Part 19

I was walking along Marylebone Road, which always seems to be a worn and wind-beaten street, very pretty once, and now repenting it; when just beyond Baker Street station I saw a gypsy van hung all round with baskets and wooden-ware. Smoke issued from its pipe, and it went along smoking like any careless pedestrian. It always seems strange to think of a family being thus conveyed with its dinner cooking, the children playing about the stove, over rural roads, past common and gorse and hedge, in and out of villages, and through Great Babylon itself, as if the family had a pied a terre, and were as secluded all the time as though they lived in Little Pedlington or Tinnecum. For they have just the same narrow range of gossip, and just the same set of friends, though the set are always on the move. Traveling does not make a cosmopolite.

By the van strolled the lord and master, with his wife. I accosted him.

"Sarishan?"

"Sarishan rye!"

"Did you ever see me before? Do you know me?"

"No, sir."

"I'm sorry for that. I have a nice velveteen coat which I have been keeping for your father. How's your brother Frank? Traveling about Kingston, I suppose. As usual. But I don't care about trusting the coat to anybody who don't know me."

"I'll take it to him, safe enough, sir."

"Yes, I dare say. On your back. And wear it yourself six months before you see him."

Up spoke his wife: "That he shan't. I'll take good care that the pooro mush [the old man] gets it all right, in a week."

"Well, dye, I can trust you. You remember me. And, Anselo, here is my address. Come to the house in half an hour."

In half an hour the housekeeper, said with a quiet smile,--

"If you please, sir, there's a gentleman--a gypsy gentleman--wishes to see you."

It is an English theory that the master can have no "visitors" who are not gentlemen. I must admit that Anselo's dress was not what could be called gentlemanly. From his hat to his stout shoes he looked the impenitent gypsy and sinful poacher, unaffected and natural. There was a cutaway, sporting look about his coat which indicated that he had grown to it from boyhood "in woodis grene." He held a heavy-handled whip, a regular Romany tchupni or chuckni, which Mr. Borrow thinks gave rise to the word "jockey." I thought the same once, but have changed my mind, for there were "jockeys" in England before gypsies. Altogether, Anselo (which comes from Wenceslas) was a determined and vigorous specimen of an old-fashioned English gypsy, a type which, with all its faults, is not wanting in sundry manly virtues.

I knew that Anselo rarely entered any houses save ale-houses, and that he had probably never before been in a study full of books, arms, and bric-a-brac. And he knew that I was aware of it. Now, if he had been more of a fool, like a red Indian or an old-fashioned fop, he would have affected a stoical indifference, for fear of showing his ignorance. As it was, he sat down in an arm-chair, glanced about him, and said just the right thing.

"It must be a pleasant thing, at the end of the day, after one has been running about, to come home to such a room as this, so full of fine things, and sit down in such a comfortable chair." "Will I have a glass of old ale? Yes, I thank you." "That is kushto levinor [good ale]. I never tasted better." "Would I rather have wine or spirits? No, I thank you; such ale as this is fit for a king."

Here Anselo's keen eye suddenly rested on something which he understood.

"What a beautiful little rifle! That's what I call a rinkno yag-engree [pretty gun]."

"Has it been a wafedo wen [hard winter], Anselo?"

"It has been a dreadful winter, sir. We have been hard put to it sometimes for food. It's dreadful to think of. I've acti'lly seen the time when I was almost desperated, and if I'd had such a gun as that I'm afraid, if I'd been tempted, I could a-found it in my heart to knock over a pheasant."

I looked sympathetically at Anselo. The idea of his having been brought to the very brink of such a terrible temptation and awful crime was touching. He met the glance with the expression of a good man, who had done no more than his duty, closed his eyes, and softly shook his head. Then he took another glass of ale, as if the memory of the pheasants or something connected with the subject had been too much for him, and spoke:--

"I came here on my horse. But he's an ugly old white punch. So as not to discredit you, I left him standing before a gentleman's house, two doors off."

Here Anselo paused. I acknowledged this touching act of thoughtful delicacy by raising my glass. He drank again, then resumed:--

"But I feel uneasy about leaving a horse by himself in the streets of London. He'll stand like a driven nail wherever you put him--but there's always plenty of claw-hammers to draw such nails."

"Don't be afraid, Anselo. The park-keeper will not let anybody take him through the gates. I'll pay for him if he goes."

But visions of a stolen horse seemed to haunt Anselo. One would have thought that something of the kind had been familiar to him. So I sent for the velveteen coat, and, folding it on his arm, he mounted the old white horse, while waving an adieu with the heavy-handled whip, rode away in the mist, and was seen no more.

Farewell, farewell, thou old brown velveteen! I had thee first in by-gone years, afar, hunting ferocious fox and horrid hare, near Brighton, on the Downs, and wore thee well on many a sketching tour to churches old and castles dark or gray, when winter went with all his raines wete. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! I bore thee over France unto Marseilles, and on the steamer where we took aboard two hundred Paynim pilgrims of Mahound. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! Thou wert in Naples by great Virgil's tomb, and borest dust from Posilippo's grot, and hast been wetted by the dainty spray from bays and shoals of old Etrurian name. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! And thou wert in the old Egyptian realm: I had thee on that morning 'neath the palms when long I lingered where of yore had stood the rose-red city, half as old as time. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! It was a lady called thee into life. She said, Methinks ye need a velvet coat. It is a seemly guise to ride to hounds. Another gave me whip and silvered spurs. Now all have vanished in the darkening past. Ladies and all are gone into the gloom. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite. Thou'st had a venturous and traveled life, for thou wert once in Moscow in the snow. A true Bohemian thou hast ever been, and as a right Bohemian thou wilt die, the garment of a roving Romany. Fain would I see and hear what thou'rt to know of reckless riding and the gypsy tan, of camps in dark green lanes, afar from towns. Farewell, mine coat, and benedicite!

VII. OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES.