  That was the beginning of a series of visits. Sometimes these two planned to meet on the beach and always Nan wore her gypsy dress. Somehow she was determined that her new friend should not forget who she really was. A week had passed and they were becoming well acquainted. Being constantly questioned about her past life, Nan had told many stories of the gypsies and adventures. They were sitting in the sun on the sand one morning and Nan was being especially thoughtful. “A penny for your thoughts, Lady Red Bird?” the boy asked. “I was wondering where I will find the caravan when I run away.” She looked up, a strange eagerness in her expressive dark eyes. “I must find them when I am eighteen for Manna Lou is to tell me then about my own mother.” Hesitatingly the boy suggested: “Would you be greatly disappointed if she were to tell you that you are not a real gypsy?” He almost feared that she would flare at him wrathfully as she had that first time, when he had scoffed at the idea of her being one. But instead, she turned toward him dark eyes in which there was the light of a simple conviction. “There is no question about that. I asked Manna Lou, and she said—‘It is real gypsy blood that has given you that dark skin Leichen Nan.’ But more, she would not tell. Manna Lou never lied.” The boy leaned forward eagerly. “But she promised to tell you more when you were eighteen?” “Yes.” “Then there is something to tell.” “Yes. But I am a gypsy.” The boy smiled. “I believe you would be disappointed if you found that you were not.” “But I am! Manna Lou said so. Manna Lou does not lie.” It was always like arguing in a circle. From whatever point they started, they swung back to that same statement which was final in the mind of the girl. Suddenly the boy asked; “Have you always lived in California?” “Oh no, no!” Nan replied. “We fled from Rumania. That is my country. There are many gypsies in that land across the sea. Manna Lou said there are more than 200,000 gypsies.” One word had attracted and held the attention of the lad. “Lady Red Bird, why did you say ‘fled?’ Did your band have to leave Rumania?” She gleamed at him quickly, suspiciously. Then she replied dully, “I don’t know. I suppose so! Anselo Spico and his queen mother Mizella, they do wrong things. They steal—” she paused, and the boy put in suggestively: “Do they steal white children?” Scornfully the girl flung back. “No, never! Horses here in this country, but over there it was more—I never knew, something that made Anselo Spico afraid. We traveled day and night.” The boy said nothing but sat poking at the sand with a stick. It looked very mysterious to him. “You don’t know what that Spico, or whatever it is you call him; you don’t know what crime he had committed that he left your native country so suddenly?” The girl shook her head. “And we didn’t stop in the East where we landed, but we came right on and on and on till we reached California.” The boy was thinking aloud. “It seems strange to me that the authorities where the boats stop would permit wandering bands of gypsies to land in this country without knowing what they come for, or why they are leaving their own native land.” “What do you mean, authorities? What are they?” The girl was plainly perplexed. “Why when a big vessel arrives at Castle Garden in New York, every passenger has been given a permit to land from Ellis Island where they first stop. Oh, there’s a lot of red tape before anyone can come ashore, and I should think a whole band of gypsies would have considerable difficulty passing the examiners, that is what I mean by authorities.” Still the girl looked at him blankly as one who did not understand. “We landed in the night on a lonely marshy shore. Florida they called it. The sailing barge that brought us across the sea left before daybreak, and when the sun came up we were in our caravans riding across a flat lonely country. We saw very few people because we slept days and passed through the villages at night. The gorigo police sometimes followed us to see that we kept going until we were out of the town but nobody stopped us. Then, for weeks and weeks we were crossing the wide sandy desert. We camped a long time in the Rocky Mountains. I never did understand that, I mean why we seemed to be hiding. I thought maybe Anselo Spico had stolen something and we were waiting until it would be safe to go on, but I heard Vestor report one night, when he came back from town that there had been no mail from Rumania and so I supposed that we had been waiting there long enough for Anselo Spico to write someone in Rumania and that we were waiting for the reply. At last it came and the message in that letter angered him terribly. He seized a whip and began to lash poor little Tirol. I threw myself on the child and he began to beat me. It was his Queen Mother Mizella, who stopped him by saying. I never forgot the words though they meant nothing to me. ‘Bedone with that! You’re like to kill her as may line your purse yet.’ He snarled an answer, but he let us both alone after that or at least he never beat me again.” Robert Widdemere was more than ever convinced that Nan had been stolen as a child and that the gypsies were hoping someday to receive a rich reward for her, but what he could not understand was why, if that were true, it had been so long in coming. If she had own relations in Rumania, they surely would have been glad to pay the ransom money as soon as they found the whereabouts of the child. But of his thoughts, he said nothing. After a few moments, he asked; “What did you do next, Lady Red Bird?” “Our caravan left the mountains and we traveled slowly westward. Manna Lou was kinder to me than ever before, and she taught me to play on a banjo which she said had belonged to my father. She did not know much about it, but I was so glad, glad to have it.” The girl’s face darkened. “That was the last mean thing Anselo Spico did to me. He found me playing the banjo, and it seemed to anger him, or some memory was called up by it that he did. Anyhow he seized it and smashed it to pieces on a rock. How I’ve hated him ever since!” Again there was one of the swift changes, and Nan turned toward the boy a face softened and beautified with tender memories. “My father played before the Queen of Rumania once and received a medal. Manna Lou told me.” The boy was indeed puzzled. “It’s all a mystery and I’m afraid I won’t be able to fathom it,” he told himself. “And now I am to be a musician, and I shall play before a queen,” the girl leaped to her feet and was dancing about on the hard sand, startling to flight a flock of shining winged white-gulls that circled in the air over the sea. The boy also rose and feeling much stronger, he tried to dance, but was soon out of breath and laughingly sank back on the sand higher up where it was dry and warm. “What I need,” he said to himself, “is a costume to match Lady Red Bird’s. Then I will be able to dance with her.” The idea pleased him, and he thought of it, smiling to himself. At last the hour came for their parting. “Remember our agreement. Tomorrow will be Thanksgiving and we are to go for a horseback ride.” Then catching both hands of the girl, the boy looked into her laughing eyes as he said with sincere earnestness. “If I have indeed regained my strength, I have no one to thank but Lady Red Bird.” “Oh, yes you have. It was Doctor Wainridge who brought you here. You must thank him as well.” “And also dear gentle Miss Dahlia,” the lad concluded, “Good-bye until tomorrow.” |
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