But she was now insensible to sound. I knew from experience now that I must shake her to bring her back to consciousness, for evidently, in her fits of reverie, the sounds falling upon her ear were not conveyed to the brain at all.
I shook her gently, and said, 'The Prince of the Mist.'
She started back to life. My idea had been a happy one. My words had at once sent her thoughts into the right direction for me.
'Pardon me, Prince,' said she, smiling; 'I had forgotten that you were here.'
'Winifred, I've warmed this hand, now give me the other.'
She stretched her other hand across her breast and gave it to me. This brought her entire body close to me, and I said, 'Winnie, you are cold all over. Won't you let the Prince of the Mist put his arms round you and warm you?'
'Oh, I should like it so much,' she said. 'But are you warm, Prince? are you really warm?—your mist is mostly very cold.'
'Quite warm, Winifred,' I said, as with my heart swelling in my breast, and with eyelids closing over my eyes from very joy, I drew her softly upon my breast once more.
'Yes—yes,' I murmured, as the tears gushed from my eyes and dropped upon the soft hair that I was kissing. 'If God will but let me have herthus! I ask for nothing better than to possess a maniac.'
As we sat locked in each other's arms the head of Sinfi appeared round the eastern cliff of the gorge where I had first seen Winifred. The Gypsy had evidently been watching us from there. I perceived that she was signalling to me that I was not to grasp Winifred. Then I saw Sinfi suddenly and excitedly point to the sky over the rock beneath which we sat. I looked up. The upper sky above us was now clear of morning mist, and right over our heads, Winifred's and mine, there hung a little morning cloud like a feather of flickering rosy gold. I looked again towards the corner of jutting rock, but Sinfi's head had disappeared.
'Dear Prince,' said Winifred, 'how delightfully warm you are! How kind of you! But are not your arms a little too tight, dear Prince? Poor Winnie cannot breathe. And this thump, thump, thump, like a—like a—fire-engine—ah!'
Too late I knew what my folly had done. The turbulent action of my heart had had a sympathetic effect upon hers. It seemed as if her senses, if not her mind, had remembered another occasion, when, as she was lying in my arms, the beating of my heart had disturbed her. In one lightning-flash her real life and all its tragedy broke mercilessly in upon her. The idea of the 'Prince of the Mist' fled. She started up and away from me. The awful mimicry of her father's expression spread over her face. With a yell of 'Fy Nhad,' and then a yell of 'Father!' she darted round the pool, and then, bounding up the rugged path like a chamois, disappeared behind a corner of jutting rock.
At the same moment the head of the Gypsy girl reappeared round the eastern cleft of the gorge. Sinfi came quickly up to me and whispered, 'Don't follow.'
'I will,' I said.
'No, you won't,' said she, seizing my wrist with a grip of iron. 'If you do she's done for. Do you know where she is running to? A couple of furlongs up that path there's another that branches off on the right; it ain't more nor a futt-an'-a-half wide along a precipuss more nor a hundred futt deep. She knows it well. She'll make for that. The cuss is on her wuss nor ever, judgin' from the gurn and the flash of her teeth.'
I waited for two or three seconds in the wildest impatience.
'Let's follow her now,' I said.
'No, no,' she whispered, 'not yet, 'less you want to see her tumble down the cliff.' After a few minutes Sinfi and I went up the main pathway. Winnie seemed to have slackened her pace when she was out of sight, for we saw her just turning away on the right at the point indicated by Sinfi. 'Give her time to get along that path,' said she, 'and then she'll be all right.'
In a state of agonised suspense I stood there waiting. At last I said:
'I must go after her. We shall lose her—I know we shall lose her.'
Sinfi demurred a moment, then acceded to my wish, and we went up the main pathway and peered round the corner of the jutting rock where Winifred had last been visible. There, along a ragged shelf bordering a yawning chasm—a shelf that seemed to me scarce wide enough for a human foot—Winifred was running and balancing herself as surely as a bird over the abyss.
'Mind she doesn't turn round sharp and see you,' said the Gypsy. 'If she does she'll lose her head and over she'll fall!'
I crouched and gazed at Winifred as she glided along towards a vast mountain of vapour that was rolling over the chasm close to her. She stood and looked into the floating mass for a moment, and then passed into it and was lost from view.
'NowI can follow her,' said Sinfi; 'but you mustn't try to come along here. Wait till I come back. I suppose you've given her all the breakfiss. Give me a drop of brandy out o' your flask.'
I gave her some brandy and took a long draught of the burning liquor myself, for I was fainting.
'I shall go with you,' I said.
'Dordi,' said the Gypsy, 'how quickly you'd be a-layin' at the bottom there!' and she pointed down into the gulf at our feet.
'I shall go with you,' I said.
'No, you won't,' said the Gypsy doggedly; ''causeIsha'n't go. I shall git round and meet her. I know where we shall strike across her slot. She'll be makin' for Llanberis.'
'I let her escape,' I moaned. 'I had her in my arms once; but you signalled to me not to grip her.'
'If you had ha' grabbed her,' said the Gypsy, 'she'd ha' pulled you along like a feather—she's so mad strong. You go hack to the llyn.'
The Gypsy girl passed along the shelf and was soon lost in the veil of vapour.
I returned to the llyn and threw myself down upon the ground, for my legs sank under me, but the dizziness of fatigue softened the effect of my distress. The rocks and peaks were swinging round my head. Soon I found the Gypsy bending over me.
'I can't find her,' said she. 'We had best make haste and strike across her path as she makes for Llanberis. I have a notion as she's sure to do that.'
As fast as we could scramble along those rugged tracks we made our way to the point where the Gypsy expected that Winifred would pass. We remained for hours, beating about in all directions in search of her,—Sinti every now and then touching her crwth with the bow,—but without any result.
'It's my belief she's gone straight down to Llanberis,' said Sinfi; 'and we'd best lose no time, but go there too.'
We went right to the top of the mountain and rested for a little time on y Wyddfa, Sinfi taking some bread and cheese and ale in the cabin there. Then we descended the other side. I had not sense then to notice the sunset-glories, the peaks of mountains melting into a sky of rose and light-green, over which a phalanx of fiery clouds was filing; and yet I see it all now as I write, and I hear what I did not seem to hear then, the musical chant of a Welsh guide ahead of us, who was conducting a party of happy tourists to Llanberis.
When we reached the village, we spent hours in making searches and inquiries, but could find no trace of her. Oh, the appalling thought of Winifred wandering about all night famishing on the hills! I went to the inn which Sinfi pointed out to me, while she went in quest of some Gypsy friends, who, she said, were stopping in the neighbourhood. She promised to come to me early in the morning, in order that we might renew our search at break of day.
When I turned into bed after supper I said to myself: 'There will be no sleep for me this night.' But I was mistaken. So great was my fatigue that sleep came upon me with a strength that was sudden and irresistible; when the servant came to call me at sunrise, I felt as though I had but just gone to bed. It was, no doubt, this sound sleep, and entire respite from the tension of mind I had undergone, which saved me from another serious illness.
I found the Gypsy already waiting for me below, preparing for the labours before her by making a hearty meal on salt beef and ale.
'Reia,' said she, pointing to the beef with her knife, 'we sha'n't get bite nor sup, 'cept what we carry, either inside or out, for twelve hours,—perhaps not for twenty-four. Before I give up this slot there ain't a path, nor a hill, nor a rock, nor a valley, nor a precipuss as won't feel my fut. Come! set to.'
I took the Gypsy's advice, made as hearty a breakfast as I could, and we left Llanberis in the light of morning. It was not till we had reached and passed a place called Gwastadnant Gate that the path along which we went became really wild and difficult. The Gypsy seemed to know every inch of the country.
We reached a beautiful lake, where Sinfi stopped, and I began to question her as to what was to be our route.
'Winnie know'd,' said she, 'some Welsh folk as fish in this 'ere lake. She might ha' called 'em to mind, poor thing, and come off here. I'm a-goin' to ask about her.'
Sinfi's inquiries here—her inquiries everywhere that day—ended in nothing but blank and cruel disappointment.
Remembering that Winifred's very earliest childhood was passed nearCarnarvon, I proposed to the Gypsy that we should go thither at once.
After sleeping again at Llanberis, we went to Carnarvon, but soon returned to the other side of Snowdon, for at Carnarvon we could find no trace of her.
'Oh, Sinfi,' I said; as we stood watching the peculiar bright yellow trout in Lake Ogwen, 'she is starving—starving on the hills—while millions of people are eating, gorging, wasting food. I shall go mad!'
Sinfi looked at me mournfully, and said:
'It's a bad job, reia, but if poor Winnie Wynne's a-starvin' it ain'tthe fault o' them as happens to ha' got the full belly. There ain't aRomany in Wales, nor there ain't a Gorgio nuther, as wouldn't giveWinnie a crust, if wonst we could find her.'
'To think of this great, rich world,' I exclaimed (to myself, not to the Gypsy), 'choke-full of harvest, bursting with grain, while famishing on the hills for a mouthful is she—the one!'
'Reia,' said Sinfi, with much solemnity, 'the world's full o' vittles; what's wanted is jist a hand as can put the vittles and the mouths where they ought to be—cluss togither. That's what the hungry Romany says when he snares a hare or a rabbit.'
We walked on. After a while Sinfi said: 'A Romany knows more o' these here kinds o' things, reia, than a Gorgio does. It's my belief as Winnie Wynne ain't a-starvin' on the hills; she ain't got to starve; she's on'y got to beg her bread. She'll have to do that, of course; but beggin' ain't so bad as starvin', after all! There's some as begs for the love on it. Videy does.'
I knew by this time that it was useless to battle against Sinfi's conviction that the curse would have to be literally fulfilled, so I kept silence. While she was speaking I was suddenly struck by a thought that ought to have come before.
'Sinfi,' I said, 'didn't you know an English lady named Dalrymple, who lodged with Mrs. Davies for some years?'
'Yis,' said Sinfi, 'and I did think o' her. She went to live at Carnarvon. But supposin' that Winnie had gone to the English lady—supposin' that she know'd where to find her—the lady 'ud never ha' let her go away, she was so fond on her. It was Miss Dalrymple as sp'ilt Winnie, a-givin' her lady-notions.'
However, I determined to see Miss Dalrymple, and started alone for Carnarvon at once. By making inquiries at the Carnarvon post-office I found Miss Dalrymple, a pale-faced, careworn lady of extraordinary culture, who evinced the greatest affection for Winifred. She had seen nothing of her, and was much distressed at the fragments of Winifred's story which I thought it well to give her. When she bade me good-bye, she said, 'I know something of your family. I know your mother and aunt. The sweet girl you are seeking is in my judgment one of the most gifted young women living. Her education, as you may be aware, she owes mainly to me. But she took to every kind of intellectual pursuit by instinct. Reared in a poor Welsh cottage as she was, there is, I believe, almost no place in society that she is not fitted to fill.'
On leaving Carnarvon I returned to Sinfi Lovell.
But why should I weary the reader by a detailed account of my wanderings and searchings with my strange guide that day, and the next, and the next? Why should I burthen him with the mental agonies I suffered as Sinfi and I, during the following days, explored the country for miles and miles—right away beyond the Cross Foxes, as far as Dolgelley and the region of Cader Idris? At last, one evening, when I and Rhona Boswell and some of her family were walking down Snowdon towards Llanberis, Sinfi announced her conviction that Winifred was no longer in the Snowdon region at all, perhaps not even in Wales at all.
'You mean, I suppose, that she is dead,' I said.
'Dead?' said Sinfi, the mysterious sibylline look returning immediately to her face, that had just seemed so frank and simple. 'She ain't got todie; she's only got to beg. But I shall ha' to leave you now. I can't do you no more good. And besides, my daddy's goin' into the Eastern Counties with the Welsh ponies, and so is Jasper Bozzell and Rhona. Videy and me are goin' too, in course.'
With deep regret and dismay I felt that I must part from her. How well I remember that evening. I feel as now I write the delicious summer breeze of Snowdon blowing on my forehead. The sky, which for some time had been growing very rich, grew at every moment rarer in colour, and glassed itself in the llyns which shone with an enjoyment of the beauty like the magic mirrors of Snowdonian spirits. The loveliness indeed was so bewitching that one or two of the Gypsies—a race who are, as I had already noticed, among the few uncultivated people that show a susceptibility to the beauties of nature—gave a long sigh of pleasure, and lingered at the llyn of the triple echo, to see how the soft iridescent opal brightened and shifted into sapphire and orange, and then into green and gold. As a small requital of her valuable services I offered her what money I had about me, and promised to send as much more as she might require as soon as I reached the hotel at Dolgelley, where at the moment my portmanteau was lying in the landlord's charge.
'Metake money for tryin' to find my sister, Winnie Wynne?' said Sinfi, in astonishment more than in anger. 'Seein', reia, as I'd jist sell everythink I've got to find her, I should like to know how many gold balansers [sovereigns] 'ud pay me. No, reia, Winnie Wynne ain't in Wales at all, else I'd never give up this patrin-chase. So fare ye well;' and she held out her hand, which I grasped, reluctant to let it go.
'Fare ye well, reia,' she repeated, as she walked swiftly away; 'I wonder whether we shall ever meet agin.'
'Indeed, I hope so,' I said.
Her sister Videy, who with Rhona Boswell was walking near us, was present at the parting—a bright-eyed, dark-skinned little girl, a head shorter than Sinfi. I saw Videy's eyes glisten greedily at sight of the gold, and, after we had parted, I was not at all surprised, though I knew her father, Panuel Lovell, a frequenter of Raxton fairs, to be a man of means, when she came back and said, with a coquettish smile,
'Give the bright balansers to Lady Sinfi's poor sister, my rei; give the balansers to the poor Gypsy, my rei.'
Rhona, however, instead of joining Videy in the prayer for backsheesh, ran down the path in the footsteps of Sinfi.
What money I had about me I was carrying loose in my waistcoat pocket, and I pulled it out, gold and silver together. I picked out the sovereigns (five) and gave them to her, retaining half-a-sovereign and the silver for my use before returning to the hotel at Dolgelley. Videy took the sovereigns and then pointed, with a dazzling smile, to the half-sovereign, saying, 'Give Lady Sinfi's poor sister the posh balanser [half-sovereign], my rei.'
I gave her the half-sovereign,' when she immediately pointed to a half-crown in my hand, and said, 'Give the poor Gypsy the posh-courna, my rei.'
So grateful was I to the very name of Lovell, that I was hesitating whether to do this, when I was suddenly aware of the presence of Sinfi, who had returned with Rhona. In a moment Videy's wrist was in a grip I had become familiar with, and the money fell to the ground. Sinfi pointed to the money and said some words in Romany. Videy stooped and picked the coins up in evident alarm. Sinfi then said some more words in Romany, whereupon Videy held out the money to me. I felt it best to receive it, though Sinfi never once looked at me; and I could not tell what expression her own honest face wore, whether of deadly anger or mortal shame. The two sisters walked off in silence together, while Rhona set up a kind of war-dance behind them, and the three went down the path.
In a few minutes Sinfi again returned and, pointing in great excitement to the sunset sky, cried, 'Look, look! The Dukkeripen of the trúshul.' [Footnote] And indeed, the sunset was now making a spectacle such as might have aroused a spasm of admiration in the most prosaic breast. As I looked at it and then turned to look at Sinfi's noble features, illumined and spiritualised by a light that seemed more than earthly, a new feeling came upon me as though y Wyddfa and the clouds were joining in a prophecy of hope.
[Footnote: Cross.]
After losing Sinfi I hired some men to assist me in my search. Day after day did we continue the quest; but no trace of Winifred could be found. The universal opinion was that she had taken sudden alarm at something, lost her foothold, and fallen down a precipice, as so many unfortunate tourists had done in North Wales. One day I and one of my men met, on a spur of the Glyder, the tourist of the flint implements with whom I had conversed at Bettws y Coed. He was alone, geologising or else searching for flint implements on the hills. Evidently my haggard appearance startled him. But when he learnt what was my trouble he became deeply interested. He told me that one day after our meeting at 'The Royal Oak,' Bettws y Coed, he had met a wild-looking girl as he was using his geologist's hammer on the mountains. She was bareheaded, and had taken fright at him, and had run madly in the direction of the most dangerous chasm on the range; he had pursued her, hoping to save her from destruction, but lost sight of her close to the chasm's brink. The expression on his face told me what his thoughts were as to her fate. He accompanied me to the chasm. It was indeed a dreadful place. We got to the bottom by a winding path, and searched till dusk among the rocks and torrents, finding nothing. But I felt that in wild and ragged pits like those, covered here and there with rough and shaggy brushwood, and full of wild cascades and deep pools, a body might well be concealed till doomsday.
My kind-hearted companion accompanied me for some miles, and did his best to dispel my gloom by his lively and intelligent talk. We parted at Pen y Gwryd. I never saw him again. I never knew his name. Should these lines ever come beneath his eyes he will know that though the great ocean of human life rolls between his life-vessel and mine, I have not forgotten how and where once we touched.
But how could I rest? Though Hope herself was laughing my hopes to scorn, how could I rest? How could I cease to search?
Bitter as it was to wander about the hills teasing my soul by delusions which other people must fain smile at, it would have been more bitter still to accept for certainty the intolerable truth that Winifred had died famished, or that her beloved body was a mangled corpse at the bottom of a cliff. If the reader does not understand this, it is because he finds it impossible to understand a sorrow like mine. I refused to return to Raxton, and took Mrs. Davies's cottage, which was unoccupied, and lived there throughout the autumn. Every day, wet or dry, I used to sally out on the Snowdonian range, just as though she had been lost but yesterday, making inquiries, bribing the good-natured Welsh people (who needed no bribing) to aid me in a search which to them must have seemed monomaniacal.
The peasants and farmers all knew me. 'Sut mae dy galon? (How is thy heart?)' they would say in the beautiful Welsh phrase as I met them. 'How is my heart, indeed!' I would sigh as I went on my way.
Before I went to Wales in search of Winifred I had never set foot in the Principality. Before I left it there was scarcely a Welshman who knew more familiarly than I every mile of the Snowdonian country. Never a trace of Winifred could I find.
At the end of the autumn I left the cottage and removed to Pen y Gwryd, as a comparatively easy point from which I could reach the mountain llyn where I had breakfasted with Winifred on that morning. Afterwards I took up my abode at a fishing-inn, and here I stayed the winter through—scarcely hoping to find her now, yet chained to Snowdon. After my labours during the day, scrambling among slippery boulders and rugged rocks, crossing swollen torrent-beds, amid rain and ice and snow and mist such as frightened away the Welsh themselves—after thus wandering, because I could not leave the region, it was a comfort to me to turn into the low, black-beamed room of the fishing-inn, with drying hams, flitches of bacon, and fishing-rods for decorations, and hear the simple-hearted Cymric folk talking, sometimes in Welsh, sometimes in English, but always with that kindness and that courtesy which go to make the poetry of Welsh common life.
Meantime, I had, as I need scarcely say, spared neither trouble nor expense in advertising for information about Winifred in the Welsh and the West of England newspapers. I offered rewards for her discovery, and the result was merely that I was pestered by letters from people (some of them tourists of education) suggesting traces and clues of so wild, and often of so fantastic a kind, that I arrived at the conviction that of all man's faculties his imagination is the most lawless, and at the same time the most powerful. It was perfectly inconceivable to me that the writers of some of these letters were not themselves demented, so wild or so fanciful were the clues they suggested. Yet. when I came to meet them and talk with them (as I sometimes did), I found these correspondents to be of the ordinary prosaic British type. All my efforts were to no purpose.
Among my longer journeys from the fishing-inn, the most frequent were those to Holywell, near Flint, to the Well of St. Winifred—the reader need not be told why. He will recollect how little Winnie, while plying me with strawberries, had sagely recommended the holy water of this famous well as a 'cure for crutches.' She had actually brought me some of it in a lemonade bottle when she returned to Raxton after her first absence, and had insisted on rubbing my ankle with it. She had, as I afterwards learnt from her father, importuned and at last induced her aunt (evidently a good-natured and worthy soul) to take her to visit a friend at Holywell, a journey of many miles, for the purpose of bringing home with her a bottle of the holy water. Whenever any ascent of the gangways had proved to be more successful than usual, Winifred had attributed the good luck to the virtues contained in her lemonade bottle. Ah! superstition seemed pretty enough then.
At first in the forlorn hope that memory might have attracted her thither, and afterwards because there was a fascination for me in the well on account of its association with her, my pilgrimages to Holywell were as frequent as those of any of the afflicted devotees of the olden time, whose crutches left behind testified to the genuineness of the Saint's pretensions. Into that well Winnie's innocent young eyes had gazed—gazed in the full belief that the holy water would cure me—gazed in the full belief that the crimson stains made by thebyssuson the stones were stains left by her martyr-namesake's blood. Where had she stood when she came and looked into the well and the rivulet? On what exact spot had rested her feet—those little rosy feet that on the sea-sands used to flash through the receding foam as she chased the ebbing billows to amuse me, while I sat between my crutches in the cove looking on? It was, I found, possible to gaze in that water till it seemed alive with her—seemed to hold the reflection of the little face which years ago peered anxiously into it for the behoof of the crippled child-lover pining for her at Raxton, and unable to 'get up or down the gangways without her.'
Holywell grew to have a fascination for me, and in the following spring I left the fishing-inn beneath Snowdon, and took rooms in this interesting old town.
One day, near the rivulet that runs from St. Winifred's Well, I suddenly encountered Sinfi Lovell.
'Sinfi,' I said, 'she's dead, she's surely dead.'
'I tell ye, brother, she ain't got to die!' said Sinfi, as she came and stood beside me. 'Winnie Wynne's on'y got to beg her bread. She's alive.'
'Where is she?' I cried. 'Oh, Sinfi, I shall go mad!'
'There you're too fast for me, brother,' said she, 'when you ask mewhereshe is; but she's alive, and I ain't come quite emp'y-handed of news about her, brother.'
'Oh, tell me!' said I.
'Well,' said Sinfi, 'I've just met one of our people, Euri Lovell, as says that, the very mornin' after we seed her on the hills, he met her close to Carnarvon at break of day.'
'Then shedidgo to Carnarvon,' I said. 'What a distance for those dear feet!'
'Euri knowed her by sight,' said Sinfi, 'but didn't know about her bein' under the cuss, so he jist let her pass, sayin' to hisself, "She looks jist like a crazy wench this mornin', does Winnie Wynne." Euri was a-goin' through Carnarvon to Bangor, on to Conway and Chester, and never heerd a word about her bein' lost till he got back, six weeks ago.'
'I must go to Carnarvon at once,' said I.
'No use, brother,' said Sinfi. 'IfIhan't pretty well worked Carnarvon, it's a pity. I've bin there the last three weeks on the patrin-chase, and not a patrin could I find. It's my belief as she never went into Carnarvon town at all, but turned off and went into Llanbeblig churchyard.'
'Why do you think so, Sinfi?'
''Cause her aunt, bein' a Carnarvon woman, was buried among her own kin in Llanbeblig churchyard.
Leastwise, you won't find a ghose of a trace on her at Carnarvon, and it'll be a long kind of a wild-goose chase from here; but if you will go, go you must.'
She could not dissuade me from starting for Carnarvon at once; and, as I would go, she seemed to take it as a matter of course that she must accompany me. Our journey was partly by coach and partly afoot.
My first impulse on nearing Carnarvon was to go—I could not have said why—to Llanbeblig churchyard.
Among a group of graves of the Davieses we easily found that of Winifred's aunt, beneath a newly-planted arbutus tree. After looking at the modest mound for some time, and wondering where Winifred had stood when the coffin was lowered—as I had wondered where she had stood at St. Winifred's Well—I roamed about the churchyard with Sinfi in silence for a time.
At last she said, 'I mind comin' here wonst with Winnie, and I mind her sayin': "There's no place I should so much like to be buried in as Llanbeblig churchyard. The graves of them as die unmarried do look so beautiful."'
'How did she know the graves of those who die unmarried?'
Sinfi looked over the churchyard and waved her hand.
'Wherever you see them beautiful primroses, and them shinin' snowdrops, and them sweet-smellin' vi'lets, that's allus the grave of a child or else of a young Gorgie as died a maid; and wherever you see them laurel trees, and box trees, and 'butus trees, that's the grave of a pusson as ain't nuther child nor maid, an' the Welsh folk think nobody else on'y child'n an' maids ain't quite good enough to be turned into the blessed flowers o' spring.'
'Next to the sea,' I said, 'she loved the flowers of spring.'
'AndIshould like to be buried here too, brother,' said Sinfi, as we left the churchyard.
'But a fine strong girl like you, Sinfi, is not very likely to die unmarried while there are Romany bachelors about.'
'There ain't a-many Romany chals,' she said, 'as du'st marry Sinfi Lovell, even supposing as Sinfi Lovell 'ud marrythem, an' a Gorgio she'll never marry—an' never can marry. And to lay here aneath the flowers o 'spring, wi' the Welsh sun a-shinin' on 'em as it's a-shinin' now, that must be a sweet kind of bed, brother, and for anythink as I knows on, a Romany chi 'ud make as sweet a bed o' vi'lets as the beautifullest Gorgie-wench as wur ever bred in Carnarvon, an' as shinin' a bunch o' snowdrops as ever the Welsh spring knows how to grow.'
At any other time this extraordinary girl's talk would have interested me greatly; now, nothing had any interest for me that did not bear directly upon the fate of Winifred.
Little dreaming how this quiet churchyard had lately been one of the battle-grounds of that all-conquering power (Destiny, or Circumstance?) which had governed Winnie's life and mine, I went with Sinfi into Carnarvon, and made inquiry everywhere, but without the slightest result. This occupied several days, during which time Sinfi stayed with some acquaintances encamped near Carnarvon, while I lodged at a little hotel.
'You don't ask me how you happened to meet me at Holywell, brother,' said she to me, as we stood looking across the water at Carnarvon Castle, over whose mighty battlements the moon was fighting with an army of black, angry clouds, which a wild wind was leading furiously against her—'you don't ask me how you happened to meet me at Holywell, nor how long I've been back agin in dear old Wales, nor what I've been a-doin' on since we parted; but that's nuther here nor there. I'll tell you what I think about Winnie an' the chances o' findin' her, brother, and that'll intrust you more.'
'What is it, Sinfi?' I cried, waking up from the reminiscences, bitter and sweet, the bright moon had conjured up in my mind.
'Well, brother, Winnie, you see, was very fond o' me.'
'She was, and good reason for being fond of you she had.'
'Well, brother, bein' very fond o' me,thatmade her very fond o'allRomanies; and though she took agin me at fust, arter the cuss, as she took agin you because we was her closest friends (that's what Mr. Blyth said, you know, they allus do), she wouldn't take agin Romanies in general. No, she'd take to Romanies in general, and she'd go hangin' about the different camps, and she'd soon be snapped up, being so comely, and they'd make a lot o' money out on her jist havin' her with 'em for the "dukkerin'."'
'I don't understand you,' I said.
'Well, you know,' said Sinfi, 'anybody as is under the cuss is half with the sperrits and half with us, and so can tell thereal"dukkerin'." Only it's bad for a Romany to have another Romany in the "place" as is under the cuss; but it don't matter a bit about having a Gorgio among your breed as is under a cuss; for Gorgio cuss can't never touch Romany.'
'Then you feel quite sure she's not dead, Sinfi?'
'She's jist as live as you an' me somewheres, brother. There's two things as keepsheralive: there's the cuss, as says she's got to beg her bread, and there's the dukkeripen o' the Golden Hand on Snowdon, as says she's got to marry you.'
'But, Sinfi, I mean that, apart from all this superstition of yours, you have reason to think she's alive? and you think she's with the Romanies?'
'I know she's alive, and I think she's with the Romanies. Shemustbe, brother, with the Shaws, or the Lees, or the Stanleys, or the Boswells, or some on 'em.'
'Then,' said I, 'I'll turn Gypsy; I'll be the second Aylwin to own allegiance to the blood of Fenella Stanley. I'll scour Great Britain till I find her.'
'You can jineusif you like, brother. We're goin' all through the West of England with the gries. You're fond o' fishin' an' shootin', brother, an' though you're a Gorgio, you can't help bein' a Gorgio, and you ain't a mumply 'un, as I've said to Jim Burton many's the time; and if you can't give the left-hand body-blow like me, there ain't a-many Gorgios nor yit a-many Romanies as knows better nor you what their fistes wur made for, an' altogether, brother, Beng te tassa mandi if I shouldn't be right-on proud to see ye jine our breed. There's a coachmaker down in Chester, and he's got for sale the beautifullest livin'-waggin in all England. It's shiny orange-yellow with red window-blinds, an' if there's a colour in any rainbow ascan'tbe seed in the panels o' the front door, it's a kind o' rainbow I ain't never seed nowheres. He made it for Jericho Bozzell, the rich Griengro as so often stays at Raxton and at Gypsy Dell; but Rhona Bozzell hates a waggin and allus will sleep in a tent. They do say as the Prince o' Wales wants to buy that livin'-waggin, only he can't spare the balansers just now—his family bein' so big an' times bein' so bad. How much money ha' you got? Can you stan' a hundud an' fifty gold balansers for the waggin besides the fixins?
'Shift,' I said. 'I'm prepared to spend more than that in seekingWinnie.'
'Dordi, brother, you must be as rich as my dad, an' lie's the richest Griengro arter Jericho Bozzell. You an' me'll jist go down to Chester,' she continued, her eyes sparkling with delight at the prospect of bargaining for the waggon, 'an' we'll fix up sich a livin'-waggin as no Romany rei never had afore.'
'Agreed!' I said, wringing her hand.
'An' now you an' me's right pals,' said Sinfi.
We went to Chester, and I became owner of the famous 'livin'-waggin' coveted (according to Sinfi) by the great personage whom, on account of his name, she always spoke of as a rich, powerful, but mysterious and invisible Welshman. One of the monthly cheese-fairs was going on in the Linen Hall. Among the rows of Welsh carts standing in front of the 'Old Yacht Inn,' Sinfi introduced me to a 'Griengro' (one of the Gypsy Locks of Gloucestershire), of whom I bought a bay mare of extraordinary strength and endurance.
It was, then, to find Winifred that I joined the Gypsies. And yet I will not deny that affinity with the kinsfolk of my ancestress Fenella Stanley must have had something to do with this passage in my eccentric life. That strain of Romany blood which, according to my mother's theory, had much to do with drawing Percy Aylwin and Rhona Boswell together, was alive and potent in my own veins.
But I must pause here to say a few words about Sinfi Lovell. Some of my readers must have already recognised her as a famous character in bohemian circles. Sinfi's father was a 'Griengro,' that is to say, a horse-dealer. She was, indeed, none other than that 'Fiddling Sinfi' who became famous in many parts of England and Wales as a violinist, and also as the only performer on the old Welsh stringed instrument called the 'crwth,' or cruth. Most Gypsies are musical, but Sinfi was a genuine musical genius. Having become, through the good-nature of Winifred's aunt Mrs. Davies, the possessor of a crwth, and having been taught by her the unique capabilities of that rarely seen instrument, she soon learnt the art of fascinating her Welsh patrons by the strange, wild strains she could draw from it. This obsolete six-stringed instrument (with two of the strings reaching beyond the key-board, used as drones and struck by the thumb, the bow only being used on the other four, and a bridge placed, not at right angles to the sides of the instrument, but in an oblique direction), though in some important respects inferior to the violin, is in other respects superior to it. Heard among the peaks of Snowdon, as I heard them during our search for Winifred, the notes of the crwth have a wonderful wildness and pathos. It is supposed to have the power of drawing the spirits when a maiden sings to its accompaniment a mysterious old Cymric song or incantation.
Among her own people it was as a seeress, as an adept in the real dukkering—the dukkering for the Romanies, as distinguished from the false dukkering, the dukkering for the Gorgios—that Sinfi's fame was great. She had travelled over nearly all England—wherever, in short, there were horse-fairs—and was familiar with London, where in the studios of artists she was in request as a face model of extraordinary value. Nor were these all the characteristics that distinguished her from the common herd of Romany chies: she was one of the few Gypsies of either sex who could speak with equal fluency both the English and Welsh Romanes, and she was in the habit sometimes of mixing the two dialects in a most singular way. Though she had lived much in Wales, and had a passionate love of Snowdon, she belonged to a famous branch of the Lovells whose haunt had for ages been in Wales and also the East Midlands, and she had caught entirely the accent of that district.
Among artists in London, as I afterwards learnt, she often went by the playful name of 'Lady Sinfi Lovell,' for the following reason:
She was extremely proud, and believed the 'Kaulo Camloes' to represent the aristocracy not only of the Gypsies, but of the world. Moreover, she had of late been brought into close contact with a certain travelling band of Hungarian Gypsy-musicians, who visited England some time ago. Intercourse with these had fostered her pride in a curious manner. The musicians are the most intelligent and most widely-travelled not only of the Hungarian Gypsies, but of all the Romany race. They are darker than the sátoros czijányok, or tented Gypsies. The Lovells being the darkest of all the Gypsies of Great Britain (and the most handsome, hence called Kaulo Camloes), it was easy to make out an affinity closer than common between the Lovells and the Hungarian musicians. Sinfi heard much talk among the Hungarians of the splendours of the early leaders of the continental Romanies. She was told of Romany kings, dukes, and counts. She accepted, with that entire faith which characterised her, the stories of the exploits of Duke Michael, Duke Andreas, Duke Panuel, and the rest. It only needed a hint from one of her continental friends, that her father, Panuel Lovell, was probably a descendant of Duke Panuel, for Sinfi to consider him a Duke. From that moment she felt as strongly as any Gorgie ever felt the fine sentiment expressed in the phrase,noblesse oblige; and to hear her say, 'I'm a duke's chavi [daughter], and mustn't do so and so,' was a delightful and refreshing experience to me. Poor Panuel groaned under these honours, for Sinfi insisted now on his dressing in a brown velveteen coat, scarlet waistcoat with gold coins for buttons, and the high-crowned, ribbon-bedizened hat which prosperous Gypsies once used to wear. She seemed to consider that her sister Videy (whose tastes were low for a Welsh Gypsy) did not belong to the high aristocracy, though born of the same father and mother. Moreover, 'dook' in Romanes means spirit, ghost, and very likely Sinfi found some power of association in this fact; for Videy was a born sceptic.
One of the special charms of Gypsy life is that a man fully admitted into the Romany brotherhood can be on terms of close intimacy with a Gypsy girl without awaking the smallest suspicion of love-making or flirtation; at least it was so in my time.
Under my father's will, a considerable legacy had come to me, and, after going to London to receive this, I made the circuit of the West of England with Sinfi's people. No sign whatever of Winifred did I find in any of the camps. I was for returning to Wales, where my thoughts always were; but I could not expect Sinfi to leave her family, so I started thither alone, leaving my waggon in their charge. Before I reached Wales, however, I met in the eastern part of Cheshire, not far from Moreton Hall, some English Lees, with whom I got into talk about the Hungarian musicians, who were here then on another flying visit to England. Something that dropped from one of the Lees as to the traditions and superstitions of the Hungarian Gypsies with regard to people suffering from dementia set me thinking; and at last I came to the conclusion that if I really believed Winifred to have taken shelter among the Romanies, it would be absurd not to follow up a band like these Hungarians. Accordingly I changed my course, and followed them up. On coming upon them in a famous English camping-place I found the Lovells and the Boswells. Rhona, dressed in gorgeous attire, evidently purchased at some second-hand shop, was rehearsing the shawl-dance for a great occasion at a neighbouring fair. But no Winifred.
My health was now much impaired by sleeplessness (the inevitable result of my anxiety), and by a narcotic, which from the commencement of my troubles I had been in the habit of taking in ever-increasing doses—a terrible narcotic, one of whose multitudinous effects is that of sending all the patient's thoughts circling around one central idea like planets round the sun. Painful and agonising as had been my suspense,—my oscillation between hope and dread,—during my wanderings with the Lovells, these wanderings had not been without their moments of comfort, for all of which I had been indebted to Sinfi. She would sit with me in an English lane, under a hedge or tree, on a balmy summer evening, or among the primroses, wild hyacinths, buttercups and daisies of the sweet meadows, chattering her reminiscences of Winifred. She would mostly end by saying: 'Winnie was very fond on ye, brother, and we shall find her yit. The Golden Hand on Snowdon wasn't there for nothink. The dukkeripen says you'll marry her yit; a love like yourn can follow the tryenest patrin as ever wur laid.' Then she would play on her crwth and say, 'Ah, brother, I shall be able to make this crwth bring ye a sight o' Winnie's livin' mullo if she's alive, and there ain't a sperrit of the hills as wouldn't answer to it.'
Of Gorgios generally, however, Sinfi had at heart a feeling somewhat akin to dread. I could not understand it.
'Why do you dislike the Gorgios, Sinfi?' I said to her one day on Lake Ogwen, after the return of the Lovells to Wales. We were trout-fishing from a boat anchored to a heavy block of granite which she had fastened to a rope and heaved overboard with a strength that would have surpassed that of most Englishwomen.
'That's nuther here nor there, brother,' she replied mysteriously. So months and months dragged by, and brought no trace of Winifred.
One day as Sinfi and I were strolling through the lovely glades between Capel Curig and Bettws y Coed, on our way to a fishing-place, we sat down by a stream to eat some bread and cheese we had brought with us.
The sunlight, as it broke here and there between the thick foliage, was playing upon the little cascades in such magical fashion—turning the water into a torrent that seemed as though molten rubies and sapphires and opals were ablaze in one dancing faery stream,—that even the dark tragedy of human life seemed enveloped for a moment in an atmosphere of poetry and beauty. Sinfi gazed at it silently, then she said:
'This is the very place where Winnie wonst tried to save a hernshaw as wur wounded. She wur tryin' to ketch hold on it, as the water wur carryin' it along, and he pretty nigh beat her to death wi' his wings for her pains. It wur then as she come an' stayed along o' us for a bit, an' she got to be as fond o' my crwth as you be's, an' she used to say that if there wur any music as 'ud draw her sperrit hack to the airth arter she wur dead it 'ud be the sound o' my crwth; but there she wur wrong as wrong could be: Romany music couldn't never touch Gorgio sperrit; 'tain't a bit likely. But it can draw her livin' mullo [wraith].' And as she spoke she began to play her crwthpizzicatoand to sing the opening bars of the old Welsh incantation which I had heard on Snowdon on that never-to-be-forgotten morning.
This, as usual, sent my mind at once back to the picture of Fenella Stanley calling round her by the aid of her music the spirits of Snowdon. And then a strange hallucination came upon me, that made me clutch at Sinfi's arm. Close by her, reflected in a little glassy pool divided off from the current by a ring of stones, two blue eyes seemed gazing. Then the face and the entire figure of Winifred appeared, but Winifred dressed as a beggar girl in rags, Winifred standing at a street corner holding out matches for sale.
'Winifred!' I exclaimed; and then the hallucination passed, and Sinfi's features were reflected in the water. My exclamation had the strangest effect upon Sinfi. Her lips, which usually wore a peculiarly proud and fearless curve, quivered, and were losing the brilliant rosebud redness which mostly characterised them. The little blue tattoo rosettes at the corners of her mouth seemed to be growing more distinct as she gazed in the water through eyes dark and mysterious as Night's, but, like Night's own eyes, ready, I thought, to call up the throbbing fires of a million stars.
'What made you cry out "Winifred"?' she said, as the music ceased.
'What you told me about the spirits following the crwth was causing the strangest dream,' I answered. 'I thought I saw Winnie's face reflected in the water, and I thought she was in awful distress. And all the time it was your face.'
'That wur her livin' mullo,' said Sinfi solemnly.
Convinced though I was that the hallucination was the natural result of Sinfi's harping upon the literal fulfilment of the curse, it depressed me greatly.
Close to this beautiful spot we came suddenly upon two tourists sketching. And now occurred one of those surprises of which I have found that real life is far more full than any fiction dares to be. As we passed the artists, I heard one call out to the other, with a 'burr' which I will not attempt to render, having never lived in the 'Black Country':
'You have a true eye for composition; what do you think of this tree?'
The speaker's remarkable appearance attracted my attention.
'Well,' said I to Sinfi, 'that's the first time I ever saw a painter shaven and dressed in a coat like a Quaker's.'
Sinfi looked across at the speaker through the curling smoke from my pipe, gave a start of surprise, and then said: 'So you've never seedhim? That's because you're a country Johnny, brother, and don't know nothink about Londra life. That's a friend o' mine from Londra as has painted me many's the time.'
'Painted you?' I said; 'the man in black, with the goggle eyes, squatting there under the white umbrella? What's his name?'
'That's the cel'erated Mr. Wilderspin, an' he's painted me many's the time, an' a rare rum 'un he is too. Dordi! it makes me laugh to think on him. Most Gorgios is mad, more or less, but he's the maddest 'un I ever know'd.'
We had by this time got close to the painter's companion, who, sitting upright on his camp-stool, was busy with his brush. Without shifting his head to look at us, or removing his eyes from his work, he said, in a voice of striking power and volume: 'Nothing but an imperfect experience of life, Lady Sinfi, could have made you pronounce our friend there to be the maddest Gorgio living.'
'Dordi!' exclaimed Sinfi, turning sharply round in great astonishment. 'Fancy seein' both on 'em here!'
'Mad our friend is, no doubt, Lady Sinfi,' said the painter, without looking round, 'but not so mad as certain illustrious Gorgios I could name, some of them born legislators and some of them (apparently) born. R.A.'s.'
'Who should ha' thought of seein' 'em both here?' said Sinfi again.
'That,' said the painter, without even yet turning to look at us or staying the movement of his brush, 'is a remark I never make in a little dot of a world like this, Lady Sinfi, where I expect to see everybody everywhere. But, my dear Romany chi,' he continued, now turning slowly round, 'in passing your strictures upon the Gorgio world, you should remember that you belong to a very limited aristocracy, and that your remarks may probably fall upon ears of an entirely inferior and Gorgio convolution.'
'No offence, I hope.' said Sinfi.
'Offence in calling the Gorgios mad? Not the smallest, save that you have distinctly plagiarised from me in your classification of the Gorgio race.'
His companion called out again. 'Just one moment! Do come and look at the position of this tree.'
'In a second, Wilderspin, in a second,' said the other. 'An old friend and myself are in the midst of a discussion.'
'A discussion!' said the person addressed as Wilderspin. 'And with whom, pray?'
'With Lady Sinfi Lovell,—a discussion as to the exact value of your own special kind of madness in relation to the tomfooleries of the Gorgio mind in general.'
'Kekka! kekka!' said Sinfi, 'you shouldn't have said that.'
'And I was on the point of proving to her ladyship that in these days, when Art has become genteel, and even New Grub Street "decorates" her walls—when success means not so much painting fine pictures as building fine houses to paint in—the greatest compliment you can pay to a man of genius is surely to call him either a beggar or a madman.'
The peculiarity of this 'chaff' was that it was uttered in a simple and serious tone, in which not the faintest tinge of ironical intent was apparent. The other artist looked across and said: 'Dear me! Sinfi Lovell! I am pleased to see you, Sinfi. I will ask you for a sitting to-morrow. A study of your head would be very suggestive among the Welsh hills.'
The man who had been 'chaffing' Sinfi then rose and walked towards his Quaker-like companion, and I had an opportunity of observing him fully. I saw that he was a spare man, wearing a brown velvet coat and a dark felt hat. The collar of the coat seemed to have been made carefully larger than usual, in order to increase the apparent width of his chest. His hair was brown and curly, but close cut. His features were regular, perhaps handsome. His complexion was bright,—fair almost,—rosy in hue, and his eyes were brown.
He shook hands with Sinfi as he passed us, and gave me a glance of that rapid and all-comprehending kind which seems to take in, at once, a picture in its every detail.
'What do you think of him?' said Sinfi to me, as he passed on and we two sat down on the grass by the side of the stream.
'I am puzzled,' I replied, 'to know whether he is a young man who looks like a middle-aged one, or a middle-aged man who looks like a young one. How's his hair under the hat?'
'Thinnish atop,' said Sinfi laconically. 'And I'm puzzled,' I added, still looking at him as he walked over the grass, 'as to whether he's a little man who looks middle-sized, or a middle-sized man who looks little.'
'He's a little big 'un,' said Sinfi; 'about the height o' RhonaBozzell's Tarno Rye.'
'Altogether he puzzles me, Sinfi!'
'He puzzled me same way at fust.'
What was it that made me take an interest so strange, strong, and sudden in this man? Without a hint of hair upon his face, while juvenile curls clustered thick and short beneath his wide-awake, he had at first struck me as being not much more than a lad, till, as he gave me that rapid, searching glance in passing, I perceived the little crow's-feet round his eyes, and he then struck me immediately as being probably on the verge of thirty-five. His figure was slim and thin, his waist almost girlish in its fall. I should have considered him small had not the unusually deep, loud, manly, and sonorous voice with which he had accosted Sinfi conveyed an impression of size and weight such as even big men do not often produce. This deep voice, coupled with that gaunt kind of cheek which we associate with the most demure people, produced an effect of sedateness such as I should have expected to find (and did not find) in the other man—the man of the shaven cheek and Quaker costume; but, in the one glance I had got from those watchful, sagacious, twinkling eyes, there was an expression quite peculiar to them, quite inscrutable, quite indescribable.
'Can you reckon him up, brother?' said Sinfi, taking my meerschaum from my lips to refill it for me, as she was fond of doing.
'No.'
'Nor I nuther,' said Sinfi. 'Nor I can't pen his dukkerin' nuther, though often's the time I've tried it.'
During this time the two friends seemed to have finished their colloquy upon 'composition'; for they both came up to us. Sinfi rose; I sat still on the grass, smoking my pipe, listening to the chatter of the water as it rushed over the rocks. By this time my curiosity in the younger man had died away. My mind was occupied with the dream-picture of a little blue-eyed girl struggling with a wounded heron. I had noticed, however, that he of the piercing eyes did not look at me again, having entirely exhausted at a glance such interest as I had momentarily afforded him; while his companion seemed quite unconscious of my presence as he stood there, his large, full, deep, brown eyes gazing apparently at something over my head, a long way off. Also I had noticed that 'Visionary' was stamped upon this man's every feature—that he seemed an inspired baby of forty, talking there to his companion and to Sinfi, the sun falling upon his long, brown, curly hair, mixed with grey, which fell from beneath his hat, and floated around his collar like a mane.
When my reverie had passed, I found the artists trying to arrange with Sinfi to give an open-air sitting to one of them, the man addressed as Wilderspin. Sinfi seemed willing enough to come to terms; but I saw her look round at me as if saying to herself, 'What am I to do with you?'
'I should like for my brother to sit too,' I heard her say.
'Surely!' said Wilderspin. 'Your brother would be a great gain to my picture.'
Sinfi then came to me, and said that the painter wanted me to sit to him.
'But,' said I in an undertone, 'the Gorgios will certainly find out that I am no Romany.'
'Not they,' said Sinfi, 'the Gorgios is sich fools. Why, bless you, aGorgio ain't got eves and ears like a Romany. You don't suppose as aGorgio can hear or see or smell like a Romany can?'
'But you forget, Sinfi, that I am a Gorgio, and there are not manyRomanies can boast of better senses than your brother Hal.'
'Dordi!' said Sinfi, 'that's jist like your mock-modesty. Your great-grandmother wur a Romany, and it's my belief that if you only went back fur enough, you'd find you had jist as good Romany blood in your veins as I have, and my daddy is a duke, you know, a real, reg'lar, out-an'-out Romany duke.'
'I'm afraid you flatter me, sister,' I replied. 'However, let's try the Gorgios;' and I got up and walked with her close to the two sketchers.
Wilderspin was on the point of engaging me, when the other man, without troubling to look at me again, said:
'He's no more a Romany than I am.'
'Ain't a Romany?' said Sinfi. 'Who says my brother ain't a Romany? Where did you ever see a Gorgio with a skin like that?' she said, triumphantly pulling up my sleeve and exposing one of my wrists. 'That ain't sunburn, that's the real Romany brown, an' we's twinses, only I'm the biggest, an' we's the child'n of a duke, a real, reg'lar, out-an'-out Romany duke.'
He gave a glance at the exposed wrist.
'As to the Romany brown,' said he, 'a little soap would often make a change in the best Romany brown—ducal or other.'
'Why, look at his neck,' said Sinfi, turning down my neckerchief; 'is that sunburn, or is it Romany brown, I should like to know?'
'I assure you,' said the speaker, still addressing her in the same grave, measured voice, 'that the Romanies have no idea what a little soap can do with the Romany brown.'
'Do you mean to say,' cried Sinfi, now entirely losing her temper (for on the subject of Romany cleanliness she, the most cleanly of women, was keenly sensitive)—'do you mean to say as the Romany dials an' the Romany dries don't wash theirselves? I know what you fine Gorgiosdosay,—you're allus a-tellin' lies about us Romanies. Brother,' she cried, turning now to me in a great fury, 'I'm a duke's chavi, an' mustn't fight no mumply Gorgios; why don'tyoutake an' make his bed for him?'
And certainly the man's supercilious impertinence was beginning to irritate me.
'I should advise you to withdraw that about the soap,' I said quietly, looking at him.
'Oh! and if I don't?'
'Why, then I suppose I must do as my sister bids,' said I. 'I must make your bed,' pointing to the grass beneath his feet. 'But I think it only fair to tell you that I am somewhat of a fighting man, which you probably are not.'
'You mean…?' said he (turning round menacingly, but with no more notion of how to use his fists than a lobster).
'I mean that we should not be fighting on equal terms,' I said.
'In other words,' said he, 'you mean…?' and he came nearer.
'In other words, I mean that, judging from the way in which you are advancing towards me now, the result of such an encounter might not tend to the honour and glory of the British artist in Wales.'
'But,' said he, 'you are no Gypsy. Who are you?'
'My name is Henry Aylwin,' said I; 'and I must ask you to withdraw your words about the virtues of soap, as my sister objects to them.'
'What?' cried he, losing for the first time his matchlesssang-froid. 'Henry Aylwin?' Then he looked at me in silent amazement, while an expression of the deepest humorous enjoyment overspread his features, making them positively shine as though oiled. Finally, he burst into a loud laugh, that was all the more irritating from the manifest effort he made to restrain it.
'Did I hear His Majesty of Gypsydom aright?' he said, as soon as his hilarity allowed him to speak. 'Is the humble bed of a mere painter to be made for him by the representative of the proud Aylwins, the genteel Aylwins, the heir-presumptive Aylwins—the most respectable branch of a most respectable family, which, alas! has its ungenteel, its bohemian, its vulgar offshoots? Did I hear His Majesty of Gypsydom aright?'
He leant against a tree, and gave utterance to peal after peal of laughter.
I advanced with rapidly rising anger, but his hilarity had so overmastered him that he did not heed it.
'Wilderspin,' cried he, 'come here! Pray come here. Have I not often told you the reason why I threw up my engagement with my theatrical manager, and missed my high vocation in ungenteel comedy? Have I not often told you that it sprang from no disrespect to my friends, the comic actors, but from the feeling that no comedian can hope to be comic enough to compete with the real thing—the true harlequinade of everyday life, roaring and screaming around me wherever I go?'
Then, without waiting for his companion's reply, he turned to me, and giving an added volume to his sonorous voice, said:
'And you, Sir King, do you know whose bed Your Majesty was going to make at the bidding of—well, of a duke's chavi?'
I advanced with still growing anger. 'Stay, King Bamfylde, stay,' said he; 'shall the beds of the mere ungenteel Aylwins, "the outside Aylwins," be made by the high Gypsy-gentility of Raxton?'
A light began to break in upon me. 'Surely,' I said, 'surely you are not Cyril Aylwin, the———?'
'Pray finish your sentence, sir, and say the low bohemian painter, the representative of the great ungenteel—the successor to the Aylwin peerage.'
The other painter, looking in blank amazement at my newly-found kinsman's extraordinary merriment, exclaimed, 'Bless me! Then you really can laugh aloud, Mr. Cyril. What has happened? What can have happened to make my dear friend laugh aloud?'
'Well he may ask,' said Cyril, turning to me. 'He knows that ever since I was a boy in jackets I have despised the man who, in a world where all is so comic, could select any particular point of the farce for his empty guffaw. But I am conquered at last. Let me introduce you, Wilderspin, to my kinsman, Henry Aylwin of Raxton Hall, alias Lord Henry Lovell of Little Egypt—one of Duke Panuel's interesting twinses.'
But Wilderspin's astonishment, apparently, was not at therencontre: it was at the spectacle of his companion's hilarity. 'Wonderful!' he murmured, with his eyes still fastened upon Cyril. 'My dear friend can laugh aloud. Most wonderful! What can have happened?'
This is what had happened. By one of those strange coincidences which make the drama of real life far more wonderful than the drama of any stage, I, in my character of wandering Gypsy, had been thrown across the path of thebête noireof my mother and aunt, Cyril Aylwin, a painter of bohemian proclivities, who (under the name of 'Cyril') had obtained some considerable reputation. This kinsman of mine had been held up to me as a warning from my very childhood, though wherein lay his delinquencies I never did clearly understand, save that he had once been an actor—before acting had become genteel. Often as I had heard of this eccentric painter as the representative of the branch of the family which preceded mine in the succession to the coveted earldom, I had never seen him before.
He stood and looked at me in a state of intense amusement, but did not speak.
'So you are Cyril Aylwin?' I said. 'Still you must withdraw what you said to my sister about the soap.'
'Delicious!' said he, grasping my hand. 'I had no idea that high gentility numbered chivalry among its virtues. Lady Sinfi,' he continued, turning to her, 'they say this brother of yours is a character, and, by Jove! he is. And as to you, dear lady, I am proud of the family connection. The man who has two Romany Rye kinsmen may be excused for showing a little pride. I withdraw every word about the virtues of soap, and am convinced that it can do nothing with the true Romany-Aylwin brown.'
On that we shook hands all round. 'But, Sinfi,' said I, 'why did you not tell me that this was my kinsman?'
''Cause I didn't know,' said she. 'I han't never seed him since I've know'd you. I always heerd his friends call him Cyril, and so I used to call him Mr. Cyril.'
'But, Lady Sinfi, my Helen of Little Egypt,' said Cyril, 'suppose that in my encounter with my patrician cousin—an encounter which would have been entirely got up in honour of you—suppose it had happened that I had made your brother's bed for him?'
'You makehisbed!' exclaimed Sinfi, laughing.
'Dordi! how you would ha' went down afore the Swimmin' Rei!'[Footnote]
[Footnote: By the Welsh Gypsies, but few of whom can swim, I was called 'the Swimmin' Rei,' a name which would have been far more appropriately given to Percy Aylwin (Rhona Boswell's lover), one of the strongest swimmers in England; but he was simply called the Tarno Rye (the young gentleman).]
'But suppose that, on the contrary, he had gone down before me,' said Cyril; 'suppose I had been the death of your Swimming Rei, I should have been tried for the wilful murder of a prince of Little Egypt, the son of a Romany duke. Why, Helen of Troy was not half so mischievous a beauty as you.'
'You was safe enough, no fear,' said Sinfi. 'It 'ud take six o' you to settle the Swimmin' Rei.'
I found that Cyril and his strange companion were staying at 'The Royal Oak,' at Bettws y Coed. They asked me to join them, but when I told them I 'could not leave my people, who were encamped about two miles off,' Cyril again looked at me with an expression of deepest enjoyment, and exclaimed 'delightful creature.'
Turning to Sinfi, he said: 'Then we'll go with you and call upon the noble father of the twins, my old friend King Panuel.'
'He ain't a king,' said Sinfi modestly; 'he's only a duke.'
'You'll give us some tea, Lady Sinfi?' said Cyril.
'No tea equal to Gypsy tea.'
'Romany tea, Mr. Cyril,' replied Sinfi, with perfect dignity and grace. 'My daddy, the duke, will be pleased to welcome you.'
We all strolled towards the tents. I offered to carry an umbrella and a camp-stool. Cyril walked briskly away with Sinfi, leaving me to get on with Wilderspin as best I could. Before the other two were out of earshot, however, I heard Cyril say,
'You shouldn't have taken so seriously my chaff about the soap, Sinfi. You ought to know me better by this time than to think that I would really insult you.'
'How you would ha' went down afore the Swimmin' Rei!' replied Sinfi regretfully.
Between my new companion, Wilderspin, and myself there was an awkward silence for some time. He was evidently in a brown study. I had ample opportunity for examining his face. Deeply impressed upon his forehead there was, as I now perceived, an ancient scar of a peculiar shape. At last, a lovely bit of scenery broke the spell, and conversation began to flow freely.
We had nearly got within sight of the encampment when he said,
'I am in some perplexity, sir, about the various branches of your family. Aylwin, I need not tell you, was the name of the greatest man of this age, and I am anxious to know what is exactly your connection with him.'
'You surprise me,' I said. 'Out of our own family, in its various branches, there is, I have been told, no very large number of Aylwins, and I had no idea that one of them had become famous.'
'I did not say famous, sir, but great; two very different words. Yet, in a certain deep sense, it may be said of Philip Aylwin's name that since his lamented death it has even become famous. The Aylwinians (of which body I am, as you are no doubt aware, founder and president) are, I may say, becoming—'
'Philip Aylwin!' I said. 'Why, that was my father. He famous!'
The recollection of the essay upon 'Hamalet and Hamlet,' the thought of the brass-rubbings, the kneecaps and mittens, came before me in an irresistibly humorous light, and I could not repress a smile. Then arose upon me the remembrance of the misery that had fallen upon Winnie and myself from his monomania and what seemed to me his superstitious folly, and I could not withhold an angry scowl. Then came the picture of the poor scarred breast, the love-token, and the martyrdom that came to him who had too deeply loved, and smile and frown both passed from my face as I murmured,—'Poor father! he famous!
'Philip Aylwin's son!' said Wilderspin, staring at me. Then, raising his hat as reverentially to me as if I had been the son of Shakespeare himself, he said, 'Mr. Aylwin, since Mary Wilderspin went home to heaven, the one great event of my life has been the reading ofThe Veiled Queen, your father's book of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder in the mind of Man. To apply his principles to Art, sir—to give artistic rendering to the profound idea hinted at in the marvellous vignette on the title-page of his third edition—has been, for some time past, the proud task of my life. And you are the great man's son! Astonishing! Although his great learning overwhelms my mind and appals my soul (whom, indeed, should it not overwhelm and appal?) there is not a pamphlet of his that I do not know intimately, almost by heart.'