Pyramus Herne was the head of a family of gypsy horse dealers that toured the south and west of England, appearing regularly in the Land’s End district on the heels of the New Year. They came not particularly to do business, but to feed their horses up for the spring fairs. The climate was mild, and Pyramus knew that to keep a beast warm is to go halfway towards fattening it. He would arrive with a chain of broken-down skeletons, tied head to tail, file their teeth, blister and fire their game legs and turn them loose in the sheltered bottoms for a rest cure. At the end of three months, when the bloom was on their new coats, he would trim their feet, pull manes and tails, give an artistic touch here and there with the shears, paint out blemishes, make old teeth look like new and depart with a string of apparently gamesome youngsters frolicking in his tracks.
It was his practice to pitch his winter camp in a small coppice about two and a half miles north of Bosula. It was no man’s land, sheltered by a wall of rocks from the north and east, water was plentiful and the trees provided fuel. Moreover, it was secluded, a weighty consideration, for the gypsy dealt in other things besides horses, in the handling of which privacy was of the first import. In short he was a receiver of stolen goods and valuable articles of salvage. He gave a better price than the Jew junk dealers in Penzance because his travels opened a wider market and also he had a reputation of never “peaching,” of betraying a customer for reward—a reputation far from deserved, be it said, but he peached always in secret and with consummate discretion.
He did lucrative business in salvage in the west, but the traffic in stolen goods was slight because there were no big towns and no professional thieves. The few furtive people who crept by night into the little wood seeking the gypsy were mainly thieves by accident, victims of sudden overwhelming temptations. They seldom bargained with Pyramus, but agreed to the first price offered, thrust the stolen articles upon him as if red-hot and were gone, radiant with relief, frequently forgetting to take the money.
“I am like their Christ,” said Pyramus; “they come to me to be relieved of their sins.”
In England of those days gypsies were regarded with well-merited suspicion and hunted from pillar to post. Pyramus was the exception. He passed unmolested up and down his trade routes, for he was at particular pains to ingratiate himself with the two ruling classes—the law officers and the gentry—and, being a clever man, succeeded.
The former liked him because once “King” Herne joined a fair there would be no trouble with the Romanies, also he gave them reliable information from time to time. Captain Rudolph, the notorious Bath Road highwayman, owed his capture and subsequent hanging to Pyramus, as did also a score of lesser tobymen. Pyramus made no money out of footpads, so he threw them as a sop to Justice.
The gentry Pyramus fawned on with the oily cunning of his race. Every man has a joint in his harness, magistrates no less. Pyramus made these little weaknesses of the great his special study. One influential land owner collected snuff boxes, another firearms. Pyramus in his traffickings up and down the world kept his eyes skinned for snuff boxes and firearms, and, having exceptional opportunities, usually managed to bring something for each when he passed their way, an exquisite casket of tortoise-shell and paste, a pair of silver-mounted pistols with Toledo barrels. Some men had to be reached by other means.
Lord James Thynne was partial to coursing. Pyramus kept an eye lifted for greyhounds, bought a dog from the widow of a Somersetshire poacher (hung the day before) and Lord James won ten matches running with it; the Herne tribe were welcome to camp on his waste lands forever.
But his greatest triumph was with Mr. Hugo Lorimer, J. P., of Stane, in the county of Hampshire. Mr. Lorimer was death on gypsies, maintaining against all reason that they hailed from Palestine and were responsible for the Crucifixion. He harried them unmercifully. He was not otherwise a devout man; the persecution of the Romanies was his sole form of religious observance. Even the astute Pyramus could not melt him, charm he never so wisely.
This worried King Herne, the more so because Mr. Lorimer’s one passion was horses—his own line of business—and he could not reach him through it.
He could not win the truculent J. P. by selling him a good nag cheap because he bred his own and would tolerate no other breed. He could not even convey a good racing tip to the gentleman because he did not bet. The Justice was adamant; Pyramus baffled.
Then one day a change came in the situation. The pride of the stud, the crack stallion “Stane Emperor,” went down with fever and, despite all ministrations, passed rapidly from bad to worse. All hope was abandoned. Mr. Lorimer, infinitely more perturbed than if his entire family had been in a like condition, sat on an upturned bucket in the horse’s box and wept.
To him entered Pyramus, pushing past the grooms, fawning, obsequiously sympathetic, white with dust. He had heard the dire news at Downton and came instanter, spurring.
Might he humbly crave a peep at the noble sufferer? . . . Perhaps his poor skill might effect something. . . . Had been with horses all his life. . . . Had succeeded with many cases abandoned by others more learned. . . . It was his business and livelihood. . . . Would His Worship graciously permit? . . .
His Worship ungraciously grunted an affirmative. Gypsy horse coper full of tricks as a dog of fleas. . . . At all events could make the precious horse no worse. . . . Go ahead!
Pyramus bolted himself in with the animal, and in two hours it was standing up, lipping bran-mash from his hand, sweaty, shaking, but saved.
Mr. Hugo Lorimer was all gratitude, his one soft spot touched at last. Pyramus must name his own reward. Pyramus, both palms upraised in protest, would hear of no reward, honored to have been of any service to such a gentleman.
Departed bowing and smirking, the poison he had blown through a grating into the horse’s manger the night before in one pocket, the antidote in the other.
Henceforward the Herne family plied their trade undisturbed within the bounds of Mr. Lorimer’s magistracy to the exclusion of all other gypsies and throve mightily in consequence.
He had been at pains to commend himself to Teresa Penhale, but had only partly succeeded. She was the principal land owner in the valley where he wintered and it was necessary to keep on her right side.
The difficulty with Teresa was that, being of gypsy blood herself, she was proof against gypsy trickery and exceeding suspicious of her own kind. He tried to present her with a pair of barbaric gold earrings, by way of throwing bread upon the waters, but she asked him how much he wanted for them and he made the fatal mistake of saying “nothing.”
“Nothing to-day and my skin to-morrow?” she sneered. “Outside with you!”
Pyramus went on the other tack, pretended not to recognize her as a Romni, addressed her in English, treated her with extravagant deference and saw to it that his family did the same.
It worked. Teresa rather fancied herself as a “lady”—though she could never go to the trouble of behaving like one—and it pleased her to find somebody who treated her as such. It pleased her to have the great King Herne back his horse out of her road and remain, hat in hand, till she had passed by, to have his women drop curtsies and his bantlings bob. It worked—temporarily. Pyramus had touched her abundant conceit, lulled the Christian half of her with flattery, but he knew that the gypsy half was awake and on guard. The situation was too nicely balanced for comfort; he looked about for fresh weight to throw into his side of the scale.
One day he met Eli, wandering up the valley alone, flintlock in hand, on the outlook for woodcock.
Pyramus could be fascinating when he chose; it lubricated the wheels of commerce. He laid himself out to charm Eli, told him where he had seen a brace of cock and also some snipe, complimented him on his villainous old blunderbuss, was all gleaming teeth, geniality and oil. He could not have made a greater mistake. Eli was not used to charm and had instinctive distrust of the unfamiliar. He had been reared among boors who said their say in the fewest words and therefore distrusted a talker. Further, he was his father’s son, a Penhale of Bosula on his own soil, and this fellow was an Egyptian, a foreigner, and he had an instinctive distrust of foreigners. He growled something incoherent, scowled at the beaming Pyramus, shouldered his unwieldy cannon and marched off in the opposite direction.
Pyramus bit his fleshy lip; nothing to be done with that truculent bear cub—but what about the brother, the handsome dark boy? What about him—eh?
He looked out for Ortho, met him once or twice in company with other lads, made no overtures beyond a smile, but heeled his mare and set her caracoling showily.
He did not glance round, but he knew the boy’s eyes were following him. A couple of evenings after the last meeting he came home to learn that young Penhale had been hanging about the camp that afternoon.
The eldest Herne son, Lussha, had invited him in, but Ortho declined, saying he had come up to look at some badger diggings. Pyramus smiled into his curly beard; the badger holes had been untenanted for years. Ortho came up to carry out a further examination of the badger earths the very next day.
Pyramus saw him, high up among the rocks of the carn, his back to the diggings, gazing wistfully down on the camp, its tents, fires, and horses. He did not ask the boy in, but sent out a scout with orders to bring word when young Penhale went home.
The scout returned at about three o’clock. Ortho, he reported, had worked stealthily down from the carn top and had been lying in the bracken at the edge of the encampment for the last hour, imagining himself invisible. He had now gone off towards Bosula. Pyramus called for his mare to be saddled, brushed his breeches, put on his best coat, mounted and pursued. He came up with the boy a mile or so above the farm and brought his mount alongside caracoling and curveting. Ortho’s expressive eyes devoured her.
“Good day to you, young gentleman,” Pyramus called, showing his fine teeth. Ortho grinned in return.
“Wind gone back to the east; we shall have a spell of dry weather, I think,” said the gypsy, making the mare do a right pass, pivot on her hocks and pass to the left.
“Yeh,” said Ortho, his mouth wide with admiration.
King Herne and his steed were enough to take any boy’s fancy; they were dressed to that end. The gypsy had masses of inky hair, curled mustaches and an Assyrian beard, which frame of black served to enhance the brightness of his glance, the white brilliance of his smile. He was dressed in the coat he wore when calling on the gentry, dark blue frogged with silver lace, and buff spatter-dashes. He sat as though bolted to the saddle from the thighs down; the upper half of him, hinged at the hips, balanced gracefully to every............