‘No, mamma does not love me any longer; and as to papa, I hate him.’
Thus spoke a boy of fourteen, with proud, defiant dark eyes, standing in the middle of a wood. He was hatless, with wind-blown hair, but nevertheless smartly clad. In appearance he was very like the well-known John the Baptist of Andrea del Sarto. He was thinking of many things, indeed of his whole life. His own father he could remember but dimly. He only remembered, when he was quite a little child, a dark man, who was very kind to him, and who, every night, sent him to sleep by a peculiar lullaby, played on a fiddle. Then he remembered a life of tents and caravans and wanderings; then he was suddenly transferred to a luxurious villa on the Adriatic. At first all went fairly well. His step-father was amiable to him, and gave him toys, and his mother rigged him out in elegant sailor suits with gold braid, and he became the pet of all the ladies in the neighbourhood. He heard one time his step-father remark, ‘Really, I don't despair of turning Sandor into a gentleman.’ He did not quite understand what it meant, but somehow, the remark galled him. Then there came a hitch. A baby was born. Then the Graf von Gratheim, having a son and heir, took an aversion to the child of the beautiful gypsy woman, whom he had married in a moment of excessive passion, as the daughters of the gypsies do not give themselves otherwise.
Sandor was passionately fond of music, and, like every gypsy child, could play the fiddle very well. His step-father detested music. Then again, he himself had a particular aversion to the baby, which he erroneously thought supplanted himself in his mother's affection. He would not even be in the same room where the baby was. So things got from bad to worse, and that day, when the baby was about three years old, he was sitting in a nook in the drawing-room, improvising on his fiddle, quite concealed by palm-trees and oleanders—so concealed and inspired, that he did not notice his step-father coming in.
His step-father said furiously, ‘Ah! That's you, Gypsy! Shut up your infernal row! You're really not fit for civilised society. I heartily wish you would go back to your own people.’ His eyes flashed fire, and he went out of the room without a word, and out of the house into the woods, taking nothing with him but his fiddle.
Suddenly he heard through the trees a sound of stringed instruments—a xylophone playing gypsy music. He looked out stealthily, and saw three men. Then they ceased playing. The first man said, ‘Where shall we go to-day; to the right or the left?’ The second said, ‘Perhaps we had better go to the right, for there there's a town.’ The third man said, ‘No, we must be returning home; you know next Sunday is the Day of Shadows, and we have hardly time to get back.’ The first man answered, ‘Oh, of course. I had forgotten that. We must be getting off at once.’
Suddenly the boy darted out from the trees and cried, ‘Oh, take me with you. I can play the fiddle a little too.’
The first man said, very kindly and tenderly, ‘Yes, little one, we'll take you with us, but remember ours is a hard life. We gypsies don't sleep on feather-beds.’
The second man said, ‘Why, I believe he belongs to our race.’
The third man took his sleeve and bared his arm. ‘Why,’ he cried, ‘that is the mark of our clan. What does it all mean?’
The boy fainted with exhaustion and excitement. The first man took him in his arms and carried him along. Then he said, ‘How like he is to Sandor!’ The boy revived for a moment, and murmured, ‘Yes, my name is Sandor. I was called after my father,’ and then fainted again. The second man said, ‘Oh, yes; I understand it all. He must be the son of Gisela, who disgraced our race by marrying an alien.’ The third man said, ‘You see gypsy blood will never be tamed. He has come back to his own people.’
‘Yes,’ said the boy, suddenly vitalised, ‘I will go back to my own people. He called me “gypsy” to-day!’
‘My dear,’ said the first man, ‘do you know that you are my brother's son? I am your uncle Ferencz.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the boy, ‘I thought I had seen you before.’
So Sandor went with the men, and arrived at their more or less permanent quarters, and soon accommodated himself to their life. He was told that if he discovered an owl's nest during that week, and could take one egg from it to bury it under a hazel-tree, after exactly seven years he would find the worm of luck in the same place. Owls’ nests are not easy to find, but for anyone who wishes to find their eggs they have one advantage—that the owl lays a second batch of eggs whilst the former are still in the nest, so by good luck it is possible to secure one whilst she is leaving her nest to procure food for her children. One night he saw some small animal running on the ground, then a great white owl, with a shrill hissing cry, leapt from her nest and seized upon it. Meanwhile, quick as thought, Sandor sprang up the tree, and found one egg still unhatched, and buried it duly under a hazel-tree.
On the 23rd of April he was selected by the clan to represent ‘Green George.’ He was stripped and garlanded with leaves, then he was pursued about the place like Dionysus. He was a little frightened at this; he thought he was going to be sacrificed, but he said to himself, ‘Better be sacrificed for my own people than live there with them.’ But he was not sacrificed, only thrown into the water in effigy.
For seven years he dwelt with his clan. On the day he had buried the owl's egg, on digging, he found a long green caterpillar, which he ate.
He had always played the fiddle remarkably well, but every one was astonished at the manner he played that night. The gypsies themselves were dumfounded by his originality and inspiration.
So the long and short of it was that Sandor should go and wander alone and play the fiddle, and get money for the clan. In one small town he came to, an old Professor came up to him and said, ‘Why, you play wonderfully. I never heard anyone play like you. What is so specially wonderful is that you manage to evoke so much out of an old cracked fiddle like that. Come with me, and I will give you a Stradivarius violin, which has come into my hands as a legacy, and which I cannot play myself. All I ask in recompense is that you should play to me once upon it.’ Sandor accepted. Then for the first time he realised himself his own power. In the next town he came to he boldly advertised a concert. The entertainment was given entirely by himself. It was a small but rather fashionable place during its season. The fashionable people, having little distraction, all came out of curiosity to hear ‘der Grüne Georg,’ who advertised himself for a concert. (He always called himself now by the name of ‘Grüner Georg,’ especially as he was now nearing places where he had been before.) The audience was spellbound, and from that time he created a furore. Money (the greater part of which he remitted to his clan) poured into his hands; he also became a lion of society. Fortunately for him, though a gypsy, he had at one time of his life been familiar with the ways of society—but all this did not turn his head. He sighed for the old wild life again.
One day in his wanderings he came back to the place where he used to live.
‘Ha, ha!’ he said, ‘they don't know that “Grüner Georg” means me!’
Tired of luxuries, he often would go out into the woods, and sleep in the open air. This time he determined he would go and sleep exactly there whence he had run away seven years before. He sat there playing to himself on his violin, thinking again of all his past life, when a boy came out from the trees, and said, ‘Oh, I love music. Will you let me listen to you?’
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘What would you like me to play to you?’
‘Oh, anything you like,’ said the boy, seating himself at his feet. ‘Father hates music, and won't allow any music in the house; but I love music, especially this sort of music.’
He played on and on; then he said to the child, ‘Tell me, what is your name?’
‘Mother calls me Gyula,’ he answered, ‘but father calls me Julius or Jules, because he says he can't bear Hungarian names.’
‘Then who is your mother?’ he asked.
‘Oh! my mother is Countess von Gratheim.’
‘The Countess von Gratheim was my mother too,’ said Sandor.
‘Then,’ said the child, looking puzzled, ‘you must be my brother.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said he, kissing him. ‘You are indeed my brother.’
‘Then,’ said he, ‘what is your name?’
‘I have no surname,’ he answered, ‘but my Christian name is Sandor.’
‘Sandor?’ said the child. ‘Why, only yesterday mother was saying, “Oh! if I only knew what has become of poor Sandor!” and father said, “Don't mention his name. He is very well named Sandor, as he has brought ‘schande’* on our family.” I don't know in the least what he meant,’ added the child innocently.
‘However,’ said Sandor, somewhat bitterly, ‘it is not poor Sandor now. I have plenty of money. I dare say you may have heard of me. I go generally by the name of Grüner Georg.’
‘Why,’ said the boy, ‘you Grüner Georg! I have been saving up all my pocket-money to hear you, and I was going to slip out on the sly one day and go to one of your concerts. Papa wouldn't let me otherwise, because, I don't know why, he can't bear anything to do with gypsies, and now I have heard you for nothing.’
‘My dear child,’ said the young man, ‘you also have something to do with gypsies. Mother is a gypsy, as perhaps you don't know.’
It was late autumn, and singularly mild; but while they were talking the sun had set, and it was quite dark.
‘Child,’ said Sandor, ‘you cannot possibly go home now, but if you will stay here, I promise to take you home to-morrow morning. I know the way,’ he added, with a trace of bitterness. ‘Look here, I will wrap you up in my fur coat. I can make you a very nice bed and pillow out of dead leaves. I am quite clever at that. It is not very cold after all.’ Then he murmured to himself between his teeth, ‘He shall see that gypsy blood can never be tamed.’
‘But,’ said the child, ‘you will be cold yourself.’
‘Oh dear no!’ said Sandor. ‘I am quite used to lie on the bare ground. We gypsies’ (he said this in the same contemptuous tone that, seven years ago, his step-father had used to him) ‘do not lie upon feather-beds.’ So he wrapped the child in his mantle, and made him a comfortable bed of leaves. The child, who was growing sleepy, said, ‘Sandor, my brother, won't you play me one thing more?’
‘Yes, dear, I will,’ he said. Then he played the lullaby with which his own father used to send him to sleep. It had the same effect upon Gyula; then he himself ultimately lay down by the side of his little brother. A wind arose, a number of leaves were blown upon Grüner Georg, making a complete coverlet.
‘I was once Green George,’ he said, somewhat sadly, ‘now, I suppose, I am Yellow George,’ and he fell asleep.
There was, as there often is in those parts, a quite sudden change of temperature during the night. Thick flakes of snow began to fall, the first of the year, and enveloped the two as in a shroud. Then a sudden hard frost set in. Neither noticed; both were fast asleep, Gyula leaning his head upon his brother's shoulder. But the sudden frost killed both the delicately nurtured child and the strong young man.
If anyone had been there, they would certainly have been much surprised to see on that unprecedentedly cold morning a very elegantly dressed lady wandering distractedly through the woods, crying almost wildly, ‘Gyula! Gyula!’ making distracted appeals, ‘O God! have I not lost one, that I should lose the other too!’
She came upon the place where they were lying, almost armoured with a frozen sheet of snow.
‘Gyula!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then she looked and recognised. ‘Sandor, my own, my firstborn! you here!’ She flung herself upon him and kissed him passionately. ‘I am your mother, don't you know me? Wake up! Speak to me!’ Neither of them moved. Then she gradually realised. She did not weep at all. She took off her cloak of rich sable, and laid it as a pall over the bodies of her two children. Then she took off all her rings and jewellery; and, cutting off a long tress of her black hair, threaded them together with it, then yoked her two sons together with this strange necklace.
‘I will go back to my own people,’ she said, and went forth into the woods.