“When did you learn it?” There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro’s heart, for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby.
“Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and forget anything.” Ingolby sighed. “But that doesn’t matter, for I know only a dozen words or so, and they won’t carry me far.”
He turned the violin over in his hands. “This ought to do a bit more than the cotton-field fiddle,” he said dryly.
He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural connoisseur. “Finish your drink and your cigarette. I can wait,” he added graciously. “If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away with you. You don’t drink much, that’s clear, therefore you must smoke. Every man has some vice or other, if it’s only hanging on to virtue too tight.”
He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met. Was it some temperamental thing in him? “Dago,” as he called the Romany inwardly, there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the light on a great picture. There was something in the air they breathed which gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world.
Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had not meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby stopped him.
“I’m a slave,” he said. “I’ve got a master. It’s Jim. Jim’s a hard master, too. He’d give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the carpet.”
He threw the refuse into a flower-pot.
“That squares Jim. Now let’s turn the world inside out,” he proceeded. He handed the fiddle over. “Here’s the little thing that’ll let you do the trick. Isn’t it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?”
The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the musician’s love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that walked in lonely places and called across the glens—all were pouring into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the liquor he had drunk could do.