Folle Farine Part 75

There was a little tavern, vine-shaded and bright with a Quatre Saisons rose that hid its cas.e.m.e.nts. She asked there, timidly, if there were any task she might do,--to fetch water, to sweep, to break wood, to drive or to stable a mule or a horse.

They took her to be a gypsy; they ordered her roughly to be gone.

Through the square window she could see food--a big juicy melon cut in halves, sweet yellow cakes, warm and crisp from the oven, a white chicken, cold and dressed with cresses, a jug of milk, an abundance of bread. And her hunger was very great.

Nine days of sharper privation than even that to which she had been inured in the penury of Ypres had made her cheeks hollow and her limbs fleshless; and a continual consuming heat and pain gnawed at her chest.

She sat on a bench that was free to all wayfarers, and looked at the food in the tavern kitchen. It tempted her with the terrible animal ravenousness begotten by long fast. She wanted to fly at it as a starved dog flies. A rosy-faced woman cut up the chicken on a china dish, singing.

Folle-Farine, outside, looked at her, and took courage from her smiling face.

"Will you give me a little work?" she murmured. "Anything--anything--so that I may get bread."

"You are a gypsy," answered the woman, ceasing to smile. "Go to your own folk."

And she would not offer her even a plate of broken victuals.

Folle-Farine rose and walked wearily away. She could not bear the sight of the food; she felt that if she looked at it longer she would spring on it like a wolf. But to use his gold never occurred to her. She would have bitten her tongue through in famine ere she would have taken one coin of it.

As she went, being weak from long hunger and the stroke of the sunrays, she stumbled and fell. She recovered herself quickly; but in the fall the money had shaken itself from her sash, and been scattered with a ringing sound upon the stones.

The woman in the tavern window raised a loud cry!

"Oh-he! the wicked liar!--to beg bread while her waistband is stuffed with gold like a turkey with chestnuts! What a rogue to try and dupe poor honest people like us! Take her to prison."

The woman cried loud; there were half a dozen stout serving-wenches and stable-lads about in the little street, with several boys and children.

Indignant at the thought of an attempted fraud upon their charity, and amazed at the flash and the fall of the money, they rushed on her with shrieks of rage and scorn, with missiles of turf and stone, with their brooms raised aloft, or their dogs set to rage at her.

She had not time to gather up the coins and notes; she could only stand over and defend them. Two beggar-boys made a s.n.a.t.c.h at the tempting heap; she drew her knife to daunt them with the sight of it. The people shrieked at sight of the bare blade; a woman selling honeycomb and pots of honey at a bench under a lime-tree raised a cry that she had been robbed. It was not true; but a street crowd always loves a lie, and never risks spoiling, by sifting, it.

The beggar-lads and the two serving-wenches and an old virago from a cottage door near set upon her, and scrambled together to drive her away from the gold and share it. Resolute to defend it at any peril, she set her heel down on it, and, with her back against the tree, stood firm; not striking, but with the point of the knife outward.

One of the boys, maddened to get the gold, darted forward, twisted his limbs round her, and struggled with her for its possession. In the struggle he wounded himself upon the steel. His arm bled largely; he filled the air with his shrieks; the people, furious, accused her of his murder.

Before five minutes had gone by she was seized, overpowered by numbers, cuffed, kicked, upbraided with every name of infamy, and dragged as a criminal up the little steep stony street in the blaze of the noonday sun, whilst on each side the townsfolk looked out from their doorways and their balconies and cried out:

"What is it? Oh-he! A brawling gypsy, who has stolen something, and has stabbed poor little Freki, the blind man's son, because he found her out. What is it? _Au violon!--au violon!_"

To which the groups called back again:

"A thief of a gypsy, begging alms while she had stolen gold on her. She has stabbed poor little Freki, the blind cobbler's son, too. We think he is dead." And the people above, in horror, lifted their hands and eyes, and shouted afresh, "_Au violon!--au violon!_"

Meanwhile the honey-seller ran beside them, crying aloud that she had been robbed of five broad golden pieces.

It was a little sunny country-place, very green with trees and gra.s.s, filled usually with few louder sounds than the cackling of geese and the dripping of the well-water.

But its stones were sharp and rough; its voices were shrill and fierce; its gossips were cruel and false of tongue; its justice was very small, and its credulity was measureless. A girl, barefoot and bareheaded, with eyes of the East, and a knife in her girdle, teeth that met in their youngsters' wrist, and gold pieces that scattered like dust from her bosom,--such a one could have no possible innocence in their eyes, such a one was condemned so soon as she was looked at when she was dragged among them up their hilly central way.

She had had money on her, and she had asked for food on the plea of being starved; that was fraud plain enough, even for those who were free to admit that the seller of the honey-pots had never been overtrue of speech, and had never owned so much as five gold pieces ever since her first bees had sucked their first spray of heath-bells.

No one had any mercy on a creature who had money, and yet asked for work; as to her guilt, there could be no question.

She was hurried before the village tribune, and cast with horror into the cell where all accused waited their judgment.

It was a dusky, loathsome place, dripping with damp, half underground, strongly grilled with iron, and smelling foully from the brandy and strong smoke of two drunkards who had been its occupants the previous night.

There they left her, taking away her knife and her money.

She did not resist. It was not her nature to rebel futilely; and they had fallen on her six to one, and had bound her safely with cords ere they had dragged her away to punishment.

The little den was visible to the highway through a square low grating.

Through this they came and stared, and mouthed, and mocked, and taunted, and danced before her. To bait a gypsy was fair pastime.

Everywhere, from door to door, the blind cobbler, with his little son, and the woman who sold honey told their tale,--how she had stabbed the little lad and stolen the gold that the brave bees had brought their mistress, and begged for food when she had had money enough on her to buy a rich man's feast. It was a tale to enlist against her all the hardest animosities of the poor. The village rose against her in all its little homes as though she had borne fire and sword into its midst.

If the arm of the law had not guarded the entrance of her prison-cell, the women would have stoned her to death, or dragged her out to drown in the pond:--she was worse than a murderess in their sight; and one weak man, thinking to shelter her a little from their rage, quoted against her her darkest crime when he pleaded for mercy for her because she was young and was so handsome.

The long hot day of torment pa.s.sed slowly by.

Outside there were cool woods, flower-filled paths, broad fields of gra.s.s, children tossing blow-b.a.l.l.s down the wind, lovers counting the leaves of yellow-eyed autumn daisies; but within there were only foul smells, intense nausea, cruel heats, the stings of a thousand insects, the buzz of a hundred carrion-flies, muddy water, and black mouldy bread.

She held her silence. She would not let her enemies see that they hurt her.

When the day had gone down, and the people had tired of their sport and left her a little while, an old feeble man stole timidly to her, glancing round lest any should see his charity and quote it as a crime, and tendered her through the bars with a gentle hand a little ripe autumnal fruit upon a cool green leaf.

The kindness made the tears start to eyes too proud to weep for pain.

She took the peaches and thanked him lovingly and gratefully; cooled her aching, burning, dust-drenched throat with their fragrant moisture.

"Hus.h.!.+ it is nothing," he whispered, frightenedly, glancing over his shoulder lest any one should see. "But tell me--tell me--why did you say you starved when you had all that gold?"

"I did starve," she answered him.

"But why--with all that gold?"

"It was another's."

The old man stared at her, trembling and amazed.

"What--what! die of hunger and keep your hands off money in your girdle?"

A dreary smile came on her face.

"What! is that inhuman too?"

"Inhuman?" he murmured. "Oh, child--oh, child, tell any tale you will, save such a tale as that!"

And he stole away sorrowful, because sure that for his fruit of charity she had given him back a lie.