Nan of the Gypsies

CHAPTER VIII.

NAN’S PUNISHMENT

Half an hour later Nan heard the automobile returning and she sighed resignedly. The gypsy girl’s heart was rebellious, yet she would bear with it a little longer for Miss Dahlia’s sake.

The door was opening, but Nan, with folded hands still gazed out of the window. A severe voice spoke:

“Anne, when I enter the room, I wish you to rise.”

“Yes, lady,” was the listless reply as the girl arose.

“And one thing more. I do not wish you to call me ‘lady’ in that gypsy fashion. If you wish to say Lady Ursula, you may do so. My English ancestry entitles me to that name.”

Miss Barrington and Miss Dahlia then seated themselves, but Nan remained standing.

“Why don’t you sit down?” the former asked impatiently.

“Sister,” a gentle voice interceded, “Nan can’t know our parlor manners, when she has been brought up in the big out-of-doors.”

“She will soon have the opportunity to learn them, however,” Miss Barrington said coldly, “for I have decided, since this morning’s performance, to place Anne in a convent school. I find the task of Christianizing and civilizing a heathen more than I care to undertake.”

“Oh, Sister Ursula, don’t send Nan away,” the other little lady implored. “Let me teach her. I will do so gladly.”

“You!” The tone was scornful. “Do you suppose that you can succeed where I fail? No indeed, Anne shall tomorrow depart for a convent school which is connected with our church.”

Then rising, she added: “We will now descend to the dining room and we will consider the subject closed.”

Had the proud Miss Barrington glanced at the girl who was keeping so still, she might have seen a gleam in the dark eyes which showed that her spirit was not yet broken.

As they went down the wide stairway, Miss Dahlia slipped her hand over the brown one that hung listlessly at the girl’s side. Nan understood that it was an assurance of the little lady’s love, and her heart responded with sudden warmth.

All that afternoon Nan sat in a sheltered corner of the garden with a beautiful story that she was trying to read, but her thoughts were continually planning and plotting. She could not and would not be sent to a convent school. She was only staying to keep her promise to Miss Dahlia, but now that Miss Ursula was sending her away, she was freed from that promise.

Just then a maid appeared, saying: “Miss Barrington wishes to see you in the library at once. She’s got a telegram from somewhere and she’s all upset about it.”

When Nan entered the stately library, she saw Miss Barrington standing near Miss Dahlia’s chair, and the younger woman was saying: “But, Sister Ursula, it would be of no use for me to go. I know nothing of law and of things like that.”

“I am quite aware of the fact,” the older woman said, “and I had no intention whatever of requesting you to go, but it is most inconvenient for me to spend several months in the East just at this time. I am president of the Society for Civic Improvements, and an active and influential member in many other clubs, as you know.” Then, noting that Nan had entered the room, she turned toward her as she said coldly: “Anne, I shall be obliged to leave for New York on the early morning train. A wealthy aunt has passed away, leaving a large fortune to my sister and myself, but unfortunately, the will is to be contested, which necessitates the presence of an heir who has some knowledge of legal matters. I may be away for several months, and so I will have to leave you in my sister’s care, trusting that she will see the advisability of sending you to a convent school as soon as a suitable wardrobe can be prepared. That is all! You may now retire.”

It had been hard for Nan to quietly listen to this glorious and astounding news. She did glance for one second at Miss Dahlia, and she was sure that she saw a happy light in those sweet grey eyes.

The next morning the household was astir at a very early hour, and at nine o’clock the automobile returned from the station and Miss Dahlia was in it alone.

Nan joyously ran across the lawn and caught the outstretched hands of the little lady.

“Oh, Miss Dahlia,” the girl implored, “you aren’t going to send me to a convent, are you? Because, if you do, I am going to run away.”

“No, indeed, dearie,” Miss Dahlia replied, as she sat on a marble bench near the fountain, and drew the girl down beside her.

Then she laughed as Nan had never heard her laugh before. There was real joy in it. “Dearie,” she said, “I begged my sister to permit me to do what I could to try to civilize you while she is away, and, because her mind was so much occupied with other and weightier matters, she gave her consent, but she made me promise that you would attend service with me wearing proper clothes, and that I would teach you to sew and also lady-like manners.”

“Oh, Miss Dahlia, I, will civilize fast enough for you, because I love you,” the girl said, impulsively, as she pressed a wrinkled hand to her flush brown cheek.

“And I love you, Nan, you don’t know how dearly, and you needn’t civilize too much, if you don’t want to. I love you just as you are. I am going to engage masters to come and teach you piano, singing and the harp or violin as you prefer.”

The girl’s dark eyes glowed happily as she exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Dahlia, how I love music; everything, every-where that sings; the brook, the bird, the wind in the trees! How glad I will be to learn to make music as they do.”

Two wonderful weeks passed. A little French lady came to teach Nan languages, for which she had a remarkable aptitude, and when she began to sing as sweetly and naturally as the wood birds, Miss Dahlia was indeed delighted, and in the long evenings she taught the gypsy girl the songs that she used to sing. Too, there had been a shopping expedition to the village, and Nan had chosen a soft cashmere dress, the color of ripe cherries with the sun shining on them. At the beginning of the third week something happened which was destined to do much toward civilizing Nan.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAD NEXT DOOR

It was Saturday and lessons were over for the week. Of tutors and music masters there would be none all that glorious day. Miss Dahlia had awakened with a headache. Nan slipped into the darkened room and asked tenderly if there was something that she could do to help.

“No, dearie,” the little lady replied, “I will just rest awhile. Go for a ride on Binnie if you wish. I will try to be down so that you need not have luncheon alone.”

A few moments later the girl emerged from a vine-hung side entrance and stood looking about. She wore her cherry red dress and the yellow silk handkerchief, with its dangles, was about her head.

In her hand she held a book, “Ivanhoe.” Miss Dahlia had been reading it aloud the night before, and the gypsy girl was eager to continue the story.

She would find a sheltered spot, she thought, and try to read it, although, as she well knew, many of the words were long and hard.

The Barrington estate contained several acres. Nan had never crossed to the high hedge that bounded it on the farther side from town.

Great old trees lured her and wondering what lay beyond the hedge, she started tramping in that direction singing a warbling song without words.

A great old pepper tree with its glowing red berries stood on the Barrington side, and Nan, gazing up, saw one wide branch curving in a way that would make of it a comfortable seat. Scrambling up, she was soon perched there. Then she peered through the thick foliage, trying to see what might be in the grounds beyond.

It was another picturesque home of Spanish architecture similar to the Barrington’s with glowing gardens and artistic groupings of shrubbery and trees.

There was no sign of life about the place, and then Nan recalled having heard Miss Ursula say that it was the home of Mrs. Warren Widdemere a beautiful young widow possessing great wealth, who was traveling in Europe trying to forget her recent bereavement. Mrs. Widdemere had a son who was in a military academy, and so, in all probability the place was unoccupied, the girl thought, as she opened her book, and began slowly and yet with increasing interest, to read.

Half an hour later she became conscious that there were voices near, and on the other side of the hedge. Glancing through the sheltering green, she beheld a woman in nurse’s uniform who was pushing a wheeled chair, in which sat a boy of about 16. His face was pale and his expression listless; almost discouraged, Nan thought.

As they neared the tree, a bell rang from the house, and the nurse, leaving the chair, started up the garden path.

“Don’t hurry back,” the boy called languidly.

“This place will do for my sunbath as well as any other.” Then he leaned back, and, closing his eyes, he sighed wearily.

Nan, prompted by pity and a desire to be friendly, broke a cluster of pepper berries and tossed them toward the chair. They fell lightly on the boy’s folded hands. He opened his eyes and looked about, but he saw no one.

“Poor, poor boy!” Nan thought with a rush of tenderness. The gypsy girl always had the same pity when she saw anything that was wounded, and it was this tenderness in her nature that had compelled her to remain in the caravan for so long to protect the little cripple Tirol.

The sick lad, believing that a cluster of pepper berries had but fallen of its own accord once more leaned back and closed his eyes, but he opened them almost instantly and again looked about. From somewhere overhead he heard a sweet warbling bird-song. “Perhaps a mocking bird,” he was thinking when the note changed to that of a meadowlark.

Gazing steadily at the tree ahead of him, he saw a gleam of red and then a laughing face peering between the branches.

“I see you! Whoever you are, come down!” His querulous voice held a command.

“Indeed sir. I don’t have to,” was the merry reply. “I am a bird with red and gold feathers and I shall remain in my tree.”

The boy smiled. It was the first time that he had been interested in the five months since his father had died.

“I can see the glimmer of your plumage through the leaves,” he called. Then changing his tone, he said pleadingly, “Lady Bird won’t you please come down?”

Nan dropped lightly to the ground on the Widdemere side of the hedge.

The lad looked at the beautiful dark-skinned maiden, and then, little dreaming that he was speaking the truth, he said, “Why, Lady Bird, your dress makes you look like a gypsy.”

“I am one!” the girl replied. “My name is Gypsy Nan. I am staying with the Barrington’s for a time.” Then her dark eyes twinkled merrily as she confided. “Miss Ursula Barrington is trying to civilize me, but she had to go away, and oh I am so glad! It isn’t a bit nice to be civilized, is it?”

The boy laughed. “I know that I wouldn’t be if I could help myself,” he said. “I’ve always wished that I had been born a wild Indian or a pirate or something interesting.”

Nan seated herself on a stump that would soon be covered with vines.

“I don’t wonder you are sick,” she said with renewed sympathy. “I would be smothered, I know, if I had to live all of the time in houses with so much velvet, and portieres shutting out the wind and the sun. Tell me what is your name?”

“I am Robert Widdemere,” he replied, and then a shadow crept into the eyes that for a moment had been gleaming with amusement as he added:

“I’m never going to be well again. The doctor does not know what is the matter with me; no one does, but I can’t eat, and so I might as well hurry up and die.”

The girl looked steadily at the lad for a moment and then she said, “Robert Widdermere, you ought to have more courage than that. Of course you’ll die if you’re just going to weakly give up. I don’t believe that you’re sick at all. I think you have been too much civilized. Now I’ll tell you what you do. Eat all you can, and get strong fast, and then we will ride horseback over the mountains and I’ll run you a race on the coast highway.”

“That would be great!” the boy exclaimed and again his eyes glowed with a new eagerness.

The girl sprang up. “Hark!” she said, “the old mission bells are telling that it is noon. I must go or Miss Dahlia will be waiting lunch.

“Good-bye, Robert Widdemere, I’ll come again.”

The lad watched the gleam of red disappearing through a gate in the hedge which he had pointed out. Then a new determination awakened in his heart. Perhaps it was cowardly to give up and die, just because he was so lonesome, so lonesome for the dad who had been the dearest pal a boy could ever have.

Robert’s father had died five months before and his mother, a rather frivolous young widow, who had always cared more for society than for her home, had placed her sixteen-year-old son in a military academy and had departed for Paris to try to forget her loss in the gay life of that city, but Robert had been unable to forget, and day after day he had grieved for that father who had been his pal ever since he could first remember. These two had been often alone as the wife and mother had spent much time at week-end house-parties in the country places of her wealthy friends. No wonder was it that the boy felt that he had lost his all.

At last, worn with the grief which he kept hidden in his heart, his health had broken and a cablegram from his mother had bidden him go with a nurse to their California home at San Seritos, adding, that if he did not recover in one month, she would return to the States, but since it was only the beginning of the gay season in Paris, she did hope that he would endeavor to get well as soon as possible.

The lad had read the message with a lack of interest and to the attending physician he had said: “Kindly cable my mother to remain in France as I am much better, but that I shall stay in California for the winter.”

The kindly doctor wondered at the message. He had but recently come to San Seritos and he did not understand the cause, as the old physician whose place he had taken, would have understood it.

Robert Widdemere, without the loving tenderness of a mother to help him bear his great loneliness, did not care to live until he met Gypsy Nan. When she had looked at him so reprovingly with those dark eyes that could be so serious or dancingly merry, and had said that it was cowardly for him to give up so weakly he had decided that she was right. He ought to want to live to carry out some of the splendid things that his father had begun if for nothing else, but now there was something else! He wanted to get strong soon that he might ride horseback with Nan over the mountains.

When Miss Squeers returned to push the wheeled chair and its usually listless occupant back to the house she was surprised to note that he looked up with a welcoming smile. “Nurse,” he said, “do you know, I am actually hungry. Don’t give me broth tonight. I want some regular things to eat, beefsteak and mashed potatoes.”

A query over the wire brought a speedy reply from the physician: “Give the lad whatever he asks for and note the result.”

The next day Doctor Wainridge called and the lad asked: “Doctor, is there any real reason why I cannot walk?”

“None whatever, son, that I know of,” the gentleman replied, “except that you have been too weak to stand, but if you continue with the menu that you ordered last night, you will soon be able to enter the Marathon races. There is nothing physically wrong with you, lad. I decided that you had made up your mind that you did not care to get well.”

The boy looked around and finding that they were alone, he confided, “I did feel that way, doctor, but now I wish to get well soon, and be a pirate or a gypsy or something uncivilized.”

“Great!” the doctor said, as he arose to go.

On his way home he wondered what had aroused Robert’s interest in life, but neither he nor the nurse could guess.

CHAPTER X.

“LADY RED BIRD.”

Again it was Saturday. Every day during the past week Robert had walked, only a few steps at first, but each day going a little farther. Too, each afternoon he had eagerly watched at the pepper tree for the appearance of his Lady Red Bird, but she had not come.

“Perhaps she only comes on Saturday,” he thought as he sat alone in his wheeled chair waiting and watching.

Suddenly a rose hurled over the hedge and fell on his book.

“Oho, Lady Red Bird,” he called joyously. “I can’t see you, but I know that you are there. Please come over on this side.”

The gate opened ever so little and Nan peered through.

Then skipping in front of him, she cried, with her dark eyes aglow, “Why, Robert Widdemere, you don’t look like the same boy. What have you done? You look almost well.”

“I am,” the lad replied, smiling radiantly. “I am going to be well enough to ride up the mountain road with you on Thanksgiving morning, and then I will surely have something to be thankful for.”

Gypsy Nan clapped her hands. “And we’ll ride a race on the hard sand close to the sea.”

“Great!” ejaculated the lad. “That will be two weeks from to-day. I’ll have to order my portion of beefsteak and mashed potatoes doubled, I guess.” Then he added with a merry twinkle, “Promise me that you’ll wear the gypsy-looking dress.”

“Oh, I will,” Nan cried, “for I love it.” Then she added, “Robert Widdemere, you don’t believe that I am truly a gypsy, do you?”

The lad shook his head and his brown eyes were laughing. “Why, of course not Lady Red Bird! Gypsies are interesting enough, in their way, but they are not like you. They are thieves – ”

The girl sprang up from the stump on which she had been seated, and her eyes flashed. “They are not all thieves, Robert Widdemere,” she cried, “and many of them are just as good and kind as gorigo could be. Manna Lou was a beautiful young gypsy woman long ago, when I first remember her, and she could have had a much happier life if she had hot chosen of her own free will to care for that poor little cripple boy Tirol, and for the motherless Nan. I wish I had not run away from the caravan now. I hate the gorigo, who always call my people thieves!” Then turning to the amazed and speechless lad, she inquired with flashing eyes, “Are there no thieves among your people? Indeed there are, but they are not all called thieves! My Manna Lou taught me not to steal, and I have never taken even a flower that did not belong to me. I’m going back, Robert Widdemere! I’m going back to Manna Lou.”

The girl burst into a passion of tears as she turned toward the gate. The lad, deeply touched, forgetting his weakness, was at her side and placing a hand on her arm, he implored, “Oh Lady Red Bird, forgive me. I see now how wrong it is to condemn a whole race because of the few. Promise me that you won’t go back. It is knowing you that has helped me to get well, and if you go away, I will be lonelier than ever.”

The boy had returned to his chair and he looked suddenly pale and tired. Nan’s heart was touched, and she said, “Robert Widdemere, now that you know I am really a gypsy, do you still care for my friendship?”

“I care more to be your friend, than for anything else in the whole world,” the lad said sincerely.

“Then I’ll not go back to the caravan,” she promised, a smile flashing through the tears. “Goodbye, Robert Widdemere. I’ll come again tomorrow.”

These two little dreamed that the nurse, Miss Squeers, hidden behind a clump of shrubbery, had seen and heard all that had passed, nor could they know that upon returning to the house, she had at once written to the lad’s mother.

When on the day following, Nan returned to the little gate in the hedge, Robert Widdemere was not seen. The nurse, having overheard the planned meeting had ordered the horses hitched to the easiest carriage and had insisted that the lad accompany her on a drive. He was restless when he realized that they were not to return at the hour he had expected his Lady Red Bird to visit him, and indeed, when at last, they did turn into the long winding drive leading to his handsome home, he was so worn and weary from having fretted because he had been forced to do something he did not wish to do, that he had a fever and had to go at once to bed. Miss Squeers sent for the doctor and drawing him aside, she confided all she had found out. If she had expected an ally, she was greatly disappointed.

“That’s great!” Doctor Wainridge exclaimed, his kindly face shining. “Nothing could be better. A tonic is powerless compared to a lad’s interest in a lassie. But if he was so much better only yesterday, because of this friendship, what has caused the set-back?”

Miss Squeer’s thin lips were pressed together in a hard line. “Doctor Wainridge, you evidently do not realize that this young person is a real gypsy. You wouldn’t have doubted it if you could have seen her black eyes flash yesterday when Robert Widdemere spoke disparagingly of the race.”

The physician looked interested, and somewhat amused. “Indeed, I could imagine it!” he said with assurance. “I had a gypsy boy for a patient once and a fiery tempered lad, he was, but I liked him. The fact is, I admire much about their life, not everything of course. They do a little too much horse trading, and sometimes they even trade without the owners being aware of it.” At that he laughed, appearing not to notice that a ramrod could not be standing stiffer or more erect than was Miss Squeers. He continued as though amused at the memory. “It was down south when I was practicing there. One of the southern colonels had a thoroughbred horse. He boasted about it on all occasions, but when the gypsies came and passed they had traded an old boney nag with the colonel. He found it in the paddock where his prize racer had been locked in securely the night before.”

“Well,” Miss Squeers snapped, “I hope you are not upholding such conduct.”

The good-natured physician shook his head, but his eyes were still twinkling. “No, indeed not!” he said emphatically. “That manner of horse trading is not to be condoned in the slightest degree.”

“Trading?” With biting sarcasm Miss Squeers spoke the word. “Stealing, you mean. That’s what they all are, thieves and liars.” Then with a self-righteous expression on her drawn, white face, the woman continued: “Mrs. Widdemere puts her entire trust in my judgment and until she comes to relieve me, I shall not permit her son to again speak to that gypsy girl.”

The doctor narrowed his eyes, gazing thoughtfully at the speaker. When she paused he exclaimed “Good Lord, Miss Squeers, what possible harm could a girl of thirteen or fourteen do a sixteen year old boy? I have heard the story of the protege of the Misses Barrington. Indeed it has been rumored about that she is very beautiful and rarely talented. My wife is well acquainted with the woman who is instructing the girl on the harp and she has only enthusiastic praise for the gifts with which she has been endowed. Nature is the mother of us all, and is no respector of persons.”

“Then you advise me to permit this friendship to continue even though I know it would greatly displease Mrs. Widdemere who is among the proudest of proud women?”

The doctor thoughtfully twirled the heavy charm on his watch chain. “If we have to choose between losing our patient and displeasing a vain mother, I prefer the latter. You can see for yourself that the boy has had a set-back. This is most discouraging to me. And, as his physician, I shall have to ask, as long as I have the case, and the boy’s mother cabled me to take it, that he be given his freedom in the matter. Do not again force him to go for a drive with you unless it is his wish to do so. I will call again tomorrow.”