“Gypsies, and no others.”
“Well, I want to find a gypsy.”
The driver laughed, and just at that instant I saw, as if awaiting me on the sidewalk, Sarsha, Liubasha, and another young lady, with a good-looking youth, their brother.
“This will do,” I said to the driver, who appeared utterly amazed at seeing me greeted like an old friend by the Zigani, but who grinned with delight, as all Russians of the lower class invariably do at anything like sociability and fraternity. The damsels were faultlessly attired in Russian style, with full fur-lined, glossy black-satin cloaks and fine Orenberg scarfs, which are, I believe, the finest woolen fabrics in the world. The party were particularly anxious to know if I had come specially to visit them, for I have passed over the fact that I had also made the
acquaintance of another very large family of gypsies, who sang at a rival café, and who had also treated me very kindly. I was at once conducted to a house, which we entered in a rather gypsy way, not in front, but through a court, a back door, and up a staircase, very much in the style of certain dwellings in the Potteries in London. But, having entered, I was led through one or two neat rooms, where I saw lying sound asleep on beds, but dressed, one or two very dark Romanys, whose faces I remembered. Then we passed into a sitting-room, which was very well furnished. I observed hanging up over the chimney-piece a good collection of photographs, nearly all of gypsies, and indicating that close resemblance to Hindoos which comes out so strongly in such pictures, being, in fact, more apparent in the pictures than in the faces; just as the photographs of the old Ulfilas manuscript revealed alterations not visible in the original. In the centre of the group was a cabinet-size portrait of Sarsha, and by it another of an Englishman of very high rank. I thought this odd, but asked no questions.
My hosts were very kind, offering me promptly a rich kind of Russian cake, begging to know what else I would like to eat or drink, and apparently deeply concerned that I could really partake of nothing, as I had just come from luncheon. They were all light-hearted and gay, so that the music began at once, as wild and as bewitching as ever. And here I observed, even more than before, how thoroughly sincere these gypsies were in their art, and to what a degree they enjoyed and were excited by their own singing. Here in their own home, warbling like birds and frolicking like children, their performance was even more delightful
than it had been in the concert-room. There was evidently a great source of excitement in the fact that I must enjoy it far more than an ordinary stranger, because I understood Romany, and sympathized with gypsy ways, and regarded them not as the Gaji or Gentiles do, but as brothers and sisters. I confess that I was indeed moved by the simple kindness with which I was treated, and I knew that, with the wonderfully keen perception of character in which gypsies excel, they perfectly understood my liking for them. It is this ready intuition of feelings which, when it is raised from an instinct to an art by practice, enables shrewd old women to tell fortunes with so much skill.
I was here introduced to the mother of the girls. She was a neat, pleasant-looking woman, of perhaps forty years, in appearance and manners irresistibly reminding me of some respectable Cuban lady. Like the others, she displayed an intelligent curiosity as to my knowledge of Romany, and I was pleased at finding that she knew much more of the language than her children did. Then there entered a young Russian gentleman, but not “Prince Paul.” He was, however, a very agreeable person, as all Russians can be when so minded; and they are always so minded when they gather, from information or conjecture, the fact that the stranger whom they meet is one of education or position. This young gentleman spoke French, and undertook the part of occasional translator.
I asked Liubasha if any of them understood fortune-telling.
“No; we have quite lost the art of dorriki. [61] None