Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

90 It was a Summer night when the engage- ment was celebrated. The guests had as- sembled in the giambic of our house, an upper terrace commanding a view of the Danube, and there the dancing and singing and drinking had gone on for hours and hours. For in Rumania engagements are celebrated with even’ greater pomp and lavishness than weddings. My glass was kept full by my brother, who urged me to drink and kissed and begged me to for- give him. “Little brother, little brother, I did not know. I swear I did not know it would hurt you so much. Let’s drink that glass together. Show me you are not angry with me.” And I drank after him and sang and danced and played and made believe that I was happy. But after the guests had de- parted, in the small hours of the morning when the candles in the colored-paper lan- terns that hung on wires had flickered their last, I loosened the little boat moored to a ring in the outer wall and crossed the Dan- ube to the Dobrudyja side of the river. I had planned it all while I danced and sang. Murdo’s Gipsy tribe had crossed the river the previous day. Murdo and I were old friends. I intended to persuade him to accept me as one of his subjects. He and my father had been old friends. I wanted to leave behind me a civilization that had hurt me. I had lost faith in it. And I had always admired the Gipsies and their care- free roving across the world. I was eighteen and had been disappointed in love. “And what will the ‘Cucoana,’ your mother, say?” questioned Murdo when I had finished telling my story and asked him to take me along on his travels. ‘No, no! I know your brother. That hot-headed son of your father will come with gun and dag- ger and fight and stir trouble.” “Murdo,” I answered, “he will not. I have left a note for him in my room. He knows that I shall go with you.” The old Gipsy looked at me in silence for a while; then he said pensively: “We shall remain here the whole day. From your giambic they will see your boat. Some one will come to take it back. We shall have speech then. Not before.” As I left the Gipsy chief to shake hands with his men who had come to greet me I saw a boat coming across the river. I soon recognized my brother in it and sat down to Adventure wait for him near Murdo, who also watched the boat that was being tossed by the foam- ing waves. When it had landed on the soft sand the chief went to shake hands with his visitor. My brother came to where I was sitting, put his hands on my shoulders and said— “Poor boy, poor boy.” His eyes were red and wet. I could see that he had not slept and had racked his soul. But then, Rita was a beautiful girl, and I myself would have sacrificed the hap- piness of a dozen brothers for one single kiss from her lips. We shook hands without another word while Murdo and the others looked on. Then my brother put some money in my coat-pockets, shook hands with the chief, fastened the little boat in which I had come to his boat and rowed back home, home to mother and sister and Rita, to the four- hand music parties on the terrace, the books and card games, lampion festas and open- air concerts which he instigated and lorded over as the leader of the younger set. ‘“‘And now we go!” Murdo roused me from my revery. “Hurry! Jump in near Ghitza on his wagon. The sun is high and Cerna Voda is far. Hurry!” There were about sixty souls, all told, in Murdo’s tribe. Twelve canvas-covered wagons traveled in single file, four horses to each wagon. Tied to the shafts of each vehicle another fifty vehicles trailed along. - Behind the caravan, on the sides and front- ing it, a dozen long-coated shepherd dogs and brown ogars, wolf-hounds, footed silently about the village on wheels as it serpentined on the winding dusty narrow dirt road leading through the deserts of the Dobrud- jan marshlands. A dull sun was cutting its way painfully through leaden clouds. A hot wind laden with vapors of decaying vegetation was blowing against us. The wagon to which I was assigned was the second one of the long file, the first one being Murdo’s, and I was sitting near Ghitza, who drove the horses. Within the wagon was the driver’s family: his wife and three children, among them Ileana, his oldest daughter. | At sundown Murdo checked his horses and the caravan came to a sudden halt. The wagons were brought up to a wide square allowing plenty of grazing for the horses. The dogs were fed and while the children jumped out from the rear of the canvas COMGHOO S CO