The Return of the Gypsy Read Online Free PDF

that spot on the cliff top where the bonfire was to be lighted. Already there was a crowd assembled there. Driftwood and rubbish of all sorts had been piled up, and on the top of the heap was an effigy of Napoleon.
    The crowd made way for our carriage.
    “Down with the Boney Party!” shouted someone.
    There were cheers for our carriage. My father waved his hand and called a greeting to some of them. Nothing could please him more than this display of feeling against the French.
    Our carriage pulled up some yards from the bonfire.
    People were looking anxiously at the sky. It must not rain. It occurred to me that people who had such a short time before been worried because they feared an invasion, now seemed equally so about the weather.
    We were lucky. The rain held off. The great moment had come.
    Several men approached carrying flaming torches. They circled the heap and with a shout threw their torches into the mass of accumulated rubbish and paraffin-soaked wood. There was a burst of flame. The bonfire was alight.
    The air was filled with shrieks of delight; people joined hands and danced round the bonfire. Fascinated, I watched. They looked different in the firelight. One hardly recognized the sober people one had known. They were servants, most of them. I saw the little tweeny, wide-eyed and wondering. Her hand was seized by one of the stable boys and she was whirled off into the dance.
    “They are going to get wilder as the night progresses,” said David.
    “Yes,” replied my mother, “there will be some merrymaking tonight.”
    “I trust the after effects will not be more than some of them have bargained for,” added my father.
    “Crowds scare me a little,” said my mother.
    My father looked at her tenderly. “This is rejoicing, Lottie,” he murmured gently.
    “I know. But crowds … mobs …”
    “Would you like to go?” he asked.
    She looked at me and Amaryllis. “No,” she replied. “Let’s wait awhile.”
    I felt a great desire to mingle with the crowds, to dance round the bonfire. Two of the men had brought fiddles with them and they were playing songs we all knew— The Vicar of Bray and Barbara Allen and the one which set them all shouting with fervour as we all joined in:
    When Britain first, at Heaven’s command
    Arose from out the azure main,
    This was the charter of the land,
    And the guardian angels sang the strain:
    “Rule Brittania, rule the waves Britons never will be slaves.”
    The words rang out into the night air; below the waves washed against the white cliffs.
    “Never, never, never,” chanted the crowd, “Will be slaves.”
    All the pent-up emotions of the last months were let loose as the fear of the havoc an invading army could wreak evaporated from their minds. Not that any of them would admit that they thought it could really happen, but the relief was intense, and I could hear it in those words. “Never … never, never …” they went on singing.
    The music changed. Now the fiddlers were playing a merry tune:
    Come, lasses and lads, get leave of your dads
    And away to the maypole hie …
    It was not Maytime but the tune would do for a dance and the lasses and lads had joined hands and were dancing round the bonfire as though it were a maypole.
    I saw some of the gypsies mingling with the crowd and yes! there he was. He was hand in hand with a sloe-eyed gypsy girl. Creole earrings flapped in her ears; she wore a red skirt and had wild dark hair.
    He danced gracefully, leaping round the bonfire. He came close to our carriage and saw me. For a few seconds his eyes met mine. He released the hand of the girl with whom he was dancing and she went leaping on without him. He stood there just looking; and although he did not beckon I knew that he was telling me how much he wanted me to be down there dancing with him. His gaze implied that our acquaintance was a secret… a delightful secret—something daring and forbidden.
    My father said: “The gypsies are