proceedings as matters belonging to the ordinary phenomena of feasting. We agreed that gentlemen were always the last to drop, and were assured, therefore, of our living out the field; but I dreaded the moment of the gooses appearance, and I think he did also. Saddlebanks pertinacity in withholding the cool ginger-beer and the apples offended us deeply; we should have conspired against him had we reposed confidence in our legs and our tongues.
Twilight was around us. The tramp-children lay in little bundles in one tent; another was being built by the women and the girl. Overhead I counted numbers of stars, all small; and lights in the valley-lights of palaces to my imagination. Stars and tramps seemed to me to go together. Houses imprisoned us, I thought a lost father was never to be discovered by remaining in them. Plunged among dark green leaves, smelling wood-smoke, at night; at morning waking up, and the world alight, and you standing high, and marking the hills where you will see the next morning and the next, morning after morning, and one morning the dearest person in the world surprising you just before you wake: I thought this a heavenly pleasure. But, observing the narrowness of the tents, it struck me there would be snoring companions. I felt so intensely sensitive, that the very idea of a snore gave me tremours and qualms: it was associated with the sense of fat. Saddlebank had the lid of the pot in his hand; we smelt the goose, and he cried, Now for supper; now for it! Halloa, you fellows!
Bother it, Saddlebank, youll make Catman hear you, said Temple, wiping his forehead.
I perspired coldly.
Catman! Hes been at it for the last hour and a half, Saddlebank replied.
One boy ran up: he was ready, and the only one who was. Presently Chaunter rushed by.
Barnshed s in custody; Im away home, he said, passing.
We stared at the black opening of the dell.
Oh, its Catman; we dont mind him, Saddlebank reassured us; but we heard ominous voices, and perceived people standing over a prostrate figure. Then we heard a voice too well known to us. It said, The explanation of a pupil in your charge, Mr. Catman, being sent barefaced into the towna scholar of mine-for sage and onions
Old Rippenger! breathed Temple.
We sat paralyzed. Now we understood the folly of despatching a donkey like Barnshed for sage and onions.
Oh, what asses we have been! Temple continued. Come along-we run for it! Come along, Richie! They re picking up the fellows like windfalls.
I told him I would not run for it; in fact, I distrusted my legs; and he was staggering, answering Saddlebanks reproaches for having come among tramps.
Temple, I see you, sir! called Mr. Rippenger. Poor Temple had advanced into the firelight.
With the instinct to defeat the master, I crawled in the line of the shadows to the farther side of a tent, where I felt a hand clutch mine. Hide me, said I; and the curtain of the tent was raised. After squeezing through boxes and straw, I lay flat, covered by a mat smelling of abominable cheese, and felt a head outside it on my chest. Several times Mr. Rippenger pronounced my name in the way habitual to him in anger: Rye!
Temples answer was inaudible to me. Saddlebank spoke, and other boys, and the man and the woman. Then a light was thrust in the tent, and the man said, Me deceive you, sir! See for yourself, to satisfy yourself. Heres our little uns laid warm, and a girl there, head on the mat, going down to join her tribe at Lipcombe, and one of our women sleeps here, and all told. But for you to suspect me of combiningThank ye, sir. Youve got my word as a man.
The light went away. My chest was relieved of the weight on it. I sat up, and the creature who had been kind to me laid mat and straw on the ground, and drew my head on her shoulder, where I slept fast.
CHAPTER VII. A FREE LIFE ON THE ROAD
I woke very early, though I had taken kindly to my pillow, as I found by my having an arm round my companions neck, and her fingers intertwisted with mine. For awhile I lay looking at her eyes, which had every imaginable light and signification in them; they advised me to lie quiet, they laughed at my wonder, they said, Dear little fellow! they flashed as from under a cloud, darkened, flashed out of it, seemed to dip in water and shine, and were sometimes like a view into a forest, sometimes intensely sunny, never quite still. I trusted her, and could have slept again, but the sight of the tent stupefied me; I fancied the sky had fallen, and gasped for air; my head was extremely dizzy too; not one idea in it was kept from wheeling. This confusion of my head flew to my legs when, imitating her, I rose to go forth. In a fit of horror I thought, I ve forgotten how to walk!
Summoning my manful resolution, I made the attempt to step across the children swaddled in matting and straw and old gowns or petticoats. The necessity for doing it with a rush seized me after the first step. I pitched over one little bundle, right on to the figure of a sleeping woman. All she did was to turn round, murmuring, Naughty Jackie. My companion pulled me along gravely, and once in the air, with a good breath of it in my chest, I felt tall and strong, and knew what had occurred. The tent where I had slept struck me as more curious than my own circumstances. I lifted my face to the sky; it was just sunrise, beautiful; bits of long and curling cloud brushed any way close on the blue, and rosy and white, deliciously cool; the grass was all grey, our dell in shadow, and the tops of the trees burning, a few birds twittering.
I sucked a blade of grass.
I wish it was all water here, I said.
Come and have a drink and a bathe, said my companion.
We went down the dell and over a juniper slope, reminding me of my day at John Salters house and the last of dear Heriot. Rather to my shame, my companion beat me at running; she was very swift, and my legs were stiff.
Can you swim? she asked me.
I can row, and swim, and fence, and ride, and fire a pistol, I said.
Oh, dear, said she, after eyeing me enviously. I could see that I had checked a recital of her accomplishments.
We arrived at a clear stream in a gentlemans park, where grass rolled smooth as sea-water on a fine day, and cows and horses were feeding.
I can catch that horse and mount him, she said.
I was astonished.
Straddle?
She nodded down for Yes.
No saddle?
She nodded level for No.
My respect for her returned. But she could not swim.
Only up to my knees, she confessed.
Have a look at me, said I; and I stripped and shot into the water, happy as a fish, and thinking how much nicer it was than champagne. My enjoyment made her so envious that she plucked off her stockings, and came in as far as she dared. I called to her. Youre like a cow, and she showed her teeth, bidding me not say that.
My respect for her returned. But she could not swim.
Only up to my knees, she confessed.
Have a look at me, said I; and I stripped and shot into the water, happy as a fish, and thinking how much nicer it was than champagne. My enjoyment made her so envious that she plucked off her stockings, and came in as far as she dared. I called to her. Youre like a cow, and she showed her teeth, bidding me not say that.
A cow! a cow! I repeated, in my superior pleasure.
She spun out in a breath, If you say that, I ll run away with every bit of your clothes, and youll come out and run about naked, you will.
Now I float, was my answer, now I dive; and when I came up she welcomed me with a big bright grin.
A smart run in the heat dried me. I dressed, finding half my money on the grass. She asked me to give her one of those bits-a shilling. I gave her two, upon which she asked me, invitingly, if ever I tossed. I replied that I never tossed for money; but she had caught a shilling, and I could not resist guessing heads, and won; the same with her second shilling. She handed them to me sullenly, sobbing, yet she would not take them back.
By-and-by you give me another two, she said, growing lively again. We agreed that it would be a good thing if we entered the village and bought something. None of the shops were open. We walked through the churchyard. I said, Heres where dead people are buried.
Ill dance if you talk about dead people, said she, and began whooping at the pitch of her voice. On my wishing to know why she did it, her reply was that it was to make the dead people hear. My feelings were strange: the shops not open, and no living people to be seen. We climbed trees, and sat on a branch talking of birds eggs till hunger drove us to the village street, where, near the public-house, we met the man-tramp, who whistled.
He was rather amusing. He remarked that he put no questions to me, because he put no question to anybody, because answers excited him about subjects that had no particular interest to him, and did not benefit him to the extent of a pipe of tobacco; and all through not being inquisitive, yesterday afternoon he had obtained, as if it had been chucked into his lap, a fine-flavoured fat goose honourably for his supper, besides bottles of ale, bottles of ginger-pop, and a fair-earned half-crown. That was through his not being inquisitive, and he was not going to be inquisitive now, knowing me for a gentleman: my master had tipped him half-a-crown.
Fortunately for him, and perhaps for my liberty, he employed a verb marvellously enlightening to a schoolboy. I tipped him another half-crown. He thanked me, observing that there were days when you lay on your back and the sky rained apples; while there were other days when you wore your fingers down to the first joint to catch a flea. Such was Fortune!
In a friendly manner he advised me to go to school; if not there, then to go home. My idea, which I had only partly conceived, was to have a look at Riversley over a hedge, kiss my aunt Dorothy unaware, and fly subsequently in search of my father. Breakfast, however, was my immediate thought. He and the girl sat down to breakfast at the inn as my guests. We ate muttonchops and eggs, and drank coffee. After it, though I had no suspicions, I noticed that the man grew thoughtful. He proposed to me, supposing I had no objection against slow travelling, to join company for a couple of days, if I was for Hampshire, which I stated was the county I meant to visit.
Well then, here now, come along, d ye see, look, said he, I mustnt be pounced on, and no missing young gentleman in my society, and me took half-a-crown for his absence; that wont do. You get on pretty well with the gal, and that s a screaming farce: none of us do. Lord! she looks down on such scum as us. Shes gipsy blood, true sort; everythings sausages that gets into their pockets, no matter what it was when it was out. Well then, now, here, you and the gal go t other side o Bedlming, and you wait for us on the heath, and we ll be there to comfort ye fore dark. Is it a fister?
He held out his hand; I agreed; and he remarked that he now counted a breakfast in the list of his gains from never asking questions.
I was glad enough to quit the village in a hurry, for the driver of the geese, or a man dreadfully resembling him, passed me near the public-house, and attacked my conscience on the cowardly side, which is, I fear, the first to awaken, and always the liveliest half while we are undisciplined. I would have paid him money, but the idea of a conversation with him indicated the road back to school. My companion related her history. She belonged to a Hampshire gipsy tribe, and had been on a visit to a relative down in the East counties, who died on the road, leaving her to be brought home by these tramps: she called them mumpers, and made faces when she spoke of them. Gipsies, she said, were a different sort: gipsies camped in gentlemens parks; gipsies, horses, fiddles, and the wide worldthat was what she liked. The wide world she described as a heath, where you looked and never saw the end of it I let her talk on. For me to talk of my affairs to a girl without bonnet and boots would have been absurd. Otherwise, her society pleased me: she was so like a boy, and unlike any boy I knew.
My mental occupation on the road was to calculate how many hill-tops I should climb before I beheld Riversley. The Sunday bells sounded homely from village to village as soon as I was convinced that I heard no bells summoning boarders to Rippengers school. The shops in the villages continued shut; however, I told the girl they should pay me for it next day, and we had an interesting topic in discussing as to the various things we would buy. She was for bright ribands and drapers stuff, I for pastry and letter-paper. The smell of peoples dinners united our appetites. Going through a village I saw a man carrying a great baked pie, smelling overpoweringly, so that to ask him his price for it was a natural impulse with me. What! sell my Sunday dinner? he said, and appeared ready to drop the dish. Nothing stopped his staring until we had finished a plateful a-piece and some beer in his cottage among his family. He wanted to take me in alone. Shes a common tramp, he said of the girl.
Thats a lie, she answered.
Of course I would not leave her hungry outside, so in the end he reluctantly invited us both, and introduced us to his wife.
Heres a young gentleman asks a bit o dinner, and a young I-dn-know-what s after the same; I leaves it to you, missus.
His wife took it off his shoulders in good humour, saying it was lucky she made the pie big enough for her family and strays. They would not accept more than a shilling for our joint repast. The man said that was the account to a farthing, if I was too proud to be a poor mans guest, and insisted on treating him like a public. Perhaps I would shake hands at parting? I did cordially, and remembered him when people were not so civil. They wanted to know whether we had made a runaway match of it. The fun of passing a boys-school and hearing the usher threaten to punish one fellow for straying from ranks, entertained me immensely. I laughed at them just as the stupid people we met laughed at me, which was unpleasant for the time; but I knew there was not a single boy who would not have changed places with me, only give him the chance, though my companion was a gipsy girl, and she certainly did look odd company for a gentlemans son in a tea-garden and public-house parlour. At nightfall, however, I was glad of her and she of me, and we walked hand in hand. I narrated tales of Roman history. It was very well for her so say, Ill mother you, as we lay down to sleep; I discovered that she would never have hooted over churchyard graves in the night. She confessed she believed the devil went about in the night. Our bed was a cart under a shed, our bed-clothes fern-leaves and armfuls of straw. The shafts of the cart were down, so we lay between upright and level, and awakening in the early light I found our four legs hanging over the seat in front. How you have been kicking! said I. She accused me of the same. Next minute she pointed over the side of the cart, and I saw the tramps horse and his tents beneath a broad roadside oak-tree. Her face was comical, just like a boys who thinks he has escaped and is caught. Lets run, she said. Preferring positive independence, I followed her, and then she told me that she had overheard the tramp last night swearing I was as good as a fistful of half-crowns lost to him if he missed me. The image of Rippengers school overshadowed me at this communication. With some melancholy I said: Youll join your friends, wont you?