The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II)James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
General
The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II)
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Romanies -- Fiction
This personage was spare in form, and without being tall, as compared
with other men, he was certainly tall in reference to his other
proportions. His arms were long and sinewy, his feet small, his ankles
well turned, and his whole body giving the promise of great activity,
though at a time of life when the agile pliancy of youth is generally
past and gone. He was dressed in an old brown long coat, "a world too
wide" for his spare form, so that, as he crept along with a quiet,
serpentine turning of his body, he looked like an eel in a great coat,
if the reader's imagination be vivid enough to call up such an image.
A hat, which had seen other days, and many of them, covered his brows;
but under that hat was a countenance, which, however ordinary might be
the rest of his appearance, redeemed the whole from the common herd.
The complexion spoke his race: it was of a pale, greenish tint,
without any rosier hue in the cheeks to enliven the pure gipsy colour
of his skin. His nose was small, and slightly aquiline, though of a
peculiar bend, forming, from the forehead to the tip, what Hogarth
drew for the line of beauty. The eyebrows were small, and pencilled
like a Circassian's, and the eyes themselves, shining through their
long, thick, black eyelashes, were full of deep light, and--to use a
very anomalous crowd of words--of wild, dark, melancholy fire. His
forehead was broad and high; and the long, soft, glossy, black hair
that fell in untrimmed profusion round his face had hardly suffered
from the blanching hand of time, although his age could not be less
than fifty-five or fifty-six, and might be more. His teeth, too, were
unimpaired, and of as dazzling a whiteness as if beetle and recca had
all possessed the properties their venders assert, and had all been
tried on them in their turn.
Such was his appearance, as, creeping along through the brushwood with
a stealthy motion, which would hardly have disturbed the deer from
their lair, he made his way towards the spot where we have seen that
his fellows were encamped. He was still far distant from it, however;
and although it was evident that he was, or had been, well acquainted
with the intricacies of the wood, yet it appeared that some leading
marks were necessary to guide him surely on his way; for, ever and
anon, when he could find a round knob of earth, raising itself above
the rest of the ground, he would climb it, and gaze for several
moments over the world of wood below him, rich in all the splendid
hues of autumn, and flooded by the purple light of the evening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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