She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at
him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world in
a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand things
which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and power in
contest with the ordered world.
Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived on
the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of
command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place,
settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was
wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as
fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people
who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving
here and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and their
national feeling.
There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility,
the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one place
in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, threw it
away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever fleeing from
yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground.
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