And all this achieved by a tottering, degraded old drunkard.
The player passed on from tune to tune, only pausing to take a drink from a bottle that the old woman handed him. Many of the strains were familiar to the young engineer; he understood they were "masterpieces" difficult to render. And wonder and a great pity stirred in him side by side at the awful contrast, the inexpressible beauty of the music and the despicable condition of the player. But he, too, seemed to straighten out and grow taller; he stood up, the mouth became steadier, the bleared eyes seemed quite brilliant in the dim light.
Slowly dying down, growing gradually less, the music stopped. Then dropping bow and fiddle the musician made straight for the brass-finished, leather-upholstered caravan, and disappeared inside.
There was silence round the little circle of the gipsies, no one stirred; Carstairs was lost in reverie, ideas thronged through his brain; he was lost to the present, his soul seemed free of his body, delving about in the unknown depths of the future.
A young gipsy started up from the circle and picked up the fiddle and bow. For Carstairs that broke the spell, he looked up and found the gipsy woman's eyes upon him.
He arose and went over to her. "What lovely music," he said. "Who is he?"
"My husband," she answered.
"Oh!" he said. He held out his hand. "Good-bye! you must thank him very much for me."
She took his hand and looked into his eyes in the fixed firelight. "You like music?" she asked.
"Very much," he answered.