He was a man of thirty, firmly set, and had a stern hard countenance, in which shone two glittering black eyes, which were serpent-like even among the Rommany. Nor have I ever seen among his people a face so expressive of self-control allied to wary suspicion. He was neatly dressed, but in a subdued Gipsy style, the principal indication being that of a pair of “cords,” which, however, any gentleman might have worn—in the field. His English was excellent—in fact, that of an educated man; his sum total that of a very decided “character,” and one who, if you wronged him, might be a dangerous one.
We entered into conversation, and the Rommany rollicking seemed all at once a vapoury thing of the dim past; it was the scene in a witch-revel suddenly shifted to a drawing-room in May Fair. We were all, and all at once, so polite and gentle, and so readily acquainted and cosmo-polite—quite beyond the average English standard; and not the least charming part of the whole performance was the skill with which the minor parts were filled up by the Gipsies, who with exquisite tact followed our lead, seeming to be at once hosts and guests. I have been at many a play, but never saw anything better acted.
But under it all burnt a lurid though hidden flame; and there was a delightful diablerie of concealment kept up among the Rommany, which was the more exquisite because I shared in it. Reader, do you remember the scene in George Borrow’s “Gipsies in Spain,” in which the woman blesses the child in Spanish, and mutters curses on it meanwhile in Zincali? So it was that my dear old hostess blessed the sweet young lady, and “prodigalled” compliments on her; but there was one instant when her eye met mine, and a soft, quick-whispered, wicked Rommany phrase, unheard by the ladies, came to my ear, and in the glance and word there was a concentrated anathema.
The stern-eyed Gipsy conversed well, entertaining his guests with ease. After he had spoken of the excellent behaviour and morals of his tribe—and I believe that they have a very high character in these respects—I put him a question.
“Can you tell me if there is really such a thing as a Gipsy language? one hears such differing accounts, you know.”
With the amiable smile of one who pitied my credulity, but who was himself superior to all petty deception or vulgar mystery, he replied—
“That is another of the absurd tales which people have invented about Gipsies. As if we could have kept such a thing a secret!”
“It does, indeed, seem to me,” I replied, “that if you had, some people who were not Gipsies must have learned it.”
“Of course,” resumed the Gipsy, philosophically, “all people who keep together get to using a few peculiar terms. Tailors and shoemakers have their own words. And there are common vagabonds who go up and down talking thieves’ slang, and imposing it on people for Gipsy. But as for any Gipsy tongue, I ought to know it” (“So I should think,” I mentally ejaculated, as I contemplated his brazen calmness); “and I don’t know three words of it.”
And we, the Gorgios, all smiled approval. At least that humbug was settled; and the Rommany tongue was done for—dead and buried—if, indeed, it ever existed. Indeed, as I looked in the Gipsy’s face, I began to realise that a man might be talked out of a belief in his own name, and felt a rudimentary sensation to the effect that the language of the Black Wanderers was all a dream, and Pott’s Zigeuner the mere tinkling of a pot of brass, Paspati a jingling Turkish symbol, and all Rommany a præterea nihil without the vox. To dissipate the delusion, I inquired of the Gipsy—