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Title: Aylwin

Author: Theodore Watts-Dunton

Release Date: September 14, 2004  [eBook #13454]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


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E-text prepared by Roy Brown, Trowbridge, England



AYLWIN

With Two Appendices, One Containing a Note on the Character of
D'arcy; the Other a Key to the Story, Reprinted from _Notes and
Queries_

by

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON

Author of 'The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story,' etc. etc.







TO
C. J. R.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF SUNNY DAYS AND STARLIT NIGHTS
WHEN WE RAMBLED TOGETHER ON CRUMBLING CLIFFS THAT
ARE NOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
THIS EDITION OF A STORY WHICH HAS BEEN A LINK BETWEEN US
IS INSCRIBED



CAUGHT IN THE EBBING TIDE

A REMINISCENCE OF RAXTOX CLIFFS

The mightiest Titan's stroke could not withstand
  An ebbing tide like this. These swirls denote
  How wind and tide conspire. I can but float
To the open sea and strike no more for land.
Farewell, brown cliffs, farewell, beloved sand
  Her feet have pressed--farewell, dear little boat
  Where Gelert,[Footnote] calmly sitting on my coat,
Unconscious of my peril, gazes bland!

All dangers grip me save the deadliest, fear:
  Yet these air-pictures of the past that glide--
  These death-mirages o'er the heaving tide--
Showing two lovers in an alcove clear,
  Will break my heart. I see them and I hear
As there they sit at morning, side by side.

[Footnote: A famous swimming dog.]


THE  VISION

_With Barton elms behind--in front the sea,
  Sitting in rosy light in that alcove,
They hear the first lark rise o'er Raxton Grove:
'What should I do with fame, dear heart?' says he,
'You talk of fame, poetic fame, to me
  Whose crown is not of laurel but of love--
  To me who would not give this little glove
On this dear hand for Shakespeare's dower in fee.

While, rising red and kindling every billow,
  The sun's shield shines 'neath many a golden spear,
To lean with you, against this leafy pillow,
  To murmur words of love in this loved ear--
To feel you bending like a bending willow,
  This is to be a poet--this, my dear!'_

O God, to die and leave her--die and leave
  The heaven so lately won!--And then, to know
  What misery will be hers--what lonely woe!--
To see the bright eyes weep, to see her grieve
Will make me a coward as I sink, and cleave
  To life though Destiny has bid me go.
  How shall I bear the pictures that will glow
Above the glowing billows as they heave?

One picture fades, and now above the spray
  Another shines: ah, do I know the bowers
  Where yon sweet woman stands--the woodland flowers,
In that bright wreath of grass and new-mown hay--
  That birthday wreath I wove when earthly hours
Wore angel-wings,--till portents brought dismay?

Shall I turn coward here who sailed with Death
  Through many a tempest on mine own North Sea,
  And quail like him of old who bowed the knee--
Faithless--to billows of Genesereth?
Did I turn coward when my very breath
  Froze on my lips that Alpine night when He
  Stood glimmering there, the Skeleton, with me,
While avalanches rolled from peaks beneath?

Each billow bears me nearer to the verge
  Of realms where she is not--where love must wait.
If Gelert, there, could hear, no need to urge
  That friend, so faithful, true, affectionate,
  To come and help me, or to share my fate.
Ah! surely I see him springing through the surge.
       [_The dog, plunging into the tide and striking
            towards his master with immense strength,
            reaches him and swims round him._]

Oh, Gelert, strong of wind and strong of paw,
  Here gazing like your namesake, 'Snowdon's Hound,'
  When great Llewelyn's child could not be found,
And all the warriors stood in speechless awe--
Mute as your namesake when his master saw
  The cradle tossed--the rushes red around--
  With never a word, but only a whimpering sound
To tell what meant the blood on lip and jaw!

In such a strait, to aid this gaze so fond,
  Should I, brave friend, have needed other speech
Than this dear whimper? Is there not a bond
  Stronger than words that binds us each to each?--
But Death has caught us both. 'Tis far beyond
  The strength of man or dog to win the beach.

Through tangle-weed--through coils of slippery kelp
  Decking your shaggy forehead, those brave eyes
  Shine true--shine deep of love's divine surmise
As hers who gave you--then a Titan whelp!--
I think you know my danger and would help!--
  See how I point to yonder smack that lies
  At anchor--Go! His countenance replies.
Hope's music rings in Gelert's eager yelp!
             [_The dog swims swiftly away down the tide._]

Now, life and love and death swim out with him!
  If he should reach the smack, the men will guess
  The dog has left his master in distress.
She taught him in these very waves to swim--
'The prince of pups,' she said, 'for wind and limb'--
  And now those lessons come to save--to bless.


ENVOY

(_The day after the rescue: Gelert and his master walking along
the sand._)

'Twas in no glittering tourney's mimic strife,--
  'Twas in that bloody fight in Raxton Grove,
  While hungry ravens croaked from boughs above,
And frightened blackbirds shrilled the warning fife--
'Twas there, in days when Friendship still was rife.
  Mine ancestor who threw the challenge-glove
  Conquered and found his foe a soul to love,
Found friendship--Life's great second crown of life.

So I this morning love our North Sea more
  Because he fought me well, because these waves
Now weaving sunbows for us by the shore
  Strove with me, tossed me in those emerald caves
  That yawned above my head like conscious graves--
I love him as I never loved before.



PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

The heart-thought of this hook being the peculiar doctrine in Philip
Aylwin's _Veiled Queen_, and the effect of it upon the fortunes
of the hero and the other characters, the name 'The Renascence of
Wonder' was the first that came to my mind when confronting the
difficult question of finding a name for a book that is at once a
love-story and an expression of a creed. But eventually I decided,
and I think from the worldly point of view wisely, to give it simply
the name of the hero.

The important place in the story, however, taken by this creed did
not escape the most acute and painstaking of the critics. Madame
Galimberti, for instance, in the elaborate study of the book which
she made in the Rivista d' Italia, gave great attention to its
central idea: so did M. Maurice Muret, in the _Journal des
Debats_; so did M. Henri Jacottet in _La Semaine Litteraire_.
Mr. Baker, again, in his recently published work on fiction,
described _Aylwin_ as 'an imaginative romance of modern days,
the moral idea of which is man's attitude in face of the unknown,'
or, as the writer puts it, 'the renascence of wonder.' With regard to
the phrase itself, in the introduction to the latest edition of
Aylwin--the twenty-second edition--I made the following brief reply
to certain questions that have been raised by critics both in England
and on the Continent concerning it. The phrase, I said, 'The
Renascence of Wonder,'

  Is used to express that great revived movement of the soul of man
  which is generally said to have begun with the poetry of
  Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and others, and after many varieties
  of expression reached its culmination in the poems and pictures of
  Rossetti. The phrase 'The Renascence of Wonder' merely indicates
  that there are two great impulses governing man, and probably not
  man only but the entire world of conscious life--the impulse of
  acceptance--the impulse to take unchallenged and for granted all
  the phenomena of the outer world as they are, and the impulse to
  confront these phenomena with eyes of inquiry and wonder.

The painter Wilderspin says to Henry Aylwin, 'The one great event of
my life has been the reading of _The Veiled Queen_, your
father's hook of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder
in the mind of man.' And further on he says that his own great
picture symbolical of this renascence was suggested by Philip
Aylwin's vignette. Since the original writing of Aylwin, many years
ago, I have enlarged upon its central idea in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ and in the introductory essay to the third volume of
Chambers's _Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, and in other
places. Naturally, therefore, the phrase has been a good deal
discussed. Quite lately Dr. Robertson Nicoll has directed attention
to the phrase, and he has taken it as a text of a remarkable
discourse upon the 'Renascence of Wonder in Religion.' I am tempted
to quote some of his words:--

  Amongst the Logia recently discovered by the explorers of the Egypt
  Fund, there is one of which part was already known to have occurred
  in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. It runs as follows:--'Let
  not him that seeketh cease from his search until he find, and when
  he finds he shall wonder: wondering he shall reach the kingdom, and
  when he reaches the kingdom he shall have rest.'...We believe that
  Butler was one of the first to share in the Renascence of Wonder,
  which was the renascence of religion....Men saw once more the
  marvel of the universe and the romance of man's destiny. They
  became aware of the spiritual world, of the supernatural, of the
  lifelong struggle of the soul, of the power of the unseen.

The words quoted by Dr. Nicoll might very appropriately be used as a
motto for _Aylwin_ and also for its sequel _The Coming of
Love: Rhona Boswells Story_.




PREFACE TO THE TWENTY-SECOND EDITION OF 1904

Nothing in regard to Aylwin has given me so much pleasure as the way
in which it has been received both by my Welsh friends and my Romany
friends. I little thought, when I wrote it, that within three years
of its publication the gypsy pictures in it would be discoursed upon
to audiences of 4000 people by a man so well equipped to express an
opinion on such a subject as the eloquent and famous 'Gypsy Smith,'
and described by him as 'the most trustworthy picture of Romany life
in the English language, containing in Sinfi Lovell the truest
representative of the Gypsy girl.'

And as regards my Welsh readers, they have done me the honour of
suggesting that an illustrated edition of the work would be prized by
all lovers of 'Beautiful Wales.'

Although such an edition is, I am told, an expensive undertaking, my
friend and publisher, Mr. Blackett, sees his way, he tells me, to
bringing it out.

Since the first appearance of the book there have been many
interesting discussions by Welsh readers, in various periodicals,
upon the path taken by Sinfi Lovell and Aylwin in their ascent of
Snowdon.

A very picturesque letter appeared in _Notes and Queries_ on May
3rd, 1902, signed _C. C. B._ in answer to a query by E. W.,
which I will give myself the pleasure of quoting because it describes
the writer's ascent of Snowdon (accompanied by a son of my old friend
Harry Owen, late of Pen-y-Gwryd) along a path which was almost the
same as that taken by Aylwin and Sinfi Lovell, when he saw the same
magnificent spectacle that was seen by them:--

  The mist was then clearing (it was in July) and in a few moments
  was entirely gone. So marvellous a transformation scene, and so
  immense a prospect, I have never beheld since. For the first and
  only time in my life I saw from one spot almost the whole of North
  and Mid-Wales, a good part of Western England, and a glimpse of
  Scotland and Ireland. The vision faded all too quickly, but it was
  worth walking thirty-three or thirty-four miles, as I did that day,
  for even a briefer view than that.

Referring to Llyn Coblynau this interesting writer says--

  Only from Glaslyn would the description in _Aylwin_ of y Wyddfa
  standing out against the sky 'as narrow and as steep as the sides of
  an acorn' be correct, but from the north and north-west sides of
  Glaslyn this answers with quite curious exactness to the appearance
  of the mountain. We must suppose the action of the story to have
  taken place before the revival of the copper-mining industry on
  Snowdon.

With regard, however, to the question here raised, I can save myself
all trouble by simply quoting the admirable remarks of _Sion o
Ddyli_ in the same number of _Notes and Queries:_--

  None of us are very likely to succeed in placing this llyn, because
  the author of _Aylwin_, taking a privilege of romance often
  taken by Sir Walter Scott before him, probably changed the
  landmarks in idealising the scene and adapting it to his story. It
  may be, indeed, that the Welsh name given to the llyn in the book
  is merely a rough translation of the gipsies' name for it, the
  'Knockers' being gnomes or goblins of the mine; hence 'Coblynau'
  equals goblins. If so, the name itself can give us no clue unless
  we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a
  guide. In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon
  for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a
  kind of composite ideal picture), is no doubt, as E. W. has
  suggested, Capel Curig; and I imagine the actual scene lies about a
  mile south from Glaslyn, while it owes something at least of its
  colouring in the book to that strange lake. The 'Knockers,' it must
  be remembered, usually depend upon the existence of a mine near by,
  with old partly fallen mine-workings where the dropping of water or
  other subterranean noises produce the curious phenomenon which is
  turned to such imaginative account in the Snowdon chapters of
  _Aylwin_.

There is another question--a question of a very different
kind--raised by several correspondents of _Notes and Queries_,
upon which I should like to say a word--a question as to _The
Veiled Queen_ and the use therein of the phrase 'The Renascence of
Wonder'--a phrase which has been said to 'express the artistic motif
of the book.' The _motif_ of the book, however, is one of
emotion primarily, or it would not have been written.

There is yet another subject upon which I feel tempted to say a few
words. D'Arcy in referring to Aylwin's conduct in regard to the cross
says:--

  You were simply doing what Hamlet would have done in such
  circumstances--what Macbeth would have done, and what he would have
  done who spoke to the human heart through their voices. All men, I
  believe, have Macbeth's instinct for making 'assurance doubly
  sure,' and I cannot imagine the man who, entangled as you were in a
  net of conflicting evidence--the evidence of the spiritual and the
  evidence of the natural world--would not, if the question were that
  of averting a curse from acting on a beloved mistress, have done as
  you did. That paralysis of Hamlet's will which followed when the
  evidence of two worlds hung in equipoise before him, no one can
  possibly understand better than I.

Several critics have asked me to explain these words. Of course,
however, the question is much too big and much too important to
discuss here. I will merely say that Shakespeare having decided in
the case of 'Macbeth' to adopt the machinery he found in Holinslied,
and in the case of 'Hamlet' the machinery he found in the old
'Hamlet,' seems to have set himself the task of realising the
situation of a man oscillating between the evidence of two worlds,
the physical and the spiritual--a man in each case unusually
sagacious, and in each case endowed with the instinct for 'making
assurance doubly sure'--the instinct which seems, from many passages
in his dramas, to have been a special characteristic of the poet's
own, such for instance as the words in _Pericles_:


  For truth can never be confirm'd enough,
  Though doubts did ever sleep.

Why is it that, in this story, Hamlet, the moody moraliser upon
charnel-houses and mouldy bones, is identified with the jolly companion
of the Mermaid, the wine-bibbing joker of the Falcon, and the Apollo
saloon? It is because Hamlet is the most elaborately-painted character
in literature. It is because the springs of his actions are so
profoundly touched, the workings of his soul so thoroughly laid bare,
that we seem to know him more completely than we know our most intimate
friends. It is because the sea which washes between personality and
personality is here, for once, rolled away, and we and this Hamlet
touch, soul to soul. That is why we ask whether such a character can
be the mere evolvement of the artistic mind at work. That is why we
exclaim: 'The man who painted Hamlet must have been painting himself.'
The perfection of the dramatist's work betrays him. For, really and
truly, no man can paint another, but only himself, and what we call
'character painting' is, at the best, but a poor mixing of painter and
painted, a 'third something' between these two; just as what we call
colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism.




INTRODUCTION TO THE SNOWDON EDITION OF 1901

Though written many years ago this story was, for certain personal
reasons easy to guess, withheld from publication--withheld, as _The
Times_ pointed out, because 'with the _Dichtung_ was mingled
a good deal of _Wahrheit_,' But why did I still delay in
publishing it after these reasons for withholding it had passed away?
This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in
conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was
not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that
infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes
to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a
time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness
into the brilliant ranks of our contemporary novelists. But this was
before I had reached what I will call the diffident period in the
life of a writer. And then, again, I had often been told by George
Borrow, and also by my friend Francis Groome, the great living
authority on Romany matters, that there was in England no interest in
Gypsies. Altogether then, had it not been for the unexpected success
of _The Coming of Love_, a story of Gypsy life, it is doubtful
whether I should not have delayed the publication of _Aylwin_
until the great warder of the gates of day we call Death should close
his portal behind me and shut me off from these dreams. However, I am
very glad now that I did publish it; for it has brought around me a
number of new friends--brought them at a time when new friends were
what I yearned for--a time when, looking back through this vision of
my life, I seem to be looking down an Appian way--a street of
tombs--the tombs of those I loved. No wonder, then, that I was deeply
touched by the kindness with which the Public and the Press received
the story.

One critic did me the honour of remarking upon what he called the
'absolute newness of the plot and incidents of _Aylwin_.' He
seems to have forgotten, however, that one incident--the most daring
incident in the book--that of the rifling of a grave for treasure
--is not new: it will at once remind folk-lorists of certain
practices charged against our old Norse invaders. And students of
Celtic and Gaelic literature are familiar with the same idea. Quite,
lately, indeed, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his analysis of the Gaelic
_Agallamh na Senorach_, or 'Colloquy of the Elders,' has made
some interesting remarks upon the subject.


As far as I remember, the only objection made by the critics to
_Aylwin_ was that I had imported into a story written for
popular acceptance too many speculations and breedings upon the
gravest of all subjects--the subject of love at struggle with death.
My answer to this is that although it did win a great popular
acceptance I never expected it to do so. I knew the book to be an
expression of idiosyncrasy, and no man knows how much or how little
his idiosyncrasy is in harmony with the temper of his time, until his
book has been given to the world. It was the story of _Aylwin_
that was born of the speculations upon Love and Death; it was not the
speculations that were pressed into the story; without these
speculations there could have been no story to tell. Indeed the chief
fault which myself should find with _Aylwin_, if my business
were to criticise it, would be that it gives not too little but too
much prominence to the strong incidents of the story--a story written
as a comment on love's warfare with death--written to show that
confronted as a man is every moment by signs of the fragility and
brevity of human life, the great marvel connected with him is not
that his thoughts dwell frequently upon the unknown country beyond
Orion where the beloved dead are loving us still, but that he can
find time and patience to think upon anything else--a story written
further to show how terribly despair becomes intensified when a man
has lost--or thinks he has lost--a woman whose love was the only
light of his world--when his soul is torn from his body, as it were,
and whisked off on the wings of the 'viewless winds' right away
beyond the farthest star, till the universe hangs beneath his feet a
trembling point of twinkling light, and at last even this dies away
and his soul cries out for help in that utter darkness and
loneliness.

It was to depict this phase of human emotion that both _Aylwin_
and its sequel, _The Coming of Love_, were written. They were
missives from the lonely watch-tower of the writer's soul, sent out
into the strange and busy battle of the world--sent out to find, if
possible, another soul or two to whom the watcher was, without
knowing it, akin.


And now as to my two Gypsy heroines, the Sinfi Lovell of
_Aylwin_ and the Rhona Boswell of _The Coming of Love_.
Although Borrow belonged to a different generation from mine, I
enjoyed his intimate friendship in his later years--during the time
when he lived in Hereford Square; and since his death I have written
a good deal about him--both in prose and in verse--in the Athenaeum,
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in other places. When, some seven
or eight years ago, I brought out an edition of _Lavengro_ (in
Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.'s Minerva Library), I prefaced that
delightful book by a few desultory remarks upon Sorrow's Gypsy
characters. On that occasion I gave a slight sketch of the most
remarkable 'Romany Chi' that had ever been met with in the part of
East Anglia known to Borrow and myself--Sinfi Lovell. I described
her playing on the crwth. I discussed her exploits as a boxer, and I
contrasted her in many ways with the glorious Anglo-Saxon road-girl
Isopel Berners. Since the publication of _Aylwin_ and _The
Coming of Love_ I have received very many letters from English and
American readers inquiring whether 'the Gypsy girl described in the
introduction to _Lavenyro_ is the same as the Sinfi Lovell of
_Aylwin_,' and also whether 'the Rhona Boswell that figures in
the prose story is the same as the Rhona of _The Coming of
Love_?' The evidence of the reality of Rhona so impressed itself
upon the reader that on the appearance of Rhona's first letter in the
_Athenaeum_, where the poem was printed in fragments, I got among
other letters one from the sweet poet and adorable woman Jean
Ingelow, who was then very ill,--near her death indeed,--urging me to
tell her whether Rhona's love-letter was not a versification of a
real letter from a real Gypsy to her lover. As it was obviously
impossible for me to answer the queries individually, I take this
opportunity of saying that the Sinfi of _Aylwin_ and the Sinfi
described in my introduction to _Lavengro_ are one and the same
character--except that the story of the child Sinfi's weeping for the
'poor dead Gorgios' in the churchyard, given in the Introduction, is
really told by the Gypsies, not of Sinfi, but of Rhona Boswell. Sinfi
is the character alluded to in the now famous sonnet describing 'the
walking lord of Gypsy lore,' Borrow, by his most intimate friend Dr.
Gordon Hake.

    'And he, the walking lord of Gypsy lore!
       How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
     Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
       Made musical with many a soaring lark,
     Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
       While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
     With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
       Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
     To tell the legends of the fading race--.
       As at the summons of his piercing glance,
     Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
       While you called up that pendant of romance
     To Petulengro with his boxing glory
     Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story?'

Now that so many of the griengroes (horse-dealers), who form the
aristocracy of the Romany race, have left England for America, it is
natural enough that to some readers of _Aylwin_ and _The
Coming of Love_ my pictures of Romany life seem a little
idealised. The _Times_, in a kindly notice of _The Coming of
Love_, said that the kind of Gypsies there depicted are a very
interesting people, 'unless the author has flattered them unduly.'
Those who best knew the Gypsy women of that period will be the first
to aver that I have not flattered them unduly. But I have fully
discussed this matter, and given a somewhat elaborate account of
Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, in the introduction to the fifth
edition of _The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story._



CONTENTS

CHAP.

1.   THE CYMRIC CHILD
2.   THE MOONLIGHT CROSS OF THE GNOSTICS
3.   WINIFRED'S DUKKERIPEN
4.   THE LEADER OF  THE AYLWINIANS
5.   HAROUN-AL-RASCHID THE PAINTER
6.   THE SONG OF Y WYDDFA
7.   SINFI'S DUKKERIPEN
8.   ISIS AS HUMOURIST
9.   THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL
10.  BEHIND THE VEIL
11.  THE IRONY OF HEAVEN
12.  THE REVOLVING CAGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE
13.  THE MAGIC OF SNOWDON
14.  SINFI'S COUP DE THEATRE
15.  THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON'S STORY
16.  D'ARCY'S LETTER
17.  THE TWO DUKKERIPENS
18.  THE WALK TO LLANBERIS
APPENDICES



AYLWIN

THE RENASCENCE OF WONDER



I

THE CYMRIC CHILD


I

'Those who in childhood have had solitary communings with the sea
know the sea's prophecy. They know that there is a deeper sympathy
between the sea and the soul of man than other people dream of. They
know that the water seems nearer akin than the land to the spiritual
world, inasmuch as it is one and indivisible, and has motion, and
answers to the mysterious call of the winds, and is the writing
tablet of the moon and stars. When a child who, born beside the sea,
and beloved by the sea, feels suddenly, as he gazes upon it, a dim
sense of pity and warning; when there comes, or seems to come, a
shadow across the waves, with never a cloud in the sky to cast it;
when there comes a shuddering as of wings that move in dread or ire,
then such a child feels as if the bloodhounds of calamity are let
loose upon him or upon those he loves; he feels that the sea has told
him all it dares tell or can. And, in other moods of fate, when
beneath a cloudy sky the myriad dimples of the sea begin to sparkle
as though the sun were shining bright upon them, such a child feels,
as he gazes at it, that the sea is telling him of some great joy near
at hand, or, at least, not far off.'

One lovely summer afternoon a little boy was sitting on the edge of
the cliff that skirts the old churchyard of Raxton-on-Sea. He was
sitting on the grass close to the brink of the indentation cut by the
water into the horse-shoe curve called by the fishermen Mousetrap
Cove; sitting there as still as an image of a boy in stone, at the
forbidden spot where the wooden fence proclaimed the crumbling hollow
crust to be specially dangerous--sitting and looking across the sheer
deep gulf below.

Flinty Point on his right was sometimes in purple shadow and
sometimes shining in the sun; Needle Point on his left was sometimes
in purple shadow and sometimes shining in the sun; and beyond these
headlands spread now the wide purple, and now the wide sparkle of the
open sea. The very gulls, wheeling as close to him as they dared,
seemed to be frightened at the little boy's peril. Straight ahead he
was gazing, however--gazing so intently that his eyes must have been
seeing very much or else very little of that limitless world of light
and coloured shade. On account of certain questions connected with
race that will be raised in this narrative, I must dwell a little
while upon the child's personal appearance, and especially upon his
colour. Natural or acquired, it was one that might be almost called
unique; as much like a young Gypsy's colour as was compatible with
respectable descent, and yet not a Gypsy's colour. A deep undertone
of 'Romany brown' seemed breaking through that peculiar kind of ruddy
golden glow which no sunshine can give till it has itself been
deepened and coloured and enriched by the responsive kisses of the
sea.

Moreover, there was a certain something in his eyes that was not
Gypsy-like--a something which is not uncommonly seen in the eyes of
boys born along that coast, whether those eyes be black or blue or
grey; a something which cannot be described, but which seems like a
reflex of the daring gaze of that great land-conquering and daring
sea. Very striking was this expression as he momentarily turned his
face landward to watch one of the gulls that had come wheeling up the
cliffs towards the flinty grey tower of the church--the old deserted
church, whose graveyard the sea had already half washed away. As his
eyes followed the bird's movements, however, this daring sea-look
seemed to be growing gradually weaker and weaker. At last it faded
away altogether, and by the time his face was turned again towards
the sea, the look I have tried to describe was supplanted by such a
gaze as that gull would give were it hiding behind a boulder with a
broken wing. A mist of cruel trouble was covering his eyes, and soon
the mist had grown into two bright glittering pearly tears, which,
globing and trembling, larger and larger, were at length big enough
to drown both eyes; big enough to drop, shining, on the grass: big
enough to blot out altogether the most brilliant picture that sea and
sky could make. For that little boy had begun to learn a lesson which
life was going to teach him fully--the lesson that shining sails in
the sunny wind, and black trailing bands of smoke passing here and
there along the horizon, and silvery gulls dipping playfully into the
green and silver waves (nay, all the beauties and all the wonders of
the world), make but a blurred picture to eyes that look through the
lens of tears. However, with a brown hand brisk and angry, he brushed
away these tears, like one who should say, 'This kind of thing will
never do.'

Indeed, so hardy was the boy's face--tanned by the sun, hardened and
bronzed by the wind, reddened by the brine--that tears seemed
entirely out of place there. The meaning of those tears must be fully
accounted for, and if possible fully justified, for this little boy
is to be the hero of this story. In other words, he is Henry Aylwin;
that is to say, myself: and those who know me now in the full vigour
of manhood, a lusty knight of the alpenstock of some repute, will be
surprised to know what troubled me. They will be surprised to know
that owing to a fall from the cliff I was for about two years a
cripple.

This is how it came about. Rough and yielding as were the paths,
called 'gangways,' connecting the cliffs with the endless reaches of
sand below, they were not rough enough, or yielding enough, or in any
way dangerous enough for me.

So I used to fashion 'gangways' of my own; I used to descend the
cliff at whatsoever point it pleased me, clinging to the lumps of
sandy earth with the prehensile power of a spider-monkey. Many a
warning had I had from the good fishermen and sea-folk, that some day
I should fall from top to bottom--fall and break my neck. A laugh was
my sole answer to these warnings; for, with the possession of perfect
health, I had inherited that instinctive belief in good luck which
perfect health will often engender.

However, my punishment came at last. The coast, which is yielding
gradually to the sea, is famous for sudden and gigantic landslips.
These landslips are sometimes followed, at the return of the tide, by
a further fall, called a 'settlement.' The word 'settlement' explains
itself, perhaps. No matter how smooth the sea, the return of the tide
seems on that coast to have a strange magnetic power upon the land,
and the debris of a landslip will sometimes, though not always,
respond to it by again falling and settling into new and permanent
shapes.

Now, on the morning after a great landslip, when the coastguard,
returning on his beat, found a cove where, half-an-hour before, he
had left his own cabbages growing, I, in spite of all warnings, had
climbed the heap of _debris_ from the sands, and while I was
hallooing triumphantly to two companions below--the two most
impudent-looking urchins, bare-footed and unkempt, that ever a
gentleman's son forgathered with--a great mass of loose earth
settled, carrying me with it in its fall. I was taken up for dead.

It was, however, only a matter of broken ribs and a damaged leg. And
there is no doubt that if the local surgeon had not been allowed to
have his own way, I should soon have been cured. As it was I became a
cripple. The great central fact--the very pivot upon which all the
wheels of my life have since been turning--is that for two years
during the impressionable period of childhood I walked with crutches.

It must not be supposed that my tears--the tears which at this moment
were blotting out the light and glory of the North Sea in the
sun--came from the pain I was suffering. They came from certain
terrible news, which even my brother Frank had been careful to keep
from me, but which had fallen from the lips of my father--the news
that I was not unlikely to be a cripple for life. From that moment I
had become a changed being, solitary and sometimes morose. I would
come and sit staring at the ocean, meditating on tilings in general,
but chiefly on things connected with cripples, asking myself, as now,
whether life would be bearable on crutches.

At my heart were misery and anger and such revolt as is, I hope,
rarely found in the heart of a child. I had sat down outside the
rails at this most dangerous point along the cliff, wondering whether
or not it would crumble beneath me. For this lameness coming to me,
who had been so active, who had been, indeed, the little athlete and
pugilist of the sands, seemed to have isolated me from my
fellow-creatures to a degree that is inconceivable to me now. A
stubborn will and masterful pride made me refuse to accept a disaster
such as many a nobler soul than mine has, I am conscious, borne with
patience. My nature became soured by asking in vain for sympathy at
home; my loneliness drove me--silent, haughty, and aggressive--to
haunt the churchyard, and sit at the edge of the cliff, gazing
wistfully at the sea and the sands which could not be reached on
crutches. Like a wounded sea-gull, I retired and took my trouble
alone.

How could I help taking it alone when none would sympathise with me?
My brother Frank called me 'The Black Savage,' and I half began to
suspect myself of secret impulses of a savage kind. Once I heard my
mother murmur, as she stroked Frank's rosy cheeks and golden curls,
'My poor Henry is a strange, proud boy!' Then, looking from my
crutches to Frank's beautiful limbs, she said, 'How providential that
it was not the elder! Providence is kind.' She meant kind to the
House of Aylwin. I often wonder whether she guessed that I heard her.
I often wonder whether she knew how I had loved her.

This is how matters stood with me on that summer afternoon, when I
sat on the edge of the cliff in a kind of dull, miserable dream.
Suddenly, at the moment when the huge mass of clouds had covered the
entire surface of the water between Flinty Point and Needle Point
with their rich purple shadow, it seemed to me that the waves began
to sparkle and laugh in a joyful radiance which they were making for
themselves. And at that same moment an unwonted sound struck my ear
from the churchyard behind me--a strange sound indeed in that
deserted place--that of a childish voice singing.

Was, then, the mighty ocean writing symbols for an unhappy child to
read? My father, from whose book, _The Veiled Queen_, the extract
with which this chapter opens is taken, would, unhesitatingly,
have answered 'Yes.'

'Destiny, no doubt, in the Greek drama concerns itself only with the
great,' says he, in that wonderful book of his. 'But who are the
great? With the unseen powers, mysterious and imperious, who govern
while they seem not to govern all that is seen, who are the great? In
a world where man's loftiest ambitions are to higher intelligences
childish dreams, where his highest knowledge is ignorance, where his
strongest strength is to heaven a derision--who are the great? Are
they not the few men and women and children on the earth who greatly
love?'


II

So sweet a sound as that childish voice I had never heard before.
I held my breath and listened.

Into my very being that child-voice passed, and it was a new music
and a new joy. I can give the reader no notion of it, because there
is not in nature anything with which I can compare it. The blackcap
has a climacteric note, just before his song collapses and dies, so
full of pathos and tenderness that often, when I had been sitting on
a gate in Wilderness Road, it had affected me more deeply than any
human words. But here was a note sweet and soft as that, and yet
charged with a richness no blackcap's song had ever borne, because no
blackcap has ever felt the joys and sorrows of a young human soul.

The voice was singing in a language which seemed strange to me then,
but has been familiar enough since:

                  Bore o'r cymwl aur,
                  Eryri oedd dy gaer.
                  Bren o wyllt a gwar,
                  Gwawr ysbrydau.[Footnote]

                  [Footnote: Morning of the golden cloud,
                  Eryrl was thy castle,
                  King of the wild and tame,
                  Glory of the spirits of air!]

[Eryri--the Place of Eagles, i.e. Snowdon.]

Intense curiosity now made me suddenly forget my troubles. I
scrambled back through the trees not tar from that spot and looked
around. There, sitting upon a grassy grave, beneath one of the
windows of the church, was a little girl, somewhat younger than
myself apparently. With her head bent back she was gazing up at the
sky and singing, while one of her little hands was pointing to a tiny
cloud that hovered like a golden feather over her head. The sun,
which had suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair
(for she was bare-headed) gave it a metallic lustre, and it was
difficult to say what was the colour, dark bronze or black. So
completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her
strange song or incantation seemed addressed, that she did not
observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up
in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was
singing, as if in rivalry. As I slowly approached the child, I could
see by her forehead (which in the sunshine gleamed like a globe of
pearl), and especially by her complexion, that she was uncommonly
lovely, and I was afraid lest she should look down before I got close
to her, and so see my crutches before her eyes encountered my face.
She did not, however, seem to hear me coming along the grass (so
intent was she with her singing) until I was close to her, and
throwing my shadow over her. Then she suddenly lowered her head and
looked at me in surprise. I stood transfixed at her astonishing
beauty. No other picture has ever taken such possession of me. In its
every detail it lives before me now. Her eyes (which at one moment
seemed blue grey, at another violet) were shaded by long black
lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way, and these matched
in hue her eyebrows, and the tresses that were tossed about her
tender throat and were quivering in the sunlight.

All this picture I did not take in at once; for at first I could see
nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up
into my face. Gradually the other features (especially the sensitive
full-lipped mouth) grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here
seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my
loveliest dreams of beauty beneath the sea. Yet it was not her beauty
perhaps, so much as the look she gave me, that fascinated me, melted
me.

As she gazed in my face there came over hers a look of pleased
surprise, and then, as her eyes passed rapidly down my limbs and up
again, her face was not overshadowed with the look of disappointment
which I had waited for--yes, waited for, like a pinioned criminal for
the executioner's uplifted knife; but the smile of pleasure was still
playing about the little mouth, while the tender young eyes were
moistening rapidly with the dews of a kind of pity that was new to
me, a pity that did not blister the pride of the lonely wounded
sea-gull, but soothed, healed, and blessed.

Remember that I was a  younger son--that I was swarthy--that I was a
cripple--and that my mother--had Frank. It was as though my heart
must leap from my breast towards that child. Not a word had she
spoken, but she had  said what the little maimed 'fighting Hal'
yearned to hear, and without _knowing_ that he yearned.

I restrained myself, and did  not yield to the feeling that impelled
me to throw my arms round her neck in an ecstasy of wonder and
delight. After a second or two she again threw back her head to gaze
at the golden cloud.

'Look!' said she, suddenly clapping her hands, 'it's over both of us
now.'

'What is it?' I said.

'The Dukkeripen,' she said, 'the Golden Hand. Sinfi and Rhona both
say the Golden Hand brings luck: what _is_ luck?'

I looked up at the little cloud which to me seemed more like a golden
feather than a golden hand. But I soon bent my eyes down again to
look at her.

While I stood looking at her, the tall figure of a man came out of
the church. This was Tom Wynne. Besides being the organist of Raxton
'New Church,' Tom was also (for a few extra shillings a week)
custodian of the 'Old Church,' this deserted pile within whose
precincts we now were. Tom's features wore an expression of virtuous
indignation which puzzled me, and evidently frightened the little
girl. He locked the door, and walked unsteadily towards us. He seemed
surprised to see me there, and his features relaxed into a bland
civility.

'This is (hiccup) Master Aylwin, Winifred,' he said.

The child looked at me again with the same smile. Her alarm had fled.

'This is my little daughter Winifred,' said Tom, with a pompous bow.

I was astonished. I never knew that Wynne had a daughter, for
intimate as he and I had become, he had actually never mentioned his
daughter before.

'My _only_ daughter,' Tom repeated.

He then told me, with many hiccups, that, since her mother's death
(that is to say from her very infancy), Winifred had been brought up
by an aunt in Wales. 'Quite a lady, her aunt is,' said Tom proudly,
'and Winifred has come to spend a few weeks with her father.'

He said this in a grandly paternal tone--a tone that seemed meant to
impress upon her how very much obliged she ought to feel to him for
consenting to be her father; and, judging from the look the child
gave him, she did feel very much obliged.

Suddenly, however, a thought seemed to come back upon Tom, a thought
which my unexpected appearance on the scene had driven from his
drunken brain. The look of virtuous indignation returned, and staring
at the little girl through glazed eyes, he said with the tremulous
and tearful voice of a deeply injured parent,

'Winifred, I thought I heard you singing one of them heathen Gypsy
songs that you learnt of the Gypsies in Wales.'

'No, father,' said she, 'it was the song they sing in Shire-Carnarvon
about the golden cloud over Snowdon and the spirits of the air.'

'Yes,' said Tom, 'but a little time ago you were singing a Gypsy
song--a downright heathen Gypsy song. I heard it about half an hour
ago when I was in the church.'

The beautiful little head drooped in shame.

'I'm s'prised at you, Winifred. When I come to think whose daughter
you are.--mine!--I'm s'prised at you,' continued Torn, whose virtuous
indignation waxed with every word.

'Oh. I'm so sorry!' said the child. 'I won't do it any more.'

This contrition of the child's only fanned the flame of Tom's
virtuous indignation.

'Here am I,' said he, 'the most (hiccup) respectable man in two
parishes,--except Master Aylwin's father, of course,--here am I, the
organ-player for the Christianest of all the Christian churches along
the coast, and here's my daughter sings heathen songs just like a
Gypsy or a tinker. I'm s'prised at you, Winifred.'

I had often seen Tom in a dignified state of liquor, but the pathetic
expression of injured virtue that again overspread his face so
changed it, that I had some difficulty myself in realising how
entirely the tears filling his eyes and the grief at his heart were
of alcoholic origin. And as to the little girl, she began to sob
piteously.

'Oh dear, oh dear, what a wicked girl I am !' said she.

This exclamation, however, aroused my ire against Tom; and as I
always looked upon him as my special paid henchman, who, in return
for such services as supplying me with tiny boxing-gloves, and
fishing-tackle, and bait, during my hale days, and tame rabbits now
that I was a cripple, mostly contrived to possess himself of my
pocket-money, I had no hesitation in exclaiming,

'Why, Tom, you know you're drunk, you silly old fool!'

At this Tom turned his mournful and reproachful gaze upon me, and
began to weep anew. Then he turned and addressed the sea, uplifting
his hand in oratorical fashion:--

'Here's a young gentleman as I've been more than a father to--yes,
more than a father to--for when did his own father ever give him a
ferret-eyed rabbit, a real ferret-eyed rabbit thoroughbred?'

'Why, I gave you one of my five-shilling pieces for it,' said I; 'and
the rabbit was in a consumption and died in three weeks.'

But Tom still addressed the sea.

'When did his own father give him,' said he, 'the longest thigh-bone
that the sea ever washed out of Raxton churchyard?'

'Why, I gave you _two_ of my five-shilling pieces for
_that_,' said I, 'and next day you went and borrowed the bone,
and sold it over again to Dr. Munro for a quart of beer.'


'When did his own father _give_ him a beautiful skull for a
money-box, and make an oak lid to it, and keep it for him because his
mother wouldn't have it in the house?'

'Ah, but where's the money that was in it, Tom? Where's the money?'
said I, flourishing one of my crutches, for I was worked up to a
state of high excitement when I recalled my own wrongs and Tom's
frauds, and I forgot his relationship to the little girl. 'Where are
the bright new half-crowns that were _in_ the money-box when I
left it with you--the half-crowns that got changed into pennies, Tom?
Where are they? What's the use of having a skull for a money-box if
it's got no money in it? That's what _I_ want to know, Tom!'

'Here's a young gentleman,' said Tom, 'as I've done all these things
for, and how does he treat me? He says, "Why, Tom, you know you're
drunk, you silly old fool."'

At this pathetic appeal the little girl sprang up and turned towards
me with the ferocity of a young tigress. Her little hands were
tightly clenched, and her eyes seemed positively to be emitting blue
sparks. Many a bold boy had I encountered on the sands before my
accident, and many a fearless girl, but such an impetuous antagonist
as this was new. I leaned on my crutches, however, and looked at her
unblenchingly.

'You wicked English boy, to make my father cry,' said she, as soon as
her anger allowed her to speak. 'If you were not lame I'd--I'd--I'd
hit you.'

I did not move a muscle, but stood lost in a dream of wonder at her
amazing loveliness. The fiery flush upon her face and neck, the
bewitching childish frown of anger corrugating the brow, the dazzling
glitter of the teeth, the quiver of the full scarlet lips above and
below them, turned me dizzy with admiration.

Her eyes met mine, and slowly the violet flames in them began to
soften. Then they died away entirely as she murmured,

'You wicked English boy, if you hadn't--beautiful--beautiful eyes,
I'd kill you.'

By this time, however, Tom had entirely forgotten his grievance
against me, and gazed upon Winifred in a state of drunken wonderment.

'Winifred,' he said, in a tone of sorrowful reproach, 'how dare you
speak like that to Master Aylwin, your father's best friend, the only
friend your poor father's got in the world, the friend as I give
ferret-eyed rabbits to, and tame hares, and beautiful skulls? Beg his
pardon this instant, Winifred. Down on your knees and beg my friend's
pardon this instant, Winifred.'

The poor little girl stood dazed, and was actually sinking down on
her knees on the grass before me.

I cried out in acute distress,

'No, no, no, no, Tom, pray don't let her--dear little girl! beautiful
little girl!'

'Very well, Master Aylwin,' said Tom grandly, 'she sha'n't if you
don't like, but she _shall_ go and kiss you and make it up.'

At this the child's face brightened, and she came and laid her little
red lips upon mine. Velvet lips, I feel them now, soft and warm--I
feel them while I write these lines.

Tom looked on for a moment, and then left us, blundering away towards
Raxton, most likely to a beer-house.

He told the child that she was to go home and mind the house until he
returned. He gave her the church key to take home. We two were left
alone in the churchyard, looking at each other in silence, each
waiting for the other to speak. At last she said, demurely,
'Good-bye; father says I must go home.'

And she walked away with a business-like air towards the little white
gate of the churchyard, opening upon what was called 'The Wilderness
Road.' When she reached the gate she threw a look over her shoulder
as she passed through. It was that same look again--wistful, frank,
courageous. I immediately began to follow her, although I did not
know why. When she saw this she stopped for me. I got up to her, and
then we proceeded side by side in perfect silence along the dusty
narrow road, perfumed with the scent of wild rose and honeysuckle.
Suddenly she stopped and said,

'I have left my hat on the tower,' and laughed merrily at her own
heedlessness.

She ran back with an agility which I thought I had never seen
equalled. It made me sad to see her run so fast, though once how it
would have delighted me! I stood still; but when she reached the
church porch she again looked over her shoulder, and again I
followed her:--I did not in the least know why. That look I think
would have made me follow her through lire and water--it _has_ made
me follow her through fire and water. When I reached her she put the
great black key in the lock. She had some difficulty in turning the
key, but I did not presume to offer such services as mine to so
superior a little woman. After one or two fruitless efforts with both
her hands, each attempt accompanied with a little laugh and a little
merry glance in my face, she turned the key and pushed open the door.
We both passed into the ghastly old church, through the green glass
windows of which the sun was shining, and illuminating the broken
remains of the high-hacked pews on the opposite side. She ran along
towards the belfry, and I soon lost her, for she passed up the stone
steps, where I knew I could not follow her.

In deep mortification I stood listening at the bottom of the
steps--listening to those little feet crunching up the broken
stones--listening to the rustle of her dress against the narrow stone
walls, until the sounds grew fainter and fainter, and then ceased.

Presently I heard her voice a long way up, calling out, 'Little boy,
if you go outside you will see something.' I guessed at once that she
was going to exhibit herself on the tower, where, before my accident,
I and my brother Frank were so fond of going. I went outside the
church and stood in the graveyard, looking up at the tower. In a
minute I saw her on it. Her face was turned towards me, gilded by the
golden sunshine. I could, or thought I could, even at that distance,
see the flash of the bright eyes looking at me. Then a little hand
was put over the parapet, and I saw a dark hat swinging by its
strings, as she was waving it to me. Oh! that I could have climbed
those steps and done that! But that exploit of hers touched a strange
chord within me. Had she been a boy, I could have borne it in a
defiant way; or had she been any other girl than this, my heart would
not have sunk as it now did when I thought of the gulf between her
and me. Down I sat upon a grave, and looked at her with a feeling
quite new to me.

This was a phase of cripplehood I had not contemplated. She soon left
the tower, and made her appearance at the church door again. After
locking it, which she did by thrusting a piece of stick through the
handle of the key, she came and stood over me. But I turned my eyes
away and gazed across the sea, and tried to deceive myself into
believing that the waves, and the gulls, and the sails dreaming on
the sky-line, and the curling clouds of smoke that came now and then
from a steamer passing Dullingham Point were interesting me deeply.
There was a remoteness about the little girl now, since I had seen
her unusual agility, and I was trying to harden my heart against her.
Loneliness I felt was best for me. She did not speak, but stood
looking at me. I turned my eyes round and saw that she was looking at
my crutches, which were lying beside me aslant the green hillock
where I sat. Her face had turned grave and pitiful.

'Oh! I forgot,' she said. 'I wish I had not run away from you now.'

'You may run where you like for what I care,' I said. But the words
were very shaky, and I had no sooner said them than I wished them
back. She made no reply for some time, and I sat plucking the
wild-flowers near my hands, and gazing again across the sea. At last
she said,

'Would you like to come in our garden? It's such a nice garden.'

I could resist her no longer. That voice would have drawn me had she
spoken in the language of the Toltecs or the lost Zamzummin. To
describe it would of course be impossible. The novelty of her accent,
the way in which she gave the 'h' in 'which,' 'what,' and 'when,' the
Welsh rhythm of her intonation, were as bewitching to me as the
_timbre_ of her voice. And let me say here, once for all, that when I
sat down to write this narrative, I determined to give the English
reader some idea of the way in which, whenever her emotions were
deeply touched, her talk would run into soft Welsh diminutives; but I
soon abandoned the attempt in despair. I found that to use colloquial
Welsh with effect in an English context is impossible without
wearying English readers and disappointing Welsh ones.

Here, indeed, is one of the great disadvantages under which this book
will go out to the world. While a story-teller may reproduce, by
means of orthographical devices, something of the effect of Scottish
accent, Irish accent, or Manx accent, such devices are powerless to
represent Welsh accent.

I got up in silence, and walked by her side out of the churchyard
towards her father's cottage, which was situated between the new
church and the old, and at a considerable distance from the town of
Raxton on one side, and the village of Graylingham on the other. Her
eager young limbs would every moment take her ahead of me, for she
was as vigorous as a fawn. But by the time she was half a yard in
advance, she would recollect herself and fall back; and every time
she did so that same look of tenderness would overspread her face.

At last she said, 'What makes you stare at me so, little boy?'

I blushed and turned my head another way, for I had been feasting my
eyes upon her complexion, and trying to satisfy myself as to what it
really was like. Indeed, I thought it quite peculiar then, when I had
seen so few lovely faces, as I always did afterwards, when I had seen
as many as most people. It was, I thought, as though underneath the
sunburn the delicate pink tint of the hedge-rose had become mingled
with the bloom of a ripening peach, and yet it was like neither peach
nor rose. But this tone, whatever it was, did not spread higher than
the eyebrows. The forehead was different. It had a singular kind of
pearly look, and her long slender throat was almost of the same tone:
no, not the same, for there was a transparency about her throat
unlike that of the forehead. This colour I was just now thinking
looked something like the inside of a certain mysterious shell upon
my father's library shelf.

As she asked me her question she stopped, and looked straight at me,
opening her eyes wide and round upon me. This threw a look of
innocent trustfulness over her bright features which I soon learnt
was the chief characteristic of her expression and was altogether
peculiar to herself. I knew it was very rude to stare at people as I
had been staring at her, and I took her question as a rebuke,
although I still was unable to keep my eyes off her. But it was not
merely her beauty and her tenderness that had absorbed my attention.
I had been noticing how intensely she seemed to enjoy the delights of
that summer afternoon. As we passed along that road, where sea-scents
and land-scents were mingled, she would stop whenever the sunshine
fell full upon her face; her eyes would sparkle and widen with
pleasure, and a half-smile would play about her lips, as if some one
had kissed her. Every now and then she would stop to listen to the
birds, putting up her finger, and with a look of childish wisdom say,
'Do you know what that is? That's a blackbird--that's a
thrush--that's a goldfinch. Which eggs do you like best--a
goldfinch's or a bullfinch's? _I_ know which _I_ like best.'



III

While we were walking along the road a sound fell upon my ears which
in my hale days never produced any very unpleasant sensations, but
which did now. I mean the cackling of the field people of both sexes
returning from their day's work. These people knew me well, and they
liked me, and I am sure they had no idea that when they ran past me
on the road their looks and nods gave me no pleasure, but pain; and I
always tried to avoid them. As they passed us they somewhat modified
the noise they were making, but only to cackle, chatter, and bawl and
laugh at each other the louder after we were left behind.

'Don't you wish,' said the little girl meditatively, 'that men and
women had voices more like the birds?' The idea had never occurred to
me before, but I understood in a moment what she meant, and
sympathised with her. Nature of course has been unkind to the lords
and ladies of creation in this one matter of voice.

'Yes, I do.' I said.

'I'm so glad you do,' said she. 'I've so often thought what a pity it
is that God did not let men and women talk and sing as the birds do.
I believe He did let 'em talk like that in the Garden of Eden, don't
you?'

'I think it very likely,' I said.

'Men's voices are so rough mostly and women's voices are so sharp
mostly, that it's sometimes a little hard to love 'em as you love the
birds.'

'It is,' I said.

'Don't you think the poor birds must sometimes feel very much
distressed at hearing the voices of men and women, especially when
they all talk together?'

The idea seemed so original and yet so true that it made me laugh; we
both laughed. At that moment there came a still louder, noisier
clamour of voices from the villagers.

'The rooks mayn't mind.' said the little girl, pointing upwards to
the large rookery close by. whence came a noise marvellously like
that made by the field-workers. 'But I'm afraid the blackbirds and
thrushes can't like it. I do so wonder what they say about it.'

After we had left the rookery behind us and the noise of the
villagers had grown fainter, we stood and listened to the blackbirds
and thrushes. She looked so joyous that I could not help saying,
'Little girl, I think you're very happy, ain't you?'

'Not quite,' she said, as though answering a question she had just
been putting to herself. 'There's not enough wind.'

'Then do _you_ like wind?' I said in surprise and delight.

'Oh, I love it!' she said rapturously. 'I can't be quite happy
without wind, can _you_? I like to run up the hills in the wind and
sing to it. That's when I am happiest. I couldn't live long without
the wind.'

Now it had been a deep-rooted conviction of mine that none but the
gulls and I really and truly liked the wind. 'Fishermen are muffs,' I
used to say; 'they talk about the wind as though it were an enemy,
just because it drowns one or two of 'em now and then. Anybody can
like sunshine; muffs can like sunshine; it takes a gull or a man to
like the wind!'

Such had been my egotism. But here was a girl who liked it! We
reached the gate of the garden in front of Tom's cottage, and then
we both stopped, looking over the neatly-kept flower-garden and the
white thatched cottage behind it, up the walls of which the
grape-vine leaves were absorbing the brilliance of the sunlight and
softening it. Wynne was a gardener as well as an organist, and had
gardens both in the front and at the back of his cottage, which was
surrounded by fruit-trees. Drunkard as he was, his two passions,
music and gardening, saved him from absolute degradation and ruin.
His garden was beautifully kept, and I have seen him deftly pruning
his vines when in such a state of drink that it was wonderful how he
managed to hold a priming-knife. Winifred opened the gate, and we
passed in. Wynne's little terrier, Snap, came barking to meet us.

There was an air of delicious peacefulness about the garden. This
also tended to soften that hardness of temper which only cripples who
have once rejoiced in their strength can possibly know, I hope.

'I like to see you look so,' said the little girl, as I melted
entirely under these sweet influences. 'You looked so cross before
that I was nearly afraid of you.'

And she took hold of my hand, not hesitatingly, but frankly. The
little fingers clasped mine. I looked at them. They were much more
sun-tanned than her face. The little rosy nails were shaped like
filbert nuts.

'Why were you not _quite_ afraid of me?' I asked.

'Because,' said she, 'under the crossness I saw that you had great
love-eyes like Snap's all the while. _I_ saw it!' she said, and
laughed with delight at her great wisdom. Then she said with a sudden
gravity, 'You didn't mean to make my father cry, did you, little
boy?'

'No,' I said.

'And you love him?' said she.

I hesitated, for I had never told a lie in my life. My business
relations with Tom had been of an entirely unsatisfactory character,
and the idea of any one's loving the beery scamp presented itself in
a ludicrous light. I got out of the difficulty by saying,

'I mean to love Tom very much, if I can.'

The answer did not appear to be entirely satisfactory to the little
girl, but it soon seemed to pass from her mind.

That was the most delightful afternoon I had ever spent in my life.
We seemed to become old friends in a few minutes, and in an hour or
two she was the closest friend I had on earth. Not all the little
shoeless friends in Raxton, not all the beautiful sea-gulls I loved,
not all the sunshine and wind upon the sands, not all the wild bees
in Graylingham Wilderness, could give the companionship this child
could give. My flesh tingled with delight. (And yet all the while I
was not Hal the conqueror of ragamuffins, but Hal the cripple!)

'Shall we go and get some strawberries?' she said, as we passed to
the back of the house. 'They are quite ripe.'

But my countenance fell at this. I was obliged to tell her that I
could not stoop.

'Ah! but I can, and I will pluck them and give them to you. I should
like to do it. Do let me, there's a good boy.'

I consented, and hobbled by her side to the verge of the
strawberry-beds. But when I foolishly tried to follow her, I stuck
ignominiously, with my crutches sunk deep in the soft mould of rotten
leaves. Here was a trial for the conquering hero of the coast. I
looked into her face to see if there was not, at last, a laugh upon
it. That cruel human laugh was my only dread. To everything but
ridicule I had hardened myself; but against that I felt helpless.

I looked into her face to see if she was laughing at my lameness. No:
her brows were merely knit with anxiety as to how she might best
relieve me. This surpassingly beautiful child, then, had evidently
accepted me--lameness and all--crutches and all--as a subject of
peculiar interest.

How I loved her as I put my hand upon her firm little shoulders,
while I extricated first one crutch and then another, and at last got
upon the hard path again!

When she had landed me safely, she returned to the strawberry-bed,
and began busily gathering the fruit, which she brought to me in her
sunburnt hands, stained to a bright pink by the ripe fruit. Such a
charm did she throw over me, that at last I actually consented to her
putting the fruit into my mouth.

She then told me with much gravity that she knew how to 'cure
crutches.' There was, she said, a famous 'crutches-well' in Wales,
kept by St. Winifred (most likely an aunt of hers, being of the same
name), whose water could 'cure crutches.' When she came from Wales
again she would be sure to bring a bottle of 'crutches-water.' She
told me also much about Snowdon (near which she lived), and how, on
misty days, she used to 'make believe that she was the Lady of the
Mist, and that she was going to visit the Tywysog o'r Niwl, the
Prince of the Mist; it was _so_ nice!'

I do not know how long we kept at this, but the organist returned and
caught her in the very act of feeding me. To be caught in this
ridiculous position, even by a drunken man, was more than I could
bear, however, and I turned and left.

As I recall that walk home along Wilderness Road. I live it as
thoroughly as I did then. I can see the rim of the sinking sun
burning fiery red low down between the trees on the left, and then
suddenly dropping out of sight. I can see on the right the lustre of
the high-tide sea. I can hear the 'che-eu-chew, che-eu-chew.' of the
wood-pigeons in Graylingham Wood. I can smell the very scent of the
bean flowers drinking in the evening dews. I did not feel that I was
going home as the sharp gables of the Hall gleamed through the
chestnut-trees. My home for evermore was the breast of that lovely
child, between whom and myself such a strange delicious sympathy had
sprung up. I felt there was no other home for me.

'Why, child, where _have_ you been?' said my mother, as she saw me
trying to slip to bed unobserved, in order that happiness such as
mine might not he brought into coarse contact with servants. 'Child,
where _have_ you been, and what has possessed you? Your face is
positively shining with joy, and your eyes, they alarm me, they are
so unnaturally bright. I hope you are not going to have an illness.'

I did not tell her, but went to my room, which now was on the ground
floor, and sat watching the rooks sailing home in the sunset till the
last one had gone, and the voices of the blackbirds grew less
clamorous, and the trees began to look larger and larger in the dusk.



IV

The next day I was again at Wynne's cottage, and the next, and the
next. We two, Winifred and I, used to stroll out together through the
narrow green lanes, and over the happy fields, and about the
Wilderness and the wood, and along the cliffs, and then down the
gangway at Flinty Point (the only gangway that was firm enough to
support my crutches, Winifred aiding me with the skill of a woman and
the agility of a child), and then along the flints below Flinty
Point. She rapidly fell into my habits. She was an adept in finding
birds' nests and wild honey; and though she would not consent to my
taking the eggs, she had not the same compunction about the honey,
and she only regretted with me that we could not be exactly like St.
John, as Graylingham Wilderness yielded no locusts to eat with the
honey. Winifred, though the most healthy of children, had a passion
for the deserted church on the cliffs, and for the desolate
churchyard.

It was one of those flint and freestone churches that are sprinkled
along the coast. Situated as it was at the back of a curve cut by the
water into the end of a peninsula running far into the sea, the tower
looked in the distance like a lighthouse. I observed after the first
day of our meeting that Winifred never would mount the tower steps
again. And I knew why. So delicate were her feelings, so acute did
her kind little heart make her, that she would not mount steps which
I could never mount.

Not that Winifred looked upon me as her little lover. There was not
much of the sentimental in her. Once when I asked her on the sands if
I might be her lover, she took an entirely practical view of the
question, and promptly replied 'certumly,' adding, however, like the
wise little woman I always found her, that she 'wasn't _quite_ sure
she knew what a lover was, but if it was anything _very_ nice she
should certumly like _me_ to be it.'

It was the child's originality of manner that people found so
captivating. One of her many little tricks and ways of an original
quaintness was her habit of speaking of herself in the third person,
like the merest baby. 'Winifred likes this,' 'Winifred doesn't like
that,' were phrases that had an irresistible fascination for me.

Another fascinating characteristic of hers was connected with her
superstitions. Whenever on parting with her I exclaimed, as I often
did. 'Oh, what a lovely day we have had, Winifred!' she would look
expectantly in my eyes, murmuring, 'And--and--' This meant that I
was to say. 'And shall have many more such days,' as though there
were a prophetic power in words.

She talked with entire seriousness of having seen in a place called
Fairy Glen in Wales the Tylwyth Teg. And when I told her of Oberon
and Titania, and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, whose acquaintance I
had made through Lamb's _Tales from Shakespeare_, she said that one
bright moonlight night she, in the company of two of her Gypsy
playmates, Rhona Boswell and a girl called Sinfi, had visited this
same Fairy Glen, when they saw the Fairy Queen alone on a ledge of
rock, dressed in a green kirtle with a wreath of golden leaves about
her head.

Another subject upon which I loved to hear her talk was that of the
'Knockers' of Snowdon, the guardians of undiscovered copper mines,
who sometimes by knocking on the rocks gave notice to individuals
they favoured of undiscovered copper, but these favoured ones were
mostly children who chanced to wander up Snowdon by themselves. She
had, she said, not only heard but seen these Knockers. They were
thick-set dwarfs, as broad as they were long. One Knocker, an elderly
female, had often played with her on the hills. Knockers' Llyn,
indeed, was very much on Winifred's mind. When a golden cloud, like
the one on which she was singing her song at the time I first saw
her, shone over a person's head at Knockers' Llyn, it was a sign of
good fortune. She was sure that it was so, because the Welsh people
believed it, and so did the Gypsies.

Not a field or a hedgerow was unfamiliar to us. We were most learned
in the structure of birds' nests, in the various colours of birds'
eggs, and in insect architecture. In all the habits or the wild
animals of the meadows we were most profound little naturalists.

Winifred could in the morning, after the dews were gone, tell by the
look of a buttercup or a daisy what kind of weather was at hand, when
the most cunning peasant was deceived by the hieroglyphics of the
sky, and the most knowing seaman could 'make nothing of the wind.'

Her life, in fact, had been spent in the open air.

There were people staying at the Hall, and they and Frank engrossed
all my mother's attention. At least, she did not appear to notice my
absence from home.

My brother Frank, however, was not so unobservant (he was two years
older than myself). Early one morning, before breakfast, curiosity
led him to follow me, and he came upon us in Graylingham Wood as we
were sitting under a tree close to the cliff, eating the wild honey
we had found in the Wilderness.

He stood there swinging a ground-ash cane, and looking at her in a
lordly, patronising way, the very personification no doubt of boyish
beauty. I became troubled to see him look so handsome. The contrast
between him and a cripple was not fair, I thought, as I observed an
expression of passing admiration on little Winifred's face. Yet I
thought there was not the pleased smile with which she had first
greeted me, and a weight of anxiety was partially removed, for it had
now become quite evident to me that I was as much in love as any
swain of eighteen--it had become quite evident that without Winifred
the poor little shattered sea-gull must perish altogether. She was
literally my world.

Frank came and sat down with us, and made himself as agreeable as
possible. He tried to enter into our play, but we were too slow for
him; he soon became restless and impatient. 'Oh bother!' he said, and
got up and left us.

I drew a sigh of relief when he was gone.

'Do you like my brother, Winifred?' I said.

'Yes.' she said.

'Why?'

'Because he is so pretty and so nimble. I believe he could run
up--' and then she stopped; but I knew what the complete sentence
would have been. She was going to say: 'I believe he could run up the
gangways without stopping to take breath.'

Here was a stab; but she did not notice the effect of her unfinished
sentence. Then a question came from me involuntarily.

'Winifred,' I said, 'do you like him as well as you like me?'

'Oh no,' she said, in a tone of wonderment that such a question
should be asked.

'But _I_ am not pretty and--'

'Oh, but you _are_!' she said eagerly, interrupting me.

'But,' I said, with a choking sensation in my voice, 'I am lame.' and
I looked at the crutches lying among the ferns beside me.

'Ah, but I like you all the better for being lame,' she said,
nestling up to me.

'But you like nimble boys,' I said, 'such as Frank.'

She looked puzzled. The anomaly of liking nimble boys and crippled
boys at the same time seemed to strike her. Yet she felt it _was_ so,
though it was difficult to explain it.

'Yes, I _do_ like nimble boys,' she said at last, plucking with her
fingers at a blade of grass she held between her teeth. 'But I think
I like lame boys better, that is if they are--if they are--_you_.'

I gave an exclamation of delight. But she was two years younger than
I, and scarcely, I suppose, understood it.

'He is very pretty,' she said meditatively, 'but he has not got
love-eyes like you and Snap, and I don't think I could love any
little boy so very, _very_ much now who wasn't lame.'

She loved me in spite of my lameness; she loved me because I was
lame, so that if I had not fallen from the cliffs, if I had sustained
my glorious position among the boys of Raxton and Graylingham as
'Fighting Hal.' I might never have won little Winifred's love. Here
was a revelation of the mingled yarn of life, that I remember struck
me even at that childish age.

I began to think I might, in spite of the undoubted crutches, resume
my old place as the luckiest boy along the sands. She loved me
because I was lame! Those who say that physical infirmity does not
feminise the character have not had my experience. No more talk for
me that morning. In such a mood as that there can be no talk. I sat
in a silent dream, save when a sweet sob of delight would come up
like a bubble from the heaving waters of my soul. I had passed into
that rare and high mood when life's afflictions are turned by love to
life's deepest, holiest joys. I had begun early to learn and know the
gamut of the affections.

'When, you leave me here and go home to Wales you will never forget
me. Winnie?'

'Never, never!' she said, as she helped me from the ferns which were
still as wet with dew as though it had been raining. 'I will think of
you every night before I go to sleep, and always end my prayers as I
did that first night after I saw you so lonely in the churchyard.'

'And how is that, Winnie?' I said, as she adjusted my crutches for
me.

'After I've said "Amen," I always say, "And, dear Lord Jesus, don't
forget to love dear Henry, who can't get up the gangways without me,"
and I will say that every night as long as I live.'

From that morning I considered her altogether mine. Her speaking of
me as the 'dear little English boy,' however, as she did, marred the
delight her words gave me. I had from the first observed that the
child's strongest passion was a patriotism of a somewhat fiery kind.
The word English in her mouth seemed some-times a word of reproach:
it was the name of the race that in the past had invaded her sacred
Snowdonia.

I afterwards learnt that her aunt was answerable for this senseless
prejudice.

'Winnie,' I said, 'don't you wish I was a Welsh boy?'

'Oh yes,' she said.'Don't you?' I made no answer.

She looked into my face and said, 'And yet I don't think I could love
a Welsh boy as I love you.'

She then repeated to me a verse of a Welsh song, which of course I
did not understand a word of until she told me what it meant in
English.

It was an address to Snowdon, and ran something like this--

                Mountain-wild Snowdon for me!
                Sweet silence there for the harp,
                Where loiter the ewes and the lambs
                In the moss and the rushes,
                Where one's song goes sounding up!
                And the rocks re-echo it higher and higher
                In the height where the eagles live.

In this manner about six weeks slid away, and Winnie's visit to her
father came to an end. I ask, how can people laugh at the sorrows of
childhood? The bitterness of my misery as I sat with that child on
the eve of her departure for Wales (which to me seemed at the extreme
end of the earth) was almost on a par with anything I have since
suffered, and that is indeed saying a great deal. It was in Wynne's
cottage, and I sat on the floor with her wet cheeks close to mine,
saying, 'She leaves me alone.' Tom tried to console me by telling me
that Winifred would soon come back.

'But when?' I said.

'Next year,' said Tom.

He might as well have said next century, for any consolation it gave
me. The idea of a year without her was altogether beyond my grasp. It
seemed infinite.

Week after week passed, and month after month, and little Winifred
was always in my thoughts. Wynne's cottage was a sacred spot to me,
and the organist the most interesting man in the world. I never tired
of asking him questions about her, though he, as I soon found, knew
scarcely anything concerning her and what she was doing, and cared
less; for love of drink had got thoroughly hold of him.

Letters were scarce visitants to him, and I believe he never used to
hear from Wales at all.


V

At the end of the year she came again, and I had about a year of
happiness. I was with her every day, and every day she grew more
necessary to my existence.

It was at this time that I made the acquaintance of Winnie's friend
Rhona Boswell, a charming little Gypsy girl. Graylingham Wood and
Rington Wood, like the entire neighbourhood, were favourite haunts of
a superior kind of Gypsies called Griengroes, that is to say,
horse-dealers. Their business was to buy ponies in Wales and sell
them in the Eastern Counties and the East Midlands. Thus it was that
Winnie had known many of the East Midland Gypsies in Wales. Compared
with Rhona Boswell, who was more like a fairy than a child, Winnie
seemed quite a grave little person. Rhona's limbs were always on the
move, and the movement sprang always from her emotions. Her laugh
seemed to ring through the woods like silver bells, a sound that it
was impossible to mistake for any other. The laughter of most Gypsy
girls is full of music and of charm, and yet Rhona's laughter was a
sound by itself, and it was no doubt this which afterwards when she
grew up attracted my kinsman, Percy Aylwin, towards her. It seemed to
emanate not from her throat merely, but from her entire frame. If one
could imagine a strain of merriment and fun blending with the
ecstatic notes of a skylark soaring and singing, one might form some
idea of the laugh of Rhona Boswell. Ah, what days they were! Rhona
would come from Gypsy Dell, a romantic place in Rington Manor some
miles off, especially to show us some newly devised coronet of
flowers that she had been weaving for herself. This induced Winnie to
weave for herself a coronet of sea-weeds, and an entire morning was
passed in grave discussion as to which coronet excelled the other.

A year had made a great difference in Winnie, a much greater
difference than it had made in me. Her aunt, who was no doubt a
well-informed woman, had been attending to her education. In a single
year she had taught her French so thoroughly that Winnie was in the
midst of Dumas' _Monte Cristo_. And apart from education in the
ordinary acceptation of the word, the expansion of her mind had been
rapid and great.

Her English vocabulary was now far above mine, far above that of most
children of her age. This I discovered was owing to the fact that a
literary English lady of delicate health, Miss Dalrymple, whose
slender means obliged her to leave the Capel Curig Hotel, had been
staying at the cottage as a lodger. She had taken I the greatest
delight in educating Winnie. Of course Winnie lost as well as gained
by this change. She was a little Welsh rustic no longer, but a little
lady unusually well equipped, as far as education went, for taking
her place in the world.

She understood fully now what I meant when I told her that we were
betrothed, and again showed that mingling of child-wisdom and poetry
which characterised her by suggesting that we should be married on
Snowdon, and that her wedding-dress should be the green kirtle and
wreath of the fairies, and that her bridesmaids should be her Gypsy
friends, Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell. This I acceded to with
alacrity.

It was now that I fully realised for the first time her extraordinary
gift of observation and her power of describing what she had observed
in the graphic language that can never be taught save by the teacher
Nature herself. In a dozen picturesque words she would flash upon my
very senses the scene that she was describing. So vividly did she
bring before my eyes the scenery of North Wales, that when at last I
went there it seemed quite familiar to me. And so in describing
individuals, her pictures of them were like photographs.

Graylingham Wood was our favourite haunt. This place and the
adjoining piece of waste land, called the Wilderness, had for us all
the charms of a primeval forest. Here in the early spring we used to
come and watch the first violet uplifting its head from the dark green
leaves behind the mossy boles, and listen for the first note of the
blackcap, the nightingale's herald, and the first coo of the
wood-pigeons among the bare and newly-budding trees. And here, in the
summer, we used to come as soon as breakfast was over with as many
story-books as we could carry, and sit on the grass and revel in the
wonders of the _Arabian Nights_. the _Tales of the Genii_, and the
_Seven Champions of Christendom_, till all the leafy alleys of the
wood were glittering with armed knights and Sinbads and Aladdins. The
story of Camaralzaman and Badoura was, I think, Winnie's chief
favourite. She could repeat it almost word for word. The idea of the
two lovers being carried to each other by genii through the air and
over the mountain tops had an especial fascination for her. I was
Camaralzaman and she Badoura, and the genii would carry me to her as
she sat by Knockers' Llyn, or, as she called it, Llyn Coblynau, on
the lower slopes of Snowdon.

But above all, there was the sea on the other side of the wood, of
the presence of which we were always conscious--the sea, of which we
could often catch glimpses between the trees, lending a sense of
freedom and wonder and romance such as no landscape can lend. Our
great difficulty of course was in connection with my lameness. Few
children would have tried to convey a pair of crutches and a lame leg
down the cliff to the long level brown sands that lay, farther than
the eye could reach, stretched beneath miles on miles of brown
crumbling cliffs, whose jagged points and indentations had the kind
of spectral look peculiar to that coast. For, alas! the holy water
Winifred brought did not 'cure the crutches.' Yet we used to master
the difficulty, always selecting the firmer gangway at Flinty Point,
and always waiting, before making the attempt, until there was no one
near to see us toiling down. Once down on the hard sands just below
the Point, we were happy, paddling and enjoying ourselves till the
sunset told us that we must begin our herculean labour of hoisting
the leg and crutches up the gangway back to the wood. I have
performed many athletic feats since my cure, but nothing comparable
to the feat of climbing with crutches up those paths of yielding
sand. Once we found on the sand a newly shot gull. She took it in her
lap and mourned over it. I guessed who was the poor bird's
murderer--her father!

We knew Nature in all her moods. In every aspect we found the sea,
the wood, and the meadows happy and beautiful--in winter as in
summer, in storm as in sunshine. In the foggy days of November, in
the sharp winds of March, in the snows and sleet and rain of
February, we used to hear other people complain of the bad weather;
we used to hear them fret for change. But we despised them for their
ignorance where we were so learned. There was no bad weather for us.
In March, what so delicious as breasting together the brave wind, and
feeling it tingle our cheeks and beat our ears till we laughed at
each other with joy? In rain, what so delicious as to stand under a
tree or behind a hedge and listen to the drops pattering overhead
among the leaves, and see the fields steaming up to meet them? Then
again the soft falling of snow upon the lonely fields, while the very
sheep looked brown against the whiteness gathering round them. All
beautiful to us two, and beloved!



VI

'But where was this little boy's mother all this time?' you naturally
ask; 'where was his father? In a word, who was he? and what were his
surroundings?'

I will answer these queries in as brief a fashion as possible.

My father, Philip Aylwin, belonged to a branch of an ancient family
which had been satirically named by another branch of the same family
'The Proud Aylwins.'

It is a singular thing that it was the proud Aylwins who had a
considerable strain of Gypsy blood in their veins. My great-grandfather
had married Fenella Stanley, the famous Gypsy beauty, about whom so
much was written in the newspapers and magazines of that period. She
had previously when a girl of sixteen married a Lovell who died and
left a child. Fenella's portrait in the character of the Sibyl of
Snowdon was painted by the great portrait painter of that time.

This picture still hangs in the portrait gallery of Raxton Hall.

As a child it had an immense attraction for me, and no wonder, for it
was original to actual eccentricity. It depicted a dark young woman
of dazzling beauty standing at break of day among mountain scenery,
holding a musical instrument of the guitar kind, but shaped like a
violin, upon the lower strings of which she was playing with the
thumb of the left hand.

Through the misty air were seen all kinds of shadowy shapes, whose
eyes were fixed on the player. I used to stand and look at this
picture by the hour together, fascinated by the strange beauty of the
singer's face and the mysterious, prophetic expression in the eyes.

And I used to try to imagine what tune it was that could call from
the mountain air the 'flower sprites' and 'sunshine elves' of morning
on the mountain.

Fenella Stanley seems in her later life to have set up as a positive
seeress, and I infer from certain family papers and diaries in my
possession that she was the very embodiment of the wildest Romany
beliefs and superstitions.

I first became conscious of the mysterious links which, bound me to
my Gypsy ancestress by reading one of her letters to my
great-grandfather, who had taught her to write: nothing apparently
could have taught her to spell. It was written during a short stay
she was making away from him in North Wales. It described in the
simplest (and often the most uncouth) words that Nature-ecstasy which
the Romanies seem to feel in the woodlands. It came upon me like a
revelation, for it was the first time I had ever seen embodied in
words the sensations which used to come to me in Graylingham Wood or
on the river that ran through it. After long basking among the
cowslips, or beneath the whispering branches of an elm, whose shade I
was robbing from the staring cows around, or lying on my hack in a
boat on the river, listening to the birds and the insect hum and all
the magic music of summer in the woodlands, I used all at once to
feel as though the hand of a great enchantress were being waved
before me and around me. The wheels of thought would stop; all the
senses would melt into one, and I would float on a tide of
unspeakable joy, a tide whose waves were waves neither of colour, nor
perfume, nor melody, but new waters born of the mixing of these; and
through a language deeper than words and deeper than thoughts, I
would seem carried at last close to an actual consciousness--a
consciousness which, to my childish dreams, seemed drawing me close
to the bosom of a mother whose face would brighten into that of
Feuella.

My father lived upon moderate means in the little seaside town of
Raxton. My mother was his second wife, a distant cousin of the same
name. She was not one of the 'Proud Aylwins,' and yet she must have
had more pride in her heart than all the 'Proud Aylwins' put
together. Her feeling in relation to the strain of Gypsy blood in the
family into which she had married was that of positive terror. She
associated the word 'Gypsy' with everything that is wild, passionate,
and lawless.

One great cause undoubtedly of her partiality for Frank and her
dislike of me was that Frank's blue-eyed Saxon face showed no sign
whatever of the Romany strain, while my swarthy face did.

As I write this, she lives before me with more vividness than my
father, for the reason that her character during my childhood, before
I came to know my father thoroughly--before I came to know what a
marvellous man he was--seemed to be a thousand times more vivid than
his. With her bright grey eyes, her patrician features, I shall see
her while memory lasts. The only differences that ever arose between
my father and my other were connected with the fact that my father
had a former wife. Now and then (not often) my mother would lose her
stoical self-command, and there would come from her an explosion of
jealous anger, stormy and terrible. This was on occasions when she
perceived bat my father's memory retained too vividly the impression
left on it of his love for the wife who was dead--dead, but a rival
still. My father lived in mortal fear of this jealousy. Yet my mother
was a devoted and a fond wife. I remember in especial the flash that
would come from her eyes, the fiery flush that would overspread her
face, whenever she saw my father open certain antique silver casket
which he kept in his escritoire when at home, and carried about with
him when travelling. The casket (I soon learned) contained momentos
of his first wife, between whom and himself there seems to have been
a deep natural sympathy such did not exist between my mother and him.
This first wife he had lost under peculiarly painful circum-stances,
which it is necessary that I should briefly narrate. She had been
drowned before his very eyes that cove beneath the church which I
have already described.

This semicircular indentation at the end of the peninsula or headland
on which the church stood was specially dangerous in two ways. It was
a fatal spot where sea and land were equally treacherous. On the
sands the tide, and on the cliffs the landslip, imperilled the lives
of the unwary. Half, at least, of the churchyard had been condemned
as 'dangerous,' and this very same spot was the only one on the coast
where the pedestrian along the sands ran any serious risk of being
entrapped by the tide; for the peninsula on which the church stood
jutted out for a considerable distance into the sea, and then was
scooped out in the form of a boot-jack, and so caught the full force
of the waves. One corner, as already mentioned, was called Flinty
Point, the other Needle Point, and between these two points there was
no gangway within the semicircle up the wall of cliff. Indeed, within
the cove the cliff was perpendicular, or rather overhanging, as far
as such crumbling earth would admit of its overhanging. To reach a
gangway, a person inside the cove would have to leave the cliff wall
for the open sands, and pass round either Needle Point or Flinty
Point. Hence the cove was sometimes called Mousetrap Cove, because
when the tide reached so high as to touch these two points, a person
on the sands within the cove was caught as in a mousetrap, and the
only means of extrication was by boat from the sea. It was the
irresistible action of the sea upon the peninsula (called Church
Headland) that had doomed church and churchyard to certain
destruction.

Dangerous as was this cove, there was something peculiarly
fascinating about it. The black, smooth, undulating boulders that
dotted the sand here and there formed the most delightful seats upon
which to meditate or read. It was a favourite spot with my father's
first wife, who had been a Swiss governess. She was a great reader
and student, but it was not till after her death that my father
became one. The poor lady was fond of bringing her books to the cove,
and pursuing her studies or meditations with the sound of the sea's
chime in her ears. My father, at that time I believe a simple, happy
country squire, but showing strong signs of his Romany ancestry, had
often warned her of the risk she ran, and one day he had the agony of
seeing her from the cliff locked in the cove, and drowning before his
eyes ere a boat could be got, while he and the coastguard stood
powerless to reach her.

The effect of this shock demented my father for a time. How it was
that he came to marry again I could never understand. During my
childhood he had, as far as I could see, no real sympathy with
anything save his own dreams. In after years I came to know the
truth. He was kind enough in disposition, but he looked upon us, his
children, as his second wife's property, his dreams as his own. Once
every year he used to go to Switzerland and stay there for several
weeks; and, as the object of these journeys was evidently to revisit
the old spots made sacred to him by reminiscences of his romantic
love for his first wife, it may he readily imagined that they were
not looked upon with any favour by my mother. She never accompanied
him on these occasions, nor would she let Frank do so--another proof
of the early partiality she showed for my brother. As I was of less
importance, my father (previous to my accident) used to take me, to
my intense delight and enjoyment; but during the period of my
lameness he went to Switzerland alone.

It was during one of my childish visits to Switzerland that I learnt
an important fact in connection with my father and his first
wife--the fact that since her death he had become a mystic and had
joined a certain sect of mystics founded by Lavater.

This is how I came to know it. My attention had been arrested by a
book lying on my father's writing-table--a large book called '_The
Veiled Queen_, by Philip Aylwin'--and I began to read it. The
statements therein were of an astounding kind, and the idea of a
beautiful woman behind a veil completely fascinated my childish mind.
And the book was full of the most amazing stories collected from all
kinds of outlandish sources. One story, called 'The Flying Donkey of
the Ruby Hills,' riveted my attention so much that it possessed me,
and even now I feel that I can repeat every word of it. It was a
story of a donkey-driver, who, having lost his wife Alawiyah, went
and lived alone in the ruby hills of Badakhshan, where the Angel of
Memory fashioned for him out of his own sorrow and tears an image of
his wife. This image was mistaken by a townsman named Hasan for his
own wife, and Ja'afar was summoned before the Ka'dee. Afterwards,
when _The Veiled Queen_ came into my possession, I noticed that this
story was quoted for motto on the title-page:

'Then quoth the Ka'dee, laughing until his grinders appeared:
"Rather, by Allah, would I take all the punishment thou dreadest,
thou most false donkey-driver of the Ruby Hills, than believe this
story of thine--this mad, mad story, that she with whom thou wast
seen was not the living wife of Hasan here (as these four legal
witnesses have sworn), but thine own dead spouse, Alawiyah,
refashioned for thee by the Angel of Memory out of thine own sorrow
and unquenchable fountain of tears."

'Quoth Ja'afar, bowing low his head: "Bold is the donkey-driver,
O Ka'dee! and bold the Ka'dee who dares say what he will believe,
what disbelieve--not knowing in any wise the mind of Allah--not
knowing in any wise his own heart and what it shall some day
suffer."'

This story so absorbed me that when my father re-entered the house
I was perfectly unconscious of his presence. He took the book from
me, saying that it was not a book for children. It possessed my mind
for some days. What I had read in it threw light upon certain
conversations in French and German which I had heard between my
father and his Swiss friends, and the fact gradually dawned upon me
that he believed himself to be in direct communication with the
spirit of his dead wife. This so acted upon my imagination that I
began to feel that she was actually alive, though invisible. I told
Frank when I got home that we had another mother in Switzerland, and
that I our father went to Switzerland to see her.

Having at that time a passionate love for my mother (a love none the
less passionate because somewhat coldly returned), I felt great anger
against this resuscitated rival; but Frank only laughed and called me
a stupid little fool.

Luckily Frank forgot my story in a minute, and it never reached my
mother's ears.

I Some years after this an odd incident occurred. The I idea of a
veiled lady had, as I say, fascinated me. One Raxton fair-day I
induced Winnie to be photographed on the sands, wearing a crown of
sea-flowers in imitation of Rhona Boswell's famous wild-flower
coronet, and a necklace of seaweed, with Frank and another boy
lifting from her head a long white veil of my mother's. My father
accidentally saw this photograph, and was so taken with it that he
adorned the title-page of the third edition of _The Veiled Queen_
with a small woodcut of it.

These vagaries of my father's had an influence upon my destiny of the
most tragic, yet of the most fantastic kind.

He had the reputation, I believe, of being one of the most learned
mystics of his time. He was a fair Hebrew scholar, and also had a
knowledge of Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian. His passion for philology
was deep-rooted. He was a no less ardent numismatist. Moreover, he
was deeply versed in amulet-lore. He wrote a treatise upon 'amulets'
and their inscriptions. All this was after the death of his first
wife. He had a large collection of amulets, Gnostic gems, and
abraxas stones. That he really believed in the virtue of amulets will
be pretty clearly seen as my narrative proceeds. Indeed, the subject
of amulets and love-tokens became a mania with him. After his death
it was said that his collection of amulets, Egyptian, Gnostic, and
other, was rarer, and  his collection of St. Helena coins larger,
than any other collection in England.

Though my mother did not know of the spiritualistic orgies in
Switzerland, she knew that my father was a spiritualist. And this
vexed her, not only because she conceived it to be visionary folly,
but because it was 'low.' She knew that it led him to join a
newly-formed band of Latter-Day mystics which had been organised at
Raxton, but luckily she did not know that through them he believed
himself to be holding communication with his first wife. The members
of this body were tradespeople of the town, and I quite think that in
my mother's eyes all tradespeople were low.

As to her indifference towards me,--that is easily explained. I was
an incorrigible little bohemian by nature. She despaired of ever
changing me. During several years this indifference distressed me,
though it in no way diminished my affection for her. At last,
however, I got accustomed to it and accepted it as inevitable. But
the remarkable thing was that Frank's affection for his mother was of
the most languid kind. He was an open-hearted boy, and never took
advantage of my mother's favouritism. Thus I was left entirely to my
own resources. My little love-idyl with Winifred was for a long time
unknown to my mother, and no amount of ocular demonstration could
have made it known (in such a dream was he) to my father.

On one occasion, however, my mother, having been struck by her beauty
at church, told Wynne to bring her to the house, little thinking what
she was doing. Accordingly, Winifred came one evening and charmed my
mother, charmed the entire household, by her grace of manner. My
mother, upon whom what she called 'style' made a far greater
impression than anything else, pronounced her to be a perfect little
lady, and I heard her remark that she wondered how the child of such
a scapegrace as Wynne could have been so reared.

Unfortunately I was not old enough to disguise the transports of
delight that set my heart beating and my crippled limbs trembling as
I saw Winifred gliding like a fairy about the house and gardens, and
petted even by my proud and awful mother. My mother did not fail to
notice this, and before long she had got from Frank the history of
our little loves, and even of the 'cripple water' from St. Winifred's
Well. I partly heard what Frank was telling her, and I was the only
one to notice the expression of displeasure that overspread her
features. She did not, however, show it to the child, but she never
invited her there again, and from that evening was much more vigilant
over my movements, lest I should go to Wynne's cottage. I still,
however, continued to meet Winifred in Graylingham Wood during her
stay with her father; and at last, when she again left me, I felt
desolate indeed.

I wrote her a letter, and took it to him to address. He was very fond
of showing his penmanship, which was remarkably good. He had indeed
been well educated, though from his beer-house associations he had
entirely caught the rustic accent. I saw him address it, and took it
myself to the post-office at Rington, where I was not so well known
as at Raxton, but I never got any reply.

And who was Tom Wynne? Though the organist of the new church at
Raxton, and custodian of the old deserted church on the cliffs, he
was the local ne'er-do-well, drunkard, and scapegrace. He was,
however, a well-connected man, reduced to his present position by
drink. He had lived in Raxton until he returned to Wales, which was
his birthplace--having obtained there some appointment the nature of
which I never could understand. In Wales he had got married; and
there his wife had died shortly after the birth of Winnie. It was no
doubt through his intemperate habits that he lost his post in Wales.
It was then that he again came to Raxton, leaving the child with his
sister-in-law.

Raxton stands on that part of the coast where the land-springs most
persistently disintegrate the hills and render them helpless against
the ravages of the sea. Perhaps even within the last few centuries
the spot called Mousetrap Cove, scooped out of the peninsula on which
the old church stands, was dry land. The old Raxton church at the end
of this peninsula had, not many years since, to be deserted for a new
one, lest it should some day carry its congregation with it when it
slides, as it soon will slide, into the sea. But as none had dared to
pull down the old church, a custodian had to be found who for a
pittance would take charge of it and of the important monuments it
contains. Such a custodian was found in Wynne, who lived in the
cottage already described on the Wilderness Road. Along this road
(which passed both the new church and the old) I was frequently
journeying, and Wynne's tall burly form and ruddy face were, even
before I knew Winnie, a certain comfort to me.

He was said to be the last remnant of an old family that once owned
much land in the neighbourhood, and he was still the recipient of a
small pension. My father used to say that Wynne's family was even
exceptionally good, that it laid claim to being descended from a
still older Welsh family. But my mother scorned the idea, and always
treated the organist as belonging to the lower classes. It was Wynne
who had taught me swimming. It was really he, and not my groom, who
had taught me how to ride a horse along the low-tide sands so as not
to distress him or damage his feet.

It was about this time that my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley, my mother's
brother, who had quarrelled with her, became reconciled to her, and
came to Raxton. He at once recommended that a friend of his, a famous
London surgeon, should he consulted about my lameness. I accordingly
went with him to London to be placed under the treatment of the
eminent man. Had this been done earlier, what a world of suffering
might have been spared me! The man of science pronounced my ailment
to be quite curable.

He performed an operation upon the leg, and after a long and careful
course of treatment in town, advised that I should go to Margate for
a long stay, and avail myself of that change of air. I went,
accompanied by my mother and brother, and stayed there several
months. My father used to come to see us once a month or so, stay for
a week, and then go back.

I now wrote another letter to Winifred, and after a long delay, got a
reply, but it consisted mainly of descriptions of the way in which
she paddled in the Welsh brooks and of lessons in the shawl-dance
which she was taking from Shuri Lovell, the mother of her Gypsy
friend. So vividly did she describe these lessons that her pictures
haunted me. I wrote in reply to this a letter burning with my
ever-growing love, but to this I got no reply.

As the surgeon had prophesied, I made such advance that I was after a
while able to walk with tolerable ease without my crutches, by the
aid of a walking-stick; and as time went on, the tonic effect of
Margate air, aiding the remedies prescribed by the surgeon, worked
such a change in me that I was pronounced well, and the doctor said I
might return home. I returned to Raxton a cripple no longer.

I returned cured. I say. But how entangled is this web of our life!
How almost impossible is it that good should come unmixed with evil,
or evil unmixed with good! At Margate, where the bracing air did
more, I doubt not, towards my restoration to health than all the
medicines,--at Margate my brother drank in his death-poison.

During the very last days of our stay he caught scarlet fever. In a
fortnight he was dead. The shock to me was very severe. It laid my
mother prostrate for months.

I was now by the death of Frank the representative of our branch of
the family, and a little fellow of uncomfortable importance. My uncle
Aylwin of Alvanley. being childless, was certain to leave me his
large estates, for he had dropped entirely away from the Aylwins of
Rington Manor, and also from the branch of the Aylwin family
represented by my kinsman Cyril.



II

THE MOONLIGHT CROSS OF THE GNOSTICS


I

My mother had some prejudice against a public school, and I was sent
to a large and important private one at Cambridge.

And go, with Winifred on my mind, I went one damp winter's morning to
Dullingham, our nearest railway station, on my way to Cambridge.

As concerns my school-days, I feel that all that will interest the
reader is this: as I rode through mile upon mile of the flat,
wide-stretching country, I made to myself a vow in connection with
Winifred,--a vow that when I left school I would do a certain thing
in relation to her, though Fate itself should say, 'This thing shall
not be done.' I did not know then, as I know now, how weak is human
will enmeshed in that web of Circumstance that has been a-weaving
since the beginning of the world.

I left school without the slightest notion as to what my future
course in life was to be. I was to take my rich uncle's property.
That was understood now. And although my mother never talked of the
matter, I could see in the pensive gaze she bent on me an
ever-present consciousness of a future for me more golden still.

But now I formed a new intimacy, and one of a very singular kind--an
intimacy with my father, who suddenly woke up to the fact that I was
no longer a child. It occurred on my making some pertinent inquiries
about a certain Gnostic amulet representing the Gorgon's head, a
prize of which he had lately become the happy possessor. On his
telling me that the Arabic word for amulet was _hamalet_, and that
the word meant 'that which is suspended,' I said in a perfectly
thoughtless way that very likely one of the learned societies to
which he belonged might be able to trace some connection between
'hamalet' and the 'Hamlet' of Shakespeare. These idle and ignorant
words of mine fell, as I found, upon a mind ripe to receive them. He
looked straight before him at the bust of Shakespeare on the
bookshelves as he always looked when his rudderless imagination was
once well launched, and I heard him mutter, 'Hamlet--the Amleth of
Saxo-Grammaticus,--hamalet, "that which is suspended." The world, to
Hamlet's metaphysical mind, _was_ "suspended" in the wide region of
Nowhere--in an infinite ocean of Nothing. Why did I not think of this
before? Strange that this child should hit upon it.' Then looking at
me as though he had just seen me for the first time in his life, he
said. 'How old are you, child?' 'Eighteen, father, I said. 'Eighteen
_years_?' he asked. 'Yes, father,' I said with some pique. 'Did you
suppose I meant eighteen months?' 'Only eighteen years,' he muttered,
'a mere baby, in short; and yet he has hit upon what we
Shakespearians have been boggling over for many year?--the symbolical
meaning involved in Hamlet's name. Henry, I prophesy great things for
you.'

An intimacy was cemented between us at once. One of the results of
this conversation was my father's elaborate paper, read before one of
his societies, in which he maintained that Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ was
a metaphysical poem, the great central idea of which was involved in
the name Hamlet, Amleth, or Hamalet--the idea that the universe,
suspended in the wide region of Nowhere, lies, an amulet, upon the
breast of the Great Latona,--a paper that was the basis of his
reputation in 'the higher criticism.'

Shortly after this my father and I spent the autumn in various parts
of Switzerland. One night, when we were sitting outside the chalet in
the full light of the moon, I was the witness of a display of passion
on the part of one whom I had always considered to be a dreamy
book-worm--a passionless, eccentric mystic--that simply amazed me. A
flickering tongue from the central fires suddenly breaking up through
the soil of an English vegetable garden could hardly have been a more
unexpected phenomenon to me than what occurred on that memorable
night.

The incident I am going to relate showed me how rash it is to suppose
that you have really fathomed the personality of any human creature.
The mementos of his first wife, which accompanied him whithersoever
he went, absorbed his attention in Switzerland, and especially in the
little place where she was born, far more than they had done at home.
He was for ever peeping furtively into his escritoire to enjoy the
sight of them, and then looking over his shoulder to see if he was
being watched by my mother, though she was far away in Raxton Hall.
On the night in question he showed me the silver casket containing
certain of these mementos--mementos which I felt to be almost too
intimate to be shown even to his son.

'And now, Henry,' said he, 'I am going to show you something that no
one else has ever seen since she died--the most sacred possession I
have upon this earth.' He then opened his shirt and his vest, and
showed me lying upon his naked bosom a beautiful jewelled cross of a
considerable size. 'This,' said he, lifting it up, 'is an ancient
Gnostic amulet. It is called the "Moonlight Cross" of the Gnostics. I
gave it to her on the night of our betrothal. She was a Roman
Catholic. It is made of precious stones cut in facets, with rubies
and diamonds and beryls so cunningly set that, when the moonlight
falls on them, the cross flashes almost as brilliantly as when the
sunlight falls on them and is kindled into living fire. These
deep-coloured crimson rubies--almost as clear as diamonds--are not of
the ordinary kind. They are true "Oriental rubies," and the jewellers
would tell you that the mine which produced them has been lost during
several centuries. But look here when I lift it up; the most
wonderful feature of the jewel is the skill with which the diamonds
are cut. The only shapes generally known are what are called the
"brilliant" and the "rose," but here the facets are arranged in an
entirely different way, and evidently with the view of throwing light
into the very hearts of the rubies, and producing this peculiar
radiance.'

He lifted the amulet again (which was suspended from his neck by a
beautifully worked cord made of soft brown hair) into the rays from
the moon. The light the jewel emitted was certainly of a strange and
fascinating kind. The cross had been worn with the jewelled front
upon his bosom instead of the smooth back, and the sharp facets of
the cross had lacerated the scarred flesh underneath in a most cruel
manner. He saw me shudder and understood why.

'Oh, I like that!' he said, with an ecstatic smile. 'I like to feel
it constantly on my bosom. It cannot cut deep enough for me. This is
her hair,' he said, taking the hair-cord between his fingers and
kissing it.

'How do you manage to exist, father,' I said, 'with that heavy
sharp-edged jewel on your breast? you who cannot bear the gout with
patience?'

'Exist? I could not exist _without_ it. The gout is pain--this is not
pain; it is joy, bliss, heaven! When I am dead it must lie for ever
on my breast as it lies now, or I shall never rest in my grave.' He
had been talking about amulets in the most quiet and matter-of-fact
way during that morning; but the I moment he produced this cross a
strange change came over his face, something like the change that
will come over a dull wood-fire when blown by the wind into a bright
light of flame.

'Ha!' he muttered to himself, as his eyes widened and sparkled with a
look of intense eagerness and his hand shook, sending the light of
the beautiful jewel all about the room, 'it is a sad pity he was not
her son. How I should have loved him then! I like him now very much;
but how I should have loved him then, for he is a brave boy. Oh, if I
had only been born brave like him!' Then, suddenly recollecting
himself, he closed his vest, and said: 'Don't tell your mother, Hal;
don't tell your mother that I have shown you this.' Then he took it
out again. 'She who is dead cherished it,' he continued, half to
himself--'she cherished it above all things. She died, boy, and I
couldn't help her. She used to wear the cross in the bosom of her
dress; and there she was in the cove kissing it when the tide swept
over her. I ought to have jumped down and died with her. _You_ would
have done it, Hal; your eyes say so. Oh, to be an Aylwin without the
Aylwin courage!'

After a little time he said: 'This has lain on her bosom, Hal, her
bosom! It has been kissed by her, Hal, oh, a thousand thousand times!
It had her last kiss. When I took it from the cold body which had
been recovered, this cross seemed to be warm with her life and love.'

And then he wept, and his tears fell thick upon his bosom and upon
the amulet. The truth was clear enough now. The appalling death of
his first wife, his love for her, and his remorse for not having
jumped down the cliff and died with her, had affected his brain. He
was a monomaniac, and all his thoughts were in some way clustered
round the dominant one. He had studied amulets because the 'Moonlight
Cross' had been cherished by her; he came to Switzerland every year
because it was associated with her; he had joined the spiritualist
body in the mad hope that perhaps there might be something in it,
perhaps there might be a power that could call her back to earth.
Even the favourite occupation of his life, visiting cathedrals and
churches and taking rubbings from monumental brasses, had begun
after her death; it had come from the fact (as I soon learned) that
she had taken interest in monumental brasses, and had begun the
collection of rubbings.

And yet this martyr to a mighty passion bore the character of a
dreamy student; and his calm, un-furrowed face, on common occasions,
expressed nothing but a rather dull kind of content! Here was a
revelation of what, afterwards, was often revealed to me, that human
personality is the crowning wonder of this wonderful universe, and
that the forces which turn fire-mist into stars are not more
inscrutable than is human character. He lifted up his head and gazed
at me through his tears.

'Hal,' he said, 'do you know why I have shown you this? It _must_,
MUST be buried with me at my death; and there is no one upon whose
energy, truth, courage, and strength of will I can rely as I can upon
yours. You must give me your word, Hal, that you will see it and this
casket containing her letters buried with me.'

I hesitated to become a party to such an undertaking as this. It
savoured of superstition, I thought. Now, having at that very time
abandoned all the superstitions and all the mystical readings of the
universe which as a child I had inherited from ancestors, Romany and
English, having at that very time begun to take a delight in the
wonderful revelations of modern science, my attitude towards
superstition--towards all super-naturalism--oscillated between anger
and simple contempt.

'But,' I said, 'you surely will not have this beautiful old cross
buried?' And as I looked at it, and the light fell upon it, there
came from it strange flashes of fire, showing with what extraordinary
skill the rubies and diamonds had been adjusted so that their facets
should catch and concentrate the rays of the moon.

'Yes,' he said, taking the cross again in his hand and fondling it
passionately, 'it must never be possessed by any one after me.'

'But it might be stolen, father--stolen from your coffin.'

'That would indeed he a disaster,' he said with a shudder. Then a
look of deadly vengeance overspread his face and brought out all its
Romany characteristics as he said: 'But with it there will be buried
a curse written in Hebrew and English--a curse upon the despoiler,
which will frighten off any thief who is in his senses.'

And he showed me a large parchment scroll, folded exactly like a
title-deed, with the following curse and two verses from the 109th
Psalm written upon it in Hebrew and English. The English version
was carefully printed by himself in large letters:--


  'He who shall violate this tomb.--he who shall steal this amulet,
  hallowed as a love-token between me and my dead wife,--he who shall
  dare to lay a sacrilegious hand upon this cross, stands cursed by
  God. cursed by love, and cursed by me. Philip Aylwin, lying here.

  "Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his
  fatherless children.... Let his children be vagabonds, and beg
  their bread; let them seek it also out of desolate places." Psalm
  cix. So saith the Lord. Amen.'


'I have printed the English version in large letters,' he said, 'so
that any would-be despoiler must see it and read it at once by the
dimmest lantern light.'

'But, father,' I said, 'is it possible that you, an educated man,
really believe in the efficacy of a curse?'

'If the curse comes straight from the heart's core of a man, as this
curse comes from mine, Hal, how can it fail to operate by the mere
force of will? The curse of a man who loved as I love upon the wretch
who should violate a love-token so sacred as this--why, the
disembodied spirits of all who have loved and suffered would combine
to execute it!'

'Spirits!' I said. 'Really, father, in times like these to talk of
spirits!'

'Ah, Henry!' he replied, 'I was like you once. I could once be
content with Materialism--I could find it supportable once; but,
should you ever come to love as I have loved (and, for your own
happiness, child, I hope you never may), you will And that
Materialism is intolerable, is hell itself, to the heart that has
known a passion like mine. You will And that it is madness, Hal,
madness, to believe in the word "never"! you will And that you
_dare_ not leave untried any creed, howsoever wild, that offers
the heart a ray of hope. Every object she cherished has become
spiritualised, sublimated, has become alive--alive as this amulet
is alive. See, the lights are no natural lights.' And again he held
it up.

'If on my death-bed,' he continued, 'I thought that this beloved
cross and these sacred relics would ever get into other hands--would
ever touch other flesh--than mine, I should die a maniac, Hal, and my
spirit would never be released from the chains of earth.' It was the
superstitious tone of his talk that irritated and hardened me. He saw
it, and a piteous expression overspread his features.

'Don't desert your poor father,' he said. 'What I want is the word
of an Aylwin that those beloved relics shall be buried with me. If I
had _that_, I should be content to live, and content to die. Oh,
Hal!'

He threw such an imploring gaze into my face as he said 'Oh, Hal!'
that, reluctant as I was to be mixed up with superstition, I promised
to execute his wishes; I promised also to keep the secret from all
the world during his life, and after his death to share it with those
two only from whom, for family reasons, it could not be kept--my
uncle Aylwin of Alvanley and my mother. He then put away the amulet,
and his face resumed the look of placid content it usually wore. He
was feeling the facets of the mysterious 'Moonlight Cross'!

The most marvellous thing is this, however: his old relations towards
me were at once resumed. He never alluded to the subject of his first
wife again, and I soon found it difficult to believe that the
conversation just recorded ever took place at all. Evidently his
monomania only rose up to a passionate expression when fanned into
sudden flame by talking about the cross. It was as though the shock
of his first wife's death had severed his consciousness and his life
in twain.



II

Naturally this visit to Switzerland cemented our intimacy, and it
was on our return home that he suggested my accompanying him on one
of his 'rubbing expeditions.'

'Henry,' he said, 'your mother has of late frequently discussed with
me the question of your future calling in life. She suggests a
Parliamentary career. I confess that I find questions about careers
exceedingly disturbing.'

'There is only one profession I should like, father,' I said, 'and
that is a painter's.' In fact, the passion for painting had come on
me very strongly of late. My dreams had from the first been of
wandering with Winnie in a paradise of colour, and these dreams had
of late been more frequent: the paradise of colour had been growing
richer and rarer.

He shook his head gravely and said, 'No, my dear; your mother would
never allow it.'

'Why not?' I said; 'is painting low too?'

'Cyril Aylwin is low, at least so your mother and aunt say, especially
your aunt. I have not perceived it myself, but then your mother's
perceptive faculties are extraordinary--quite extraordinary.'

'Did the lowness come from his being a painter, father?' I asked.

'Really, child, you are puzzling me. But I have observed you now for
some weeks, and I quite believe that you would make one of the best
rubbers who ever held a ball. I am going to Salisbury next week, and
you shall then make your _debut_.'

This was in the midst of a very severe winter we had some years ago,
when all Europe was under a coating of ice.

'But, father,' I said, 'shan't we find it rather cold?'

'Well,' said my father, with a bland smile, 'I will not pretend that
Salisbury Cathedral is particularly warm in this weather, but in
winter I always rub in knee-caps and mittens. I will tell Hodder to
knit you a full set at once.'

'But, father,' I said, 'Tom Wynne tells me that rubbing is the most
painful of all occupations. He even goes so far sometimes as to say
that it was the exhaustion of rubbing for you which turned him to
drink.'

'Nothing of the kind,' said my father. 'All that Tom needed to make
him a good rubber was enthusiasm. I am strongly of opinion that
without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome,
except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this
exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the
thighs, the most numbing for the fingers. It is a profession, Henry,
demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator. Now Tom's
enthusiasm for rubbing as an art was from the first exceedingly
feeble.'

I was on the eve of revolting, but I remembered what there was
lacerating his poor breast, and consented. And when I heard hints of
our 'working the Welsh churches' my sudden enthusiasm for the
rubber's art astonished even my father.

'My dear,' he said to my mother at dinner one day, 'what do you
think? Henry has developed quite a sudden passion for rubbing.'

I saw an expression of perplexity and  mystification overspread my
mother's sagacious face.

'And in the spring,' continued my father, 'we are going into Wales
to rub.'

'Into Wales, are you?' said my mother, in a tone of that soft voice
whose meaning I knew so well.

My thoughts were continually upon Winifred, now that I was alone in
the familiar spots. I had never seen her nor heard from her since we
parted as children. She had only known me as a cripple. What would
she think of me now? Did she ever think of me? She had not answered
my childish letter, and this had caused me much sorrow and
perplexity.

We did not go into Wales after all. But the result of this
conversation took a shape that amazed me. I was sent to stay with my
Aunt Prue in London in order that I might attend one of the Schools
of Art. Yes, my mother thought it was better for me even to run the
risk of becoming bohemianised like Cyril Aylwin, than to brood over
Winnie or the scenes that were associated with our happy childhood.

In London I was an absolute stranger. We had no town house. On the
few occasions when the family had gone to London, it was to stay in
Belgrave Square with my Aunt Prue, who was an unmarried sister of my
mother's.

'Since the death of the Prince Consort, to go no further back,' she
used to say, 'a dreadful change has come over the tone of society;
the love of bohemianism, the desire to take up any kind of people, if
they are amusing, and still more if they are rich, is levelling
everything. However, I'm nobody now; I say nothing.'

What wonder that from my very childhood my aunt took a prejudice
against me, and predicted for me a career 'as deplorable as Cyril
Aylwin's,' and sympathised with my mother in her terror of the Gypsy
strain in my father's branch of the family?

Her tastes and instincts being intensely aristocratic, she suffered a
martyrdom from her ever present consciousness of this disgrace. She
had seen very much more of what is called Society than my mother had
ever an opportunity of seeing. It was not, however, aristocracy, but
Royalty that won the true worship of her soul.

Although she was immeasurably inferior to my mother in everything,
her influence over her was great, and it was always for ill. I
believe that even my mother's prejudice against Tom Wynne was largely
owing to my aunt, who disliked my relations towards Wynne simply
because he did not represent one of the great Wynne families. But the
remarkable thing was that, although my mother thus yielded to my
aunt's influence, she in her heart despised her sister's ignorance
and her narrowness of mind. She often took a humorous pleasure in
seeing my aunt's aristocratic proclivities baffled by some vexing
_contretemps_ or by some slight passed upon her by people of superior
rank, especially by those in the Royal circle.

There have been so many descriptions of art schools, from the famous
'Gandish's' down to the very moment at which I write, that I do not
intend to describe mine.

It would be very far from my taste to use a narrative like this, a
narrative made sacred by the spiritual love it records, as a means of
advertising efforts of such modest pretensions as mine when placed in
comparison with the work of the illustrious painters my friendship
with whom has been the great honour of my life. And if I allude here
to the fact of my being a painter, it is in order that I may not be
mistaken for another Aylwin. my cousin Percy, who in some unpublished
poems of his which I have seen has told how a sailor was turned into
a poet by love--love of Rhona Boswell. In the same way, these pages
are written to tell how I was made a painter by love of her whom I
first saw in Raxton churchyard, her who filled my being as Beatrice
filled the being of Dante when 'the spirit of life, which hath its
dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so
violently that the least pulses of his body shook therewith.'



III

Time went by, and I returned to Raxton. Just when I had determined
that, come what would, I would go into Wales, Wynne one day told me
that Winnie was coming to live with him at Raxton, her aunt having
lately died. 'The English lady,' said he, 'who lived with them so
long and eddicated Winifred, has gone to live at Carnarvon to get the
sea air.'

This news was at once a joy and a perplexity.

Wynne, though still the handsomest and finest man in Raxton, had sunk
much lower in intemperance of late. He now generally wound up a
conversation with me by a certain stereotyped allusion to the dryness
of the weather, which I perfectly understood to mean that he felt
thirsty, and that an offer of half-a-crown for beer would not be
unacceptable. He was a proud man in everything except in reference to
beer. But he seemed to think there was no degradation in asking for
money to get drunk with, though to have asked for it to buy bread
would, I suppose, have wounded his pride. I did not then see so
clearly as I now do the wrong of giving him those half-crowns. His
annuity he had long since sold.

Spite of all his delinquencies, however, my father liked him; so did
my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley. But my mother seemed positively to hate
him. It was the knowledge of this that caused my anxiety about
Winifred's return. I felt that complications must arise.

At this time I used to go to Dullingham every day. The clergyman
there was preparing me for college.

On the Sunday following the day when I got such momentous news from
Wynne, I was met suddenly, as my mother and I were leaving the church
after the service, by the gaze of a pair of blue eyes that arrested
my steps as by magic, and caused the church and the churchgoers to
vanish from my sight.

The picture of Winifred that had dwelt in my mind so long was that of
a beautiful child. The radiant vision of the girl before me came on
me by surprise and dazzled me. Tall and slim she was now, but the
complexion had not altered at all; the eyes seemed young and
childlike as ever.

When our eyes met she blushed, then turned pale, and took hold of the
top of a seat near which she was standing. She came along the aisle
close to us, gliding and slipping through the crowd, and passed out
of the porch. My mother had seen my agitation, and had moved on in a
state of haughty indignation. I had no room, however, at that moment
for considerations of any person but one. I hurried out of the
church, and, following Winifred, grasped her gloved hand.

'Winifred, you are come,' I said; 'I have been longing to see you.'

She again turned pale and then blushed scarlet. Next she looked down
me as if she had expected to see something which she did not see, and
when her eyes were upraised again something in them gave me a strange
fancy that she was disappointed to miss my crutches.

'Why didn't you write to me from Wales, Winifred? Why didn't you
answer my letter years ago?'

She hesitated, then said,

'My aunt wouldn't let me, sir.'

'Wouldn't let you answer it! and why?'

Again she hesitated--

'I--I don't know, sir.'

'You _do_ know, Winifred. I see that you know, and you shall tell me.
Why didn't your aunt let you answer my letter?'

Winifred's eyes looked into mine beseechingly. Then that light of
playful humour, which I remembered so well, shot like a sunbeam
across and through them as she replied--

'My aunt said we must both forget our pretty dream.'

Almost before the words were out, however, the sunbeam fled from her
eyes and was replaced by a look of terror. I now perceived that my
mother, in passing to the carriage, had lingered on the gravel-path
close to us, and had, of course, overheard the dialogue. She passed
on with a look of hate. I thought it wise to bid Winifred good-bye
and join my mother.

As I stepped into the carriage I turned round and saw that Winifred
was again looking wistfully at some particular part of me--looking
with exactly that simple, frank, 'objective' expression with which I
was familiar.

'I knew it was the crutches she missed,' I said to myself as I sat
down by my mother's side; 'she'll have to love me now because I am
_not_ lame.'

I also knew something else: I must prepare for a conflict with my
mother. My father, at this time in Switzerland, had written to say
that he had been suffering acutely from an attack of what he called
'spasms.' He had 'been much subject to them of late, but no one
considered them to be really dangerous.'

During luncheon I felt that my mother's eyes were on me. After it was
over she went to her room to write in answer to my father's letter,
and then later on she returned to me.

'Henry,' she said, 'my overhearing the dialogue in the churchyard
between you and Wynne's daughter was, I need not pay, quite
accidental, but it is perhaps fortunate that I did overhear it.'

'Why fortunate, mother? You simply heard her say that her aunt in
Wales had forbidden her to answer a childish letter of mine written
years ago.'

'In telling you which, the girl, I must say, proclaimed her aunt to
be an exceedingly sensible and well-conducted woman,' said my mother.

'On that point, mother,' I said, 'you must allow me to hold a
different opinion. I, for my part, should have said that Winifred's
story proclaimed her aunt to be a worthy member of a flunkey society
like this of ours--a society whose structure, political and moral and
religious, is based on an adamantine rock of paltry snobbery.'

It was impossible to restrain my indignation.

'I am aware, Henry,' replied my mother calmly, 'that it is one of the
fashions of the hour for young men of family to adopt the language of
Radical newspapers. In a country like this the affectation does no
great harm, I grant, and my only serious objection to it is that it
implies in young men of one's own class a lack of originality which
is a little humiliating. I am aware that your cousin, Percy Aylwin,
of Rington Manor, used to talk in the same strain as this, and ended
by joining the Gypsies. But I came to warn you, Henry, I came to urge
you not to injure this poor girl's reputation by such scenes as that
I witnessed this morning.'

I remained silent. The method of my mother's attack had taken me by
surprise. Her sagacity was so much greater than mine, her power of
fence was so much greater, her stroke was so much deadlier, that in
all our encounters I had been conquered.

'It is for the girl's own sake that I speak to you,' continued my
mother. 'She was deeply embarrassed at your method of address, and
well she might be, seeing that it will be, for a long time to come,
the subject of discussion in all the beer-houses which her father
frequents.'

'You speak as though she were answerable for her father's faults,' I
said, with heat.

'No,' said my mother; 'but _your_ father is the owner of Raxton Hall,
which to her and her class is a kind of Palace of the Caesars. You
belong to a family famous all along the coast; you are well known to
be the probable heir of one of the largest landowners in England; you
may be something more important still; while she, poor girl, what is
she that you should rush up to her before all the churchgoers of the
parish and address her as Winifred? The daughter of a penniless,
drunken reprobate. Every attention you pay her is but a slur upon her
good name.'

'There is not a lady in the county worthy to unlace her shoes,' I
cried, unguardedly. Then I could have bitten off my tongue for saying
so.

'That may be,' said my mother, with the quiet irony peculiar to her;
'but so monstrous are the customs of England, Henry, so barbaric is
this society you despise, that she, whose shoes no lady in the county
is worthy to unlace, is in an anomalous position. Should she once
again be seen talking familiarly with you, her character will have
fled, and fled for ever. It is for you to choose whether you are set
upon ruining her reputation.'

I felt that what she said was true. I felt also that Winifred herself
had recognised the net of conventions that kept us apart in spite of
that close and tender intimacy which had been the one great fact of
our lives. In a certain sense I was far more of a child of Nature
than Winifred herself, inasmuch as, owing to my remarkable childish
experience of isolation, I had imbibed a scepticism about the
sanctity of conventions such as is foreign to the nature of woman, be
she ever so unsophisticated, as Winifred's shyness towards me had
testified.

As a child I had been neglected for the firstborn, I had enjoyed
through this neglect an absolute freedom with regard to associating
with fisher-boys and all the shoeless, hatless 'sea-pups' of the
sands, and now, when the time had come to civilise me, my mother had
found that it was too late. I was bohemian to the core. My childish
intercourse with Winifred had been one of absolute equality, and I
could not now divest myself of this relation. These were my thoughts
as I listened to my mother's words.

My great fear now, however, was lest I should say something to
compromise myself, and so make matter worse. Before another word upon
the subject should pass between my mother and me I must see
Winifred--and then I had something to say to her which no power on
earth should prevent me from saying. So I merely told my mother that
there was much truth in what she had said, and proceeded to ask
particulars about my father's recent illness. After giving me these
particulars she left the room, perplexed, I thought, as to what had
been the result of her mission.


IV

I remained alone for some time. Then I told  the servants that I was
going to walk along the cliffs to Dullingham Church, where there was
an evening service, and left the house. I hastened towards the
cliffs, and descended to the sands, in the hope that Winifred might
be roaming about there, but I walked all the way to Dullingham
without getting a glimpse of her. The church service did not interest
me that evening. I heard nothing and saw nothing. When the service
was over I returned along the sands, sauntering and lingering in the
hope that, late as it was now growing, the balmy evening might have
enticed her out.

The evening grew to night, and still I lingered. The moon was nearly
at the full, and exceedingly bright. The tide was down. The scene was
magical; I could not leave it. I said to myself, 'I will go and stand
on the very spot where Winifred stood when she lisped "certumly" to
the proposal of her little lover.'

It was not, after all, till this evening that I really knew how
entirely she was a portion of my life.

I went and stood by the black boulder where I had received the little
child's prompt reply. There was not a grain left, I knew, of that
same sand which had been hallowed by the little feet of Winifred, but
it served my mood just as well as though every grain had felt the
beloved pressure. For that the very sands had loved the child, I half
believed.

I said to myself, as I sat down upon the boulder, 'At this very
moment she is here, she is in Raxton. In a certain little cottage
there is a certain little room.' And then I longed to leave the
sands, to go and stand in front of Wynne's cottage and dream there.
But that would be too foolish. 'I must get home,' I thought. 'The
night will pass somehow, and in the morning I shall, as sure as fate,
see her flitting about the sands she loves, and then what I have
sworn to say to her I will say, and what I have sworn to do I will
do, come what will.'

Then came the puzzling question, how was I to greet her when we met?
Was I to run up and kiss her, and hear her say, 'Oh, I'm so pleased!'
as she would sometimes say when I kissed her of yore? No: her
deportment in the morning forbade _that_. Or was I to raise my hat
and walk up to her saying, 'How do you do, Miss Wynne? I'm glad to
see you back, Miss Wynne,' for she was now neither child nor young
woman, she was a 'girl.' Perhaps I had better rush up to her in a
bluff, hearty way, and say: 'How do you do, Miss Winifred? Delighted
to see you back to Raxton.' Finally, I decided that circumstance must
guide me entirely, and I sat upon the boulder meditating.

After a while I saw, or thought I saw, in the far distance, close to
the waves, a moving figure among the patches of rocks and stones
(some black and some white) that break the continuity of the sand on
that shore at low water.

When the figure got nearer I perceived it to be a woman, a girl, who,
every now and then, was stooping as if to pick up something from the
pools of water left by the ebbing tide imprisoned amid the encircling
rocks. At first I watched the figure, wondering in a lazy and dreamy
way what girl could be out there so late.

But all at once I began to catch my breath and gasp The sea-smells
had become laden with a kind of paradisal perfume, ineffably sweet,
but difficult to breathe all of a sudden. My heart too--what was
amiss with that? And why did the muscles of my body seem to melt like
wax?' The lonely wanderer by the sea could be none other than
Winifred.

'It is she!' I said. 'There is no beach-woman or shore-prowling girl
who, without raising an arm to balance her body, without a totter or
a slip, could step in that way upon stones some of which are as
slippery as ice with gelatinous weed and slime, while others are as
sharp as razors. To walk like that the eye must be my darling's, that
is to say, an eye as sure as a bird's the ball of the foot must be
the ball of a certain little foot I have often had in my hand wet
with sea-water and gritty with sand. For such work a mountaineer or a
cragsman, or Winifred, is needed.' Then I recalled her love of marine
creatures, her delight in seaweed, of which she would weave the most
astonishing chaplets and necklaces coloured like the rainbow.
'seawood boas' and seaweed turbans, calling herself the princess of
the sea (as indeed she was), and calling me her prince. 'Yes,' said
I, 'it is certainly she'; and when at last I espied a little dog by
her side, Tom Wynne's little dog Snap (a descendant of the original
Snap of our never-to-be-forgotten seaside adventures)--when I espied
all these things I said, 'Then the hour is come.'

By this time my heart had settled down to a calmer throb, the
paradisal scent had become more supportable, and I grew master of
myself again. I was going towards her, when I stayed my steps, for
she was already making her way, entirely unconscious of my presence,
towards the boulder where I sat.

'I know what I will do.' I said; 'I will fling myself flat on the
sands behind the boulder and watch her. I will observe her without
being myself observed.'

I was in the mood when one tries sportfully to deceive one's self as
to the depth and intensity of the emotion within. Perhaps I would and
perhaps I would not speak to her at all that night; but if I did
speak, I would say and do what (on that day when I set out for
school) I had sworn to say and do.

So there I lay hidden by the boulder and watched her. She made the
circuit of each pool that lay across her path towards the
cliffs,--made it apparently for the childish enjoyment of balancing
herself on the stones and snapping her fingers at the dog, who looked
on with philosophic indifference at such a frivolous waste of force.
Yes, though a tall girl of seventeen, she was the same incomparable
child who had coloured my life and stirred the entire air of my
imagination with the breezes of a new heaven. The voice of the
tumbling sea in the distance, the caresses of the tender breeze, the
wistful gaze of the great moon overhead, were companionship enough
for her--for her whose loveliness would have enchanted a world. She
had no idea that there was at this moment stepping round those black
stones the loveliest woman then upon the earth. If she had had that
idea she would still have been the star of all womanhood, but she
would not have been Winifred. A charm superior to all other women's
charm she still would have had; but she would not have been Winifred.

When she left the rocks and came upon the clear sand, she stopped
and looked at her sweet shadow in the moonlight. Then, with the
self-pleasing playfulness of a kitten, she stood and put herself
into all kinds of postures to see what varying silhouettes they would
make on the hard and polished sand (that shone with a soft lustre
like satin); now throwing up one arm, now another, and at last making
a pirouette, twirling her shawl round, trying to keep it in a
horizontal position by the rapidity of her movements.

The interest of the philosophic Snap was aroused at last. He began
wheeling and barking round her, tearing up the sand as he went like a
little whirlwind. This induced Winifred to redouble her gymnastic
exertions. She twirled round with the velocity of an engine wheel. At
last, finding the enjoyment it gave to Snap, she changed the
performance by taking off her hat, flinging it high in the air,
catching it, flinging it up again and again, while the moving shadow
it made was hunted along the sand by Snap with a volley of deafening
barks. By this time she had got close to me, but she was too busy to
see me. Then she began to dance--the very same dance with which she
used to entertain me in those happy days. I advanced from my stone,
dodging and slipping behind her, unobserved even by Snap, so intent
were these two friends upon this entertainment, got up, one would
think, for whatsoever sylphs or gnomes or water sprites might be
looking on.

How could I address in the language of passion which alone would have
expressed my true feelings, a dancing fairy such as this?

'Bravo!' I said, as she stopped, panting and breathless. 'Why,
Winifred, you dance better than ever!'

She leaped away in alarm and confusion; while Snap, on the contrary,
welcomed me with much joy.

'Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,' she said, not looking at me with the
blunt frankness of childhood, as the little woman of the old days
used to do, but drooping her eyes. 'I didn't see you.'

'But _I_ saw _you_, Winifred; I have been watching you for the last
quarter of an hour.'

'Oh, you never have!' said she, in distress; 'what could you have
thought? I was only trying to cheer up poor Snap, who is out of
sorts. What a mad romp you must have thought me, sir!'

'Why, what's the matter with Snap?'

'I don't know. Poor Snap' (stooping down to fondle him, and at the
same time to hide her face from me, for she was talking against time
to conceal her great confusion and agitation at seeing me. _That_ was
perceptible enough.)

Then she remembered she was hatless.

'Oh dear, where's my hat?' said she, looking round. I had picked up
the hat before accosting her, and it was now dangling behind me. I,
too, began talking against time, for the beating of my heart began
again at the thought of what I was going to say and do. 'Hat!' I
said; 'do _you_ wear hats, Winifred? I should as soon have thought of
hearing the Queen of the Tylwyth Teg ask for her hat as you, after
such goings-on as those I have just been witnessing. You see I have
not forgotten the Welsh you taught me.'

'Oh, but my hat--where is it?' cried she, vexed and sorely ashamed.
So different from the unblenching child who loved to stand hatless
and feel the rain-drops on her bare head!

'Well, Winifred, I've found a hat on the sand,' I said; 'here it is.'

'Thank you, sir,' said she, and stretched out her hand for it.

'No,' said I, 'I don't for one moment believe in its belonging to
you, any more than it belongs to the Queen of the "Fair People." But
if you'll let me put it on your head I'll give you the hat I've
found,' and with a rapid movement I advanced and put it on her head.
I had meant to seize that moment for saying what I had to say, but
was obliged to wait.

An expression of such genuine distress overspread her face, that I
regretted having taken the liberty with her. Her bearing altogether
was puzzling me. She seemed instinctively to feel as I felt, that
raillery was the only possible attitude to take up in a situation so
extremely romantic--a meeting on the sands at night between me and
her who was neither child nor woman--and yet she seemed distressed at
the raillery.

Embarrassment was rapidly coming between us.

There was a brief silence,  during which Winifred seemed trying to
move away from me.

'Did you--did you see me from the cliffs, sir, am; come down?' said
Winifred.

'Winifred,' said I, 'the polite thing to say would be "Yes"; but you
know "Fighting Hal" never was remarkable for politeness, so I  will
say frankly that did not come down from the cliff's on seeing you.
But when  I did see you, I wasn't very likely to  return without
speaking to you.'

'I am locked out,' said Winifred, in explanation of her moonlight
ramble. 'My father went off to Dullingham with the key in his pocket
while I and Snap were in the garden, so we have to wait till his
return. Good-night, sir,' and she gave me her hand. I seemed to feel
the fingers around my heart, and knew that I was turning very pale.
'The same little sunburnt fingers.' I said, as I retained them in
mine 'just the same, Winifred! But it's not "good-night" yet. No, no,
it's not good-night yet; and, Winifred if you dare to call me "sir"
again, I declare I'll kiss you where you stand. I will, Winifred.
I'll put my arms right round that slender waist and kiss you under
that moon, as sure as you stand on these sands.'

'Then I will not call you "sir."' said Winifred laughingly.
'Certainly I will not call you "sir," if that is to be the penalty.'

'Winifred,' said I, 'the last time that I remember to have heard you
say "certainly" was on this very spot. You then pronounced it
"certumly," and that was when I asked you if I might be your lover.
You said "certumly" on that occasion without the least hesitation.'

Winifred, as I could see, even by the moonlight, was blushing. 'Ah,
those childish days!' she said. 'How delightful they were, sir!'

'"Sir" again!' said I. 'Now, Winifred, I am going to execute my
threat--I am indeed.'

She put up her hands before her face and said,

'Oh, don't! please don't.'

The action no doubt might seem coquettish, but the tone of her voice
was so genuine, so serious--so agitated even--that I paused:--I
paused in bewilderment and perplexity concerning us both. I observed
that her fingers shook as she held them before her face. That she
should be agitated at seeing me after so long a separation did not
surprise me, I being deeply agitated myself. It was the _nature_ of
her emotion that puzzled me, until suddenly I remembered my mother's
words.

I perceived then that, child of Nature as she still was, some one had
given her a careful training which had transfigured my little Welsh
rustic into a lady. She had not failed to apprehend the anomaly of
her present position--on the moonlit sands with me. Though could not
break free from the old equal relations between us. Winifred had been
able to do so.

'To her,' I thought with shame, 'my offering to kiss her at such a
place and time must have seemed an insult. The very fact of my
attempting to do so must have seemed to indicate an offensive
consciousness of the difference of our social positions. It must
have, seemed to show that I recognised a distinction between the
drunken organist's daughter and a lady.'

I saw now, indeed, that she felt this keenly; and I knew that it was
nothing but the sweetness of her nature, coupled with the fond
recollection of the old happy days, that restrained that high spirit
of hers, and prevented her from giving expression to her indignation
and disgust.

All this was shown by the appealing look on her sweet, fond face, and
I was touched to the heart.

'Winifred--Miss Wynne,' I said, 'I beg your pardon most sincerely.
The shadow-dance has been mainly answerable for my folly. You did
look so exactly the little Winifred, my heart's sister, that I felt
it impossible to treat you otherwise than as that dear child-friend
of years ago.'

A look of delight broke over her face.

'I felt sure it was so,' she said. 'But it is a relief that you have
said it.' And the tears came to her eyes.

'Thank you, Winifred, for having pardoned me. I feel that you would
have forgiven no one else as you have forgiven me. I feel that you
would not have forgiven any one else than your old child-companion,
whom on a memorable occasion you threatened to hit, and then had not
the heart to do so.'

'I don't think I _could_ hit _you_,' said she, in a meditative tone
of perfect unconsciousness as to the bewitching import of her speech.

'Don't you think you could?' I said, drawing nearer, but governing my
passion.

'No,' said she, looking now for the first time with those wide-open
confiding eyes which, as a child, were the chief characteristic of
her face. 'I don't think I could hit you, whatever you did.'

'Couldn't you, Winifred?' I said, coming still nearer, in order to
drink to the full the wonder of her beauty, the thrill at my heart
bringing, as I felt, a pallor to my cheek. 'Don't you think you could
hit your old playfellow, Winifred?'

'No,' she said, still gazing in the same dreamy, reminiscent way
straight into my eyes as of yore. 'As a child you were so delightful.
And then you were so kind to me!'

At that word 'kind' from _her_ to _me_ I could restrain myself no
longer; I shouted with a wild laughter of uncontrollable passion as I
gazed at her through tears of love and admiration and deep
gratitude--gazed till I was blind. My throat throbbed till it ached:
I Could get out no more words; I could only gaze. At my shout
Winifred stood bewildered and confused. She did not understand a mood
like that. Having got myself under control, I said,

'Winifred, it is not my doing; it is Fate's doing that we meet here
on this night, and that I am driven to say here what I had as a
schoolboy sworn should be said whenever we should meet again.'

'I think,' said Winifred, pulling herself up with the dignity of a
queen, 'that if you have anything important to say to me it had
better be at a more seasonable time than at this hour of night, and
at a more seasonable place than on these sands.'

'No, Winifred,' said I, 'the time is _now_, and the place is
here--here on this very spot where, once on a time, you said
"certumly" when a little lover asked your hand. It is now and here,
Winifred, that I will say what I have to say.'

'And what is that, sir?' said Winifred, much perplexed and disturbed.

'I have to say, Winifred, that the man does not live and never _has_
lived,' said I, with suppressed vehemence, who loved a woman as I
love you.'

Oh, sir! oh, Henry!' returned Winifred, trembling, then standing
still and whiter than the moon. 'And the reason why no man has ever
loved a woman as I love you, Winifred, is because your match, or
anything like your match, has never trod the earth before.'

'Oh, Henry, my dear Henry! you _must_ not say such things to me, your
poor Winifred.'

'But that isn't all that I swore I'd say to you, Winifred.'

'Don't say any more--not to-night, not to-night.'

'What I swore I would ask you, Winifred, is this: Will you be Henry's
wife?'

She gave one hysterical sob, and swayed till she nearly fell on the
sand, and said, while her face shone like a pearl,

'Henry's wife!'

She recovered herself and stood and looked at me; her lips moved, but
I waited in vain--waited in a fever of expectation--for her answer.
None came. I gazed into her eyes, but they now seemed rilled with
visions--visions of the great race to which she belonged--visions in
which her English lover had no place. Suddenly, and for the first
time, I felt that she who had inspired within me this all-conquering
passion, though the penniless child of a drunken organist, was a
daughter of Snowdon--a representative of the Cymric race that was
once so mighty, and is still more romantic in its associations than
all others. Already in the little talk I had had with her I began to
guess what I realised before the evening was over, that owing to the
influence of the English lady, Miss Dalrymple, who had lodged at the
cottage with her, she was more than my own equal in culture, and
could have held her own with almost any girl of her own age in
England. It was only in her subjection to Cymric superstitions that
she was benighted.

'Winnie,' I murmured, 'what have you to say?'

After a while her eyes seemed to clear of the visions, and she said,

'What changes have come upon us both, Henry. since that childish
betrothal on the sands!'

'Happy changes for one of the child-lovers,' I said--'happy changes
for the one who was then a lonely cripple shut out from all sympathy
save that which the other child-lover could give.'

'And yet you then seemed happy, Henry--happy with Winnie to help you
up the gangways. And how happy Winnie was! But now the child-lover is
a cripple no longer: he is very, very strong--he is so strong that he
could carry Winnie up the gangways in his arms, I think.'

The thrill of natural pride which such recognition of my physical
powers would otherwise have given me was quelled by a something in
the tone in which she spoke.

'And he is powerful in every way,' she went on, as if talking to
herself. 'He is a great rich Englishman to whom (as auntie was never
tired of saying) that childish betrothal must needs seem a dream--a
quaint and pretty dream.'

'And so your aunt said that, Winnie. How far from the truth she was
you see to-night.'

'Yes, she thought you would forget all about me; and yet she could
not have felt quite confident about it, for she made me promise that
if you should not forget me--if you should ever ask me what you have
just asked--she made me promise--'

'What, Winnie? what? She did not make promise that you would refuse
me?'

'That is what she asked me to promise.'

'But you did not.'

'I did not.'

'No, no! you did not, Winnie. My darling refused to make any such
cruel, monstrous promise as that.'

'But I promised her that I would in such an event wait a year--at
least a year--before betrothing myself to you.'

'Shame! shame! What made her do this cruel thing? A year! wait for a
year!'

'She brought forward many reasons, Henry, but upon two of them she
was constantly dwelling.'

'And what were these?'

'Well, the news of the death of your brother Frank of course reached
us in Shire-Carnarvon, and how well I remember hearing my aunt say,
"Henry Aylwin will be one of the wealthiest landowners in England."
And I remember how my heart sank at her words, for I was always
thinking of the dear little lame boy with the language of suffering
in his eyes and the deep music of sorrow in his voice.'

'Your heart sank, Winnie, and why?'

'I felt as if a breath of icy air had blown between us, dividing us
for ever. And then my aunt began to talk about you and your future.'

After some trouble I persuaded Winnie to tell me what was the homily
that this aunt of hers preached _a propos_ of Frank's death. And as
she talked I could not help observing what, as a child, I had only
observed in a dim, semi-conscious way--a strange kind of double
personality in Winnie. At one moment she seemed to me nothing but the
dancing fairy of the sands, objective and unconscious as a young
animal playing to itself, at another she seemed the mouthpiece of the
narrow world-wisdom of this Welsh aunt. No sooner had she spoken of
herself as a friendless, homeless girl, than her brow began to shine
with the pride of the Cymry.

'My aunt,' said she, 'used to tell me that until disaster came upon
my uncle, and they were reduced to living upon a very narrow income,
he and she never really knew what love was--they never really knew
how rich their hearts were in the capacity of loving.'

'Ah, I thought so,' I said bitterly. 'I thought the text was,

              Love in a hut, with water and a crust.'

'No,' said Winifred firmly, 'that was not the text. She believed that
the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is
nestling.'

'Then what did she believe? In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what
did she believe?'

'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes
brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's
evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and
luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the
word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is
the most perfect.'

'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love.
And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?'

'She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches
in our time.'

'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'

'She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time.
She told me that the passion of vanity--"the greatest of all the
human passions," as she used to say--has taken the form of
money-worship in our time, sapping all the noblest instincts of men
and women, and in rich people poisoning even parental affection,
making the mother thirst for the pleasures which in old days she
would only have tried to win for her child. She told me
stories--dreadful stories--about children with expectations of great
wealth who watched the poor grey hairs of those who gave them birth,
and counted the years and months and days that kept them from the
gold which modern society finds to be more precious than honour,
family, heroism, genius, and all that was held precious in less
materialised times. She told me a thousand other things of this kind,
and when I grew older she put into my hand what has been written on
the subject.'

'Good God! Has the narrow-minded tomfoolery got a literature?'

Winnie went on with her eloquent account of her aunt's doctrines, and
to my surprise I found that there actually _was_ a literature of the
subject.

Winnie's bright eyes had actually pored over old and long Chartist
tracts translated into Welsh, and books on the Christian Socialism of
Charles Kingsley, and pamphlets on more' recent kinds of Socialism.

As she went on I could not help murmuring now and then, 'What
surroundings for my Winnie!'

'And the result of all this was, Winnie, that your aunt asked you to
promise not to marry a man demoralised by privileges and made
contemptible by wealth.'

'That is what she wanted me to promise; but as I have said, I did
not. But I did promise to wait for a year and see what effect wealth
would have upon you.'

'Did your aunt not tell you also that the man who marries you can
never be unmanned by wealth, because he will know that everything he
can give is as dross when set against Winnie's love and Winnie's
beauty: Did she not also tell you that?'

'Love and beauty!' said Winnie. 'Even if a woman's beauty did not
depend for its existence upon the eyes that look upon it, I should
want to give more to my hero than love and beauty. I should want to
give him help in the battle of life, Henry. I should want to buckle
on his armour, and sharpen the point of his lance, and whet the edge
of his sword; a rich man's armour is bank-notes, and Winnie knows
nothing of such paper. His spear, I am told, is a bullion bar, and
Winnie's fingers scarcely know the touch of gold.'

'Then you agree, Winnie, with these strange views of your aunt?'

'I do partly agree with them now. Ever since I saw you to-day in the
churchyard I have partly agreed with them.'

'And why?'

'Because already prosperity or bodily vigour or something has changed
your eyes and changed the tone of your voice.'

'You mean that my eyes are no longer so full of trouble; and as to my
voice--how should my voice not change, seeing that it was the voice
of a child when you last listened to it?'

'It is impossible for me even now, after I have thought about it so
much, to put into words that expression in your eyes which won me as
a child. All I knew at the time was that it fascinated me. And as I
now recall it, all I know is that your gaze then seemed full of
something which I can give a name to now, though I did not understand
it then--the pathos and tenderness and yearning, which come, as I
have been told, from suffering, and that your voice seemed to have
the same message. That expression and that tone are gone--they will,
of course, never return to you now. Your life is, and will be, too
prosperous for that. But still I hope and believe that in a year's
time prosperity will not have worked in you any of the mischief that
my aunt feared. For you have a noble nature, Henry, and to spoil you
will not be easy. You will never be the dear little Henry I loved,
but you will still be nobler and greater than other men, I think.'

'Do you really mean that my lameness was a positive attraction to
you? Do you really mean that the very change in me which I thought
would strengthen the bond between us--my restoration to
health--weakens it? That is impossible, Winnie.'

She remained silent for a time, as though lost in thought, and then
said, 'I do not believe that any woman can understand the movements
of her own heart where love is concerned. My aunt used to say I was a
strange girl, and I am afraid I am strange and perverse. She used to
say that in my affections I was like no other creature in the world.'

'How should Winifred be like any other creature in the world?' I
said. 'She would not be Winifred if she were. But what did your aunt
mean?'

'When I was quite a little child she noticed that I was neglecting a
favourite mavis which I used to delight to listen to as he warbled
from his wicker cage. She watched me, and found that my attention was
all given to a wounded bird that I had picked up on the Capel Curig
road. "Winnie," she said, "nothing can ever win your love until it
has first won your pity. A bird with a broken wing would be always
more to you than a sound one!"'

'Your aunt was right,' I said, 'as no one should know better than I.
For was it not the new kind of pity shining in those eyes of yours
that revealed to me a new heaven in my loneliness? And when my
brother Frank on that day in the wood stood over us in all the pride
of his boyish strength, do I not remember the words you spoke?'

'What were they? I have quite forgotten them.'

'You said, "I don't think I could love any one very much who was not
lame."'



V

I wonder what words could render that love-dream on the dear silvered
sands, with the moon overhead, the dark shadowy cliffs and the old
church on one side, and the North Sea murmuring a love-chime on the
other!

Suffice it to record that Winifred, with a throb in her throat (a
throb that prevented her from pronouncing her n's with the clarity
that some might have desired), said 'certumly' again to Henry's
suit,--'Certumly, if in a year's time you seek me out in the
mountains, and your eyes and voice show that prosperity has not
spoiled you, but that you are indeed my Henry.' And this being
settled in strict accordance with her aunt's injunctions, she never
tried to disguise how happy she was, but told Henry again and again
in answer to his importunate questions--told him with her frank
courage how she had loved him from the first in the old churchyard as
a child--loved him for what she called his love-eyes; told him--ah!
what did she not tell him? I must not go on. These things should not
be written about at all but for the demands of my story.

And how soon she forgot that the betrothal was all on one side! I
could write out every word of that talk. I remember every accent of
her voice, every variation of light that came and went in her eyes,
every ripple of love-laughter, every movement of her body, lissome as
a greyhound's, graceful as a bird's. For fully an hour it lasted. And
remember, reader, that it was on the silvered sands, every inch of
which was associated with some reminiscence of childhood; it was
beneath a moon smiling as fondly and brightly as she ever smiled on
the domes of Venice or between the trees of Fiesole; it was by the
margin of waves whose murmurs were soft and perfumed as Winifred's
own breathing's when she slept; and remember that the girl was
Winifred herself, and that the boy--the happy boy--had Winifred's
love. Ah! but that last element of that hour's bliss is just what
the reader cannot realise, because he can only know Winifred through
these poor words. That is the distressing side of a task like mine.
The beloved woman here called Winifred (no phantom of an idle
imagination, but more real to me and dear to me than this soul and
body I call my own)--this Winifred can only live for you, reader,
through my feeble, faltering words; and yet I ask you to listen to
the story of such a love as mine.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have often as a child sung songs of Snowdon to
me and told me of others you used to sing. I should love to hear one
of these now, with the chime of the North Sea for an accompaniment
instead of the instrument you tell me your Gypsy friend used to play.
Before we go up the gangway, do sing me a verse of one of those
songs.'

After some little persuasion she yielded and sang in a soft undertone
the following verse:--

              'I met in a glade a lone little maid,
                At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;
              Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,
                And darker her hair than the night;
              Her cheek was like the mountain rose,
                But fairer far to see,
              As driving along her sheep with a song,
                Down from the hills came she.'

[Welsh translation]

              'Mi gwrddais gynt a morwynig,
                Wrth odreu y Wyddfa wen,
              Un ysgafn ei throed fel yr ewig
                A gwallt fel y nos ar ei phen;
              Ei grudd oedd fel y rhosyn,
                Un hardd a gwen ei gwawr;
              Yn canu can, a'i defaid man,
                O'r Wyddfa'n d'od i lawr.'

'What a beautiful world it is!' said she, in a half-whisper, as we
were about to part at the cottage door, for I had refused to leave
her on the sands or even at the garden-gate. 'I should like to live
for ever,' she whispered; 'shouldn't you, Henry?'

'Well, that all depends upon the person I lived with. For instance, I
shouldn't care to live for ever with Widow Shales, the pale-faced
tailoress, nor yet with her humpbacked son, whose hump was such a
constant source of wistful wonder and solicitude to you as a child.'

She gave a merry little laugh of reminiscence. Then she said, 'But you
could live with _me_ for ever, couldn't you, Henry?' plucking a leaf
from the grape-vine on the wall and putting it between her teeth.

'For ever and ever, Winifred.'

'It fills me with wonder,' said she, after a while, 'the thought of
being Henry's wife. It is so delightful and yet so fearful.'

By this I knew she had not forgotten that look of hate on my mother's
face.

She put her hand on the latch and found that the door was now
unlocked.

'But where is the fearful part of it, Winifred?' I said. 'I am not a
cannibal.'

'You ought to marry a great English lady, dear, and I'm only a poor
girl; you seem to forget all about that, you silly fond boy. You
forget I'm only a poor girl--just Winifred,' she continued.

'Just Winifred,' I said, taking her hand and preventing her from
lifting the latch.

'I've lived,' said she, 'in a little cottage like this with my aunt
and Miss Dalrymple and done everything.'

'Everything's a big word, Winifred. What may everything include in
your case?'

'Include!' said Winifred; 'oh, everything, housekeeping and--'

'Housekeeping!' said I. 'Racing the winds with Rhona Boswell and
other Gypsy children up and down Snowdon--that's been _your_
housekeeping.'

'Cooking,' said Winifred, maintaining her point.

'Oh, what a fib, Winifred! These sunburnt fingers may have picked
wild fruits, but they never made a pie in their lives.'

'Never made a pie! I make beautiful pies and things; and when we're
married I'll make your pies--may I, instead of a conceited man-cook?'

'No, Winifred. Never make a pie or do a bit of cooking in _my_ house,
I charge you.'

'Oh, why not?' said Winifred, a shade of disappointment overspreading
her face. 'I suppose it's unladylike to cook.'

'Because,' said I,'once let me taste something made by these tanned
fingers, and how could I ever afterwards eat anything made by a
man-cook, conceited or modest? I should say to that poor cook, "Where
is the Winifred flavour, cook? I don't taste those tanned fingers
here." And then, suppose you were to die first, Winifred, why I
should have to starve, just for want of a little Winifred flavour in
the pie-crust. Now I don't want to starve, and you sha'n't cook.'

'Oh, Hal, you dear, dear fellow!' shrieked Winifred, in an ecstasy of
delight at this nonsense. Then her deep love overpowered her quite,
and she said, her eyes suffused with tears, 'Henry, you can't think
how I love you. I'm sure I couldn't live even in heaven without you.'

Then came the shadow of a lich-owl, as it whisked past us towards the
apple-trees.

'Why, you'd be obliged to live without me, Winifred, if I were still
at Raxton.'

'No,' said she, 'I'm quite sure I couldn't. I should have to come in
the winds and play round you on the sands. I should have to peep over
the clouds and watch you. I should have to follow you about wherever
you went. I should have to beset you till you said, "Bother Winnie! I
wish she'd keep in heaven."'

I saw, however, that the owl's shadow had disturbed her, and I lifted
the latch of the cottage door for her. We were met by a noise so loud
that it might have come from a trombone.

'Why, what on earth is that?' I said. I could see the look of shame
break over Winifred's features as she said, 'Father.' Yes, it was the
snoring of Wynne in a drunken sleep: it filled the entire cottage.

The poor girl seemed to feel that that brutal noise had, somehow,
coarsened  _her_, and she actually half shrank from me as I gave her
a kiss and left her.

Wondering how I should at such an hour get into the house without
disturbing my mother and the servants, I passed along that same road
where, as a crippled child, I had hobbled on that, bright afternoon
when love was first revealed to me. Ah, what a different love was
this which was firing my blood, and making dizzy my brain! That
child-love had softened my heart in its deep distress, and widened
my soul. This new and mighty passion in whose grasp I was, this
irresistible power that had seized and possessed my entire being,
wrought my soul in quite a different sort, concentrating and
narrowing my horizon till the human life outside the circle of our
love seemed far, far away, as though I were gazing through the wrong
end of a telescope. I had learned that he who truly loves is indeed
born again, becomes a new and a different man. Was it only a few
short hours ago, I asked myself, that I was listening to my mother's
attack upon Winifred? Was it this very evening that I was sitting in
Dullingham Church?

How far away in the past seemed those events! And as to my mother's
anger against Winifred, that anger and cruel scorn of class which had
concerned me so much, how insignificant now seemed this and every
other obstacle in love's path! I looked up at the moonlit sky; I
leaned upon a gate and looked across the silent fields where Winifred
and I used to gather violets in spring, hedge-roses in summer,
mushrooms in autumn, and I said, '_I_ will marry her; she shall be
mine; she _shall_ be mine, though all the powers on earth, all the
powers in the universe, should say nay.'

As I spoke I saw that lights were flashing to and fro in the windows
of the Hall. 'My poor father is dead,' I said. I turned and ran up
the road. 'Oh, that I could have seen him once again!' At the hall
door I was met by a servant, and learnt that, while I had been
love-making on the sands, a message had come from the Continent with
news of my father's death.



VI

There was no meeting Winifred on the next night.

It was decided that my uncle's private secretary should go to
Switzerland to bring the body to England. I (remembering my promise
about the mementos) insisted on accompanying him. We started on the
morrow, preceded by a message to my father's Swiss friends ordering
an embalmment. Before starting I tried to see Winifred; but she had
gone to Dullingham.

On our arrival at the little Swiss town, we found that the embalmment
had been begun. The body was still in the hands of a famous
embalmer--an Italian Jew settled at Geneva, the only successful rival
there of Professor Laskowski. He was celebrated for having revived
the old Hebraic method of embalmment in spices, and improving it by
the aid of the modern discoveries in antiseptics of Laskowski, Signer
Franchina of Naples, and Dr. Dupre of Paris. This physician told me
that by his process the body would, without the peculiarly-sealed
coffin used by the Swiss embalmers, last 'firm and white as Carrara
marble for a thousand years.'

The people at the chalet had naturally been much astonished to find
upon my father's breast a jewelled cross lying. As soon as I entered
the house they handed it to me.

For some reason or another this amulet and the curse had haunted my
imagination as much as if I believed in amulets and curses, though my
reason told me that everything of the kind was sheer nonsense. I
could not sleep for thinking about it, and in the night I rose from
my bed, and, opening the window, held up the cross in the moonlight.
The facets caught the silvery rays and focussed them. The amulet
seemed to shudder with some prophecy of woe. It was now that, for the
first time, I began to feel the signs of that great struggle between
reason and the inherited instinct of superstition which afterwards
played so important a part in my life. I then took up the parchment
scroll, and opened it and re-read the curse. The great letters in
which the English version was printed seemed to me larger by the
light of the moon than they had seemed by daylight.

We had to wait for some time in Switzerland. In a locked drawer I
found the casket and a copy of _The Veiled Queen_. I read much in the
book. Every word I found there was in flat contradiction to my own
mode of thought.

Did the shock of this dreadful catastrophe drive Winifred from my
mind? No, nothing could have done that. My soul seemed, as I have
said, to be new-born, and all emotions, passions, and sentiments that
were not connected with her seemed to be shadowy and distant, like
ante-natal dreams. It would be hypocrisy not to confess this frankly,
regardless of the impression against me it may make on the reader's
mind. Yet I had a real affection for my father. In spite of his
extraordinary obliviousness of my very existence till the last year
of his life, I was strongly attached to him, and his death made me
see nothing but his virtues; yet my soul was so filled with my
passion for Winifred as to have but little room for sorrow. As to my
mother, her attachment to my father knew no bounds, and her grief at
her bereavement knew none.

A day or two before the funeral my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley arrived,
and his presence was a great comfort to her. Owing to my father's
position in the county a great deal of funereal state was considered
necessary, and there was much hurry and bustle.

My uncle having known Wynne when quite a young man, before
intemperance had degraded him, took an interest in him still. He had
called at the cottage as he passed along Wilderness Road towards
Raxton, and the result of this was that the organist came to speak to
him at our house upon some matter in connection with the funeral
service. My mother was greatly vexed at this. Her conduct on the
occasion alarmed me. Ever since Frank's death had made it evident not
only that I should succeed to all the property of my uncle Aylwin of
Alvanley, but that I might even succeed to something greater, to the
earldom which was the glory and pride of the Aylwins, my mother had
kept a jealous and watchful eye upon me, being, as I afterwards
learned, not unmindful of the early child-loves of Winifred and
myself; and the advent to Raxton of Winifred, as a beautiful tall
girl, had aroused her fears as well as her wrath.

The day of the funeral came, and the question of the casket and the
amulet was on my mind. The important thing, of course, was that the
matter should be kept absolutely secret. The valuables must be placed
in secrecy with the embalmed corpse at the last moment, before the
screwing down of the coffin, when servants and undertakers were out
of sight and hearing.

My mother knew what had been my father's instructions to me, and was
desirous that they should be fulfilled, though she scorned the
superstition. She and I placed the casket and the scroll hearing the
written curse upon it beneath my father's head, and hung the chain of
the amulet around his neck, so that the cross lay with the jewels
uppermost upon his breast. Then the undertakers were called in to
screw down the coffin in my presence. My mother afterwards called me
to her room, and told me that she was much troubled about the cross.
The amulet being of great value, my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley had
tried to dissuade her from carrying into execution what he called
'the absurd whim of a mystic'; but my mother urged my promise, and
there had been warm words between them, as my mother told me--adding,
however, 'and the worst of it is, that scamp Wynne, whom your uncle
introduced into this house without my knowledge or sanction, was
passing the door while your uncle was talking, and if he did not hear
every word about the jewelled cross, drink must have stupefied him
indeed. _He_ is my only fear in connection with the jewels.' Her
dislike of Wynne had made her forget for the moment the effect her
words must have upon me.

'Mother,' I said, 'your persistent prejudice and injustice towards
this man astonish me. Wynne, though poor and degraded now, is a
gentleman born, and is no more likely to violate a tomb than the best
Aylwin that ever lived.'

I will not dwell upon the scene at the funeral. I saw my father's
coffin placed in the crypt that spread beneath the deserted church.
It was by the earnest wish of my father that he was buried in a
church already deserted because the grip of the resistless sea was
upon it. At this very time a very large slice of the cliff behind the
church was pronounced dangerous, and I perceived that new rails were
lying on the grass ready to be fixed up, further inland than ever.



VII

My mother retired to her room immediately on our return to the house.
My uncle stayed till just before dinner, and then left. I seemed to
be alone in a deserted house, so still were the servants, so quiet
seemed everything. But now what was this sense of undefined dread
that came upon me and would not let me rest? Why did I move from room
to room? and what was goading me? Something was stirring like a blind
creature across my brain, and it was too hideous to confront. Why
_should_ I confront it? Why scare one's soul and lacerate one's heart
at every dark fear that peeps through the door of imagination, when
experience teaches us that out of every hundred such dark fears
ninety-nine are sure to turn out mere magic-lantern bogies?

The evening wore on, and yet I _would_ not face this phantom fear,
though it refused to quit me.

The servants went to bed quite early that night, and when the butler
came to ask me if I should 'want anything more,' I said 'only a
candle,' and went up to my bedroom.

'I will turn into bed,' I said, 'and sleep over it. The idea is a
figment of an over-wrought brain. Destiny would never play any man a
trick like that which I have dared to dream of. Among human
calamities it would be at once the most shocking and the most
whimsical--this imaginary woe that scares me. Destiny is merciless,
but who ever heard of Destiny playing mere cruel practical jokes upon
man? Up to now the Fates have never set up as humorists. Now, for a
man to love, to dote upon, a girl whose father is the violator of his
own father's tomb--a wretch who has called down upon himself the most
terrible curse of a dead man that has ever been uttered--_that_ would
be a fate too fantastically cruel to be permitted by Heaven--by any
governing power whose sanctions were not those of a whimsical
cruelty.'

Yet those words of my mother's about Wynne, and her suspicions of
him, were flitting about the air of the room like fiery-eyed bats.

The air of the room--ah! it was stifling me. I opened the window and
leant out. But that made matters a thousand times worse, for the moon
was now at the very full, and staring across--staring at
what?--staring across the sea at the tall tower of the old church on
the cliff, where perhaps the sin--the 'unpardonable sin,' according
to Cymric ideas--of sacrilege--sacrilege committed by _her_ father
upon the grave of mine--might at this moment be going on. The body of
the church was hidden from me by the intervening trees, and nothing
but the tall tower shone in the silver light. So intently did the
moon stare at it, that it seemed to me that the inside of the church,
with its silent aisles, arches, and tombs, was reflected on her disc.
The moon oppressed me, and when I turned my eyes away I seemed to see
hanging in the air the silent aisles of a church, through whose
windows the moonlight was pouring, flooding them with a radiance more
ghastly than darkness, concentrating all its light on the chancel,
beneath which I knew that my father was lying in the dark crypt with
a cross on his breast. I turned for relief to look in the room, and
there, in the darkness made by the shadow of the bed, I seemed to
read, written in pale, trembling flame, the words:

  'LET THERE BE NO MAN TO PITY HIM, NOR TO HAVE COMPASSION UPON HIS
  FATHERLESS CHILDREN....LET HIS CHILDREN BE VAGABONDS, AND BEG THEIR
  BREAD: LET THEM SEEK IT ALSO OUT OF DESOLATE PLACES.'


I returned to the window for relief from the bedroom.

'Now, let me calmly consider the case in all its bearings, I said to
myself, drawing a chair to the window and sitting down with my elbows
resting on the sill. 'Suppose Wynne really did overhear the
altercation between my mother and my uncle, which seems scarcely
probable, has drink really so demoralised him, so brutalised him,
that for drink he would commit the crime of sacrilege? There are no
signs of his having sunk so low as that. But suppose the crime were
committed, what then? Do I really believe that the curse of my father
and of the Psalmist would fall upon Winifred's pure and innocent
head? Certainly not. I do not believe in the effect of curses at all.
I do not belief in any supernatural interference with the natural
laws of the universe.'

Ah! but this thought about the futility of the curse, about the folly
of my father's superstitions, brought me no comfort. I knew that,
brave as Winifred was as a child, she was, when confronting the
material world, very superstitious. I remembered that as a child,
whenever I said, 'What a happy day it has been!' she would not rest
until she had made me add, 'and shall have many more,' because of her
feeling of the prophetic power of words. I knew that the
superstitions of the Welsh hills awed her. I knew that it had been
her lot to imbibe, not only Celtic, but Romany superstitions. I knew
that the tribe of Gypsies with whom she had been thrown into contact,
the Lovells and the Boswells, though superior to the rest, of the
Romany race, are the most superstitious of all, and that Winifred had
become an object of strong affection to the most superstitious even
among that tribe, one Sinfi Lovell. I knew from something that had
once fallen from her as a child on the sands, when prattling about
Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, that especially powerful with her was
the idea (both Romany and Celtic) about the effect of a dead man's
curse. I knew that this idea had a dreadful fascination for her--the
fascination of repulsion. I knew also that reason may strive with
superstition as with the other instincts, but it will strive in vain.
I knew that it would have been worse than idle for me to say to
Winifred, 'There is no curse in the matter. The dreaming mystic who
begot and forgot me, what curse could he call down on a soul like my
Winifred's?' Her reason might partly accept my arguments; but
straightway they would be spurned by her instincts and her
traditional habits of thought. The terrible voice of the Psalmist
would hush every other sound. Her sweet soul would pine under the
blazing fire of a curse, real or imaginary; her life would be
henceforth but a bitter penance. Like the girl in Coleridge's poem of
'The Three Graves,' her very flesh would waste before the fires of
her imagination. 'No,' said I, 'such a calamity as this which I dread
Heaven would not permit. So cruel a joke as this Hell itself would
not have the heart to play.'

My meditations were interrupted by a sound, and then by a sensation
such as I cannot describe. Whence came that shriek? It was like a
coming from a distance--loud _there_, faint _here_, and yet it seemed
to come from _me_! It was as though I were witnessing some dreadful
sight unutterable and intolerable. And then it seemed the voice of
Winifred, and then it seemed her father's voice, and finally it
seemed the voice of my own father struggling in his tomb. My horror
stopped the pulses of my heart for a moment, and then it passed.

'It comes from the church or from behind the church,' I said, as the
shriek was followed by an angry murmur as of muffled thunder. All had
occurred within the space of half a second. I quickly but cautiously
opened my bedroom door, extinguishing my light before doing so, and
began to creep downstairs, fearing to wake my mother. My shoes
creaked, so I took them off and carried them. Crossing the hall, I
softly drew the bolts of the front door; then I passed into the
moonlight. The gravel of the carriage-drive cut through my stockings,
and a pebble bruised one of my heels so that I nearly fell. When I
got safely under the shadow of the large cedar of Lebanon in the
middle of the lawn, I stopped and looked up at my mother's window to
see if she were a watcher. The blinds were down, there was no
movement, no noise. Evidently she was asleep. I put on my shoes and
hurried across the lawn towards the high road. I walked at a sharp
pace towards the old church. The bark of a distant dog or the baa of
a waking sheep was the only sound. When I reached the churchyard, I
peered in dread over the lich-gate before I opened it. Neither Wynne
nor any living creature was to be seen in the churchyard.

The soothing smell of the sea came from the cliffs, making me wonder
at my fears. On the loneliest coast, in the dunnest night, a sense of
companionship comes with the smell of seaweed. At my feet spread the
great churchyard, with its hundreds of little green hillocks and
white gravestones, sprinkled here and there with square, box-like
tombs. All quietly asleep in the moonlight! Here and there an aged
headstone seemed to nod to its neighbour, as though muttering in its
dreams. The old church, bathed in the radiance, seemed larger than it
had ever done in daylight, and incomparably more grand and lonely.

On the left were the tall poplar trees, rustling and whispering among
themselves. Still, there might be at the back of the church mischief
working. I walked round thither. The ghostly shadows on the long
grass might have been shadows thrown by the ruins of Tadmor, so
quietly did they lie and dream. A weight was uplifted from my soul.
A balm of sweet peace fell upon my heart. The noises I had heard had
been imaginary, conjured up by love and fear; or they might have been
an echo of distant thunder. The windows of the church no doubt looked
ghastly, as I peered in to see whether Wynne's lantern was moving
about. But all was still. I lingered in the churchyard close by the
spot where I had first seen the child Winifred and heard the Welsh
song.

I went to look at the sea from the cliff. Here, however, there was
something sensational at last. The spot where years ago I had sat
when Winifred's song had struck upon my ear and awoke me to a new
life--_was gone_! 'This then was the noise I heard,' I said; 'the
rumbling was the falling of the earth; the shriek was the tearing
down of trees.'

Another slice, a slice weighing thousands of tons, had slipped since
the afternoon from the churchyard on to the sands below. 'Perhaps the
tread of the townspeople who came to witness the funeral may have
given the last shake to the soil,' I said.

I stood and looked over the newly-made gap at the great hungry water.
Considering the little wind, the swell on the North Sea was
tremendous. Far away there had been a storm somewhere. The moon was
laying a band of living light across the vast bosom of the sea, like
a girdle. Only a month had elapsed since that never-to-be-forgotten
moonlight walk with Winifred. But what a world of emotion since then!



VIII

I walked along the cliff to the gangway behind Flinty Point, and
descended in order to see what havoc the landslip had made with the
graves.

I looked across the same moonlit sands where I had seen Winifred so
short a time before, when I had a father. To my delight and surprise,
there she was again. There was Winifred, walking thoughtfully towards
Church Cove with Snap by her side, who seemed equally thoughtful and
sedate. The relief of finding that my fears about her father were
groundless added to my joy at seeing her. With my own dead father
lying within a few roods of me, I ran towards her in a state of high
exhilaration, forgetting everything but her. With sympathetic looks
for my bereavement she met me, and we walked hand-in-hand in silence.

After a little while she said: 'My father told me he was very busy
to-night, and wished me to come on the sands for a walk, but I little
hoped to meet you; I am very pleased we have met, for to-morrow I am
going to London.'

'To London?' I said, in dismay at the thought of losing her so soon.
'Why are you going to London. Winnie?'

'Oh,' said she, with the same innocent look of business-like
importance which, at our first meeting as children, had so impressed
me when she pulled out the key to open the church door, 'I'm going on
business.'

'On business! And how long do you stay?'

'I don't stay at all; I'm coming back immediately.'

'Come,' I exclaimed, 'there's a little comfort in that, at least.
Snap and I can wait for one day.'

'Good-night,' said Winifred.

'Have you not seen the great landslip at the churchyard?' I asked,
taking her hand and pointing to the new promontory which the _debris_
of the fall had made.

'Another landslip?' said she. 'Poor dear old churchyard, it will soon
all be gone! Snap and I must have been far away when that fell. But I
remember saying to him, 'Hark at the thunder. Snap!' and then I heard
a sound like a shriek that appalled me. It recalled a sound I once
heard in Shire-Carnarvon.'

'What was it, Winnie?'

'You've heard me when I was a little girl talk of my Gypsy sister
Sinfi?'

'Often,' I said.

'She loves me more than anybody else in the whole world,' said
Winifred  simply. 'She says she would lay down her life for me, and I
really believe she would. Well, there is not far from where I used to
live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops
down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the
cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as
from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John
Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at
the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds on
earth. On those  rare nights when the full moon shines down the
chasm, the wail becomes an agonised shriek. Once on a bright
moonlight night Sinfi and I went to see these falls. The moonlight on
the cascade had exactly the same supernatural appearance that it has
now falling upon these billows. Sinfi sings some of our Welsh songs,
and accompanies herself on a peculiar obsolete Welsh instrument
called a crwth, which she always carries with her. While we were
listening to the cataract and what she called the Wynn wail, she
began to sing the wild old air. Then at once the wail sprang into a
loud shriek; Sinfi said the shriek of a cursed  spirit; and the
shriek was exactly like the sound I heard from the cliffs a little
while ago.'

'I heard the same noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and
cracking of the poor churchyard trees as they fell.'

She turned back with me to the water-mark to see the waves come
tumbling in beneath the moon. We sauntered along the sea-margin
again, heedless of the passage of time.

And  again (as  on  that  betrothal  night) Winifred prattled on,
while I listened to the prattle, craftily throwing in a word or two,
now and then, to direct the course of the sweet music into such
channels as best pleased my lordly whim,--when suddenly, against my
will and reason, there came into my mind that idea of the sea's
prophecy which was so familiar to my childhood, but which my studies
had now made me despise.

The sea then threw up to Winifred's feet a piece of seaweed. It was a
long band of common weed, that would in the sunlight have shone a
bright red. And at that very moment--right across the sparkling bar
the moon had laid over the sea--there passed, without any cloud to
cast it, a shadow. And my father's description of his love-tragedy
haunted me, I knew not why. And right across my life, dividing it in
twain like a burn-scar, came and lay for ever that strip of red
seaweed. Why did my father's description of his own love-tragedy
haunt me?

Before recalling the words that had fallen from my father in
Switzerland, I was a boy: in a few minutes afterwards, I was a man
with an awful knowledge of Destiny in my eyes--a man struggling with
calamity, and fainting in the grip of dread. My manhood, I say, dates
from the throwing up of that strip of seaweed. Winifred picked up the
weed and made a necklace of it, in the old childish way, knowing how
much it would please me.

'Isn't it a lovely colour?' she said, as it glistened in the
moonlight. 'Isn't it just as beautiful and just as precious as if it
were really made of the jewels it seems to rival?'

'It is as red as the reddest ruby,' I replied, putting out my hand
and grasping the slippery substance.

'Would you believe,' said Winnie, 'that I never saw a ruby in my
life? And now I particularly want to know all about rubies.'

'Why do you want particularly to know?'

'Because,' said Winifred, 'my father, when he wished me to come out
for a walk, had been talking a great deal about rubies.'

'Your father had been talking about rubies, Winifred--how very odd!'

'Yes,' said Winifred, 'and he talked about diamonds too.'

'THE CURSE!' I murmured, and clasped her to my breast. 'Kiss me,
Winifred!'

There had come a bite of sudden fire at my heart, and I shuddered
with a dreadful knowledge, like the captain of an unarmed ship, who,
while the unconscious landsmen on board are gaily scrutinising a sail
that like a speck has appeared on the horizon, shudders with the
knowledge of what the speck is, and hears in imagination the yells,
and sees the knives, of the Lascar pirates just starting in pursuit.
As I took in the import of those innocent words, falling from
Winifred's bright lips, falling as  unconsciously as water-drops over
a coral  reef in  tropical seas alive with the eyes of a thousand
sharks, my skin seemed to roughen with dread, and my hair began to
stir.

At first she resisted my movement, but looking in my eyes and seeing
that something had  deeply disturbed me, she let me kiss her. 'What
did you say, Henry?'

'That I love you so, Winnie, and cannot let you go just yet.'

'What a dear fellow it is!' she said; 'and all this ado about a poor
girl with scarcely shoes to her feet.' Then, after an instant's
pause, she said: 'But I thought you said something very different. I
thought you said something about a curse, and _that_ scared me.'

'Scared Winifred!' I said. 'Fancy anything scaring Winnie, who
threatens to hit people when they offend her.'

'Ah! but I am scared,' said she, 'at things from the other world, and
especially at a curse.'

'Why, what do you know about curses, Winifred?'

'Oh, a good deal. I have never forgotten that shriek of a cursed
spirit which I heard at the Swallow Falls. And only a short time ago
Sinfi Lovell nearly frightened me to death by a story of a whole
Gypsy tribe having withered, one after the other--grandfathers,
fathers, and children--through a dead man's curse. But what is the
matter with you, Henry? You surely have turned very pale!'

'Well, Winnie,' said I, 'I _am_ a little, just a little faint. After
the funeral I could take no dinner. But it will he over in a minute.
Let us go back a few yards and sit down upon the dry sand, and have
a little more chat.'

We went and sat down, and my heart slowly resumed its function.

'Let me see, Winnie, what were we talking about? About rubies and
diamonds, I think, were we not? You said that when your father bade
you come out for a walk to-night, he had just been talking about
rubies and diamonds. What was he saying about them, Winnie? But come
and lay your head here while you tell me; lay it on my breast,
Winnie, as you used to do in Graylingham Wood, and on these same
sands.'

Evidently the earnestness of my manner and the suppressed passion in
my voice drove out of her mind all her wise saws about the perils of
wealth and all her wise determinations about the postponed betrothal,
for she came and sat by my side and laid her head upon my breast.

'Yes. like _that_,' I said; 'and now tell me what your father was
saying about precious stones; for I, too, take an interest in jewels,
and have a great knowledge of them.'

'My father,' said Winifred, 'is going to have some diamonds and
rubies given to him to-night by a friend of his, a sailor, who has
come from India, and I am to go to London to-morrow to sell some of
them; for you know, dear, we are very poor. That is why I am
determined to go back to Shire-Carnarvon and see if I can get a
situation as governess. Miss Dalrymple's recommendation will be of
great aid. Poverty afflicts father more than it afflicts most people,
and the rubies and diamonds and things will be of no use to us, you
know.'

I could make her no answer.

'It seems a very strange kind of present from my father's friend,'
she continued, meditatively; 'but it is a very kind one for all that.
But, Henry, you surely are still very unwell; your heart is thumping
underneath my ear like a fire-engine.'

'They are all love-thumps for Winifred,' I said, with pretended
jocosity; 'they are all love-thumps for my Winnie.'

'But of course,' said she, 'this is quite a secret about the precious
stones. My father enjoined me to tell no one, because the temptation
to people is so great, and the cottage might be robbed, or I might be
waylaid going to London. But of course I may tell you; he never
thought of _you_.'

'No, Winnie, he never thought of me. You are very fond of him; very
fond of your father, are you not?'

'Oh yes,' said she, 'I love him more than all the world--next to
you.'

'Then he is kind to you, Winnie?' 'Ye--yes, as kind as he can
be--considering--'

'Considering what, Winnie?'

'Considering that he's often--unwell, you know.'

'Winnie.' I said, as I gazed in the innocent eyes, 'whom are you
considered to be the most like, your father or your mother?'

'I never knew my mother, but I am said to be partly like her. Why do
you ask?'

'Only an idle question. You love me, Winnie?'

'What a question!'

'And you will do what I ask you to do, if I ask you very earnestly,
Winnie?'

'Certumly,' said Winifred, giving, with a forced laugh, the lisp with
which that word had been given on a now famous occasion.

'Well, Winifred, I told you that I feel an interest in precious
stones, and have some knowledge of them. There are certain stones to
which I have the greatest antipathy: diamonds and rubies are the
chief of these.

Now I want you to promise that diamonds and rubies and beryls shall
never touch these fingers, these dear fingers, Winnie, which are
mine, you know; they are mine now,' and I drew the smooth nails
slowly along my lips. 'You are mine now, every bit.'

'Every bit,' said Winifred, but she looked perplexed.

She saw, however, by my face that, for some reason or other, I was
deeply in earnest. She gave the promise. And I knew at least that
those fingers would not be polluted, come what would. As to her going
to London with the spoil, I knew how to prevent that.

But what course of action was I now to take? At this very moment
perhaps Winifred's father was violating my father's tomb, unless
indeed the crime might even yet he prevented. There was one hope,
however. The drunken scoundrel whose daughter was my world I knew to
be a procrastinator in everything. His crime might, even yet, be only
a crime in intent; and, if so, I could prevent it easily enough. My
first business was to hurry to the church, and, if not yet too late,
keep guard over the tomb. But to achieve this I must get quit of
Winifred without a moment's delay. Now Winifred's most direct path to
the cottage was the path I myself must take to the church, the
gangway behind Flinty Point. Yet _she_ must not pass the church with
me, lest an encounter with her father should take place. There was
thus but one course open. I must induce her to take the gangway
behind the other point of the cove; and how was this to be compassed?
That was what I was racking my brain about.

'Winifred,' I said at last, as we sat and looked at the sea, 'I begin
to fear we must be moving.'

She started up, vexed that the hint to move had come from me.

'The fact is,' I said, 'I particularly want to go into the old
church.'

'Into the old church to-night?' said Winifred, with a look of
astonishment and alarm that I could not understand.

'Yes; something was left undone there this afternoon at the funeral,
and I must go at once. But why do you look so alarmed?'

'Oh, don't go into the old church to-night,' said Winifred.

I stood and looked at her, puzzled and strangely disturbed.

'Henry,' said she, 'I know you will think me very foolish, but I have
not yet got over the fright that shriek gave me, the shriek we both
heard the moment before the landslip. That shriek was not a noise
made by the rending of trees, Henry. No, no; we both know better than
that, Henry.'

I gave a start; for, try as I would, I had not really succeeded in
persuading myself that what I had heard was anything but a human
voice in terror or in pain.

'What do you think the noise was, then?' said I.

'I don't know; but I know what I felt as it came shuddering along the
sand, and then went wailing over the sea.'

'What did you feel, Winnie?'

'My heart stood still, for it seemed to me to be the call from the
grave.'

'The call from the grave! and pray what is that? I feel how sadly my
education has been neglected.'

'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family
is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a
call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his
hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I
felt sure it was a call from the grave, and I knelt on the sands and
prayed. Henry, Henry, don't go in the church to-night.'

That Winifred's words affected me profoundly I need not say. The
shriek, whatever it was, had been responded to by her soul and by
mine in the same mysterious way. But the important thing to do was to
prevent her from imagining that her superstitious terrors had
affected me.

'Really, Winnie,' I said, 'this double-voiced shriek of yours, which
is at once the shriek of the Welshman at the bottom of the swollen
falls and the Celtic call from the grave, is the most dramatic shriek
I ever heard of. It would make its fortune on the stage. But with all
its power of being the shriek of two different people at once, it
must not prevent my going into the church to do my duty; so we had
better part here at this very spot. You go up the cliffs by Needle
Point, and _I_ will take Flinty Point gangway.'

'But why not ascend the cliffs together?' said Winifred.

'Why, the prying coastguard might be passing, and might wonder to
see us in the churchyard on the night of my father's funeral (he
might take us for two ghosts in love, you know). However, we need not
part just yet. We can walk on a little farther into the cove before
our paths diverge.'

Winifred made no demur, though she looked puzzled, as we were then
much nearer to the gangway I had selected for myself than to the
gangway I had allotted to her.


IX

Winifred and I were in the little horseshoe curve called 'Church
Cove,' but also called sometimes 'Mousetrap Cove,' because, as I have
already mentioned, a person imprisoned in it by the tide could only
escape by means of a boat from the sea.

Needle Point was at one extremity of the cove and Flinty Point at the
other. In front of us, therefore, at the very centre of the cliff
that surrounded the cove, was the old church, which I was to reach as
soon as possible. To reach a gangway up the cliff it was necessary to
pass quite out of the cove, round either Flinty Point or Needle
Point; for the cliff _within_ the cove was perpendicular, and in some
parts actually overhanging.

When we reached the softer sands near the back of the cove, where the
walking was difficult, I bade Winifred good-night, and she turned
somewhat demurely to the left on her way to Needle Point, between
which and the spot where we now parted she would have to pass below
the church on the cliff, and close by the great masses of debris from
the new landslip that had fallen from the churchyard. This landslip
(which had taken place since she had left home for her moonlight
walk) had changed the shape of the cove into a figure something like
the Greek epsilon.

I walked rapidly towards Flinty Point, which I should have to double
before I could reach the gangway I was to take. So feverishly
possessed had I become by the desire to prevent the sacrilege, if
possible, that I had walked some distance away from Winifred before I
observed how high the returning tide had risen in the cove.

When I now looked at Flinty Point, round which I was to turn, I saw
that it was already in deep water, and that I could not reach the
gangway outside the cove. It was necessary, therefore, to turn back
and ascend by the gangway Winifred was making for, behind Needle
Point, which did not project so far into the sea. So I turned back.
As I did so, I perceived that she had reached the projecting mass of
debris in the middle of the semicircle below the churchyard, and was
looking at it. Then I saw her stoop, pick up what seemed a paper
parcel, open it, and hold it near her face to trace out the letters
by the moonlight. Then I saw her give a start as she read it. I
walked towards her, and soon reached the landslip. Evidently what she
read agitated her much. She seemed to read it and re-read it. When
she saw me she put it behind her back, trying to conceal it from me.

'What have you picked up, Winifred?' I said, in much alarm; for my
heart told me that it was in some way connected with her father and
the shriek.

'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'I was in hopes you had not seen it. I am so
grieved for you. This parchment contains a curse written in large
letters. Some sacrilegious wretch has broken into the church and
stolen a cross placed in your father's tomb.'

God!--It was the very same parchment scroll from my father's tomb on
which was written the curse! I was struck dumb with astonishment and
dismay. The whole terrible truth of the situation broke in upon me at
one flash. The mysterious shriek was explained now. Wynne had
evidently broken open the tomb as soon as his daughter was out of the
way. He had then, in order to reach the cottage without running the
risk of being seen by a chance passenger on the Wilderness Road,
blundered about the edge of the cliff at the very moment when it was
giving way, and had fallen with it. It was his yell of despair amid
the noise of the landslip that Winifred and I had both heard. My sole
thought was for Winifred. She had read the curse; but where was the
dead body of her father that would proclaim upon whose head the curse
had fallen? I stared around me in dismay. She saw how deeply I was
disturbed, but little dreamed the true cause.

'Oh, Henry,' said she, 'to think that you should have such a grief as
this; your dear father's tomb violated!' and she sat down and sobbed.
'But there is a God in heaven,' she added, rising with great
solemnity. 'Whoever has committed this dreadful crime against God and
man will rue the day he was born:--the curse of a dead man who has
been really wronged no penance or prayer can cure,--so my aunt in
Wales used to say, and so Sinfi says;--it clings to the wrongdoer and
to his children. That cry I heard was the voice of vengeance, and it
came from your father's tomb.'

'It is a most infamous robbery,' I said; 'but as to the curse, that
is of course as powerless to work mischief as the breath of a baby.'
And again I anxiously looked around to see where was the dead body of
Wynne, which I knew must be close by.

'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'listen to these words, these awful words of
your dead father, and the words of the Bible too.'

And she held up to her eyes, as though fascinated by it, the
parchment scroll, and read aloud in a voice so awe-struck that it did
not seem to be her voice at all:

  '_He who shall violate this tomb,--he who shall steal this amulet,
  hallowed as a love-token between me and my dead wife,--he who shall
  dare to lay a sacrilegious hand upon this cross, stands cursed by
  God, cursed by love, and cursed by me, Philip Aylwin, lying here.
  "Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his
  fatherless children....Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their
  bread: let them seek it also out of desolate places."--Psalm cix.
  So saith the Lord_. Amen.'

'I am in the toils,' I murmured, with grinding teeth.

'What a frightful curse!' she said, shuddering. 'It terrifies me to
think of it. How hard it seems,' she continued, 'that the children
should be cursed for the father's crimes.'

'But, Winifred, they are NOT so cursed,' I cried. 'It is all a
hideous superstition: one of Man's idiotic lies!'

'Henry,' said she, shocked at my irreverence, 'it _is_ so; the Bible
says it, and all life shows it. Ah! I wonder what wretch committed
the sacrilege, and why he had no pity on his poor innocent children!'

While she was talking, I stooped and picked up the casket from which
the letters had been forced by the fall. She had not seen it. I put
it in my pocket.

'Henry, I am so grieved for you,' said Winifred again, and she came
and wound her fingers in mine.

Grieved for _me_! But where was her father's dead body? That was the
thought that appalled me. Should we come upon it in the _debris_?
What was to be done? Owing to the tide, there was no turning back now
to Flinty Point. The projecting debris must be passed. There was no
dallying for a moment. If we lingered we should be caught by the tide
in Mousetrap Cove, and then nothing could save us. Suppose in passing
the _debris_ we should come upon her father's corpse. The idea was
insupportable. 'Thank God, however, I murmured, 'she will not even
_then_ know the very worst; she will see the corpse of her father who
has fallen with the cliff, but she need not and will not associate
him with the sacrilege and the curse.'

As I picked up the letters that had been scattered from the casket,
she said,

'I cannot get that dreadful curse out of my head; to think that the
children of the despoiler should be cursed by God, and cursed by your
father, and yet they are as innocent as I am.'

'Best to forget it,' said I, standing still, for I dared not move
towards the _debris_.

'We must get on, Henry,' said she, 'for look, the tide is unusually
high to-night. You have turned back, I see, because Flinty Point is
already deep in the water.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I must turn Needle Point with you. But as to the
sacrilege, let us dismiss it from our minds; what cannot be helped
had better be forgotten.'

I then cautiously turned the corner of the _debris_, leading her
after me in such a way that my body acted as a screen. Then my eyes
encountered a spectacle whose horror chilled my blood, and haunts me
to this day in my dreams. About twelve feet above the general level
of the sand, buried to the breast behind a mass of green sward fallen
from the graveyard, stood the dead body of Wynne, amid a confused
heap of earth, gravestones, trees, shrubs, bones, and shattered
coffins. Bolt upright it stood, staring with horribly distorted
features, as in terror, the crown of the head smashed by a fallen
gravestone. Upon his breast glittered the rubies and diamonds and
beryls of the cross, sparkling in the light of the moon, and seeming
to be endowed with conscious life. It was evident that he had, while
groping his way out of the crypt, slung the cross around his neck, in
order to free his hands. I shudder as I recall the spectacle. The
sight would have struck Winifred dead, or sent her raving mad, on the
spot; but she had not turned the corner, and I had just time to wheel
sharply round, and thrust my body between her and the spectacle. The
dog saw it, and, foaming with terror, pointed at it.

'I beg your pardon, Winifred,' I said, falling upon her and pushing
her back.

Then I stood paralysed as the full sinister meaning of the situation
broke in upon my mind. Had the _debris_ fallen in any other way I
might have saved Winifred from seeing the most cruel feature of the
hideous spectacle, the cross, the evidence of her father's sacrilege.
I might, perhaps, on some pretence, have left her on this side the
_debris_, and turning the corner, have mounted the heap and removed
the cross gleaming in hideous mockery on the dead man's breast, and
giving back the moonbeams in a cross of angry fire. One glance,
however, had shown me that before this could be done, there was a
wall of slippery sward to climb, for the largest portion of the
churchyard soil had broken off in one lump. In falling, it had turned
but _half_ over, and then had slid down sideways, presenting to the
climber a facet or sward nearly perpendicular and a dozen feet high.
Wedged in between the jaggy top of this block and the wall of the
cliff was the corpse, showing that Wynne had been standing by the
fissure of the cliff at the moment when it widened into a landslip.

Nor was that all; between that part of the _debris_ where the corpse
was perched and the sand below was one of those long pools of
sea-water edged by shingles, which are common features of that coast.
It seemed that Destiny or Circumstance, more pitiless than Fate and
Hell, determined on our ruin, had forgotten nothing.

The contour of the cove; the way in which the debris had been thrown
across the path we now must follow in order to reach the only place
of egress; the way in which the hideous spectacle of Wynne and the
proof of his guilt had been placed, so that to pass it without seeing
it the passenger must go blindfold; the brilliance of the moon,
intensified by being reflected from the sea; the fulness of the high
tide, and the swell--all was complete! As I stood there with clenched
teeth, like a rat in a trap, a wind seemed to come blowing through my
soul, freezing and burning. I cursed Superstition that was slaying us
both. And I should have cursed Heaven but for the touch of Winnie's
clasping fingers, silky and soft as when I first felt them as a child
in the churchyard.

'What has happened?' asked she, looking into my face.

'Only a slip of my foot,' I said, recovering my presence of mind.

'But why do you turn back?'

'I cannot bring myself to part from you under this delicious moon,
Winnie, if you will stay a few minutes longer. Let us go and sit on
that very boulder where little Hal proposed to you.'

'But you want to go into the church,' said Winifred, as we moved back
towards the boulder.

'No, I will leave that till the morning. I would leave _anything_
till the morning, to have a few minutes longer with you on the sands.
Try to imagine that we are children again, and that I am not the
despised rich man but little Hal the cripple.'

Winifred's eyes, which had begun to look very troubled, sparkled with
delight.

'But,' said she with a sigh, as we sat down on the boulder, 'I'm
afraid we sha'n't be able to stay long. See how the tide is rising,
and the sea is wild. The tides just now, father says, come right up
to the cliff in the cove, and once locked in between Flinty Point and
Needle Point there is no escape.'

'Yes, darling,' I muttered to myself, drawing her to me and burying
my face in her bosom, 'there is one escape, only one.'

For death seemed to me the only escape from a tragedy far, far worse
than death.

If she made me any answer I heard it not; for, as I sat there with
closed eyes, schemes of escape fluttered before me and were dismissed
at the rate of a thousand a second. A fiery photograph of the cove
was burning within my brain, my mind was absorbed in examining every
cranny and every protuberance in the semicircular wall of the cliff
there depicted; over and over again I was examining that
brain-picture, though I knew every inch of it, and knew there was not
in the cliff-wall foothold for a squirrel.


X

The moon mocked me, and seemed to say:

'The blasting spectacle shining there on the other side of that heap
of earth must be passed, or Needle Point can never be reached; and
unless it is reached instantly you and she can never leave the cove.'

'Then we will never leave it,' I whispered to myself, jumping up.

As I did so I found for the first time that her forehead had been
resting against my head; for the furious rate at which the wheels of
thought were moving left no vital current for the sense of touch, and
my flesh was numbed.

'Something has happened,' she said. 'And why did you keep whispering
"yes, yes"? Whom were you whispering to?'

The truth was that, in that dreadful trance, my conscience had been
saying to me, 'Have you a right to exercise your power over this girl
by leading her like a lamb to death?' and my love had replied, 'Yes,
ten thousand times yes.'

'Winifred,' I said, 'I would die for you.'

'Yes, Henry,' said she, 'I know it; but what have we to do with death
now?'

'To save you from harm this flesh of mine would rejoice at
crucifixion; to save you from death this soul and body of mine would
rejoice to endure a thousand years of hell-fire.'

She turned pale, amazed at the delirium into which I had passed.

'To save you from harm, dear, I would,' said I, with a quiet
fierceness that scared her, 'immolate the whole human race--mothers,
and fathers, and children; I would make a hecatomb of them all to
save this body of yours, this sweet body, alive.'

But I could not proceed. What I had meant to say was this,--

'And yet, Winnie, I have brought you here to this boulder to die!'

But I could not say it--my tongue rebelled and would not say it.

Winifred was so full of health and enjoyment of life that, courageous
as she was. I felt that the prospect of certain and imminent death
must appal her; and to see the look of terror break over her face
confronting death was what I could not bear. And yet the thing must
be said. But at this very moment, when my perplexity seemed direst, a
blessed thought came to me--a subterfuge holier than truth. I knew
the Cymric superstition about 'the call from the grave,' for had not
she herself just told me of it?

'I will turn Superstition, accursed Superstition itself, to account,'
I muttered. 'I will pretend that I am enmeshed in a web of Fate, and
doomed to die here myself. Then, if I know my Winifred, she will, of
her own free mind, die with me.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'I have to tell you something that I know must
distress you sorely on my account--something that must wring your
heart, dear, and yet it must be told.'

She turned her head sharply round with a look of alarm that almost
silenced me, so pathetic was it. On that courageous face I had not
seen alarm before, and this was alarm for evil coming to me. It shook
my heart--it shook my heart so that I could not speak.

'I felt,' said she, 'that something awful had happened. And it
affects yourself, Henry?'

'It affects myself.'

'And very deeply?'

'Very deeply, Winnie.'

Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment
scroll, I said, 'It has relation to these.'

'_That_ I felt,' said she; 'how could it be otherwise? Oh, the
miscreant! I curse him; I curse him!'

'Winifred,' I said, 'between me and this casket, and the cross
mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an
amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been
disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is
but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable
calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin
and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is
demanded.'

'Henry, you terrify me to death. What is the sacrifice? Oh God! Oh
God!'

'My father's son must die, Winnie.'

She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, 'I
fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must
even take the calamity and bear it; for I don't mean my Henry to die,
let me assure both families of _that_.'

'Ah! but, Winnie, I am under a solemn oath and pledge to bear this
penalty; and we part to-night, That shriek which so appalled you--'

'Well, well, the shriek?' said she, in a frenzy of impatience.

I made no answer, but she answered herself.

'That shriek was a call to you,' she cried, and then burst into a
passion of tears. 'It _cannot_ be,' she said. 'It cannot and shall
not be; God is too good to suffer it,' Then she fixed her eyes upon
me, and sobbed: 'Ah, it is _true_! I feel it is all true! Yes, they
are calling you, and that is why my soul answered the call. Ah, when
I saw you just now lift your head from my breast with a face grey and
wizened as an old man's--when I saw you look at me, I knew that
something dreadful had happened. Oh, I knew, I knew! but I thought it
had happened to _me_. The love and pity in your eyes when you opened
them upon me made me think it was my trouble, and not yours, that
disturbed you. And now I know it is yours, and you are going to die!
They are calling you. Yes, you are going to let the tide drown you!
Oh, my love  my love!' and her grief was so acute that I knew not at
first whether in this I had done well after all.

'Winifred,' I said, 'you must bear this. I have always been ready to
take death when it should come. I have at least had one blessed time
with Winifred on the sands--Winifred the beloved and beautiful
girl--one night, as the crown to the happy days that have been mine
with Winifred the beloved and beautiful child. And that night, as we
were walking by the sea, it seemed to me that such happiness as was
ours can come but once--that never again could there be a night equal
to that.'

Smiles broke through her tears as she listened to me. I had struck
the right chord.

'And _I_ thought so too,' she said. 'It was indeed a night of bliss.
Indeed, indeed God has been good to us, Henry,' and she fell into my
arms again.

'And now, Winnie,' I said, 'we must kiss and part--part for ever.'

Yes, I had struck the right chord. As she lay in my arms I felt her
soft bosom moving with a little hysterical laugh of derision when I
said we must part. And then she rose and sat beside me upon the
boulder, looking calm and fearless at the tide as it got nearer and
nearer to Needle Point.

'Yes, dear,' I said, looking in the same direction, 'you must be
going; see how the waves are surrounding the Point. You must run,
Winnie--you must run, and leave me.'

'Yes,' said she, still gazing across to the Point, 'as you say, I
must run, but not yet, dear; plenty of time yet,' and she smiled to
herself as she used to do in the old days, when as a child she had
made up her mind to do something.

Then without another word she took her shawl from her shoulders, and
pulled it out to see its length. And soon I felt her fingers stealing
my penknife from my waistcoat-pocket, and saw her deftly cut up the
shawl, strip after strip, and weave it and knot it into a rope, and
tie the rope around her waist, and then she stooped to tie it around
me.

It was when I felt her warm breath about my neck as she stooped over
me to tie that rope, that love was really revealed to me; it was
then, and not till then, that all my previous love for Winifred
seemed as the flicker of a rushlight to Salaman's cloak of fire; and
a feeling of bliss unutterable came upon me, and the night air seemed
full of music, and the sky above seemed opening, as she whispered,
'Henry, Henry, Henry, in a few minutes you will be mine.' But the
very confidence with which she spoke these simple words startled me
as from a dream. 'Suppose,' I thought, 'suppose my last drop of bliss
with Winnie were being tasted now!' In a moment I felt like a coward.
But then there came a loud crash and a thunder from behind the
landslip.

'The settlement!' I cried. 'The coming in of the tide has made the
landslip settle!'

When I sat with closed eyes examining my fiery photograph, I had
calculated the 'settlement' at the return of the tide as being among
the chances of escape. But feeling myself to be engaged in a duel
with Circumstance (more cruel than the fiends), I believed that the
settlement would come too late for us, or even if it did not come too
late, it might not hide away the spectacle. The settlement had come;
what had it done for us? This I must know at once.

'Untie the rope,' I said; 'quick, untie the rope, there is a
settlement of the landslip.'

'But what has the settlement to do with us?' said Winnie.

'It _has_ to do with us, dear; untie the rope. It has much to do with
us, Winnie,' I said; for now the determination to save her life came
on me stronger than ever.

When the rope was untied, I said, 'Wait till I call,' and I ran round
the corner of the _debris_. The great upright wall of earth and
sward, from which had stared the body of Wynne, had fallen, hiding
him and his crime together!

To return round the corner of the landslip and call Winifred was the
work of an instant, and, quick as she was in answering my call, by
the time she had reached me I had thrown off my coat and boots.

'Now for a run and a tussle with the waves, Winnie,' I said.

'Then we are not going to die?'

'We are going to live. Run; in six more returns of a wave like that
there will he four feet of water at the Point.'

'Come along, Snap,' said Winifred, and she flew along the sands
without another word.

Ah, she could run!--faster than I could, with my bruised heel! She
was there first.

'Leap in, Winnie,' I cried, 'and struggle towards the Point; it will
save time. I shall he with you in a second.'

Winifred plunged into the tide (Snap following with a bark), and
fought her way so bravely that my fear now was lest she should be out
of her depth before I could reach her, and then, clad as she was, she
would certainly drown. But never tor a moment did her good sense
leave her. When she was nearly waist-high she stopped and turned
round, gazing at me as I tore through the shallow water--gazing with
a wistful, curious look that her face would have worn had we been
playing.

To get round the Point and pull Winifred round was no slight task,
for the water was nearly up to my breast, and a woman's clothing
seems designed for drowning her. Any other woman than Winifred
_would_ have been drowned, and would have drowned me with her. But in
straits of this kind the only safety lies in courage.

'What a night's adventures!' said Winifred, after we had turned the
Point, and were walking through the shallow water towards the
gangway.

We hurried towards the cottage as fast as our wet clothes would
permit. On reaching it we found the door unlocked, and entered.

'Father has again gone to bed,' said Winifred, 'and left no candle
burning for me.'

And without seeing her face, I knew by the tremor of the hand I
clasped that she was listening with shame for the drunken snore that
she would never hear again.

I lighted a match, which with a candle I found on a chair.

'Your father is no doubt sound asleep,' I said; 'you will scarcely
awake him to-night?'

'Oh dear, no,' said Winifred. 'Good-night. You look quite ill. Ever
since you lifted up your head from my breast, when you were thinking
so hard, you have looked quite ill.'

Suddenly I remembered that I must be up and on the sands betimes in
the morning, to see whether the tide had washed away the fallen earth
so as to expose Wynne's body. To prevent Winifred from seeing the
stolen cross was now the one important thing in the world.

I bade her good-night and walked towards home.


XI

She was right: those few minutes of concentrated agony had in truth
made me ill. My wet clothes clinging round my body began to chill me
now, and as I crept into the house and upstairs to my room, my teeth
were chattering like castanets.

As I threw off my wet clothes and turned into bed, I was partially
forewarned by the throbbing at my temples, the rolling fire at the
back of my eyeballs, the thirst in my parched throat, that some kind
of illness, some kind of fever, was upon me. And no wonder, after
such a night!

In that awful trance, when I had sat with my face buried on
Winifred's breast, not only had the physiognomy of the cove, but
every circumstance of our lives together, been photographed in my
brain in one picture of fire. When, after the concentrated agony of
those first moments of tension, I looked up into Winifred's face, as
though awakening from a dream, my flesh had 'appeared,' she told me,
'grey and wizened, like the flesh of an old man.' The mental and
physical effects of this were now gathering around me and upon me.

From a painful slumber I awoke in about an hour with red-heat at my
brain and with a sickening dread at my heart. 'It is fever,' thought
I; 'I am going to be ill; and what is there to do in the morning at
the ebb of the tide before Winifred can go upon the sands? I ought
not to have come home at all,' I said. 'Suppose illness were to
seize me and prevent my getting there?' The dreadful thought alone
paralysed me quite. Under it I lay as under a nightmare. I scarcely
dared try to get out of bed, lest I should find my fears
well-grounded. At last, cautiously and timorously, I put one leg out
of bed and then the other, till at length I felt the little ridges of
the carpet; but my knees gave way, my head swam, my stomach heaved
with a deadly nausea, and I fell like a log on the floor.

As I lay there I knew that I was indeed in the grasp of fever. I
nearly went crazed from terror at the thought that in a few minutes I
should perhaps lapse into unconsciousness and be unable to
rise--unable to reach the sands in the morning and seek for Wynne's
body--unable even to send some one there as a substitute to perform
that task. But then whom was I to send? whom could I entrust with
such a commission? I was under a pledge to my dead father never to
divulge the secret of the amulet save to my mother and uncle. And
besides, if I would effectually save Winifred from the harm I
dreaded, the hideous sacrilege committed by her father must be kept a
secret from servants and townspeople. Whom then could I send on this
errand? At the present moment, there were but four people in the
world who knew that the cross and casket had been placed in the
coffin--my mother, my uncle, myself, and now, alas! Winifred. My
mother was the one person who could do what I wanted done. Her
sagacity I knew; her courage I knew. But how could I--how dare I,
broach such a matter to her? I felt it would be sheer madness to do
so, and yet, in my dire strait, in my terror at the illness I was
fighting with, I did it, as I am going to tell.

By this time the noise of my fall had brought up the servants. They
lifted me into bed and proposed fetching our medical man. But I
forbade them to do so, and said, 'I want to speak to my mother.'

'She is herself unwell, sir,' said the man to whom I spoke.

'I know,' I replied. 'Call her maid and tell her that my business
with my mother is very important, or I would not have dreamed of
disturbing her; but see her I must.'

The man looked dubious, but observing my wet clothes on a chair he
seemed to think that something had happened, and went to do my
bidding.

In a very short time my mother entered the room. I felt that my
moments of consciousness were brief, and began my story as soon as we
were alone. I told her how the sudden dread that Wynne would steal
the amulet had come upon me; I told her how I had run down to the
churchyard and discovered the landslip; I told her how, on seeing the
landslip, I had descended the gangway and found the body of Wynne,
the amulet, the casket, and the written curse. But I did not tell her
that I had met Winifred on the sands. Excited as I was, I had the
presence of mind not to tell her that.

As I proceeded with my narrative, with my mother sitting by my
bedside, a look of horror, then a look of loathing, then a look of
scorn, swept over her face. I knew that the horror was of the
sacrilege. I knew that the loathing and the haughty scorn expressed
her feeling towards the despoiler--the father of her whose cause I
might have to plead; and I began to wish from the bottom of my heart
that I had not taken her into my confidence. When I got to the
finding of Tom's body, and the look of terror stamped upon his face,
a new expression broke over hers--an expression of triumphant hate
that was fearful.

'Thank God at least for that!' she said. Then she murmured, 'But that
does not atone.'

Ah! how I regretted now that I had consulted her on a subject where
her proud imperious nature must be so deeply disturbed. But it was
too late to retreat.

'Henry,' she said, 'this is a shocking story you tell me. After
losing my husband this is the worst that could have happened to
me--the violation of his sacred tomb. Had I only hearkened to my own
misgiving about the miscreant! Yet I wonder you did not wait till the
morning before telling me.'

'Wait till the morning?' I said, forgetting that she did not know
what was at my heart.

'Doubtless the matter is important, Henry,' said she. 'Still, the
mischief is done, the hideous crime has been committed, and the news
of it could have waited till morning.'

'But, mother, unless my father's words are idle breath, it is
important, most important, that the amulet should again be buried
with him. I meant to go to the sands in the morning and wait for the
ebbing tide--I meant to take the cross from the breast of the dead
man, and to replace it in my father's coffin. That, mother, was what
I meant to do. But I am too ill to move; I feel that in an hour or
so, or in a few minutes, I shall be delirious. And then, mother! Oh,
_then_!--'My mother looked astonished at my vehemence upon the
subject.

'Henry,' she said, 'I had no idea that you felt such an interest in
the matter; I have certainly misjudged your character entirely. And
now, what do you want me to do?'

'Nobody,' I said, 'must know of the cross but ourselves. I want you,
mother, to do what I cannot do: I want you to go on the sands and
wait for the turn of the tide; I want you to take the cross from
Wynne's breast, if the body should be exposed, and secure it in
secret till it can be replaced in the coffin.'

'_I_ do this, Henry?' said my mother, with a look of bewilderment at
my earnestness. 'Yet there is reason in what you say, and grievous as
the task would be for me, I must consider it.'

'But will you engage to do it, mother?'

'Really, Henry, you forget yourself,--you forget your mother too. For
me to go down to the sands and watch the ebbing of the tide, and then
defile myself by touching the body of this wretch, is a task I
naturally shrink from. Still if, on thinking it over, I find it my
duty to do it, it will not be needful for me to enter into a compact
with my son that my duty to my dead husband shall be performed.
Good-night. I quite think you will be better in the morning. I see no
signs myself of the fever you seem to dread, and, alas! I am not, as
you know, ignorant of the way in which a fever begins.'

She was going out of the room when I exclaimed, in sheer desperation,
'Mother, I have something else to say to you. You remember the little
girl, the little blue-eyed girl, Wynne's daughter, who came here
once, and you were so kind to her, so gracious and so kind'; and I
seized her hand and covered it with kisses, for I was beside myself
with alarm lest my one hope should go.'

The sudden little laugh of bitter scorn that came from my mother's
lips, the sudden spasm that shook her frame, the sudden shadow as of
night that swept across her features, should at once have hushed my
confession. But I went on: my tongue would not stop now: I felt that
my eloquence, the eloquence of Winifred's danger, must conquer, must
soften even the hard pride of her race.

'And she has never forgotten your graciousness to her, mother.'

'Well?' said my mother, in a tone whose velvet softness withered me.

'Well, mother, she is in all things the very opposite of her father.
This very night she told me'--and I was actually on the verge of
repeating poor Winifred's prattle about her resembling her mother,
and not her father (for already my brain had succumbed to the force
of the oncoming fever, and the catastrophe I was dreading made of me
a frank and confiding child).

'Well?' said my mother, in a voice softer and more velvety still.
'What did she tell you?'

That tone ought to have convinced me of the folly, the worse than
folly, of saying another word to her.

'But I can conquer her,' I thought; 'I can conquer her yet. When she
comes to know all the piteousness of Winifred's case, she _must_
yield.'

'Yes, mother,' I cried, 'she is in all things the very opposite of
Tom. She has such a horror of sacrilege; she has such a dread of a
crime and a curse like this; she has such a superstitious belief in
the power of a dead man's curse to cling to the delinquent's
offspring, that, if she knew of what her father had done, she would
go mad--raving mad, mother--she would indeed!' And I fell hack on the
pillow exhausted.

'Well, Henry, and is this what you summoned me from my bed to tell
me--that Wynne's daughter will most likely object to share the
consequences of her father's crime? A very natural objection, and I
am really sorry for her; but further than that I have certainly no
affair with her.'

'But, mother, the body of her father lies beneath the _debris_ on the
shore; the ebbing tide may leave it exposed, and the poor girl,
missing her father in the morning, will seek him perhaps on the shore
and find him--find him with the proof of his crime on his breast, and
know that she inherits the curse--my father's curse! Oh, think of
_that_, mother--think of it. And you only can prevent it.'

For a few moments there was intense silence in the room. I saw that
my mother was reflecting. At last she said:

'You say that Wynne's daughter told you something to-night. Where did
you see her?'

'On the sands.'

'At what hour?'

'At--at--at--about eleven, or twelve, or one o'clock.'

I felt that I was getting into a net, but was too ill to know what I
was doing. My mother paused for awhile; I waited as the prisoner
tried for his life waits when the jury have retired to consult. I
clutched the bedclothes to stay the trembling of my limbs. On a chair
by my bedside was my watch, which had been stopped by the sea-water.
I saw her take it up mechanically, look at it, and lay it down again.
In the agony of my suspense I yet observed her smallest movement.

'And in what capacity am I to undertake this expedition?' said she at
length, in the same quiet tone, that soul-quelling tone she always
adopted when her passion was at white-heat. 'Is it in the capacity of
your father's wife executing his wishes about the amulet? Or is it as
the friend, protectress, and guardian of Miss Wynne?'

She sat down again by my bedside, and communed with
herself--sometimes fixing an abstracted gaze upon me, sometimes
looking across me at the very spot where in the shadow beside my bed
I bad seemed to see the words of the Psalmist's curse written in
letters of fire. At last she said quietly, 'Henry, I will undertake
this commission of yours.'

'Dear mother!' I exclaimed in my delight. 'I will undertake it,'
pursued my mother in the same quiet tone, 'on one condition.'

'Any condition in the world, mother. There is nothing I will not do,
nothing I will not sacrifice or suffer, if you will only aid me in
saving this poor girl. Name your condition, mother; you can name
nothing I will not comply with.'

'I am not so sure of that, Henry. Let me be quite frank with you. I
do not wish to entrap you into making an engagement you cannot keep.
You have corroborated to-night what I half suspected when I saw you
talking to the girl in the churchyard; there is a very vigorous
flirtation going on between you and this wretched man's daughter.'

'Flirtation? 'I said, and the incongruity of the word as applied to
such a passion as mine did not vex or wound me; it made me smile.

'Well, for her sake, I hope it is nothing more,' said my mother. 'In
view of the impassable gulf between her and you, I do for her sake
sincerely hope that it is nothing more than a flirtation.'

'Pardon me, mother,' I said, 'it was the word "flirtation" that made
me smile.'

'We will not haggle about words, Henry; give it what name may please
you, it is all the same to me. But flirtations of this kind will
sometimes grow serious, as the case of Percy Aylwin and the Gypsy
girl shows. Now, Henry, I do not accuse you of entertaining the mad
idea of really marrying this girl, though such things, as you know,
have been in our family. But you are my only son, and I do love you,
Henry, whatever may be your opinion on that point; and, because I
love you, I would rather, far rather, be a lonely, childless woman in
the world, I would far rather see you dead on this floor, than see
you marry Winifred Wynne.'

'Ah! mother, the cruelty of this family pride has always been the
curse of the Aylwins.'

'It seems cruel to you now, because you are a boy, a generous boy.
You think it the romantic, poetic thing to elevate a low girl to your
own station--perhaps even to show your superiority to conventions by
marrying the daughter of the miscreant who has desecrated your own
father's tomb. But, Henry, I know the race to which you and I belong.
In five years' time--in three years, or perhaps in two--you will
thank me for this; you will say: "My mother's love was not cruel, but
wise."'

'Oh, mother!' I said, '_any_ condition but that.'

'I see that you know what my condition is before I utter it. If you
will give me your word--and the word of an Aylwin is an oath--if you
will give me your word that you will never marry Winifred Wynne, I
will do as you desire. I will myself go upon the sands in the
morning, and if the body has been exposed by the tide I will secure
the evidence of her father's guilt, in order to save the girl from
the suffering which the knowledge of that guilt would cause her, as
you suppose.'

'As I suppose!'

'Again I say, Henry, we will not quarrel about words.'

I turned sick with despair.

'And on no other terms, mother?'

'On no other terms,' said she.

'Oh, mercy, mother! mercy! you know not what you do. I could not live
without her; I should die without her.'

'Better die then!' exclaimed my mother, with an expression of
ineffable scorn, and losing for the first time her self-possession;
'better die than marry like that.'

'She is my very life now, mother.'

'Have I not said you had better die then? On no other terms will I go
on those sands. But I tell you frankly what I think about this
matter. I think that you absurdly exaggerate the effect the knowledge
of her father's crime will have upon the girl.'

'No, no; I do not. Mercy, dear mother, mercy! I am your only child.'

'That is the very reason why you, who may some day be the heir of one
of the first houses in England, must never marry Winifred Wynne.'

'But I don't want to be heir of the Aylwins; I don't want my uncle's
property,' I retorted. 'Nor do I want the other bauble prizes of the
Aylwins.'

'Providence has taken Frank, and says you must stand where you
stand,' replied my mother solemnly. 'You may even some day, should
Cyril be childless, succeed to the earldom, and then what an alliance
would this be!'

'Earldom! I'd not have it. I'd trample on the coronet. Gingerbread!
I'd trample it in the mud, if it were to sever me from Winifred.'

'You must succeed to it should Cyril Aylwin, who seems disinclined to
marry, die childless,' said my mother quietly; 'and by that time you
may perhaps have reached man's estate.'

'Pity, mother, pity!' I cried in despair, as I looked at the strong
woman who bore me.

'Pity upon whom? Have pity upon me, and upon the family you now
represent. As to all the fearful effects that the knowledge of this
sacrilege will have upon the girl, _that_ is a subject upon which you
must allow me to have my own opinion. God tempers the wind to the
shorn lamb, and provides thick skins for the _canaille_. What will
concern her chiefly, perhaps entirely, will be the loss of her
father, and she will soon know of that, whether she finds the body on
the sands or not. This kind of person is not nearly so sensitive as
my romantic Henry supposes. However, my condition will not be
departed from. If you consent to give up this girl I will go on the
sands; I will defile my fingers; I will secure the stolen amulet at
the ebb of the tide, should the corpse become exposed. If you will
_not_ consent to give her up, there is an end of the matter, and
words are being wasted between us.'

'Give up Winifred, mother? That is not possible.'

'Then there is no more to be said. We will not waste our time in
discussing impossibilities. And I am really so depressed and unwell
that I must return to my room. I hope to hear you are better in the
morning, and I think you will be. The excitement of this night and
your anxiety about the girl have unstrung your nerves, and you have
lost that courage and endurance which are yours by birthright.'

And she left the room.

But she had no sooner gone than there came before my eyes the
insupportable picture of a slim figure walking along the sands
stooping to look at some object among the _debris_, standing aghast
at the sight of her dead father with the evidence of his hideous
crime on his own breast; there came the sound of a cry to 'Henry' for
help! I beat my head against the bedstead till I was nearly stunned.
I yelled and bellowed like a maniac: 'Mother, come back!'

When she returned to my bedside my eyes were glaring so that my
mother stood appalled, and (as she afterwards owned to me) was nearly
yielding her point.

'Mother,' I said,'I consent to your condition: I will give her
up--but oh, save her! Let there be no dallying, let there be no risk,
mother. Let nothing prevent your going upon the sands in the
morning--early, quite early--and every morning at the ebbing of the
tide.'

'I will keep my word,' she said.

'You will use the fullest and best means to save her?'

'I will keep my word,' she said, and left the room.

'I have saved her!' I cried over and over again, as I sank back on my
pillow. Then the delirium of fever came upon me, and I lay tossing as
upon a sea of fire.


XII

Weak in body and in mind as an infant, I woke again to consciousness.
Through the open window the sunlight, with that tender golden-yellow
tone which comes with morning in England, was pouring between the
curtains, and illuminating the white counterpane. Then a soft breeze
came and slightly moved the curtains, and sent the light and shadows
about the bed and the opposite wall--a breeze laden with the scent I
always associated with Wynne's cottage, the scent of geraniums. I
raised myself on my elbows, and gazed over the geraniums on the
window-sill at the blue sky, which was as free of clouds as though it
were an Italian one, save that a little feathery cloud of a palish
gold was slowly moving towards the west.

'It is shaped like a hand,' I said dreamily, and then came the
picture of Winifred in the churchyard singing, and pointing to just
such a golden cloud, and then came the picture of Tom Wynne reeling
towards us from the church porch, and then came everything in
connection with him and with her; everything down to the very
last words which I had spoken about her to my mother before
unconsciousness had come upon me. But what I did _not_ know--what I
was now burning to know without delay--was what time had passed since
then.

I called out 'Mother!' A nurse, who was sitting in the room, but
hidden from me by a large carved and corniced oak wardrobe, sprang up
and told me that she would go and fetch my mother.

'Mother,' I said, when she entered the room, 'you've been?'

'Yes,' said she, taking a seat by my bedside, and motioning the nurse
to leave us.

'And you were in time, mother!'

'More than in time,' said she. 'There was nothing to do. I have
realised, however, that your extraordinary and horrible story was
true. It was not a fever-dream. The tomb has been desecrated.'

'But, mother, you went as you promised to the sands in Church Cove,
and you waited for the ebb of the tide?'

'I did.'

'And you found--'

'Nothing; no corpse exposed.'

'And you went again the next day?'

'I did.'

'And you found--'

'Nothing.'

'But how many days have passed, mother? How many days have I been
lying here?'

'Seven.'

'And no sign of--of the body was to be seen?'

'None. The wretch must have been buried for ever beneath the great
mass of the fallen cliff. I went no more.'

'Oh, mother, you should have gone every day. Think of the frightful
risk, mother. On the very day after you ceased your visits the body
might have been turned up by the tide, and she might have gone and
seen it.'

The picture was too terrible. I fell back exhausted. I revived,
however, in a somewhat calmer mood. When my mother came into the room
again, I returned at once to the subject. I reproached her bitterly
for not having gone every day. She listened to my reproaches in
entire calmness.

'It was idle to keep repeating these visits every day,' said she,
'and I consider that I have fully performed my part of the compact. I
expect you to fulfil yours.'

I remained silent, preparing for a deadly struggle with the only
being on earth I had ever really feared.

'I have fully kept my word, Henry,' said she, 'and have done for you
more than my duty to your father's memory warranted me in doing.'

'But, mother, you did not do all that you promised to do; you did not
prevent all risk of Winifred's finding it. She may find it even yet.'

'That is not likely now. I have performed my part of the compact, and
I expect you to perform yours.'

'You did not use all means to save my Winifred from worse than
death--from madness; you did not use all means to save me from dying
of self-murder or of a broken heart; and the compact is broken.
Whether or not I could have kept my faith with you by breaking troth
with her, it is you who have set me free. Mother,' I said, fiercely,
'in such a compact it must be the letter of the bond.'

'Mean subterfuge, unworthy of your descent,' said my mother quietly,
but with one of those looks of hers that used to frighten me once.

'No, no, mother; you have not kept the letter of the bond, and I am
free. You did _not_ take the fullest and best means to save Winifred.
Your compact was to save her from the risk I told you of. And,
mother, mother, listen to me!' I cried, in a state of crazy
excitement now: 'in the darkest moment of my life, when I was
prostrate and helpless, you were pitiless as Pride. Listen, mother:
Winifred Wynne shall be mine. Not all the Aylwins that have ever
eaten of wheat and fattened the worms shall prevent that. She shall
be mine. I say, she shall be mine!'

'The daughter of the man who desecrated my husband's tomb!'

'And my father's! That man's daughter shall be my wife,' I said,
sitting up in bed and looking into those eyes, bright and proud,
which had been wont to make all other eyes blink and quail.

'Cursed by your father, and cursed by God--'

'That curse--for what it may be worth--I take upon my own head; the
curse shall be mine. Even if I believed the threat about the
"desolate places," I would be there; if bare-footed she had to beg
from door to door, rest assured, mother, that an Aylwin would hold
the wallet--would leave the whole Aylwin brood, their rank, their
money, and their stupid, vulgar British pride, to walk beside the
beggar.'

The look on my mother's face would have terrified most people. It
would have terrified me once, but in the frenzy into which I had then
passed, nothing would have made me quail.

'Your services, mother, are no longer needed,' I said. 'Wynne's
corpse might have been washed up by the tide, and your compact was to
be there to see; but now, most likely, it is hidden, not under the
loose fragments as I had feared, but under the great mass of
earth,--hidden for ever.'

'But you forget,' said my mother, 'that the amulet has to be
recovered.'

'Mother,' I said, in the state of wild suspiciousness concerning her
and her motives into which I had now passed, 'I know what your words
imply,--that Winifred is not yet out of danger; the evidence of the
curse and the crime can be dug up.'

'I have no wish to harm the girl, Henry. You mistake me.'

'Then, mother, we must _not_ mistake each other in this matter,' I
said. 'You have alluded to the word of an Aylwin. With me, as with
the best of us, the word of an Aylwin is an oath. Wynne's corpse is
now hidden; the cross is now hidden; I give you the word of an Aylwin
that the man who digs up that corpse I will kill. I will not consider
that he is an irresponsible agent of yours; I will kill him, and his
blood shall be upon the head of her who sends him, knowing, to his
death.'

'And be hanged,' said my mother.

'Perhaps. But after her father's crime has been exposed, the first
thing for me is--to kill!'

'Why, boy, there's murder in your eyes!' said my mother, taken off
her guard.

'Oh, mother, mother, can you not see that no wolf with a stolen lamb
in its mouth was ever more pitilessly shot down by the owner of that
lamb than any hireling wolf of yours would be shot down by me?'

'Boy, are you quite demented?'

'Listen, mother. To prevent Winifred from knowing that her father had
stolen that amulet, and so brought down upon her the curse, I would
have drowned her with myself in the tide. We sat waiting for the tide
to drown us, when the settlement came at the last moment and buried
it away from her. Is it likely that I should hesitate to kill a
clodhopper, or a score, if only to take my vengeance on you and Fate?
The homicide now will be yours.'

She left, giving me a glance of defiance; but before our eyes ended
that conflict, I saw which of us had conquered.

'Hate is strong,' I murmured, as I sank down on my pillow, 'and
destiny is strong; but oh, Winnie, Winnie--stronger than hate, and
stronger than destiny and death, is love. She knows, Winnie, that the
life of the man who should dig up that corpse would not be worth an
hour's purchase; she knows, Winnie, that in the court of conscience
she alone is answerable now for what may befall; and you are safe!
But poor mother! My poor dear mother, whom once I loved so dearly,
was it indeed you I struggled with just now? Mother, mother, was it
you?'

This interview retarded my recovery, and I had a serious relapse.

The fever was a severe one. The symptoms were aggravated by these
most painful and trying interviews with my mother, and by my
increasing anxiety about the fate of Winifred. Yet my vigorous
constitution began to show signs of conquering. Of Winifred I could
learn nothing, save what could be gleaned from the servants in
attendance, who seemed merely to have heard that Tom Wynne was
missing, that he had probably fallen drunk over the cliff and been
washed out to sea, and that his daughter was seeking him everywhere.
As the days passed by, however, and no hint reached me that the
corpse had been found on the sands, I concluded that, when the larger
mass finally settled on the night of the landslip, the corpse had
fallen immediately beneath it, and was buried under the  main mass.
Yet, from what I had seen of the corpse's position, in the rapid view
I had of it, perched on the upright mass of sward, I did not
understand how this could be.

And so anxiety after anxiety delayed my progress. Still, on the
whole, I felt that the body would not now be dislodged by the tides,
and that Winifred would at least be spared a misery compared with
which even her uncertainty about her father's fate would be bearable.
But how I longed to be up and with her!

Dr. Mivart, who attended me, a young medical man of much ability who
had finished his medical education in Paris, and had lately settled
at Raxton, came every day with great punctuality.

One day, however, he arrived three hours behind his usual time, and
seemed to think that some explanation was necessary.

'I must apologise,' said he, 'for my unpunctuality to-day, but the
fact is that, at the very moment of starting, I was delayed by one of
the most interesting--one of the most extraordinary cases that ever
came within my experience, even at the Salpetriere Hospital, where we
were familiar with the most marvellous cases of hysteria--a seizure
brought on by terror in which the subject's countenance mimics the
appearance of the terrible object that has caused it. A truly
wonderful case! I have just written to Marini about it.'

He seemed so much interested in his case, that he aroused a certain
interest in me, though at that time the word 'hysteria' conveyed an
impression to me of a very uncertain and misty kind.

'Where did it occur?' I asked.

'Here, in your own town,' said Mivart. 'A most extraordinary case. My
report will delight Marini, our great authority, as you no doubt are
aware, on catalepsy and cataleptic ecstasy.'

'Strange that I have heard nothing of it!' I said.

'Oh!' replied Mivart, 'it occurred only this morning. Some fishermen
passing below the old church were attracted, first by a shriek of a
peculiarly frightful and unearthly kind, and then by some unusual
appearance on the sands, at the spot where the last landslip took
place.'

My pulses stopped in a moment, and I clung to the back of my chair.

'What--did--the fishermen see?' I gasped.

'The men landed,' continued Mivart,--too much interested in the case
to observe my emotion,--'and there they found a dead body--the body
of the missing organist here, who had apparently fallen with the
landslip. The face was horribly distorted by terror, the skull
shattered, and around the neck was slung a valuable cross made of
precious stones. But the most interesting feature of the case is
this, that in front of the body, in a fit of a remarkable kind,
squatted his daughter--you may have seen her, an exceedingly pretty
girl lately come from Wales or somewhere--and on her face was
reflected and mimicked, in the most astonishing way, the horrible
expression on the face of the corpse, while the fingers of her right
hand were so closely locked around the cross--'

I felt that from my mouth there issued a voice not mine--a long
smothered shriek like that which had seemed to issue from my mouth on
that awful night when, looking out of the window, I had heard the
noise of the landslip. Then I felt myself whispering 'The Curse!'
Then I knew no more.


XIII

I had another dangerous relapse, and was delirious for two days, I
think. When I came to myself, the first words I uttered to Mivart,
whom I found with me, were inquiries about Winifred. He was loth at
first to revive the subject, though he supposed that the effect of
his narrative upon me had arisen partly from my weakness and partly
from what he called his 'sensational way' of telling the story. (My
mother had been very careful to drop no hint of the true state of the
case.) At last, however, Mivart told me all he knew about Winifred,
while I hid my face in my pillow and listened.

'In the seizures (which are recurrent) the girl,' he said, 'mimics
the expression of terror on her father's face. Between the paroxysms
she lapses into a strange kind of dementia. It is as though her own
mind had fled and the body had been entered by the soul of a child.
She will then sing snatches of songs, sometimes in Welsh and
sometimes in English, but with the strange, weird intonation of a
person in a dream. I have known something like this to take place
before, but it has been in seizures of an epileptic kind, very unlike
this case in their general characteristics. The mental processes seem
to have been completely arrested by the shock, as the wheels of a
watch or a musical box are stopped if it falls.'

He could tell me nothing about her, he said, nor what had become of
her since she had left his hands.

'The parish officer is taking his holiday,' he added. 'I mean to
inquire about her. I wish I could take her to Paris to the
Salpetriere, where Marini is treating such cases by transmitting
through magnetism the patient's seizure to a healthy subject.'

'Will she recover?'

'Without the Salpetriere treatment?'

'Will she recover?' I asked, maddened beyond endurance by all this
cold-blooded professional enthusiasm about a case which was simply a
case of life and death to Winnie and me.

'She may, unless the seizures become too frequent for the strength of
the constitution. In that event, of course, she would succumb. She is
entirely harmless, let me tell you.'

He told me that she was at the cottage, where some good soul was
seeing after her.

'I'll get up,' I said, trying to rise.

'Get up!' said the doctor, astonished; 'why do you want to get up?
You are not strong enough to sit in a chair yet.'

This was, alas! but too true, and my great object now was to conceal
my weakness; for I determined to get out as soon as my legs could
carry me, though I should drop down dead on the road.

I gathered from the doctor and the servants that the sacrilege had
now become publicly known, and had caused much excitement. Wynne had
evidently been slightly intoxicated when he committed it, and had
taken no care to conceal the proofs that the grave had been tampered
with. At the inquest the amulet had been identified and claimed by my
mother.

It was some days before I got out, and then I went at once to the
cottage. It was a lovely evening as I walked down Wilderness Road. It
was not till I reached the little garden-gate that I began fully to
feel how weak my illness had left me. The gate was half open, and I
looked over into the garden, which was already forlorn and deserted.
Some instinct told me she was not there. The little flower-beds
looked shaggy, grass-grown, and uncared for. In the centre, among the
geraniums, phlox-beds, and French marigolds, sat a dirty-white hen,
clucking and calling a brood of dirty-white chickens. The
box-bordered gravelled paths, which Wynne, in spite of his
drunkenness, used to keep always so neat, were covered with leaves,
shaken by the wind from the trees surrounding the garden. One of the
dark green shutters was unfastened, and stood out at right-angles
from the wall--a token of desertion. On the diamond panes of the
upper windows, round which the long tendrils of grape-vines were
drooping, the gorgeous sunset was reflected, making the glass gleam
as though a hundred little fires were playing behind it. When I
reached the door, the paint of which seemed far more cracked with the
sun than it had looked a few weeks before, I found on knocking that
the cottage was empty. I did not linger, but went at once into the
town to inquire about her.

In place of giving me the information I was panting for, the whole
town came cackling round me with comments on the organist and the
sacrilege. I turned into the 'Fishing Smack' inn, a likely place to
get what news was to be had, and found the asthmatical old landlord
haranguing some fishermen who were drinking their ale on a settle.

'It's my b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink
else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come
next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy
when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried on in the old
churchyard jes' like one o'clock, and the carpuses sent up to Lunnon
reg'lar, and it's my 'pinion as that wur part o' Tom's game, dang
'im; and if I'd a 'ad _my_ way arter the crouner's quest, he'd never
a' bin buried in the very churchyard as he went and blast-phemed.'

'Where would you 'a  buried 'im, then, Muster Lantoff?' asked a
fisher-boy in a blue worsted jerkin.

'Buried 'im? why, at the cross-ruds, with a hedge-stake through his
guts, to be sure. If there's a penny agin' 'im on that air slate'
(pointing to a slate hung up on the door) 'there must be ten
shillins, dang 'im.'

'You  blear-eyed, ignorant old donkey,' I  cried, coming suddenly
upon him, 'what do you suppose he could have done with a dead body in
these days? Here's your wretched ten shillings,--for which you'd sell
all the corpses in Raxton churchyard.'

And I gave him half-a-sovereign, feeling, somehow, that I was doing
honour to Winifred.

'Thankee for the money, Mister Hal, anyhow,' said the old creature.
'You was allus a liberal 'un, you was. But as to what Tom could 'a
dun with the carpus, I'm allus heer'd that you may dew anythink
_with_ any-think, if you on'y send it carriage-paid to Lunnon,'

I left the house in anger and disgust. No tidings could I get of
Winifred in Raxton or Graylingham.

By this time I was thoroughly worn out, and obliged to go home. My
anxiety had become nearly insupportable. All night I walked up and
down my bedroom, like a caged animal, cursing Superstition, cursing
Convention, and all the other follies that had combined to destroy
her. It was not till the next day that the true state of the case was
made known to me in the following manner: At the end of the town
lived the widow of Shales, the tailor. Winifred and I had often, in
our childish days, stood and watched old Shales, sitting cross-legged
on a board in the window, at his work, when Winifred would whisper to
me, 'How nice it must be to be a tailor!'

As I passed this shop I now saw that on the same board was sitting a
person in whom Winifred had taken still stronger interest. This was a
diminutive imitation of the deceased, in the person of his
hump-backed son, a little man of about twenty-four, who might, as far
as appearance went, have been any age from twenty to eighty, with a
pale anxious face like his mother's. He was stitching at a coat with,
apparently, the same pair of scissors by his side that used to
delight us two children. Standing by the side of the board, and
looking on with a skilled intelligence shining from her pale eyes,
was Mrs. Shales, with an infant in her arms--a wasted little
grandchild wrapt in a plaid shawl, apparently smoking a chibouque,
but in reality sucking vigorously at the mouthpiece of a baby's
bottle, which it was clasping deftly with its pink little fingers.

Mrs. Shales beckoned me mysteriously into her shop, and then into the
little parlour behind it, where she used to sit and watch the
customers through the green muslin blind of the glass door, like a
spider in its web. Young Shales, who left his board, followed us, and
they then gave me some news that at once decided my course of action.
They told me that one morning, after her frightful shock, Winifred
had encountered Shales, who was taking, a holiday, and employing it
in catching young crabs among the stones. Winifred, who had a great
liking for the hump-backed tailor, had come up to him and talked in a
dazed way. Shales, pitying her condition, had induced her to go home
with him; and then it had occurred to him to go and inquire at the
Hall what suggestion could be made concerning her at a house where
her father had been so well known. He could not see me; I was ill in
bed. He saw my mother, who at once suggested that Winifred should be
taken to Wales, to an aunt with whom, according to Wynne, she had
been living. (No one but myself knew anything of Wynne's affairs, and
my mother, though she had heard of the aunt, had not, as I then
believed, heard of her death.) She proposed that Shales himself
should contrive to take Winifred to Wales. 'She had reasons,' she
said, 'for wishing that Winifred should not be handed over to the
local parish officer.' She offered to pay Shales liberally for going.
_I_, however, was to know nothing of this. Her object, of course,
was to get Winifred out of my way. The aunt's address was furnished
by a Mr. Lacon of Dullingham, an old friend of Wynne's, who also, it
seems, was ignorant of the aunt's death. This aunt, a sister of
Winifred's mother, named Davies, the widow of a sea captain who had
once known better days, resided in an old cottage between Bettws y
Coed and Capel Curig. Shales had found no difficulty in persuading
Winifred to go with him, for she had now sunk into a condition of
dazed stupor, and was very docile.

They started on their long journey across England by rail, and
everything went well till they got into Wales, when Winifred's stupor
seemed to be broken into by the familiar scenery; her wits became
alive again. Then an idea seemed to seize her that she was pursued by
me, as the messenger bearing my dead father's curse. The appearance
of any young man bearing the remotest resemblance to me frightened
her. At last, before they reached Bettws y Coed, she had escaped, and
was lost among the woods. Shales had made every effort to find her,
but without avail, and was compelled at last, by the demands of his
business, to give up the quest. He had returned on the previous
evening, and my mother had enjoined him not to tell me what had been
done, though she seemed much distressed at hearing that Winnie was
lost, and was about to send others into Wales in order to find her,
if possible. Shales, however, had determined to tell me, as the
matter, he said, lay upon his conscience.

On getting this news I went straight home, ordered a portmanteau to
be packed, and placed in it all my ready cash. Before starting I sat
down to write a letter to my uncle. On hearing of my movements, my
mother came to me in great agitation. In her eyes there was that
haggard expression which I thought I understood. Already she had
begun to feel that she and she alone was responsible for whatsoever
calamities might fall upon the helpless deserted girl she had sent
away. Already she had begun to feel the pangs of that remorse which
afterwards stung her so cruelly that not all Winnie's woes, nor all
mine, were so dire as hers. There are some natures that feel
themselves responsible for all the unforeseen, as well as for all the
foreseen, consequences of their acts. My mother was one of these. I
rose as she entered, offered her a seat, and then sat down again.

She inquired whither I was going.

'To North Wales,' I said.

She stood aghast. But she now understood that grief had made me a
man.

'You are going,' said she, 'after the daughter of the scoundrel who
desecrated your father's tomb?'

'I am going after the young lady whom I intend to marry.'

'Wynne's daughter marry my only son! Never!'

I proceeded with my letter.

'I will write to your uncle Aylwin at once. I will tell him you are
going to marry that miscreant's daughter, and he will disinherit
you.'

'In that case, mother,' I said, rising from the table, 'I need not
trouble myself to finish my letter; for I was writing to him, telling
him the same thing. Still, perhaps I had better send mine too,' I
continued. 'I should like at least to remain on friendly terms with
him, he is so good to me'; and I resumed my seat at the
writing-table.

'Henry,' said my mother, after a second or two, 'I think you had
better _not_ write to your uncle; it might only make matters worse.
You had better leave it to me.'

'Thank you, mother, the letter is finished,' I replied as I sealed it
up, 'and will be sent. Good-bye, dear,' I said, taking her hand and
kissing it. 'You knew not what you did, and I know you did it for the
best.'

'When do you return, Henry?' asked she, in a conquered and sad tone,
that caused me many a pang to remember afterwards.

'That is altogether uncertain,' I answered. 'I go to follow Winifred.
If I find her alive I shall marry her, if she will marry me, unless
permanent insanity prove a barrier. If she is dead'--(I restrained
myself from saying aloud what I said to myself)--'I shall still
follow her.'

'The daughter of the scoundrel!' she murmured, her lips grey with
suppressed passion.

'Mother,' I said, 'let us not part in anger. The sword of Fate is
between us. When I was at school I made a certain vow. The vow was
that I would woo and win but one woman upon earth--the daughter of
the man who has since violated my father's tomb. I have lately made a
second vow, that, until she is found, I shall devote my life to the
quest of Winifred Wynne. If you think that I am likely to be deterred
by fears of being disinherited by your family, open and read my
letter to my uncle. I have there told him whom I intend to marry.'

'Mad, mad boy!' said my mother. 'Society will--'

'You have once or twice before mentioned society, mother. If I find
Winifred Wynne, I shall assuredly marry her, unless prevented by the
one obstacle I have mentioned. If I marry her I shall, if it so
please me and her, take her into society.'

'Into society!' she replied, with ineffable scorn.

'And I shall say to society, "Here is my wife.'"

'And when society asks, "Who _is_ your wife?'"

'I shall reply, "She is the daughter of the drunken organist who
desecrated my father's tomb, though that concerns you not:--her own
speciality, as you see, is that she is the flower of all girlhood."'

'And when society rejects this earthly paragon?'

'Then I shall reject society.'

'Reject society, boy!' said my mother. 'Why, Cyril Aylwin himself,
the bohemian painter who has done his best to cheapen and vulgarise
our name, is not a more reckless, lawless leveller than you. And,
good heavens! to him, and perhaps afterwards to you, will come--the
coronet.'

And she left the room.



III

WINIFRED'S DUKKERIPEN


I

I need not describe my journey to North Wales. On reaching Bettws y
Coed I turned into the hotel there--'The Royal Oak'--famished; for,
as fast as trains could carry me, I had travelled right across
England, leaving rest and meals to chance. I found the hotel full of
English painters, whom the fine summer had attracted thither as
usual. The landlord got me a bed in the village. A six-o'clock _table
d'hote_ was going on when I arrived, and I joined it. Save myself,
the guests were, I think, landscape painters to a man. They had been
sketching in the neighbourhood. I thought I had never met so genial
and good-natured a set of men, and I have since often wondered what
they thought of me, who met such courteous and friendly advances as
they made towards me in a temper that must have seemed to them morose
or churlish and stupid. Before the dinner was over another tourist
entered--a fresh-complexioned young Englishman in spectacles, who,
sitting next to me, did at length, by force of sheer good-humour,
contrive to get into a desultory kind of conversation with me, and,
as far as I remember, he talked well. He was not an artist, I found,
but an amateur geologist and antiquary. His hobby was not like that
fatal antiquarianism of my father's, which had worked so much
mischief, but the harmless quest of flint implements. His talk about
his collection of flints, however, sent my mind off to Flinty Point
and the never-to-be-forgotten flint-built walls of Raxton church.
After dinner, coffee, liquors, and tobacco being introduced into the
dining-room, I got up, intending to roam about outside the hotel till
bedtime; but the rain, I found, was falling in torrents. I was
compelled to return to my friend of the 'flints.' At that moment one
of the artists plunged into a comic song, and by the ecstatic look of
the company I knew that a purgatorial time was before me. I resigned
myself to my fate. Song followed song, until at last even my friend
of the flints struck up the ballad of _Little Billee_, whose
lugubrious refrain seemed to 'set the table in a roar'; but to me it
will always be associated with sickening heartache.

As soon as the rain ceased I left the hotel and went to the room in
the little town the landlord had engaged for me. There, with the roar
in my ears of the mountain streams (swollen by the rains), I went to
bed and, strange to say, slept.

Next morning I rose early, breakfasted at 'The Royal Oak' as soon as
I could get attended to, and proceeded in the direction in which,
according to what I had gathered from various sources, Mrs. Davies
had lived. This led me through a valley and by the side of a stream,
whose cascades I succeeded, after many efforts, in crossing. After a
while, however, I found that I had taken a wrong track, and was soon
walking in the contrary direction. I will not describe that long
dreary walk in a drenching rain, with nothing but the base of the
mountain visible, all else being lost in clouds and mist.

After blundering through marshy and boggy hillocks for miles, I found
myself at last in the locality indicated to me. Arriving at a
roadside public-house, I entered it, and on inquiry was vexed to find
that I had again been misdirected. I slept there, and in the morning
started again on my quest. I was now a long way off my destination,
but had at least the satisfaction of knowing that I was on the right
road at last. In the afternoon I reached another wayside inn, very
similar to that in which I had slept. I walked up at once to the
landlord (a fat little Englishman who looked like a Welshman, with
black eyes and a head of hair like a black door-mat), and asked him
if he had known Mrs. Davies. He said he had, but seemed anxious to
assure me that he was a Chester man and 'not a Taffy.' She had died,
he told me, not long since. But he had known more of her niece,
Winifred Wynne (or, as most people called her, Winifred Davies); for,
said he, 'she was a queer kind of outdoor creature that everybody
knew.--as fond of the rain and mist as sensible folk are fond of
sunshine.'

'Where did she live?' I inquired.

'You must have passed the very door,' said the man. And then he
indicated a pretty little cottage by the roadside which I had passed,
not far from the lake. Mrs. Davies (he told me) had lived there with
her niece till the aunt died.

'Then you knew Winifred Wynne?' I said. There was to me a romantic
kind of interest about a man who had seen Winifred in Wales.

'Knew her well,' said he. 'She was a Carnarvon gal--tremenjus fond o'
the sea--and a rare pretty gal she was.'

'Pretty gal she _is_, you might ha' said, Mr. Blyth,' a woman's voice
exclaimed from the settle beneath the window. 'She's about in these
parts at this very moment, though Jim Burton there says it's her
ghose. But do ghoses eat and drink? that's what _I_ want to know.
Besides, if anybody's like to know the difference between Winnie
Wynne and Winnie Wynne's ghose, I should say it's most likely me.'

I turned round. A Gypsy girl, dressed in fine Gypsy costume, very
dark but very handsome, was sitting on a settle drinking from a pot
of ale, and nursing an instrument of the violin kind, which she was
fondling as though it were a baby. She was quite young, not above
eighteen years of age, slender, graceful--remarkably so, even for a
Gypsy girl. Her hair, which was not so much coal-black as blue-black,
was plaited in the old-fashioned Gypsy way, in little plaits that
looked almost as close as plaited straw, and as it was of an
unusually soft and fine texture for a Gypsy, the plaits gave it a
lustre quite unlike that which unguents can give. As she sat there,
one leg thrown over the over, displaying a foot which, even in the
heavy nailed boots, would have put to shame the finest foot of the
finest English lady I have ever seen, I could discern that she was
powerful and tall; her bosom, gently rising and falling beneath the
layers of scarlet and yellow and blue handkerchiefs, which filled up
the space the loose-fitting gown of bright merino left open, was of a
breadth fully worthy of her height. A silk handkerchief of deep
blood-red colour was bound round her head, not in the modern Gypsy
fashion, but more like an Oriental turban. From each ear was
suspended a massive ring of red gold. Round her beautiful, towering,
tanned neck was a thrice-twisted necklace of half-sovereigns and
amber and red coral. She looked me full in the face. Then came a
something in the girl's eyes the like of which I had seen in no
other Gypsy's eyes, though I had known well the Gypsies who used
to camp near Rington Manor, not far from Raxton, for my kinsman
Percy Aylwin, the poet, had lately fallen in love with Winnie's early
friend, Rhona Boswell. It was not exactly an 'uncanny' expression,
yet it suggested a world quite other than this. It was an expression
such as one might expect to see in a 'budding spae-wife,' or in a
Roman Sibyl. And whose expression was it that it now reminded me of?
But the remarkable thing was that this expression was intermittent;
it came and went like the shadows the fleeting clouds cast along the
sunlit grass. Then it was followed by a look of steady self-reliance
and daring. This last variation of expression was what now suddenly
came into her eyes as she said, scrutinising me from head to foot:

'Reia, you make a good git-up for a Romany-chal. Can you rokkra
Romanes? No, I see you can't. I should ha' took you for the right
sort. I should ha' begun the Romany rokkerpen with you, only you
ain't got the Romany glime in your eyes. It's a pity he ain't got the
Romany glime, ain't it, Jim?'

She turned to a young Gypsy fellow who was sitting at the other end
of the settle, drinking also from a pot of ale, and smoking a cutty
pipe.

'Don't ax me about no mumply Gorgio's eyes,' muttered the man,
striking the leather legging of his right leg with a silver-headed
whip he carried. 'You're allus a-takin' intrust in the Gorgios, and
yet you're allus a-makin' believe as you hate 'em.'

'You say Winifred Wynne is back again?' I cried in an eager voice.

'That's jist what I _did_ say, and I ain't deaf, my rei. How she
managed to get back here puzzles me, poor thing, for she's jist for
all the world like Rhona's daddy's daddy, Opi Bozzell, what buried
his wits in his dead wife's coffin. She's even skeared at _me_.'

'Why, you don't mean to say Winnie's back!' cried the landlord. 'To
think that I shouldn't have heard about Winnie Wynne bein' back. When
did you see her, Sinfi?'

'I see her fust ever so many nights ago. I was comin' down this road,
when what do I see but a gal a-kicking at the door of Mrs. Davies's
emp'y house, and a-sobbin' she was jist fit to break her heart, and I
sez to myself, as I looked at her--"Now, if it was possible for that
'ere gal to be Winifred Wynne, she'd be Winifred Wynne, but as it
ain't possible for her to be Winifred Wynne, it _ain't_ Winifred
Wynne, and any mumply Gorgie [Footnote] as _ain't_ Winifred Wynne may
kick and sob for a blue moon for all me."'

[Footnote: Gorgio, a man who is not a Gypsy. Gorgie, a woman who is
not a Gypsy.]

'But it was Winnie Wynne, I s'pose?' said the landlord, in a state
now of great curiosity.

'It was Winnie Wynne,' replied the Gypsy, handing her companion her
empty beer-pot, and pointing to the landlord as a sign that the man
was to pass it on to him to be refilled. 'Up I goes to her, and I
says, "Why, sister, who's bin a-meddlin' with you? I'll tear the
windpipe out o' anybody wot's been a-meddlin' with you."'

When the girl used the word 'sister' a light broke in upon me.

'Are you Sinfi Lovell?' I cried.

'That jist my name, my rei; but as I said afore, I ain't deaf. Jist
let Jim pass my beer across and don't interrup' me, please.'

'Don't rile her, sir,' whispered the landlord to me; 'she's got the
real witch's eye, and can do you a mischief in a twink, if she likes.
She's a good sort, though, for all that.'

'What are you two a-whisperin' about me?' said the girl in a menacing
tone that seemed to alarm the landlord.

'I was only tellin' the gentleman not to rile you, because you was a
fightin' woman,' said the man.

The Gypsy looked appeased and even gratified at the landlord's
explanation.

'But what did Winnie Wynne do then, Sinfi?' asked the landlord.

'She turns round sharp,' said the Gypsy; 'she looks at me as skeared
as the eyes of a hotchiwitchi [Footnote] as knows he's a-bein'
uncurled for the knife. "_Father!_" she cries, and away she bolts
like a greyhound; and I know'd at oust as she wur under a cuss. Now,
you see, Mr. Blyth, that upset me, _that_ did, for Winnie Wynne was
the only one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever I liked. No offence, Mr.
Blyth, it isn't your fault you was born one; but,' continued the
girl, holding up the foaming tankard and admiring the froth as it
dropped from the rim upon her slender brown hand on its way to the
floor, 'Winnie Wynne was the only one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever
I liked, and that upset me, _that_ did, to see that 'ere beautiful
cretur a-grinnin' and jabberin' under a cuss. The Romanies is gittin'
too fond by half o' the Gorgios, and will soon be jist like mumply
Gorgios themselves, speckable and silly; but Gorgio or Gorgie, she
was the only one on 'em ever I liked, was Winnie Wynne; and when she
turned round on me like _that_, with them kind eyes o' hern (such
kind eyes _I_ never seed afore) lookin' like _that_ at me (and I
know'd she was under a cuss)--I tell you,' she said, still addressing
the beer, 'that it's made me fret ever since--that's what it's done!'

[Footnote: Hedgehog.]

About the truth of this last statement there could be no doubt, for
her face was twitching violently in her efforts to keep down her
emotion.

'And did you follow her?' said the landlord.

'Not I; what was the good?'

'But what did you do, Sinfi?'

'What did I do? Well, don't you mind me comin' here one night and
buyin' a couple of blankets off you, and some bread and meat and
things?'

'In course I do, Sinfi, and you said you wanted them for the vans.'

The Gypsy smiled and said, 'I knowed she was bound to come back, so
I pulls up the window and in I gets, and then opens the door and off
I comes to you, as bein' the nearest neighbour, for the blankets and
things, and I puts 'em in the house, and I leaves the door uncatched,
and I hides myself behind the house, and, sure enough, back she
comes, poor thing! I hears her kick, kick, kickin' at the door, and
then I hears her go in when she finds it give way. So I waits a good
while, till I thinks she's eat some o' the vittles and gone to sleep
maybe, and then round the house I creeps, and in the door I peeps,
and soon I hears her breathin' soft, and then I shuts the door and
goes away to the place.' [Footnote]

[Footnote: Camping-place.]

'But why didn't you tell _us_ all this, Sinfi?' asked the landlord.
'My wife would ha' went and seen arter her, and we wouldn't ha'
touched a farthin' for they blankets and things, not we, Sinfi, not
we.'

'Ah, you _would_, though,' said the girl, ''cause I'd ha' _made_ you
take it. Winnie Wynne was the only one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, ever
I liked, and nobody's got no right to see arter her only me, and
that's why I'm about here _now_, if you _must_ know; but nobody's
got no right to see arter her only me, and nobody sha'n't nuther.
They might go and skear her to run up the hills, and she might dash
herself all to flactions in no time.'

'Don't take on so, Sinfi,' said the landlord. 'When they are in that
way they allus turns agin them as they was fond on.'

'Then you noticed as she was fond o' me, Mr. Blyth,' said the girl
with great earnestness.

'Of course she was fond on you, Sinfi; everybody knows that.'

'Yes,' said the girl, now much affected, '_every_ body knowed it,
_every_ body knowed as she was fond o' me. And to see her look at me
like _that_--it was a cruel sight, Mr. Blyth, I can tell you. Such a
look you never see'd in all your life, Mr. Blyth.'

'Then I take it she's in the house now?' said the landlord.

'She goes prowlin' about all day among the hills, as if she was
a-lookin' for somebody; and she talks to somebody as she calls the
Tywysog o'r Niwl, an' I know that's Welsh for the "Prince o' the
Mist"; but back she comes at night. She talks to herself a good deal;
and she sings to herself the Welsh gillies what Mrs. Davies larnt her
in a v'ice as seems as if she wur a-singin' in her sleep, but it's
very sweet to hear it. Yesterday I crep' near her when she was
a-sittin' down lookin' at herself in that 'ere llyn where the water's
so clear, "Knockers' Llyn," as they calls it, where her and me and
Rhona Boswell used to go. And I heard her say she was "cussed by
Henry's feyther." And then I heard her talk to somebody agin, as she
called the Prince of the Mist; but it's herself as she's a-talkin'
to all the while.'

'Cursed by Henry's father! What curse could any superstitious mystic
call down upon the head of Winifred? The heaven that would answer a
call of that kind would be a heaven for zanies and tomfools!' I
shouted, in a paroxysm of rage against the entire besotted human
race. '_That_ for the curse!' I cried, snapping my fingers. '_I_ am
Henry, and I am come to share the curse, if there is one.'

'Young man,' interposed the landlord, 'such blas-pheemous langige as
that must not be spoke here; I ain't a-goin' to have _my_ good beer
turned to vinegar by blasphemin' them as owns the thunder, I can tell
you.'

But the effect of my words upon the Gypsy was that of a spark in a
powder-mine.

'Henry?' she said, 'Henry? are _you_ the fine rei as she used to talk
about? Are you the fine cripple as she was so fond on? Yes, Beng te
tassa mandi if you ain't Henry his very self.'

'Don't,' remonstrated the landlord, 'don't meddle with the gentleman,
Sinfi. He ain't a cripple, as you can see.'

'Well, cripple or no cripple, he's _Henry_. I half thought it as soon
as he began askin' about her. Now, my fine Gorgio, what do you and
your fine feyther mean by cussin' Winnie Wynne? You've jist about
broke her heart among ye. If you want to cuss you'd better cuss me;'
and she sprang up in an attitude that showed me at once that she was
a skilled boxer.

The male Gypsy rose and buttoned his coat over his waistcoat. I
thought he was going to attack me. Instead of this, he said to the
landlord:

'_She's_ in for a set-to agin. She's sure to quarrel with me if I
interferes, so I'll just go on to the place and not spile sport.
Don't let her kill the chap, though, Mr. Blyth, if you can anyways
help it. Anyhows, _I_ ain't a-goin' to be called in for witness.'

With that he left the house.

The Gypsy girl looked at me from head to foot, and exclaimed,

'Lucky for you, my fine fellow, that I'm a duke's chavi, an' mustn't
fight, else I'd pretty soon ask you outside and settle this off in no
time. But you'd better keep clear of Mrs. Davies's cottage, I can
tell you. Every stick in that house is mine.'

And, forgetting in her rage to pay her score, she picked up her
strange-looking musical instrument, put it into a bag, and stalked
out.

'She's got a queer temper of her own,' said the landlord; 'but she
ain't a bad sort for all that. She's clever, too: she's the only
woman in Wales, they say, as can play on the crwth now since Mrs.
Davies is dead, what larnt her to do it.'

'The crwth?'

'The old ancient Welsh fiddle what can draw the Sperrits o' Snowdon
when it's played by a vargin. I dessay you've often heard the sayin'
"The sperrits follow the crwth." She makes a sight o' money by
playin' on that fiddle in the houses o' the gentlefolk, and she's as
proud as the very deuce. Ain't a bad sort, though, for all that.'


II

That I determined to cultivate the acquaintance of Sinfi Lovell I
need scarcely say. But my first purpose was to see the cottage. The
landlord showed me the way to it. He warned me that a storm was
coming on, but I did not let that stay me. Masses of dark clouds were
gathering, and there was every sign of a heavy rainstorm as I went
out along the road in the direction indicated.

There was a damp boisterous wind, that seemed blowing from all points
of the compass at once, and in a minute I was caught in a swirl of
blinding rain. I took no heed of it, however, but hurried along the
lonely road till I reached the cottage, which I knew at once was the
one I sought. It was picturesque, but had a deserted look.

It was not till I stood in front or the door that I began to consider
what I really intended to do in case I found her there. A heedless,
impetuous desire to see her--to get possession of her--had brought me
to Wales. But what was to be my course of action if I found her I had
never given myself time to think.

If I could only clasp her in my arms and tell her I was Henry, I felt
that she must, even in madness, know me and cling to me. I could not
realise that any insanity could estrange her from me if I could only
get near her.

I put my thumb upon the old-fashioned latch, and found that the door
was not locked. It yielded to my touch, and with a throbbing of every
pulse, I pushed it open and looked in.

In front of me rose a staircase, steep and narrow. There was
sufficient evening light to enable me to see up the staircase, and to
distinguish two black bedroom doors, now closed, on the landing. I
stood on the wet threshold till my nerves grew calmer. On my right
and on my left the doors of the two rooms on the ground floor were
open. I could see that the one on my left was stripped of furniture.

I entered the room on my right--a low room of some considerable
length, with heavy beams across the ceiling, which in that light
seemed black. Two or three chairs and a table were in it. There was a
brisk fire, and over it a tea-kettle of the kind much favoured by
Gypsies, as I afterwards learnt. There was no grate, but an open
hearth, exactly like the one in Wynne's cottage, where Winifred and I
used to stand in summer evenings to see the sky, and the stars
twinkling above the great sooty throat of the open chimney. I now
perceived the crwth and bow upon the table. Sinfi Lovell had
evidently been here since we parted. On the walls hung a few of those
highly coloured prints of Scriptural subjects which, at one time,
used to be seen in English farm-houses, and are still the only works
of art with the Welsh peasants and a few well-to-do Welsh Gypsies who
would emulate Gorgio tastes.

On the left-hand side of the room was an arched recess, in which, no
doubt, had stood at one time a sideboard, or some such piece of
furniture. There was no occupant of the room, however, and I grew
calmer as I stood before the fire, which drew from my wet clothes a
cloud of steam. The ruddy fingers of the fire-gleam playing upon the
walls made the colours of the pictures seem bright as the tints of
stained glass. The pathetic message of those flickering rays flowed
into my soul. The red mantle of the Prodigal Son, in which he was
feeding the swine, shone as though it had been soaked in sorrow and
blood-red sin. The house was apparently empty; the tension of my
passion became for the first time relaxed, and I passed into a
strange mood of pathos, dreamy, but yet acute, in which Winifred's
fate, and my mother's harshness, and my father's scarred breast,
seemed all a mingled mystery of reminiscent pain.

I had not stood more than a minute, however, when I was startled into
a very different mood. I thought I heard a sobbing noise, which
seemed to me to come from some one overhead, some one lying upon the
boards of the room above me. I was rooted to the spot where I stood,
for the sob seemed scarcely human, and yet it seemed to be hers. A
new feeling about Winifred's madness came upon me. I recalled
Mivart's horrible description of the mimicry. My God! what was I
about to see? I dared not turn and go upstairs: the fire and the
singing tea-kettle were, at least, companions. But something impelled
me to take the bow and draw it across the crwth-strings. Presently I
thought I heard a door overhead softly open, and this was followed by
the almost inaudible creak of a light footstep descending the stairs.
With paralysed pulses I kept my eyes fixed on the half-open door, in
the certainty of seeing her pass along the little passage leading
from the staircase to the front door. But as I heard the dear
footsteps descend stair after stair my horror left me, and I nearly
began to sob myself. My thoughts now were all for her safety. I
slipped into the recess, fearing to take her by surprise.

Soon the slim girlish figure passed into the room. And as I saw her
glide along I was stunned, as though I had not expected to see her,
as though I had not known the footstep coming down the stairs.

With her eyes fixed on the fireplace, she brushed past me without
perceiving me, took a chair, and sat down in front of the fire, her
elbows resting on her knees, and her face meditatively sunk between
her hands. Her sobbing bad ceased, and unless my ears deceived me,
had given place to an occasional soft happy gurgle of childish
laughter.

I stepped out from the shelter of my archway into the middle of the
room, dubious as to what course to pursue. I thought that, on the
whole, the movement that would startle her least would be to slip
quietly out of the room and out of the house while she was in the
reverie, then knock at the door. She would arouse herself then,
expecting to see some one, and would not be so entirely taken by
surprise at the sight of my face as she would have been at finding
me, without the slightest warning, standing behind her in the room.
I did this: I slipped out at the door and knocked, gently at first,
but got no answer; then a little louder--no answer; then louder and
louder, till at last I thundered at the door in a state of growing
alarm; still no answer.

'She is stone deaf,' I thought; and now I remembered having noticed,
as she brushed past me, a far-off gaze in her eyes, such as some
stone-deaf people show.

I re-entered the house. There she was, sitting immovably before the
fire, in the same reverie. I coughed and hemmed, softly at first,
then more loudly, finally with such vigour that I ran the risk of
damaging my throat, and still there was no movement of that head bent
over the fire and resting in the palms of the hands. At last I made a
step forward, then another, finally finding myself on the knitted
cloth hearthrug beside her. I now had the full view of her profile.
That she should be still unconscious of my presence was
unaccountable, for I stood at the end of the rug gazing at her. Again
I coughed and hemmed, but without producing the smallest effect. Then
I determined to address her; but I thought it would be safer to do so
as a stranger than to announce myself at once as Henry.

'I beg pardon,' I said, 'but is there any one at home?'

No answer.

'Is this the way to Capel Curig?

No answer.

'Will you give me shelter?' I said; and finally I gave a desperate
'halloo.'

My efforts had not produced the slightest effect. I was now in a
state of great agitation. That she was stone deaf seemed evident. But
was she not in some kind of fit, though without the contortions of
face Mivart had described to me--contortions which haunted me as much
as though I had seen them? I stooped down and gazed into her face.
There was now no terror there, nor even sorrow. I could see in her
eyes sparks of pleasure, as in the eyes of an infant when it seems to
see in the air pictures or colours to which our eyes are blind. Round
about her cheek and mouth a little dimple was playing, exactly like
the dimple that plays around the mouth of a pleased child. This
marvellous expression on her face recalled to me what Mivart had said
as to the form her dementia assumed between one paroxysm and another.

'Thank God,' thought I, 'she's not in a fit: she's only deaf.'

Driven to desperation, however, I seized her shoulder and shook it.
This aroused her. She started up with violence, at the same time
overturning the chair upon which she had been sitting. She stared at
me wildly. The danger of what I had done struck me now. A fortunate
inspiration caused me to say, 'Tywysog o'r Niwl.' Then there broke
over her face a sweet smile of childish pleasure. She made a graceful
curtsey, and said, 'You've come at last; I was thinking about you all
the while.'

Shall I ever forget her expression? Her eyes were alive with light
and pleasure. It was as though Winifred's soul had fled or the soul
of her childhood had re-entered and taken possession of her body. But
the witchery of her expression no words can describe. Never had I
seen her so lovely as now. Often when a child I had seen the boatmen
on the sands look at us as we passed--seen them stay in the midst of
their toil, their dull faces brightening with admiration, as though a
bar of unexpected sunlight had fallen across them. In the fields I
had seen labourers, sitting at their simple dinner under the hedges,
stay their meal to look after the child--so winning, dazzling, and
strange was her beauty. And when I had first met her again, a child
no longer, in the churchyard, my memory had accepted her at once as
fulfilling, and more than fulfilling, all her childhood's promise.
But never had she looked so bewitching as now--a poor mad girl who
had lost her wits from terror.

For some time I could only keep murmuring: 'More lovely mad than
sane!'

'As if I didn't _know_ the Prince!' said she. 'You who, in fine
weather or cloudy, wet or dry, are there on the hills to meet me! As
if I don't know the Prince of the Mist when I see him! But how kind
of you to come down here and see poor Winnie, poor lonely Winnie, at
home!'

She fetched a chair, placed it in front of the fire, pointed to it
with the same ravishingly childlike smile, indicating that it was for
me, and then, when she saw me mechanically sit down, picked up her
chair and came and sat close beside me.

In a second she was lost in a reverie as profound as that from which
I had aroused her; and the only sound I heard was the rain on the
window and the fitful gusts of wind playing around the cottage.

The wind having blown open the door, I got up to shut it. Winifred
rose too, and again taking hold of my hand, she looked up into my
face with a smile, and said, 'Don't go; I'm so lonely--poor Winnie's
so lonely.'

As I held her hand in mine, and closed my other hand over it, I
murmured to myself, 'If God will only give her to me like this--mad
like this--I will be content.'

'Dearest,' I said, longing to put my arm round her waist--to kiss her
own passionless lips--but I dared not, lest I might frighten her
away, 'I will not leave you. I will never leave you. You shall never
be lonely any more.'

I closed the door, and we resumed our seats.

Can I put into words what passed within my soul as we two sat by the
fire, she holding my hand in her own--holding it as innocently as a
child holds the hand of its mother? Can I put into words my mingled
feelings of love and pity and wild grief, as I sat looking at her and
murmuring, 'Yes; if God will only give her to me like _this_, I will
be content'?

'Prince,' said she, 'your eyes look very kind!--Sweet, sweet eyes,'
she continued, looking at me. 'The Prince of the Mist has love-eyes,'
she repeated, as she placed the seats before the fire again.

Then I heard her murmur, 'Love-eyes! love-eyes! Henry's love-eyes!'
Then a terrible change came over her. She sprang up and came and
peered in my face. An indescribable expression of terror overspread
her features, her nostrils expanded, her lips were drawn tightly over
her teeth, her eyes seemed starting from their sockets; her throat
suddenly became fluted like the throat of an aged woman, then veined
with knotted, cruel cords. Then she stood as transfixed, and her face
was mimicking that appalling look on her father's face which I had
seen in the moonlight. With a yell of 'Father!' she leapt from me.
Then she rushed from the house, and I could hear her run by the
window, crying, 'Cursed, cursed, cursed by Henry's father!'

For an instant the movement took away my breath; but I soon recovered
and sprang after her to the door.

There, in the distance, I saw her in the rain, running along the
road. My first impulse was to follow her and run her down. But
luckily I considered the effect this might have in increasing her
terror, and stopped. She was soon out of sight. I wandered about the
road calling her name, and calling on Heaven to have a little pity--a
little mercy.


III

I decided to return to the house, but found that I had lost my way in
the obscurity and pelting rain. For hours I wandered about, without
the slightest clue as to where I was. I was literally soaked to the
skin. Several times I fell into holes in a morass, and was up to my
hips in moss and mud and water. Then I began to call out for
assistance till I was hoarse. I might as well have called out on an
uninhabited island.

The night wore on, and the darkness grew so intense that I could
scarcely see my hand when I held it up. Every star in the heavens was
hid away as by a thick-pall. The darkness was positively benumbing to
the faculties, and added, if possible, to the misery I was in on
account of Winifred. Suddenly my progress was arrested. I had fallen
violently against something. A human body, a woman! I thrust out my
hand and seized a woman's damp arm.

'Winifred,' I cried, 'it's Henry.'

'I thought as much.' said the voice of the Gypsy girl I had met at
the wayside inn, and she seized me by the throat with a fearful grip.
'You've been to the cottage and skeared her away, and now she's seed
you there she'll never come back; she'll wander about the hills till
she drops down dead, or falls over the brinks.'

'O God!' I cried, as I struggled away from her. 'Winifred! Winifred!

There was silence between us then.

'You seem mighty fond on her, young man,' said the Gypsy at length,
in a softened voice, 'and you don't strike out at me for grabbin'
your throat.'

'Winifred! Winifred!' I said, as I thought of her on the hills on a
night like this.

'You seem mighty fond on her, young man,' repeated the girl's voice
in the darkness.

But I could afford no words for her, so cruelly was misery lacerating
me.

'Reia,' said the Gypsy, 'did I hurt your throat just now? I hope I
didn't; but you see she was the only one of 'em ever I liked, Gorgio
or Gorgie, 'cept Mrs. Davies, lad or wench. I know'd her as a child,
and arterwards, when a fine English lady, as poor as a church-mouse,
tried to spile her, a-makin' _her_ a fine lady too, I thought she'd
forget all about me. But not she. I never once called at Mrs.
Davies's house with my crwth, as she taught me to play on, but out
Winnie would come with her bright eyes an' say, "Oh, I'm so glad!"
She meant she was glad to see me, bless the kind heart on her. An'
when I used to see her on the hills, she'd come runnin' up to me, and
she'd put her little hand in mine, she would, an' chatter away, she
would, as we went up an' up. An' one day, when she heard me callin'
one o' the Romany chies sister, she says, "Is that your sister?" an'
when I says, "No; but the Romany chies call each other sister," then
says she, pretending not to know all about our Romany ways, "Sinfi,
I'm very fond on you, may _I_ call you sister?" An' she had sich
ways; an' she's the only Gorgio or Gorgie, 'cept Mrs. Davies, as I
ever liked, lad or wench.'

The Gypsy's simple words came like a new message of comfort and hope,
but I could not speak.

'Young man,' she continued, 'are you there?' and she put out her hand
to feel for me.

I took hold of the hand. No words passed; none were needed. Never had
I known friendship before. After a short time I said,

'What shall we do, Sinfi?'

'I shall wait a bit, till the stars are out,' said she. 'I know
they're a-comin' out by the feel o' the wind. Then I shall walk up a
path as Winnie knows. The sun'll be up ready for me by the time I get
to the part I wants to go to. You know, young man, I _must_ find her.
She'll never come back to the cottage no more, now she's been skeared
away from it.'

'But I must accompany you,' I said.

'No, no, you mustn't do that,' said the Gypsy; 'she might take fright
and fall and be killed. Besides,' said she, 'Winifred Wynne's under
a cuss; it's bad luck to follow up anybody under a cuss.'

'But you are following her,' I said.

'Ah, but that's different. "Gorgio cuss never touched Romany," as my
mammy, as had the seein' eye, used to say.'

'But,' I exclaimed vehemently, 'I _want_ to be cursed with her. I
have followed her to be cursed with her. I mean to go with you.'

'Young man,' said she, 'are there many o' your sort among the
Gorgios?'

'I don't know and I don't care,' said I.

''Cause,' said she, 'that sayin' o' yourn is a fine sight liker a
Romany chi's nor a Romany chal's. It's the chies as sticks to the
dials, cuss or no cuss. I wish the chals 'ud stick as close to the
chies.'

After much persuasion, however, I induced the Gypsy to let me
accompany her, promising to abide implicitly by her instructions.

Even while we were talking the rain had ceased, and patches of stars
were shining brilliantly. These patches got rapidly larger. Sinfi
Lovell proposed that we should go to the cottage, dry our clothes,
and furnish ourselves with a day's provisions, which she said a
certain cupboard in the cottage would supply, and also with her
crwth, which she appeared to consider essential to the success of the
enterprise.

'She's fond o' the crwth,' she said. 'She allus wanted Mrs. Davies to
larn her to play it, but her aunt never would, 'cause when it's
played by a maid on the hills to the Welsh dukkerin' gillie,
[Footnote 1] the spirits o' Snowdon and the livin' mullos
[Footnote 2] o' them as she's fond on will sometimes come and show
themselves, and she said Winnie wasn't at all the sort o' gal to feel
comfable with spirits moving round her. She larnt me it, though. It's
only when the crwth is played by a maid on the hills that the spirits
can follow it.'

[Footnote 1: _Dukkerin gillie_, incantation song.]

[Footnote 2: _Livin' mullos_, wraiths.]

We did as Shift suggested, and afterwards began our search. She
proposed that we should go at once to Knockers' Llyn, where she had
seen Winifred the day before sitting and talking to herself. We
proceeded towards the spot.


IV

The Gypsy girl was as lithe and active as Winifred herself, and
vastly more powerful. I was wasted by illness and fatigue. Along the
rough path we went, while the morning gradually broke over the east.
Great isles and continents of clouds were rolled and swirled from
peak to peak, from crag to crag, across steaming valley and valley;
iron-grey at first, then faintly tinged with rose, which grew warmer
and richer and deeper every moment.

'It's a-goin' to be one of the finest sunrises ever seed,' said the
Gypsy girl. 'Dordi! the Gorgios come to see our sunrises,' she
continued, with the pride of an owner of Snowdon. 'You know this is
the only way to see the hills. You may ride up the Llanberis side in
a go-cart.'

Racked with anxiety as I was. I found it a relief during the ascent
to listen to the Gypsy's talk about Winifred. She gave me a string of
reminiscences about her that enchained, enchanted, and yet harrowed
me. A strong friendship had already sprung up between me and my
companion; and I was led to tell her about the cross and the curse,
the violation of my father's tomb and its disastrous consequences.
She was evidently much awed by the story.

'Well,' said she, when I had stopped to look round, 'it's my belief
as the cuss is a-workin' now, and'll have to spend itself. If it
could ha' spent itself on the feyther as did the mischief, why all
well an' good, but, you see, he's gone, an' left it to spend itself
on his chavi; jist the way with 'em Gorgio feythers an' Romany
daddies. It'll have to spend itself, though, that cuss will, I'm
afeard.'

'But,' I said, 'you don't mean that you think for her father's crime
she'll have to beg her bread in desolate places.'

'I do though, wusser luck,' said the Gypsy solemnly, stopping
suddenly, and standing still as a statue.

'And this,' I ejaculated, 'is the hideous belief of all races in all
times! Monstrous if a lie--more monstrous if true! Anyhow I'll find
her. I'll traverse the earth till I find her. I'll share her lot with
her, whatever it may be, and wherever it may be in the world. If
she's a beggar, I'll beg by her side.'

'Right you are, brother,' said the Gypsy, breaking in
enthusiastically. 'I likes to hear a man say that. You're liker a
Romany chi nor a Romany chal, the more I see of you. What I says to
our people is:--"If the Romany chals would only stick by the Romany
chies as the Romany chies sticks by the Romany chals, where 'ud the
Gorgios be then? Why, the Romanies would be the strongest people on
the arth." But you see, reia, about this cuss--a cuss has to work
itself out, jist for all the world like the bite of a sap.'
[Footnote]

[Footnote: _Sap_, a snake.]

Then she continued, with great earnestness, looking across the
kindling expanse of hill and valley before us: 'You know, the very
dead things round us,--these here peaks, an' rocks, an' lakes, an'
mountains--ay, an' the woods an' the sun an' the sky above our
heads,--cusses us when we do anythink wrong. You may see it by the
way they looks at you. Of course I mean when you do anythink wrong
accordin' to us Romanies. I don't mean wrong accordin' to the
Gorgios: they're two very different kinds o' wrongs.'

'I don't see the difference,' said I; 'but tell me more about
Winifred.'

'You don't see the difference?' said Sinfi. 'Well then, I do. It's
wrong to tell a lie to a Romany, ain't it? But is it wrong to tell a
lie to a Gorgio? Not a bit of it. And why? 'Cause most Gorgios is
fools and wants lies, an' that gives the poor Romanies a chance. But
this here cuss is a very bad kind 'o cuss. It's a dead man's cuss,
and what's wuss, him as is cussed is dead and out of the way, and so
it has to be worked out in the blood of his child. But when she's
done that, when she's worked it out of her blood, things'll come
right agin if the cross is put back agin on your father's buzzum.'

'When she has done what?' I said.

'Begged her bread in desolate places,' said the Gypsy girl solemnly.
'Then if the cross is put back agin on your feyther's buzzum, I
believe things'll all come right. It's bad the cusser was your
feyther though.'

'But why?' I asked.

'There's nobody can't hurt you and them you're fond on as your own
breed can. As my poor mammy used to say, "For good or for ill you
must dig deep to bury your daddy." But you know, brother, the wust o'
this job is that it's a trushul as has been stole.'

'A trushul?'

'What you call a cross. There's nothin' in the world so strong for
cussin' and blessin' as a trushul, unless the stars shinin' in the
river or the hand in the clouds is as strong. Why, I tell you there's
nothin' a trushul can't do, whether it's curin' a man as is bit by a
sap, or wipin' the very rainbow out o' the sky by jist layin' two
sticks crossways, or even curin' the cramp in your legs by jist
settin' your shoes crossways; there's nothin' for good or bad a
trushul _can't_ do if it likes. Hav'n't you never heer'd o' the
dukkeripen o' the trushul shinin' in the sunset sky when the light
o' the sinkin' sun shoots up behind a bar o' clouds an' makes a kind
o fiery cross? But to go and steal a trushul out of a dead man's
tomb--why, it's no wonder as the Wynnes is cussed, feyther and
child.'

I could not have tolerated this prattle about Gypsy superstitions had
I not observed that through it all the Gypsy was on the _qui vive_,
looking for the traces of her path that Winifred had unconsciously
left behind her. Had the Gypsy been following the trail with the
silence of an American Indian, she could not have worked more
carefully than she was now working while her tongue went rattling on.
I afterwards found this to be a characteristic of her race, as I
afterwards found that what is called the long sight of the Gypsies
(as displayed in the following of the _patrin_ [Footnote: Trail]) is
not long sight at all, but is the result of a peculiar faculty the
Gypsies have of observing more closely than Gorgios do everything
that meets their eyes in the woods and on the hills and along the
roads. When we reached the spot indicated by the Gypsy as being
Winifred's haunt, the ledge where she was in the habit of coming for
her imaginary interviews with the 'Prince of the Mist,' we did not
stay there, but for a time still followed the path, which from this
point became rougher and rougher, alongside deep precipices and
chasms. Every now and then she would stop on a ledge of rock, and,
without staying her prattle for a moment, stoop down and examine the
earth with eyes that would not have missed the footprint of a rat.
When I saw her pause, as she sometimes would in the midst of her
scrutiny, to gaze inquiringly down some gulf, which then seemed awful
to my inexperienced eyes, but which later on in the day, when I came
to see the tremendous chasms of that side of Snowdon, seemed
insignificant enough, the circulation of my blood would seem to stop,
and then rush again through my body more violently than before. And
while the 'patrin-chase' went on, and the morning grew brighter and
brighter, the Gypsy's lithe, catlike tread never faltered. The rise
and fall of her bosom were as regular and as calm as in the
public-house. Such agility and such staying power in a woman
astonished me. Finding no trace of Winnie, we returned to the little
plateau by Knockers' Llyn.

'This is the place,' said the Gypsy; 'it used to be called in old
times the haunted llyn, because when you sings the Welsh dukkerin
gillie here or plays it on a crwth, the Knockers answers it. I dare
say you've heard o' what the Gorgios call the triple echo o' Llyn
Ddu'r Arddu. Well, it's somethin' like that, only bein' done by the
knocking sperrits, it's grander and don't come 'cept when they hears
the Welsh dukkerin gillie. Now, you must hide yourself somewheres
while I go and touch the crwth in her favourite place. I think she'll
come to that. I wish though I hadn't brought ye,' she continued,
looking at me meditatively; 'you're a little winded a-ready, and we
ain't begun the rough climbing at all. Up to this 'ere pool Winnie
and me and Rhona Boswell used to climb when we was children; it
needed longer legs nor ourn to get farther up, and you're winded
a-ready. If she should come on you suddent, she's liker than not to
run for a mile or more up that path where we've just been and then to
jump down one of them chasms you've just seed. But if she does pop
on ye, don't you try to grab her, whatever you do; leave me alone for
that. You ain't got strength enough to grab a hare; you ought to be
in bed. Besides, she won't be skeared at me. But,' she continued,
turning round to look at the vast circuit of peaks stretching away as
far as the eye could reach, 'we shall have to ketch her to-day
somehow. She'll never go back to the cottage where you went and
skeared her; and if she don't have a fall, she'll run about these
here hills till she drops. We shall have to ketch her to-day somehow.
I'm in hopes she'll come to the sound of my crwth, she's so uncommon
fond on it; and if she don't come in the flesh, p'rhaps her livin'
mullo will come, and that'll show she's alive.'

She placed me in a crevice overlooking the small lake, or pool, which
on the opposite side was enclosed in a gorge, opening only by a cleft
to the east. Then she unburdened herself of a wallet containing the
breakfast, saying, 'When I come back we'll fall to and breakfiss.'
She then, as though she were following the trail, made a circuit of
the pool and disappeared through the gorge. All round the pool there
was a narrow ragged ledge leading to this eastern opening. I stood
concealed in my crevice and looked at the peaks, or rather at the
vast masses of billowy vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes
boiled and sometimes blazed, shaking--when the sun struck one and
then another--from brilliant amethyst to vermilion, shot occasionally
with purple, or gold, or blue.

A radiance now came pouring through the eastern opening down the
gorge or cwm itself, and soon the light vapours floating about the
pool were turned to sailing gauzes, all quivering with different
dyes, as though a rainbow had become torn from the sky and woven into
gossamer hangings and set adrift.

Fatigue was beginning to numb my senses and to conquer my brain. The
acuteness of my mental anguish had consumed itself in its own intense
fires. The idea of Winifred's danger became more remote. The
mist-pageants of the morning seemed somehow to emanate from Winnie.

'No one is worthy to haunt such a scene as this,' I murmured, sinking
against the rock, 'but Winifred--so beautiful of body and pure of
soul. Would that I were indeed her "Prince of the Mist," and that we
could die here together with Sinfi's strains in our ears.'

Then I felt coming over me strange influences which afterwards became
familiar to me--influences which I can only call the spells of
Snowdon. They were far more intense than those strange, sweet, wild,
mesmeric throbs which I used to feel in Graylingham Wood, and which
my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, seems also to have known, but they
were akin to them. Then came the sound of Sinfi's crwth and song, and
in the distance repetitions of it, as though the spirits of Snowdon
were, in very truth, joining in a chorus.

At once a marvellous change came over me. I seemed to be listening to
my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, and not to Sinfi Lovell. I was
hearing that strain which in my childhood I had so often tried to
imagine, and it was conjuring up the morning sylphs of the mountain
air and all the 'flower-sprites' and 'sunshine elves' of Snowdon.


V

I shook off the spell when the music ceased; then I began to wonder
why the Gypsy did not return. I was now faint and almost famished for
want of food. I opened the Gypsy's wallet. There was the substantial
and tempting breakfast she had brought from the cottage
cupboard--cold beef and bread, and ale. I spread the breakfast on the
ground.

Scarcely had I done so when a figure appeared at the opening of the
gorge and caught the ruddy flood of light. It was Winifred,
bare-headed. I knew it was she, and I waited in breathless suspense,
crouching close up into the crevice, dreading lest she should see me
and be frightened away. She stood in the eastern cleft of the gorge
against the sun for fully half a minute, looking around as a stag
might look that was trying to give the hunters the slip.

'She has seen the Gypsy,' I thought, 'and been scared by her.' Then
she came down and glided along the side of the pool. At first she did
not see me, though she stood opposite and stopped, while the
opalescent vapours from the pool steamed around her, and she shone as
through a glittering veil, her eyes flashing like sapphires. The
palpitation of my heart choked me; I dared not stir, I dared not
speak; the slightest movement or the slightest sound might cause her
to start away. There was she whom I had travelled and toiled to
find--there was she, so close to me, and yet must I let her pass and
perhaps lose her after all--for ever?

Where was the Gypsy girl? I was in an agony of desire to see her or
hear her crwth, and yet her approach might frighten Winifred to her
destruction.

But Winifred, who had now seen me, did not bound away with that
heart-quelling yell of hers which I had dreaded. No, I perceived to
my astonishment that the flash of the eyes was not of alarm, but of
greeting to me--pleasure at seeing me! She came close to the water,
and then I saw a smile on her face through the misty film--a flash of
shining teeth.

'May I come?' she said.

'Yes, Winifred,' I gasped, scarcely knowing what I said in my
surprise and joy.

She came slipping round the pool, and in a few seconds was by my
side. Her clothes were saturated with last night's rain, but though
she looked very cold, she did not shiver, a proof that she had not
lain down on the hills, but had walked about during the whole night.
There was no wildness of the maniac--there was no idiotic stare. But
oh the witchery of the gaze!

If one could imagine the look on the face of a wanderer from the
cloud-palaces of the sylphs, or the gaze in the eyes of a statue
newly animated by the passion of the sculptor who had fashioned it,
or the smile on the face of a wondering Eve just created upon the
earth--any one of these expressions would, perhaps, give the idea
of that on Winifred's face as she stood there.

'May I sit down, Prince?' said she.

'Yes, Winnie,' I replied; 'I've been waiting for you.'

'Been waiting for poor Winnie?' she said, her eyes sparkling anew
with pleasure; and she sat down close by my side, gazing hungrily at
the food--her hands resting on her lap.

I laid my hand upon one of hers; it was so damp and cold that it made
me shudder.

'Why, Winifred,' I said, 'how cold you are!' 'The hills are _so_
cold!' said she, '_so_ cold when the stars go out, and the red
streaks begin to come.'

'May I warm your hands in mine, Winnie?' I said, longing to clasp the
dear fingers, but trembling lest anything I might say or do should
bring about a repetition of last night's catastrophe.

'_Will_ you, Prince?' said she. 'How very, very kind!' and in a
moment the hand was between mine.

Remembering that it was through looking into my eyes that she
recognised me in the cottage, I now avoided looking straight into
hers. All this time she kept gazing wistfully at the food spread out
on the ground.

'Are you hungry, Winifred?' I said.

'Oh yes; _so_ hungry!' said she, shaking her head in a sad meditative
way. 'Poor Winifred is so hungry and cold and lonely!'

'Will you breakfast with the Prince of the Mist, Winifred?'

'Oh, may I, Prince?' she asked, her face beaming with delight.

'To be sure you may, Winnie. You may always breakfast with the Prince
of the Mist if you like.'

'Always? Always?' she repeated.

'Yes, Winnie,' I said, as I handed her some bread and meat, which she
devoured ravenously.

'Yes, dear Winnie,' I continued, handing her a foaming horn of
Sinfi's ale, to which she did as full justice as she was doing to the
bread and meat. 'Yes, I want you to breakfast with me and dine with
me always.'

'Do you mean _live_ with you, Prince?' she asked, looking me dreamily
in the face--'live with you behind the white mist? Is this our
wedding breakfast, Prince?'

'Yes, Winnie.'

Then her eyes wandered down over her dress, and she said, 'Ah! how
strange I did not notice my green fairy kirtle before. And I declare
I never felt till this moment the wreath of gold leaves round my
forehead. Do they shine much in the sun?'

'They quite dazzle me, Winnie,' I said, arching my hand above my
eyes, as if to protect them from the glare.

'Do you have a nice fire there when it's very cold?' she said.

'Yes, Winifred,' I said.

She then sank into silence, while I kept plying her with food.

After she had appeased her hunger she sat looking into the pool,
quite unconscious, apparently, of my presence by her side, and lost
in a reverie similar to that which I had seen at the cottage.

The form her dementia had taken was unlike anything that I had ever
conceived. Madness seemed too coarse a word to denote so wonderful
and fascinating a mental derangement. Mivart's comparison to a
musical-box recurred to me, and seemed most apt. She was in a waking
dream. The peril lay in breaking through that dream and bringing her
real life before her. There was a certain cogency of dreamland in all
she said and did. And I found that she sank into silent reverie
simply because she waited, like a person in sleep, for the current of
her thoughts to be directed and dictated by external phenomena. As
she sat there gazing in the pool, her hand gradually warming between
my two hands, I felt that never when sane, never in her most
bewitching moments, had she been so lovable as she was now. This new
kind of spell she exercised over me it would be impossible to
describe. But it sprang from the expression on her face of that
absolute freedom from all self-consciousness which is the great charm
in children, combined with the grace and beauty of her own matchless
girlhood. A desire to embrace her, to crush her to my breast, seized
me like a frenzy.

'Winifred,' I said, 'you are very cold.'

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
her _thus_! 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.


VI

'_Now_ I 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; ''cause _I_ sha'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 near
Carnarvon, 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't
the fault o' them as happens to ha' got the full belly. There ain't a
Romany in Wales, nor there ain't a Gorgio nuther, as wouldn't give
Winnie 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 to _die_; 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.

'_Me_ take 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 trushul.' [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.]


VII

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 the _byssus_ on 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.


VIII

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 me
_where_ she 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 she _did_ go 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. 'If _I_ han'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.'

'And _I_ should 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 marry _them_, 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, _that_ made her very fond o'
_all_ Romanies; 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 the _real_
"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 keeps _her_ alive: 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. She _must_
be, 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 jine _us_ if 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 as _can't_ be 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 seeking
Winnie.'

'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.


IX

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 satoros czijanyok, 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.



IV

THE LEADER OF THE AYLWINIANS


I

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 crwth
_pizzicato_ and 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 seed
_him_? 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' Rhona
Bozzell'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.


II

'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, a
Gorgio ain't got eves and ears like a Romany. You don't suppose as a
Gorgio can hear or see or smell like a Romany can?'

'But you forget, Sinfi, that I am a Gorgio, and there are not many
Romanies 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
Gorgios _do_ say,--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't _you_ take 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 matchless
_sang-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 the
_rencontre_: 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 the _bete noire_ of 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  make _his_  bed!' 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.


III

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
of _The 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.'

'Including the paper on "Hamlet and Hamalet, and the wide region of
Nowhere"?'

'Including that and everything.'

'Did you know him, Mr. Wilderspin?'

'Not in the flesh; in the spirit, who knows him so well? Your mother
I have had the pleasure of meeting at the house of Lord Sleaford, and
indeed I have had the distinguished honour of painting her portrait;
but the great author of _The Veiled Queen_--the inspired designer of
the vignette symbolical of the Renascence of Wonder in Art--I never
had the rapture of seeing. This very day, the anniversary of his
birth,' he continued, 'is a great day in the Aylwinian calendar.'

'My father's birthday? Why, so it is!'

'Mr. Aylwin, is it possible that the anniversary of a day so
momentous for the world is forgotten--forgotten by the very issue of
the great man's loins?'

'The fact is,' said I, in some confusion, 'I have been living with
the Gypsies, and, you see, Mr. Wilderspin, the passage of time--'

'The son of Philip Aylwin a Gypsy!' murmured Wilderspin meditatively,
and unconscious evidently that he was speaking aloud--'a Gypsy! Still
it would surely be a mistake to suppose,' he continued, perfectly
oblivious now of my presence, 'that the vagaries of his son can
really bring shame upon the head of the father.'

'But, by God!' I cried, 'it is no mistake that the vagaries of the
father can bring shame and sorrow and misery upon the child. I could
name a couple of fathers--sleeping very close to each other
now--whose vagaries--'

My sudden anger was carrying me away; but I stopped, recollecting
myself.

'Doubtless,' said Wilderspin, 'there are fathers and fathers. The son
of Philip Aylwin has assuredly a right to be critical in regard to
all other fathers than his own.'

I looked in his face; the expression of solemn earnestness was quite
unmistakable.

'It is not you,' I said, 'it is Heaven, or else it is the blind
jester Circumstance, that is playing this joke upon me!'

'To your honoured father,' he continued, taking not the slightest
notice of my interjection, 'I owe everything. From his grave he
supports my soul; from his grave he gives me ideas; from his grave
he makes my fame. How should I fail to honour his son, even though
he--'

Of course he was going to add--'even though he be a vagabond
associating with vagabonds,'--but he left the sentence unfinished.

'I confess, Mr. Wilderspin,' said I, 'that you speak in such enigmas
that it would be folly for me to attempt to answer you.'

'I wish,' said Wilderspin, 'that all enigmas were as soluble as this.
Let me ask you a question, sir. When you stood before my picture,
"Faith and Love," in Bond Street, did you not perceive that both it
and the predella were inspired entirely by your father's great work,
_The Veiled Queen_, or rather that they are mere pictorial
renderings and illustrations of that grand effort of man's soul in
its loftiest development?'

I had never heard of the picture in question. As for the book, my
father, perceiving my great dislike of mysticism, had always shrunk
from showing me any effusion of his that was not of a simply
antiquarian kind. In Switzerland, however, after his death, while
waiting for the embalmer to finish his work, I had become, during a
few days' reading, acquainted with _The Veiled Queen_. It was a new
edition containing an 'added chapter,' full of subtle spiritualistic
symbols. Amid what had seemed to me mere mystical jargon about the
veil of Isis being uplifted, not by Man's reason, not by such
researches as those of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and the continental
evolutionists, but by Faith and Love, I had come across passages of
burning eloquence.

'I am sorry to say,' I replied, 'that my Gypsy wanderings are again
answerable for my shortcomings. I have not yet seen your picture.
When I do see it I--'

'Not seen "Faith and Love" and the equally wonderful predella at the
foot of it!' he exclaimed incredulously. 'Ah, but you have been
living among the Gypsies. It is the greatest picture of the modern
world; for, Mr. Aylwin, it renders in Art the inevitable attitude of
its own time and country towards the unseen world, and renders it as
completely as did the masterpiece of Polygnotus in the Lesche of the
'Not in the flesh; in the spirit, who knows him so well? Your mother
I have had the pleasure of meeting at the house of Lord Sleaford, and
indeed I have had the distinguished honour of painting her portrait;
but the great author of _The Veiled Queen_--the inspired designer of
the vignette symbolical of the Renascence of Wonder in Art--I never
had the rapture of seeing. This very day, the anniversary of his
birth,' he continued, 'is a great day in the Aylwinian calendar.'

'My father's birthday? Why, so it is!'

'Mr. Aylwin, is it possible that the anniversary of a day so
momentous for the world is forgotten--forgotten by the very issue of
the great man's loins?'

'The fact is,' said I, in some confusion, 'I have been living with
the Gypsies, and, you see, Mr. Wilderspin, the passage of time--'

'The son of Philip Aylwin a Gypsy!' murmured Wilderspin meditatively,
and unconscious evidently that he was speaking aloud--'a Gypsy! Still
it would surely be a mistake to suppose,' he continued, perfectly
oblivious now of my presence, 'that the vagaries of his son can
really bring shame upon the head of the father.'

'But, by God!' I cried, 'it is no mistake that the vagaries of the
father can bring shame and sorrow and misery upon the child. I could
name a couple of fathers--sleeping very close to each other
now--whose vagaries--'

My sudden anger was carrying me away; but I stopped, recollecting
myself.

'Doubtless,' said Wilderspin, 'there are fathers and fathers. The son
of Philip Aylwin has assuredly a right to be critical in regard to
all other fathers than his own.'

I looked in his face; the expression of solemn earnestness was quite
unmistakable.

'It is not you,' I said, 'it is Heaven, or else it is the blind
jester Circumstance, that is playing this joke upon me!'

'To your honoured father,' he continued, taking not the slightest
notice of my interjection, 'I owe everything. From his grave he
supports my soul; from his grave he gives me ideas; from his grave
he makes my fame. How should I fail to honour his son, even though
he--'

Of course he was going to add--'even though he be a vagabond
associating with vagabonds,'--but he left the sentence unfinished.

'I confess, Mr. Wilderspin,' said I, 'that you speak in such enigmas
that it would be folly for me to attempt to answer you.'

'I wish,' said Wilderspin, 'that all enigmas were as soluble as this.
Let me ask you a question, sir. When you stood before my picture,
"Faith and Love," in Bond Street, did you not perceive that both it
and the predella were inspired entirely by your father's great work,
_The Veiled Queen_, or rather that they are mere pictorial
renderings and illustrations of that grand effort of man's soul in
its loftiest development?'

I had never heard of the picture in question. As for the book, my
father, perceiving my great dislike of mysticism, had always shrunk
from showing me any effusion of his that was not of a simply
antiquarian kind. In Switzerland, however, after his death, while
waiting for the embalmer to finish his work, I had become, during a
few days' reading, acquainted with _The Veiled Queen_. It was a new
edition containing an 'added chapter,' full of subtle spiritualistic
symbols. Amid what had seemed to me mere mystical jargon about the
veil of Isis being uplifted, not by Man's reason, not by such
researches as those of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and the continental
evolutionists, but by Faith and Love, I had come across passages of
burning eloquence.

'I am sorry to say,' I replied, 'that my Gypsy wanderings are again
answerable for my shortcomings. I have not yet seen your picture.
When I do see it I--'

'Not seen "Faith and Love" and the equally wonderful predella at the
foot of it!' he exclaimed incredulously. 'Ah, but you have been
living among the Gypsies. It is the greatest picture of the modern
world; for, Mr. Aylwin, it renders in Art the inevitable attitude of
its own time and country towards the unseen world, and renders it as
completely as did the masterpiece of Polygnotus in the Lesche of the
Cnidians at Delphi--as completely as did the wonderful frescoes of
Andrea Orcagna on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa.'

'And you attribute your success to the inspiration you derived from
my father's hook?'

'To that and to the spirit of Mary Wilderspin in heaven.'

'Then you are a Spiritualist?'

'I am an Aylwinian, the opposite (need I say?) of a Darwinian.'

'Of the school of Blake, perhaps?' I asked.

'Of the school of Blake? No. He was on the right road; but he was a
writer of verses! Art is a jealous mistress, Mr. Aylwin: the painter
who rhymes is lost. Even the master himself is so much the weaker by
every verse he has written. I never could make a rhyme in my life,
and have faithfully shunned printer's ink, the black blight of the
painter. I am my own school; the school of the spirit world.'

'I am very curious,' I said, 'to know in what way my father and the
spirits can have inspired a great painter. Of the vignette I may
claim to know something. Of the spirits as artists I have of course
no knowledge, but as regards my father, he, I am certain, could
hardly have told a Raphael from a chromolithograph copy. He was, in
spite of that same vignette, most ignorant of art. Raxton Hall
possesses nothing but family portraits.'


IV

By this time we had reached the encampment, which was close by a
waterfall among ferns and wild-flowers. Little Jerry Lovell, a child
of about four years of age, came running to meet me with a dead
water-wagtail in his hand which he had knocked down.

'Me kill de Romany Chiriklo,' said he, and  then proceeded to tell me
very gravely that, having killed the 'Gypsy magpie,' he was bound to
have a great lady for his sweetheart.

'Jerry,' said I bitterly, 'you begin with love and superstition
early; you are an incipient "Aylwinian": take care.'

When I explained to Wilderspin that this was one of the Romany
beliefs, he said that he did not at present see the connection
between a dead water-wagtail and a live lady, but that such a
connection might doubtless exist. Panuel Lovell now came forward to
greet and welcome Wilderspin. Sinfi and Cyril had evidently walked at
a brisk rate, for already tea was spread out on a cloth. The fire was
blazing beneath a kettle slung from the 'kettle-prop.' The party were
waiting for us. Sinfi, however, never idle, was filling up the time
by giving lessons in riding to Euri and Sylvester Lovell, two dusky
urchins in their early teens, while her favourite bantam-cock
Pharaoh, standing on a donkey's back, his wattles gleaming like coral
in the sun, was crowing lustily. Cyril, who lay stretched among the
ferns, his chin resting in his hands and a cigarette in his mouth,
was looking on with the deepest interest. As I passed  behind him to
introduce Wilderspin to Videy Lovell (who was making tea), I heard
Cyril say, 'Lady Sinfi, you must and shall teach me how to make an
adversary's bed--the only really essential part of a liberal
education.'

'Brother,' said Sinfi, turning to me, 'your thoughts are a-flyin' off
agin; keep your spirits up afore all these.'

The leafy dingle was recalling Graylingham Wilderness and 'Fairy
Dell,' where little Winifred used to play Titania to my childish
Oberon, and dance the Gypsy 'shawl-dance' Sinfi's mother had taught
her!

So much was I occupied with these reminiscences that I had not
observed that during our absence our camp had been honoured by
visitors. These were Jericho Boswell, christened, I believe, Jasper,
his daughter Rhona, and James Herne, called on account of his
accomplishments as a penman the Scollard. Although Jasper Boswell and
Panuel Lovell were rival Griengroes, there was no jealousy between
them--indeed, they were excellent friends.

There were many points of similarity between their characters. Each
had risen from comparative poverty to what might be called wealth,
and risen in the same way, that is to say, by straightforward dealing
with the Gorgios, although as regarded Jericho, Rhona was generally
credited with having acted as a great auxiliary in amassing his
wealth. All over the country the farmers and horse-dealers knew that
neither Jasper nor Panuel ever bishoped a gry, or indulged in any
other horse-dealing tricks. Their very simplicity of character had
done what all the crafty tricks of certain compeers of theirs had
failed to do. They were also very much alike in their good-natured
and humorous, way of taking all the ups and downs of life.

A very different kind of Romany was the Scollard--so different,
indeed, that it was hard to think that he was of the same race:
Romany guile incarnate was the Scollard. He suggested even in his
personal appearance the typical Gypsy of the novel and the stage,
rather than the true Gypsy as he lives and moves. The Scollard was
well known to be half-crazed with a passion for Rhona Boswell, who
was _the fiancee_ of that cousin of mine, Percy Aylwin, before
mentioned. Percy was considered to be a hopelessly erratic character.
Much against the wish of his parents, he had been brought up as a
sailor; but on seeing Rhona Boswell he promptly fell in love with
her, and quitted the sea in order to be near her. And no man who ever
heard Rhona's laugh professed to wonder at Percy's infatuation. As a
Griengro her father, Jericho Boswell, who had no son, was said to
have owed his prosperity to Rhona's instinctive knowledge of
horseflesh.

While our guests, Romany and Gorgio, were doing justice to the trout,
Welsh brown bread and butter and jam which Videy had spread before
them, Sinfi went to the back of the camp to look at the ponies, and I
got into conversation with Rhona Boswell, whom I remembered so well
as a child. At first she was shy and embarrassed, doubtful, as I
perceived, whether or not she ought to talk about Winnie. She waited
to see whether I introduced the subject, and finding that I did not,
she began to talk about Sinfi and plied me with questions as to what
we two had been doing and where we had been during our wanderings
through Wales.

When tea was over and Cyril was in lively talk with Sinfi, Wilderspin
grew restless, and I perceived that he wanted to resume his
conversation with me about his picture. I said to him: 'This idea o
f my father's which has inspired you, and resulted in such great
work, what is its nature?'

'I am a painter, Mr. Aylwin, and nothing more,' he replied. 'I could
only express Philip Aylwin's ideas by describing my picture and the
predella beneath it. Will you permit me to do so?'

'May I ask you,' I said, 'as a favour to do so?'

Immediately his face became very bright, and into his eyes returned
the far-off look already described.

'I will first take the predella, which represents Isis behind the
Veil,' said he. 'Imagine yourself thousands of years away from this
time. Imagine yourself thousands of miles away, among real
Egyptians.'

'Real 'Gyptians!' cried Sinfi. 'Who says the Romanies ain't real
'Gyptians? Anybody as says my daddy ain't a real 'Gyptian duke'll ha'
to set to with Sinfi Lovell.'

'Nonsense,' said Cyril, smiling, and playing idly with a coral amulet
dangling from Sinfi's neck; 'he's talking about the ancient
Egyptians: Egyptian mummies, you silly Lady Sinfi. You're not a
mummy, are you?'

'Well, no, I ain't a mummy as fur as I knows on,' said Sinfi, only
half-appeased; 'but my daddy's a 'Gyptian duke for all that,--ain't
you, dad?'

'So it seems, Sin,' said Panuel, 'but I ommust begin to wish I
worn't; it makes you feel so blazin' shy bein' a duke all of a
suddent.'

'Dabla!' said the guest Jericho Boswell. 'What, Pan, has she made a
dook on ye?'

The Scollard began to grin.

'Pull that ugly mug o' yourn straight, Jim Herne,' said Sinfi, 'else
I'll come and pull it straight for you.'

Wilderspin took no notice of the interruption, but addressed me as
though no one else were within earshot.

'Imagine yourself standing in an Egyptian city, where innumerable
lamps of every hue are shining. It is one of the great lamp-fetes of
Sais, which all Egypt has come to see. There, in honour of the feast,
sits a tall woman, covered by a veil. But the painting is so
wonderful, Mr. Aylwin, that, though you see a woman's face expressed
behind the veil--though you see the warm flesh-tints and the light of
the eyes through the aerial film--you cannot judge of the character
of the face--you cannot see whether it is that of woman in her noblest,
or woman in her basest, type. The eyes sparkle, but you cannot say
whether they sparkle with malignity or benevolence--whether they are
fired with what Philip Aylwin calls "the love-light of the seventh
heaven," or are threatening with "the hungry flames of the seventh
hell"! There she sits in front of a portico, while, asleep, with
folded wings, is crouched on one side of her the figure of Love, with
rosy feathers, and on the other the figure of Faith, with plumage
of a deep azure. Over her head, on the portico, are written the
words:--"I am all that hath been, is, and shall be, and no mortal
hath uncovered my veil." The tinted lights falling on the group are
shed, you see, from the rainbow-coloured lamps of Sais, which are
countless. But in spite of all these lamps, Mr. Aylwin, no mortal can
see the face behind that veil. And why? Those who alone could uplift
it, the figures with folded wings--Faith and Love--are fast asleep at
the great Queen's feet. When Faith and Love are sleeping there, what
are the many-coloured lamps of science?--of what use are they to the
famished soul of man?'

'A striking idea!' I exclaimed.

'Your father's,' replied Wilderspin, in a tone of such reverence that
one might have imagined my father's spectre stood before him. 'It
symbolises that base Darwinian cosmogony which Carlyle spits at, and
the great and good John Ruskin scorns. But this design is only the
predella beneath the picture "Faith and Love." Now look at the
picture itself, Mr. Aylwin,' he continued, as though it were upon an
easel before me. 'You are at Sais no longer: you are now, as the
architecture around you shows, in a Greek city by the sea. In the
light of innumerable lamps, torches, and wax tapers, a procession is
moving through the streets. You see Isis, as Pelagia, advancing
between two ranks, one of joyous maidens in snow-white garments,
adorned with wreaths, and scattering from their bosoms all kinds of
dewy flowers; the other of youths, playing upon pipes and flutes,
mixed with men with shaven shining crowns, playing upon sistra of
brass, silver, and gold. Isis wears a Dorian tunic, fastened on her
breast by a tasselled knot,--an azure-coloured tunic bordered with
silver stars,--and an upper garment of the colour of the moon at
moonrise. Her head is crowned with a chaplet of sea-flowers, and
round her throat is a necklace of seaweeds, wet still with sea-water,
and shimmering with all the shifting hues of the sea. On either side
of her stand the awakened angels, uplifting from her face a veil
whose folds flow soft as water over her shoulders and over the wings
of Faith and Love. A symbol of the true cosmogony which Philip Aylwin
gave to the world!'

'Why, that's esackly like the wreath o' seaweeds as poor Winnie Wynne
used to make,' said Rhona Boswell.

'The photograph of Raxton Fair!' I cried. 'Frank and Winnie, and
little Bob Milford, and the seaweeds!' The terrible past came upon my
soul like an avalanche, and I leapt up and walked frantically towards
my own waggon. The picture, which was nothing but an idealisation of
the vignette upon the title-page of my father's book--the vignette
taken from the photograph of Winnie, my brother Frank, and one of my
fisher-boy playmates--brought back upon me--all!

Sinfi came to me.

'What is it, brother?' said she.

'Sinfi,' I cried, 'what was that saying of your mother's about
fathers and children?'

'My poor mammy's daddy, when she wur a little chavi, beat her so
cruel that she was a ailin' woman all her life, and she used to say,
"For good or for ill, you must dig deep to bury your daddy."'

I went back and resumed my seat by Wilderspin's side, while Sinfi
returned to Cyril.

Wilderspin evidently thought that I had been overcome by the
marvellous power of his description, and went on as though there had
been no interruption.

'Isis,' said he,' stands before you; Isis, not matronly and stern as
the mother of Horus, nor as the Isis of the licentious orgies; but
(as Philip Aylwin says) "Isis, the maiden, gazing around her, with
pure but mystic eyes."'

'And you got from my father's book,--_The Veiled Queen_, all this'--I
was going to add--'jumble of classic story and mediaeval
mysticism,'--but I stopped short in time.

'All this and more--a thousand times more than could be rendered by
the art of any painter. For the age that Carlyle spits at and the
great and good John Ruskin scorns is gross, Mr. Aylwin; the age is
grovelling and gross. No wonder, then, that Art in our time has
nothing but technical excellence; that it despises conscience,
despises aspiration, despises soul, despises even ideas--that it is
worthless, all worthless.'

'Except as practised in a certain temple of art in a certain part of
London that shall be nameless, whence Calliope, Euterpe, and all the
rhythmic sisters are banished,' interposed Cyril.

'But how did you attain to this superlative excellence, Mr.
Wilderspin?' I asked.

'That would indeed be a long story to tell,' said he. 'Yet Philip
Aylwin's son has a right to know all that I can tell. My dear friend
here knows that, though famous now, I climbed the ladder of Art from
the bottom rung; nay, before I could even reach the bottom rung, what
a toilsome journey was mine to get within sight of the ladder at all!
The future biographer of the painter of "Faith and Love" will have to
record that he was born in a hovel; that he was nursed in a smithy;
that his cradle was a piece of board suspended from the smithy
ceiling by a chain, which his mother--his widowed mother--kept
swinging by an occasional touch in the intervals of her labours at
the forge.'

I did not even smile at this speech, so entirely was the effect of
its egotism killed by the wonderful way of pronouncing the word
'mother.'

'You have heard,' he continued in a voice whose intense earnestness
had an irresistible fascination for the ear, like that of a Hindoo
charmer--'you have heard of the mother-bird who feeds her young from
the blood of her own breast; that bird but feebly typifies her whom
God, in His abundant love of me, gave me for a mother. There were ten
of us--ten little children. My mother was a female blacksmith of Old
Hill, who for four shillings and sixpence a week worked sixteen hours
a day for the fogger, hammering hot iron into nails. The scar upon my
forehead--look! it is shaped like the red-hot nail that one day leapt
upon me from her anvil, as I lay asleep in my swing above her head. I
would not lose it for all the diadems of all the monarchs of this
world. She was much too poor to educate us. When the wolf is at the
door, Mr. Aylwin, and the very flesh and blood of the babes in danger
of perishing, what mother can find time to think of education, to
think even of the salvation of the soul,--to think of anything but
food--food? Have you ever wanted food, Mr. Aylwin?' he suddenly said,
in a voice so magnetic from its very earnestness that I seemed for
the moment to feel the faintness of hunger.

'No, no,' I said, a tide of grief rushing upon me; 'but there is one
who perhaps--there is one I love more dearly than your mother loved
her babes--'

Sinfi rose, and came and placed her hand upon my shoulder and
whispered,

'She ain't a-starvin', brother; she never starved on the hills. She's
only jest a-beggin' her bread for a little while, that's all.'

And then, after laying her hand upon my forehead, soft and soothing,
she returned to Cyril's side.

'No one who has never wanted food knows what life is,' said
Wilderspin, taking but little heed of even so violent an interruption
as this.'No one has been entirely educated, Mr. Aylwin--no one knows
the real primal meaning of that pathetic word Man--no one knows the
true meaning of Man's position here among the other living creatures
of this world, if he has never wanted food. Hunger gives a new seeing
to the eyes.'

'That's as true as the blessed stars,' muttered old Mrs. Boswell,
Rhona's beloved granny, who was squatting on a rug next to her son
Jericho, with a pipe in her mouth, weaving fancy baskets, and
listening intently. 'The very airth under your feet seems to be
a-sinkin' away, and the sweet sunshine itself seems as if it all
belonged to the Gorgios, when you're a-follerin' the patrin with the
emp'y belly.'

'I thank God,' continued Wilderspin, 'that I once wanted food.'

'More nor I do,' muttered old Mrs. Boswell, as she went on weaving;
'no mammy as ever felt a little chavo [Footnote 1] a-suckin' at her
burk [Footnote 2] never thanked God for wantin' food: it dries the
milk, or else it sp'iles it.'

[Footnote 1: Child.]

[Footnote 2:  Bosom.]


'In no way,' said Wilderspin, 'has the spirit-world neglected the
education of the apostle of spiritual beauty. I became a "blower" in
the smithy. As a child, from early sunrise till nearly midnight, I
blew the bellows for eighteen pence a week. But long before I could
read or write my mother knew that I was set apart for great things.
She knew, from the profiles I used to trace with the point of a nail
on the smithy walls, that, unless the heavy world pressed too heavily
upon me, I should become a great painter. Except anxiety about my
mother and my little brothers and sisters, I, for my part, had no
thought besides this of being some day a painter. Except love for her
and for them, I had no other passion. By assiduous attendance at
night-schools I learnt to read and write. This enabled me to take a
better berth in Black Waggon Street, where I earned enough to take
lessons in drawing from the reduced widow of a once prosperous
fogger. But ah! so eager was I to learn, that I did not notice how my
mother was fading, wasting, dying slowly. It was not till too late
that I learnt the appalling truth, that while the babes had been
nourished, the mother had starved--starved! On a few ounces of bread
a day no woman can work the Oliver and prod the fire. Her last
whispers to me were, "I shall see you, dear, a great painter yet;
Jesus will let me look down and watch my boy." Ah, Sinfi Lovell! that
makes you weep. It is long, long since I ceased to weep at that.
"Whatsoever is not of faith is sin."'

Rhona Boswell, down whose face also the tears were streaming, nodded
in a patronising way to Wilderspin, and said, 'Reia, my mammy lives
in the clouds, and I'll tell her to show you the Golden Hand, I
will.'

'From the moment when I left my mother in the grave,' said
Wilderspin, 'I had but one hope, that she who was watching my
endeavours might not watch in vain. Art became now my religion:
success in it my soul's goal. I went to London; I soon began to
develop a great power of design, in illustrating penny periodicals.
For years I worked at this, improving in execution with every design,
but still unable to find an opening for a better class of work. What
I yearned for was the opportunity to exercise the gift of colour.
That I did possess this in a rare degree I knew. At last I got a
commission. Oh! the joy of painting that first picture! My progress
was now rapid. But I had few purchasers till Providence sent me a
good man and great gentleman, my dear friend--'

'This is a long-winded speech of yours, _mon cher_,' yawned Cyril.
'Lady Sinfi is going to strike up with the Welsh riddle unless you
get along faster.'

'Don't stop him,' I heard Sinfi mutter, as she shook Cyril angrily;
'he's mighty fond o' that mother o' his'n, an', if he's ever sich a
horn nataral, I likes him.'

'I never exhibited in the Academy,' continued Wilderspin, without
heeding the interruption, 'I never tried to exhibit; but, thanks to
the dear friend I have mentioned, I got to know the Master himself.
People came to my poor studio, and my pictures were bought from my
easel as fast as I could paint them. I could please my buyers, I
could please my dear friend, I could please the Master himself; I
could please every person in the world but one--myself. For years I
had been struggling with what cripples so many artists--with
ignorance--ignorance, Mr. Aylwin, of the million points of detail
which must be understood and mastered before ever the sweetness, the
apparent lawlessness and abandonment of Nature can be expressed by
Art. But it was now, when I had conquered these,--it was now that I
was dissatisfied, and no man living was so miserable as I. I dare say
you are an artist yourself, Mr. Aylwin, and will understand me when I
say that artists--figure-painters, I mean,--are divided into two
classes--those whose natural impulse is to paint men, and those who
are sent into the world expressly to paint women. My mother's death
taught me that my mission was to paint women, women whom I--being the
son of Mary Wilderspin--love and understand better than other men,
because my soul (once folded in her womb) is purer than other men's
souls.'

'Is not modesty a Gorgio virtue, Lady Sinfi?' murmured Cyril.

'Nothin' like a painter for thinkin' strong beer of hisself,' she
replied; 'but I likes him--oh, I likes him.'

'No man whose soul is stained by fleshly desire shall render in art
all that there is in a truly beautiful woman's face,' said
Wilderspin. 'I worked hard at imaginative painting; I worked for
years and years, Mr. Aylwin, but with scant success. It shames me to
say that I was at last discouraged. Hut, after a time, I began to
feel that the spirit-world was giving me a strength of vision second
only to the Master's own, and a cunning of hand greater than any
vouchsafed to man since the death of Raphael. This was once
stigmatised as egotism; but "Faith and Love," and the predella "Isis
behind the Veil," have told another story. I did not despair, I say;
for I knew the cause of my failure. Two sources of inspiration were
wanting to me--that of a superlative subject and that of a
superlative model. For the first I am indebted to Philip Aylwin; for
the second I am indebted to--'

'A greater still, Miss Gudgeon, of Primrose Court,' interjected
Cyril.

'For the second I'm indebted to my mother. And yet something else was
wanting,' continued Wilderspin, 'to enable me for many months to
concentrate my life upon one work--the self-sacrificing generosity of
such a friend as I think no man ever had before.

'Wilderspin,' said Cyril, rising, 'the Duke of Little Egypt sleeps,
as you see. His Grace of the Pyramids snores, as you hear. The
autobiography of a man of genius is interesting; but I fear that
yours will have to be continued in our next.'

'But Mr. Aylwin wants to hear--'

'He and our other idyllic friends are early to bed and early to rise;
they have, in the morning, trout to catch for breakfast, and we have
a good way to walk to-night.'

'That's just like my friend,' said Wilderspin. 'That's my friend all
over.'

With this they left us, and we betook ourselves to our usual evening
occupations.

Next morning the two painters called upon us. Wilderspin sketched
alone, while Sinfi, Rhona, Cyril, and I went trout-fishing in one of
the numerous brooks.

'What do you think of my friend by this time?' said Cyril to me.

'He is my fifth mystic,' I replied; 'I wonder what the sixth will be
like. Is he really as great a painter as he takes himself to he, or
does his art begin and end with flowery words?'

'I believe,' said Cyril, pointing across to where Wilderspin sat at
work, 'that the strange creature under that white umbrella is the
greatest artistic genius now living. The death of his mother by
starvation has turned his head, poor fellow, but turned it to good
purpose: "Faith and Love" is the greatest modern picture in Europe.
To be sure, he has the advantage of painting from the finest model
ever seen, the lovely, if rather stupid, Miss Gudgeon, of Primrose
Court, whom he monopolises.'

Cyril had already, during the morning, told me that my mother, who
was much out of health, was now staying in London, where he had for
the first time in his life met her at Lord Sleaford's house.
Notwithstanding their differences of opinion, my mother and he
seemed to have formed a mutual liking. He also told me that my uncle
Cecil Aylwin of Alvanley (who in this narrative must not, of course,
be confounded with another important relative, Henry Aylwin, Earl of
Aylwin) having just died and left me the bulk of his property, I had
been in much request. I consequently determined to start for London
on the following day, leaving my waggon in charge of Sinfi, who was
to sit to Wilderspin in the open air.

During this conversation Sinfi was absorbed in her fishing, and
wandered away up the brook, and I could see that Cyril's eyes were
following her with great admiration.

Turning to me and looking at me, he said, 'Lucky dog!' and then,
looking again across at Sinfi, he said, 'The finest girl in England.'



V

HAROUN-AL-RASCHID THE PAINTER


I

On reaching London and finding that it was necessary I should remain
there for some little time, I wrote to Cyril to say so, sending some
messages to Sinfi and her father about my own living-waggon.

My mother was now staying at my aunt's house, whither I went to call
upon her shortly after my arrival in town.

Our meeting was a constrained and painful one. It was my mother's
cruelty to Winifred that had, in my view, completely ruined two
lives. I did not know then what an awful struggle was going on in her
own breast between her pride and her remorse for having driven Winnie
away, to be lost in Wales. Afterwards her sad case taught me that
among all the agents of soul-torture that have ever stung mankind to
madness the scorpion Remorse is by far the most appalling. But other
events had to take place before she reached the state when the
scorpion stings to death all other passions, even Pride and even
Vanity, and reigns in the bosom supreme. We could hardly meet without
softening towards each other. She was most anxious to know what had
occurred to me since I left Raxton to search for Winnie. I gave her
the entire story from my first seeing Winnie in the cottage, to my
_rencontre_ with her at Knockers' Llyn. At this time she had
accidentally been brought into contact with Miss Dalrymple, who had
lately received a legacy and was now in better circumstances. Miss
Dalrymple had spoken in high terms of Winnie's intelligence and
culture, little thinking how she was making my mother feel more
acutely than ever her own wrongdoing. Knowing that I was very fond of
music, my mother persuaded me to take her on several occasions to the
opera and the theatre. She with more difficulty persuaded me to
consult a medical man upon the subject of my insomnia; and at last I
agreed, though very reluctantly, to consult Dr. Mivart, late of
Raxton, who was now living in London. Mivart attributed my ailment
(as I, of course, knew he would) to hypochondria, and I saw that he
was fully aware of the cause. I therefore opened my mind to him upon
the subject. I told him everything in connection with Winifred in
Wales.

He pondered the subject carefully and then said:

'What you need is to escape from these terrible oscillations between
hope and despair. Therefore I think it best to tell you frankly that
Miss Wynne is certainly dead. Even suppose that she did not fall down
a precipice in Wales, she is, I repeat, certainly dead. So severe a
form of hysteria as hers must have worn her out by this time. It is
difficult for me to think that any nervous system could withstand a
strain so severe and so prolonged.'

I felt the terrible truth of his words, but I made no answer.

'But let this be your consolation,' said he. 'Her death is a blessing
to herself, and the knowledge that she is dead will be a blessing to
you.'

'A blessing to me?' I said.

'I mean that it will save you from the mischief of these alternations
between hope and despair. You will remember that it was I who saw her
in her first seizure and told you of it. Such a seizure having lasted
so long, nothing could have given her relief but death or magnetic
transmission of the seizure. It is a grievous case, but what concerns
me now is the condition into which you yourself have passed. Nothing
but a successful effort on your part to relieve your mind from the
dominant idea that has disturbed it can save you from--from--'

'From what?'

'That drug of yours is the most dangerous narcotic of all. Increase
your doses by a few more grains and you will lose all command over
your nervous system--all presence of mind. Give it up, give it up and
enter Parliament.'

I left Mivart in anger, and took a stroll through the streets, trying
to amuse myself by looking at the shop windows and recalling the few
salient incidents that were connected with my brief experiences as an
art student.

Hours passed in this way, until one by one the shops were closed and
only the theatres, public bars, and supper-rooms seemed to be open.

I turned into a restaurant in the Haymarket, for I had taken no
dinner. I went upstairs into a supper-room, and after I had finished
my meal, taking a seat near the window, I gazed abstractedly over
the bustling, flashing streets, which to me seemed far more lonely,
far more remote, than the most secluded paths of Snowdon. In a
trouble such as mine it is not Man but Nature that can give
companionship.

I  was so absorbed  in my thoughts that I did not observe whether
I was or was not now alone in the room, till the name of Wilderspin
fell on my ear and recalled me to myself. I started and looked round.
At a table  near  me sat two men whom I had not noticed before. The
face of the man who sat on the opposite side of the table confronted
me.

If I had one tithe of that objective power and that instinct for
description which used to amaze me in Winifred as a child, I could
give here a picture of a face which the reader could never forget.

If it was not beautiful in detail it was illuminated by an expression
that gave a unity of beauty to the whole. And what was the
expression? I can only describe it by saying that it was the
expression of genius; and it had that imperious magnetism which I had
never before seen in any face save that of Sinfi Lovell. But striking
as was the face of this man, I soon found that his voice was more
striking still. In whatever assembly that voice was heard, its
indescribable resonance would have marked it off from all other
voices, and  have made the ear of the listener eager to catch the
sound. This voice, however, was not the one that had uttered the name
of Wilderspin. It was from his companion, who sat opposite to him,
with his great broad back, covered with a smart velvet coat, towards
me, that the talk was now coming. This man was smoking cigarettes in
that kind of furious sucking way which is characteristic of great
smokers. Much smoking, however, had not dried up his skin to the
consistence of blotting paper and to the colour of tobacco ash as it
does in some cases, but tobacco juice, which seemed to ooze from his
face like perspiration, or rather like oil, had made his complexion
of a yellow green colour, something like a vegetable marrow. Although
his face was as hairless as a woman's, there was not a feature in it
that was not masculine. Although his cheek-bones were high and his
jaw was of the mould which we so often associate with the
prizefighter, he looked as if he might somehow be a gentleman. And
when I got for a moment a full view of his face as he turned round, I
thought it showed power and intelligence, although his forehead
receded a good deal, a recession which was owing mainly to the bone
above the eyes. Power and intelligence too were seen in every glance
of his dark bright eyes. In a few minutes Wilderspin's name was again
uttered by this man, and I found he was telling anecdotes of the
eccentric painter--telling them with great gusto and humour, in a
loud voice, quite careless of being overheard by me. Then followed
other anecdotes of other people--artists for the most part--in which
the names of Millais, Ruskin, Watts, Leighton, and others came up in
quick succession.

That he was a professional anecdote-monger of extraordinary
brilliancy, a _raconteur_ of the very first order, was evident
enough. I found also that as a story-teller he was reckless and
without conscience. He was, I thought, inventing anecdotes to amuse
his companion, whose manifest enjoyment of them rather weakened the
impression that his own personality had been making upon me.

After a while the name of Cyril Aylwin came up, and I soon found the
man telling a story of Cyril and a recent escapade of his which I
knew must be false. He then went rattling on about other people,
mentioning names which, as I soon gathered, were those of female
models known in the art world. The anecdotes he told of these were
mostly to their disadvantage. I was about to move to another table,
in order to get out of earshot of this gossip, when the name 'Lady
Sinfi' fell upon my ears.

And then I heard the other man--the man of the musical voice--talk
about Lady Sinfi with the greatest admiration and regard. He wound up
by saying, 'By the bye, where is she now? I should like to use her in
painting my new picture.'

'She's in Wales; so Kiomi told me.'

'Ah yes! I remember she has an extraordinary passion for Snowdon.'

'Her passion is now for something else, though.'

'What's that?'

'A man.'

'I never saw a girl so indifferent to men as Lady Sinfi.'

'She is living at this moment as the mistress of a cousin of Cyril
Aylwin.'

My blood boiled with rage. I lost all control of myself. I longed to
feel his face against my knuckles.

'That's not true,' I said in a rather loud voice.

He started up, and turned round, saying in a hectoring voice, 'What
was that you said to me? Will you repeat your words?'

'To repeat one's words,'  I said quietly, 'shows a limited
vocabulary, so I will put it thus,--what you said just now about
Sinfi Lovell being the mistress of Cyril Aylwin's cousin is a lie.'

'You dare to give me the lie, sir? And what the devil do you mean by
listening to our conversation?'

The threatening look that he managed to put into his face was so
entirely histrionic that it made me laugh outright. This seemed to
damp his courage more than if I had sprung up and shown fight. The
man had a somewhat formidable appearance, however, as regards build,
which showed that he possessed more than average strength. It was the
manifest genuineness of my laugh that gave him pause. And when I sat
with my elbows on the table and my face between my palms, taking
stock of him quietly, he looked extremely puzzled. The man of the
musical voice sat and looked at me as though under a spell.

'I am a young man from the country,' I said to him. 'To what theatre
is your histrionic friend attached? I should like to see him in a
better farce than this.'

'Do you hear that, De Castro?' said the other. 'What is your
theatre?'

'If he is really excited,' I said, 'tell him that people at a public
supper-room should speak in a moderate tone or their conversation is
likely to be overheard.'

'Do you hear this young man from the country, De Castro?' said he.
'You seem to be the Oraculum of the hay-fields, sir,' he continued,
turning to me with a delightfully humorous expression on his face.
'Have you any other Delphic utterance?'

'Only this,' I said, 'that people who do not like being given the lie
should tell the truth.'

'May I be permitted to guess your Christian name, sir? Is it Martin,
perchance?'

'Yes,' I replied, 'and my surname is Tupper.' He then got up and laid
his hand on the _raconteur's_ shoulder, and said, 'Don't be a fool,
De Castro. When a man looks at another as the author of the
_Proverbial Philosophy_ is looking at you, he knows that he can use
his fists as well as his pen.'

'He gave me the lie. Didn't you hear?'

'I did, and I thought the gift as entirely gratuitous, _mon cher_,
as giving a scuttleful of coals to Newcastle.'

The anecdote-monger stood silent, quelled by this man's voice.

Then turning to me, the man of the musical voice said, 'I suppose you
know something about my friend Lady Sinfi?'

'I do,' I said, 'and I am Cyril Aylwin's kinsman, whom you call his
cousin, so perhaps, as every word your friend has said about Sinfi
Lovell and me is false, you will allow me to call him a liar.'

A look of the greatest glee at the discomfiture of his companion
overspread his face.

'Certainly,' he said with a loud laugh. 'You may call him that, you
may even qualify the noun you have used with an adjective if the
author of the _Proverbial Philosophy_ can think of one that is
properly descriptive and yet not too unparliamentary. So you are
Cyril Aylwin's kinsman. I have heard him,' he said, with a smile that
he tried in vain to suppress, 'I have heard Cyril expatiate on the
various branches of the Aylwin family.'

'I belong to the proud Aylwins,' I said.

The twinkle in his eye made me adore him as he said--'The proud
Aylwins. A man who, in a world like this, is proud and knows it, and
is proud of confessing his pride, always interests me, but I will not
ask you what makes the proud Aylwins proud, sir.'

'I will tell you what makes me proud,' I said: 'my great-grandmother
was a full-blooded Gypsy, and I am proud of the descent.'

He came forward and held out his hand and said, 'It is long since I
met a man who interested me'--he gave a sigh--'very long; and I hope
that you and I may become friends.'

I grasped his hand and shook it warmly.

The anecdote-monger began talking at once about Sinfi, Wilderspin,
and Cyril Aylwin, speaking of them in the most genial and
affectionate terms. In a few minutes, without withdrawing a word he
had said about either of them, he had entirely changed the spirit of
every word. At first I tried to resist his sophistry, but it was not
to be resisted. I ended by apologising to him for my stupidity in
misunderstanding him.

'My dear fellow,' said he, 'not a word, not a word. I admired the way
in which you stood up for absent friends. Didn't you, D'Arcy?'

At this the other broke out into another mellow laugh. 'I did. How's
your kinsman, and how's Wilderspin?' he said, turning to me. 'Did you
leave them well?'

We soon began, all three of us, to talk freely together. Of course I
was filled with curiosity about my new friends, especially about the
liar. His extraordinary command of facial expression, coupled with
the fact that he wore no hair on his face, made me at first think he
was a great actor; but being at that time comparatively ignorant of
the stage, I did not attempt to guess what actor it was. After a
while his prodigious acuteness struck me more than even his
histrionic powers, and I began to ask myself what Old Bailey
barrister it was.

Turning at last to the one called D'Arcy, I said. 'You are an artist;
you are a painter?'

'I have been trying for many years to paint,' he said.

'And you?' I said, turning to his companion.

'He is an artist too,' D'Arcy said, 'but his line is not painting--he
is an artist in words.'

'A poet?' I said in amazement.

'A romancer, the greatest one of his time unless it be old Dumas.'

'A novelist?'

'Yes, but he does not write his novels, he speaks them.'

De Castro, evidently with a desire to turn the conversation from
himself and his profession, said, pointing to D'Arcy, 'You see before
you the famous painter Haroun-al-Raschid, who has never been known to
perambulate the streets of London except by night, and in me you see
his faithful vizier.'

It soon became evident that D'Arcy, for some reason or other, had
thoroughly taken to me--more thoroughly, I thought, than De Castro
seemed to like, for whenever D'Arcy seemed to be on the verge of
asking me to call at his studio, De Castro would suddenly lead the
conversation off into another channel by means of some amusing
anecdote. However, the painter was not to be defeated in his
intention; indeed I noticed during the conversation that although
D'Arcy yielded to the sophistries of his companion, he did so
wilfully. While he forced his mind, as it were, to accept these
sophistries there seemed to be all the while in his consciousness a
perception that sophistries they were. He ended by giving me his
address and inviting me to call upon him.

'I am only making a brief stay in London,' he said; 'I am working
hard at a picture in the country, but business just now calls me to
London for a short time.'

With this we parted at the door of the restaurant.


II

It was through the merest accident that I saw these two men again.

One evening I had been dining with my mother and aunt. I think I may
say that I had now become entirely reconciled to my mother. I used to
call upon her often, and at every call I could not but observe how
dire was the struggle going on within her breast between pride and
remorse. She felt, and rightly felt, that the loss of Winifred among
the Welsh hills had been due to her harshness in sending the stricken
girl away from Raxton, to say nothing of her breaking her word with
me after having promised to take my place and watch for the exposure
of the cross by the wash of the tides until the danger was certainly
past.

But against my aunt I cherished a stronger resentment every day. She
it was, with her inferior intellect and insect soul, who had in my
childhood prejudiced my mother against me and in favour of Frank,
because I showed signs of my descent from Fenella Stanley while Frank
did not. She it was who first planted in my mother's mind the seeds
of prejudice against Winnie as being the daughter of Tom Wynne.

The influence of such a paltry nature upon a woman of my mother's
strength and endowments had always astonished as much as it had
irritated me.

I had not learnt then what I fully learnt afterwards, that in this
life it is mostly the dull and stupid people who dominate the clever
ones--that it is, in short, the fools who govern the world.

I should, of course, never have gone to Belgrave Square at all had it
not been to see my mother. Such a commonplace slave of convention was
my aunt, that, on the evening I am now mentioning, she had scarcely
spoken to me during dinner, because, having been detained at the
solicitor's, I had found it quite impossible to go to my hotel to
dress for her ridiculous seven o'clock dinner.

When I found that my mother had actually taken this inferior woman
into her confidence in regard to my affairs and told her all about
Winnie and the cross, my dislike of her became intensified, and on
this evening my mother very much vexed me in the drawing-room by
taking the cross from a cabinet and saying to me,

'What is now to be done with this? All along the coast there are such
notions about its value that to replace it in the tomb would be
simple madness.' I made no reply. 'Indeed,' she continued, looking at
the amulet as she might have looked at a cobra uprearing its head to
spring at her, 'it must really be priceless. And to think that all
this was to be buried in the coffin of--! It is your charge,
however, and not mine.'

'Yes, mother,' I said, 'it is my charge;' and taking up the cross I
wrapped it in my handkerchief.

'Take the amulet and guard it well,' she said, as I placed it
carefully in the breast pocket of my coat.

'And remember,' said my aunt, breaking into the conversation, 'that
the true curses of the Aylwins are and always have been superstition
and love-madness.'

'I should have added a third curse,--pride, aunt,' I could not help
replying.

'Henry,' said she, pursing her thin lips, 'you have the obstinacy and
the courage of your race, that is to say, you have the obstinacy and
the courage of ten ordinary men, and yet a man you are not--a man you
will never be, if strength of character, and self-mastery and power
to withstand the inevitable trials of life, go to the making of a
man.'

'Pardon me, aunt; but such trials as mine are beyond your
comprehension.'

'Are they, boy?' said she. 'This fancy of yours for an insignificant
girl--this boyish infatuation which with any other young man of your
rank would have long ago exhausted itself and been forgotten--is a
passion that absorbs your life. And I tremble for you: I tremble for
the house you represent.'

But I saw by the expression on my mother's face that my aunt had now
gone too far. 'Prue,' she said, 'your tremblings concerning my son
and my family are, I assure you, gratuitous. Such trembling as the
case demands you had better leave to me. My heart tells me I have
been very wrong to that poor child, and I would give much to know
that she was found and that she was well.'

I set out to walk to my hotel, wondering how I was to while away the
long night until sleep should come to relieve me. Suddenly I
remembered D'Arcy, and my promise to call upon him. I changed my
course, and  hailing a hansom drove to the address he  had given me.

When I reached the door I found, upon looking at my watch, that it
was late--so late that I was dubious whether I should ring the bell.
I remembered, however, that he told me how very late his hours were,
and I rang.

On sending in my card I was shown at once into the studio, and after
threading my way between some pieces of massive furniture and
pictures upon easels, I found D'Arcy lolling lazily upon a huge sofa.
Seeing that he was not alone, I was about to withdraw, for I was in
no mood to meet strangers. However, he sprang up and introduced me to
his guest, whom he called Symonds, an elegant-looking man in a
peculiar kind of evening dress, who, as I afterwards learned, was one
of Mr. D'Arcy's chief buyers. This gentleman bowed stiffly to me.

He did not stay long; indeed, it was evident that the appearance of a
stranger somewhat disconcerted him.

After he was gone D'Arcy said, 'A good fellow! One of my most
important buyers. I should like you to know him, for you and I are
going to be friends. I hope.'

He seems very fond of pictures,' I said. A man of great taste, with a
real love of art and music.'

In a little while after this gentleman's departure in came De Castro,
who had driven up in a hansom. I certainly saw a flash of anger in
his eyes as he recognised me, but it vanished like lightning, and his
manner became cordiality itself. Late as it was (it was nearly
twelve), he pulled out his cigarette case, and evidently intended to
begin the evening. As soon as he was told that Mr. Symonds had been,
he began to talk about him in a disparaging manner. Evidently his
metier was, as I had surmised, that of a professional talker. Talk
was his stock-in-trade.

The night wore on, and De Castro in the intervals of his talk kept
pulling out his watch. It was evident that he wanted to be going, but
was reluctant to leave me there. For my part, I frequently rose to
go, but on getting a sign from D'Arcy that he wished me to stay I sat
down again. At last D'Arcy said,

'You had better go now, De Castro, you have kept that hansom outside
for more than an hour and a half; and besides, if you stay till
daylight our friend here will stay longer, for I want to talk with
him alone.'

De Castro got up with a laugh that seemed genuine enough, and left
us.

D'Arcy, who was still on the sofa, then lapsed into a silence that
became after a while rather awkward. He lay there, gazing
abstractedly at the fireplace.

'Some of my friends call me, as you heard De Castro say the other
night, Haroun-al-Raschid, and I suppose I am like him in some things.
I am a bad sleeper, and to be amused by De Castro when I can't sleep
is the chief of blessings. De Castro, however, is not so bad as he
seems. A man may be a scandal-monger without being really malignant.
I have known him go out of his way to do a struggling man a service.'

'You are a bad sleeper?' I said, in a tone that proclaimed at once
that I was a bad sleeper also.

'Yes,' said he, 'and so are you, as I noticed the other night. I can
always tell. There is something in the eyes when a man is a bad
sleeper that proclaims it to me.'

Then springing up from the divan and laying his hand upon my
shoulder, he said, 'And you have a great trouble at the heart. You
have had some great loss the effect of which is sapping the very
fountains of your life. We should be friends. We must be friends. I
asked you to call upon me because we must be friends.'

His voice was so tender that I was almost unmanned.

I will not dwell upon this part of my narrative; I will only say that
I told him something of my story, and he told me his.

I told him that a terrible trouble had unhinged the mind of a young
lady whom I deeply loved, and that she had been lost on the Welsh
hills. I felt that it was only right that I should know more of him
before giving him the more intimate details connected with Winnie,
myself, and the secrets of my family. He listened to every word with
the deepest attention and sympathy. After a while he said,

'You must not go to your hotel to-night. A friend of mine who
occupies two rooms is not sleeping here to-night, and I particularly
wish for you to take his bed, so that I can see you in the morning.
We shall not breakfast together. My breakfast is a peculiarly
irregular meal. But when you wake ring your bedroom bell and order
your own breakfast; afterwards we shall meet in the studio.'

I did not in the least object to this arrangement, for I found his
society a great relief.


Next morning, after I had finished my solitary breakfast, I asked the
servant if Mr. D'Arcy had yet risen. On being told that he had not, I
went downstairs into the studio where I had spent the previous
evening. After examining the pictures on the walls and the easels, I
walked to the window and looked out at the garden. It was large, and
so neglected and untrimmed as to be a veritable wilderness. While I
was marvelling why it should have been left in this state, I saw the
eyes of some animal staring at me from the distance, and was soon
astonished to see that they belonged to a little Indian bull. My
curiosity induced me to go into the garden and look at the creature.
He seemed rather threatening at first, but after a while allowed me
to go up to him and stroke him. Then I left the Indian bull and
explored this extraordinary domain. It was full of unkempt trees,
including two fine mulberries, and surrounded by a very high wall.
Soon I came across an object which, at first, seemed a little mass of
black and white oats moving along, but I presently discovered it to
be a hedgehog. It was so tame that it did not curl up as I approached
it, but allowed me, though with some show of nervousness, to stroke
its pretty little black snout. As I walked about the garden, I found
it was populated with several kinds of animals such as are never seen
except in menageries or in the Zoological Gardens. Wombats,
kangaroos, and the like, formed a kind of happy family.

My love of animals led me to linger in the garden. When I returned to
the house I found D'Arcy in the green dining-room, where we talked,
and he read aloud some verses to me. We then went to the studio. He
said,

'No doubt you are surprised at my menagerie. Every man has one side
of his character where the child remains. I have a love of animals
which, I suppose, I may call a passion. The kind of amusement they
can afford me is like none other. It is the self-consciousness of men
and women that makes them, in a general way, intensely unamusing. I
turn from them to the unconscious brutes, and often get a world of
enjoyment. To watch a kitten or a puppy play, or the funny antics of
a parrot or a cockatoo, or the wise movements of a wombat, will keep
me for hours from being bored.'

'And children,' I said--'do you like children?'

'Yes, so long as they remain like the young animals--until they
become self-conscious, I mean, and that is very soon. Then their
charm goes. Has it ever occurred to you how fascinating a beautiful
young girl would be if she were as unconscious as a young animal?
What makes you sigh?'

My thoughts had flown to Winifred breakfasting with her 'Prince of
the Mist' on Snowdon. And I said to myself, 'How he would have been
fascinated by a sight like that!'

My experience of men at that time was so slight that the opinion I
then formed of D'Arcy as a talker was not of much account. But since
then I have seen very much of men, and I find that I was right in the
view I then took of his conversational powers. When his spirits were
at their highest he was without an equal as a wit, without an equal
as a humourist. He had more than even Cyril Aylwin's quickness of
repartee, and it was of an incomparably rarer quality. To define it
would be, of course, impossible, but I might perhaps call it poetic
fancy suddenly stimulated at moments by animal spirits into rapid
movements--so rapid, indeed, that what in slower movement would be
merely fancy, in him became wit. Beneath the coruscations of this wit
a rare and deep intellect was always perceptible.

His humour was also so fanciful that it seemed poetry at play, but
here was the remarkable thing: although he was not unconscious of his
other gifts, he did not seem to be in the least aware that he was a
humourist of the first order; every _jeu d'esprit_ seemed to leap
from him involuntarily, like the spray from a fountain. A dull man
like myself must not attempt to reproduce these qualities here.

While he was talking he kept on painting, and I said to him, 'I can't
understand how you can keep up a conversation while you are at work.'

I took care not to tell him that I was an amateur painter.

'It is only when the work that I am on is in some degree mechanical
that I can talk while at work. These flowers, which were brought to
me this morning for my use in painting this picture, will very soon
wither, and I can put them into the picture without being disturbed
by talk; but if I were at work upon this face, if I were putting
dramatic expression into these eyes, I should have to be silent.'

He then went on talking upon art and poetry, letting fall at every
moment gems of criticism that would have made the fortune of a critic.

After a while, however, he threw down the brush and said,

'Sometimes I can paint with another man in the studio; sometimes I
can't.'

I rose to go.

'No, no,' he said; 'I don't want you to go, yet I don't like keeping
you in this musty studio on such a morning. Suppose we take a stroll
together.'

'But you never walk out in the daytime.'

'Not often; indeed, I may say never, unless it is to go to the Zoo,
or to Jamrach's, which I do about once in three months.'

'Jamrach's!' I said. 'Why, he's the importer of animals, isn't he? Of
all places in London that is the one I should most like to see.' He
then took me into a long panelled room with bay windows looking over
the Thames, furnished with remarkable Chinese chairs and tables. And
then we left the house.

In Maud Street a hansom passed us; D'Arcy hailed it.

'We will take this to the Bank,' said he, 'and then walk through the
East End to Jamrach's. Jump in.'

As we drove off, the sun was shining brilliantly, and London seemed
very animated--seemed to be enjoying itself. Until we reached the
Bank our drive was through all the most cheerful-looking and
prosperous streets of London. It acted like a tonic on me, and for
the first time since my trouble I felt really exhilarated. As to
D'Arcy, after we had left behind us what he called the 'stucco world'
of the West End, his spirits seemed to rise every minute, and by the
time we reached the Strand he was as boisterous as a boy on a
holiday.

On reaching the Bank we dismissed the hansom and proceeded to walk to
Ratcliffe Highway. Before reaching it I was appalled at the
forbidding aspect of the neighbourhood. It was not merely that the
unsavoury character of the streets offended and disgusted me, but the
locality wore a sinister aspect which acted upon my imagination in
the strangest, wildest way. Why was it that this aspect fairly cowed
me, scared me? I felt that I was not frightened on my own account,
and yet when I asked myself why I was frightened I could not find a
rational answer.

As I saw the sailors come noisily from their boarding-houses; as I
saw the loafers standing at the street corners, smoking their dirty
pipes and gazing at us; as I saw the tawdry girls, bare-headed or in
flaunting hats covered with garish flowers, my thoughts, for no
conceivable reason, ran upon Winnie more persistently than they had
run upon her since I had abandoned all hope of seeing her in Wales.

The thought came to me that, grievous as was her fate and mine, the
tragedy of our lives might have been still worse.

'Suppose,' I said, 'that instead of being lost in the Welsh hills she
had been lost here!' I shuddered at the thought.

Again that picture in the Welsh pool came to me, the picture of
Winnie standing at a street corner, offering matches for sale. D'Arcy
then got talking about Sinfi Lovell and her strange superiority in
every respect to the few Gypsy women he had seen.

'She has,' said he, 'mesmeric power; it is only semiconscious, but it
is mesmeric. She exercises it partly through her gaze and partly
through her voice.'

He was still talking about Sinfi when a river-boy, who was whistling
with extraordinary brilliancy and gusto, met and passed us. Not a
word more of D'Arcy's talk did I hear, for the boy was whistling the
very air to which Winnie used to sing the Snowdon song

        I met in a glade a lone little maid
        At the foot of y Wyddfa the white.

I ran after the boy and asked him what tune he was whistling.

'What tune?' he said, 'blowed if I know.'

'Where did you hear it?' I asked.

'Well, there used to be a gal, a kind of a beggar gal, as lived not
far from 'ere for a little while, but she's gone away now, and she
used to sing that tune. I allas remember tunes, but I never could
make out anything of the words.'

D'Arcy laughed at my eccentricity in running after the boy to learn
where he had got a tune. But I did not tell him why.

After we had passed some way down Ratcliffe Highway, D'Arcy said,
'Here we are then,' and pointed to a shop, or rather two shops, on
the opposite side of the street. One window was filled with caged
birds; the other with specimens of beautiful Oriental pottery and
grotesque curiosities in the shape of Chinese and Japanese statues
and carvings.

My brain still rang with the air I had heard the river-boy whistling,
but I felt that I must talk about something.

'It is here that you buy your wonderful curiosities and porcelain!' I
said.

'Partly; but there is not a curiosity shop in London that I have not
ransacked in my time.'

The shop we now entered reminded me of that Raxton Fair which was so
much associated with Winnie. Its chief attraction was the advent of
Wombwell's menagerie. From the first moment that the couriers of that
august establishment came to paste their enormous placards on the
walls, down to the sad morning when the caravans left the
market-place, Winnie and I and Rhona Boswell had talked 'Wombwell.'
It was not merely that the large pictures of the wild animals in
action, the more than brassy sound of the cracked brass band,
delighted our eyes and ears. Our olfactories also were charmed. The
mousy scent of the animals mixed with the scent of sawdust, which to
adults was so objectionable, was characterised by us as delicious.
All these Wombwell delights came back to me as we entered Jamrach's,
and for a time the picture of Winifred prevented my seeing the famous
shop. When this passed I saw that the walls of the large room were
covered from top to bottom with cages, some of them full of wonderful
or beautiful birds, and others full of evil-faced, screeching
monkeys.

While D'Arcy was amusing himself with a blue-faced rib-nosed baboon,
I asked Mr. Jamrach, an extremely intelligent man, about the singing
girl and the Welsh air. But he could tell me nothing, and evidently
thought I had been hoaxed.

In a small case by itself was a beautiful jewelled cross, which
attracted D'Arcy's attention very much.

'This is not much in your line,' he said to Jamrach.'This is
European.'

'It came to me from Morocco,' said Jamrach, 'and it was no doubt
taken by a Morocco pirate from some Venetian captive.'

'It is a diamond and ruby cross,' said D'Arcy, 'but mixed with the
rubies there are beryls. I am at this moment describing a beryl in
some verses. The setting of the stones is surely quite peculiar.'

'Yes,' said Jamrach. 'It is the curiosity of the setting more than
the value of the gems which caused it to be sent to me. I have
offered it to the London jewellers, but they will only give me the
market-price of the stones and the gold.'

While he was talking I pulled out of my breast pocket the cross,
which had remained there since I received it from my mother the
evening before.

'They are very much alike,' said Jamrach; 'but the setting of these
stones is more extraordinary than in mine. And of course they are
more than fifty times as valuable.'

D'Arcy turned round to see what we were talking about, when he saw
the cross in my hand, and an expression of something like awe came
over his face.

'The Moonlight Cross of the Gnostics!' he exclaimed. 'You carry this
about in your breast pocket? Put it away, put it away! The thing
seems to be alive.'

In a second, however, and before I could answer him, the expression
passed from his face, and he took the cross from my hands and
examined it.

'This is the most beautiful piece of jewel work I ever saw in my
life. I have heard of such things. The Gnostic art of arranging
jewels so that they will catch the moon-rays and answer them as
though the light were that of the sun, is quite lost.'

We then went and examined Jamrach's menagerie. I found that one
source of the interest D'Arcy took in animals was that he was a
believer in Baptista Porta's whimsical theory that every human
creature resembles one of the lower animals, and he found a perennial
amusement in seeing in the faces of animals caricatures of his
friends.

With a fund of humour that was exhaustless, he went from cage to
cage, giving to each animal the name of some member of the Royal
Academy, or of one of his own intimate friends.

On leaving Jamrach's he said to me, 'Suppose we make a day of it and
go to the Zoo?'

I agreed, and we took a hansom as soon as we could get one and drove
across London towards Regent's Park.

Here the pleasure that he took in watching the movements of the
animals was so great that it seemed impossible but that he was
visiting the Zoo for the first time. I remembered, however, that he
had told me in the morning how frequently he went to these gardens.

But his interest in the animals was unlike my own, and I should
suppose unlike the interest of any other man. He had no knowledge
whatever of zoology, and appeared to wish for none. His pleasure
consisted in watching the curious expressions and movements of the
animals and in dramatising them.

On leaving the Zoo, I said, 'The cross you were just now looking at
is as remarkable for its history as for its beauty. It was stolen
from the tomb of a near relative of mine. I was under a solemn
promise to the person upon whose breast it lay to see that it should
never be disturbed. But, now that it has been disturbed, to replace
it in the tomb would, I fear, be to insure another sacrilege. I
wonder what you would do in such a case?'

He looked at me and said, 'As it is evident that we are going to be
intimate friends, I may as well confess to you at once that I am a
mystic.'

'When did you become so?'

'When? Ask any man who has passionately loved a woman and lost her;
ask him at what moment mysticism was forced upon him--at what moment
he felt that he must either accept a spiritualistic theory of the
universe or go mad; ask him this, and he will tell you that it was at
that moment when he first looked upon her as she lay dead, with
Corruption's foul fingers waiting to soil and stain. What are you
going to do with the cross?'

'Lock it up as safely as I can,' I said; 'what else is there to do
with it?'

He looked into my face and said, 'You are a rationalist.'

'I am.'

'You do not believe in a supernatural world?'

'My disbelief of it,' I said, 'is something more than an exercise of
the reason. It is a passion, an angry passion. But what should you do
with the cross if you were in my place?'

'Put it back in the tomb.'

I had great difficulty in suppressing my ridicule, but I merely said,
'That would be, as I have told you, to insure its being stolen
again.'

'There is the promise to the dead man or woman on whose breast it
lay.'

'This I intend to keep in the spirit like a reasonable man--not in
the letter like--'

'Promises to the dead must be kept to the letter, or no peace can
come to the bereaved heart. You are talking to a man who _knows_!'

'I will commit no such outrage upon reason as to place a priceless
jewel in a place where I know it will be stolen.'

'You _will_ replace the cross in that tomb.'

As he spoke he shook my hands warmly, and said, '_Au revoir_.
Remember, I shall always be delighted to see you.'

It was not till I saw him disappear amongst the crowd that I could
give way to the laughter which I had so much difficulty in
suppressing. What a relief it was to be able to do this!



VI

THE SONG OF Y WYDDFA


I

After this I had one or two interviews with our solicitor in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon important family matters connected with my
late uncle's property.

I had been one night to the theatre with my mother and my aunt. The
house had been unusually crowded. When the performance was over, we
found that the streets were deluged with rain. Our carriage had been
called some time before it drew up, and we were standing under the
portico amid a crowd of impatient ladies when a sound fell or seemed
to fall on my ears which stopped for the moment the very movements of
life. Amid the rattle of wheels and horses' feet and cries of
messengers about carriages and cabs, I seemed to distinguish a female
voice singing:

          'I met in a glade a lone little maid.
            At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;
          Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,
            And darker her hair than the night!'

It was the voice of Winifred singing as in a dream.

I heard my aunt say,

'Do look at that poor girl singing and holding out her little
baskets! She must be crazed to be offering baskets for sale in this
rain and at this time of night.'

I turned my eyes in the direction in which my aunt was looking, but
the crowd before me prevented my seeing the singer.

'She is gone, vanished,' said my aunt sharply, for my eagerness to
see made me rude.

'What was she like?' I asked.

'She was a young slender girl, holding out a bunch of small fancy
baskets of woven colours, through which the rain was dripping. She
was dressed in rags, and through the rags shone, here and there,
patches of her shoulders; and she wore a dingy red handkerchief round
her head. She stood in the wet and mud, beneath the lamp, quite
unconscious apparently of the bustle and confusion around her.'

Almost at the same moment our carriage drew up. I lingered on the
step as long as possible. My mother made a sign of impatience at the
delay, and I got into the carriage. Spite of the rain, I put down the
window and leaned out. I forgot the presence of my mother and aunt. I
forgot everything. The carriage moved on.

'Winifred!' I gasped, as the certainty that the voice was hers came
upon me.

And the dingy London night became illuminated with scrolls of fire,
whose blinding, blasting scripture seared my eyes till I was fain to
close them: 'Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread: let
them seek it also out of desolate places.'

So rapidly had the carriage rolled through the rain, and so entirely
had my long pain robbed me of all presence of mind, that, by the time
I had recovered from the paralysing shock, we had reached Piccadilly
Circus. I pulled the check-string.

'Why, Henry!' said my mother, who had raised the window, 'what are
you doing? And what has made you turn so pale?'

My aunt sat in indignant silence. 'Ten thousand pardons,' I said, as
I stepped out of the carriage, and shook hands with them. 'A sudden
recollection--important papers unsecured at my hotel--business in--in
Lincoln's Inn Fields. I will call on you in the morning.'

And I reeled down the pavement towards the Haymarket. When I was some
little distance from the carriage, I took to my heels and hurried as
fast as possible towards the theatre, utterly regardless of the
people. I reached the spot breathless. I stood for a moment staring
wildly to right and left of me. Not a trace of her was to be seen. I
heard a thin voice from my lips, that did not seem my own, ask a
policeman, who was now patrolling the neighbourhood, if he had seen a
basket-girl singing.

'No,' said the man, 'but I fancy you mean the Essex Street Beauty,
don't you? I haven't seen her for a long while now, but her dodge
used to be to come here on rainy nights, and stand bare-headed and
sing and sell just when the theatres was a-bustin'. She gets a good
lot, I fancy, by that dodge.'

'The Essex Street Beauty?'

'Oh, I thought you know'd p'raps. She's a strornary pretty
beggar-wench, with blue eyes and black hair, as used to stand at the
corner of Essex Street, Strand, and the money as that gal got
a-holdin' out her matches and a-sayin' texes out of the Bible must
ha' been strornary. So the Essex Street Beauty's bin about here agin
on the rainy-night dodge, 'es she? Well, it must have been the fust
time for many a long day, for I've never seen her now for a long
time. She couldn't ha' stood about here for many minutes; if she had
I must ha' seen her.'

I staggered away from him, and passed and repassed the spot many
times. Then I extended my beat about the neighbouring streets,
loitering at every corner where a basket-girl or a flower-girl might
be likely to stand. But no trace of her was to be seen. Meantime the
rain had ceased.

All the frightful stories that I had heard or read of the kidnapping
of girls came pouring into my mind, till my blood boiled and my knees
trembled. Imagination was stinging me to life's very core. Every few
minutes I would pass the theatre, and look towards the portico.

The night wore on, and I was unconscious how the time passed. It was
not till daybreak that I returned to my hotel, pale, weary, bent.

I threw myself upon my bed: it scorched me.

I could not think. At present I could only see--see what? At one
moment a squalid attic, the starlight shining through patched
window-panes upon a lonely mattress, on which a starving girl was
lying; at another moment a cellar damp and dark, in one corner of
which a youthful figure was crouching; and then (most intolerable of
all!) a flaring gin-palace, where, among a noisy crowd, a face was
looking wistfully on, while coarse and vulgar men were clustering
with cruel, wolfish eyes around a beggar-girl. This I saw and
more--a thousand things more.

It was insupportable. I rose and again paced the street.


When I called upon my mother she asked me anxious questions as to
what had ailed me the previous night. Seeing, however, that I
avoided replying to them, she left me after a while in peace.

'Fancy,' said my aunt, who was writing a letter at a little desk
between two windows,--'fancy an Aylwin pulling the check-string, and
then, with ladies in the carriage and the rain pouring--'

During that day how many times I passed in front of the theatre I
cannot say; but at last I thought the very men in the shops must be
observing me. Again, though I half poisoned myself with my drug, I
passed a sleepless night. The next night was passed in almost the
same manner as the previous one.


II

From this time I felt working within me a great change. A horrible
new thought got entire possession of me. Wherever I went I could
think of nothing but--the curse. I scorned the monstrous idea of a
curse, and yet I was always thinking about it. I was always seeking
Winifred--always speculating on her possible fate. I saw no one in
society.

My time was now largely occupied with wandering about the streets of
London. I began by exploring the vicinity of the theatre, and day
after day used to thread the alleys and courts in that neighbourhood.
Then I took the eastern direction, and soon became familiar with the
most squalid haunts.

My method was to wander from street to street, looking at every
poorly-dressed girl I met. Often I was greeted with an impudent
laugh, that brought back the sickening mental pictures I have
mentioned; and often I was greeted with an angry toss of the head and
such an exclamation as, 'What d'ye take me for, staring like that?'

These peregrinations I used to carry far into the night, and thus, as
I perceived, got the character at my hotel of a wild young man. The
family solicitor wrote to me again and again for appointments which I
could not give him.

It had often occurred to me that in a case of this kind the police
ought to be of some assistance. One day I called at Scotland Yard,
saw an official, and asked his aid. He listened to my story
attentively, then said: 'Do you come from the missing party's
friends, sir?'

'I am her friend,' I answered--'her only friend.'

'I mean, of course, do you represent her father or mother, or any
near relative?'

'She is an orphan; she has no relatives,' I said.

He looked at me steadily and said: 'I am sorry, sir, that neither I
nor a magistrate could do anything to aid you.'

'You can do nothing to aid me?' I asked angrily.

'I can do nothing to aid you, sir, in identifying a young woman you
once heard sing in the streets of London, with a lady you saw once on
the top of Snowdon.'

As I was leaving the office, he said: 'One moment, sir. I don't see
how I can take up this case for you, but I may make a suggestion. I
have an idea that you would do well to pursue inquiries among the
Gypsies.'

'Gypsies!' I said with great heat, as I left the office. 'If you knew
how I had already "pursued inquiries" among the Gypsies, you would
understand how barren is your suggestion.'

Weeks passed in this way. My aunt's ill-health became rather serious:
my mother too was still very unwell. I afterwards learnt that her
illness was really the result of the dire conflict in her breast
between the old passion of pride and the new invader remorse. There
were, no doubt, many discussions between them concerning me. I could
see plainly enough they both thought my mind was becoming unhinged.

One night, as I lay thinking over the insoluble mystery of Winifred's
disappearance, I was struck by a sudden thought that caused me to
leap from my bed. What could have led the official in Scotland Yard
to connect Winifred with Gypsies? I had simply told him of her
disappearance on Snowdon, and her reappearance afterwards near the
theatre. Not one word had I said to him about her early relations
with Gypsies. I was impatient for the daylight, in order that I might
go to Scotland Yard again. When I did so and saw the official, I
asked him without preamble what had caused him to connect the missing
girl I was seeking with the Gypsies.

'The little fancy baskets she was selling,' said he. 'They are often
made by Gypsies.'

'Of course they are,' I said, hurrying away. 'Why did I not think of
this?'

In fact I had, during our wanderings over England and Wales, often
seen Sinfi's sister Videy and Rhona Boswell weaving such baskets.
Winifred, after all, might be among the Gypsies, and the crafty Videy
Lovell might have some mysterious connection with her; for she
detested me as much as she loved the gold 'balansers' she could
wheedle out of me. Moreover, there were in England the Hungarian
Gypsies, with their notions about demented girls, and the Lovells,
owing to Sinfi's musical proclivities, were just now much connected
with a Hungarian troupe.



VII

SINFI'S  DUKKERIPEN


I

The Gypsies I had never seen since leaving them in Wales, and I knew
that by this time they were either making their circuit of the
English fairs or located in a certain romantic spot called Gypsy
Dell, near Rington Manor, the property of my kinsman Percy Aylwin,
whither they often went after the earlier fairs were over.

The next evening I went to the Great Eastern Railway station, and
taking the train to Rington I walked to Gypsy Dell, where I found the
Lovells and Boswells.

Familiar as I was with, the better class of Welsh Gypsies, the camp
here was the best display of Romany well-being I had ever seen. It
would, indeed, have surprised those who associate all Gypsy life with
the squalor which in England, and especially near London, marks the
life of the mongrel wanderers who are so often called Gypsies. In a
lovely dingle, skirted by a winding, willow-bordered river, and
dotted here and there with clumps of hawthorn, were ranged the
'living-waggons' of those trading Romanies who had accompanied the
'Griengroes' to the East Anglian and Midland fairs.

Alongside the waggons was a single large brown tent that for
luxuriousness might have been the envy of all Gypsydom. On the
hawthorn bushes and the grass was spread, instead of the poor rags
that one often sees around a so-called Gypsy encampment, snowy
linen, newly washed. The ponies and horses were scattered about the
Dell feeding.

I soon distinguished Sinfi's commanding figure near that gorgeous
living-waggon of 'orange-yellow colour with red window-blinds' in
which she had persuaded me to invest my money at Chester. On the
foot-board sat two urchins of the Lovell family, 'making believe' to
drive imaginary horses, and yelling with all their might to Rhona
Boswell, whose laugh, musical as ever, showed that she enjoyed the
game as much as the children did. Sinfi was standing on a patch of
that peculiar kind of black ash which burnt grass makes, busy with a
fire, over which a tea-kettle was hanging from the usual iron
kettle-prop. Among the ashes left by a previous fire her bantam-cock
Pharaoh was busy pecking, scratching, and calling up imaginary hens
to feast upon his imaginary 'finds.' I entered the Dell, and before
Sinfi saw me I was close to her.

She was muttering to the refractory fire as though it were a live
thing, and asking it why it refused to burn beneath the kettle. A
startled look, partly of pleasure and partly of something like alarm,
came over her face as she perceived me. I drew her aside and told her
all that had happened in regard to Winifred's appearance as a beggar
in London. A strange expression that was new to me overspread her
features, and I thought I heard her whisper to herself, 'I will, I
will.'

'I knowed the cuss 'ud ha' to ha' its way in the blood, like the bite
of a sap' [snake], she murmured to herself. 'And yit the dukkeripen
on Snowdon said, clear and plain enough, as they'd surely marry at
last. What's become o' the stolen trushul, brother--the cross?' she
inquired aloud. 'That trushul will ha' to be given to the dead man
agin, an' it'll ha' to be given back by his chavo [child] as swore to
keep watch over it. But what's it all to me?' she said in a tone of
suppressed anger that startled me. 'I ain't a Gorgie,'

'But, Sinfi, the cross cannot be buried again. The reason I have not
replaced it in the tomb,--the reason I never will replace it
there,--is that the people along the coast know now of the existence
of the jewel, and know also of my father's wishes. If it was unsafe
in the tomb when only Winnie's father knew of it, it would be a
thousandfold more unsafe now.'

'P'raps that's all the better for her an' you: the new thief takes
the cuss.'

'This is all folly,' I replied, with the anger of one struggling
against an unwelcome half-belief that refuses to be dismissed. 'It is
all moonshine-madness. I'll never do it,--not at least while I retain
my reason. It was no doubt partly for safety as well as for the other
reason that my father wished the cross to be placed in the tomb. It
will be far safer now in a cabinet than anywhere else.'

'Reia,' said Sinfi, 'you told me wonst as your great-grandmother
was a Romany named Fenella Stanley. I have axed the Scollard
about her, and what do you think he says? He says that she wur my
great-grandmother too, for she married a Lovell as died.'

'Good heavens, Sinfi! Well, I'm proud of my kinswoman.'

'And he says that Fenella Stanley know'd more about the true
dukkerin, the dukkerin of the Romanies, than anybody as were ever
heerd on.'

'She seems to have been pretty superstitious,' I said, 'by all
accounts. But what has that to do with the cross?'

'You'll put it in the tomb again.'

'Never!'

'Fenella Stanley will see arter that.'

'Fenella Stanley! Why, she's dead and dust.'

'That's what I mean; that's why she can make you do it, and will.'

'Well, well! I did not come to talk about the cross; I want to have
a quiet word with you about another matter.'

She sprang away as if in terror or else in anger. Then recovering
herself she took the kettle from the prop. I followed her to the
tent, which, save that it was made of brown blanket, looked more like
a tent on a lawn than a Gypsy-tent. All its comfort seemed, however,
to give no great delight to Videy, the cashier and female
financier-general of the Lovell family, who, in a state of absorbed
untidiness, sitting at the end of the tent upon a palliasse covered
with a counterpane of quilted cloth of every hue, was evidently
occupied in calculating her father's profits and losses at the recent
horse-fair. The moment Videy saw us she hurriedly threw the coin into
the silver tea-pot by her side, and put it beneath the counterpane,
with that instinctive and unnecessary secrecy which characterised
her, and made her such an amazing contrast both to her sister Sinfi
and to Rhona Boswell.

After Panuel had received me in his usual friendly manner, we all sat
down, partly inside the tent and partly outside, around the white
table-cloth that had been spread upon the grass. The Scollard took no
note of me; he had no eyes for any one but Rhona Boswell.

When tea was over Sinfi left the camp, and strode across the Dell
towards the river. I followed her.


II

It was not till we reached a turn in the river that is more secluded
than any other--a spot called 'Gypsy Ring,' a lovely little spot
within the hollow of birch trees and gorse--that she spoke a few
words to me, in a constrained tone. Then I said, as we sat down upon
a green hillock within the Ring: 'Sinfi, the baskets my aunt saw in
Winnie's hand when she was standing in the rain were of the very kind
that Videy makes.'

'Oh, _that's_ what you wanted to say!' said she; 'you think Videy
knows something about Winnie. But that's all a fancy o' yourn, and
it's of no use looking for Winnie any more among the Romanies. Even
supposin' you did hear the Welsh gillie--and I think it was all a
fancy--you can't make nothin' out o' them baskets as your aunt seed.
Us Romanies don't make one in a hundud of the fancy baskets as is
sold for Gypsy baskets in the streets, and besides, the hawkers and
costers what buys 'em of us sells 'em agin to other hawkers and
costers, and there ain't no tracin' on 'em.'

I argued the point with her. At last I felt convinced that I was
again on the wrong track. By this time the sun had set, and the stars
were out. I had noticed that during our talk Sinfi's attention would
sometimes seem to be distracted from the matter in hand, and I had
observed her give a little start now and then, as though listening to
something in the distance.

'What are you listening to?' I inquired at last. 'Reia,' said Sinfi,
'I've been a-listenin' to a v'ice as nobody can't hear on'y me, an'
I've bin a-seein' a face peepin' atween the leaves o' the trees as
nobody can't see on'y me; my mammy's been to me. I thought she would
come here. They say my mammy's mammy wur buried here, an' she wur the
child of Fenella, an' that's why it's called Gypsy Ring. The moment I
sat down in this Ring a mullo [spirit] come and whispered in my ear,
but I can't make out whether it's my mammy or Fenella Stanley, and I
can't make out what she said. It's hard sometimes for them as has to
gnaw their way out o' the groun' to get their words out clear.
[Footnote] Howsomever, this I do know, reia, you an' me must part. I
felt as we must part when we was in Wales togither last time, and now
I knows it.'

[Footnote: Some Romanies think that spirits rise from the ground.]

'Part, Sinfi! Not if I can prevent it.'

'Reia,' replied Sinfi emphatically, 'when I've wonst made up my mind,
you know it's made up for good an' all. When us two leaves this 'ere
Ring to-night, you'll turn your ways and I shall turn mine.'

I thought it best to let the subject drop. Perhaps by the time we had
left the Ring this mood would have passed. After a minute or so she
said,

'You needn't see no fear about not marryin' Winifred Wynne. You
_must_ marry her; your dukkeripen on Snowdon didn't show itself there
for nothink. When you two was a-settin' by the pool, a-eatin' the
breakfiss, I was a-lookin' at you round the corner of the rock. I
seed a little kindlin' cloud break away and go floatin' over your
heads, and then it shaped itself into what us Romanies calls the
Golden Hand. You know what the Golden Hand means when it comes over
two sweethearts? You don't believe it? Ask Rhona Boswell! Here she
comes a-singin' to herself. She's trying to get away from that devil
of a Scollard as says she's bound to marry him. I've a good mind to
go and give him a left-hand body-blow in the ribs and settle him for
good and all. He means mischief to the Tarno Rye, and Rhona too.
Brother, I've noticed for a long while that the Romany blood is a
good deal stronger in you than the Gorgio blood. And now mark my
words, that cuss o' your feyther's'll work itself out. You'll go to
his grave and you'll jist put that trushul back in that tomb, and
arter that, and not afore, you'll marry Winnie Wynne.'

Sinfi's creed did not surprise me: the mixture of guile and
simplicity in the Romany race is only understood by the few who know
it thoroughly: the race whose profession it is to cheat by
fortune-telling, to read the false 'dukkeripen' as being 'good enough
for the Gorgios,' believe profoundly in nature's symbols; but her
bearing did surprise me.

'Your dukkeripen will come true,' said she; 'but mine won't, for I
won't let it.'

'And what is yours?' I asked.

'That's nuther here nor there.'

Then she stood again as though listening to something, and again I
thought, as her lips moved, that I heard her whisper, 'I will, I
will.'


III

I had intended to go to London at once after leaving Gypsy Dell, but
something that Sinfi told me during our interview impelled me to go
on to Raxton Hall, which was so near. The fact that Sinfi was my
kinswoman opened up new and exciting vistas of thought.

I understood now what was that haunting sense of recognition which
came upon me when I first saw Sinfi at the wayside inn in Wales. Day
by day had proofs been pouring in upon me that the strain of Romany
blood in my veins was asserting itself with more and more force. Day
by day I had come to realise how closely, though the main current of
my blood was English, I was affined to the strange and mysterious
people among whom I was now thrown--the only people in these islands,
as it seemed to me, who would be able to understand a love-passion
like mine. And there were many things in the great race of my
forefathers which I had found not only unsympathetic to me, but
deeply repugnant. In Great Britain it is the Gypsies alone who
understand nature's supreme charm, and enjoy her largesse as it used
to be enjoyed in those remote times described in Percy Aylwin's poems
before the Children of the Roof invaded the Children of the Open Air,
before the earth was parcelled out into domains and ownerships as it
now is parcelled out. In the mind of the Gorgio, the most beautiful
landscape or the most breezy heath or the loveliest meadow-land is
cut up into allotments, whether of fifty thousand acres or of two
roods, and owned by people. Of ownership of land the Romany is
entirely unconscious. The landscape around him is part of Nature
herself, and the Romany on his part acknowledges no owner. No doubt
he yields to _force majeure_ in the shape of gamekeeper or constable,
but that is because he has no power to resist it. Nature to him is as
free and unowned by man as it was to the North American Indian in his
wigwam before the invasion of the Children of the Roof.

During the time that I was staying in Flintshire and near Capel
Curig, rambling through the dells or fishing in the brooks, it was
surprising how soon the companionship of a Gorgio would begin to pall
upon me. And here the Cymric race is just as bad as the Saxon. The
same detestable habit of looking upon nature as a paying
market-garden, the same detestable inquiry as to who was the owner of
this or that glen or waterfall, was sure at last to make me sever
from him. But as to Sinfi, her attitude towards nature, though it was
only one of the charms that endeared her to me, was not the least of
them. There was scarcely a point upon which she and I did not touch.

And what about her lack of education? Was that a drawback? Not in the
least. The fact that she knew nothing of that traditional ignorance
which for ages has taken the name of knowledge--that record of the
foolish cosmogonies upon which have been built the philosophies and
the social systems of the blundering creature Man--the fact that she
knew nothing of these gave an especial piquancy to everything she
said. I had been trying to educate myself in the new and wonderful
cosmogony of growth which was first enunciated in the sixties, and
was going to be, as I firmly believed, the basis of a new philosophy,
a new system of ethics, a new poetry, a new everything. But in
knowledge of nature as a sublime consciousness, in knowledge of the
human heart, Sinfi was far more learned than I. And believing as I
did that education will in the twentieth century consist of
unlearning, of unlading the mind of the trash previously called
knowledge, I could not help feeling that Sinfi was far more advanced,
far more in harmony than I could hope to be With the new morning of
Life of which we are just beginning to see the streaks of dawn.

'I must go and see Fenella's portrait,' I said, as I Walked briskly
towards Raxton.

When I reached Raxton Hall I seemed to startle the butler and the
servants, as though I had come from the other world.

I told the butler that I should sleep there that night, and then went
at once to the picture gallery and stood before Reynolds' famous
picture of Fenella Stanley as the Sibyl. The likeness to Sinfi was
striking. How was it that it had not previously struck me more
forcibly? The painter had evidently seized the moment when Fenella's
eyes expressed that look of the seeress which Sinfi's eyes, on
occasion, so powerfully expressed. I stood motionless before it while
the rich, warm light of evening bathed it in a rosy radiance. And
when the twilight shadows fell upon it, and when the moon again lit
it up, I stood there still. The face seemed to pass into my very
being, and Sinfi's voice kept singing in my ears, 'Fenella Stanley's
dead and dust, and that's why she can make you put that cross in
your feyther's tomb, and she will, she will.'

I left the picture and went into the library: for I bethought me of
that sheaf of Fenella's letters to my great-grandfather which he had
kept so sacredly, and which had come to me as representative of the
family. My previous slight inspection of them had shown me what a
wonderful woman she was, how full of ideas the most original and the
most wild. The moment a Gypsy-woman has been taught to write there
comes upon her a passion for letter-writing.

Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the
illiterate locutions and the eccentric orthography of Fenella's
letters and the subtle remarks and speculations upon the symbols of
nature.--the dukkeripen of the woods, the streams, the stars, and the
winds. But when I came to analyse the theories of man's place in
nature expressed in the ignorant language of this Romany heathen,
they seemed to me only another mode of expressing the mysticism of
the religious enthusiast Wilderspin, the more learned and
philosophic mysticism of my father, and the views of D'Arcy, the
dreamy painter.

As I rode back to London, I said to myself, 'What change has come
over me? What power has been gradually sapping my manhood? Why do I,
who was so self-reliant, long now so passionately for a friend to
whom to unburthen my soul--one who could give me a sympathy as deep
and true as that I got from Sinfi Lovell, and yet the sympathy of a
mind unclouded by ignorant superstitions?'

With the exception of D'Arcy, whose advice as to the disposal of the
cross had proclaimed him to be as superstitious as Sinfi herself, not
a single friend had I in all London. Indeed, besides Lord Sleaford (a
tall, burly man with the springy movement of a prize-tighter, with
blue-grey eyes, thick, close-cropped hair, and a flaxen moustache,
who had lately struck up a friendship with my mother) I had not even
an acquaintance. Cyril Aylwin, whom I had not seen since we parted in
Wales, was now on the Continent with Wilderspin. Strange as it may
seem, I looked forward with eagerness to the return of this
light-hearted jester. Cyril's sagacity and knowledge of the world had
impressed me in Wales; but his cynical attitude, whether genuine or
assumed, towards subjects connected with deep passion, had prevented
my confiding in him. He must, I knew, have gathered from Sinfi, and
from other sources, that I was mourning the loss of a Welsh girl in
humble life; but during our very brief intercourse in Wales neither
of us had mentioned the matter to the other. Now, however, in my
present dire strait I longed to call in the aid of his penetrative
mind.



VIII

ISIS AS HUMOURIST


I

On reaching London I resumed my wanderings through the London
streets. Bitter as these wanderings were, my real misery now did not
begin until I got to bed. Then began the terrible struggle of the
soul that wrestles with its ancestral fleshly prison--that prison
whose warders are the superstitions of bygone ages. 'Have you not
seen the curse literally fulfilled?' ancestral voices of the
blood--voices Romany and Gorgio--seemed whispering in my ears. 'Have
you not heard the voice of his daughter upon whose head the curse of
your dead father has fallen a beggar in the street, while not all
your love can succour her or reach her?'

And then my soul would cry out in its agony, 'Most true, Fenella
Stanley--most true, Philip Aylwin; but before I will succumb to such
a theory of the universe as yours, a theory which reason laughs at
and which laughs at reason, I will die--die by this hand of mine:
this flesh that imprisons me in a world of mocking delusion shall be
destroyed, but first the symbol itself of your wicked, cruel old
folly shall go.'

I would then leap from my bed, light a candle, unlock my cabinet,
take out the cross, and holding it aloft prepare to dash it against
the wall, when my hand would be arrested by the same ancestral
voices, Romany and Gorgio, whispering in my ears and at my heart,

'If you break that amulet, how shall you ever be able to see what
would be the effect upon Winnie's fate of its restoration to your
father's tomb?'

And then I would laugh aloud and mock the voices of Fenella Stanley
and Philip Aylwin and millions of other voices that echoed or
murmured or bellowed through half a million years, echoed or murmured
or bellowed from European halls and castles, from Gypsy tents, from
caves of palaeolithic man.

'How shall you stay the curse from working in the blood of the
accursed one?' the voices would say. And then I would laugh again
till I feared the people in the hotel would hear me and take me for a
maniac.

But then my aunt's picture of a beggar-girl standing in the rain
would fill my eyes and the whispers would grow louder than the voice
of the North Sea in the March wind: 'Look at _that_. How dare you
leave undone anything, howsoever wild, which might seem to any
one--even to an illiterate Gypsy, even to a crazy mystic--a means of
finding Winifred? What is the meaning of the great instinct which has
always conquered the soul in its direst need--which has always driven
man when in the grip of unbearable calamity to believe in powers that
are unseen? What though that scientific reason of yours tells you
that Winifred's misfortunes have nothing to do with any curse? what
though your reason tells you that all these calamities may be read as
being the perfectly natural results of perfectly natural causes? Is
the voice of man's puny reason clothed with such authority that it
dares to answer his heart, which knows nothing but that it bleeds?
The terrible facts of the case may be read in two ways. With an
inscrutable symmetry these facts may and do fit in with the universal
theory of the power of the spirit-world to execute a curse from the
grave. Look at that beggar in the street! How dare you ignore the
theory of the sorrowing soul, the logic of the lacerated heart, even
though your reason laughs it to scorn?'

And then at last my laughter would turn to moans, and, replacing the
cross in the cabinet, I would creep hack to my bed ashamed, like a
guilty thing--ashamed before myself.

But the more I felt at my throat the claws of the ancestral ogre
Superstition, the more enraged I became with myself for feeling them
there. And the auger against my ancestors' mysticism grew with the
growing consciousness that I was rapidly yielding to the very same
mysticism myself. And then I would get up again and take from my
escritoire the sheaf of Fenella Stanley's letters which I had brought
from Raxton, and read again those stories about curses, such as that
about the withering of a Romany family under a dead man's curse which
Winnie had described to me that night on the sands.


II

I was delighted to be told by Sleaford, whom I met one afternoon in
Piccadilly, that Cyril had returned to London within the last few
days. 'He is appointed artist-in-chief of the new comic paper, _The
Caricaturist,_ said Sleaford, 'and is in great feather. I have just
been calling upon him.'

'The very man I want to see,' I replied. Sleaford thereupon directed
me to Cyril's studio 'You'll find him at work,' said he, 'doin' a
caricature of Wilderspin's great picture, "Faith and Love." Mother
Gudgeon is sittin' as his model. He does everything from models, you
know.'

'Mother Gudgeon?'

'A female costermonger that he picked up some where in the slums, the
funniest woman in London: haw! haw! I promise you she'll make you
laugh when Cyril draws her out.'

He then began to talk upon the subject which interested him above all
others, the smartness and swiftness of his yacht. 'I am trying to
persuade your mother and aunt to go for a cruise with me, and I think
I shall succeed.'

He directed me to the studio, and we parted.

I found Cyril in a large and lofty studio in Chelsea, filled with the
curiously carved black furniture of Bombay, mixed, for contrast, with
a few Indian cabinets of carved and fretted ivory exquisitely
wrought. He greeted me cordially. The walls were covered with
Japanese drawings. I began by asking him about The Caricaturist.

'Well,' said he, 'now that the House of Commons has become a
bear-garden, and t'other House a waxwork show, and the intellect and
culture of the country are leaving politics to dummies and cads, how
can the artistic mind condescend to caricature the political world--a
world that has not only ceased to be intelligent, but has even ceased
to be funny? The quarry of _The Caricaturist_ will be literature,
science, and art. Instead of wasting artistic genius upon such small
fry as premiers, diplomatists, and cabinet ministers, our cartoons
will be caricatures of the pictures of Millais, Leighton,
Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Watts, Sandys,
Whistler, Wilderspin: our letterpress will be Aristophanic parodies
of Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne; game
worth flying at, my boy! The art-world is in a dire funk, I can tell
you, for the artistic epidermis has latterly grown genteel and thin.'

Already I was beginning to ask myself whether it was possible to make
a confidant of this inscrutable cynic. 'You are fond of Oriental
things?' I said, wishing to turn the subject. I looked round at the
Chinese, Indian, and Japanese monstrosities scattered about the room.

'That,' said he, pointing to a picture of a woman (apparently drunk)
who was amusing herself by chasing butterflies, while a number of
broad-faced, mischievous-looking children were teasing her--'that is
the masterpiece of Hokusai. The legend in the corner is "Kiyo-jo cho
ni tawamureru," which, according to the lying Japanese scholars,
means nothing more than "A cracked woman chasing butterflies." It was
left for me to discover that it represents Yoka, the goddess of Fun,
sportively chasing the butterfly souls of men, while the urchins, the
little Yokas, are crying, "Ma! you're screwed."'

'But what are these quaint figures?' I asked, pointing to certain
drawings of an obese Japanese figure, grinning with lazy good-humour
above several of the cabinets.

'Hotei, the fat god of enjoyment.'

'A Japanese god?' I asked.

'Yes, nothing artistic is quite right now unless it has a savour of
blue mould or Japan. Wonderful people, the Japanese, to have
discovered the Jolly Hotei. And here is Hotei's wife, the
goddess-queen Yoka herself--the real masquerader behind that mystic
veil which has so enveloped and bemuddled the mind of poor
Wilderspin. She is to figure in the first number of _The
Caricaturist_.'

He pointed to an object I had only partially observed: a broad-faced
burly woman, of about forty-five years of age, in an eccentric dress
of Japanese silks, standing on the model-throne between two lay
figures. 'Good heavens!' I exclaimed, 'why, she's alive.'

'An' kickin', sir,' said a voice that was at once strident and
unctuous. Owing to the almond shape of her sparkling black eyes and
the flatness of her nose, the bridge of which had been broken (most
likely in childhood), she looked absurdly like a Japanese woman, save
that upon her quaintly-cut mouth, curving slightly upwards horse-shoe
fashion, there was that twitter of humorous alertness which is
perhaps rarely seen in perfection except among the lower orders,
Celtic or Saxon, of London. Her build was that of a Dutch
fisher-woman. The set of her head on her muscular neck showed her to
be a woman of immense strength. But still more was her great physical
power indicated by her hands, the fingers of which seemed to have a
grip like that of an eagle's claws.

I then perceived upon an easel a large drawing. 'I have not seen
Wilderspin's "Faith and Love,"' I said; 'but this, I see, must be a
caricature of it.'

In it the woman figured as Isis, grinning beneath a veil held over
her head by two fantastically-dressed figures--one having the face of
Darwin, the other the face of Wilderspin.

'Allow me,' said Cyril, 'to introduce you to the Goddess Yoka, the
true Isis or goddess of bohemianism and universal joke, who, when she
had the chance of I making a rational and common-sense universe,
preferred amusing herself with flamingoes, dromedaries, ring-taile
monkeys, and men.'

'Pardon me,' I said; 'I merely called to see you. Good afternoon.'

'Allow me,' said he, turning to the woman, 'to introduce to your
celestial majesty Mr. Henry Aylwin, a kinsman of mine, whose
possessions in Little Egypt are as brilliant (judging from the
colours of his royal waggon) as are his possessions in Philistia.'

The woman made me a curtsey of much gravity. 'And allow me to
introduce _you_,' he said, turning to me, 'to the real original
Natura Mystica,--she who for ages upon ages has been trying by her
funny goings-on to teach us that "the _Principium hylarchicum_ of the
cosmos" (to  use the simple phraseology of a great spiritualistic
painter) is the benign principle of joke.'

The woman made me another curtsey. 'You forget your exalted position,
Mrs. Gudgeon,' said Cyril; 'when a mystic goddess-queen is so
condescending as to curtsey she should be careful not to bend too
low. Man is a creature who can never with safety be treated with too
much respect.'

'We's all so modest in Primrose Court, that's the wust on us,'
replied the woman. 'But, Muster Cyril, sir, I don't think you've
noticed that the queen's _t'other_ eye's got dry now.'

Cyril gravely poured her out a glass of foaming ale from a bottle
that stood upon a little Indian bamboo-table, and handed it to her
carefully over the silks, saying to me,

'Her majesty's elegant way of hinting that she likes to wet both
eyes!'

Such foolery as this and at such a time irritated me sorely; but
there was no help for it now. Whether I should or should not open to
him the subject that had taken me thither, I must, I saw, let him
have his humour till the woman was dismissed.

'And now, goddess,' said he, 'while I am doing justice to the design
of your nose--'

'You can't do that, sir,' interjected the creature, 'it's sich a
beauty, ha! ha! I allus say that when I do die, I shall die
a-larfin'. They calls me "Jokin' Meg" in Primrose Court. I shall die
a-larfin', they say in Primrose Court, and so I shall--unless I die
a-cryin',' she added in an utterly different and tragic voice which
greatly struck me.

'While I am trying to do justice to that beautiful bridge you must
tell my friend about yourself and your daughter, and how you and she
first became two shining lights in the art world of London.'

'You makes me blush,' said the woman, 'an' blow me if blushin' ain't
bin an' made _t'other_ eye dry.'

She then took another glass of ale, grinned, shook herself, as though
preparing for an effort, and said,

'Well you must know, sir, as my name's Meg Gudgeon, leaseways that
was my name till my darter chrissened me Mrs. Knocker, and I lives in
Primrose Court, Great Queen Street, and my reg'lar perfession is
a-sellin' coffee "so airly in the mornin'," and I've got a darter as
ain't quite so 'ansom as me, bein' the moral of her father as is over
the water a-livin' in the fine 'Straley. And you must know, sir, that
one of summer's day there comes a knock at our door as sends my 'eart
into my mouth and makes me cry out, "The coppers, by jabbers!" and
when I goes down and opens the door, lo! and behold, there stan's a
chap wi' great goggle eyes, dressed all in shiny black, jest like a
Quaker.' (Here she made a noise between a laugh and a cough.) 'I
allus say that when I do die I shall die a-larfin'--unless I die
a-cryin',' she added, in the same altered voice that had struck me
before.

'Well, mother,' said Cyril, 'and what did the shiny Quaker say?'

'They calls me "Jokin' Meg" in Primrose Court. The shiny Quaker, 'e
axes if my name is Gudgeon. "Well," sez I, "supposin' as my name _is_
Gudgeon,--I don't say it is," says I, "but supposin' as it is,--what
then?" sez I. "But _is_ that your name?" sez 'e. "Supposin' as it
was," sez I, "what then?" "Will you answer my simple kervestion?" sez
'e. "Is your name Mrs. Gudgeon, or ain't it not?" sez 'e. "An' will
_you_  answer _my_ simple kervestion, Mr. Shiny Quaker?" sez I.
"Supposin' my name was Mrs. Gudgeon,--I don't say it _is_, but
supposin' it was,--what's that to you?" sez I, for I thought my poor
bor Bob what lives in the country had got into trouble agin and had
sent for me.'

'Go on,  mother,'  said Cyril, 'what did the shiny Quaker say then?'

'"Well then," sez 'e, "if your name is Mrs. Gudgeon, there is a
pootty gal as is, I am told, a-livin' along o' you." "Oh, oh, my fine
shiny Quaker gent," sez I, an' I flings the door wide open an' there
I stan's in the doorway, "it's _her_ you wants, is it?" sez I. "And
pray what does my fine shiny Quaker gent want wi' my darter?" "Your
darter?" sez 'e, an opens 'is mouth like this, and shets it agin like
a rat-trap. "Yis, my darter," sez I. "I s'pose," sez I, "you think
she ain't 'ansom enough to be my darter. No more she ain't," sez I;
"but she takes arter her father, an' werry sorry she is for it," sez
I. "I want to put her in the way of 'arnin' some money," sez 'e. "Oh,
_do_ you?" sez I. "How very kind! I'm sure it does a pore woman's
'eart good to see how kind you gents is to us pore women's pootty
darters," sez I,--"even shiny Quaker gents as is generally so quiet.
You're not the fust shiny gent," sez I, "as 'ez followed 'er 'um, I
can tell you,--not the fust by a long way; but up to now," sez I,
"I've allus managed to send you all away with a flea in your ears,
cuss you for a lot of wicious warm exits, young and old," sez I, "an'
if you don't get out," sez I--"My good woman, you mistake my
attentions," sez 'e. "Oh no, I don't," sez I, "not a bit on it. It's
sich ole sinners as you in your shiny black coats," sez I, "as I
never _do_ mistake, and if you don't git out there's a pump-'andle
behind this werry door, as my poor bor Bob brought up from the
country for me to sell for him--" "My good woman," sez 'e, "I am a
hartist," sez 'e. "What's that?" sez I. "A painter," sez 'e. "A
painter, air you? you don't look it," sez I. "P'raps it's holiday
time with  ye,"  sez I, "and that makes you look so varnishy. Well,
and what do painters more nor any other trade want with pore women's
pootty darters?" sez I,--"more nor plumbers nor glaziers, nor
bricklayers, for the matter of that?" sez I. "But I ain't a
'ousepainter," sez 'e; "I paints picturs, and I want this gal to set
as a moral," sez 'e. "A moral! an' what's a moral?" sez I. "You ain't
a-goin' to play none o' your shiny-coat larks wi' my pootty darter,"
sez I. "I wants to paint her portrait," sez 'e, "an' then put it in a
pictur." "Oh," sez I, "you wants to paint her portrait 'cause she's
such a pootty gal, an' then you wants to make believe you drawed it
out of your own 'ead, an' sell it," sez I. "Oh, but you're a downy
one, you are, an' no mistake," sez I. "But I likes you none the wuss
for that. I likes a downy chap, an' I don't see no objection to that;
but how much will you give to paint my pootty darter?" sez I. "P'raps
I'd better come in," sez he. "P'raps you 'ad, if we're a-comin' to
bisniss," sez I; "so jest make a long leg an' step over them
dirty-nosed child'n o' Mrs. Mix's, a-settin' on my doorstep, an' I
dessay we sha'n't quarrel over a 'undud p'un' or two," sez I. An'
then I bust out a-larfin' agin--I shall die a-larfin'.' And then she
added suddenly in the same tone of sadness, 'if I don't die
a-cryin'.'

'Really, mother,' said Cyril, 'it is very egotistical of you to
interrupt your story with prophecies about the mood in which you will
probably shuffle off the Gudgeon coil and take to Gudgeon wings. It
is the shiny Quaker we want to know about.'

'And then the shiny Quaker comes in,' said the woman, 'and I shets
the door, being be'ind 'im, and that skears _'im_ for a moment, till
I bust out a-larfin': "Oh, you needn't be afeard," sez I;--"when we
burgles a Quaker in Primrose Court we never minces 'im for
sossingers, 'e's so 'ily in 'is flavour." Well, sir, to cut a long
story short, I agrees to take my pootty darter to the Quaker gent's
studero; an' I takes 'er nex' day, an' 'e puts her in a pictur. But
afore long,' continued the old woman, leering round at Cyril, 'lo!
and behold, a young swell, p'raps a young lord in disguise (I don't
want to be pussonal, an' so I sha'n't tell his name), 'e comes into
that studero one day when I was a-settlin' up with the Quaker gent
for the week's pay, an' he sets an' admires me, till I sets an'
blushes as I'm a-blushin' at this werry moment; an' when I gits 'ome,
I sez to Polly Onion (that's a pal o' mine as lives on the ground
floor), I sez, "Poll, bring my best lookin'-glass out o' my bowdore,
an' let's have a look at my old chops, for I'm blowed if there ain't
a young swell, p'raps a young lord in disguise, as 'ez fell 'ead over
ears in love with me." And sure enough when I goes back to the
studero the werry nex' time, my young swell 'e sez to me, "It's your
own pootty face as I wants for _my_ moral. I dessay your darter's a
stunner--I ain't seen her yit--but she cain't be nothin' to you." And
I sez to 'im, "In course she ain't, for she takes arter her father's
family, pore gal, and werry sorry she is for it."'

At this  moment a servant entered and said Mr. Wilderspin was waiting
in the hall.

All hope having now fled of my getting a private word
with Cyril that afternoon, I was preparing to slip I away; but he
would not let me go.

'I don't want Wilderspin to know about the caricature till it is
finished,' whispered he to me; 'so I told Bunner never to let him
come suddenly upon me. You'd better be off, mother,' he said to the
old woman, 'and come again to-morrow.'

She bustled up and, throwing off the Japanese finery, left the room,
while Cyril removed the drawing from the easel and hid it away.

'Isn't she delightful?' ejaculated Cyril.

'Delightful! What, that old wretch? All that interests me in her is
the change in her voice after she says she will die laughing.'

'Oh,' said Cyril, 'she seems to be troubled with a drunken son in the
country somewhere, who is always getting into scrapes. Wilderspin's
in love with her daughter, a wonderfully beautiful girl, the finding
of whom at the very moment when he was in despair for the want of the
right model gave the final turn to his head. He thinks she was sent
to him from Paradise by his mother's spirit! He does, I assure you.'

'Wilderspin in love with a model!'

'Oh, not _a la_ Raphael.'

'If you think Wilderspin to be in love with any woman, you little
know what love is,' I exclaimed. 'He is in love with his art and with
that beautiful memory of his mother's self-sacrifice which has
shattered his reason, but built up his genius. Except as a means
towards the production of those pictures that possess him, no model
is anything more to him than his palette-knife. Shall you be alone
this evening?'

'This evening I dine at Sleaford's. To-morrow I am due in Paris.'

Wilderspin, who had now entered the studio, seemed genuinely pleased
to see me again, and told me that in a few days he should be able to
borrow 'Faith and Love' of its owner for the purpose of beginning a
replica of it, and hoped then to have the pleasure of showing it to
me.

'I observed Mrs. Gudgeon in the hall,' said he to Cyril. 'To think
that so unlovely a woman should, through an illusion of the senses,
seem to be the mere material mother of her who was sent to me from
the spirit-world in the very depths of my despair! Wonderful are the
ways of the spirit-world. Ah, Mr. Aylwin, did it never occur to you
how important is the expression of the model from whom you work?'

'I am not a painter,' I said, 'only an amateur,' trying to stop a
conversation that might run on for an hour.

'It has never occurred to you! That is strange. Let me read to you a
passage upon this subject just published in _The Art Review_, written
by the great painter D'Arcy.'

He then took from Cyril's table a number of _The Art Review_, and
began to read aloud:--

  It is a curious thing that not only the general public, but the art
  connoisseurs and the writers upon art, although they know full well
  how a painter goes to work in painting a picture, speak and write
  as though they thought that the head of a beautiful woman was drawn
  from the painter's inner consciousness, instead of from the real
  woman who sits to him as a model. Notwithstanding all the technical
  excellence of Raphael, his extraordinary good luck in finding the
  model that suited his genius had very much to do with his enormous
  success and fame. And with all Michael Angelo's instinct for
  grandeur, if he had not been equally lucky in regard to models, he
  could never adequately have expressed that genius. It is impossible
  to give vitality to the painting of any head unless the artist has
  nature before him; this is why no true judge of pictures was ever
  deceived as to the difference between an original and a copy. It
  stands to reason that in every picture of a head, howsoever the
  model's features may be idealised, Nature's own handiwork and
  mastery must dominate.

Here Cyril gently took the magazine from Wilderspin's hand, but did
not silence him. 'As I told you in Wales,' said he to me, 'I had an
abundance of imagination, but I wanted some model in order to realise
it. I could never meet a face that came anything nigh my own ideal of
expression as the purely spiritual side of the beauty of woman; and
until I did that I knew that I should achieve nothing whereby the
world might recognise a new power in art. In vain did I try to
idealise such faces as did not please me. And this was because
nothing could satisfy me but the perfect type of expression which not
even Leonardo nor any other painter in the world had found--the true
Romantic type.'

'I understand you, Mr. Wilderspin,' I said. 'This I perfect type of
expression you eventually found--'

'In the daughter,' said Cyril, 'of the goddess Gudgeon.'

'By the blessing of Mary Wilderspin in heaven,' said Wilderspin.

And then the talk between the two friends ran upon artistic matters,
and I heard no more, for my mind was wandering up and down the London
streets.

Wilderspin and I left the house together. As we walked along, side by
side, I said to him: 'You spoke just now of your mother's blessing.
Am I really to understand that you in an age like this believe in the
power of human blessings and human curses?'

'Do I believe in blessings and curses, Mr. Aylwin?' said Wilderspin
solemnly. 'You are asking me whether I am with or without what your
sublime father calls the "most powerful of the primary instincts of
man." He tells us in _The Veiled Queen_ that "Even in this material
age of ours there is not a single soul that does not in its inner
depths acknowledge the power of the unseen world. The most hardened
materialist," says he, "believes in what he calls sometimes 'luck'
and sometimes 'fortune.'" Let me advise you, Mr. Aylwin, to study the
voice of your inspired father. I will send a set of his writings to
your hotel to-morrow. And, Mr. Aylwin, my duty compels me to speak
very plainly to you upon a subject that has troubled me since I had
the honour of meeting you in Wales. There is but one commandment in
the decalogue to which a distinct promise of reward is attached; it
is that which bids us honour our fathers and our mothers. Good-day,
sir.'



IX

THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL


I

Shortly after this I met my mother at our solicitor's office
according to appointment. As she was on the eve of departing for the
Continent, it was necessary that various family matters should be
arranged. On the day following, as I was about to leave my hotel to
call at Cyril's studio, rather doubtful, after the frivolity I had
lately witnessed, as to whether or not I should unburden my heart to
such a man, he entered my room in company with Wilderspin, the latter
carrying a parcel of books.

'I have brought your father's works,' Wilderspin said.

'Thank you very much,' I replied, taking the books. 'And when am I to
call and see your picture? Have you yet got it back from the owner?'

'"Faith and Love" is now in my studio,' he replied; 'but I will ask
you not to call upon me yet for a few days. I hope to be too busily
engaged upon another picture to afford a moment to any one save the
model--that is,' he added with a sigh, 'should she make her
appearance.'

'A picture of his called "Ruth and Boaz,"' interposed Cyril.
'Wilderspin is repainting the face from that favourite model of his
of whom you heard so much in Wales. But the fact is the model is
rather out of sorts at this moment, and Wilderspin is fearful that
she may not turn up to-day. Hence the melancholy you see on his face.
I try to console him, however, by assuring him that the daughter of a
mamma with such a sharp appreciation of half-crowns as the lady you
saw at my studio the other day is sure to turn up in due time as
sound as a roach.'

Wilderspin shook his head gravely.

'Good heavens!' I muttered, 'when am I to hear the last of painters'
models?' Then turning to Wilderspin, I said,

'This is the model to whom you feel so deeply indebted?'

'Deeply indebted, indeed!' exclaimed he in a fervid tone, taking a
chair and playing with his hat between his knees, in his previous
fashion when beginning one of his monologues. 'When I began "Faith
and Love" I worked for weeks and months and years, having but one
thought, how to give artistic rendering to the great idea of the
Renascence of Wonder in Art symbolised in the vignette in your
father's third edition. I was very poor then; but to live upon bread
and water and paint a great picture, and know that you are being
watched by loving eyes above,--there is no joy like that. I found a
model--a fine and beautiful woman, the same magnificent blonde who
sat for so many of the Master's greatest pictures. For a long time my
work delighted me; but after awhile a suspicion, and then a sickening
dread, came upon me that all was not well with the picture. And then
the withering truth broke in upon me, the scales fell from my
eyes--the model's face was beautiful, but it was not right; the
expression I wanted was as far off as ever; there was but one right
expression in the world, and that I could not find. Ah! is there any
pain like that of discovering that all the toil of years has been in
vain, that the best you can do--the best that the spiritual world
permits you to do--is as far off the goal as when you began?'

'And so you failed after all, Mr. Wilderspin?' I said, anxious to get
him away so that I might talk to Cyril alone upon the one subject at
my heart.

'I told the model I should want her no more,' said Wilderspin, 'and
for two days and nights I sat in the studio in a dream, and could get
nothing to pass my lips but bread and water. Then it was that Mary
Wilderspin, my mother, remembered me, blessed me--sent me a
spiritual body--'

'For God's sake!' I whispered to Cyril, 'take the good madman away;
you don't know how his prattle harrows me just now.'

'Ah! never,' said Wilderspin, 'shall I forget that sunny morning when
was first revealed to me--'

'My dear fellow,' said Cyril, 'to tell the adventures of that sunny
morning would, as I know from experience, keep us here for the next
three hours. So, as I must not miss my train, and as you cannot spare
a second from "Ruth and Boaz," come along.'

While I was accompanying them through the corridors of the hotel,
Cyril said: 'You say he is not in love with his model? Don't you see
the sulky looks he gives me? I was the innocent cause of an unlucky
catastrophe with her. I'll tell you about that, however, another
time. Good-bye; I'm off to Paris.'

'When you return to London,' I said to Cyril, 'I wish to consult you
upon, a matter that concerns me deeply.'


II

On re-entering my room, as I stood and gazed at my father's book _The
Veiled Queen_, I understood something about that fascination which
the bird feels who goes fluttering to the serpent's jaws from sheer
repulsion. 'Am I indeed,' I asked myself, 'that same Darwinian
student who in Switzerland not long since turned over in scorn these
pages, where are enshrined superstitious stories as gross as any of
those told in Fenella Stanley's ignorant letters?'

In a chapter on 'Love and Death' certain passages showed me how great
must have been the influence of this book on Wilderspin, and I no
longer wondered at what the painter had told me in Wales. I will give
one passage here, because it had a strange effect on my imagination,
as will be soon seen:

'There is an old Babylonian tablet of Nin-ki-gal, the Queen of Death,
whose abode the tablet thus describes:--

     To the house men enter, but cannot depart from;
     To the road men go, but cannot return;
     The abode of darkness and famine,
     Where earth is their food--their nourishment clay.
     Light is not seen; in darkness they dwell:
     Ghosts, like birds, flutter their wings there;
     On the gate and the gate-posts the dust lies undisturbed.'

Another part of the inscription describes Nin-ki-gal on her throne
scattering over the earth the 'Seeds of Life and Death,' and chanting
her responses to the Sibyl, and to the prayers of the shapes kneeling
around her, the dead gods and the souls of all the sons of men. And I
often wonder whether my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, had any
traditional knowledge of the Queen of Death when she had her portrait
painted as the Sibyl. But whether she had or not, I never think of
this Babylonian Sibyl kneeling before Nin-ki-gal, surrounded by gods
and men, without seeing in the Sibyl's face the grand features of
Fenella Stanley.

                THE SIBYL.

     What answer, O Nin-ki-gal?
     What answer, O Nin-ki-gal?
     Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

                NIN-KI-GAL

       Life's fountain flows,
     And still the drink is Death's;
       Life's garden blows,
     And still 'tis Ashtoreth's; [Footnote]
       But all is Nin-ki-gal's.
     I lent the drink of Day
       To man and beast;
     I lent the drink of Day
       To gods for feast;
     I poured the river of Night
       On gods surceased:
     Their blood was Nin-ki-gal's.

[Footnote: Hathor.]

                THE SIBYL.

     What sowest thou, Nin-ki-gal?
     What growest thou, Nin-ki-gal?
     Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

                NIN-KI-GAL.

       Life-seeds I sow--
     To reap the numbered breaths;
       Fair flowers I grow--
     And hers, red Ashtoreth's;
       Yea, all are Nin-ki-gal's!

                THE SIBYL.

     What knowest thou, Nin-ki-gal?
     What showest thou, Nin-ki-gal?
     Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

                NIN-KI-GAL.

       Nor king nor slave I know,
     Nor tribes, nor shibboleths;
       But Life-in-Death I know--
     Yea, Nin-ki-gal I know--
       Life's Queen and Death's.

And what was the effect upon me of these communings with the
ancestors whose superstitions I have, perhaps, been throughout this
narrative treating in a spirit that hardly becomes their descendant?

The best and briefest way of answering this question is to confess
not what I thought, as I went on studying my father's book, its
strange theories and revelations, but what I did. I read the book all
day long: I read it all the next day. I cannot say what days passed.
One night I resumed my wanderings in the streets for an hour or two,
and then returned home and went to bed,--but not to sleep. For me
there was no more sleep till those ancestral voices could be
quelled--till that sound of Winnie's song in the street could be
stopped in my ears. For very relief from them I again leapt out of
bed, lit a candle, unlocked the cabinet, and taking out the amulet,
proceeded to examine the I facets as I did once before when I heard
in the Swiss cottage these words of my stricken father:--

'Should you ever come to love as I have loved, you will find that
materialism is intolerable--is hell itself--to the heart that has
known a passion like mine. You will find that it is madness, Hal,
madness, to believe in the word "never"! You will find that you
_dare_ not leave untried any creed, howsoever wild, that offers the
heart a ray of hope.'

And then while the candle burnt out dead in the socket I sat in a
waking dream.


III

The bright light of morning was pouring through the window. I gave a
start of horror, and cried, 'Whose face?' Opposite to me there seemed
to be sitting on a bed the figure of a man with a fiery cross upon
his breast. That strange wild light upon the face, as it the pains at
the heart were flickering up through the flesh--where had I seen it?
For a moment when, in Switzerland, my father bared his bosom to me,
that ancestral flame had flashed up into his dull lineaments. But
upon the picture of 'The Sibyl' in the portrait-gallery that
illumination was perpetual!

'It is merely my own reflex in a looking-glass,' I exclaimed.

Without knowing it I had slung the cross round my neck.

And then Sinfi Lovell's voice seemed murmuring in my ears, 'Fenella
Stanley's dead and dust, and that's why she can make you put that
cross in your feyther's tomb, and she will, she will.'

I turned the cross round: the front of it was now next to my skin.
Sharp as needles were those diamond and ruby points as I sat and
gazed in the glass. Slowly a sensation arose on my breast, of pain
that was a pleasure wild and new. _I was feeling the facet_. But the
tears trickling down, salt, through my moustache tears of laughter;
for Sinfi Lovell seemed again murmuring, 'For good or for ill, you
must dig deep to bury your daddy.'

What thoughts and what sensations were mine as I sat there, pressing
the sharp stones into my breast, thinking of her to whom the sacred
symbol had come, not as a blessing, but as a curse--what agonies were
mine as I sat there sobbing the one word 'Winnie,'--could be
understood by myself alone, the latest blossom of the passionate
blood that for generations had brought bliss and bale to the Aylwins.

*     *     *     *     *

I cannot tell what I felt and thought, but only what I did. And while
I did it my reason was all the time scoffing at my heart (for whose
imperious behoof the wild, mad things I am about to record were
done)--scoffing, as an Asiatic malefactor will sometimes scoff at the
executioner whose pitiless and conquering saw is severing his
bleeding body in twain. I arose and murmured ironically to Fenella
Stanley as I wrapped the cross in a handkerchief and placed it in a
hand-valise: 'Secrecy is the first thing for us sacrilegists to
consider, dear Sibyl, in placing a valuable jewel in a tomb in a
deserted church. To take any one into our confidence would be
impossible; we must go alone. But to open the tomb and, close it
again, and leave no trace of what has been done, will require all our
skill. And as burglars' jemmies are not on open sale we must buy, on
our way to the railway-station, screw-drivers, chisels, a hammer, and
a lantern; for who should know better than you, dear Sibyl, that the
palace of Nin-ki-gal is dark?'


IV

As I hurried towards the Great Eastern Railway station, I felt like a
horse drawn by a Gypsy whisperer to do something against his own
will, and yet in the street I stopped to buy the tools. Reaching
Dullingham in the afternoon, I lunched there; and as I walked thence
along the cliff, towards Raxton, I became more calm and collected. I
determined not to go near the Hall, lest my movements should be
watched by the servants. The old churchyard was full of workmen of
the navvy kind, and I learned that for the safety of the public it
had now become necessary to hurl down upon the sands some enormous
masses of the cliff newly disintegrated by the land-springs. I
descended the gangway at Flinty Point, and concealing my implements
behind a boulder in the cliff, ascended Needle Point, and went into
the town.

I had previously become aware, from conversations with my mother,
that Wynne had been succeeded as custodian of the old church by
Shales, the humpbacked tailor, and I apprehended no difficulty in
getting the keys of the church and crypt from my simple-minded
acquaintance, without arousing his suspicions as to my mission.

Therefore I went at once to the tailor's shop, but found that Shales
was out, attending an annual Odd-Fellows' carousal at Graylingham.
Consequently I was obliged to open my business to his mother, a far
shrewder person, and one who might be much more difficult to deal
with. However, the fact of the navvies being at work so close to a
church whose chancel belonged to my family afforded an excellent
motive for my visit. But before I could introduce the subject to Mrs.
Shales, I had to listen to an exhaustive chronicle of Raxton and
Graylingham doings since I had left. Hence by the time I quitted her
(with a promise to return the keys in the morning) the sun was
setting.

But, as I walked along Wilderness Road towards the church, a new and
unexpected difficulty presented itself to my mind. I could not,
without running the risk of an interruption, enter the church till
after the Odd-Fellows had all returned from Graylingham, as Shales
and his companions would have to pass along Wilderness Road, which
skirts the churchyard. Shales himself was as short-sighted as a bat;
but his companions had the usual long-sight of agriculturists, and
would descry the slightest movement in the church-yard, or any
glimmer of light at the church windows.

I would have postponed my enterprise till the morrow; but another
important appointment at the office of our solicitor with my mother,
precluded the possibility of this. So my visit to the catacomb must
perforce be late at night.

Accordingly I descended the cliff and waited to hear the return of
the carousers. There I sat down upon the well-remembered boulder,
lost in recollections of all that had passed on those sands, while
over the sea the night spread like the widening, darkening wings of
an enormous spectral bird, whose brooding voice was the drone of the
waves as they came nearer and nearer. Then I began to think of what
lay before me, of the strangeness and wildness of my life.

Then I recalled, with a shudder I could not repress, those sepulchral
chambers beneath the church, which, owing, I believe, to the
directions in an ancestor's will, had been the means of saving it
from demolition after a large portion of the churchyard bad been
condemned as dangerous. Raxton church is the only one along the coast
that can boast a crypt: all the churches are Perpendicular in style,
too late for crypts; a fact which is supposed to indicate that Raxton
was, in very early times, a seaside town of great importance; for the
crypt is much older than the church, and of an entirely different
kind of architecture. It was once a depository for the bones of
Danish warriors killed before the Norman Conquest; it extends not
only beneath the chancel, as in most cases, but beneath both the
transepts. The vaulting (supported partly on low columns of
remarkable beauty and partly on the basement wall of the church) is
therefore of unusual extent. The external door in the churchyard is
now hidden by drifted sand and mould. Many years ago, to give place
to the tombs and coffins of my family, the bones of the old Danes
were piled together in various corners; and the thought of these
bones called up the picture of the abode of 'Nin-ki-gal,' the Queen
of Death,

       Ghosts, like birds, flutter their wings there;
       On the gate and the gate-posts the dust lies undisturbed.

Then my mind began to make pictures for itself of my father lying in
his coffin. I have, I think, already said that his body had been
embalmed, in order to allow of its being conveyed from Switzerland to
England. Therefore I had no dread of being confronted by that
attribute of Death alluded to by D'Arcy which is the most cruel and
terrible of all--corruption. But then what change should I find in
the _expression_ of those features which on the day of the interment
had looked so calm? A thrill ran through my frame as I pictured
myself raising the coffin-lid, and finding expressed upon the face,
in language more appalling than any malediction in articulate
speech--the curse!

At about ten o'clock I mounted the gangway and waited behind a
deserted bungalow built for Fenella Stanley till I should hear the
Odd-Fellows returning. In a few minutes I heard them approaching.
They were singing snatches of songs they had been entertained with at
Graylingham, and chatting and laughing as they went down Wilderness
Road towards Raxton. As they passed the bungalow and adjoining mill
there was a silence.

I heard one man say: ''Ez Tom Wynne's ghooast bin seen here o' late?'

'Nooa, but the Squoire's 'ez,' said another.

'_I_ say they've both on 'em bin seed,' exclaimed a third voice,
which I recognised to be that of old Lantoff of the 'Fishing
Smack'--'leaseways, if they ain't bin seed they've bin 'eeared. One
Saturday arternoon old Sal Gunn wur in the church a-cleanin' The Hall
brasses, an' jist afore sundown, as she wur a-comin' away, she
'eeared a awful scrimmage an squealin' in the crypt, and she 'eeared
the v'ice o' the Squoire a-callin' out, and she 'eeared Tom Wynne's
v'ice a-cussin' an' a-swearin' at 'im. And more nor that, Sal told me
that on the night when the Squoire wur buried, she seed Tom
a-draggin' the Squoire's body along the churchyard to the cliff; only
she never spoke on it at the time. And Sal says she larnt in a dream
that the moment as Tom went and laid 'is 'and on that 'ere dimind
cross in the coffin, up springs Squoire and claps 'old o' Tom's
throat, and Tom takes 'old on him, and drags him out o' the church,
meanin' to chuck him over the cliffs, when God o' mighty, as wur
a-keepin' 'is eye on Tom all the time, he jist lets go o' the cliffs
and down they falls, and kills Tom, an' buries him an' Squoire tew.'

'Did you say Sal seed all that in a dream? or did she see it in ole
ale, Muster Lantoff?' said Shales.

'Well,' replied Lantoff, as the party turned past the bungalow,
'p'raps it wur ole ale as made me see in this very bungaler when I
wur a bor the ghooast o' the great Gypsy lady whose pictur hangs up
at the Hall, her as they used to call the old Squoire's Witch-wife.'
Soon the singing and laughing were renewed; and I stood and listened
to the sounds till they died away in the distance. Then I unlocked
the church door and entered.


V

As I walked down an aisle, the echoes of my footsteps seemed almost
loud enough to be heard on the Wilderness Road. No one could have a
more contemptuous disbelief in ghosts than I, and yet the man's words
about the ghost of Fenella Stanley haunted me. When I reached the
heavy nailed door leading down to the crypt, I lit the lantern. The
rusty key turned so stiffly in the lock, that, to relieve my hands
(which were burdened with the implements I had brought), I slung the
hair-chain of the cross around my neck, intending merely to raise the
coffin-lid sufficiently high to admit of my slipping the amulet in.

Having, with much difficulty, opened the door, I entered the crypt.
The atmosphere, though not noisome, was heavy, and charged with an
influence that worked an extraordinary effect upon my brain and
nerves. It was as though my personality were becoming dissipated,
until at last it was partly the reflex of ancestral experiences.
Scarcely had this mood passed before a sensation came upon me of
being fanned as if by clammy bat-like wings; and then the idea seized
me that the crypt scintillated with the eyes of a malignant foe. It
was as if the curse which, until I heard Winnie a beggar singing in
the street, had been to me but a collocation of maledictory words,
harmless save in their effect upon her superstitious mind, had here
assumed an actual corporeal shape. In the uncertain light shed by the
lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an
ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the
features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the
leer of the old woman I had seen in Cyril's studio.

'It is an illusion,' I said, as I closed my eyes to shut it out; 'it
is an illusion, born of opiate fumes or else of an over-taxed brain
and an exhausted stomach.' Yet it disturbed me as much as if my
reason had accepted it as real. Against this foe I seemed to be
fighting towards my father's coffin as a dreamer lights against a
nightmare, and At last I fell over one of the heaps of old Danish
bones in a corner of the crypt. The candle fell from my lantern, and
I was in darkness. As I sat there I passed into a semi-conscious
state. I saw sitting at the apex of a towering pyramid, built of
phosphorescent human bones that reached far, far above the stars, the
'Queen of Death, Nin-ki-gal,' scattering seeds over the earth below.
At the pyramid's base knelt the suppliant figure of a Sibyl pleading
with the Queen of Death:

       What answer, O Nin-ki-gal?
       Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

And the Sibyl's face was that of Fenella Stanley--her voice was that
of Sinfi Lovell.

And then from that dizzy height seemed to come a cackling laugh:--

'You makes me blush, an' blow me if blushin' ain't bin an' made
_t'other_ eye dry. I lives in Primrose Court, Great Queen Street, an'
my reg'lar perfession is a-sellin' coffee "so airly in the mornin',"
and I've got a darter as ain't quite so 'ansom as me, bein' the moral
of her father.'

And now in my vision I perceived that Nin-ki-gal's face was that of
the old woman I had seen in Cyril's studio, and that she was dressed
in the same fantastic in which Cyril had bedizened her.


VI

I sprang up, struck a light and relit the candle, and soon reached
the coffin resting on a stone table. I found, on examining it, that
although it had been screwed down after the discovery of the
violation, the work had been so loosely done that a few turns of the
screwdriver were sufficient to set the lid free. Then I paused; for
to raise the loosened lid (knowing as I did that it was only the
blood's inherited follies that had conquered my rationalism and
induced me to disturb the tomb) seemed to require the strength of a
giant. Moreover, the fantastic terror of old Lantoff's story, which
at another time would have made me smile, also took bodily shape, and
the picture of a dreadful struggle at the edge of the cliff between
Winnie's father and mine seemed to hang in the air--a fascinating
mirage of ghastly horror.

*     *     *     *     *

At last, by an immense effort of will, I closed my eyes and pushed
the lid violently on one side.

*     *     *     *     *

The 'sweet odours and divers kinds of spices' of the Jewish embalmer
rose like a gust of incense--rose and spread through the crypt like
the sweet breath of a new-born blessing, till the air of the
charnel-house seemed laden with a mingled odour of indescribable
sweetness. Never had any odour so delighted my senses; never had any
sensuous influence so soothed my soul.

While I stood inhaling the scents of opobalsam, and cinnamon and
myrrh, and wine of palm and oil of cedar, and all the other spices of
the Pharaohs, mingled in one strange aromatic cloud, my personality
seemed again to become, in part, the reflex of ancestral experiences.

I opened my eyes. I looked into the coffin. The face (which had been
left by the embalmer exposed) confronted mine. 'Fenella Stanley!' I
cried, for the great transfigurer Death had written upon my father's
brow that self-same message which the passions of a thousand Romany
ancestors had set upon the face of her whose portrait hung in the
picture-gallery. And the rubies and diamonds and beryls of the cross
as it now hung upon my breast, catching the light of the opened
lantern in my left hand, shed over the features an indescribable
reflex hue of quivering rose.

Beneath his head I placed the silver casket: I hung the hair-chain
round his neck: I laid upon his breast the long-loved memento of his
love and the parchment scroll.

Then I sank down by the coffin, and prayed. I knew not what or why.
But never since the first human prayer was breathed did there rise to
heaven a supplication so incoherent and so wild as mine. Then I rose,
and laying my hand upon my father's cold brow, I said: 'You have
forgiven me for all the wild words that I uttered in my long agony.
They were but the voice of intolerable misery rebelling against
itself. You, who suffered so much--who know so well those flames
burning at the heart's core--those flames before which all the forces
of the man go down like prairie-grass before the fire and wind--you
have forgiven me. You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love--you
have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself. You have
forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb:
you have removed the curse, and his child--his innocent child--is
free.'

I replaced the coffin-lid, and screwing it down left the crypt, so
buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked
myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I
really relieve that my restoring the amulet has removed it? Have I
really come to this?'

Throughout all these proceedings--yes, even amidst that prayer to
Heaven, amidst that impassioned appeal to my dead father--had my
reason been keeping up that scoffing at my heart which I have before
described.

I knocked up the landlord of the 'White Hart,' and, turning into bed,
slept my first peaceful sleep since my trouble.

To escape awkward questions, I did not in the morning take back the
keys to Shales's house myself, but sent them, and walking to
Dullingham took the train to London.



X

BEHIND THE VEIL


I

When I met my mother at the solicitor's office next day, she was
astonished at my cheerfulness and at the general change in me. As we
left the office together, she said,

'Everything is now arranged: your aunt and I have decided to accept
Lord Sleaford's invitation to go for a cruise in his yacht. We leave
to-morrow evening. Lord Sleaford has promised to take me to-morrow
afternoon to Mr. Wilderspin's studio, to see the great painter's
portrait of me, which is now, I understand, quite finished.'

'Why did you not ask me to accompany you, instead of asking
Sleaford?'

'I did not know that you would care to do so.' 'Dear mother,' I said,
in a tender tone that startled her, 'you must let me go with you and
Sleaford to the studio.'

She consented, and on the following afternoon I called at my aunt's
house in Belgrave Square. The hall was full of portmanteaux, boxes,
and packages. Sleaford had already arrived, and was waiting with
stolid patience for my mother, who had gone to her room to dress. He
began to talk to me about the astonishing gifts of Cyril Aylwin.

'Have you made an appointment with Wilderspin?' I said to my mother,
when she  entered the room. 'The last time I saw him he seemed to be
much occupied with some disturbing affairs of his own.'

'Appointment? No,' said she, with an air that seemed to imply that an
Aylwin, even with Gypsy blood in his veins, in calling upon Art, was
conferring upon it a favour to be welcomed at any time.

'I have not seen this portrait yet,' said Sleaford, as the carriage
moved off; 'but Cyril Aylwin says it is magnificent, and if anybody
knows what's good and what's bad it's Cyril Aylwin.'

'Do you know,' said my mother to me, 'I have taken vastly to this
eccentric kinsman of ours? I had really no idea that a bohemian could
be so much like a gentleman; but, of course, an Aylwin must always be
an Aylwin.'

'Haw, haw!' laughed Sleaford to himself, 'that's good about Cyril
Aylwin though--that's dooced good.'

'We shall see Wilderspin's great picture, "Faith and Love," at the
same time,' I said, as we approached Chelsea; 'for Wilderspin tells
me that he has borrowed it from the owner to make a replica of it.'

'That is very fortunate,' said my mother. 'I have the greatest desire
to see this picture and its wonderful predella. Wilderspin is one of
the few painters who revert to the predella of the old masters. He is
said to combine the colour of him whom he calls "his master" with the
draughtsmanship and intellect of Shields, whose stained-glass windows
the owner was showing me the other day at Eaton Hall; and do you
know, Henry, that the painter of this wonderful "Faith and Love" is
never tired of declaring that the subject was inspired by your dear
father?'

When we reached the studio the servant said that Mr. Wilderspin was
much indisposed that afternoon, and was also just getting ready to go
to Paris, where he was to join Mr. Cyril in his studio; 'but perhaps
he would see us,'--an announcement that brought a severe look to my
mother's face, and another half-suppressed 'Haw, haw!' from
Sleaford's deep chest.

Mounting the broad old staircase, we found ourselves in the studio of
the famous spiritualist-painter--one of two studios; for Wilderspin
had turned two rooms communicating with each other by folding-doors
into a sort of double studio. One of these rooms, which was of
moderate size, fronted the north-east, the other faced the
south-west. There were (as I soon discovered) easels in both. It was
the smaller of these rooms into which we were now shown by the
servant. The walls were covered with sketches and drawings in various
stages, and photographs of sculpture.

'By Jove, that's dooced like!' said Sleaford, pointing to my mother's
portrait, which was standing on the floor, as though just returned
from the frame-maker's: 'ask Cyril Aylwin if it ain't when you see
him.'

It was a truly magnificent painting, but more full of imagination
than of actual portraiture.

One of the windows was open, and the noise of an anvil from a
blacksmith's shop in Maud Street came into the room.

'Do you know,' said my mother in an undertone, 'that this strange
genius can only, when in London, work to the sound of a blacksmith's
anvil? Nothing will induce him to paint a portrait out of his own
studio; and I observed, when I was sitting to him here, that
sometimes when the noise from the anvil ceased he laid down his brush
and waited for the hideous din to be resumed.

Wilderspin now came through the folding-doors, and greeted us in his
usual simple, courteous way. But I saw that he was in trouble. 'The
portrait will look better yet,' he said. 'I always leave the final
glazing till the picture is in the frame.'

After we had thoroughly examined the portrait, we turned to look at a
large canvas upon an easel. Wilderspin had evidently been working
upon it very lately.

'That's "Ruth and Boaz," don't you know?' said Sleaford. 'Finest crop
of barley I ever saw in my life, judgin' from the size of the
sheaves. Barley paid better than wheat last year. So the farmers all
say.'

'Don't look at it,' said Wilderspin. 'I have been taking out part of
Ruth, and was just beginning to repaint her from the shoulders
upwards. It will never be finished now,' he continued with a sigh.

We asked him to allow us to see 'Faith and Love.'

'It is in the next room,' said he, 'but the predella is here on the
next easel. I have removed it from underneath the picture to work
upon.'

'The head of Ruth has been taken out,' said my mother, turning to me:
'but isn't it like an old master? You ought to see the marvellous
Pre-Raphaelite pictures at Mr. Graham's and Mr. Leyland's, Henry.'

'Pre-Raphaelites?' said Wilderspin, 'the Master rhymes, madam, and
Burne-Jones actually _reads_ the rhymes! However, they are on the
right track in art, though neither has the slightest intercourse with
the spirit world, not the slightest.'

'My exploits as a painter have not been noticeable as yet,' I said;
'but an amateur may know what a barley-field is. That is one before
us. He may know what a man in love is; Boaz there is in love.'

'I wish we could see the woman's face,' said Sleaford. 'A woman, you
know, without a face--'

'Come and see the predella of "Faith and Love,"' said Wilderspin, and
he moved towards an easel where rested the predella, a long narrow
picture without a frame. My mother followed him, leaving me standing
before the picture of 'Ruth and Boaz.' Although the head of Ruth had
been painted out, the picture seemed to throb with life. Boaz had
just discovered the Moabitish maiden in the gleaming barley-field, as
she had risen from stooping to glean the corn. Two ears of barley
were in one hand. In the face of Boaz was an expression of surprise,
and his eyes were alight with admiration. The picture was finished
with the exception of the face of Ruth, which was but newly sketched
in. Wilderspin had contrived to make her attitude and even the very
barley-ears in her hand (one of which was dangling between her
slender fingers in the act of falling) express innocent perturbation
and girlish modesty.


II

At length I joined the others, who were standing before the easel,
looking at the predella which, as Wilderspin again took care to tell
us, had been removed from the famous picture of 'Faith and Love' we
were about to see in the next room--'the culmination and final
expression of the Renascence of Wonder in Art.'

'Perhaps it is fortunate,' said he, 'that I happen to be working at
this very time upon the predella, which acts as a key to the meaning
of the design. You will now have the advantage of seeing the predella
before you see the picture itself. And really it would be to the
advantage of the picture if every one could see it under like
circumstances; it would add immensely to the effect of the design.
Look well and carefully at the predella first. Try to imagine the
Oriental Queen behind that veil, then observe the way in which the
features are expressed through the veil; and then, but not till then,
come into the adjoining room and see the picture itself, see what
Isis really is (according to the sublime idea of Philip Aylwin) when
Faith and Love, the twin angels of all true art, upraise the veil.'

He then turned and passed through the folding-doors into a room of
great size, crowded with easels, upon which pictures were resting.

The predella before me seemed a miracle of imaginative power. At that
time I had not seen the work of the great poet-painter of modern
times whom Wilderspin called 'the Master,' and by whom he had been
unconsciously inspired.

'Most beautiful!' my mother ejaculated, as we three lingered before
the predella. 'Do look at the filmy texture of the veil.'

'Looks more like steam than a white veil, don't you know?' said
Sleaford.

'Like steam, my lord?' exclaimed Wilderspin from the next room. 'The
painter of that veil had peculiar privileges. As a child he had been
in the habit of watching a face through the curtain of steam around a
blacksmith's forge when hot iron is plunged into the water-trench,
and the face, my lord, though begrimed by earthly toil, was an
angel's. No wonder, then, that the painting in that veil is unique in
art. The flesh-tints that are pearly and yet rosy seem, as you
observe, to be breaking through it, and yet you cannot say what is
the actual expression on the face. But now come and see the picture
itself.'

My mother and Sleaford lingered for a moment longer, and then passed
between the folding-doors.

But I did not follow them; I could not. For now there was something
in the predella before me which fascinated me, I scarcely knew why.
It was the figure of the queen--the figure between the two sleeping
angels--the figure behind the veil, and expressed by the veil--that
enthralled me.

There was a turn about the outlined neck and head that riveted my
gaze; and, as I looked from these to the veil falling over the face,
a vision seemed to be rapidly growing before my eyes--a vision that
stopped my breath--a vision of a face struggling to express itself
through that snowy film--_whose_ face?

*      *      *      *      *

'In the crypt my senses had a kind of license to play me tricks,' I
murmured; 'but now and here my reason _shall_ conquer.'

And I stood and gazed at the veil. During all the time I could hear
every word of the talk between Wilderspin, Sleaford, and my mother
before the picture in the other room.

'Awfully fine picture,' said Sleaford, 'but the Queen there--Isis:
more like a European face than an Egyptian. I've been to Egypt a good
deal, don't you know?'

'This is not an historical painting, my lord. As Philip Aylwin says,
"the only soul-satisfying function of art is to give what Zoroaster
calls 'apparent pictures of unapparent realities.'" Perfect beauty
has no nationality; hers has none. All the perfections of woman
culminate in her. How can she then be disfigured by paltry
characteristics of this or that race or nation? In looking at that
group, my lord, nationality is forgotten, and should be forgotten.
She is the type of Ideal Beauty whose veil can never be raised save
by the two angels of all true art, Faith and Love. She is the type of
Nature, too, whose secret, as Philip Aylwin says, "no science but
that of Faith and Love can read."'

'Seems to be the type of a good deal; but it's all right, don't you
know? Awfully fine picture! Awfully fine woman!' said Sleaford in a
conciliatory tone. 'She's a good deal fairer, though, than any
Eastern women I've seen; but then I suppose she has worn a veil al
her life up to now. Most of 'em take sly peeps, and let in the hot
Oriental sun, and that tans 'em, don't you know?'

'And the original of this face?' I heard my mother say in a voice
that seemed agitated; 'could you tell me something about the original
of this remarkable face?' 'The model?' said Wilderspin. 'We are not
often asked about our models, but a model like that would endow
mediocrity itself with genius, for, though apparently, and by way of
beneficent illusion, the daughter of an earthly costermonger, she was
a wanderer from another and a better world. She is not more beautiful
here than when I saw her first in the sunlight on that memorable day,
at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, bare-headed, her shoulders
shining like patches of polished ivory here and there through the
rents in her tattered dress, while she stood gazing before her,
murmuring a verse of Scripture, perfectly unconscious whether she was
dressed in rags or velvet; her eyes--'

'The eyes--it _is_ the eyes, don't you know--it is the eyes that are
not quite right,' said Sleaford. 'Blue eyes with black eyelashes are
awfully fine; you don't see 'em in Egypt. But I suppose that's the
type of something too. Types always floor me, don't you know?'

'But the scene is no longer Egypt, my lord; it is Corinth,' replied
Wilderspin.

During this dialogue I stood motionless before the predella: I could
not stir; my feet seemed fixed in the floor by what can only be
described as a wild passion of expectation. As I stood there a
marvellous change appeared to be coming over the veiled figure of the
predella. The veil seemed to be growing more and more filmy--more and
more like the 'steam' to which Sleaford had compared it, till at last
it resolved itself into a veil of mist--into the rainbow-tinted
vapours of a gorgeous mountain sunrise--and looking straight at me
were two blue eyes sparkling with childish happiness and childish
greeting, through flushed mists across a pool on Snowdon.

That she was found at last my heart knew, though my brain was dazed.
That in the next room, within a few yards of me, my mother and
Sleaford and Wilderspin were looking at the picture of Winifred's
face unclouded by the veil, my heart knew as clearly as though my
eyes were gazing at it, and yet I could not stir. Yes, I knew that
she was now neither a beggar in the street, nor a prisoner in one of
the dens of London, nor starving in a squalid garret, but was safe
under the sheltering protection of a good man. I knew that I had only
to pass between those folding-doors to see her in Wilderspin's
picture--see her dressed in the 'azure-coloured tunic bordered with
stars,' and the upper garment of the 'colour of the moon at
moonrise,' which Wilderspin had so vividly described in Wales; and
yet, paralysed by expectation, I could not stir.


III

Soon I was conscious that my mother, Sleaford, and Wilderspin were
standing by my side, that Wilderspin's hand was laid on my arm, and
that I was pointing at the predella--pointing and muttering,

'She lives! She is saved.'

My mother led me into the other studio, and I stood before the great
picture. Wilderspin and Sleaford, feeling that something had occurred
of a private and delicate nature, lingered out of hearing in the
smaller studio.

'I must be taken to her at once,' I muttered to my mother; 'at once.'

So living was the portrait of Winifred that I felt that she must be
close at hand. I looked round to see if she herself were not standing
by me dressed in the dazzling draperies gleaming from Wilderspin's
superb canvas.

But in place of Winifred the profile of my mother's face, cold,
proud, and white, met my gaze. Again did the stress of overmastering
emotion make of me a child, as it had done on the night of the
landslip. 'Mother!' I said, 'you see who it is?'

She made no answer: she stood looking steadfastly at the picture; but
the tremor of the nostrils, the long deep breaths she drew, told me
of the fierce struggle waging within her breast between conscience
and pity, with rage and cruel pride. My old awe of her returned. I
was a little boy again, trembling for Winnie. In some unaccountable
and, I believe, unprecedented way I had always felt that she, my own
mother, belonged to some haughty race superior to mine and Winnie's;
and nothing but the intensity of my love for Winnie could ever have
caused me to rebel against my mother.

'Dear mother,' I murmured, 'all the mischief and sorrow and pain are
ended now; and we shall all be happy; for you have a kind heart,
dear, and cannot help loving poor Winnie, when you come to know her.'

She made no answer save that her lips slowly reddened again after the
pallor; then came a quiver in them, as though pity were conquering
pride within her breast, and then that contemptuous curl that had
often in the past cowed the heart of the fearless and pugnacious boy
whom no peril of sea or land could appal.

'She is found,' I said. 'And, mother, there is no longer an
estrangement between you and me. I forgive you everything now.'

I leapt from her as though I had been stung, so sudden and unexpected
was the look of scorn that came over her face as she said, 'You
forgive  me!' It recalled my struggle with her on that dreadful
night: and in a moment I became myself again. The pleading boy
became, at a flash, the stern and angry man that misery had made him.
With my heart hedged once more with points of steel to all the world
but Winnie, I turned away. I did not know then that her attitude
towards me at this moment came from the final struggle in her breast
between her pride and that remorse which afterwards took possession
of her and seemed as though it would make the remainder of her life a
tragedy without a smile in it. At that moment Wilderspin and Sleaford
came in from the smaller studio. 'Where is she?' I said to
Wilderspin. 'Take me to her at once--take me to her who sat for this
picture. It is she whom I and Sinfi Lovell were seeking in Wales.'

A look of utter astonishment, then one of painful perplexity, came
over his face--a look which I attributed to his having heard part of
the conversation between my mother and myself.

'You mean the--the--model? She is not here, Mr. Aylwin,' said he.
'The same young lady you were seeking in Wales! Mysterious indeed are
the ways of the spirit world!' and then his lips moved silently as
though in prayer.

'Where is she?' I asked again.

'I will tell you all about her soon--when we are alone,' he said in
an undertone. 'Does the picture satisfy you?'

The picture! He was thinking of his art. Amid all that gorgeous
pageant in which mediaeval angels; were  mixed with classic youths and
flower-crowned; maidens, in  such a medley of fantastic beauty as
could never have been imagined save by a painter; who was one-third
artist, one-third madman, and one-third seer--amid all the marvels of
that strange, uncanny culmination of the neo-Romantic movement in Art
which had excited the admiration of one set of the London critics and
the scorn of others, I had really and fully seen but one face--the
face of Isis, or Pelagia, or Eve, or _Natura Benigna_, or whosoever
she was looking at me with those dear eyes of Winnie's which were my
very life--looking at me with the same bewitching, indescribable
expression that they wore when she sat with her 'Prince of the Mist'
on Snowdon. I tried to take in the _ensemble_. In vain! Nothing but
the face and figure of Winifred--crowned with seaweed as in the
Raxton photograph--could stay for the thousandth part of a second
upon my eyes.

'Wilderspin,' I said, 'I cannot do the picture justice at this
moment. I must see it again--after I have seen her. Where is she? Can
I not see her now?'

'You cannot.'

'Can I not see her to-day?'

'You cannot. I will tell you soon, and I have much to tell you,' said
Wilderspin, looking uneasily round at my mother, who did not seem
inclined to leave us. 'I will tell you all about her when--when you
are sufficiently calm.'

'Tell me now,' I said.

'Gad! this is a strange affair, don't you know? It would puzzle Cyril
Aylwin himself,' said Sleaford. 'What the dooce does it all mean?'

'Is she safe?' I cried to Wilderspin.

There was a pause.

'Is she safe?' I cried again.

'Quite safe,' said Wilderspin, in a tone whose solemnity would have
scared me had the speaker been any other person than this eccentric
creature. 'When you are less agitated, I will tell you all about
her.'

'No! now, now!'


IV

'Well, Mr. Aylwin,' said Wilderspin, 'when I first saw your father's
book,  _The  Veiled Queen_, it was the vignette on the title-page
that attracted me. In the eyes of that beautiful child-face, even as
rendered by a small reproduction, there was the very expression that
my soul had been yearning after--the expression which no painter of
woman's beauty had ever yet caught and rendered. I felt that he who
could design or suggest to a designer such a vignette must be
inspired, and I bought the book: it was as an artist, not as a
thinker, that I bought the book for the vignette.  When, on reading
it, I came to understand the full meaning of the  design, such sweet
comfort and hope did the writer's words give me, that I knew at once
who had impressed me to read it--I knew that my mission in life was
to give  artistic  development to the sublime ideas of Philip Aylwin.
I began the subject of "Faith and Love." But the more I tried to
render the expression that had fascinated me the more impossible did
the task seem to me. Howsoever imaginative may be any design, the
painter who would produce a living picture must paint from life, and
then he has to fight against his model's expression. Do you remember
my telling you the other day how the spirit of Mary Wilderspin in
heaven came upon me in my sore perplexity and blessed me--sent me a
spiritual body--led me out into the street, and--'

'Yes, yes, I remember; but what happened?'

'We will sit,' said Wilderspin.

He placed chairs for us, and I perceived that my mother did not
intend to go.

'Well,'  he continued, 'on that sunny morning I was impressed to
leave my studio and go out into the streets. It was then that I found
what I had been seeking,--the expression in the beautiful child-face
off the vignette.'

'In the street!' I heard my mother say to herself. 'How did it come
about?' she asked aloud.

'It had long been my habit to roam about the streets of London
whenever I could afford the time to do so, in the hope of finding
what I sought, the fascinating and indescribable expression on that
one lovely child-face. Sometimes I believed that I had found this
expression. I have followed women for miles, traced them home,
introduced myself to them, told them of my longings; and have then,
after all, come away in bitter disappointment. The insults and
revilings I have, on these occasions, sometimes submitted to I will
narrate to no man, for they would bring me no respect in a cynical
age like this--an age which Carlyle spits at and the great and good
John Ruskin chides. Sometimes my dear friend Mr. Cyril has
accompanied me on these occasions, and he has seen how I have been
humiliated.'

An involuntary 'haw, haw!' came from Sleaford, but looking towards my
mother and perceiving that she was listening with intense eagerness,
he said: 'Ten thousand pardons, but Cyril Aylwin's droll
stories,--don't you know? they will--hang it all--keep comin' up and
makin' a fellow laugh.'

'Well,' continued Wilderspin, 'on that memorable morning I was
impressed to walk down the street towards Temple Bar. I was passing
close to the wall to escape the glare of the sun, when I was stopped
suddenly by a sight which I knew could only have been sent to me in
that hour of perplexity by her who had said that Jesus would let her
look down and watch her boy. Moreover, at that moment the noise of
the Strand seemed to cease in my ears, which were rilled with the
music I love best--the only music that I have patience to listen
to--the tinkle of a black-smith's anvil.'

'Blacksmith's anvil in the Strand?' said Sleaford.

'It was from heaven, my lord, that the music fell like rain; it was
a sign from Mary Wilderspin who lives there.'

'For God's sake be quick!' I exclaimed. 'Where was it?'

'At the corner of Essex Street. A bright-eyed, bright-haired girl in
rags was standing bare-headed, holding out boxes of matches for sale,
and murmuring words of Scripture. This she was doing quite
mechanically, as it seemed, and unobservant of the crowd passing
by,--individuals of whom would stop for a moment to look at her; some
with eyes of pure admiration and some with other eyes. The squalid
attire in which she was clothed seemed to add to her beauty.'

'My poor Winnie!' I murmured, entirely overcome.

'She seemed to take as little heed of the heat and glare as of the
people, but stood there looking before her, murmuring texts from
Scripture as though she were communing with the spiritual world. Her
eyes shook and glittered in the sunshine; they seemed to emit lights
from behind the black lashes surrounding them; the ruddy lips were
quivering. There was an innocence about her brow, and yet a mystic
wonder in her eyes which formed a mingling of the child-like with the
maidenly such as--'

'Man! man! would you kill me with your description?' I cried. Then
grasping Wilderspin's hand, I said, 'But,--but was she begging,
Wilderspin? Not literally begging! My Winnie! my poor Winnie!'

My mother looked at me. The gaze was full of a painful interest; but
she recognised that between me and her there now was rolling an
infinite sea or emotion, and her eyes drooped before mine as though
she had suddenly invaded the privacy of a stranger.

'She was offering matches for sale,' said Wilderspin.

'Winnie! Winnie! Winnie!' I murmured. 'Did she seem emaciated,
Wilderspin? Did she seem as though she wanted food?'

'Heaven, no!' exclaimed my mother.

'No,' replied Wilderspin firmly. 'On that point who is a better judge
than the painter of "Faith and Love"? She did not want food. The
colour of the skin was not--was not--such as I have seen--when a
woman is dying for want of food.'

'God bless you, Wilderspin, God bless you! But what then?--what
followed?'

'Well, Mr. Aylwin, I stood for some time gazing at her, muttering
thanks to my mother for what I had found. I then went up to her, and
asked her for a box of matches. She held me out a box, mechanically,
as it seemed, and, when I had taken it of her, she held out her hand
just as though she had been a real earthly beggar-girl; but that was
part of the beneficent illusion of Heaven.'

'That was for the price, don't you know?' said Sleaford. 'What did
you give her?'

'I gave her a shilling, my lord, which she looked at for some time in
a state of bewilderment. She then began to feel about her as if for
something.'

'She was feelin' for the change, don't you know?' said Sleaford, not
in the least degree perceiving how these interruptions of a prosaic
mind were maddening me.

'I told her that I wanted to speak to her,' continued Wilderspin,
'and asked her where she lived. She gave me the same bewildered,
other-world look with which she had regarded the shilling, a look
which seemed to say, "Go away now: leave me alone!" As I did not go,
she began to appear afraid of me, and moved away towards Temple Bar,
and then crossed the street. I followed, as far behind as I could
without running the danger of losing sight of her, to a wretched
place running out of Great Queen Street. Holborn, which I afterwards
found was called Primrose Court, and when I got there she had
disappeared in one of the squalid houses opening into the court. I
knocked at the first door once or twice before an answer came, and
then a tiny girl with the face of a woman opened it. "Is there a
beggar-girl living here?" I asked. "No," answered the child in a
sharp, querulous voice. "You mean Meg Gudgeon's gal wot sings and
does the rainy-night dodge. She lives next house." And the child
slammed the door in my face. I knocked at the next door, and after
waiting for a minute it was opened by a short, middle-aged woman,
with black eyes and a flattened nose, who stared at me, and then
said, "A Quaker, by the looks o' ye." She had the strident voice of a
raven, and she smelt, I thought, of gin.'

'But, Mr. Wilderspin, Mr. Wilderspin, you said the girl was safe!'

It was my mother's voice, but so loud, sharp, and agonised was it
that it did not seem to be her voice at all. In that dreadful moment,
however, I had no time to heed it. At the description of the hideous
den and the odious Mrs. Gudgeon, whose face as I had seen it in
Cyril's studio had haunted me in the crypt, a dreadful shudder
passed through my frame; an indescribable sense of nausea stirred
within me; and for a moment I felt as though the pains of
dissolution were on me. And there was something in Wilderspin's
face--what was it?--that added to my alarm. 'Stay for a moment,' I
said to him; 'I cannot yet bear to hear any more.'

'I know the dread that has come upon you, and upon your kind,
sympathetic mother,' said he; 'but she you are disturbed about was
not a prisoner in the kind of place my words seem to describe.'

'But the woman?' said my mother. 'How could she be safe in such
hands?'

'Has he not said she is safe?' I cried, in a voice that startled even
my own ears, so loud and angry it was, and yet I hardly knew why.

'You forget,' said Wilderspin, turning to my mother, 'that the whole
spiritual world was watching over her.'

'But was the place very--was it so very squalid?' said my mother.
'Pray describe it to us, Mr. Wilderspin; I am really very anxious.'

'No!' I said; 'I want no description: I shall go and see for myself.'

'But; Henry, I am most anxious to know about this poor girl, and I
want Mr. Wilderspin to tell us how and where he found her.'

'The "poor girl" concerns me alone, mother. Our calamities--Winnie's
and mine--are between us two and God....You engaged her, Wilderspin,
of the woman whom I saw at Cyril's studio, to sit as a model? What
passed when she came?'

'The woman brought her next day,' said Wilderspin, 'and I sketched in
the face of Pelagia as Isis at once. I had already taken out the face
of the previous model that had dissatisfied me. I now took out the
figure too, for the figure of this new model was as perfect as her
face.'

'Go on, go on. What occurred?'

'Nothing, save that she stood dumb, like one who had no language save
that of another world. But at the second sitting she had a fit of a
most dreadful kind.'

'Ah! Tell me quickly,' I said. Her face became suddenly distorted by
an expression of terror such as I had never seen and never imagined
possible. I have caught it exactly in my picture "Christabel." She
revived and tried to run out of the studio. Her mother and I seized
her, and she then fell down insensible.'

'What occasioned the fit? What had frightened her?'

'That is what I am not quite certain about. When she entered the
studio she fixed her eyes upon a portrait which I had been working
upon; but that must have been merely a coincidence.'

'A portrait!' I cried. And Winifred's scared expression when she
encountered my mother's look of hate in the churchyard came back to
me like a scene witnessed in a flash of lightning. 'The portrait was
my mother's?'

'It was the face of the kind, tender, and noble lady your mother,'
said Wilderspin gently.

I gave a hurried glance at my mother, and saw the pallor of her
face,--but to me the world  held now only two realities, Winifred and
Wilderspin; all other people were dreams, obtrusive and irritating
dreams. 'Go on, go on,' I said.

'She recovered,' continued Wilderspin, 'and seemed to have forgotten
all about the portrait, which I had put away.'

'Did she talk?'

'Never, Mr. Aylwin,' said Wilderspin solemnly. 'Nor did I invite her
to talk, knowing whence she came--from the spirit-world. At the first
few sittings Mrs. Gudgeon came with her, and would sit looking on
with the intention of seeing that she came to no harm. She said her
daughter was very beautiful, and she, her mother, never trusted her
with men.'

'God bless the hag, God bless her; but go on!'

'Gradually Mrs. Gudgeon seemed to acquire more confidence in me; and
one day, on leaving, she lingered behind the girl, and told me that
her daughter, though uncommonly stupid and a little touched in the
head, had now learnt her way to my studio, and that in future she
should let her come alone, as she believed that she could trust her
with me. She warned me earnestly, however, not to "worrit" the girl
by asking her all sorts of questions.'

'And there she was right,' I cried. 'But you did ask her
questions,--I see you did, you asked her about her father and brought
on another catastrophe.'

'No,' said Wilderspin with gentle dignity; 'I was careful not to ask
her questions, for her mother told me that she was liable to fits.'

'Mr. Wilderspin, I beg your pardon,' I said.

'I see you are deeply troubled,' said he; 'but, Mr. Aylwin, you need
not beg my pardon. Since I saw Mary Wilderspin, my mother, die for
her children, no words of mere Man have been able to give me pain.'

'Go on, go on. What did the woman say to you?'

'She said, "The fewer questions you ask her the better, and don't pay
her any money. She'd only lose it; I'll come for it at the proper
times." From that day the model came to the sittings alone, and Mrs.
Gudgeon came at the end of every week for the money.'

'And did the model maintain her silence all this time?'

'She did. She would, every few minutes, sink into a reverie, and
appear to be stone-deaf. But sometimes her face would become suddenly
alive with all sorts of shifting expressions. A few days ago she had
another fit, exactly like the former one. That was on the day
preceding my call at your hotel with your father's books. This time
we had much more difficulty in bringing her round. We did so at last;
and when she was gone I gave the final touch to my picture of "The
Lady Geraldine and Christabel." I was at the moment, however, at work
upon "Ruth and Boaz," which I had painted years before--removing the
face of Ruth originally there. I worked long at it; and as she was
not coming for two days I kept steadily at the picture. This was the
day on which I called upon you, wishing you to postpone your visit,
lest you should interrupt me while at work upon the head of Ruth,
which I was hoping to paint. On Thursday I waited for her at the
appointed hour, but she did not come, and I saw her no more.'


V

'Mr. Wilderspin,' I said, as I rose hurriedly, with the intention of
going at once in search of Winifred, 'let me see the picture you
allude to--"Christabel," and then tell me where to find her.'

'Better not see it!' said Wilderspin solemnly; 'there's something to
tell you yet, Mr. Aylwin.'

'Yes, yes; but let me see the picture first. I can bear anything now.
Howsoever terrible it may be, I can bear it now; for she's
found--she's safe.' And I rushed into the next room, and began
turning round in a wild manner one after another some dozens of
canvases that were standing on the floor and leaning against the
wall.

Half the canvases had been turned, and then I came upon what I
sought.

I stood petrified. But I heard Wilderspin's voice at my side say, 'Do
not let an imaginary scene distress you, Mr. Aylwin. The picture
merely represents the scene in Coleridge's poem where the Lady
Christabel, having secretly and in pity brought to her room to share
her bed the mysterious lady she had met in the forest at midnight,
watches the beautiful witch undress, and is spell-bound and struck
dumb by some "sight to dream of, not to tell," which she sees at the
lady's bosom.'

*      *      *      *      *

Christabel! It was Winifred sitting there upright in bed, confronted
by a female figure--a tall lady, who with bowed head was undressing
herself beneath a lamp suspended from the ceiling. Christabel! It was
Winifred gazing at this figure--gazing as though fascinated; her dark
hair falling and tumbling down her neck, till it was at last partly
lost between her shining bosom and her nightdress. Yes, and in her
blue eyes there was the same concentration of light, there was the
same uprolling of the lips, there was the same dreadful gleaming of
the teeth, the same swollen veins about the throat that I had seen in
Wales. No wonder that at first I could see only the face and figure
of Winifred. My consciousness had again dwindled to a single point.
In a few seconds, however, I perceived that the scene was an antique
oak-panelled chamber, corniced with large and curiously-carven
figures, upon which played the warm light from a silver lamp
suspended from the middle of the ceiling by a twofold silver chain
fastened to the feet of an angel, quaintly carved in the dark wood of
the ceiling. It was beneath this lamp that stood the majestic figure
of the beautiful stranger, the Lady Geraldine. As she bent her head
to look at her bosom, which she was about fully to uncover, the
lamp-light gleaming among the gems and flashing in her hair and down
her loosened white silken robe to her naked feet, shining,
blue-veined and half-hidden in the green rushes that covered the
floor, she seemed to be herself the source from which the lurid light
was shed about the room. But her eyes were brighter than all. They
were more dreadful by far to look at than Winifred's own--they were
rolling wildly as if in an agony of hate, while she was drawing in
her breath till that marble throat of hers seemed choking. It was not
upon her eyes, however, that Winifred's were fixed: it was upon the
lady's bosom, for out from beneath the partially-loosened robes that
covered that bosom a tiny fork of flame was flickering like a
serpent's tongue ruddy from the fires of a cruel and monstrous hate
within.

This sight was dreadful enough; but it was not the terror on
Winifred's face that now sent me reeling against Sleaford, who with
my mother had followed me into the smaller room. Whose figure was
that, and whose was the face which at first I had half-recognised in
the Lady Geraldine? My mother's!

In painting this subject Wilderspin had, without knowing it, worked
with too strong a reminiscence of my mother's portrait, unconscious
that he was but giving expression to the awful irony of Heaven.

I turned round. Wilderspin was supporting with difficulty my mother's
dead weight. For the first time (as I think) in her life, she whom,
until I came to know Sinfi Lovell, I had believed to be the
strongest, proudest, bravest woman living, had fainted.

'Dear me!' said Wilderspin, 'I had no idea that Christabel's terror
was so strongly rendered,--no idea! Art should never produce an
effect like this. Romantic art knows nothing of a mere sensational
illusion. Dear me!--I must soften it at once.'

He was evidently quite unconscious that he had given my mother's
features to Geraldine, and attributed the effect to his own
superlative strength as a dramatic artist.

I ran to her: she soon recovered, but asked to be taken to Belgrave
Square at once. Wild as I was with the desire to go in quest of
Winifred; goaded as I was by a new, nameless, shapeless dread which
certain words of Wilderspin's had aroused, but which (like the dread
that had come to me on the night of my father's funeral) was too
appalling to confront, I was obliged to leave the studio and take my
mother to the house of my aunt, who was, I knew, waiting to start for
the yacht.



XI

THE IRONY OF HEAVEN


I

As we stepped into the carriage, Sleaford, full of sympathy, jumped
in. This fortunately prevented a conversation that would have been
intolerable both to my mother and to me.

'Studio oppressively close,' said Sleaford; 'usual beastly smell of
turpentine and pigments and things. Why the dooce don't these fellows
ventilate their studios before they get ladies to go to see their
paintin's!' This he kept repeating, but got no response from either
of us.

As to me, let me honestly confess that I had but one thought: how
much time would be required to go to Belgrave Square and back to the
studio, to learn the whereabouts of Winifred. 'But she's safe,' I
kept murmuring, in answer to that rising dread: 'Wilderspin said she
was safe.'

During that drive to Belgrave Square, he whose bearing towards my
mother was that of the anxious, loving son was not I, the only living
child of her womb, but poor, simple, empty-headed Sleaford.

When we reached Belgrave Square my mother declared that she had
entirely recovered from the fainting fit, but I scarcely dared to
look into those haggard eyes of hers, which showed only too plainly
that the triumph of remorse in her bosom was now complete. My aunt,
who seemed to guess that something lowering to the family had taken
place, was impatient to get on board the yacht. I saw how my mother
now longed to remain and learn the upshot of events; but I told her
that she was far better away now, and that I would write to her and
keep her posted up in the story day by day. I bade them a hurried
'Good-bye.'

'How shall I be able to stay out of England until I know all about
her?' said my mother. 'Go back and learn all about her, Henry, and
write to me; and be sure to get and take care of that dreadful
picture, and write to me about that also.'

When the carriage left I walked rapidly along the Square, looking
for a hansom. In a second or two Sleaford was by my side. He took my
arm.

'I suppose you're goin' back to cane him, aren't you?' said he.

'Cane whom?' I said impatiently, for that intolerable thought which
I have hinted at was now growing within my brain, and I must, _must_
be alone to grapple with it.

'Cane the d----d painter, of course,' said Sleaford, opening his
great blue eyes in wonder that such a question should be asked.
'Awfully bad form that fellow goin' and puttin' your mother in the
picture. But that's just the way with these fellows.'

'What do you mean?' I asked again.

'What do I mean? The paintin' and writin' fellows. You can't make a
silk purse out of a sow's ear, as I've often and often said to Cyril
Aylwin; and by Jove, I'm right for once. I suppose I needn't ask you
if you're going back to cane him.'

'Wilderspin did what he did quite unconsciously,' I replied, as I
hailed a hansom. 'It was the finger of God.'

'The finger of--Oh come! That be hanged, old chap.'

'Good-bye,' I said, as I jumped into the hansom.

'But you don't mean to say you are goin' to let a man put your mother
into--'

I heard no more. The terrible idea which had been growing in my
brain, shaping itself out of a nebulous mass of reminiscences of what
had just occurred at the studio, was now stinging me to madness.
Wilderspin's extreme dejection, the strange way in which he had
seemed inclined to evade answering my question as to the safety of
Winifred, the look of pity on his face as at last he answered 'quite
safe'--what did all these indications portend? At every second the
thought grew and grew, till my brain seemed like a vapour of fire,
and my eyeballs seemed to scorch their sockets as I cried aloud:
'Have I found her at last to lose her?'

On reaching the studio door I rapped: before the servant had time to
answer my summons, I rapped again till the sounds echoed along the
street. When my summons was answered, I rushed upstairs. Wilderspin
stood at the studio door, listening, apparently, to the sound of the
blacksmith's anvil coming in from the back of Maud Street through the
open window. Though his sorrowful face told all, I cried out,
'Wilderspin, she's safe? You said she was safe?'

'My friend,' said Wilderspin solemnly, 'the news I have to give you
is news that I knew you would rather receive when you could hear it
alone.'

'You said she was safe!'

'Yes, safe indeed! She whom you, under some strange but no doubt
beneficent hallucination, believe to be the lady you lost in Wales,
is safe indeed, for she is in the spirit-land with her whose blessing
lent her to me--she has returned to her who was once a female
blacksmith at Oldhill, and is now the brightest, sweetest, purest
saint in Paradise.'

Dead! My soul had been waiting for the word--expecting it ever since
I left the studio with my mother--but now it sounded more dreadful
than if it had come as a surprise.

'Tell me all,' I cried, 'at once--at once. She did not return, you
say, on the day following the catastrophe--when did she return?--when
did you next see her?'

'I never saw her again alive,' answered Wilderspin mournfully; 'but
you are so pale, Mr. Aylwin, and your eyes are so wild, I had better
defer telling you what little more there is to tell until you have
quite recovered from the shock.'

'No; now, now.'

Wilderspin looked with a deep sigh at the picture of 'Faith and
Love,' fired by the lights of sunset, where Winnie's face seemed
alive.

'Well,' said he, 'as she did not come, I worked at my painting of
"Ruth" all day; and on the next morning, as I was starting for
Primrose Court to seek her, Mrs. Gudgeon came kicking frantically at
the street-door. When it was opened, she came stamping upstairs, and
as I advanced to meet her, she shook her fists in my face, shouting
out: "I could tear your eyes out, you vagabones." "Why, what is the
matter?" I asked in great surprise. "You've bin and killed her,
that's all," said the woman, foaming at the mouth. She then told me
that her daughter, almost immediately on reaching home after having
left the studio in the company of my servant, had fallen down in a
swoon. A succession of swoons followed. She never rallied. She was
then lying dead in Primrose Court.'

'And what then? Answer me quickly.'

'She asked me to give her money that her daughter might be buried
respectably and not by the parish. I told her it was all
hallucination about the girl being her daughter, and that a spiritual
body could not be buried, but she seemed so genuinely distressed that
I gave her the money.'

'Spiritual body! Hallucination!' I said. 'I heard her voice in the
London streets, and she was seen selling baskets at the theatre door.
Where shall I find the house?'

'It is of no use for you to go there,' he said.

'Nothing shall prevent my going at once.' A feverish yearning had
come upon me to see the body.

'If you _will_ go,' said Wilderspin, 'it is No. 2 Primrose Court,
Great Queen Street, Holborn.


II

I hurried out of the house, and soon finding a cab I drove to Great
Queen Street.

My soul had passed now into another torture-chamber. It was being
torn between two warring, maddening forces--the passionate desire to
see her body, and the shrinking dread of undergoing the ordeal. At
one moment I felt--as palpably as I felt it, on the betrothal
night--her slim figure, soft as a twine of flowers in my arms: at the
next I was clasping a corpse--a rigid corpse in rags. And yet I can
scarcely say that I had any thoughts. At Great Queen Street I
dismissed the cab, and had some little difficulty in finding Primrose
Court, a miserable narrow alley. I knocked at a door which, even in
that light, I could see was a peculiarly wretched one. After a
considerable delay the door was opened and a face peered out--the
face of the woman whom I had seen in Cyril's studio. She did not at
first seem to recognise me. She was evidently far gone in liquor, and
looked at me, murmuring, 'You're one o' the cussed body-snatchers; I
know you: you belong to the Rose Alley "Forty Thieves." You'll
swing--every man Jack o' ye'll swing yet, mind if you don't.'

At the sight of the squalid house in which Winifred had lived and
died I passed into a new world of horror. Dead matter had become
conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before
me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of
brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the
walls,--it was these which seemed to have life--a terrible life--and
to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the
triumph of evil over good. I knew that the woman was still speaking,
but for a time I heard no sound--my senses could receive no
impressions save from the sinister eloquence of the dead and yet
living matter around me. Not an object there that did not seem
charged with the wicked message of the heartless Fates.

At length, and as I stood upon the doorstep, a trembling, a mighty
expectance, seized me like an ague-fit; and I heard myself saying, 'I
am come to see the body, Mrs. Gudgeon.' Then I saw her peer,
blinking, into my face, as she said,

'Oh, oh, it's _you_, is it? It's one o' the lot as keeps the
studeros, is it?--the cussed Chelsea lot as killed her. I recklet yer
a-starin' at the goddess Joker! So you've come to see my poor
darter's body, are you? How werry kind, to be sure! Pray come in,
gentleman, an' pray let the beautiful goddess Joker be perlite an'
show sich a nice kind wisiter the way upstairs.'

She took a candle, and with a mincing, mocking movement, curtseying
low at every step, she backed before me, and then stood waiting at
the foot of the staircase with a drunken look of satire on her
features.

'Pray go upstairs fust, gentleman,' said she; 'I can't think o' goin'
up fust, an' lettin' my darter's kind wisiter foller behind like a
sarvint. I 'opes we knows our manners better nor that comes to in
Primrose Court.'

'None of this foolery now, woman,' said I. 'There's a time for
everything, you know.'

'How right he is!' she exclaimed, nodding to the flickering candle
in her hand. 'There's a time for everything an' this is the time for
makin' a peep-show of my pore darter's body. Oh, yes!'

I mounted a shaky staircase, the steps of which were, some of them,
so broken away that the ascent was no easy matter. The miserable
light from the woman's candle, as I entered the room, seemed suddenly
to shoot up in a column of dazzling brilliance that caused me to
close my eyes in pain, so unnaturally sensitive had they been
rendered by the terrible expectance of the sight that was about to
sear them.

When I re-opened my eyes, I perceived that in the room there was one
window, which looked like a trap-door; on the red pantiles of the
opposite roof lay a smoke-dimmed sheet of moonlight. On the floor at
the further end of the garret, where the roof met the boards at a
sharp angle, a mattress was spread. Then speech came to me.

'Not there!' I groaned, pointing to the hideous black-looking bed,
and turning my head away in terror. The woman burst into a cackling
laugh.

'Not there? Who said she _was_ there? _I_ didn't. If you can see
anythink there besides a bed an' a quilt, you've got eyes as can make
picturs out o' nothink, same as my darter's eyes could make 'em, pore
dear.'

'Ah, what do you mean?' I cried, leaping to the side of the mattress,
upon which I now saw that no dead form was lying.

For a moment a flash of joy as dazzling as a fork of lightning seemed
to strike through my soul and turn my blood into a liquid fire that
rose and blinded my eyes.

'Not dead,' I cried; 'no, no, no! The pitiful heavens would have
rained blood and tears at such a monstrous tragedy. She is not
dead--not dead after all! The hideous dream is passing.'

'Oh, ain't she dead, pore dear?--ain't she? She's dead enough for
one,' said the woman; 'but 'ow can she be there on that mattress,
when she's buried, an' the prayers read over her, like the darter of
the most 'spectable mother as ever lived in Primrose Court! That's
what the neighbours say o' me. The most 'spectable mother as
ever--'

'Buried!' I said, 'who buried her?'

'Who buried her? Why the parish, in course.'

Despair then again seemed to send a torrent of ice-water through my
veins. But after a time the passionate desire to see her body leapt
up within my heart.

At this moment Wilderspin, who had evidently followed me with
remarkable expedition, came upstairs and stood by my side.

'I must go and see the grave,' I said to him. 'I must see her face
once more. I must petition the Home Secretary. Nothing can and
nothing shall prevent my seeing her--no, not if I have to dig down to
her with my nails.'

'An' who the dickens are you as takes on so about my darter?' said
the woman, holding the candle to my face.

'Drunken brute!' said I. 'Where is she buried?'

'Well, I'm sure!' said the woman in a mincing, sarcastic voice. 'How
werry unperlite you is all at wonst! how werry rude you speaks to
such a werry 'spectable party as I am! You seem to forgit who I am.
Ain't I the goddess as likes to 'ave 'er little joke, an' likes to
wet both eyes, and as plays sich larks with her flummeringeroes and
drumming-dairies an' ring-tailed monkeys an' men?'

When I saw the creature whip up the quilt from the mattress, and,
holding it over her head like a veil, leer hideously in imitation of
Cyril's caricature, a shudder went again through my frame--a strange
kind of dementia came upon me; my soul again seemed to leave my
body--seemed to be lifted through the air and beyond the stars,
crying, in agony, 'Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath
not done it?' Yet all the while, though my soul seemed fleeing
through infinite space, where a pitiless universe was waltzing madly
round a ball of cruel fire--all the while I was acutely conscious of
looking down upon the dreadful dream-world below, looking down into a
frightful garret where a dialogue between two dream-figures was going
on--a dialogue between Wilderspin and the woman, each word of which
struck upon my ears like a sharp-edged flint, though it seemed
millions of miles away.

*      *      *      *      *

'What made you trick me like this? Where is the money I gave you for
the funeral?'

'That's werry true, about that money, an' where is it? The orkerdest
question about money allus is--"Where is it?" The money for that
funeral I 'ad, I won't deny that. The orkard question ain't that:
it's "Where is it?" But you see, arter I left your studero I sets on
that pore gal's bed a-cryin' fit to bust; then I goes out into
Clement's Alley, and I calls on Mrs. Mix--that's a werry dear friend
of mine, the mother o' seven child'n as are allus a-settin' on my
doorstep, an' she comes out of Yorkshire you must know, an' she's bin
a streaker in her day (for she was well off wonst was Mrs. Mix afore
she 'ad them seven dirty-nosed child'n as sets on her neighbours'
doorsteps)--an' she sez, sez she, "My pore Meg" (meanin' me), "I've
bin the mother o' fourteen beautiful clean-nosed child'n, an' I've
streaked an' buried seven on 'em, so I ought to know somethink about
corpuses, an' I tell you this corpse o' your darter's must be
streaked an' buried at wonst, for she died in a swownd. An' there's
nothink like the parishes for buryin' folk quick, an' I dessay the
coffin's ordered by this time, an' I dessay the gent gev you that
money just to make you comforble like, seein' as he killed your
darter." That's what Mrs. Mix says to me. So the parish comed an'
brought a coffin an' tookt her, pore dear. And I've cried myself
stupid-like, bein' her pore mother as 'es lost her on'y darter--an'
I was just a-tryin' to make myself comfable when this 'ere young toff
as seems so werry drunk comes a-rappin' at my door fit to rap the
'ouse down.'

'Has she been buried at all? How can a spiritual body be buried?'

'"Buried at all?" What do you mean by insinivatin' to the pore gal's
conflicted mother as she p'raps ain't buried at all? You're a-makin'
me cry ag'in. She lays comfable enough underneath a lot of other
coffins, in the pauper part of the New North Cimingtary.'

'Underneath a lot of others; how can that be?'

'What! ain't you toffs never seed a pauper finneral? Now that's a
pity; and sich nice toffs as they are, a-settin' theirselves up to
look arter the darters o' pore folks. P'raps you never thought how we
was buried. We're buried, when our time comes, and then they're werry
kind to us, the parish toffs is:--It's in a lump--six at a time--as
they buries us, and sich nice deal coffins they makes us, the parish
toffs does, an' sich nice lamp-black they paints 'em with to make 'em
look as if they was covered over with the best black velvid; an' then
sich a nice sarmint--none o' your retail sarmints, but a hulsale
sarmint--they reads over the lot, an' into one hole they packs us one
atop o' the other, jest like a pile o' the werry best Yarmith
bloaters, an' that's a good deal more sociable an' comfable, the
parish toffs thinks, than puttin' us in single; so it is, for the
matter o' that.'

Then I heard no more; for at the intolerable picture called up by the
woman's words, my soul in its misery seemed to have soared, scared
and trembling, above and beyond the heavens at whose futile gates it
had been moaning, till at last it sank at the feet of the mighty
power that my love had striven with on the sands of Raxton when the
tide was coming in--some pale and cruel ruler whose brow I saw
wrinkled with the woman's mocking smile--some frightful
columbine-queen, wicked, bowelless, and blind, shaking a starry cap
and bells, and chanting--

       I lent the drink of Day
         To gods for feast;
       I poured the river of Night
         On gods surceased:
       Their blood was Nin-ki-gal's.

And there, at the feet of the awful jesting hag, Circumstance, I
could only cry 'Winnie! my poor Winnie!' while over my head seemed to
pass Necessity and her black ages of despair.

When I came to myself I said to the woman,

'You can point out the grave?'

'Well, yes,' paid slip, turning round sharply; 'but may I ax who the
dickens you are?--an' what makes you so cut up about a pore woman's
darter? It's right-on beautiful to see how kind gentlemen is
nowadays': and she turned and tried, stumbling, to lead the way
downstairs.

As we left the room  I turned round to look at it. The picture of the
mattress, now nearly hidden in the shadows--the picture of the other
furniture in the room--two chairs--or rather one and a part of a
chair, for the rails of the hack were gone--a table, a large brown
jug, the handle of which had been replaced by a piece of string, and
a white washhand-basin, with most of the rim broken away, and a
shallow tub apparently used for a bath--seemed to sink into my flesh
as though bitten in by the etcher's aquafortis. Winifred's
sleeping-room!

'Of course she wasn't her daughter,' said Wilderspin meditatively, as
we stood on the stairs.

'Not my darter! Why, in course she was. What an imperent thing to
say, sure_lie_!'

'There is one thing I wish to say to you,' said he to the woman.
'When I agreed with you as to the sum to be paid for the model's
sittings, it was clearly understood that she was to sit to no other
artist, and that the match-selling was to cease.

'Well, and 'ave I broke my word?'

'A person has heard her singing and seen her selling baskets,' I
said.

'The person tells a lie,' said the woman, with a dogged and sullen
look, and in a voice that grew thicker with every word. 'Ain't there
sich things as doubles?'

At these last words my heart gave a sudden leap. We left the house,
and neither of us spoke till we got into the Strand.

'Did you see the--body at all?' I asked Wilderspin.

'Oh, yes. After I gave her the money for the funeral I went to
Primrose Court. The woman took me upstairs, and there on the mattress
lay--what the poor woman believed to be the earthly body of an
earthly daughter. It was covered with a quilt. Over the face a ragged
shawl had been thrown.'

'Yes, yes. She raised the shawl?'

'Yes, the woman went and held the candle over the head of the
mattress and uncovered the face; and there lay she whom the woman
believed to be her daughter, and whom you believe to be the young
lady you seek, but whom I _know_ to be a spiritual body--the perfect
type that was sent to me in order that I might fulfil my mission. You
groan, Mr. Aylwin, but remember that you have lost only a dream, a
beautiful hallucination; I have lost a reality: there is nothing real
but the spiritual world.


III

As I wandered about the streets after parting from Wilderspin, what
were my emotions? If I could put them into words, is there one human
being in ten thousand who would understand me? Happily, no. For there
is not one in ten thousand who, having sounded the darkest depths of
human misery, will know how strong is Hope when at the true
death-struggle with Despair. 'Hope in the human breast,' wrote my
father, 'is a passion, a wild, a lawless, and an indomitable passion,
that almost no cruelty of Fate can conquer.'

Many a passer-by in the streets of London that night must have asked
himself, What lunatic is this at large? At one moment I would bound
along the pavement as though propelled by wings, scarcely seeming to
touch the pavement with my feet. At the next I would stop in a cold
perspiration and say to myself, 'Idiot, is it possible that you, so
learned in suffering--you, whom Destiny, or Heaven, or Hell, has
taken in hand as a special sport--can befool yourself with Hope now,
after the terrible comedy by which you and the ancestral idiots from
whom you sprang amused Queen Nin-ki-gal in Raxton crypt?'

Hope and Despair were playing at shuttlecock with my soul. Underneath
my misery there flickered a thought which, wild as it was, I dared
not dismiss--the thought that, after all, it _might_ not be Winifred
who had died in that den. Possible it was--however improbable--that I
_might_ be labouring under a delusion. My imagination _might_ have
exaggerated a resemblance into actual identity, and Winifred and she
whom Wilderspin painted might be two different persons--and there
might be hope even yet. But so momentous was the issue to my soul,
that the mere fact of having clearly marshalled the arguments on the
side of Hope made my reason critical and suspicious of their cogency.
From the sweet sophisms that my reason had called up, I turned, and
there stood Despair, ready for me behind a phalanx of arguments,
which laughed all Hope's 'ragged regiment' to scorn.

Had not my mother recognised her? Could the infallible perceptive
faculties of my mother be also deceived?

But to accept the fact that she who died on that mattress was little
Winnie of the sands was to go stark mad, and the very instinct of
self-preservation made me clutch at every sophism Hope could offer.

'Did not the woman declare that the singing-girl and the model were
_not_ one and the same?' said Hope. 'And if she did not lie, may you
not have been, after all, hunting a shadow through London?'

'It might not have been Winifred,' I shouted.

But no sooner had I done so than the scene in the
studio--Wilderspin's story of the model's terror on seeing my
mother's portrait--came upon me, and 'Dead! dead!' rang through me
like a funeral knell: all the superstructure of Hope's sophisms was
shattered in a moment like a house of cards: my imagination flew
away to all the London graveyards I had ever heard of; and there, in
the part divided by the pauper line, my soul hovered over a grave
newly made, and then dived down from coffin to coffin, one piled
above another, till it reached Winifred, lying pressed down by the
superincumbent mass; those eyes staring.

Yes; that night I was mad!

I could not walk fatigue into my restless limbs. Morning broke in
curdling billows of fire over the east of London--which even at this
early hour was slowly growing hazy with smoke. I found myself in
Primrose Court, looking at that squalid door, those squalid windows.
I knocked at the door. No answer came to my summons, and I knocked
again and again. Then a window opened above my head, and I heard the
well-known voice of the woman exclaiming,

'Who's that? Poll Onion's out to-night, and the rooms are emp'y 'cept
mine. Why, God bless me, man, is it you?'

'Hag! that was not your daughter.'

She slammed the window down.

'Let me in, or I will break the door.'

The window was opened again.

'Lucky as I didn't leave the front door open to-night, as I mostly
do. What do you want to skear a pore woman for?' she bawled. 'Go
away, else I'll call up the people in Great Queen Street.'

'Mrs. Gudgeon, all I want to do is to ask you a question.'

'Ah, but that's what you jis' _won't_ do, my fine gentleman. I don't
let you in again in a hurry.'

'I will give you a sovereign.'

'Honour bright?' bawled the old woman; 'let me look at it.'

'Here it is, in my hand.'

'Jink it on the stuns.'

I threw it down.

'Quid seems to jink all right, anyhow,' she said, 'though I'm more
used to the jink of a tanner than a quid in these cussed times. You
won't skear me if I come down?'

'No, no.'

At last I heard her fumbling inside at the lock, and then the door
opened.

'Why, man alive! your eyes are afire jist like a cat's wi' drownded
kitlins.'

'She was not your daughter.'

'Not my darter?' said she, as she stooped to pick up the sovereign.
'You ain't a-goin' to catch me the likes o' that. The Beauty not my
darter! All the court knows she was my own on'y darter. I'll swear
afore all the beaks in London as I'm the mother of my own on'y darter
Winifred, allus' wur 'er mother, and allus wull be; an' if she went
a-beggin' it worn't my fort. She liked beggin', poor dear; some gals
does.'

'Her name Winifred!' I cried, with a pang at my heart as sharp as
though there had been a reasonable hope till now.

'In course her name was Winifred.'

'Liar! How came she to be called Winifred?'

'Well, I'm sure! Mayn't a Welshman's wife give her own on'y Welsh
darter a Welsh name? Us poor folks is come to somethink! P'raps
you'll say I ain't a Welshman's wife next? It's your own cussed lot
as killed her, ain't it? What did I tell the shiny Quaker when fust I
tookt her to the studero? I sez to the shiny un, "She's jist a bit
touched here," I sez' (tapping her own head), '"and nothink upsets
her so much as to be arsted a lot o' questions," I sez to the shiny
un. "The less you talks to her," I sez, "the better you'll get on
with her," I sez, "and the better kind o' pictur you'll make out on
her," I sez to the shiny un; "an' don't you go an' arst who her
father is," I sez, "for that word 'ull bring such a horful look on
her face," I sez, "as is enough to skear anybody to death. I sha'n't
forget the look the fust time I seed it," I sez. That's what I sez to
the shiny Quaker. An' yit you did go an' worrit 'er, a-arstin' 'er a
lot o' questions about 'er father. You _did_--I know you did! You
_must_ 'a done it--so no lies; for that wur the on'y thing as ever
skeared 'er, arstin' 'er about 'er father, pore dear....Why, man
alive! what _are_ you a-gurnin' at? an' what are you a-smackin' your
forred wi' your 'and like that for, an' a-gurnin' in my face like a
Chessy cat? Blow'd if I don't b'lieve you're drunk. An' who the
dickens are you a-callin' a fool, Mr. Imperance?'

It was not the woman but myself I was cursing when I cried out,
'Fool! besotted fool!'

Not till now had the wild hope fled which had led me back to the den.
As I stood shuddering on the doorstep in the cold morning light,
while the whole unbearable truth broke in upon me, I could hear my
lips murmuring,

'Fool of ancestral superstitions! Fenella Stanley's fool! Philip
Aylwin's fool! Where was the besotted fool and plaything of besotted
ancestors, when the truth was burning so close beneath his eyes that
it is wonderful they were not scorched into recognising it? Where was
he when, but for superstitions grosser than those of the negroes on
the Niger banks, he might have saved the living heart and centre of
his little world? Where was the rationalist when, but for
superstitions sucked in with his mother's milk, he would have gone to
a certain studio, seen a certain picture which would have sent him on
the wings of the wind to find and rescue and watch over the one for
whom he had renounced all the ties of kindred? Where was then the
most worthy descendant of a line of ancestral idiots--Romany and
Gorgio--stretching back to the days when man's compeers, the mammoth
and the cave-bear, could have taught him better? Rushing down to
Raxton church to save her!--to save her by laying a poor little
trinket upon a dead man's breast!'


After the paroxysm of self-scorn had partly exhausted itself, I
stood staring in the woman's face.

'Well,' said she, 'I thought the shiny Quaker was a rum un, but blow
me if you ain't a rummyer.

'Her name was Winifred, and the word "father" produced fits,' I said,
not to the woman, but to my soul, in mocking answer to its own woe.
'What about my father's spiritualism now? Good God! Is there no other
ancestral tomfoolery, no other of Superstition's patent Aylwinian
soul-salves for the philosophical Nature-worshipper and apostle of
rationalism to fly to? Her name was Winifred.

'Yis; don't I say 'er name wur Winifred?' said the woman, who thought
I was addressing her. 'You're jist like a poll-parrit with your
"Winifred, Winifred, Winifred." That was 'er name, an' she 'ad a
shock, pore dear, an' it was all along of you at the studero
a-talkin' about 'er father. You _must_ a-talked about 'er father: so
no lies. She 'ad fits arter that, in course she 'ad. Why, you'll make
me die a-larfin' with your poll-parritin' ways, sayin' "a shock, a
shock, a shock," arter me. In course she 'ad a shock; she 'ad it when
she was a little gal o' six. My pore Bill (that's my 'usband as now
lives in the fine 'Straley) was a'most killed a-fightin' a Irishman.
They brought 'im 'um an' laid 'im afore her werry eyes, an' the sight
throw'd 'er into high-strikes, an' arter that the name of "father"
allus throwed her into high-strikes, an' that's why I told 'em at the
studero never to say that word. An' I know you _must_ 'a' said it,
some o' your cussed lot must, or else why should my pore darter 'a'
'ad the high-strikes? Nothin' else never gev 'er no high-strikes only
talkin' to 'er about 'er father. An' as to me a-sendin' 'er
a-beggin', I tell you she liked beggin'. I gev her baskets to sell,
an' flowers to sell, an' yet she _would_ beg. I tell you she liked
beggin'. Some gals does. She was touched in the 'ead, an' she used to
say she _must_ beg, an' there was nothink she used to like so much as
to stan' with a box o' matches a-jabberin' a tex' out o' the Bible
unless it was singin'. There you are, a-larfin' and a-gurnin' ag'in.
If I wur on'y 'arf as drunk as you are the coppers 'ud 'a' run _me_
in hours ago; cuss 'em, an' their favouritin' ways.'


At the truth flashing in upon me through these fantastic lies, I had
passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate's awards
can draw from the victim no loud lamentations--when there are no
frantic blows aimed at the sufferer's own poor eyeballs till the
beard--like the self-mutilated Theban king's--is bedewed with a dark
hail-shower of blood. More terrible because more inhuman than the
agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition
of the soul into which I had passed--when the cruelty that seems to
work at Nature's heart, and to vitalise a dark universe of pain,
loses its mysterious aspect and becomes a mockery; when the whole
vast and merciless scheme seems too monstrous to be confronted save
by mad peals of derisive laughter--that dreadful laughter which
bubbles lower than the fount of tears--that laughter which is the
heart's last language; when no words can give it the relief of
utterance--no words, nor wails, nor moans.

'Another quid,' bawled the woman after me, as I turned away, 'another
quid, an' then I'll tell you somethink to your awantage. Out with it,
and don't spile a good mind.'

What I did and said that morning as I wandered through the streets of
London in that state of tearless despair and mad unnatural merriment,
one hour of which will age a man more than a decade of any woe that
can find a voice in lamentations, remains a blank in my memory.


I found myself at the corner of Essex Street, staring across the
Strand, which, even yet, had scarcely awoke into life. Presently I
felt my sleeve pulled, and heard the woman's voice.

'You didn't know as I was cluss behind you all the while, a-watchin'
your tantrums. Never spile a good mind, my young swell. Out with
t'other quid, an' then I'll tell you somethink about my pootty darter
as is on my mind.'

I gave her money, but got nothing from her save more incoherent lies
and self-contradictions about the time of the funeral.

'Point out the spot where she used to stand and beg. No, don't stand
on it yourself, but point it out.'

'This is the werry spot. She used to hold out her matches like this
'ere,--my darter used,--an' say texes out o' the Bible. She loved
beggin', pore dear!'

'Texts from the Bible?' I said, staggering under a new thought that
seemed to strike through me like a bar of hot metal. 'Can you
remember any one of them?'

'It was allus the same tex', an' I ought to remember it well enough,
for I've 'eerd it times enough. She wur like you for poll-parritin'
ways, and used to say the same thing over an' over ag'in. It wur
allus, "Let his children be wagabones and beg their bread; let them
seek it also out of desolate places." Why, you're at it
ag'in--gurnin' ag'in. You _must_ be drunk.'

Again there came upon me the involuntary laughter of heart-agony at
its tensest. I cried aloud: 'Faith and Love! Faith and Love! That
farce of the Raxton crypt with the great-grandmother's fool on his
knees shall be repeated for the delight of Nin-ki-gal and the Danish
skeletons and the ancestral ghosts from Hugh the Crusader down to the
hero of the knee-caps and mittens; and there shall be a dance of
death and a song, and the burden shall be--

       As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods:
       They kill us for their sport.'

Misery had made me a maniac at last; my brain swam, and the head of
the woman seemed to be growing before me--seemed once more to be
transfigured before me into a monstrous mountainous representation of
an awful mockery-goddess and columbine-queen, down whose merry
wrinkles were flowing tears that were at once tears of Olympian
laughter and tears of the oceanic misery of Man.

'Well, you _are_ a rum un, and no mistake,' said the woman. 'But who
the dickens _are_ you? _That's_ what licks me. Who the dickens _are_
you? Howsomever, if you'll fork out another quid, the Queen of the
Jokes'll tell you some'ink to your awantage, an' if you won't fork
out the Queen o' the Jokes is mum.'

I stood and looked at her--looked till the street seemed to heave
under my feet and the houses to rock. After this I seem to have
wandered back to Wilderspin's studio, and there to have sunk down
unconscious.




XII

THE REVOLVING CAGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE


I

I will not trouble the reader with details of the illness that came
upon me as the result of my mental agony and physical exhaustion. At
intervals I was aware of what was going on around me, but for the
most part I was in a semi-comatose state. I realised at intervals
that a medical man was sitting by my side, as I lay in bed. Then I
had a sense of being moved from place to place; and then of being
rocked by the waves. Slowly the periods of consciousness became more
frequent and also more prolonged.

My first exclamation was--'Dead! Have I been ill?' and I tried to
raise myself in vain.

'Yes, very ill,' said a voice, my mother's.

'Dangerously?'

'For several days you were in danger. Your recovery now entirely
depends upon your keeping yourself calm.'

'I am out at sea?'

'Yes,' said my mother; 'in Lord Sleaford's yacht.'

'How did I come here?'

'Well, Henry, I was so anxious to wait for a day or two to learn the
sequel of the dreadful tragedy, that I persuaded Lord Sleaford to
delay sailing. Next day he called at Belgrave Square, and told us he
had heard that you had been taken suddenly ill and were lying
unconscious at the studio. I went at once and saw the medical man,
Mr. Finch, whom Mr. Wilderspin had called in. This gentleman took a
serious view of your case. When I asked him what could be done he
said that nothing would benefit you so much as removal from London,
and recommended a sea voyage. It occurred to me at once to ask Lord
Sleaford if we might take you in his yacht, and he with his usual
good-nature agreed, and agreed also that Mr. Finch should accompany
us as your medical attendant.'

'You know all?' I said; 'you know that she is dead.'

'Alas! yes.'

At that moment the doctor came into the cabin, and my mother retired.

'When did you last see Wilderspin?' I asked Mr. Finch.

'Before leaving England to join a friend in Paris he went to Belgrave
Square to get tidings of you, and I was there.'

'He told you--what had occurred to make me ill?'

'He told me that it was the death of some one in whom you took an
interest, a model of his, but told it in such a wild and excited way
that I lost patience with him. His addled brains are crammed with the
wildest and most ignorant superstitions.'

'Did you ask him about her burial?'

'I did. I gathered from him that she was buried by the parish in the
usual way. But I assure you the man's account of everything that
occurred was so bewildered and so incoherent that I could really make
nothing out of him. What is his creed? Is it Swedenborgianism? He
seems to think that the model he has lost is a spirit (or spiritual
body, to use his own jargon) sent to him by the artistic-minded
spirits for entirely artistic purposes, but snatched from him now by
the mean jealousy of the same spirit-world.' 'But what did he say
about her burial?' 'Well, he seems not to have ignored so completely
the mundane question of burying this spiritual body as his creed
would have warranted, for he gave the mother money to bury it. The
mother, however, seems to have spent the money in gin and to have
left the duty of burying the spiritual body to the parish, who make
short work of all bodies; and, of course, by the parish she was
buried, you may rest assured of that, though the artist seems to
think that she was simply translated to heaven like Elijah.'

'I must return to England at once,' I said. 'I shall apply to the
Home Secretary to have the body disinterred.'

'Why, sir?'

'In order that she may be buried in a proper place, to be sure.'

'No use. You have no _locus standi_.'

'What do you mean?'

'You are not a relative, and to ask for a disinterment for such an
unimportant reason as that you, a stranger, would prefer to see her
buried elsewhere, would be idle.'

Sleaford now came into the cabin. I thanked him for his kindness, but
told him I must return at once.

'Even if your health permitted,' he said, 'it is impossible for the
yacht to go back. I have an appointment to meet a yachting friend.
But in any case depend upon it, old fellow, the doctor won't hear of
your returning for a long while yet. He told me not five minutes ago
that nothing but sea air, and keeping your mind tranquil, you know,
will restore you.'

The feeling of exhaustion that came upon me as he spoke convinced me
that there was only too much truth in his words. I felt that I must
yield to the inevitable; but as to tranquillity of mind, my entire
being was now filled with a yearning to see the New North
Cemetery--to see her grave. I seemed to long for the very pang which
I knew the sight of the grave would give me.


It is of course impossible for me to linger over that cruise, or to
record any of the incidents that took place at the ports at which we
touched and landed. My recovery, or rather my partial recovery, was
slower than the doctor had anticipated. Weeks and months passed, and
still there seemed but little improvement in me.

The result was that I was obliged to yield to the importunities of my
mother, and to the urgent advice of Dr. Finch, to remain on board
Sleaford's yacht during the entire cruise, and afterwards to go with
them to Italy.

Absence from England gave me not the smallest respite from the grief
that was destroying me.


My parting with my mother was a very pathetic one. She was greatly
changed, and I knew why. The furrows Time sets on the face can never
be mistaken for those which are caused by the passions. The struggle
between pride and remorse had been going on apace; her sufferings had
been as great as my own.

It was in Rome we parted. We were sitting in the cool, perfumed
atmosphere of St. Peter's, and for the moment a soothing wave seemed
to pass over my soul. For some little time there had been silence
between us. At length I said, 'Mother, it seems strange indeed for me
to have to say to you that you blame yourself too much for the part
you took in the tragedy of Winnie. When you sent her into Wales you
didn't know that her aunt was dead; you did it, as you thought, for
her good as well as for mine.'

She rose as if to embrace me, and then sank down again.

'But you don't know all, Henry; you don't know all. I knew her aunt
was dead, though Shales did not, or he would never have taken her.
All that concerned me was to get her away before your own recovery. I
thought there might be relatives of hers or friends whom Shales might
find. But I was possessed by a frenzied desire to get her away. For
years my eyes had been fixed on the earldom. I had been told by your
aunt that Cyril was consumptive, and also that he was very unlikely
to marry.'

I could not suppress a little laugh. 'Ha, ha! Cyril consumptive! No
man's stronger and sounder, I am glad to tell you; but if by
ill-chance he should die and the title should come to me, then,
mother, I'll wear the coronet, and it shall be made of the best
gingerbread gilt and ornamented thus. I'll give public lectures on
the British aristocracy and its origin, and its present relations to
the community, and my audience shall consist of society--that society
which is so much to aunt and the likes of her. Society shall be my
audience, and then, after my course of lectures is over, I will join
the Gypsies. But pray pardon me, mother. I had no idea I should thus
lose my temper. I should not have lost it so entirely had I not
witnessed how you are suffering from the tyranny of this blatant
bugbear called "Society."'

'My suffering, Henry, has brought me nearer to your line of thought
than you may suppose. It has taught me that when the affections are
deeply touched everything which before had seemed so momentous stands
out in a new light, that light in which the insignificance of the
important stands revealed. In that terrible conflict between you and
me on the night following the landslip, you spoke of my "cruel
pride." Oh, Henry, if you only knew how that cruel pride had been
wiped out of existence by remorse, I believe that even you would
forgive me. I believe that even she would if she were here.'

'I told you that I had entirely forgiven you, mother, and that I was
sure Winnie would forgive you if she were alive.'

'You did, Henry, but it did not satisfy me; I felt that you did not
know all.'

'I fear you have been very unhappy,' I said.

'I have been constantly thinking of Winifred a beggar in the streets
as described by Wilderspin. Oh, Henry, I used to think of her in the
charge of that woman. And Miss Dalrymple, who educated her, tells me
that in culture she was far above the girls of her own class; and
this makes the degradation into which she was forced through me the
more dreadful for me to think of. I used to think of her dying in the
squalid den, and then the Italian sunshine has seemed darker than a
London fog. Even the comfort that your kind words gave me was
incomplete, for you did not know the worst features of my cruelty.'

'But have you had no respite, mother? Surely the intensity of this
pain did not last, or it would have killed you.'

'The crisis did pass, for, as you say, had it lasted in its most
intense form, it would have killed me or sent me mad. After a while,
though remorse was always with me, I seemed to become in some degree
numbed against its sting. I could bear at last to live, but that was
all. Yet there was always one hour out of the twenty-four when I was
overmastered by pathetic memories, such as nearly killed me with
pity--one hour when, in a sudden and irresistible storm, grief would
still come upon me with almost its old power. This was on awaking in
the early morning. I learnt then that if there is trouble at the
founts of life, there is nothing which stirs that trouble like the
twitter of the birds at dawn. At Florence, I would, after spending
the day in wandering with you through picture galleries or about
those lovely spots near Fiesole, go to bed at night tolerably calm;
I would sink into a sleep, haunted no longer by those dreams of the
tragedy in which my part had been so cruel, and yet the very act of
waking in the morning would bring upon me a whirlwind of anguish; and
then would come the struggling light at the window, and the twitter
of the birds that seemed to say, "Poor child, poor child!" and I
would bury my face in my pillow and moan.'

When I looked in her face, I realised for the first time that not
even such a passion of pity as that which had aged me is so cruel in
its ravages as Remorse. To gaze at her was so painful that I turned
my eyes away.

When I could speak I said,

'I have forgiven you from the bottom of my heart, mother, but, if
that does not give you comfort, is there anything that will?'

'Nothing, Henry, nothing but what is impossible for me ever to
get--the forgiveness of the wronged child herself. _That_ I can never
get in this world. I dare only hope that by prayers and tears I may
get it in the end. Oh, Henry, if I were in heaven I could never rest
until I had sought her out, and found her and thrown myself on her
neck and said, "Forgive your persecutor, my dear, or this is no place
for me."'


II

As soon as I reached London, thinking that Wilderspin was still on
the Continent, I went first to D'Arcy's studio, but was there told
that D'Arcy was away--that he had been in the country for a long
time, busy painting, and would not return for some months. I then
went to Wilderspin's studio, and found, to my surprise and relief,
that he and Cyril had returned from Paris. I learnt from the servant
that Wilderspin had just gone to call on Cyril; accordingly to
Cyril's studio I went.

'He is engaged with the Gypsy-model, sir,' said Cyril's man, pointing
to the studio door, which was ajar. 'He told me that if ever you
should call you were to be admitted at once. Mr. Wilderspin is there
too.'

'You need not announce me,' I said, as I pushed open the door.

Entering the studio, I found myself behind a tall easel where Cyril
was at work. I was concealed from him, and also from Wilderspin and
Sinfi. On my left stood Cyril's caricature of Wilderspin's 'Faith and
Love,' upon which the light from a window was falling aslant!

Before I could pass round the easel into the open space I was
arrested by overhearing a conversation between Cyril, Sinfi, and
Wilderspin.

They were talking about _her_!

With my eyes fixed on Cyril's caricature on my left hand; I stood,
every nerve in my body seeming to listen to the talk, while the veil
of the goddess-queen in the caricature appeared to become
illuminated; the tragedy of our love (from the spectacle of her
father's dead body shining in the moonlight, with a cross on his
breast, down to the hideous-grotesque scene of the woman at the
corner of Essex Street) appeared to be represented on the veil of the
mocking queen in little pictures of scorching flame. These are the
words I heard:

'Keep your head in that position, Lady Sinfi,' said Cyril, 'and pray
do not get so excited.'

'I thought I felt the Swimmin' Rei in the room,' said Sinfi.

'What do you mean?'

'I thought I felt the stir of him in my burk [bosom]. Howsomever, it
must ha' bin all a fancy o' mine. But you see, Mr. Cyril, she wur
once a friend o' mine. I want to know what skeared her? If it _was_
her as set for the pictur, she'd never 'a' had the fit if she hadn't,
'a' bin skeared. I s'pose Mr. Wilderspin didn't go an' say the word
"feyther" to her? I s'pose he didn't go an' ax her who her feyther
was?'

I heard Wilderspin's voice say. 'No, indeed. _I_ would never have
asked who her father was. Ah, Mr. Cyril, I knew how mysteriously she
had come to me; why should I ask who was her father? Her earthly
parentage was not an illusion. But you will remember that I was not
in the studio at the time of the fit. Mr. Ebury had called about a
commission, and I had gone into the next room to speak to him. You
came into the studio at the time, Mr. Cyril. When I returned, I found
her in the fit, and you standing over her.'

'No, don't get up, Sinfi, my girl,' I heard Cyril say. 'Sit down
quietly, and I will tell you what, passed. There is no doubt I did
ask her about her father, poor thing; but I did it with the best
intentions--did it for her good, as I thought--did it to learn
whether she had been kidnapped, and certainly not from idle
curiosity.'

'Scepticism, the curse of the age,' said Wilderspin.

I heard Cyril say, 'Who could have thought it would turn out so? But
you yourself had told me, Wilderspin, of Mother Gudgeon's injunction
not to ask the girl who her father was, and of course it had upon me
the opposite effect the funny hag had intended it to have upon you.
It was hard to believe that such a flower could have sprung from such
a root. I thought it very likely that the woman had told you this to
prevent your getting at the truth about their connection; so I
decided to question the model myself, but determined to wait till you
had had a good number of sittings, lest there should come a quarrel
with the woman.'

'Well, an' so you asked her?' said Sinfi.

'I thought the moment had come for me to try to read the puzzle,'
said Cyril. 'So, on that day when Ebury called, when you, Wilderspin,
had left us together, I walked up to her and said, "Is your father
alive?"'

'Ah!' cried Sinfi, 'it was as I thought. It was the word "feyther" as
killed her! An' what'll become o' _him_?'

'The word "father" seemed to shoot into her like a bullet,' said
Cyril. 'She shrieked "Father," and her face looked--'

'No, don't, tell me how she looked!' said Sinfi. 'Mr. Wilderspin's
pictur' o' the witch and the lady shows how she  looked--whoever she
was. But if it was Winnie Wynne. what'll become o' _him_?'

Then I heard. Cyril address Wilderspin again. 'We had great
difficulty, you remember, Wilderspin, in bringing her round, and
afterwards I took her out of the house, put her into a cab, and you
directed your servant whither to take her.'

'It was scepticism that ruined all.' I heard Wilderspin say.

'And yet,' said Sinfi, 'the Golden Hand on Snowdon told as he'd marry
Winifred Wynne. Ah! surely the Swimmin' Rei is in the room! I thought
I heard that choke come in his throat as comes when he frets about
Winnie. Howsomever, I s'pose it must ha' bin all a fancy o' mine.'

'You make _me_ laugh, Sinfi, about this golden hand of yours that is
stronger than the hand of Death,' said Cyril; 'and yet I wish from my
heart I could believe it.'

'My poor mammy used to say, "The Gorgios believes when they ought to
disbelieve, and they disbelieve when they ought to believe, and that
gives the Romanies a chance."'

'Sinfi Lovell,' said Wilderspin, 'that saying of your mother's
touches at the very root of romantic art.'

'Well, if Gorgios don't believe enough, Sinfi,--if there is not
enough superstition among certain Gorgio acquaintances of mine, it's
a pity,' said Cyril.

'I don't know what you are a-talkin' about with your romantic art an'
sich like, but I _do_ know that nothink can't go ag'in the
dukkeripen o' the clouds; but if I was on Snowdon with my crwth I
could soon tell for sartin whether she's alive or dead,' said Sinfi.

'And how?' said Cyril.

'How? By playin' on the hills the old Welsh dukkerin' tune [Footnote
1] as she was so fond on. If she was dead, she wouldn't hear it, but
if she was alive she would, and her livin' mullo [Footnote 2] 'ud
come to it,' said Sinfi.

[Footnote 1: Incantation song.]

[Footnote 2: Wraith or fetch.]

'Do you believe that possible?' said Cyril, turning to Wilderspin.

'My friend,' said Wilderspin, 'I was at that moment repeating to
myself certain wise and pregnant words quoted from an Oriental book
by the great Philip Aylwin--words which tell us that he is too bold
who dares say what he will believe, what disbelieve, not knowing in
any wise the mind of God--not knowing in any wise his own heart and
what it shall one day suffer.'

'But,' said Sinfi, 'about her as sat to Mr. Wilderspin; did she never
talk at all, Mr. Cyril?'

'Never; but I saw her only three times,' said Cyril.

'Mr. Wilderspin,' said Sinfi, 'did she never talk?'

'Only once, and that was when the woman addressed her as Winifred.
That name set me thinking about the famous Welsh saint and those
wonderful miracles of hers, and I muttered "St. Winifred." The face
of the model immediately grew bright with a new light, and she spoke
the only words I ever heard her speak.'

'You never told me of this,' said Cyril.

'She stooped,' said Wilderspin, 'and went through a strange kind of
movement, as though she were dipping water from a well, and said,
"Please, good St. Winifred, bless the holy water and make it
cure--"'

'Ah, for God's sake stop!' cried Sinfi. 'Look! the Swimmin' Rei! He's
in the room! There he stan's, and he's a-hearin' every word, an'
it'll kill him outright!'

I stared at Cyril's picture of Leaena for which Sinfi was sitting. I
heard her say,

'There ain't nothink so cruel as seein' him take on like that; I've
seed it afore, many's the time, in old Wales. You'll find her yit.
The dukkeripen says you'll marry her yit, and you will. She can't be
dead when the sun and the golden clouds say you'll marry her at last.
Her as is dead _must_ ha' been somebody else.'

'Sinfi, you know there is no hope.'

'It might not ha' bin your Winnie, arter all,' said she. 'It might
ha' bin some poor innocent as her feyther used to beat. It's
wonderful how cruel Gorgio feythers is to poor born naterals. And she
might ha' heerd in London about St. Winifred's Well a-curin' people.'

'Sinfi,' I said, 'you know there is no hope. And I have no friend but
you now--I am going back to the Romanies.'

'No, no, brother,' she said, 'never no more.'

She put on her shawl. I rose mechanically. When she bade Cyril and
Wilderspin good-bye and passed out of the studio, I did so too. In
the street she stood and looked wistfully at me, as though she saw me
through a mist, and then bade me good-bye, saying that she must go to
Kingston Vale where her people were encamped in a hired field. We
separated, and I wandered I knew not whither.


III

I found myself inquiring for the New North Cemetery, and after a time
I stood looking through the bars of tall iron gates at long lines of
gravestones and dreary hillocks before me. Then I went in, walking
straight over the grass towards a gravedigger digging in the
sunshine. He looked at me, resting his foot on his spade.

'I want to find a grave.'

'What part was the party buried in?'

'The pauper part,' I said.

'Oh,' said he, losing suddenly his respectful tone. 'When was she
buried? I suppose it was a she by the look o' you.'

'When? I don't know the date.'

'Rather a wide order that, but there's the pauper part.' And he
pointed to a spot at some little distance, where there were no
gravestones and no shrubs. I walked across to this Desert of Poverty,
which seemed too cheerless for a place of rest. I stood and gazed at
the mounds till the black coffins underneath grew upon my mental
vision, and seemed to press upon my brain. Thoughts I had none, only
a sense of being another person.

The man came slowly towards me, and then looked meditatively into my
face. I shall never forget him. A tall, sallow, emaciated man he was,
with cheek-bones high and sharp as an American Indian's, and
straight black hair. He looked like a wooden image of Mephistopheles,
carved with a jack-knife.

'Who are you?' The words seemed to come, not from the gravedigger's
mouth, but from those piles of lamp-blacked coffins which were
searing my eyes through four feet of graveyard earth. By the
fever-fires in my brain I seemed to see the very faces of the
corpses.

'Who am I?' I said to myself, as I thought, but evidently aloud;
'I am the Fool of Superstition. I am Fenella Stanley's Fool, and
Sinfi Lovell's Fool, and Philip Aylwin's Fool, who went and averted
a curse from one of the heads resting down here, averted a curse by
burying a jewel in a dead man's tomb.'

'Not in this cemetery, so none o' your gammon,' said the
gravedigger, who had overheard me. 'The on'y people as is fools
enough to bury jewels with dead bodies is the Gypsies, and _they_
take precious good care, as I know, to keep it mum _where_ they bury
'em. There's bin as much diggin' for them thousand guineas as was
buried with Jerry Chilcott in Foxleigh Parish, where I was born, as
would more nor pay for emptying a gold mine; but I never heard o'
Christian folk a-buryin' jewels. But who are you?'

I felt a hand upon my shoulder, and looking round, I found Sinfi by
my side.

'Does he belong to you, my gal?'

'Yis,' said Sinfi, with a strange, deep ring in her rich contralto
voice. 'Yis, he belongs to me now--leastways he's my pal
now--whatever comes on it.'

'Then take him away, my wench. What's the matter with him? The old
complaint, I s'pose,' he added, lifting his hand to his mouth as
though drinking from a glass.

Sinfi gently put out her hand and brushed the man aside.

'I've bin a-followin' on you all the way, brother,' said Sinfi, as
we moved out of the cemetery, 'for your looks skeared me a bit. Let's
go away from this place.'

'But whither, Sinfi? I have no friend but you; I have no home.'

'No home, brother? The kairengros [Footnote] has got about
everythink, 'cept the sky an' the wind, an' you're one o' the richest
kairengros on 'em all--leastways so I wur told t'other day in
Kingston Vale. It's the Romanies, brother, as 'ain't got no home
'cept the sky an' the wind. Howsumever, that's nuther here nor there;
we'll jist go to the woman they told me on, an' if there's any truth
to be torn out of her, out it'll ha' to come, if I ha' to tear out
her windpipe with it.'

[Footnote: The house-dwellers.]

We took a cab and were soon in Primrose Court.

The front door was wide open--fastened back. Entering the narrow
common passage, we rapped at a dingy inner door. It was opened by a
pretty girl, whose thick chestnut hair and eyes to match contrasted
richly with the dress she wore--a dirty black dress, with great
patches of lining bursting through holes like a whity-brown froth.

'Meg Gudgeon?' said the girl in answer to our inquiries; and at first
she looked at us rather suspiciously, 'upstairs, she's very bad--like
to die--I'm a-seein' arter 'er. Better let 'er alone; she bites when
she's in 'er tantrums.'

'We's friends o' hern,' said Sinfi, whose appearance and decisive
voice seemed to reassure the girl.

'Oh, if you're friends that's different,' said she. 'Meg's gone off
'er 'ead; thinks the p'leace in plain clothes are after 'er.'

We went up the stairs. The girl followed us. When we reached a low
door, Sinfi proposed that she should remain outside on the landing,
but within ear-shot, as 'the sight o' both on us, all of a suddent,
might make the poor body all of a dither if she was very ill.'

The girl then opened the door and went in. I heard the woman's voice
say in answer to her,

'Friend? Who is it? Are you sure, Poll, it ain't a copper in plain
clothes come about that gal?'

The girl came out, and signalling me to enter, went leisurely
downstairs. Leaving Sinfi outside on the landing, I entered the room.
There, on a sort of truckle-bed in one corner, I saw the woman. She
slowly raised herself up on her elbows to stare at me. I took for
granted that she would recognise me at once; but either because she
was in drink when I saw her last, or because she had got the idea of
a policeman in plain clothes, she did not seem to know me. Then a
look of dire alarm broke over her face and she said,

'P'leaceman, I'm as hinicent about that air gal as a new-born babe.'

'Mrs. Gudgeon,' I said, 'I only want you to tell a friend of mine
about your daughter.'

'Oh yis! a friend o' yourn! Another or two on ye in plain clothes
behind the door, I dessay. An' pray who said the gal wur my darter?
What for do you want to put words into the mouth of a hinicent dyin'
woman? I comed by 'er 'onest enough. The pore half-starved thing came
up to me in Llanbeblig churchyard.'

'Llanbeblig churchyard?' I exclaimed, drawing close up to the bed.
'How came you in Llanbeblig churchyard?' But then I remembered that,
according to her own story, she had married a Welshman.

'How did I come in Llanbeblig churchyard?' said the woman in a tone
in which irony and fear were strangely mingled. 'Well, p'leaceman, I
don't mean to be sarcy: but seein' as all my pore dear 'usband's kith
and kin o' the name o' Goodjohn was buried in Llanbeblig churchyard,
p'raps you'll be kind enough to let me go there sometimes, an' p'raps
be buried there when my time comes.'

'But what took you there?' I said.

'What took me to Llanbeblig churchyard?' exclaimed the woman, whose
natural dogged courage seemed to be returning to her. 'What made me
leave every fardin' I had in the world with Poll Onion, when we
ommust wanted bread, an' go to Carnarvon on Shanks's pony? I sha'n't
tell ye. I comed by the gal 'onest enough, an' she never comed to no
'arm through me, less mendin' 'er does for 'er, and bringin' 'er to
London, and bein' a mother to 'er, an' givin' 'er a few baskets an'
matches to sell is a-doin' 'er any 'arm. An' as to beggin' she
_would_ beg, she loved to beg an' say texes.'

'Old kidnapper!' I cried, maddened by the visions that came upon me.
'How do I know that she came to no harm with a wretch like you?'

The woman shrank back upon the pillows in a revival of her terror.
'She never comed to no 'arm, p'leaceman. No, no, she never comed to
no 'arm through me. I'd a darter once o' my own, Jenny Gudgeon by
name--p'raps you know'd 'er, most o' the coppers did--as was brought
up by my sister by marriage at Carnarvon, an' I sent for 'er to
London, I did, pl'eaceman--God forgi'e me--an' she went wrong all
through me bein' a drinkin' woman an' not seein' arter 'er, just as
my son Bob tookt to drink, through me bein' a drinkin' woman an' not
seein' arter _him_. She tookt and went from bad to wuss, bad to
wuss; it's my belief as it's allus starvation as drives 'em to it;
an' when she wur a-dyin' gal, she sez to me, "Mother," sez she,
"I've got the smell o' Welsh vi'lets on me ag'in: I wants to be
buried in Llanbeblig churchyard, among the Welsh child'n an' maids,
mother. I wants to feel the snowdrops, an' smell the vi'lets, an'
the primroses, a-growin' over my 'ead," sez she; "but that can't
never be, mother," sez she, a-sobbin' fit to bust; "never, never,
for such as me," sez she. An' I know'd what she meant, though she
never once blamed me, an' 'er words stuck in my gizzard like a thorn,
p'leaceman.'

'But what has all this to do with the girl you kidnapped?'

'Ain't I a-tellin' on ye as fast as I can? When my pore gal dropped
off to sleep, I sez to Polly Onion, "Poll," I sez, "to-morrow mornin'
I'll pop every-think as ain't popped a'ready, an' I'll leave you the
money to see arter 'er, an' I'll start for Carnarvon on Shanks's
pony. I knows a good many on the road," sez I, "as won't let Jokin'
Meg want for a crust and a sup, an' when I gits to Carnarvon I'll ax
'er aunt to bury 'er (she sells fish, 'er aunt does,"' sez I, "and
she's got a pot o' money), an' then I'll see the parson or the sexton
or somebody," sez I, "an' I'll tell 'em I've got a darter in London
as is goin' to die, a Carnarvon gal by family, an' I'll tell 'im she
ain't never bin married, an' then they'll bury 'er where she can
smell the primroses and the vi'lets." That's what I sez to Poll
Onion, an' then Poll she begins to pipe, an' sez, "Oh Meg, Meg, ain't
I a Carnarvon gal too? The likes o' us ain't a-goin' to grow no
vi'lets an' snowdrops in Llanbeblig churchyard." An' I sez to her,
"What a d--d fool you are, Poll! You never 'adn't a gal as went wrong
through you a-drinkin', else you'd never say that. If the parson sez
to me, 'Is your darter a vargin-maid?' d'ye think I shall say, 'Oh
no, parson'? I'll swear she is a vargin-maid on all the Bibles in all
the churches in Wales." That's jis' what I sez to Polly Onion, God
forgi'e me. An' Poll sez, "The parson'll be sure to send you to hell,
Meg, if you do that air." An' I sez, "So he may, then, but I _shall_
do it, no fear." That's what I sez to Poll Onion (she's downstairs at
this werry moment a-warmin' me a drop o' beer); it was 'er as showed
you upstairs, cuss 'er for a fool; an' she can tell you the same
thing as I'm a-tellin' on you.'

'But what about her you kidnapped? Tell me all about it, or it will
be worse for you.'

'Ain't I a-tellin' you as fast as I can? Off to Carnarvon I goes, an'
every futt o' the way I walks--Lor' bless your soul, there worn't a
better pair o' pins nowheres than Meg Gudgeon's then, afore the water
got in 'em an' bust 'em; an' I got to Llanbeblig churchyard early one
mornin', and there I seed the pore half-sharp gal. So you see I comed
by 'er 'onest enough, p'leaceman, though she worn't ezzackly my own
darter.'

'Well, well,' I said; 'go on.'

'Yes, it's all very well to say "go on," p'leaceman; but if you'd got
as much water in your legs as I've got in mine, an' if you'd got no
more wind in your bellows than I've got in mine, you'd find it none
so easy to go on.'

'What was she doing in the churchyard?'

'Well, p'leaceman, I'm tellin' you the truth, s'elp me Bob! I was
a-lookin' over the graves to see if I could find a nice comfortable
place for my pore gal, an' all at once I heered a kind o' sobbin' as
would a' made me die o' fright if it 'adn't a' bin broad daylight,
an' then  I see a gal a-layin' flat on a grave an' cryin', an' when I
got up to her I seed as she wur covered with mud, an' I seed as she
wur a-starvin'.'

'Good God, woman, you are lying! you are lying!'

'No, I ain't a-lyin'. She tookt to me the moment she clapped eyes on
me; most people does, and them as don't ought, an' she got up an' put
her arms round my neck, and she called me "Knocker."'

'Called you what?'

'Ain't I a-tellin' you? She called me "Knocker"; and that's the very
name as she allus called me up to the day of 'er death, pore dear! I
tried to make 'er come along o' me, an' she wouldn't stir, an' so I
left 'er, meanin' to go back; but when I got to my sister's by
marriage, there was a letter for me an' it wur from Polly Onion,
a-sayin' as my pore Jenny died the same day as I left London,
a-sayin', "Mother, vi'lets, vi'lets; mother, vi'lets, vi'lets!" an'
was buried by the parish. An' that upset me, p'leaceman, an' made me
swownd, an' when I comed to, I couldn't hear nothink only my pore
Jenny's voice a-sobbin' on the wind, "Mother, vi'lets, vi'lets;
mother, vi'lets, vi'lets!" an' that sent me off my 'ead a bit, an' I
run out o' the 'ouse, an' there was Jenny's voice a-goin' on before
me a-sobbin', "Mother, vi'lets, vi'lets; mother, vi'lets, vi'lets!"
an' it seemed to lead me back to the churchyard; an' lo an' be'old!
there was the pore half-starved creatur' a-settin' there jist as I'd
left 'er, an' I sez, "God bless you, my gal, you're a-starvin'!" an'
she jumped up, an' she comed an' throwed 'er arms round my waist, an'
there we stood both on us a-cryin' togither, an' then I runned back
into Carnarvon, an' fetched 'er some grub, an' she tucked into the
grub.--But hullo! p'leaceman, what's up now? What the devil are you
a-squeedgin' my 'and like that for? Are you a-goin' to kiss it? It
ain't none so clean, p'leaceman. You're the rummest copper in plain
clothes ever I seed in all my born days. Fust you seem as if you want
to bite me, you looks so savage, an' then you looks as if you wants
to kiss me; you'll make me laugh, I know you will, an' that'll make
me cough.--Hi! Poll Onion, come 'ere. Bring my best lookin'-glass out
o' my bowdore, an' let me look at my ole chops, for I'm blowed if
there ain't a copper in plain clothes this time as is fell 'ead over
ears in love with me, jist as the young swell did at the studero.'

'Go on, Mrs. Gudgeon,' I said; 'go on. She ate the food?'

'Oh, didn't she jist! And the pore half-sharp thing took to me, an' I
took to she, an' I thinks to myself, "She's a purty gal, if she's
ever so stupid, an' she'll get 'er livin' a-sellin' flowers o' fine
days, an' a-doin' the rainy-night dodge with baskets when it's wet ";
an' so I took 'er in, an' in the street she'd all of a suddent bust
out a-singin' songs about Snowdon an' sich like, just as if she was
a-singin' in a dream, and folk used to like to 'ear 'er an' gev 'er
money; an' I was a good mother to 'er, I was, an' them as sez I
worn't is cussed liars.'

'And she never came to any harm?' I said, holding the great muscular
hands between my two palms, unwilling to let them go. 'She never came
to any harm?'

'Ain't I said so more nor wunst? I swore on the Bible--there's the
very Bible, under the match-box, agin the winder--on that very Bible
I swore as my port Jenny brought from Wales, an' as I've never popped
yit that this pore half-sharp gal should never go wrong through me;
an' then, arter I swore that, my pore Jenny let me alone, an' I never
'eard 'er v'ice no more a-cryin'. "Mother, vi'lets, vi'lets; mother,
vi'lets, vi'lets!" An' many's the chap as 'as come leerin' after 'er
as I've sent away with a flea in 'is ear. Cuss 'em all; they's all
bad alike about purty gals, men is. She's never comed to no wrong
through _me_. Didn't I ammost kill a real sailor capting when I used
to live in the East End 'cause he tried to meddle with 'er? An'
worn't that the reason why I left my 'um close to Radcliffe 'Ighway
an' comed 'ere? Them as killed 'er wur the cussed lot in the
studeros. I'm a dyin' woman; I'm as hinicent as a new-born babe. An'
there ain't nothink o' 'ern in this room on'y a pair o' ole shoes an'
a few rags in that ole trunk under the winder.'

I went to the trunk and raised the lid. The tattered, stained remains
of the very dress she wore when I last saw her in the mist on
Snowdon! But what else? Pushed into an old worn shoe, which with its
fellow lay tossed among the ragged clothes, was a brown stained
letter. I took it out. It was addressed to 'Miss Winifred Wynne at
Mrs. Davies's.' Part of the envelope was torn away. It bore the
Graylingham post-mark, and its superscription was in a hand which I
did not recognise, and yet it was a hand which seemed half-familiar
to me. I opened it; I read a line or two before I fully realised what
it was--the letter, full of childish prattle, which I had written to
Winifred when I was a little boy--the first letter I wrote to her.


I forgot where I was, I forgot that Sinfi was standing outside the
door, till I heard the woman's voice exclaiming, 'What do you want to
set on my bed an' look at me like that for?--you ain't no p'leaceman
in plain clothes, so none o' your larks. Git off o' my bed, will ye?
You'll be a-settin' on my bad leg an' a-bustin' on it in a minit. Git
off my bed, else look another way; them eyes o' yourn skear me.'

I was sitting on the side of her bed and looking into her face.
'Where did you get this?' I said, holding out the letter.

'You skears me, a-lookin' like that,' said she. 'I comed by it
'onest. One day when she was asleep, I was turnin' over 'er clothes
to see how much longer they would hold together, when I feels a
somethink 'ard sewed up in the breast; I rips it open, and it was
that letter. I didn't put it back in the frock ag'in, 'cause I
thought it might be useful some day in findin' out who she was. She
never missed it. I don't think she'd 'ave missed anythink, she wur
so oncommon silly. You ain't a-goin' to pocket it, air you?'

I had put the letter in my pocket, and had seized the shoes and was
going out of the room; but I stopped, took a sovereign from my purse,
placed it in an envelope bearing my own address which I chanced to
find in my pocket, and, putting it into her hand, I said, 'Here is my
address and here is a sovereign. I will tell your friend below to
come for me or send whenever you need assistance.' The woman clutched
at the money with greed, and I left the room, signalling to Sinfi
(who stood on the landing, pale and deeply moved) to follow me
downstairs. When we reached the wretched room on the ground-floor we
found the girl hanging some wet rags on lines that were stretched
from wall to wall.

'What is your name?' I said.

'Polly Unwin,' replied she, turning round with a piece of damp linen
in her hand.

'And what are you?'

'What am I?'

'I mean what do you do for a living?'

'What do I do for a living?' she said. 'All kinds of things--help the
men at the barrows in the New Cut sell flowers, do anything that
comes in my way.'

'Never mind what she does for a livin', brother,' said Sinfi; 'give
her a gold balanser or two, and tell her to see arter the woman.'

'Here is some money,' I said to the girl. 'See that Mrs. Gudgeon
upstairs wants for nothing. Is that story of hers true about her
daughter and Llanbeblig churchyard?'

'That's true enough, though she's a wunner at a lie: that's true
enough.'

But as I spoke I heard a noise like the laugh or the shriek of a
maniac. It seemed to come from upstairs.

'She's a-larfin' ag'in,' said the girl. 'It's a very wicked larf,
sir, ain't it? But there's wuss uns nor Meg Gudgeon for all 'er
wicked larf, as I knows. Many a time she's kep' me from starvin'. I
mus' run up an' see 'er. She'll kill herself a-larfin' yit.'

The girl hurried upstairs and I followed her, leaving Sinfi below. I
re-entered the bedroom. There was the woman, her face buried in the
pillow, rocking and rolling her body half round with the regularity
of a pendulum. Between the peals of half-smothered hysterical
laughter that came from her, I could hear her say:

'_Dear Lord Jesus, don't forget to love dear Henry who can't git up
the gangways without me_.'

The words seemed to fall upon my heart like a rain of molten metal
dropping from the merciless and mocking skies. But I had ceased to
wonder at the cruelty of Fate. The girl went to her and shook her
angrily. This seemed to allay her hysterics, for she rolled round
upon her back and stared at us. Then she looked at the envelope
clutched in her hand, and read out the address,

'Henry, Henry, Henry Halywin, Eskeuer! An' I tookt 'im for a copper
in plain clothes all the while! Henry, Henry, Henry Halywin, Eskeuer!
I shall die a-larfin', I know I shall! I shall die a-larfin', I know
I shall! Poll! don't you mind me a-tellin' you about my pore darter
Winifred--for my darter she _was_, as I'll swear afore all the beaks
in London--don't you mind me a-sayin' that if she wouldn't talk when
she wur awake, she could mag away fast enough when she wur asleep;
an' it were allus the same mag about dear little Henry, an' dear
Henry Halywin as couldn't git up the gangways without 'er. Well, pore
dear Henry was 'er sweet'airt, an' this is the chap, an' if my eyes
ain't stun blind, the werry chap out o' the cussed studeros as killed
'er, pore dear, an' as is a-skearin' me away from my beautiful 'um in
Primrose Court; an' 'ere wur I a-talkin' to 'im all of a muck sweat,
thinkin' he wur a copper in plain clothes!'

At this moment Sinfi entered the room. She came up to me, and laying
her hand upon my shoulder she said: 'Come away, brother, this is
cruel hard for you to bear. It's our poor sister Winifred as is dead,
and it ain't nobody else.'

The effect of Sinfi's appearance and of her words upon the woman was
like that of an electric shock. She sat up in her bed open-mouthed,
staring from Sinfi to me, and from me to Sinfi.

'So my darter Winifred's your _sister_ now, is she?' (turning to me).
'A few minutes ago she was your sweet'airt: an' now she seems to ha'
bin your sister. An' she was _your_ sister, too, was she?' (turning
to Sinfi). 'Well, all I know is, that she was my darter, Winifred
Gudgeon, as is dead, an' buried in the New North Cemetery, pore dear;
an' yet she was sister to both on ye!'

She then buried her face again in the pillows and resumed the rocking
movement, shrieking between her peals of laughter: 'Well, if I'm the
mother of a six-fut Gypsy gal an' a black-eyed chap as seems jest
atween a Gypsy and a Christian, I never knowed _that_ afore. No, I
never knowed _that_ afore! I allus said I should die a-larfin', an'
so I shall; I'm a-dyin' now--ha! ha! ha!'

She fell back upon the pillow, exhausted by her own cruel merriment.

'She always said she'd die a-larfin', an' she will, too--more nor I
shall ever do,' said the girl, after we had gone downstairs.

'Did you notice what she said about Winnie a-callin' her Knocker?'
said Sinfi.

'Yes, and couldn't understand it.'

'_I_ know what it meant. Winnie knowed all about the Knockers of
Snowdon, the dwarfs o' the copper mine, and this woman, bein' so
thick and short, must look ezackly like a Knocker, I should say, if
you could see one.'

I said to the girl, 'Was she really kind to--to--'

'To her you were asking about,--the Essex Street Beauty? I should
think she just was. She's a drinker, is poor Meg, and drinking in
Primrose Court means starvation. Meg and the Beauty were often short
enough of grub, but, drunk or sober, Meg would never touch a mouthful
till the Beauty had had her fill. I noticed it many a time--not a
mouthful. When Meg was obliged to send her into the streets to sell
things she was always afraid that the Beauty might come to harm
through the toffs and the chaps. The toffs were the worst looking
after her--as they mostly are--so I was always watching her in the
day-time, and at night Meg was always watching her, and that was what
made me know your face, as soon as ever I clapt eyes on it.'

'Why, what do you mean?'

'Well, one rainy night when I was standing by the theatre door, I
heard a toff ask a policeman about the Essex Street Beauty, and I
thought I knew what that meant very well. So I ran off to find Meg. I
had seen her watching the Beauty all the time. But lo and behold! Meg
was gone and the Beauty too. So I run across here, and found Meg and
the Beauty getting their supper as quiet as possible. Meg had heard
the toff talking to the policeman--though I didn't know she was
standing so near--and whisked her off and away as quick as
lightning.'

'That was I,' I said. 'God! God! If I had only known!'

'There's the same look now on your face as there was then, and I
should know it among ten thousand.'

'Polly Onion,' I said, 'there is my address, and if ever you want a
friend, and if you are in trouble, you will know where to find
assistance,' and I gave her another sovereign.

'You're a good sort,' said she, 'and no mistake.'

'Good-bye,' I said, shaking her hand. 'See well after Mrs. Gudgeon.'

'All right,' said she, and a smile broke over her face. 'I think I
ought to tell you now,' she continued, 'that Meg's no more ill of
dropsy than I am; she could walk twenty miles off the reel; there
ain't a bullock in England half as strong as Meg; she's shamming.'

'Shamming, but why?'

'Well, she ain't drunk; ever since the Beauty died she's never
touched a drop o' gin. But she's turned quite cranky. She's got it
into her head that the relations of the Beauty are going to send her
to prison for kidnapping; and she thinks that every one that comes
near her is a policeman in plain clothes. She's just lying in bed to
keep herself out of the way till she starts.'

'Where's she going, then?'

'She talks about going to see after her son Bob in the country; her
husband is a Welshman. He's over the water.'

'Did you say she had given up drinking?' I asked.

'Yes; she seemed to dote on the Beauty, and when the Beauty died she
said, "My darter went wrong through me drinkin', and my son Bob went
wrong through me drinkin'; and I feel somehow that it was through my
drinkin' that I lost the Beauty; and never will you find me touch
another drop o' gin, Poll. Beer I ain't fond on, and it 'ud take a
rare swill o' beer to get up as far as Meg Gudgeon's head."'

'There ain't much fault to be found with a woman like Meg Gudgeon,'
said Sinfi. 'Was the Beauty fond o' her? She ought to ha' bin.'

'She used to call her Knocker,' said the girl. 'She seemed very fond
of her when they were together, but seemed to forget her as soon as
they were apart.'

Sinfi and I then left the house.

In Great Queen Street she took my hand as if to bid me good-bye. But
she stood and gazed at me wistfully, and I gazed at her. At last she
said,

'An' now, brother, we'll jist go across to Kingston Vale, an' see my
daddy, an' set your livin'-waggin to rights.'

'Then, Sinfi,' I said, 'you and I are once more--'

I stopped and looked at her. The fearless young Amazon and seeress,
who kept a large family of the Kaulo Camloes in awe, was supposed to
have nearly conquered the feminine weakness of tears; but she had
not. There was a chink in the Amazon's armour, and I had found it.

'Yis,' said she, nodding her head and smiling. 'You an' me's right
pals ag'in.'

As we were going I told her how I had replaced the jewel in the tomb.

'I know'd you would do it. Yis, I heer'd you telling the gravedigger
the same thing.'

'And yet,' said I bitterly, 'in spite of that and in spite of the
Golden Hand, she is dead.'

Sinfi stood silently looking at me now. Even her prodigious faith
seemed conquered.


IV

For a few days I paced with Sinfi over Wimbledon Common and Richmond
Park, The weather was now unusually brilliant for the time of year.
Sinfi would walk silently by my side.

But I could not rest with the Gypsies. I must be alone. Soon I left
the camp and returned to London, where I took a suite of rooms in a
house not far from Eaton Square--though to me London was a huge
meaningless maze of houses clustered around Primrose Court--that
horrid, fascinating, intolerable core of pain. Into my lungs poured
the hateful atmosphere of the city where Winifred had perished;
poured hot and stifling as sand-blasts of the desert. Impossible to
stay there!--for the pavement seemed actually to scorch my feet, like
the floor of a fiery furnace. To me the sun above was but the hideous
eye of Circumstance which had stared down pitilessly on that bare
head of hers, and blistered those feet.

The lamps at night seemed twinkling, blinking in a callous
consciousness of my tragedy--my monstrous tragedy of real life, the
like of which no poet dare imagine. But what aroused my wrath to an
unbearable pitch--what determined me to leave London at once--was the
sight of the unsympathetic faces in the streets. Though sympathy
could have given me no comfort, the myriad unsympathetic eyes of
London infuriated me.

'Died in beggar's rags--died in a hovel!' I muttered with rage as the
equipages and coarse splendours of the West End rolled insolently by.
'Died in a hovel!--and this London, this vast, ridiculous, swarming
human ant-hill, whose millions of paltry humdrum lives were not worth
one breath from those lips--this London spurned her, left her to
perish alone in her squalor and misery.'


Cyril and Wilderspin had returned to the Continent. D'Arcy was still
away.


I made application to the Home Secretary to have the pauper grave
opened. On the ground that I was 'not a relative of the deceased,'
the officials refused to institute even preliminary inquiries.

During this time no news of Mrs. Gudgeon had come to me through Polly
Onion, and I determined to go to Primrose Court and see what had
become of her.

When I reached Primrose Court I found that the shutters of the house
were up. Knocking and getting no response, I ascertained from a
pot-boy who was passing the corner of the court that Mrs. Gudgeon had
decamped. Neither the pot-boy nor any one in the court could tell me
whither she was gone.

'But where is Polly Onion?' I asked anxiously; for I was beginning to
blame myself bitterly for having neglected them.

'I can tell you where poor Polly is,' said the pot-boy. 'She's in the
New North Cemetery. She fell downstairs and broke her neck.'

'Why, she lived downstairs,' I said.

'That's true; you seem to be well up in the family, sir. But Poll
couldn't pay her rent, so old Meg took her in. And on the very
morning when Meg and Poll were a-startin' off together into the
country--it was quite early and dark--Poll stumbles over three young
flower-gals as 'ad crep' in the front door in the night time and was
makin' the stairs their bed. Gals as hadn't made enough to pay for
their night's lodgin' often used to sleep on Meg's stairs. Poll was
picked up as nigh dead as a toucher, and she died at the 'ospital.'


Toiling in the revolving cage of Circumstance, I strove in vain
against that most appalling form of envy--the envy of one's fellow
creatures that they should live and breathe while there is no breath
of life for the _one_.


My uncle Cecil's death had made me a rich man; but what was wealth to
me if it could not buy me respite from the vision haunting me day and
night--the vision of the attic, the mattress, and the woman?

And as I thought of the powerlessness of wealth to give me one crumb
of comfort, and remembered Winnie's sermon about wealth, I would look
at myself in the mirror above my mantelpiece and smile bitterly at
the sight of the hollow cheeks, furrowed brow, and melancholy eyes,
and recall her words about her hovering near me after she was dead.

The thought of my wealth and the squalor in which she had died was, I
think, the most maddening thought of all. I had now become the
possessor of Wilderspin's picture 'Faith and Love,' having bought it
of the Bond Street dealer to whom it belonged; and also of the
'Christabel' picture, and these I was constantly looking at as they
hung up on the walls of my room. After a while, however, I destroyed
the 'Christabel' picture, it was too painful. Though I would not see
such friends as I had, I read their letters; indeed, it was these
same letters which alone could draw from me a grim smile now and
then.

Almost every letter ended by urging me, in order to flee from my
sorrows, to travel! With the typical John Bull travelling seems to be
always the panacea. In sorrow, John's herald of peace is Baedeker:
the dispenser of John's true nepenthe is Mr. Murray. Pity and love
for Winifred pursued me, tortured me nigh unto death, and therefore
did these friends of mine seem to suppose that I wanted to flee from
my pity and sorrow! Why, to flee from my sorrow, to get free of my
pity, to flee from the agonies that went nigh to tearing soul from
body, would have been to flee from all that I had left of
life--memory.

Did I want to flee from Winnie? Why, memory was Winnie now; and did
I want to flee from _her_? And yet it was memory that was goading me
on to the verge of madness. No doubt the reader thinks me a weak
creature for allowing the passion of pity to sap my manhood in this
fashion. But it was not so much her death as the manner of her death
that withered my heart and darkened my soul. The calamities which
fell upon her, grievous beyond measure, unparalleled, not to be
thought of save with a pallor of cheek and a shudder of the flesh,
were ever before me, mocking me--maddening me.

'Died in a hovel!' As I gave voice to this impeachment of Heaven,
night after night, wandering up and down the streets, my brain was
being scorched and withered by those same thoughts of anger against
destiny and most awful revolt which had appalled me when first I saw
how the curse of Heaven or the whim of Circumstance had been
fulfilled.

Then came that passionate yearning for death, which grief such as
mine must needs bring. But if what Materialism teaches were true,
suicide would rob me even of my memory of her. If, on the other hand,
what I had been taught by the supernaturalism of my ancestors were
true, to commit suicide might be but to play finally into the hands
of that same unknown pitiless power with whom my love had all along
been striving.

'Suicide might sever my soul from hers for ever.' I said, and then
the tragedy would seem too monstrously unjust to be true, and I said:
'It cannot be--such things cannot be: it is a hideous dream. She is
not dead! She is in Wales with friends at Carnarvon, and I shall
awake and laugh at all this imaginary woe!'

And what were now my feelings towards the memory of my father? Can
a man cherish in his heart at one and the same moment scorn of
another man for believing in the efficacy of a curse, and bitter
anger against him for having left a curse behind him? He can! On my
return to London after my illness I had sent back to Wilderspin the
copy of _The Veiled Queen_ he had lent me. But from the library of
Raxton Hall I brought my father's own copy, elaborately bound in the
tooled black calf my father affected. The very sight of that black
binding now irritated me; never did I pass it without experiencing a
sensation that seemed a blending of scorn and fear: scorn of the
ancestral superstitions the book gave voice to: fear of them.

One day I took the book from the shelves and then hurled it across
the room. Stumbling over it some days after this, a spasm of
ungovernable rage came upon me, for terribly was my blood struggling
with Fenella Stanley and Philip Aylwin, and thousands of ancestors,
Romany and Gorgio, who for ages upon ages had been shaping my
destiny. I began to tear out the leaves and throw them on the fire.
But suddenly I perceived the leaves to be covered with marginalia in
my father's manuscript, and with references to Fenella Stanley's
letters--letters which my father seemed to have studied as deeply as
though they were the writings of a great philosopher instead of the
scribblings of an ignorant Gypsy. My eye had caught certain written
words which caused me to clutch at the sheets still burning on the
fire. Too late!--I grasped nothing save a little paper-ash. Then I
turned to the pages still left in my hand, and read these words of my
father's:

'These marginalia are written for the eyes of my dear son, into whose
hands this copy of my book will come. Until he gave me his promise to
bury the amulet with me, I felt alone in the world. But even he
failed to understand what he called "my superstition." He did not
know that by perpetually feeling on my bosom the facets of the
beloved jewel which had long lain warm upon hers--the cross which had
received the last kiss from her lips--I had been able to focus all
the scattered rays of thought--I had been able to vitalise memory
till it became an actual presence. He did not know that out of my
sorrow had been born at last a strange kind of happiness--the
happiness that springs from loving a memory--living with a
memory--till it becomes a presence--an objective reality. He did not
know that, by holding her continually in my thoughts, by means of
the amulet, I achieved at last the miracle described by the Hindoo
poets--the miracle of reshaping from the undulations of "the three
regions of the universe the remembered object by the all-creative
magic of love!"'


Then followed some translations from the Kumara-sambhava and other
Sanscrit poems, and then the well-known passage in Lucretius about
dreams, and then a pathetic account of the visions called up within
him by the sensation caused by the lacerations of the facets of the
cherished amulet upon his bosom--visions something akin, as I
imagine, to those experienced by _convulsionnaires_. And then after
all this learning came references to poor ignorant Fenella Stanley's
letters and extracts from them.

In one of these extracts I was startled to come upon the now familiar
word 'crwth.'


'De Welch fok ses as de livin mullos only follow the crwth on Snowdon
wen it is playde by a Welch Chavi, but dat is all a lie. Dey follows
the crwth when a Romany Chi plays it as I nows very wel, but de
chavi wot play on the crwth, shee must love the living mullo she want
for to come, and de living mullo must love her.'


And then followed my father's comments on the extract.


'_N.B._--To see and hear a crwth, if possible, and ascertain the true
nature of the vibrations. But there are said to be only a few crwths
in existence; and very likely there is no musician who could play
upon them.'


Then followed a few sentences written at a later date.


'The crwth is now becoming obsolete; on inquiry I learn that it is a
stringed instrument played with a bow like a violin; but as one of
the feet of the bridge passes through one of the sound-holes and
rests on the inside of the back, the vibrations must be quite unique,
if we remember how important a part is played by the back in all
instruments of the violin kind. It must be far more subtle than the
vibrations of the Welsh harp, and even more subtle (if also more
nasal) than those of the violin.

'The reason why music has in all ages been called in to aid in
evoking the spirits, the reason why it is as potent now as ever it
was in aiding the spirits to manifest themselves, is simple enough:
the rhythmic vibrations of music set in active motion the magnetic
waves through whose means alone the two worlds, spiritual and
material, can hold communication. The quality and the value of these
vibrations depend mainly, no doubt, upon the magnetic power,
conscious or other, of the musician, but partly also upon the kind of
instrument used. The vibrations awakened by stringed instruments have
been long known to be more subtle than any others: instruments of the
violin kind are of course the most subtle of all. Doubtless this is
why among the Welsh hills the old saying used to be "The spirits
follow the crwth."'

'Which folly is the more besotted,' I said, as I read and re-read the
marginalia--'that of the scholar with his scientific nonsense about
vibrations, or that of the ignorant Gypsy with her living mullos
drawn through the air by music and love?'

But now my eyes fell upon a very different kind of marginal note
which ran thus:--


'The one important fact of the twentieth century will be the growth
and development of that great Renascence of Wonder which set in in
Europe at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of
the nineteenth.

'The warring of the two impulses governing man (and probably not man
only, but the entire world of conscious life)--the impulse of
acceptance, the impulse to take unchallenged and for granted all the
phenomena of the outer world as they are, and the impulse to confront
these phenomena with eyes of inquiry and wonder--will occupy all the
energies of the next century.

'The old impulse of wonder which came to the human race in its
infancy has to come back--has to triumph--before the morning of the
final emancipation of man can dawn.

'But the wonder will be exercised in very different fields from those
in which it was exercised in the past. The materialism which at this
moment seems to most thinkers inseparable from the idea of evolution
will go. Against their own intentions certain scientists are showing
that the spiritual force called life is the maker and not the
creature of organism--is a something outside the material world, a
something which uses the material world as a means of phenomenal
expression.

'The materialist, with his primitive and confiding belief in the
testimony of the senses, is beginning to be left out in the cold,
when men like Sir W. R. Grove turn round on him and tell him that
"the principle of all certitude" is not and cannot be the testimony
of his own senses; that these senses, indeed, are no absolute tests
of phenomena at all; that probably man is surrounded by beings he can
neither see, feel, hear, nor smell; and that, notwithstanding the
excellence of his own eyes, ears, and nose, the universe the
materialist is mapping out so deftly is, and must be, monophysical,
lightless, colourless, soundless--a phantasmagoric show--a deceptive
series of undulations, which become colour, or sound, or what not,
according to the organism upon which they fall.'


These words were followed by a sequence of mystical sonnets about
"the Omnipotence of Love," which showed, beyond doubt, that if my
father was not a scientific thinker, he was, at least, a very
original poet. And this made me perplexed as to what could have drawn
Wilderspin, who scorned the art of poetry, into the meshes of _The
Veiled Queen_. Perhaps, however, it was because Wilderspin's ancestry
was, notwithstanding his English name, largely, if not wholly, Welsh,
as I learnt from Cyril. Welshmen, whether sensitive or not to the
rhythmic expression of the English language, are almost all, I
believe, of the poetic temperament.

But from this moment my mind began to run upon the picture of Fenella
Stanley, surrounded by those Snowdonian spirits which her music was
supposed to have evoked from the mountain air of the morning.



XIII

THE MAGIC  OF  SNOWDON


I

In a few days I left London and went to North Wales.

Opposite to me in the railway carriage sat an elderly lady, into
whose face I occasionally felt myself to be staring in an unconscious
way. But I was merely communing with myself: I was saying to myself,
'My love of North Wales, and especially of Snowdon, is certainly very
strong; but it is easily accounted for--it is a matter of
temperament. Even had Wales not been associated with Winnie, I still
must have dearly loved it. Much has been said about the effect of
scenery upon the minds and temperaments of those who are native to
it. But temperament is a matter of ancestral conditions: the place of
one's birth is an accident. As some, like my cousin Percy, for
instance are born with a passion for the sea, and some with a passion
for forests, some with a passion for mountains, and some with a
passion for rolling plains. The landscape amid which I was born had,
no doubt, a charm for me, and could bring to me that nature-ecstacy
which I inherited from Fenella Stanley. But with Wales I actually
fell in love the moment I set foot in the country. This is why I am
hurrying there now.'

And I laughed at myself, and evidently frightened the old lady very
much. She did not know that underneath the soul's direst
struggle--the struggle of personality with the tyranny of the
ancestral blood--there is an awful sense of humour--a laughter
(unconquerable, and yet intolerable) at the deepest of all
incongruities, the incongruity of Fate's game with man. I apologised
to her, and told her that I had been absorbed in reading a droll
story, in which a man believed that the Angel of Memory had
refashioned for him his dead wife out of his own sorrow and
unquenchable fountain of tears.

'What an extraordinary idea!' said the old lady, in the conciliatory
tone she would have adopted towards a madman whom she found alone
with her in a railway carriage. 'I mean he was very eccentric, wasn't
he?'

'Who shall say, madam? "Bold is the donkey-driver and bold the ka'dee
who dares say what he will believe, what disbelieve, not knowing in
any wise the mind of Allah, not knowing in any wise his own heart and
what it shall some day suffer."'

At the next station the old lady left the carriage and entered
another, and I was left alone.

My intention was to take up my residence at the cottage where
Winifred had lived with her aunt. Indeed, for a few days I did this,
taking with me one of the Welsh peasants with whom I had previously
made friends. But of course a lengthened stay in such a house was
impossible. More than ever now I needed attendance, and good
attendance, for I had passed into a strange state of irritability--I
had no command over my nerves, which were jarred by the most trifling
thing. I went to the hotel at Peri y Gwryd, but there tourists and
visitors made life more intolerable still to a man in my condition.

At first I thought of building a house as near to the cottage as
possible; but this would take time, and I could not rest out of
Wales. I decided at last to have a wooden bungalow built. By telling
the builders that time was the first consideration with me, the cost
a secondary one, I got a bungalow built in a few weeks. By the
tradesmen of Chester I got it fitted up and furnished to my taste
with equal rapidity. Attending to this business gave real relief.

When the bungalow was finished I removed into it the picture 'Faith
and Love.' I also got in as much painting material as I might want
and began to make sketches in the neighbourhood.

Time went on, and there I remained. In a great degree, however, the
habit of grieving was conquered by my application to work. My
moroseness of temper gradually left me.

Beautiful memories began to take the place of hideous ones--the
picture of the mattress and the squalor gave place to pictures of
Winifred on the sands of Raxton or on Snowdon. Yet so much of habit
is there in grief that even at this time I was subject to recurrent
waves of the old pain--waves which were sometimes as overmastering as
ever.

I did not neglect the cottage, which was now my property, but kept it
in exactly the same state as that in which it had been put by Sinfi
after Winnie had wandered back to Wales.

By isolating myself from all society, by surrounding myself with
mementos of Winifred, memory really did at last seem to be working a
miracle such as was worked for the widowed Ja'afar.

Yet not entirely had memory passed into an objective presence. I
seemed to feel Winnie near me; but that was all. I felt that more
necessary than anything else in perfecting the atmosphere of memory
in which I would live was the society of her in whom alone I had
found sympathy--Sinfi Lovell. Did I also remember the wild theories
of my father and Fenella Stanley about the crwth? To obtain the
company of Sinfi had now become very difficult--her attitude towards
me had so changed. When she allowed me to rejoin the Lovells at
Kingston Vale she did so under the compulsion of my distress. But my
leaving the Gypsies of my own accord left her free from this
compulsion. She felt that she had now at last bidden me farewell
for ever.

Still, opportunities of seeing her occasionally would, I knew,
present themselves, and I now determined to avail myself of these.
Panuel Lovell and some of the Boswells were not unfrequently in the
neighbourhood, and they were always accompanied by Sinfi and Videy.


II

On a certain occasion, when I learnt that the Lovells were in the
neighbourhood, I sought them out. Sinfi at first was extremely shy,
or distant, or proud, or scared, and it was not till after one or two
interviews that she relaxed. She still was overshadowed by some
mysterious feeling towards me that seemed at one moment anger, at
another dread. However, I succeeded at last. I persuaded Panuel and
his daughters to leave their friends at 'the Place,' and spend a few
days with me at the bungalow. Great was the gaping and wide the
grinning among the tourists to see me inarching along the Capel Curig
road with three Gypsies. But to all human opinion I had become as
indifferent as Wilderspin himself.

As we walked along the road, Sinfi slowly warmed into her old self,
but Videy, as usual, was silent, preoccupied, and meditative. When we
got within sight of the bungalow, however, the lights flashing from
the windows made the long low building look very imposing. Pharaoh,
the bantam cock which Sinfi was carrying, began to crow, but silence
again fell upon Sinfi.

Panuel, when we entered the bungalow, said he was very tired and
would like to go to bed. I had perceived by the glossy appearance of
his skin (which was of the colour of beeswaxed mahogany) and the
benevolent dimple in his check that, although far from being
intoxicated, he was 'market-merry'; and as the two sisters also
seemed tired, I took the party at once to their bedrooms.

'Dordi! what a gran' room,' said Sinfi, in a hushed voice, as I
opened the door of the one allotted to her. 'Don't you mind, Videy,
when you an' me fust slep' like two kairengros?' [Footnote]

[Footnote: House-dwellers.]

'No, I don't,' said Videy sharply.

'It was at Llangollen Fair,' continued Sinfi, her frank face beaming
like a great child's; 'two little chavies we was then. An' don't you
mind, Videy, how we both on us cried when they put us to bed, 'cause
we was afeard the ceilin' would fall down on us?'

Videy made no answer, but tossed up her head and looked around to see
whether there was a grinning servant within earshot.

'Good-night, Sinfi,' I said, shaking her hand; 'and now, Videy, I
will show you your room.'

'Oh, but Videy an' me sleeps togither, don't we?'

'Certainly, if you wish it,' I replied.

'She's afeard o' the "mullos,"' said Videy scornfully, as she went
and stood before an old engraved Venetian mirror I had picked up at
Chester, admiring her own perfect little figure reflected therein.
'Ever since she's know'd you she's bin afeard o' mullos, and keeps
Pharaoh with her o' nights; the mullos never come where there's a
crowin' cock.'

I did not look at Sinfi, but bent my eyes upon the mirror, where,
several inches above the reflex of Videy's sarcastic face, shone the
features of Sinfi, perfectly cut as those of a Greek statue.

'It's the dukkerin' dook [Footnote] as she's afeard on,' said Videy,
smiling in the glass till her face seemed one wicked glitter of
scarlet lips and pearly teeth. 'An' yit there ain't no dukkerin'
dook, an' there ain't no mullos.'

[Footnote: The prophesying ghost.]

Among the elaborately-engraved flowers and stars at the top of the
mirror was the representation of an angel grasping a musical
instrument.

'Look, look!' said Sinfi, 'I never know'd afore that angels played
the crwth. I wonder whether they can draw a livin' mullo up to the
clouds, same as my crwth can draw one to Snowdon?'

I bade them good-night, and joined Panuel at the door.

I was conducting him along the corridor to his room when the door was
reopened and Sinfi's head appeared, as bright as ever, and then a
beckoning hand.

'Reia,' said she, when I had returned to the door, 'I want to whisper
a word in your ear'; and she pulled my head towards the door and
whispered, 'Don't tell nobody about that 'ere jewelled trushul in the
church vaults at Raxton. We shall be going down there at the fair
time, so don't tell nobody.'

'But you surely are not afraid of your father,' I whispered in reply.

'No, no,' said she, bringing her lips so close to my face that I felt
the breath steaming round my ear. 'Not daddy--Videy!--Daddy can't
keep a secret for five minutes. It's her I'm afeared on.'

I had scarcely left the door two yards behind me when I heard the
voices of the sisters in loud altercation. I heard Sinfi exclaim, 'I
sha'n't tell you what I said to him, so now! It was somethin' atween
him an' me.'

'There they are ag'in,' said Panuel, bending his head sagely round
and pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the door; 'at it
ag'in! Them two chavies o' mine are allus a-quarrellin' now, an' it's
allus about the same thing. 'Tain't the quarrellin' as I mind so
much,--women an' sparrows, they say, must cherrup an' quarrel,--but
they needn't allus keep a-nag-naggin' about the same thing.'

'What's their subject, Panuel?'  I asked.

'Subjick? Why _you_, in course. That's what the subjick is. When
women quarrels you may allus be sure there's a chap somewheres
about.'

By this time we had entered his bedroom: he went and sat upon the
bed, and without looking round him began unlacing his 'highlows.' I
had often on previous occasions remarked that Panuel, who, when
sober, was as silent as Videy, and looked like her in the face,
became, the moment that he passed into 'market-merriness,' as frank
and communicative as Sinfi, and (what was more inexplicable) _looked_
as much like Sinfi as he had previously looked like Videy.

'How can I be the subject of their quarrels?' I said, listlessly
enough, for I scarcely at first followed his words.

'How? Ain't you a chap?'

'Undoubtedly, Panuel, I am a chap.'

'When women quarrels there's allus a chap somewheres about, in course
there is. But look ye here, Mr. Aylwin, the fault ain't Sinfi's, not
a bit of it. It's Videy's, wi' her dog-in-the-manger ways. She's a
back-bred un,' he said, giving me a knowing wink as he pulled off his
calf-skin waistcoat and tossed it on to a chair at the further end of
the room with a certainty of aim that would have been marvellous,
even had he been entirely free from market-merriness.

I had before observed that Panuel when market-merry always designated
Videy the 'back-bred un, that took a'ter Shuri's blazin' ole dad!'
When sober his views of heredity changed; the 'back-bred un' was
Sinfi.

After breakfast next morning it was agreed that Panuel and Videy
should walk to the Place to see that everything was going on well,
while Sinfi and I should remain in the bungalow. I observed from the
distance that Videy had loitered behind her father on the Capel Curig
road. I saw a dark shadow of anger pass over Sinfi's face, and I soon
understood what was causing it. The daughter of the well-to-do Panuel
Lovell and my guest was accosting a tourist with, 'Let me tell you
your fortune, my pretty gentleman. Give the poor Gypsy a sixpence for
luck, my gentleman.'

The bungalow delighted Sinfi. 'It's just like a great livin'-waggin,
only more comfortable,' said she.

We spent the entire morning and afternoon there, and much of the next
two days. It certainly seemed to me that her mere presence was an
immense stimulus to memory in vitalising its one image.

'What's the use o' us a-keepin' a-talkin' about Winnie?' Sinfi said
to me one day. 'It on'y makes you fret. You skears me sometimes; for
your eyes are a-gettin' jis' as sad-lookin' as Mr. D'Arcy's eyes, an'
it's all along o' fret-tin'.'

I persuaded her to stay with me while Panuel and Videy went on to
Chester, for she could both soothe and amuse me.


III

Those who might suppose that Sinfi Lovell's lack of education would
be a barrier against our sympathy, know little or nothing of real
sorrow--little or nothing of the human heart--little or nothing of
the stricken soul that looks out on man and his conventions through
the light of an intolerable pain.

I now began to read and study as well as paint. But so absorbed was I
in my struggle with Fenella Stanley and Romany superstitions, that
the only subject which could distract me from memory was that of
hereditary influence--prepotency of transmission in relation to
races. Though Sinfi could neither read nor write, she loved to sit by
my side and, caressing Pharaoh, to watch me as I read or wrote. To
her there evidently seemed something mysterious and uncanny in
writing, something like 'penning dukkering.' It seemed to her, I
think, a much more remarkable accomplishment than that of painting.
And as to reading, I am not sure that the satirical Videy was
entirely wrong in saying that Sinfi believed that books 'could talk
jis' like men and women.' Not a word would she speak, save when she
now and then bent down her head to whisper to Pharaoh when that
little warrior was inclined to give a disturbing chuckle, or to shake
his wattles. And when at last she and Pharaoh got wearied by the
prolonged silence, she would begin to murmur in a tone of playful
satire to the restless bird, 'Mum, mum, Pharaoh. He's too hoot of a
mush to rocker a choori chavi.' [Hush, hush, Pharaoh. He's too proud
to speak to a poor child.]

Of course there was immense curiosity about my life at the bungalow,
not only among the visitors at the Capel Curig Hotel, but among the
Welsh residents; and rarely did the weekly papers come out without
some paragraph about me. As a result of this, some of the London
papers reproduced the paragraphs, and built upon their gossip columns
of a positively offensive nature. In a paper which I will for
convenience call the _London Satirist_ appeared a paragraph which
some one cut out of the columns of the paper and posted to me. It ran
thus:


'THE ECCENTRIC AYLWINS.--The power of heredity, which has much
exercised the mind of Balzac, has never been more strikingly
exemplified than in the case of the great family of the Aylwins. It
is matter of common knowledge that some generations ago one of the
Aylwins married a Gypsy. This fact did not, however, prevent his
branch from being respectable, and receiving the name of the proud
Aylwins; and the Gypsy blood remained entirely in abeyance until the
present generation. Mr. Percy Aylwin, it will be remembered, having
been smitten by the charms of a certain Rhona Boswell, actually set
up a tent with the Gypsies; and now Mr. Henry Aylwin, of Raxton Hall
(who, by the bye, has never been seen in that neighbourhood since the
great landslip), is said to be following a good example by living in
Wales with a Gypsy wife, but whether the wedding took place at St.
George's, Hanover Square, or in simpler fashion in an encampment of
Little Egypt, we do not know.'


One day in the bungalow, when I was reading the copious marginalia
with which my father had furnished his own copy of _The Veiled
Queen_, I came upon a passage which so completely carried my mind
back to the night of our betrothal that I heard as plainly as I had
then heard Winnie's words at the door of her father's cottage:

'I should have to come in the winds and play around you in the woods.
I should have to peep over the clouds and watch you. I should have
to follow you about wherever you went. I should have to beset you
till you said: "Bother Winnie, I wish she'd keep in heaven!"'

The written words of my father that had worked this magical effect
upon me were these:


'But after months of these lonely wanderings in Graylingham Wood and
along the sands, not even the reshaping power of memory would suffice
to appease my longing; a new hope, wild as new, was breaking in upon
my soul, dim and yet golden, like the sun struggling through a
sea-fog. While wandering with me along the sands on the eve of that
dreadful day when I lost her, she had declared that even in heaven
she could not rest without me, nor did I understand how she could.
For by this time my instincts had fully taught me that there is a
kind of love so intense that no power in the universe--not death
itself--is strong enough to sever it from its object. I knew that
although true spiritual love, as thus understood, scarcely exists
among Englishmen, and even among Englishwomen is so rare that the
capacity for feeling it is a kind of genius, this genius was hers.
Sooner or later I said to myself, "She will and must manifest
herself!"'


I looked up from the book and saw both Sinfi and Pharaoh gazing at
me.

'Sinfi,' I said, 'what were Winnie's favourite places among the
hills? Where was she most in the habit of roaming when she stayed
with your people?'

'If I ain't told you that often enough it's a pity, brother,' she
said. 'What do _you_ think, Pharaoh?'

Pharaoh expressed his acquiescence in the satire by clapping his
wings and crowing at me contemptuously.

'The place I think she liked most of all wur that very pool where she
and you breakfasted together on that morning.'

'Were there no other favourite places?'

'Yes, there wur the Fairy Glen; she wur very fond of that. And there
wur the Swallow Falls; she wur very fond of them. And there wur a
place on the Beddgelert pathway, up from the Carnarvon road, about
two miles from Beddgelert. There is a great bit of rock there where
she used to love to sit and look across towards Anglesey. And talking
about that place reminds me, brother, that our people and the
Boswells and a lot more are camped on the Carnarvon road just where
the pathway up Snowdon begins. And I wur told yesterday by a
'quaintance of mine as I seed outside the bungalow that daddy and
Videy had joined them. Shouldn't we go and see 'em?'

This exactly fitted in with the thoughts and projects that had
suddenly come to me, and it was arranged that we should start for the
encampment next morning.

As we were leaving the bungalow the next day, I said to Sinfi, 'You
are not taking your crwth.'

'Crwth! we sha'n't want that.'

'Your people are very fond of music, you know. Your father is very
fond of a musical tea.'

'So he is. I'll take it,' said Sinfi.


IV

When we reached the camping-place on the Carnarvon road we found a
very jolly party. Panuel had had some very successful dealings, and
he was slightly market-merry. He said to Videy, 'Make the tea, Vi,
and let Sinfi hev' hern fust, so that she can play on the Welsh
fiddle while the rest on us are getting ourn. It'll seem jist like
Chester Fair with Jim Burton scrapin' in the dancin' booth to heel
and toe.'

Sinfi soon finished her tea, and began to play some merry dancing
airs, which set Rhona Boswell's limbs twittering till she spilt her
tea in her lap. Then, laughing at the catastrophe, she sprang up
saying, 'I'll dance myself dry,' and began dancing on the sward.

After tea was over the party got too boisterous for Sinfi's taste,
and she said to me, 'Let's slip away, brother, and go up the pathway,
and I'll show you Winnie's favourite place.'

This proposal met my wishes entirely, and under the pretence of going
to look at something on the Carnarvon road we managed to escape from
the party, Sinfi still carrying her crwth and bow. She then led the
way up a slope green with grass and moss. We did not talk till we had
passed the slate quarry.

The evening was so fine and the scene was so lovely that Sinfi's very
body seemed to drink it in and become intoxicated with beauty. After
we had left the slate quarries behind, the panorama became more
entrancing at every yard we walked. Cwellyn Lake and Valley, Moel
Hebog, y Garnedd, the glittering sea, Anglesey, Holyhead Hill, all
seemed to be growing in gold and glory out of masses of sunset mist.

When at last we reached the edge of a steep cliff, with the rocky
forehead of Snowdon in front, and the shining llyns of Cwm y Clogwyn
below, Sinfi stopped.

'This is the place,' said she, sitting down on a mossy mound, 'where
Winnie loved to come and look down.'

After Sinfi and I had sat on this mound for a few minutes, I asked
her to sing and play one or two Welsh airs which I knew to be
especial favourites of hers, and then, with much hesitancy, I asked
her to play and sing the same song or incantation which had become
associated for ever with my first morning on the hills.

'You mean the Welsh dukkerin' gillie,' said Sinfi, looking, with an
expression that might have been either alarm or suspicion, into my
face.

'Yes.'

'You've been a-thinkin' all this while, brother, that I don't know
why you asked me about Winnie's favourite places on Snowdon, and why
you wanted me to take my crwth to the camp. But I've been a-thinkin'
about it, and I know now why you did, and I know why you wants me to
play the Welsh dukkerin' gillie here. It's because you heerd me say
that if I were to play that dukkerin' gillie on Snowdon in the places
she was fond on, I could tell for sartin whether Winnie wur alive or
dead. If she wur alive her livin' mullo 'ud follow the crwth. But I
ain't a-goin' to do it.'

'Why not, Sinfi?'

'Because my mammy used to say it ain't right to make use o' the real
dukkerin' for Gorgios, and I've heerd her say that if them as had the
real dukkerin'--the dukkerin' for the Romanies--used it for the
Gorgios, or if they turned it into a sport and a plaything, it 'ud
leave 'em altogether. And that ain't the wust on it, for when the
real dukkerin' leaves you it turns into a kind of a cuss, and it
brings on the bite of the Romany Sap. [Footnote] Even now, Hal, I
sometimes o' nights feels the bite here of the Romany Sap,' pointing
to her bosom, 'and it's all along o' you, Hal, it's all along o' you,
because I seem to be breaking the promise about Gorgios I made to my
poor mammy.'

[Footnote: The Romany serpent, Conscience.]

'The Romany Sap? You mean the Romany conscience, I suppose, Sinfi:
you mean the trouble a Romany feels when he has broken the Romany
laws, when he has done wrong according to the Romany notions of right
and wrong. But you are innocent of all wrong-doing.'

'I don't know nothin' about conscience,' said she, 'I mean the Romany
Sap. Don't you mind when we was a-goin' up Snowdon arter Winifred
that mornin'? I told you as the rocks, an' the trees, an' the winds,
an' the waters cuss us when we goes ag'in the Romany blood an' ag'in
the dukkerin' dook. The cuss that the rocks, an' the trees, an' the
winds, an' the waters makes, an' sends it out to bite the burk
[Footnote] o' the Romany as does wrong--that's the Romany Sap.'

[Footnote:  Breast.]

'You mean conscience, Sinfi.'

'No, I don't mean nothink o' the sort; the Romanies ain't got no
conscience, an' if the Gorgios has, it's precious little good as it
does 'em, as far as I can see. But the Romanies has got the Romany
Sap. Everything wrong as you does, such as killin' a Romany, or
cheatin' a Romany, or playin' the lubbany with a Gorgio, or breakin'
your oath to your mammy as is dead, or goin' ag'in the dukkerin'
dook, an' sich like, every one o' these things turns into the Romany
Sap.'

'You're speaking of conscience, Sinfi.'

'Every one o' them wrong things as you does seems to make out o' the
burk o' the airth a sap o' its own as has got its own pertickler
stare, but allus it's a hungry sap, Hal, an' a sap wi' bloody fangs.
An' it's a sap as follows the bad un's feet, Hal--follows the bad
un's feet wheresomever they goes; it's a sap as goes slippin' thro'
the dews o' the grass on the brightest mornin', an' dodges round the
trees in the sweetest evenin', an' goes wriggle, wriggle across the
brook jis' when you wants to enjoy yourself, jis' when you wants to
stay a bit on the steppin'-stuns to enjoy the sight o' the dear
little minnows a-shootin' atween the water-creases. That's what the
Romany Sap is.'

'Don't talk like that, Sinfi,' I said; 'you make me feel the sap
myself.'

'It's a sap, Hal, as follows you everywheres, everywheres, till you
feel as you must stop an' face it whatever comes; an' stop you do at
last, an' turn round you must, an' bare your burk you must to the
sharp teeth o' that air wenemous sap.'

'Well, and what then, Sinfi?'

'Well then, when you ha' given up to the thing its fill o' your
blood, then the trees, an' the rocks, an' the winds, an' the waters
seem to know, for everythink seems to begin smilin' ag'in, an' you're
let to go on your way till you do somethin' bad ag'in. That's the
Romany Sap, Hal, an' I won't deny as I sometimes feel its bite pretty
hard here' (pointing to her breast) 'when I thinks what I promised my
poor mammy, an' how I kep' my word to her, when I let a Gorgio come
under our tents.' [Footnote]

[Footnote: To prevent misconceptions, it may be well to say that the
paraphrase of Sinfi's description of the 'Romany Sap,' which appeared
in the writer's reminiscences of George Borrow, was written long
after the main portion of the present narrative.]

'You don't mean,' I said, 'that it is a real flesh-and-blood sap, but
a sap that you think you see and feel.'

'Hal,' said Sinfi, 'a Romany's feelin's ain't like a Gorgio's. A
Romany can feel the bite of a sap whether it's made o' flesh an'
blood or not, and the Romany Sap's all the wuss for not bein' a
flesh-and-blood sap, for it's a cuss hatched in the airth; it's
everythink a-cussin' on ye--the airth, an' the sky, an' the dukkerin'
dook.'

Her manner was so solemn, her grand simplicity was so pathetic, that
I felt I could not urge her to do what her conscience told her was
wrong. But soon that which no persuasion of mine would have effected
the grief and disappointment expressed by my face achieved.

'Hal,' she said, 'I sometimes feel as if I'd bear the bite o' all the
Romany saps as ever wur hatched to give you a little comfort.
Besides, it's for a true Romany arter all--it's for myself quite as
much as for you that I'm a-goin' to see whether Winnie is alive or
dead. If she's dead we sha'n't see nothink, and perhaps if she's in
one o' them fits o' hern we sha'n't see nothink; but if she's alive
and herself ag'in, I believe I shall see--p'raps we shall both
see--her livin' mullo.'

She then drew the bow across the crwth. The instrument at first
seemed to chatter with her agitation. I waited in breathless
suspense. At last there came clearly from her crwth the wild air I
had already heard on Snowdon. Then the sound of the instrument ceased
save for the drone of the two bottom strings, and Sinfi's voice leapt
out and  I heard the words of what she called the Welsh dukkering
gillie.

As I listened and looked over the wide-stretching panorama before me,
I felt my very flesh answering to every vibration; and when the song
stopped and I suddenly heard Sinfi call out, 'Look, brother!' I felt
that my own being, physical and mental, had passed into a new phase,
and that resistance to some mighty power governing my blood was
impossible.

'Look straight afore you, brother, and you'll see Winnie's face.
She's alive, brother, and the dukkeripen of the Golden Hand will come
true, and mine will come true. Oh, mammy, mammy!'

At first I saw nothing, but after a while two blue eyes seemed gazing
at me as through a veil of evening haze. They were looking straight
at me, those beloved eyes--they were sparkling with childish
happiness as they had sparkled through the vapours of the pool when
she walked towards me that morning on the brink of Knockers' Llyn.

Starting up and throwing up my arms, I cried, 'My darling!' The
vision vanished. Then turning round, I looked at Sinfi. She seemed
listening to a voice I could not hear--her face was pale with
emotion. I could hear her breath coming and going heavily; her bosom
rose and fell, and the necklace of coral and gold coins around her
throat trembled like a shuddering snake while she murmured, 'My
dukkeripen! Yes, mammy, I've gone ag'in you and broke my promise,
and this is the very Gorgio as you meant.'

'Call the vision back,' I said; 'play the air again, dear Sinfi.'

She sprang in front of me, and seizing one of my wrists, she gazed in
my face, and said, 'Yes, it's "dear Sinfi"! You wants dear Sinfi to
fiddle the Gorgie's livin' mullo back to you.'

I looked into the dark eyes, lately so kind. I did not know them.
They were dilated and grown red-brown in hue, like the scorched
colour of a North African lion's mane, and along the eyelashes a
phosphorescent light seemed to play. What did it mean? Was it indeed
Sinfi standing there, rigid as a column, with a clenched brown fist
drawn up to the broad, heaving breast, till the knuckles shone white,
as if about to strike me? What made her throw out her arms as if
struggling desperately with the air, or with some unseen foe who was
binding her with chains?

I stood astounded, watching her, as she gradually calmed down and
became herself again; but I was deeply perplexed and deeply troubled.


After a while she said, 'Let's go back to "the Place,"' and without
waiting for my acquiescence, she strode along down the path towards
Beddgelert.

I was quickly by her side, but felt as little in the mood for talking
as she did. Suddenly a small lizard glided from the grass.

'The Romany Sap!' cried Sinfi, and she--the fearless woman before
whom the stoutest Gypsy men had quailed--sobbed wildly in terror. She
soon recovered herself, and said: 'What a fool you must think me,
Hal! It wur all through talkin' about the Romany Sap. At fust I
thought it wur the Romany Sap itself, an' it wur only a poor little
effet arter all. There ain't a-many things made o' flesh and blood as
can make Sinfi Lovell show the white feather; but I know you'll think
the wuss o' me arter this, Hal. But while the pictur were a-showin' I
heard my dear mammy's whisper: "Little Sinfi, little Sinfi, beware o'
Gorgios! This is the one."'


V

By the time we reached the encampment it was quite dark. Panuel, and
indeed most of the Gypsies, had turned into the tents for the night;
but both Videy Lovell and Rhona Boswell were moving about as briskly
as though the time was early morning, one with guile expressed in
every feature, the other shedding that aura of frankness and sweet
winsomeness which enslaved Percy Aylwin, and no wonder.

Rhona was in a specially playful mood, and came dancing round us more
like a child of six than a young woman with a Romany Rye for a lover.

But neither Sinfi nor I was in the mood for frolic. My living-waggon,
which still went about wherever the Lovells went, had been carefully
prepared for me by Rhona, and I at once went into it, not with the
idea of getting much sleep, but in order to be alone with my
thoughts. What was I to think of my experiences of that evening? Was
I really to take the spectacle that had seemed to fall upon my eyes
when listening to Sinfi's crwth, or rather when listening to her
song, as evidence that Winifred was alive? Oh, if I could, if I
could! Was I really to accept as true this fantastic superstition
about the crwth and the spirits of Snowdon and the 'living mullo'?
That was too monstrous a thought even for me to entertain.
Notwithstanding all that had passed in the long and dire struggle
between my reason and the mysticism inherited with the blood of two
lines of superstitious ancestors, which circumstances had conspired
to foster, my reason had only been baffled and thwarted; it had not
really been slain.

What, then, could be the explanation of the spectacle that had seemed
to fall upon my eyes? 'It is hallucination,' I said, 'and it is the
result of two very powerful causes--my own strong imagination,
excited to a state of feverish exaltation by the long strain of my
suffering, and that power in Sinfi which D'Arcy had described as her
"half-unconscious power as a mesmerist." At a moment when my will,
weakened by sorrow and pain, lay prostrate beneath my own fevered
imagination, Sinfi's voice, so full of intense belief in her own
hallucination, had leapt, as it were, into my consciousness and
enslaved my imagination, which in turn had enslaved my will and my
senses.'

For hours  I  argued this point with  myself, and I ended by coming
to the conclusion that it was 'my mind's eye' alone that saw the
picture of Winifred.

But there was also another question to confront. What was the cause
of Sinfi's astonishing emotion after the vision vanished? Such a
mingling of warring passions I had never seen before. I tried to
account for it. I thought about it for hours, and finally fell
asleep without finding any solution of the enigma.

I had no conversation of a private nature with Sinfi until the next
evening, when the camp was on the move.

'You had no sleep last night, Sinfi; I can see it by the dark circles
round your eyes.'

'That's nuther here nor there, brother,' she said.


I found to my surprise that the Gypsies were preparing to remove the
camp to a place not far from Bettws y Coed. I suggested to Sinfi that
we two should return to the bungalow. But she told me that her stay
there had come to an end. The firmness with which she made this
announcement made me sure that there was no appeal.

'Then,' said I, 'my living-waggon will come into use again. The
camping place is near some of the best trout streams in the
neighbourhood, and I sadly want some trout-fishing.'

'We part company to-day, brother,' she said. 'We can't be pals no
more--never no more.'

'Sister, I will not be parted from you: I shall follow you.'

'Reia--Hal Aylwin--you knows very well that any man, Gorgio or
Romany, as followed Sinfi Lovell when she told him not, 'ud ketch
a body-blow as wouldn't leave him three hull ribs, nor a ounce o'
wind to bless hisself with.'

'But I am now one of the Lovells, and I shall go with you. I am a
Romany myself--I mean I am becoming more and more of a Romany every
day and every hour. The blood of Fenella Stanley is in us both.'

She looked at me, evidently astonished at the earnestness and the
energy of my tone. Indeed at that moment I felt an alien among
Gorgios.

'I am now one of the Lovells,' I said, 'and I shall go with you.'

'We part company to-night, brother, fare ye well,' she said.

As she stood delivering this speech--her head erect, her eyes
flashing angrily at me, her brown fists tightly clenched, I knew that
further resistance would be futile.

'But now I wants to be left alone,' she said.

She bent her head forward in a listening attitude, and I heard her
murmur, 'I knowed it 'ud come ag'in. A Romany sperrit likes to come
up in the evenin' and smell the heather an' see the shinin' stars
come out.'

While she was speaking, she began to move off between the trees. But
she turned, took hold of both my hands, and gazed into my eyes. Then
she moved away again, and I was beginning to follow her. She turned
and said: 'Don't follow me. There ain't no place for ye among the
Romanies. Go the ways o' the Gorgios, Hal Aylwin, an' let Sinfi
Lovell go hern.'

As I leaned against a tree and watched Sinfi striding through the
grass till she passed out of sight, the entire panorama of my life
passed before me.

'She has left me with a blessing after all,' I said; 'my poor Sinfi
has taught me the lesson that he who would fain be cured of the
disease of a wasting sorrow must burn to ashes Memory. He must flee
Memory and never look back.'


VI

And did I flee Memory? When I re-entered the bungalow next day it was
my intention to leave it and Wales at once and for ever, and indeed
to leave England at once--perhaps for ever, in order to escape from
the unmanning effect of the sorrowful brooding which I knew had
become a habit. 'I will now,' I said, 'try the nepenthe that all my
friends in their letters are urging me to try--I will travel. Yes, I
will go to Japan. My late experiences should teach me that Ja'afar's
"Angel of Memory," who refashioned for him his dead wife out of his
own sorrow and tears, did him an ill service. He who would fain be
cured of the disease of a wasting sorrow should try to flee the
"Angel of Memory," and never look back.'

And so fixed was my mind upon travelling that I wrote to several of
my friends, and told them of my intention. But I need scarcely say
that as I urged them to keep the matter secret it was talked about
far and wide. Indeed, as I afterwards found to my cost, there were
paragraphs in the newspapers stating that the eccentric amateur
painter and heir of one branch of the Aylwins had at last gone to
Japan, and that as his deep interest in a certain charming beauty of
an un-English type was proverbial, it was expected that he would
return with a Japanese, or perhaps a Chinese wife.

But I did not go to Japan; and what prevented me?

My reason told me that what I had just seen near Beddgelert was an
optical illusion. I had become very learned on the subject of optical
illusions ever since I had known Sinfi Lovell, and especially since I
had seen that picture of Winnie in the water near Bettws y Coed,
which I have described in an earlier chapter. Every book I could get
upon optical illusions I had read, and I was astonished to find how
many instances are on record of illusions of a much more powerful
kind than mine.

And yet I could not leave Snowdon. The mountain's very breath grew
sweeter and sweeter of Winnie's lips. As I walked about the hills I
found myself repeating over and over again one of the verses which
Winnie used to sing to me as a child at Raxton.

       Eryri fynyddig i mi,
         Bro dawel y delyn yw,
       Lle mae'r defaid a'r wyn,
         Yn y mwswg a'r brwyn,
       Am can inau'n esgyn i fyny,
         A'r gareg yn ateb i fyny, i fyny,
       O'r lle bu'r eryrod yn byw. [Footnote]

[Footnote:

       Mountain-wild Snowdon for me!
         Sweet silence there for the harp,
       Where loiter the ewes and the lambs,
         In the moss and the rushes,
       Where one's song goes sounding up
         And the rocks re-echo it higher and higher
       In the height where the eagles live.]

But then I felt that Sinfi was the mere instrument of the mysterious
magic of y Wyddfa, that magic which no other mountain in Europe
exercises. I knew that among all the Gypsies Sinfi was almost the
only one who possessed that power which belonged once to her race,
that power which is expressed in a Scottish word now universally
misused, 'glamour,' the power which Johnnie Faa and his people
brought into play when they abducted Lady Casilis.

       Soon as they saw her well-faured face
         They cast the glamour oure her.

'Yes,' I said, 'I am convinced that my illusion is the result of two
causes, my own brooding over Winnie's tragedy and the glamour that
Sinfi sheds around her, either consciously or unconsciously; that
imperious imagination of hers which projects her own visions upon the
senses of another person either with or without an exercise of her
own will. This is the explanation, I am convinced.'

Wheresoever I now went, Snowdon's message to my heart was, 'She
lives,' and my heart accepted the message. And then the new blessed
feeling that Winnie was not lying in a pauper grave had an effect
upon me that a few who read these pages will understand--only a few.
Perhaps, indeed, even those I am thinking of, those who, having lost
the one being they loved, feel that the earth has lost all its
beauty--perhaps even these may not be able to sympathise fully with
me in this matter, never having had an experience remotely comparable
with mine.

When I thought of Winifred lying at the bottom of some chasm in
Snowdon, my grief was very great, as these pages show. Yet it was not
intolerable; it did not threaten to unseat my reason, for even then,
when I knew so little of the magic of y Wyddfa, I felt how close was
the connection between my darling and the hills that knew her and
loved her. But during the time that her death, amidst surroundings
too appalling to contemplate, hung before my eyes in a dreadful
picture--during the time when it seemed certain that her death in a
garret, her burial in a pauper pit six coffins deep, was a hideous
truth and no fancy, all the beauty with which Nature seemed at one
time clothed was wiped away as by a sponge. The earth was nothing
more than a charnel-house, the skies above it were the roof of the
Palace of Nin-ki-gal. But now that Snowdon had spoken to me, the old
life which had formerly made the world so beautiful and so beloved
came back.

All nature seemed rich and glowing with the deep expectance of my
heart. The sunrise and the sunset seemed conscious of Winnie, and the
very birds seemed to be warbling at times 'She's alive.'

I think, indeed, that I had passed into that sufistic ecstasy
expressed by a writer often quoted by my father, an Oriental writer,
Ferridoddin--

       With love I burn: the centre is within me;
       While in a circle everywhere around me
       Its Wonder lies--

that exalted mood, I mean, described in the great chapter on the
Renascence of Wonder which forms the very core and heart-thought of
the strange book so strangely destined to govern the entire drama of
my life, _The Veiled Queen_.

The very words of the opening of that chapter came to me:

'The omnipotence of love--its power of knitting together the entire
universe--is, of course, best understood by the Oriental mind. Just
after the loss of my dear wife I wrote the following poem called "The
Bedouin Child," dealing with the strange feeling among the Bedouins
about girl children, and I translated it into Arabic. Among these
Bedouins a father in enumerating his children never counts his
daughters, because a daughter is considered a disgrace.

       'Ilyas the prophet, lingering 'neath the moon,
         Heard from a tent a child's heart-withering wail,
         Mixt with the message of the nightingale,
       And, entering, found, sunk in mysterious swoon,
       A little maiden dreaming there alone.
         She babbled of her father sitting pale
         'Neath wings of Death--'mid sights of sorrow and bale,
       And pleaded for his life in piteous tone.

       '"Poor child, plead on," the succouring prophet saith,
         While she, with eager lips, like one who tries
         To kiss a dream, stretches her arms and cries
       To Heaven for help--"Plead on; such pure love-breath,
       Beaching the Throne, might stay the wings of Death
         That, in the Desert, fan thy father's eyes."

       'The drouth-slain camels lie on every hand;
         Seven sons await the morning vultures' claws;
         'Mid empty water-skins and camel maws
       The father sits, the last of all the band.
       He mutters, drowsing o'er the moonlit sand,
         "Sleep fans my brow: sleep makes us all pashas;
         Or, if the wings are Death's, why Azraeel draws
       A childless father from an empty land."

       '"Nay," saith a Voice, "the wind of Azraeel's wings
         A child's sweet breath has stilled: so God decrees:"
         A camel's bell comes tinkling on the breeze.
       Filling the Bedouin's brain with bubble of springs
         And scent of flowers and shadow of wavering trees,
       Where, from a tent, a little maiden sings.

'Between this reading of Nature, which makes her but "the superficial
film" of the immensity of God, and that which finds a mystic heart of
love and beauty beating within the bosom of Nature herself, I know no
real difference. Sufism, in some form or another, could not possibly
be confined to Asia. The Greeks, though strangers to the mystic
element of that Beauty-worship which in Asia became afterwards
sufism, could not have exhibited a passion for concrete beauty such
as theirs without feeling that, deeper than Tartarus, stronger than
Destiny and Death, the great heart of Nature is beating to the tune
of universal love and beauty.'

This was followed by a still more mystical poem called 'The Persian
Slave Girl's Progress to Paradise,' showing the Omnipotence of Love.
[Footnote]

[Footnote: This poem of Philip Aylwin's appears now in the present
writer's volume, _The Coming of Love_.]



XIV

SINFI'S COUP DE THEATRE


I

Weeks passed by. I visited all the scenes that were in the least
degree associated with Winnie.

The two places nearest to me--Fairy Glen and the Swallow Falls--which
I had always hitherto avoided on  account  of  their being the
favourite haunts  of tourists--I left to the last, because I
specially desired to see them by moonlight. With regard to Fairy
Glen, I had often heard Winnie say how she used to go there by
moonlight and imagine the Tylwyth Teg or the fairy scenes of the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ which I had told her of long ago--imagine
them so vividly that she could actually see, on a certain projecting
rock in the cliffs that enclose the dell, the figure of Titania
dressed in green, with a wreath of leaves round her head. And with
regard to the Swallow Falls, I remembered only too well her telling
me, on the night of the landslip, the Welsh legend of Sir John Wynn,
who died in the seventeenth century, and whose ghost, imprisoned at
the bottom of the Falls on account of his ill deeds in the flesh, was
heard to shriek amid the din of the waters. On that fatal night she
told me that on certain rare occasions, when the moon shines straight
down the chasm, the wail will become an agonised shriek. I had often
wondered what natural sound this was which could afford such pabulum
to my old foe, Superstition. So one night, when the moon was shining
brilliantly--so brilliantly that the light seemed very little
feebler than that of day--I walked in the direction of the Swallow
Falls.

Being afraid that I should not get much privacy at the Falls, I
started late. But I came upon only three or four people on the road.
I had forgotten that my own passion for moonlight was entirely a
Romany inheritance. I had forgotten that a family of English
tourists will carefully pull down the blinds and close the shutters,
in order to enjoy the luxury of candlelight, lamp-light, or gas,
when a Romany will throw wide open the tent's mouth to enjoy the
light he loves most of all--'chonesko dood,' as he calls the
moonlight. As I approached the Swallow Falls Hotel, I lingered to
let my fancy feast in anticipation on the lovely spectacle that
awaited me. When I turned into the wood I encountered only one
person, a lady, and she hurried back to the hotel as soon as I
approached the river.

Following the slippery path as far as it led down the dell, I
stopped at the brink of a pool about a dozen yards, apparently,
from the bottom, and looked up at the water. Bursting like a vast
belt of molten silver out of an eerie wilderness of rocks and trees,
the stream, as it tumbled down between high walls of cliff to the
platform of projecting rocks around the pool at the edge of which I
stood, divided into three torrents, which themselves were again
divided and scattered by projecting boulders into cascades before
they fell into the gulf below. The whole seemed one wide cataract of
living moonlight that made the eyes ache with beauty.

Amid the din of the water I listened for the wail which had so deeply
impressed Winifred, and certainly there was what may be described as
a sound within a sound, which ears so attuned to every note of
Superstition's gamut as Winifred's might easily accept as the wail of
Sir John Wynn's ghost.

There was no footpath down to the bottom, but I descended without any
great difficulty, though I was now soaked in spray. Here the
mysterious human sound seemed to be less perceptible amid the din of
the torrent than from the platform where I had stayed to listen to
it. But when I climbed up again to the spot by the mid-pool where I
had originally stood, a strange sensation came to me. My recollection
of Winnie's words on the night of the landslip came upon me with such
overmastering power that the noise of the cataract seemed changed to
the sound of billows tumbling on Raxton sands, and the 'wail' of Sir
John Wynn seemed changed to that shriek from Raxton cliff which
appalled Winnie as it appalled me.


The following night I passed into a moonlight as bright as that which
had played me such fantastic tricks at the Swallow Falls.

It was not until I had crossed the bridge over the Conway, and was
turning to the right in the direction of Fairy Glen, that I fully
realised how romantic the moonlight was. Every wooded hill and every
precipice, whether craggy and bald or feathered with pines, was
bathed in light that would have made an Irish bog, or an Essex marsh,
or an Isle of Ely fen, a land of poetry.

When I reached Pont Llyn-yr-Afange (Beaver Pool Bridge) I lingered to
look down the lovely lane on the left, through which I was to pass in
order to reach the rocky dell of Fairy Glen, for it was perfumed, not
with the breath of the flowers now asleep, but with the perfume I
love most of all, the night's floating memory of the flowery breath
of day.

Suddenly I felt some one touching my elbow. I turned round. It was
Rhona Boswell. I was amazed to see her, for I thought that all my
Gypsy friends, Boswells, Lovells, and the rest, were still attending
the horse-fairs in the Midlands and Eastern Counties.

'We've only just got here,' said Rhona; 'wussur luck that we got here
at all. I wants to get back to dear Gypsy Dell and Rington Wood;
that's what I wants to do.'

'Where is the camp?' I asked.

'Same place, twix Bettws and Capel Curig.'

She had been to the bungalow, she told me, with a message from Sinfi.
This message was that she particularly wished to meet me at Mrs.
Davies's cottage--'not at the bungalow'--on the following night.

'She'll go there to-morrow mornin',' said Rhona, 'and make things
tidy for you; but she won't expect you till night, same time as she
met you there fust. She's got a key o' the door, she says, wot you
gev her.'

I was not so surprised at Sinfi's proposed place of meeting as I
should have been had I not remembered her resolution not to return
to the bungalow, and not to let me return to the camp.

'You must be sure to go to meet her at the cottage to-morrow night,
else you'll be too late.'

'Why too late?' I asked.

'Well,' said Rhona, 'I can't say as I knows why ezackly. But
I know she's bin' an' bought beautiful dresses at Chester, or
somewheres,--an' I think she's goin' to be married the day arter
to-morrow.'

'Married to whom?'

'Well, I can't say as I rightly knows,' said Rhona.

'Do you know whether Mr. Cyril is in Wales?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Rhona, 'him and the funny un are not far from Capel
Curig. Now I come to think on't, it's mose likely Mr. Cyril as she's
a-goin' to marry, for I know it ain't no Romany chal. It _can't_ be
the funny un,' added she, laughing.

'But where's the wedding to take place?'

'I can't say as I knows ezackly,' said Rhona; 'but I thinks it's by
Knockers' Llyn if it ain't on the top o' Snowdon.'

'Good heavens, girl!' I said. 'What on earth makes you think that?
That pretty little head of yours is stuffed with the wildest
nonsense. I ran make nothing out of you, so good-night. Tell her I'll
be there.'

And I was leaving her to walk down the lane when I turned back and
said, 'How long has Sinfi been at the camp?'

'On'y jist come. She's bin away from us for a long while,' said
Rhona.

And then she looked as if she was tempted to reveal some secret that
she was bound not to tell.

'Sinfi's been very bad,' she went on, 'but she's better now. Her
daddy says she's under a cuss. She's been a-wastin' away like, but
she's better now.'

'So it's Sinfi who is under a curse now,' I said to myself. 'I
suppose Superstition has at last turned her brain. This perhaps
explains Rhona's mad story.'

'Does anybody but you think she's going to be married?' I asked her.
'Does her father think so?'

'Her daddy says it ain't Sinfi as is goin' to be married; but I think
it's Sinfi! An' you'll know all about it the day arter to-morrow.'
And she tripped away in the direction of the camp.

Lost in a whirl of thoughts and speculations, I turned into Fairy
Glen. And now, below me, lay the rocky dell so dearly beloved by
Winnie; and there I walked in such a magic web of light and shade as
can only be seen in that glen when the moon hangs over it in a
certain position.

I descended the steps to the stream and sat down for a time on one
of the great boulders and asked myself if this was the very boulder
on which Winnie used to sit when she conjured up her childish
visions of fairyland. And by that sweet thought the beauty of the
scene became intensified. There, while the unbroken torrent of
the Conway--glittering along the narrow gorge of the glen between
silvered walls of rock as upright as the turreted bastions of a
castle--seemed to flash a kind of phosphorescent light of its own
upon the flowers and plants and sparsely scattered trees along the
sides, I sat and passed into Winifred's own dream, and the Tylwyth
Teg, which to Winnie represented Oberon and Titania and the whole
group of fairies, swept before me.

Awaking from this dream, I looked up the wall of the cliff to enjoy
one more sight of the magical beauty, when there fell upon my eyes,
or seemed to fall, a sight that, though I felt it must be a delusion,
took away my breath. Standing on a piece of rock that was flush with
one of the steps by which I had descended was a slender girlish
figure, so lissom that it might have been the famous 'Queen of the
Fair People.'

'Never,' I said to myself, 'was there an optical illusion so perfect.
I can see the moonlight playing upon her hair. But the hair is not
golden, as the hair of the Queen of the Tylwyth Teg should be; it is
dark as Winnie's own.'

Then the face turned and she looked at the river, and then I
exclaimed 'Winifred!' And then Fairy Glen vanished and I was at
Raxton standing by a cottage door in the moonlight. I was listening
to a voice--that one voice to whose music every chord of life within
me was set for ever, which said,

'I should have to come in the winds, and play around you on the
sands. I should have to peep over the clouds and watch you. I should
have to follow you about wherever you went.'


The sight vanished. Although I had no doubt that what I had seen was
an hallucination, when I moved farther on and stood and gazed at the
stream as it went winding round the mossy cliffs to join the Lledr, I
felt that Winnie was by my side, her hand in mine, and that we were
children together. And when I mounted the steps and strolled along
the path that leads to the plantation where the moonlight, falling
through the leaves, covered the ground with what seemed symbolical
arabesques of silver and grey and purple, I felt the pressure of
little fingers that seemed to express 'How beautiful!' And when I
stood gazing through the opening in the landscape, and saw the rocks
gleaming in the distance and the water down the Lledr valley, I saw
the sweet young face gazing in mine with the smile of the delight
that illumined it on the Wilderness Road when she discoursed of birds
and the wind.

The vividness of the vision of Fairy Glen drove out for a time all
other thoughts. The livelong night my brain seemed filled with it.

       'My eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
       Or else worth all the rest,'

I said to myself as I lay awake. So full, indeed, was my mind of this
one subject that even Rhona's strange message from Sinfi was only
recalled at intervals. While I was breakfasting, however, this
incident came fully back to me. Either Rhona's chatter about Sinfi's
reason for wanting to see me was the nonsense that had floated into
Rhona's own brain, the brain of a love-sick girl to whom everything
spelt marriage--or else poor Sinfi's mind had become unhinged.


II

As I was to sleep at the cottage, and as I knew not what part I might
have to play in Sinfi's wild frolic, I told the servants that any
letters which might reach the bungalow next morning were to be sent
at once to the cottage, should I not have returned thence.


At about the hour, as far as I could guess, when I had first knocked
at the cottage door at the beginning of my search for Winnie, I stood
there again. The door was on the latch. I pushed it open.

The scene I then saw was so exact a repetition of what had met my
eyes when for the first time I passed under that roof, that it did
not seem as though it could be real; it seemed as though it must be a
freak of memory: the same long low room, the same heavy beams across
the ceiling, the same three chairs, standing in the same places where
they stood then, the same table, and upon it the crwth and bow. There
was a brisk fire, and over it hung the kettle--the same kettle as
then. There were on the walls the same pictures, with the ruddy
fingers of the fire-gleam playing upon them and illuminating them in
the same pathetic way, and in front of the fire sitting upon the same
chair, was a youthful female figure--not Winnie's figure, taller than
hers, and grander than hers--the figure of Sinfi, her elbows resting
upon her knees, and her face sunk meditatively between her hands.

After standing for fully half a minute gazing at her, I went up to
her, and laying my hand upon her shoulder, I said, 'This is a good
sight for the Swimming Rei, Sinfi.'

At the touch of my hand a thrill seemed to dart through her frame;
she leaped up and stared wildly in my face. Her features became
contorted by terror--as horribly contorted as Winnie's had been in
the same spot and under the same circumstances. Exactly the same
terrible words fell upon my ear:--

'Let his children be vagabonds and beg their bread: let them seek it
also out of desolate places. So saith the Lord. Amen.'

Then she fell on the floor insensible.

At first I was too astonished, awed, and bewildered to stir from the
spot where I was standing. Then I knelt down, and raising her
shoulders, placed her head on my knee. For a time the expression of
horror on her pale features was fixed as though graven in marble. A
jug of water, from which the kettle had been supplied, stood on the
floor in the recess. I sprinkled some water over her face. The
muscles relaxed, she opened her eyes; the seizure had passed. She
recognised me, and at once the old brave smile I knew so well passed
over her face. Rhona's words about the curse and the purchase of the
dresses seemed explained now. Long brooding over Winnie's terrible
fate had unhinged her mind.

'My girl, my brave girl,' I said, 'have you, then, felt our sorrow so
deeply? Have you so fully shared poor Winnie's pain that your nerves
have given way at last? You are suffering through sympathy, Sinfi;
you are suffering poor Winnie's great martyrdom.'

'Oh, it ain't that!' she said, 'but how I must have skeared you!'

She got up and sat upon the chair in a much more vigorous way than I
could have expected after such a seizure.

'I am so sorry,' she said. 'It was the sudden feel o' your hand on my
shoulder that done it. It seemed to burn me like, and then it made my
blood seem scaldin' hot. If I'd only 'a' seed you come through the
door I shouldn't have had the fit. The doctor told me the fits wur
all gone now, and I feel sure as this is the last on 'em. You must go
to Knockers' Llyn with me to-morrow mornin' early. I want you to go
at the same time that we started when we tried that mornin' to find
Winnie.'

'Then Rhona's story is true,' I thought. 'Her delusion is that she is
going to Knockers' Llyn to be married.'

'The weather's goin' to be just the same as it was then,' she said,
'and when we get to Knockers' Llyn where you two breakfasted
together, I want to play the crwth and sing the song just as I did
then.'

She made no allusion to a wedding. Getting up and pouring the boiling
water from the kettle into the teapot, 'Something tells me,' she went
on, 'that when I touch my crwth to-morrow, and when I sing them words
by the side of Knockers' Llyn, you'll see the picture you want to
see, the livin' mullo o' Winnie.'

'Still no allusion to a wedding, but no doubt that will soon come,' I
murmured.

'I want to go the same way we went that day, and I want for you and
me to see everythink as we seed it then from fust to last.'

I was haunted by Rhona Boswell's words, and wondered when she would
begin talking about the wedding at Knockers' Llyn.

She never once alluded to it; but at intervals when the talk between
us flagged I could hear her muttering, 'He must see everythink just
as he seed it then from fust to last, and then it's good-bye for
ever.'

At last she said, 'I've had both the rooms upstairs made tidy to
sleep in--one for you and one for me. I'll call you in the mornin' at
the proper time. Goodnight.'

I was not sorry to get this summary dismissal and be alone with my
thoughts. When I got to bed I was kept awake by recalling the sight I
saw on entering the cottage. There seemed no other explanation of it
than this, the tragedy of Winifred had touched Sinfi's sympathetic
soul too deeply. Her imagination had seized upon the spectacle of
Winifred in one of her fits, and had caused so serious a disturbance
of her nervous system that through sheer fascination of repulsion her
face mimicked it exactly as Winifred's face had mimicked the original
spectacle of horror on the sands.


III

It was not yet dawn when I was aroused from the fitful slumber into
which I had at last fallen by a sharp knocking at the door. When I
answered the summons by 'All right, Sinfi,' and heard her footsteps
descend the stairs, the words of Rhona Boswell again came to me.


I found that I must return to the bungalow to get my bath.

The startled servant who let me in asked if there was anything the
matter. I explained my early rising by telling him that I was merely
going to Knockers' Llyn to see the sunrise. He gave me a letter which
had come on the previous evening, and had been addressed by mistake
to Carnarvon. As the handwriting was new to me, I felt sure that it
was only an unimportant missive from some stranger, and I put it into
my pocket without opening it.

On my return I found Sinfi in the little room where we had supped. I
guessed that an essential part of her crazy project was that we
should breakfast at the llyn.

On the table was a basket filled with the materials for the
breakfast.

Another breakfast was spread for us two on the table, and the teapot
was steaming. Sinfi saw me look at the two breakfasts and smile.

'We've got a good way to walk before we get to the pool where we are
goin' to breakfast,' she said, 'so I thought we'd take a snack before
we start.'


As we went along I noticed that the air of Snowdon seemed to have its
usual effect on Sinfi. In taking the path that led to Knockers' Llyn
we saw before us Cwm-Dyli, the wildest of all the Snowdonian
recesses, surrounded by frowning precipices of great height and
steepness. We then walked briskly on towards our goal. When the three
peaks that she knew so well--y Wyddfa, Lliwedd, and Crib Goch--stood
out in the still grey light she stopped, set down her basket, clapped
her hands, and said, 'Didn't I tell you the mornin' was a-goin' to be
ezackly the same as then? No mists to-day. By the time we get to the
llyn the colours o' the vapours, what they calls the Knockers' flags,
will come out ezackly as they did that mornin' when you and me first
went arter Winnie.'

All the way Sinfi's eyes were fixed on the majestic forehead of y
Wyddfa and the bastions of Lliwedd which seemed to guard it as though
the Great Spirit of Snowdon himself was speaking to her and drawing
her on, and she kept murmuring 'The two dukkeripens.'

But still she said nothing about her wedding, though that some such
mad idea as that suggested by Rhona possessed her mind was manifest
enough.


'Here we are at last,' she said, when we reached the pool for which
we were bound; and setting down her little basket she stood and
looked over to the valley beneath.

The colours were coming more quickly every minute, and the entire
picture was exactly the same as that which I had seen on the morning
when we last saw Winifred on the hills, so unlike the misty panorama
that Snowdon usually presents. Y Wyddfa was silhouetted against the
sky, and looked as narrow and as steep as the sides of an acorn. Here
we halted and set down our basket.

As we did so she said, 'Hark! the Knockers! Don't you hear them?
Listen, listen!'

I did listen, and I seemed to hear a peculiar sound as of a distant
knocking against the rocks by some soft substance. She saw that I
heard the noise.

'That's the Snowdon spirits as guards more copper mines than ever
yet's been found. And they're dwarfs. I've seed 'em, and Winnie has.
They're little, fat, short folk, somethin' like the woman in Primrose
Court, only littler. Don't you mind the gal in the court said Winnie
used to call the woman Knocker? Sometimes they knock to show to some
Taffy as has pleased 'em where the veins of copper may be found, and
sometimes they knock to give warnin' of a dangerous precipuss, and
sometimes they knock to give the person as is talkin' warnin' that
he's sayin' or doin' somethin' as may lead to danger. They speaks to
each other too, but in a v'ice so low that you can't tell what words
they're a-speakin', even if you knew their language. My crwth and
song will rouse every spirit on the hills.'

I listened again. This was the mysterious sound that had so
captivated Winnie's imagination as a child.

The extraordinary lustre of Sinfi's eyes indicated to me, who knew
them so well, that every nerve, every fibre in her system, was
trembling under the stress of some intense emotion. I stood and
watched her, wondering as to her condition, and speculating as to
what her crazy project could be.

Then she proceeded to unpack the little basket.

'This is for the love-feast,' said Sinfi.

'You mean betrothal feast,' I said. 'But who are the lovers?'

'You and the livin' mullo that you made me draw for you by my crwth
down by Beddgelert--the livin' mullo o' Winnie Wynne.'

'At last then,' I said to myself, 'I know the form the mania has
taken. It is not her own betrothal, but mine with Winnie's wraith,
that is deluding her crazy brain. How well I remember telling her how
I had promised Winnie as a child to be betrothed by Knockers' Llyn.
Poor Sinfi! Mad or sane, her generosity remains undimmed.'

Before the breakfast cloth could be laid--indeed before the basket
was unpacked--she asked me to look at my watch, and on my doing so
and telling her the time, she jumped up and said, 'It's later than I
thought. We must lay the cloth arterwards.' She then placed me in
that same crevice overlooking the tarn whence Winnie had come to me
on that morning.

Knockers' Llyn, it will perhaps be remembered, is enclosed in a
little gorge opening by a broken, ragged fissure at the back to the
east. Leading to this opening there is on one side a narrow, jagged
shelf which runs half-way round the pool. Sinfi's movements now were
an exact repetition of everything she did on that first morning of
our search for Winnie.

While I stood partially concealed in my crevice, Sinfi took up her
crwth, which was lying on the rock.

'What are you going; to do, Sinfi?'  I said.

'I'm just goin' to bring back old times for you. You remember that
mornin' when my crwth and song called Winnie to us at this very llyn?
I'm goin' to play on my crwth and sing the same song now. It's to
draw her livin' mullo, as I did at Bettws and Beddgelert, so that the
dukkeripen of the "Golden Hand" may come true.'

'But how can it come true, Sinfi?'  I said.

'The dukkeripen allus does come true, whether it's good or whether
it's bad.'

'Not always,' I said.

'No, not allus,' she cried, starting up, while there came over her
face that expression which had so amazed me at Beddgelert. When at
last breath came to her she was looking towards y Wyddfa through the
kindling haze.

'There you're right, Hal Aylwin. It ain't every dukkeripen as comes
true. The dukkeripen allus comes true, unless it's one as says a
Gorgio shall come to the Kaulo Camloes an' break Sinfi Lovell's
heart. Before that dukkeripen shall come true Sinfi Lovell 'ud cut
her heart out. Yes, my fine Gorgio, she'd cut it out--she'd cut it
out and fling it in that 'ere llyn. She did cut it out when she took
the cuss on herself. She's a-cuttin' it out now.'

Then without saying another word Sinfi took up her crwth and moved
towards the llyn.

'You'll soon come back, Sinfi?' I said.

'We've got to see about that,' she replied, still pale and trembling
from the effects of that sudden upheaval of the passion of a
Titaness. 'If the livin' mullo does come you can't have a love-feast
without company, you know, and I sha'n't be far off if you find you
want me.'

She then took up her crwth, went round the llyn, and disappeared
through the eastern cleft. In a few minutes I heard her crwth. But
the air she played was not the air of the song she called the 'Welsh
dukkerin' gillie' which I had heard by Beddgelert. It was the air of
the same idyll of Snowdon that I first beard Winifred sing on the
sands of Raxton. Then I heard in the distance those echoes, magical
and faint, which were attributed by Winifred and Sinfi to the
Knockers or spirits of Snowdon.


IV

There I stood again, as on that other morning, in the crevice
overlooking the same llyn, looking at what might well have been the
same masses of vapour enveloping the same peaks, rolling as then,
boiling as then, blazing as then, whenever the bright shafts of
morning struck them. There I stood again, listening to the wild notes
of Sinfi's crwth in the distance, as the sun rose higher, pouring a
radiance through the eastern gate of the gorge, and kindling the
aerial vapours moving about the llyn till their iridescent sails
suggested the wings of some enormous dragon-fly of every hue.

'Her song does not come,' I said, 'but, this time, when it does come,
it will not befool my senses. Sinfi's own presence by my side--that
magnetism of hers which D'Arcy spoke of--would be required before the
glamour could be cast over me, now that I know she is crazy. Poor
Sinfi! Her influence will not to-day be able to cajole my eyes into
accepting her superstitious visions as their own.'

But as I spoke a sound fell, not upon my ears alone, but upon every
nerve of my body, the sound of a voice singing, a voice that was not
Sinfi's, but another's,

       'I met in a glade a lone little maid,
         At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;
       Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,
         And darker her hair than the night;
       Her cheek was like the mountain rose,
         But fairer far to see.
       As driving along her sheep with a song,
         Down from the hills came she.'

It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song on Raxton
Sands. It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song in
the London streets--Winnie's!

And then there appeared in the eastern cleft of the gorge on the
other side of the llyn, illuminated as by a rosy steam, Winnie! Amid
the opalescent vapours gleaming round the llyn, with eyes now
shimmering as through a veil--now flashing like sapphires in the
sun--there she stood gazing through the film, her eyes expressing a
surprise and a wonder as great as my own.


'It is no phantasm--it is no hallucination,' I said, while my
breathing had become a spasmodic, choking gasp.

But when I remembered the vision of Fairy Glen, I said, 'Imagination
can do that, and so can the glamour cast over me by Sinfi's music. It
does not vanish; ah, if the sweet madness should remain with me for
ever! It does not vanish--it is gliding along the side of the llyn:
it is moving towards me. And now those sudden little ripples in the
llyn--what do they mean? The trout are flying from her shadow. The
feet are grating on the stones. And hark! that pebble which falls
into the water with a splash; the glassy llyn is ribbed and rippled
with rings. Can a phantom do that? It comes towards me still.
Hallucination!'

Still the vision came on.


When I felt the touch of her body, when I felt myself clasped in soft
arms, and felt falling on my face warm tears, and on my lips the
pressure of Winnie's lips--lips that were murmuring, 'At last, at
last!'--a strange, wild effect was worked within me. The reality of
the beloved form now in my arms declared itself; it brought back the
scene where I had last clasped it.

Snowdon had vanished; the brilliant morning sun had vanished. The
moon was shining on a cottage near Raxton Church, and at the door two
lovers were standing, wet with the sea-water--with the sea-water
through which they had just waded. All the misery that had followed
was wiped out of my brain. It had not even the cobweb consistence of
a dream.


When, after a while, Snowdon and the drama of the present came back
to me, my brain was in such a marvellous state that it held two
pictures of the same Winnie as though each hemisphere of the brain
were occupied with its own vision. I was kissing Winnie's sea-salt
lips in the light of the moon at the cottage door, and I was kissing
them in the morning radiance by Knockers' Llyn. And yet so
overwhelming was the mighty tide of bliss overflowing my soul that
there was no room within me for any other emotion--no room for
curiosity, no room even for wonder.

Like a spirit awakening in Paradise, I accepted the heaven in which
I found myself, and did not inquire how I got there.

This did not last long, however. Suddenly and sharply the moonlight
scene vanished, and I was on Snowdon, and there came a burning
curiosity to know the meaning of this new life--the meaning of the
life of pain that had followed the parting at the cottage door.


V

'Winnie,' I said, 'tell me where we are. I have been very ill since
we parted in your father's cottage. I have had the wildest
hallucinations concerning you; dreams, intolerable dreams. And even
now they hang about me; even now it seems to me that we are far away
from Raxton, surrounded by the hills and peaks of Snowdon. If they
were real _you_ would be the dream, but you are real; this waist is
real.'

'Of course we are on Snowdon, Henry!' said she. 'You must indeed have
been ill--you must now be very ill--to suppose you are at Raxton.'

'But what are we doing here?' I said. 'How did we come here?'

'Let Badoura speak for herself only,' she said, with that arch smile
of hers. She was alluding to the old days at Raxton, when she hoped
that some day her little Camaralzaman would be carried by genii to
her as she sat thinking of him by the magic llyn. 'The genie who
brought me was Sinfi Lovell. But who brought Camaralzaman? That is a
question,' she said, 'I am dying to have answered.'

At the name of Sinfi Lovell the past came flowing in.

'Then there _is_ a Sinfi Lovell, Winnie! And yet she is one of the
figures in the dream. There was no Sinfi Lovell with us at Raxton.'

'Of course there is a Sinfi Lovell! You begin to make me as dazed as
yourself. You have known her well; you and she were seeking me when I
was lost.'

'Then you _were_ lost?' I said. 'That, then, is no dream. And yet if
you were lost you have been--But you are alive, Winnie. Let me
feel the lips on mine again. You are alive! Snowdon told me at last
that you were alive, but I dared not believe it, my darling. I dared
not believe that my misery would end thus--thus.'

There came upon her face an expression of distressed perplexity which
did more than anything else to recall me to my senses.

'Winnie,' I said, 'my brain is whirling. Let us sit down.'

She sat down by my side.

'You thought your Winnie was dead, Henry. Sinfi Lovell has told me
all about it.' Then, looking intently at me, she said, 'And how your
sorrow has changed you, dear!'

'You mean it has aged me, Winnie. I have observed it myself, and
people tell me it has made me look older than I am by many years.
These furrows around the eyes--these furrows on my brow--you are
kissing them, dear.'

'Oh, I love them; how I love them!' she said. 'I am not kissing them
to smooth them away. To me every line tells of your love for Winnie.'

'And the hair, Winnie--look, it is getting quite grizzled.' Then, as
the lovely head sank upon my breast. I whispered in her ears, 'Is
there at last sorrow enough in the eyes, Winnie? Has the hardening
effect of wealth coarsened my expression? Can a rich man for once
enter the kingdom of love? Is the betrothal now complete? Are we both
betrothed now?'

I stopped, for bliss and love were convulsing her with sobs until you
might have supposed her heart was breaking.


While she lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits
around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to
direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my faculties
and paralyse me.

After a while she became more composed, and sat in a trance, so to
speak, of happiness.

But she remained silent. The conversation, I perceived, would have to
be directed entirely by me. With the appalling seizures ever present
in my mind, I felt that every word that came from my lips was
dangerous.

'Look,' I said, 'the colours of the vapours round the llyn are as
rich as they were when we breakfasted here together.'

'We breakfasted here together! Why, what do you mean?' she said,
looking in my face. 'You forget, Henry, you never knew me in Wales at
all; it was only at Raxton that you ever saw me.'

'I mean when you breakfasted with the Prince of the Mist. I was the
Prince of the Mist, dear.'

She gave me a puzzled look which scared while it warned me. How cruel
it seemed of Sinfi, who had planned this meeting, not to have told me
how much and how little Winnie knew of the past.

'You know nothing about the Prince of the Mist except what I told you
on Raxton sands,' she said. 'But you have been very ill; you will be
well now.'

'Yes,' I said; 'I have found the life I had lost, and these dreams of
mine will soon pass.'

As the conversation went on I began to see that she remembered our
meetings on the sands--remembered everything up to a certain point.
What was that point? This was the question that kept me on
tenterhooks.

Every word she uttered, however, shed light into my mind, and served
as a warning that I must feel my way cautiously. It was evident to me
that in some unaccountable way Sinfi at some time after she left me
at Beddgelert had discovered that Winnie was not really dead, and had
brought her back to me--brought her back to me restored in mind, but
with all memory of what had passed during her dementia erased from
her consciousness. Everything depended now upon my learning how much
of her past she did remember. A single ill-judged word of mine--a
single false move--might ruin all, and bring back the life of misery
which I seemed at last to have left behind me.


VI

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have not yet told me how you came here. You
have not yet told me how it is that you meet me on Snowdon--meet me
in this wonderful way.'

'Oh,' said she with a smile, 'Badoura has been a mere puppet in the
play. She had no idea she was going to meet her prince. Sinfi was
suddenly seized with a desire that she and I should come back, and
visit the dear old places we knew together. I was nothing loth, as
you may imagine, but I could not understand what had made her set
her heart upon it. When we reached Carnarvonshire I found that
Sinfi's people were all encamped near to Bettws y Coed, and we went
and stayed there. We visited all the places in the neighbourhood that
were associated with her childhood and mine.'

'You went to Fairy Glen?' I said.

'Yes; we went there the night before last and saw it in the
moonlight.'

'I was there, and I saw you.'

'Ah! Then the man sitting on the boulder at the bottom was you! How
wonderful! Sinfi was there on the step round the corner; she must
have seen you. I know now why she suddenly hurried me away. She had
told me that she wanted to see the Glen by moonlight'

'Then you did not know that you would meet me here?'

'My dear Henry, do you suppose that if I had known, I could have been
induced to take part in anything so theatrical? When I saw you
standing here my amazement and joy were so great that I forgot the
strange way in which I stood exhibited.'

I felt that the longer she chatted about such matters as these the
more opportunities I should get of learning how much and how little
she knew of her own story, so I said,

'But tell me how Sinfi contrived to trick you.'

'Well, this morning was the time fixed for our visiting Llyn
Coblynau, as we call Knockers' Lynn, which was my favourite place as
a child. We were to see it when the colours of the morning were upon
it. Then we were to go right to the top of Snowdon and take a mid-day
meal at the hut there, and in the evening go down to Llanberis and
sleep there. To-morrow morning we were to go to dear old Carnarvon
and see again the beloved sea. I find now that her plan was to bring
you and me together in this sensational way.'

'Will she join us?' I asked.

'I know no more than you what will be Sinfi's next whim. At the last
moment yesterday I was surprised to find that I was not to come with
her here, as she was not to sleep in the camp last night because she
had promised to see a friend at Capel Curig. And now, shall I tell
you how she inveigled me into taking my part in this Snowdon play she
was getting up? She told me that she had the greatest wish to
discover how the "Knockers' echoes," as they are called, would sound
if, in the early morning, she were to play her crwth in one spot and
I were to answer it from another spot with a verse of a Welsh song.
It seemed a pretty idea, and it was agreed that when I reached the
llyn I was to go round it to the opening at the east, pass through
the crevice, and wait there till I heard her crwth.'

'Well, Winnie, I must say that the way in which our Gypsy friend
manipulated you, and the way in which she manipulated me, shows a
method that would have done credit to any madness.'

'You? How did she trick you?'

I was determined not to talk about myself till I had felt my way.

'Winnie, dear,' I said, 'seeing you is such a surprise, and my
illness has left me so weak, that I must wait before talking about
myself. I shall be more able to do this after I have learnt more of
what has befallen you. You say that Sinfi proposed to bring you to
Wales; but where were you when she did so? And what brought you into
contact with Sinfi again after--after--after you and I were parted in
Raxton?'

'Ah! that is a strange story indeed,' said Winifred. 'It bewilders me
to recall it as much as it will bewilder you when you come to hear
it. I, too, seem to have been ill, and quite unconscious for months
and months.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'tell me this strange story about yourself. Tell it
in your own way, and do not let me interrupt you by a word. Whenever
you see that I am about to speak, stop me--put your hand over my
mouth.'

'But where am I to begin?'

'Begin from our first meeting on the sands on the night of the
landslip.'

But while I spoke I thought I observed her looking at the breakfast
provided by Sinfi with something like the same wistful expression
that was on her face on that morning forgotten by her but remembered
by me so well, when she breakfasted so heartily on the same spot.

'Winnie,' I said, 'this mountain air has given me a voracious
appetite. I wonder whether you could manage to eat some of these good
things provided by our theatrical manageress?'

'I wonder whether I could,' said Winnie; 'I'll try--if you'll ask me
no questions, but talk about Snowdon and watch the changes of the
glorious morning. But we must call Sinfi.'

'No, no. I want to talk to you alone first. By the time your story is
over I at least shall be ready for another breakfast, and then we
will call her.'

This was agreed upon, and I sat down to my second breakfast with
Winnie beside Knockers' Llyn. I sat with my face opposite to the
llyn, and we had scarcely begun when I noticed Sinfi's face peeping
round a corner of the little gorge. Winnie's back being turned from
the llyn she did not see Sinfi, who gave me a sign that her part of
that performance was to be looker-on.

I have not time to dwell upon what was said and done during our
breakfast in this romantic place, and under these more than romantic
circumstances. During the whole of the time the Knockers kept up
their knockings, and it really seemed as though the good-natured
goblins were expressing their welcome to the child of y Wyddfa.



XV

THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON'S STORY


I

After the breakfast was ended Winifred went over the entire drama of
that night of the landslip as far as she knew it. There was not an
important incident that she missed. Every detail of her narrative was
so vividly given that I lived it all over again. She recalled our
meeting on the sands, and my inexplicable bearing when she told me of
the seaman's present of precious stones to her father. She dwelt upon
my mysterious conduct in insisting upon our ascending the cliff by
different gangways. She recalled her picking up from the sands a
parchment scroll and spelling out by the moonlight the words of the
curse it called down upon the head of any one who should violate the
tomb from which the parchment and the jewel had been stolen, but as
she repeated the words of the curse she was evidently unconscious of
the tremendous import of the words in regard to herself and her
father. She told me of her desire to conceal from me, for my own sake
merely, the evidence afforded by the scroll that my father's tomb had
been violated. She recalled my seeing the parchment and being thrown
thereby into a state of the greatest mental agony. She recalled my
taking her hand as we neared the new tongue of land made by the
_debris_, and peering round it as though in dread of some concealed
foe, but evidently she had no idea of _what_ was behind there. She
described the way in which my 'foot slipped on the sand,' and how I
was thrown back upon her as she stood waiting to pass the _debris_
herself. She spoke of my unaccountable and apparently mad suggestion
that we should, although the tide was coming in, and we were already
in danger of being imprisoned in the cove and drowned, sit down on
the boulder made sacred to us both by our childish betrothal. She
spoke of her own suspicion, and then her conviction, that some great
calamity was threatening me on account of the violation of the tomb,
and that the knowledge of this was governing all these strange
movements of mine. She reminded me of my telling her that the shriek
we both heard at the moment when the cliff fell was connected with
the crime against my father, and that it was the call from the grave
which, according to wild traditions, will sometimes come to the heir
of an old family. She recalled the very words I used when I told her
that in answer to this call I intended to remain there until the tide
came in and drowned me. She dwelt upon the way in which I urged her
to go and leave me, her own resolution to die with me, and her
cutting up her shawl into a rope and tying herself to me. She
recalled the sudden thunderous noise of the settlement in response
to the tide, and my springing up and running to the mass of _debris_
and looking round it, and then my calling her to join me; and finally
she described her running toward Needle Point in order to pass round
it before the tide should get any higher, her plunging into the sea
and my pulling her round the Point.

It was manifest, from the first word she uttered to the last, that
she had no idea who was the 'miscreant,' to use her oft-repeated
word, who committed the sacrilege; and nothing could express what
relief this gave my heart. I felt as though I had just escaped from
some peril too dire to think of with calmness.

'You remember, Henry,' said she, 'how we ran to the cottage in our
wet clothes. You remember how we parted at the cottage door. From
that night till now we have never met, and now we meet--here on
Snowdon--at the very llyn I was always so fond of.

'But tell me more, Winnie--tell me what occurred to you on the next
morning.'

'Well,' said she, 'I was always a sound sleeper, but my fatigue that
night made me sleep until quite late the next morning. I hurried up
and got breakfast ready for father and myself. I then went and rapped
at his door, but I got no answer. His room was empty.'

Winifred paused here as though she expected me to say something. A
thousand things occurred to me to ask, but until I knew more--until I
knew how much and how little she remembered of that dreadful time, I
dared ask her nothing--I dared make no remark at all. I said, 'Go on,
Winnie; pray do not break your story.'

'Well,' said she, 'I found that my father had not returned during the
night. I did not feel disturbed at that, his ways were so uncertain.
I did not even hurry over my breakfast, but dallied over it,
recalling the scenes of the previous night, and wondering what some
of them could mean. I then went down the gangway at Needle Point to
walk on the sands. I thought I might meet father coming from
Dullingham. I had to pass the landslip, where a great number of
Raxton people were gathered. They were looking at the frightful
relics of Raxton churchyard. They were too dreadful for me to look
at. I walked right to Dullingham without meeting my father. At
Dullingham I was told that he had not been there for some days. Then,
for the first time, I began to be haunted by fears, but they took no
distinct shape. When I returned to the landslip the people were still
there, and still very excited about it. In the afternoon I went again
on the sands, thinking that I might see my father and also that I
might see you. I walked about till dusk without seeing either of you,
and then I went back to the cottage. I had now become very anxious
about my father, and sat up all night. The next morning after
breakfast I went again on the sands. The number of people collected
round the landslip seemed greater than ever, and many of them, I
think, came from Graylingham, Rington, and Dullingham. They seemed
more excited than they had been on the previous day, and they did not
notice me as I joined them. I heard some one say in a cracked and
piping voice, "Well, it's my belief as Tom lays under that there
settlement. It's my belief that he wur standing on the edge of the
churchyard cliff, and when the cliff fell he fell with it." Then the
kind and good-natured little tailor Shales saw me, and I thought he
must have made some signal to the others, for they all stood silent.
I felt sure now that for some reason, unknown to me, it was generally
believed that my father had perished in the landslip. Mrs. Shales
took me by the hand, and gently led me away up the gangway. When we
reached the cottage I asked her whether my father's body had been
found. She told me that it had not, and was not likely to be found,
for if he had really fallen with the landslip his body lay under tons
upon tons of earth. I shall never forget the misery of that night;
kind Mrs. Shales would not leave me, but slept in the cottage. I had
very little doubt that the Raxton people were right in their dreadful
guesses about my father. I had very little doubt that while walking
along the cliff, either to or from the cottage, he had reached the
point at the back of the church at the moment of the landslip, and
been carried down with it, and I now felt sure that the shriek you
and I both heard was his shriek of terror as he fell. I bethought me
of the jewels that my father's sailor friend was to give him, and
searched the cottage for them. As I could not find them, I felt sure
that it was on his return from his meeting with his sailor friend,
when the jewels were upon him, that he fell with the landslip.'

Again Winnie paused as if awaiting some question, or at least some
remark from me.

'Did you make no inquiries about me?' I said.

'Oh yes,' said she; 'my grief at the loss of my father was very much
increased by my not being able to see you. Mrs. Shales told me that
you were ill--very ill. And altogether, you may imagine my misery.
Day after day I got worse and worse news of you. 'And day after day
it became more and more certain, that my father had perished in the
way people supposed. I used to spend most of the day on the sands,
gazing at the landslip, and searching for my father's body. Every
one tried to persuade me to give up my search, as it was hopeless,
for his body was certain to be buried deep under the new tongue of
land.'

'But you still continued your search, Winnie?' I said, remembering
every word Dr. Mivart had told me in connection with her being found
by the fishermen.

'Yes, I found it impossible not to go on with it. But one morning
after there had been a great storm followed by a further settlement
of the landslip, I went out alone on the cliffs. I said to myself,
"This shall be my last search." By this time the news of your illness
and the anxiety I felt about you helped much in blunting the anxiety
I felt about my father's loss. But on this very morning I am speaking
of something very extraordinary happened.

'Don't tell me, Winnie. For God's sake, don't tell me! It will
disturb you; it will make you ill again.'

She looked at me in evident astonishment at my words.

'Don't tell you, Henry? Why, there is nothing to tell,' said she. 'As
I was walking along the sands, looking at the new tongue of land made
by the landslip, I seem to have lost consciousness.'

'And you don't know what caused this?'

'Not in the least; unless it was my anxiety and want of sleep. This
was the beginning of the long illness that I spoke of, and I seem to
have remained quite without consciousness until a few weeks ago. I
often try to make my mind bring back the circumstances under which I
lost consciousness. I throw my thoughts, so to speak, upon a wall of
darkness, and they come reeling back  like waves that are dashed
against a cliff.'

'Then don't do so any more, Winnie. I know enough of such matters to
tell you confidently that you never will recall the incidents
connected with your collapse, and that the endeavour to do so is
really injurious to you. What interests me very much more is to know
the circumstances under which you came to yourself. I am dying with
impatience to know all about that.'


II

'When I came to myself,' said Winifred, 'I was in a world as new and
strange and wonderful as that in which Christopher Sly found himself
when he woke up to his new life in Shakespeare's play.'

She paused. She little thought how my flesh kindled with impatience.

'Yes, Winnie,' I said; 'you are going to tell me how, and where, and
when you were restored to life--regained your consciousness, I
mean--unless it will too deeply agitate you to tell me.'

'It would not agitate me in the least, Henry, to tell you all about
it. But it is a long story, and this seems a strange place in which
to tell it, surrounded by these glorious peaks and covered by this
roof of sunrise. But do you tell me all about yourself, all about
your illness, which seems to have been a dreadful one.'


My story, indeed! What was there in my story that I could or dare
tell her? My story would have to be all about herself, and the
tragedy of the supposed curse, and the terrible seizures from which
she had recovered, and of which she must never know. I set to work to
persuade her to tell me all she knew.

At last she yielded, and said, 'Well, I awoke as from a deep sleep,
and found myself lying on a couch, with a man's face bending over
mine. I could not help exclaiming, "Henry!'"

'Then did he resemble me?' I asked.

'Only in this--that in his eyes there was the expression which has
always appealed to me more than any other expression, whether in
human eyes or in the eyes of animals. I mean the pleading, yearning
expression of loneliness that there was in your eyes when they were
the eyes of a little, lame boy who could not get up the gangways
without me.'

'Ah, the egotism of love!' I exclaimed. 'You mean, Winnie, that
expression which my unlucky eyes had lost when we met upon the sands
after our childhood was passed.'

'But which love,' said she, 'love of Winnie, sorrow for the loss of
Winnie, have brought back, increased a thousandfold, till it gives me
pain and yet a delicious pain to look into them. Oh, Henry, I can't
go on; I really can't, if you look--'

She burst into tears.

When she got calmer she proceeded.

'It was only in the expression of your eyes that he resembled you.
He was much older, and wore spectacles. He, on his part, gave a start
when he looked into my eyes. It seemed to me that he had been
expecting to see something in them which he did not find there, and
was a little disappointed. I then heard voices in the room, which was
evidently, from the sound of the voices, a large room, and I looked
round. I saw that there was another couch close to mine, but nearly
hidden from view by a large screen between the two couches. Evidently
a woman was lying on the other couch, for I could see her feet; she
was a tall woman, for her feet reached out much beyond my own.'

'Good heavens, Winnie,' I exclaimed, 'what on earth is coming? But I
promised not to interrupt you. Pray go on, I am all impatience.'

'Well, at the sound of the voices the gentleman started, and seemed
much alarmed--alarmed on my account, I thought.

'I then heard a voice say, "A most successful experiment. Look at the
face of this other patient, and see the expression on it."

'The gentleman bent over me, and hurriedly raised me from the couch,
and then fairly carried me out of the room. But you seem very
excited, Henry, you have turned quite pale.'

It would have been wonderful if I had not turned pale. So deeply
burnt into my brain had been the picture I had imagined of Winnie
dead and in a pauper's grave that even now, with Winnie in my arms,
it all came to me, and I seemed to see her lying in a pauper's
shroud, and being restored to life, and I said to her, 'Did you
observe--did you observe your dress, Winnie?'

She answered my question by a little laugh. 'Did I observe my dress
at such a moment? Well, I knew you could be satirical on my sex when
you are in the mood, but, Henry, there are moments, I assure you,
when the first thing a woman observes is not her dress, and this was
one. Afterwards I did observe it, and I can tell you what it was. It
was a walking-dress. Perhaps,' said she, with a smile, 'perhaps you
would like to know the material? But really I have forgotten that.'
'Pardon my idle question, Winnie--pray go on. I will interrupt you no
more.'

'Oh, you will interrupt me no more! We shall see. The gentleman then
led me through a passage of some length.'

'Do describe it!'

'I felt quite sure you would interrupt me no more. Well! The dim
light in the windows made me guess I was in an old house, and from
the sweet smell of hay and wild-flowers I thought we were near the
Wilderness, at Raxton. I could only imagine that I had fallen
insensible on the sands and been taken to Raxton Hall.'

'Ah! that's where you ought to have been taken.' I could not help
exclaiming.

'Surely not,' said Winnie.

'Why?'

'Your mother! But why have you turned so angry?'

In spite of all that I had lately witnessed of my mother's sufferings
from remorse, in spite of all the deep and genuine pity that those
sufferings had drawn from me, Winnie's words struck deeper than any
pity for any creature but herself, and for a moment my soul rose
against my mother again.

'Go on, Winnie, pray go on,' I said.

'You _will_ make me talk about myself,' said Winifred, 'when I so
much want to hear all about you. This is what I call the
self-indulgence of love. Well, then, the gentleman and I mounted some
steps and then we entered a tapestried room. The windows--they were
quaint and old-fashioned casements--were open, and the sunlight was
pouring through them. I then saw at once that I was not anywhere near
Raxton. Besides, there was no sea-smell mixed with the perfumes of
the flowers and the songs of the birds. That I was not near Raxton,
very much amazed me, you may be sure. And then the room was so new to
me and so strange. I had never been in an artist's studio, but Sinfi
had talked to me of such places, and there were many signs that I was
in a studio now.'

'A studio! And not in London! Describe it, Winnie,' I said.

Although she had told me that the house was in the country, my mind
flew at once to Wilderspin's studio. 'You say that the gentleman was
not young, but that he had an expression of sorrow in his eyes. Had
he long iron-grey hair, and was he dressed--dressed, like a--like a
shiny Quaker?' So full was my mind of Mrs. Gudgeon's story that I was
positively using her language.

'Like a what?' exclaimed Winnie. 'Really, Henry, you have become very
eccentric since our parting. The gentleman had not iron-grey hair,
and he was not dressed in the least like a Quaker, unless a loose,
brown lounge coat tossed on anyhow over a waistcoat and trousers of
the same colour is the costume of a shiny Quaker. But it was the room
you asked me to describe. There were pictures on the walls, and there
were two easels, and on one of them I saw a picture. The gentleman
led me to a strange and very beautiful piece of furniture. If I
attempted to describe it I should call it a divan, under a gorgeous
kind of awning ornamented with Chinese figures in ivory and precious
stones. Now, isn't it exactly like an _Arabian Nights_ story, Henry?'

'Yes, yes, Winnie; but pray go on. What did the gentleman do?'

'He drew a chair towards me, and without speaking looked into my face
again. The expression in his eyes drew me towards him, as it had at
first done when I awoke from my trance; it drew me towards him partly
because it said, "I am lonely and in sorrow," and partly from
another cause which I could not understand and could never define,
howsoever I might try. "Where am I?" I said; "I remember nothing
since I fell on the sands. Where is Henry? Is he better or worse? Can
you tell me?" The gentleman said, "The friend you inquire about is a
long way from here, and you are a long way from Raxton." I asked him
why I was a long way from Raxton, and said, "Who brought me here? Do,
please, tell me what it means. I am amongst friends--of that I am
sure; there is something in your voice which assures me of that; but
do tell me what this mystery means." "You are indeed among friends,"
he said. Then looking at me with an expression of great kindness, he
continued, "It would be difficult to imagine where you could go
without finding friends, Miss Wynne."'

'Then he knew who you were, Winnie?' I said.

'Yes, he knew who I was,' said she, looking meditatively across the
hills as though my query had raised in her own mind some question
which had newly presented itself. 'The gentleman told me that I had
been very ill and was now recovered, but not so entirely recovered at
present that I could with safety be burthened and perplexed with the
long story of my illness and what had brought me there. And when he
concluded by saying, "You are here for your good," I exclaimed, "Ah,
yes; no need for me to be told that," for his voice convinced me that
it was so. "But surely you can tell me something. Where is Henry? Is
he still ill?" I said. He told me that he believed you to be
perfectly well, and that you had lately been living in Wales, but had
now gone to Japan. "Henry lately in Wales! now gone to Japan!" I
exclaimed, "and he was not with me during the illness that you say I
have just recovered from?"'

'Winnie,' I said, 'it was no wonder you asked those questions, but you
will soon know all.'

Whilst Winnie had been talking my mind had been partly occupied with
words that fell from her about the voice of her mysterious rescuer.
They seemed to recall something.

'You were saying, Winnie, that the gentleman had a peculiarly musical
voice,' I said.

'So musical,' she replied, 'that it seemed to delight and charm, not
my mind only, but every nerve in my body.'

'Could you describe it?'

'Describe a voice,' she said, laughing. 'Who could describe a voice?'

'You, Winnie; only you. Do describe it.'

'I wonder,' she said, 'whether you remember our first walk along the
Raxton road, when I made invidious comparison between the voices of
birds and the voices of men and women?'

'Indeed I do,' I said. 'I remember how you suggested that among the
birds the rooks only could listen without offence to the cackle of a
crowd of people.'

'Well, Henry, I can only give you an idea of the gentleman's voice by
saying that the most fastidious blackbirds and thrushes that ever
lived would have liked it. Indeed they did seem to like it, as I
afterwards thought, when I took walks with him. It was music in every
variety of tone; and, besides, it seemed to me that this music was
enriched by a tone which I had learnt from your own dear voice as a
child, the tone which sorrow can give and nothing else. The listener
while he was speaking felt so drawn towards him as to love the man
who spoke. When his voice ceased, some part of his attraction ceased.
But the moment the voice was again heard the magic of the man
returned as strong as ever.'


III

For some time during Winnie's narrative glimmerings of the
gentleman's identity had been coming to me, and what she said of the
voice seemed to be turning these glimmerings into shafts of light. I
was now in a state of the greatest impatience to verify my surmise.
But this only gave a sharper edge to my intense curiosity as to
_how_ she had been rescued by him.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have said nothing about his appearance. Could
you describe his face?'

'Describe his face?' said Winnie. 'If I were a painter I could paint
it from memory. But who can paint a face in words?'

Then she launched into a description of the gentleman's appearance,
and gave me a specimen of that 'objective' power which used to amaze
me as a child but which I afterwards found was a speciality of the
girls of Wales.

'I should like a description of him feature by feature,' I said.

She laughed, and said, 'I suppose I must begin with his forehead
then. It was almost of the tone of marble, and contrasted, but not
too violently, with the thin crop of dark hair slightly curling round
the temples, which were partly bald. The forehead in its form was so
perfect that it seemed to shed its own beauty over all the other
features; it prevented me from noticing, as I afterwards did, that
these other features--the features below the eyes, were not in
themselves beautiful. The eyes, which looked at me through
spectacles, were of a colour between hazel and blue-grey, but there
were lights shining within them which were neither grey, nor hazel,
nor blue--wonderful lights. And it was to these indescribable lights,
moving and alive in the deeps of the pupils, that his face owed its
extraordinary attractiveness. Have I sufficiently described him? or
am I to go on taking his face to pieces for you?'

'Go on, Winnie--pray go on.'

'Well, then, between the eyes, across the top of the nose, where the
bridge of the spectacles rested, there was a strongly marked indented
line which had the appearance of having been made by long-continued
pressure of the spectacle frame. Am I still to go on?'

'Yes, yes.'

'The beauty of the face, as I said before, was entirely confined to
the upper portion. It did not extend lower than the cheek-bones,
which were well shaped.'

'The mouth, Winnie? Describe that, and then I need not ask you his
name, though perhaps you don't know it yourself.'

'A dark brown moustache covered the mouth. I have always thought that
a mouth is unattractive if the lips are so close to the teeth that
they seem to stick to them; and yet what a kind woman Mrs. Shales is,
and her mouth is of this kind. But, on the other hand, where the
space between the teeth and the lips is too great no mouth can be
called beautiful, I think. Now though the mouth of the gentleman was
not ill-cut, the lips were too far from the teeth, I thought; they
were too loose, a little baggy, in short. And when he laughed--'

'What about that, Winnie? I specially want to know about his laugh.'

'Then I will tell you. When he laughed his teeth were a little too
much seen; and this gave the mouth a somewhat satirical expression.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'there is no need now for you to tell me the name
of the gentleman. In a few sentences you have described him better
than I could have done in a hundred.'

'And certainly there is no reason why I should not tell you his
name,' she said, laughing, 'for if there is a word that is musical in
my ears, it is the name of him whose voice is music--D'Arcy. When he
told me that I should know everything in time, and that there was
nothing for me to know except that which would give me comfort, and
said, "You confide in me!" I could only answer, "Who would not
confide in you? I will wait patiently until you tell me what you have
to tell." "Then," said he, "the best thing you can do is to lie down
for an hour or two on that divan and rest yourself, and go to sleep
if you can, while I go and attend to certain affairs that need me."
He then left the room. I was glad to be alone, for I was terribly
tired. I felt as though I had been taking violent bodily exercise,
but without feeling the staying power that Snowdon air can give. I
lay down on the divan, and must have fallen asleep immediately. When
I woke I found the same kind face near me, and the same kind eyes
watching me. Mr. D'Arcy told me that I had been sleeping for two
hours, and that it had, he hoped, much refreshed me. He told me also
that he took a constitutional walk every day, and asked me if I would
accompany him. I said, "Yes, I should like to do so." At this moment
there passed the window some railway men leaving some luggage. On
seeing them Mr. D'Arcy said, "I see that I must leave you for a
minute or two to look after a package of canvases that has just come
from my assistant in London," and he left me. When I was left alone I
had an opportunity of observing the room. The walls were covered with
old faded tapestry, so faded indeed that its general effect was that
of a dull grey texture. On looking at it closely I found that it told
the story of Samson. Every piece of furniture seemed to me to be a
rare curiosity.'

'Now, Winnie,' I said, 'I am not going to interrupt you any more. I
want to hear your story as an unbroken narrative.'


IV

'Well,' said Winnie, 'after a while Mr. D'Arcy returned and told me
that he was now ready to take me for a stroll across the meadows,
saying, "The doctor told me that, at first, your walks must be short;
so while you go to your room I will get Mrs. Titwing in for my usual
consultation about our frugal meal."

'"My room," I said, "my room, and Mrs. Titwing; who's--"

'"Ha! I quite forgot myself," he said, with an air of vexation,
which he tried, I thought, to conceal. "I will ring for Mrs.
Titwing--the housekeeper--and she will take you to your room."

'He walked towards the bell, but before reaching it he stopped as if
arrested by a sudden thought. Then he said, "I will go to the
housekeeper's room and speak to Mrs. Titwing there. I shall be back
in a minute." And he passed from the room through the door by which
he and I had first entered.

'Scarcely had the door closed behind him before a woman entered by
another door opposite to it. She was about the common height,
slender, and of an extremely youthful figure for a woman of middle
age. Her bright-complexioned face, lit by two watery blue eyes, was
pleasant to look upon. It was none the less pleasant because it
showed clearly that she was as guileless as a child.

'I knew at once that she was the person--the housekeeper--that Mr.
D'Arcy had gone to seek at the other side of the house. Evidently she
had come upon me unexpectedly, for she gave a violent start, then she
murmured to herself,

'"So it's all over, and all went off well." she said. Then she walked
quietly towards me and threw her arms round me and kissed me, saying,
"Dear child, I am so glad."

'The tone of voice in which she spoke to me was exactly that of a
nurse speaking to a little child.

'I was so taken by surprise that I pulled myself from her embrace
with some force. The poor woman looked at me in a hurt way and then
said,

'"I beg your pardon, miss. I didn't notice at first how--how changed
you are. The look in your eyes makes me feel that you are not the
same person, and that I have done quite wrong."

'While she was speaking, Mr. D'Arcy had re-entered the room by the
door by which he went out. He had evidently heard the housekeeper's
words.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, "this is Mrs. Titwing, my excellent
housekeeper. She has been attending you during your illness; but your
weakness was so great that you were unconscious of all her kindness."

'I went up to her and kissed her rosy cheek, at which she began to
cry a little. I afterwards found that she was in the habit of crying
a little on most occasions.

'"Will you, then, kindly show me my room?" I said to her. But as she
turned round to lead the way to the room, Mr. D'Arcy said to her,

'"Before you show Miss Wynne the way, I should like one word with
you, Mrs. Titwing, in your room, about the arrangements for the day."

'The two passed out of the room, and again I was left to myself and
my own thoughts.'


V

'Evidently there was some mystery about me,' said Winifred,
continuing her story. 'But the more I tried to think it out the more
puzzling it seemed. How had I been conveyed to this strange new
place? Who was the wizard whose eyes and whose voice began to enslave
me? and what time had passed since he caught me up on Raxton sands?
It seemed exactly like one of those _Arabian Nights_ stories which
you and I used to read together when we were children. The waking up
on the couch, the sight of the end of the other couch behind the
screen, and the tall woman's feet upon it, the voices from unseen
persons in the room, and above all the strange magic of him who
seemed to be the directing genie of the story--all would have seemed
to me unreal had it not been for the prosaic figure of Mrs. Titwing.
About her there could not possibly be any mystery; she was what Miss
Dalrymple would have called "the very embodiment of British
commonplace," and when, after a minute or two, she returned with Mr.
D'Arcy, I went and kissed her again from sheer delight of feeling
the touch of her real, solid; commonplace cheek, and to breathe the
commonplace smell of scented soap. Her bearing, however, towards me
had become entirely changed since she had gone out of the room. She
did not return the kiss, but said, "Shall I show you the way, miss?"
and led the way out.

'She took me through the same dark passage by which I had entered,
and then I found myself in a large bedroom with low panelled walls,
in the middle of which was a vast antique bedstead made of black
carved oak, and every bit of furniture in the room seemed as old as
the bedstead. Over the mantelpiece was an old picture in a carved oak
frame, a Madonna and Child, the beauty of which fascinated me. I
remember that on the bottom of the frame was written in printed
letters the name "Chiaro dell' Erma." I was surprised to find in the
room another walking-dress, not new, but slightly worn, laid out
ready for me to put on. I lifted it up and looked at it. I saw at a
glance that it would most likely fit me like a glove.

'"Whose dress is this?" I said.

'"It's yours, miss."

'"Mine? But how came it mine?"

'"Oh, please don't ask me any questions, miss," she said. "Please ask
Mr. D'Arcy, miss; he knows all about it. I am only the housekeeper,
miss."

'"Mr. D'Arcy knows all about my dress!" I said. "Why, what on earth
has Mr. D'Arcy to do with my dress?"

'"Please don't ask me any more questions, miss," she said. "Pray
don't. Mr. D'Arcy is a very kind man; I am sure nobody has ever heard
me say but what he is a very kind man; but if you do what he says you
are not to do, if you talk about what he says you are not to talk
about, he is frightful, he is awful. He calls you a chattering old--I
don't know what he won't call you. And, of course, I know you are a
lady, miss. Of course you look a lady, miss, when you are dressed
like one. But then, you see, when I first saw you, you were not
dressed as you are now, and at first sight, of course, we go by the
dress a good deal, you know. But Mr. D'Arcy needn't be afraid I shall
not treat you like a lady, miss. I'm only a housekeeper now, though,
of course, I was once very different--very different indeed. But, of
course, anybody has only to look at you to see you are a lady, and,
besides, Mr. D'Arcy says you are a lady, and that is quite enough."

'At this moment there came through the door--it was ajar--Mr.
D'Arcy's voice from the distance, so loud and clear that every word
could be heard.

'"Mrs. Titwing, why do you stay chattering there, preventing Miss
Wynne from getting ready? You know we are going out for a walk
together."

'"Oh Lord, miss!" said the poor woman in a frightened tone, "I must
go. Tell him I didn't chatter--tell him you asked me questions and I
was obliged to answer them."

'The mysteries around me were thickening every moment. What did this
prattling woman mean about the dress in which she had at first seen
me? Was the dress in which she had first seen me so squalid that it
had affected her simple imagination? What had become of me after I
had sunk down on Raxton sands, and why was I left neglected by every
one? I knew you were ill after the landslip, but Mr. D'Arcy had just
told me that you had since been well enough to go to Wales and
afterwards to Japan.

'I put on the dress and soon followed her. When I reached the
tapestried room there was Mr. D'Arcy talking to her in a voice so
gentle, tender, and caressing, that it seemed impossible the rough
voice I had heard bellowing through the passage could have come from
the same mouth, and Mrs. Titwing was looking into his face with the
delighted smile of a child who was being forgiven by its father for
some trifling offence. As I stood and looked at them I said to
myself, "Truly I am in a land of wonders."'


VI

'Mr. D'Arcy and I,' said Winifred, 'went out of the house at the
back, walked across a roughly paved stable-yard, and passed through a
gate and entered a meadow. Then we walked along a stream about as
wide as one of our Welsh brooks, but I found it to be a backwater
connected with a river. For some time neither of us spoke a word. He
seemed lost in thought, and my mind was busy with what I intended to
say to him, for I was fully determined to get some light thrown upon
the mystery.

'When we reached the river bank we turned towards the left, and
walked until we reached a weir, and there we sat down upon a fallen
willow tree, the inside of which was all touchwood. Then he said,

'"You are silent, Miss Wynne."

'"And you are silent," I said.

'"My silence is easily explained," he said. "I was waiting to hear
some remark fall from you as to these meadows and the river, which
you have seen so often."

'"Which I see now for the first time, you mean."

'"Miss Wynne," he said, looking earnestly in my face, "you and I have
taken this walk together nearly every day for months."

'"That," I said, "is--is quite impossible."

'"It is true," he said. And then again we sat silent.

'Then I said to him with great firmness, "Mr. D'Arcy, I'm only a
peasant girl, but I'm Welsh; I have faith in you, faith in your
goodness and faith in your kindness to me; but I must insist upon
knowing how I came here, and how you and I were brought together."

'He smiled, and said, "I was right in thinking that your face
expresses a good deal of what we call character. I should have
preferred waiting for a day or two before relating all I have to
tell," he said, "in answer to what you ask, but as you _insist_ upon
having it now," with a playful kind of smile, "it would be ill-bred
for me to insist that you must wait. But before I begin, would it not
be better if you were to tell me something of what occurred to
yourself when you were taken ill at Raxton?"

'"Then will your story begin where mine breaks off?" I said.

'"We shall see that," he said, "as soon as you have ended yours."

'"Do you know Raxton?" I said.

'At first he seemed to hesitate about his reply, and then said,

'"No, I do not."

'I then told him in as few words as I could our adventures on the
sands on the night of the landslip, and my search for my father's
body afterwards, until I suddenly sank down in a fit. When I had
finished Mr. D'Arcy was silent, and was evidently lost in thought. At
last he said,

'"My story, I perceive, cannot begin where yours breaks off. I first
became acquainted with you in the studio of a famous painter named
Wilderspin, one of the noblest-minded and most admirable men now
breathing, but a great eccentric."

'"Why, Mr. D'Arcy, I never was in a studio in my life until to-day,"
I said.

'"You mean, Miss Wynne, that you were not consciously there," he
said. "But in that studio you certainly were, and the artist, who
reverenced you as a being from another world, was painting your face
in a beautiful picture. While he was doing this you were taken
seriously ill, and your life was despaired of. It was then that I
brought you into the country, and here you have been living and
benefiting by the kind services of Mrs. Titwing for a long time."

'"And you know nothing of my history previously to seeing me in the
London studio?" I asked.

'"All that I could ever learn about that," said he, in what seemed to
me a rather evasive tone, "I had to gather from the incoherent and
rambling talk of Wilderspin, a religious enthusiast whose genius is
very nearly akin to mania. He was so struck by you that he actually
believed you to be not a corporeal woman at all; he believed you had
been sent from the spirit-world by his dead mother to enable him to
paint a great picture."

'"Oh, I must see him, and make him tell me all," I said.

'"Yes," said he, "but not yet."


'What Mr. D'Arcy told me,' said Winnie, 'affected me so deeply that I
remained silent for a long time. Then came a thought which made me
say,

'"You. too, are a painter, Mr. D'Arcy?"

'"Yes," he said.

'"During the months that I have been living here have you used me as
your model?"

'"No; but that was not because I did not wish to do so."

'Then he suddenly looked in my face and said,

'"Is your family entirely Welsh, Miss Wynne?"

'"Entirely," I said. "But why did you not use me as your model, Mr.
D'Arcy?"

'"Poor Wilderspin believed you to be a spiritual body," he said; "I
did not. I knew that you were a young lady in an unconscious
condition. To have painted you in such a condition and without the
possibility of getting your consent would have been sacrilege, even
if I had painted you as a Madonna."

'I could not speak, his words and tone were so tender. He broke the
silence by saying,

'"Miss Wynne, there is one thing in connection with you that puzzles
me very much. You speak of yourself as though you were a kind of
Welsh peasant girl, and yet your conversation--well, I mustn't tell
you what I think of that."

'This made me laugh outright, for ladies who called on Miss Dalrymple
used to make the same remark.

'"Mr. D'Arcy," I said, "you are harbouring the greatest little
impostor in the British Islands. I am the mere mocking-bird of one of
the most cultivated women living. My true note is that of a simple
Welsh bird."

'"A Welsh warbler," he said, with a smile, "but who was the original
of the impostor?"

'"Miss Dalrymple," I said.

'"Miss Dalrymple, the writer!--why I knew her years ago--before you
were born."


'Our talk had been so lively that we had not noticed the passage of
time, nor had we noticed that the clouds had been gathering for a
summer shower. Suddenly the rain fell heavily; although we ran to the
house, we were quite wet by the time we got in.

'We found poor Mrs. Titwing in a great state of excitement on account
of the rain, and also because the dinner had been waiting for nearly
an hour. That scamper in the rain, and the laughing and joking at our
predicament, seemed to bring us closer together than anything else
could have done. Mr. D'Arcy told Mrs. Titwing to take me to my room
to change my dress for dinner, and he seemed quite disappointed when
I told him that I could eat no dinner, and would like to retire to my
room for the night. The fact was that the events of that wonderful
day had exhausted all my powers; every nerve within me seemed crying
out for sleep.

'I went to my room, dismissed Mrs. Titwing, and went to bed at once.
But no sooner had I got into bed than I began to perceive that,
instead of sleep, a long wakeful night was before me. Mr. D'Arcy's
story about finding me in a London studio took entire possession of
my mind. How did I get there? Where had I been and what had been my
adventures before I got there? Why did the painter, in whose studio
Mr. D'Arcy found me, believe that I had been super-naturally sent to
him? I shuddered as a thousand dreadful thoughts flowed into my mind.
"Mr. D'Arcy," I said to myself, "must know more than he has told
me." Then, of course, came thoughts about you. I wondered why you had
allowed me to drift away from you in this manner. True, I was
probably removed from Raxton immediately after my illness, when you
were very ill, as I knew; but then you had recovered!'


VII

When Winifred reached this point in her story, I said,

'And so you wondered what had become of me from your last seeing me
down to your waking up in Mr. D'Arcy's house?'

'Yes, yes, Henry. Do tell me what you were doing all that time.'

As she said these words the whole tragedy of my life returned to me
in one moment, and yet in that moment I lived over again every
dreadful incident and every dreadful detail. The spectacle on the
sands, the search for her in North Wales, the meeting in the cottage,
the frightful sight as she leapt away from me on Snowdon, the
heart-breaking search for her among the mountains, the sound of her
voice, singing by the theatre portico in the rain, the search for her
in the hideous London streets, the scenes in the studios, the
soul-blasting drama in Primrose Court--all came upon me in such a
succession of realities that the beautiful radiant creature now
talking to me seemed impossible except as a figure in a dream. And
she was asking me to tell her what I had been doing during all these
months of nightmare. But I knew that I never could tell her, either
now or at any future time. I knew that to tell her would be to kill
her.

'Winnie,' I said, 'I will tell you all about myself, but I must hear
your story first. The faster you get on with that the sooner you will
hear what I have to tell.'

'Then I will get on fast,' said she. 'After a while my thoughts, as I
tossed in my bed, turned from the past to the future. What was the
future that was lying before me? For months I had evidently been
living on the charity of Mr. D'Arcy. My only excuse for having done
so was that I was entirely unconscious of it; but now that I did know
the relations between us I must of course end them at once. But what
was I to do? Whither was I to go? Besides Miss Dalrymple, whose
address I did not know, I had no friends except Sinfi Lovell and the
Gypsies and a few Welsh farmers. To live upon my benefactor's
generous charity now that I was conscious of it was, I felt,
impossible.

'I was penniless. I had not even money to pay my railway fare to any
part of England. There was only one thing for me to do--write to you.
When I rose in the morning it was with the full determination to
write to you at once. I had been told by Mrs. Titwing that Mr. D'Arcy
always breakfasted alone in a little anteroom adjoining his bedroom,
and always breakfasted late. My breakfast, she said, would be
prepared in what she called the little green room. And when I left my
bedroom, dressed in a morning dress that was carefully laid out for
me, I found the housekeeper moving about in the passages. She
conducted me to the little green room. On the walls were two
looking-glasses in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt
and angels' heads hovering above them. Each frame contained two
circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of
the Holy Grail. The room was furnished with quaint sofas and chairs
on which beautiful little old-fashioned designs were painted. She
told me that as I had not named an hour for breakfasting I should
have to wait about twenty minutes.

'In one corner of the room was a rather large whatnot, on which lay
one or two French novels in green and yellow paper covers and a few
daily and weekly newspapers, which I went and turned over. Among them
I was startled to find a paper called the _Raxton Gazette_. But I saw
at once how it got there, for written on the margin at the top of the
paper was the address, "Dr. Mivart, Wimpole Street, London." Mr.
D'Arcy had told me that the gentleman whose voice I heard behind the
screen was the medical man who attended to me during my illness, and
it now suddenly flashed upon my mind that at Raxton there was a Dr.
Mivart, though I had never seen him during my stay there. These were,
no doubt, one and the same person, and some one from Raxton had
posted the newspaper to the doctor's house in London.

'I looked down the columns of the paper with a very lively interest,
and my eye was soon caught by a paragraph encircled by a thick blue
pencil mark. It gave from a paper called the _London Satirist_ what
professed to be a long account of you, in which it was said that you
were living in a bungalow in Wales with a Gypsy girl.'

When Winifred said this I forgot my promise not to interrupt her
narrative, and exclaimed,

'And you believed this infamous libel, Winnie?'

'To say that I believed it as a simple statement of fact would of
course be wrong. I never doubted you loved me as a child.'

'As a child! Do you then think that I did not love you that night on
Raxton sands?'

'I did not doubt that you loved me then. But wealth, I had been told,
is so demoralising, and I thought your never coming forward to find
me and protect me in my illness might have something to do with
inconstancy. Anyhow, these thoughts combined with my dread of your
mother to prevent me from writing to you.'

'Winnie, Winnie!' I said, 'these theories of the so-called advanced
thinkers, whom your aunt taught you to believe in--these ideas that
love and wealth cannot exist together, are prejudices as narrow and
as blind as those of an opposite kind which have sapped the natures
of certain members of my own family.'

'The sight of your dear sad face when I first saw it here was proof
enough of that,' she said. 'As your life was said to be that of a
wanderer, I did not care to write to Raxton, and I did not know where
to address you. What I had read in the newspaper, I need not tell
you, troubled me greatly. I cried bitterly, and made but a poor
breakfast. After it was over Mr. D'Arcy entered the room, and shook
me warmly by the hand. He saw that I had been crying, and he stood
silent and seemed to be asking himself the cause. Drawing a chair
towards me, and taking a seat, he said,

'"I fear you have not slept well, Miss Wynne."

'"Not very well," I answered. Then, looking at him, I said, "Mr.
D'Arcy, I have something to say to you, and this is the moment for
saying it."

'He gave a startled look, as though he guessed what I was going to
say.

'"And I have something to say to _you_, Miss Wynne," he said,
smiling, "and this seems the proper time for saying it. Up to the
last few weeks a young gentleman from Oxford has been acting as my
secretary. He has now left me, and I am seeking another. His duties,
I must say, have not been what would generally be called severe. I
write most of my own letters, though not all, and my correspondence
is far from being large. His chief duty has been that of reading to
me in the evening. For many years my eyes have not been so strong as
a painter's ought to be, and the oculist whom I consulted told me
that the strain of the painter's work was quite as much as my eyes
ought to bear, and that I could not afford much eyesight for reading
purposes. I am passionately fond of reading. To be without the
pleasure that books can afford me would be to make me miserable, and
I have looked upon my secretary's duty of reading aloud to me as an
important one. If you would take his place you would be conferring
the greatest service upon me."

'"Mr. D'Arcy," I said, "I suspect you."

'"Suspect me, Miss Wynne?"

'"I suspect that generous heart of yours. I suspect you are merely
inventing a post for me to fill, because you pity me."

'"No, Miss Wynne; upon my honour this is not so. I will not deny that
if it were not in your power to do me the service that I ask of you,
I should still feel the greatest disappointment if you passed from
under this roof. Your scruples about living here as you lived during
your illness--simply as my guest--I understand, but do not approve.
They show that you are not quite so free from the bondage of custom
as I should like every friend of mine to be. The tie of friendship
is, in my judgment, the strongest of all ties, stronger than that of
blood, because it springs from the natural kinship of soul to soul,
and there is no reason in the world why I should not offer you a home
as a friend, or why, if the circumstances of our lives were reversed,
you should not offer me one. But in this case it is the fact that the
service I am asking you to render me is greater than any service I
can render you."

'I was so deeply touched by his words and by his way of speaking
them, that my lips trembled, and I could make no reply.


'"It is a shame," he said, "for me to talk about business so soon
after your recovery. Let us leave the matter for the moment, and come
to me in the studio during the morning, and let me show you the
pictures I am painting, and some of my choice things."

'The morning wore on, and still I sat pondering over the situation in
which I found myself. The servant came and removed the breakfast
things, and her furtive glances at me showed that I was an object at
once familiar and strange to her. But very little attention did I pay
to her, in such a whirl of thoughts as I then was. The moment that
one course of action seemed to me the best, the very opposite would
occur to me as being the best. However, I was determined to know from
Mr. D'Arcy, and at once, what was the state in which I was when I was
brought to this place, and what had been the course of my life during
my stay here. Mr. D'Arcy had told me that, for reasons which he so
touchingly alluded to, he had not used me as a model. How, then, had
my time been passed? To question poor Mrs. Titwing would only be to
frighten her. I would ask Mr. D'Arcy for a full confession.

'Mrs. Titwing came into the room. She began pulling at the ribbon of
her black silk apron as though she wanted to speak and could not find
the proper words. At last she said,

'"I hope, miss, there have been no words between you and Mr. D'Arcy?"

''"Words between me and Mr. D'Arcy? What do you mean?" I asked.

'"He seems very much upset, miss, about something. He is not at his
easel, but keeps walking about the studio, and every now and then he
asks where you are. I'm sure he used to dote on you when you were a
child, miss."

'"When I was a child?" I said, laughing. "But I see what it is. I
have been very neglectful. I promised to go into the studio to see
the pictures, and he is, of course, impatient at my keeping him
waiting. I will go to him at once," and I went.

'When I entered the studio he turned quickly round and said,

'"Well?"

'"You were so kind," I said, "as to invite me to see your treasures."

'"To be sure," he said. "I thought you came to give your decision."

'He then showed me the curious divan upon which I had rested the day
before, and explained to me the meaning of the carved designs.'


VIII

Winifred described the designs on the divan so vividly that I could
almost see them. But what interested me was the painter, not his
surroundings; and she now seemed to grow weary of talking about
herself.

'Did he,' I said, 'did he say anything about--about painters'
models?'

'Yes,' she said, 'Mr. D'Arcy took me to an easel and showed me a
picture. It was only the half-length of a woman; but it was a tragedy
rendered fully by the expression on one woman's face.

'"I had no idea," I said, "that any picture of a single face could do
such work as that. Was this painted from a model?"

'"Yes," he said, with a smile, which was evidently at my ignorance of
art. "It was painted from life."

'There were four other half-lengths in the room, all of them very
beautiful.

'"Two of these," he said, "are copies; the originals have been sold.
The other two need still a few touches to make them complete."

'"And they were all painted from life?" I said.

'"Yes," he said. "Why do you repeat that question?"

'"Because," I said, "although they are all so wonderful and so
beautiful in colour, I can see a great difference between them--I can
scarcely say what the difference is. They are evidently all painted
by the same artist, but painted in different moods of the artist's
mind."

'"Ah," he said, "I am much interested. Let me see you classify them
according to your view. There are, as you see, two brunettes and two
blondes."

'"Yes," I said, "between this grand brunette, to use your own
expression, holding a pomegranate in her hand and the other brunette
whose beautiful eyes are glistening and laughing over the fruit she
is holding up, there is the same difference that there is between the
blonde's face under the apple blossoms and the other blonde's face of
the figure that is listening to music. In both faces the difference
seems to be that of the soul."

'"The two faces," said he, "in which you see what you call soul are
painted from two dear friends of mine--ladies of high intelligence
and great accomplishments, who occasionally honour me by giving me
sittings--the other two are painted from two of the finest hired
models to be found in London."

'"Then," I said, "an artist's success depends a great deal upon his
model? I had no idea of such a thing."

'"It does indeed," he said. "Such success as I have won since my
great loss is very largely owing to those two ladies, one so grand
and the other so sweet, whom you are admiring."

'The way in which he spoke the words "since my great loss" almost
brought tears into my eyes. He then went round the room, and
explained in a delightful way the various pictures and objects of
interest. I felt that I was preventing him from working, and told
him so.

'"You are very thoughtful," he said, "but I can only paint when I
feel the impulse within me, and to-day I am lazy. But while you go
and get your luncheon--I do not lunch myself--I must try to do
something. You must have many matters of your own that you would
like to attend to. Will you return to the studio about five o'clock,
and let me have your company in another walk?"

'Until five o'clock I was quite alone, and wandered about the house
and garden trying my memory as to whether I could recall something,
but in vain. At any other time than this I should no doubt have found
the old house a very fascinating one; but not for two minutes
together could my mind dwell upon anything but the amazing situation
in which I found myself. The house was, I saw, built of grey stone,
and as it had seven gables it suggested to me Nathaniel Hawthorne's
famous story, of which my aunt was so fond. Inside I found every room
to be more or less interesting. But what attracted me most, I think,
was a series of large attics in which was a number of enormous oak
beams supporting the antique roof. With the sunlight pouring through
the windows and illuminating almost every corner, the place seemed
cheerful enough, but I could not help thinking how ghostly it must
look on a moonlight night.

'While the thought was in my mind, a strangle sensation came upon me.
I seemed to hear a moan; it came through the door of the large attic
adjoining the one in which I stood, and then I heard a voice that
seemed familiar to me, and yet I could not recall it. It was
repeating in a loud, agonised tone the words of that curse written on
the parchment scroll which I picked up on Raxton sands. I was so
astonished that for a long time I could think of nothing else.


IX

'At five o'clock I was going towards the studio to keep my
appointment when I met Mr. D'Arcy in his broad-brimmed felt hat,
ready and waiting for me to take the proposed walk with him.

'Oh, what a lovely afternoon it was! A Welsh afternoon could not have
been lovelier. In fact, it carried my mind back here. The sun,
shining on the buttercups and the grey-tufted standing grass, made
the meadows look as though covered with a tapestry that shifted from
grey to lavender, and then from lavender to gold, as the soft breeze
moved over it. And many of the birds were still in full song; and
brilliant as was the music of the skylarks, the blackbirds and
thrushes were so numerous that the music falling from the sky seemed
caught and swallowed up by the music rising from the hedgerows and
trees.

'I lingered at one of the gates through which we passed to enjoy the
beauty undisturbed by the motion of my own body.

'"I have often wished," Mr. D'Arcy said, "that I had a tithe of your
passion for Nature, and all your knowledge of Nature. To have been
born in London and to have passed one's youth there is a great loss.
Nature has to be learnt, as art has to be learnt, in earliest youth."

'"What makes you know that my chief passion is love of Nature?" I
asked.

'"It was," he said, "the one thing you showed during your
illness--during your unconscious condition."

'"And yet I remember nothing of that time," I said. "This gives me an
opportunity of asking you something--an opportunity which I had
determined to make for myself before another day went by."

'"And what is that?" he said, in a tone that betrayed some
uneasiness.

'"You have told me how I came here. I now want you to tell me, too,
what was my condition when I came and what was my course of life
during all this long period. How did the time pass? What did I do? I
remember nothing."

'"I am glad you are asking me these questions," he said, "for I
believe that the more fully and more exactly I answer them, the
better for you and the better for me. Victor Hugo, in one of his
romances, speaks of the pensive somnambulism of the animals.
'Somnambulism,' sometimes pensive and sometimes playful, is the
very phrase I should use in characterising your condition when you
first came here and down to your recovery from that strange illness.
But this somnambulism would every now and then change and pass into
a consciousness which I can only compare with that of a child. But
no child that I have ever seen was so bewitchingly child-like as you
were. It was this that made your presence such a priceless boon to
me."

'"Priceless boon, Mr. D'Arcy!" I said. "How could such a being as you
describe be a priceless boon to any one?"

'"I will tell you," he replied. "Even before that great sorrow which
has made me the loneliest man upon the earth--even in the days when
my animal spirits were considered at times almost boisterous, I was
always at intervals subject to periods of great depression, or
rather, I should say, to periods of _ennui_. I must either be
painting or reading or writing. I had not the precious faculty of
being able on occasions to sit and let the rich waters of life flow
over me. I would yearn for amusement, and search in vain for some
object to amuse me. When you first came I was deeply interested in so
extraordinary a case as yours; and after a while, when the acuteness
of my curiosity and the poignancy of my sympathy for you had abated,
you became to me a joy, as a child is a joy in the eyes of its
parents."

'"Then your interest in me," I said, with a smile, "was that which
you would feel towards a puppy or a kitten."

'"I perceive that you have a turn for satire," he said, laughing.
"I will not deny that I have an extraordinarily strong passion for
watching the movements of animals. I have, to the sorrow of my
neighbours, filled my garden in London with all kinds of purchases
from Jamrach's. But from the moment that I knew you, who combined the
fascination of a fawn and a child with that of a sylph or a fairy, my
poor little menagerie was neglected, and what became of its members I
scarcely know. I suppose I am very uncomplimentary to you, but you
would have the truth. The moment that I felt myself threatened by the
fiend _Ennui_ I used to tell Mrs. Titwing, who was in the habit of
calling you her baby, to bring you into the studio, and at once the
fiend fled. At last I grew so attached to you that your presence was
a positive necessity of my life. Unless I knew that you were in the
studio I could not paint. It was necessary for me at intervals to
look across the room at that divan and see you there amusing
yourself--playing with yourself, so to speak, sometimes like a
kitten, sometimes like a child. I would not have parted with you for
the world."

'He did not say he would not now part with me for the world, Henry,
and I thought I understood the meaning of that expression of
disappointment which I had observed in his eyes when I first saw them
looking into mine. I thought I understood this extraordinary man--so
unlike all others; I thought I knew why my eyes lost the charm he was
now so eloquently describing to me the moment that they became
lighted with what he called self-consciousness.

'After a while I said, "But as I was in such an unconscious state as
you describe, how could you possibly know that a speciality of mine
is a love of Nature?"

'"It was only when you were out in the open air that the condition
which I have compared to somnambulism seemed at times to disappear.
Then your consciousness seemed to spring up for a moment and to take
heed of what was passing around you. You would sometimes scamper
through the meadows, pluck the wild-flowers and weave them into
wreaths round your head, or stand listening to the birds, or hold out
your hands as if to embrace the sunny wind. One day when a friend of
mine, an enthusiastic angler, who comes here, was going down to the
river to fish, you showed the greatest interest in what was going on.
The fishing tackle seemed so familiar to you that my friend put a
fishing rod into your hand and you went with him to the river. I do
not myself care for angling, and I was at the time very busy with a
picture, but I could not resist the temptation to follow you. You
skipped into the punt with the greatest glee, baited your hook,
adjusted your float on the line, cast it into the water and fished
with such skill that you caught two fish to my friend's one.
Observing all these things, I came to the conclusion that you had
lived much in the open air, and other incidents made me know that you
were a great lover of Nature."

'"And you," I said, "must also be a lover of Nature, or you could not
find such delight in watching animals."

'"No," he said, "the interest I take in animals has nothing whatever
to do with love of Nature or study of Nature. They interest me by
that unconsciousness of grace which makes them such a contrast to
man."

'We then went into the house. Our talk during our ramble in the
fields seemed to remove effectually all awkwardness and restraint
between us.


X

'That day,' said Winnie, 'a determination which had been caused by
many a reflection during the last few hours induced me at dinner to
lead the conversation to the subject of pictures and models. In a few
minutes Mr. D'Arcy launched out in an eloquent discourse upon a
subject which was so new to me and so familiar to him.

'"You were saying this morning,  Mr.  D'Arcy," I urged me to tell her
what had befallen myself since we had parted at the cottage door at
Raxton. Even had it been possible for me to talk about myself without
touching upon some dangerous incident or another, my impatience to
get at the mystery of mysteries in connection with her and her rescue
from Primrose Court was so great that I could only implore her to
tell me what had occurred down to her leaving Hurstcote Manor, and
also what had been the cause of her leaving.

'Well,' said Winnie, 'I am  now going to tell you of an extraordinary
thing that happened. One fine night the moon was so brilliant that
after I quitted Mr. D'Arcy I stole out of the side door into the
garden, a favourite place of mine, for old English flowers were mixed
with apple trees and pear trees. I was strolling about the garden,
thinking over a thousand things connected with you, and myself, and
Mr. D'Arcy, when I saw stooping over a flower-bed the figure of a
tall woman. I could scarcely believe my eyes, for I had all the while
supposed  that, excepting Mr. D'Arcy, myself, and Mrs. Titwing, the
servants were the only occupants of the place. I turned away, and
walked silently through the little wicket into what is called the
home close. As I pondered over the incident, I recalled certain
things which singly had produced no effect on my mind, but which now
fitted in with each other, and seemed to open up vistas of mystery
and suspicion. Mysterious looks and gestures on the faces of the
servants pointed to there being some secret that was to be kept from
me. I had not given much heed to these things, but now I could not
help connecting them with the appearance of the tall woman in the
garden.


'Some guests arrived next day, and when I pleaded headache Mr. D'Arcy
said, "Perhaps you would rather keep to your own room to-day."

'I told him I should, and I spent the day alone--spent it mainly in
thinking about the tall woman. In the evening I went into the garden,
and remained there for a long time, but no tall woman made her
appearance.

'I passed out through the wicket into the home close, and as I walked
about in the grass, under the elms that sprang up from the tall
hedge, I thought and thought over what I had seen, but could come to
no explanation. I was standing under a tree, in the shadow which its
branches made, when I became suddenly conscious that the tall woman
was close to me. I turned round, and stood face to face with Sinfi
Lovell. The sight of a spectre could not have startled me more, but
the effect of my appearance upon her was greater still. Her face took
an expression that seemed to curdle my blood, and she shrieked,
"Father! the curse! Let his children be vagabonds and beg their
bread; let them seek it also out of desolate places." And then she
ran towards the house.

'In a few minutes Mr. D'Arcy came out into the field without his hat,
and evidently much agitated.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, "I fear you must have been half frightened to
death. Never was there such an unlucky _contretemps_."

'"But why is Sinfi Lovell here?" I said, "and why was I not told she
was here?"

'"Sinfi is an old friend of mine," he said. "I have been in the habit
of using her as a model for pictures. She came here to sit to me,
when she was taken ill. She is subject to fits, as you have seen. The
doctor believed that they were over and would not recur, and I had
determined that to-morrow I would bring you together."

'I made no reply, but walked silently by his side across the field to
the little wicket. The confidence I had reposed in Mr. D'Arcy had
been like the confidence a child reposes in its father.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, in a voice full of emotion, "I feel that an
unlucky incident has come between us, and yet if I ever did anything
for your good, it was when I decided to postpone revealing the fact
that Sinfi Lovell was under this roof until her cure was so complete
and decisive that you could never by any chance receive the shock
that you have now received."

'I felt that my resentment was melting in the music of his words.

'"What caused the fits?" I said. "She talked about being under a
curse. What can it mean?"

'"That," he said, "is too long a story for me to tell you now."

'"I know," said I, "that some time ago the tomb of Mr. Aylwin's
father was violated by some undiscovered miscreant, and I know that
the words Sinfi uttered just now are the words of a curse written by
the dead man on a piece of parchment, and stolen with a jewel from
his tomb. I have seen the parchment itself, and I know the words
well. Her father, Panuel Lovell, is as innocent of the crime of
sacrilege as my poor father was. What could have made her suppose
that she had inherited the curse from her father?"

'"I have no explanation to offer," he said. "As you know so much of
the matter and I know so little, I am inclined to ask you for some
explanation of the puzzle."

'I thought over the matter for a minute, and then I said to him,
"Sinfi Lovell knows Raxton as well as Snowdon, and must have been
very familiar with the crime. I can only suppose that she has brooded
so long over the enormity of the offence and the appalling words of
the curse that she has actually come at last to believe that poor,
simple-minded Panuel Lovell is the offender, and that she, as his
child, has inherited the curse."

'"A most admirable solution of the mystery," he said, his face
beaming with delight.'


XII

When Winnie got to this point she said, 'Yes, Henry, poor Sinfi seems
in some unaccountable way to have learnt all about that piece of
parchment and the curse written upon it. She has been under the
extraordinary delusion that her own father, poor Panuel Lovell, was
the violator of the tomb, and that she has inherited the curse.'

'Good God, Winnie!' I exclaimed; and when I recalled what I had seen
of Sinfi in the cottage, I was racked with perplexity, pity, and
wonder. What could it mean?

'Yes,' said Winifred, 'she has been possessed by this astounding
delusion, and it used to bring on fits which were appalling to
witness. They are passed now, however.'

'Is she recovered now?'

'Mr. D'Arcy,' said Winnie, 'assured me that, in the opinion of the
doctor, the delusion would not he permanent, but that Sinfi would
soon be entirely restored to health. While Mr. D'Arcy and I were
talking about her Sinfi came through the wicket again. Rushing up to
me and seizing my hand, she said,

'"Oh, Winnie, how I must have skeared you! I dare say Mr. D'Arcy has
told you that I've been subject to fits o' late. It was comin' on you
suddint as I did under the tree that brought it on. I wouldn't let
Mr. D'Arcy tell you I wur here until I wur quite sure I should have
no more on 'em, but the doctor said this very day that I wur now
quite well."

'My mind ran all night long upon the mystery of Sinfi Lovell. Mr.
D'Arcy's explanation of her appearance at Hurstcote Manor was
certainly clear enough, but somehow its very clearness aroused
suspicion--no, I will not say suspicion--misgivings. If he had been
able, while he seemed so frank and open, to keep away from me a
secret--I mean the secret of Sinfi Lovell's being concealed in the
house--what secrets might he not be concealing from me about my own
mystery? Did he not know everything that occurred during that period
which was a blank in my mind, the period from my sinking down on the
sands to my waking up in his house?

'From the very first, indeed, a feeling of mystery had haunted me. I
had often pondered over every circumstance that attended my waking
into life, but that incident which was the most firmly fixed in my
mind was the sight of the feet of a tall woman whose body was hid by
the screen between my couch and the other one. When I asked Mr.
D'Arcy about this, he did not say in so many words that I was
suffering from a delusion about those feet, but he talked about the
illusion which generally accompanied a recovery from such illnesses
as mine. Now of course I felt sure that Sinfi was the person I had
seen on the couch. But why was she there?

'I did not see Mr. D'Arcy until the afternoon after the guests had
left, for in order to avoid seeing him and them, I took a long stroll
by the river and then got into the punt. I had scarcely done so when
Sinfi appeared on the bank and hailed me. I took her into the punt.
She was so entirely herself that I found it difficult to believe in
the startling spectacle of the previous evening, although her
expression was careworn, and she certainly looked a little paler than
she used to look when she and I and Rhona Boswell were such great
friends; her splendid beauty and bearing were as striking as ever, I
thought. I was expecting every minute that she would say something
about what occurred under the elm tree in the home close. But she did
not allude to it, and therefore I did not. We spent the entire
afternoon in reminiscences of Carnarvonshire. When she told me that
she knew you and that you had been there together, and when she told
me the cause of your being there, and told me of your search for me,
and all the distress that came to you on my account, my longing to
see you was like a fever.

'But vivid as were the pictures that Sinfi gave me of your search for
me, I could not piece them together in a plain tale. I tried to do
so; it was impossible. What had happened to me after I had become
unconscious on the sands in that unaccountable way--why I was found
in Wales--how I could possibly have got there without knowing about
it--what had led to my being discovered by Mr. D'Arcy--discovered in
London, above all places, and in a painter's studio--these questions
were with me night and day, and Sinfi was entirely unable to tell me
anything about the matter, unless, as I sometimes half-thought, she
was concealing something from me.'


'How could you have suspicions of poor Sinfi?' I said, for I was
becoming alarmed at the way in which these inquiries were absorbing
Winnie's mind.

'It is, I know, Henry, a peculiarity of my nature to be extremely
confiding until I have once been deceived, and then to be just as
suspicious. Kind as Mr. D'Arcy has been to me, I began to feel
restless in his haven of refuge. I think that he perceived it, for I
often found his eyes fixed upon me with a somewhat inquiring and
anxious expression in them. I felt that I must leave him and go out
into the world and take my place in the battle of life.'

'But, Winnie,' I said, 'you don't say that you intended to come to
me. Battle of life, indeed! Where should Winnie stand in that battle
except by the side of Henry? You knew now where to find me. Sinfi,
of course, told you that I was in Wales. And you did not even write
to me! What can it mean?'

'Why, Henry, don't you know what it means? Don't you know that the
newspapers were full of long paragraphs about the heir of the Aylwins
having left his famous bungalow and gone to Japan? Why, it was
actually copied into the little penny weekly thing that Mrs. Titwing
takes in, and it was there that I read it.'

'This shows the folly of ignoring the papers,' I said. 'I did
undoubtedly say in some letters to friends that I proposed going to
Japan; but my loss of you, my grief, my misery, paralysed every
faculty of mine. My strength of purpose was all gone. I delayed and
delayed starting, and never left Wales at all, as you see.'

'Two things,' continued Winnie, 'prevented my leaving Hurstcote--my
promise to Mr. D'Arcy to sit to him for his picture of Zenelophon,
and the prosaic fact that I had not money in my pocket to travel
with; for it was part of the delicate method of Mr. D'Arcy to furnish
me with everything money could buy, but to give me no money. His
extravagant expenditure upon me in the way of dress, trinkets, and
every kind of luxury that could be placed in my room by Mrs. Titwing
appalled me. Mrs. Titwing's own bearing, when I spoke to her about
them, would have made one almost suppose that they grew there like
mushrooms; and if I mentioned them to Mr. D'Arcy he would tell me
that Mrs. Titwing was answerable for all that; he knew nothing about
such matters.

'What I should in the end have done as to leaving Hurstcote or
remaining there I don't know; but after a while something occurred to
remove my difficulties. One morning, when I was giving Mr. D'Arcy a
long sitting for his picture, a Gypsy friend of Sinfi's, belonging to
a family of Lees encamped two or three miles off, called to see her.
It was a man, Sinfi told me, whom I did not know, and he had gone
away without my seeing him.

'In the afternoon, when Sinfi and I were in the punt fishing
together, I could not help noticing that she was much absorbed in
thought.

'"This 'ere fishin' brings back old Wales, don't it?" she said.

'"Yes," I said, "and I should love to see the old places again."

'"You would?" she said; and her excitement was so great that she
dropped her fishing-rod in the river. "Jake Lee has been tellin' me
that our people are there, all camped in the old place by Bettws y
Coed. I told him to write to my daddy--Jake can write--and tell him
that I'm goin' to see him."

'"But you already knew they were there, Sinfi; you told me. What
makes you so suddenly want to go?"

'"That's nuther here nor there. I do want to go. Why can't you go
with me?"

'"I should much like it," I said, "but it's impossible."

'"Why? You can come back to Mr. D'Arcy again."

'"But, Sinfi," I said, "how are we to travel without money? I have
not a copper."

'"Ah, but I've got gold balansers about me, and they're better nor
copper."

'"Dear Sinfi!" I said, "I'd rather borrow of you than any one in the
world."

'"Borrow!" said she,--"all right! Now we shall have to speak to Mr.
D'Arcy about it. It'll be like drawin' one o' his teeth partin' with
you."

'When I next saw Mr. D'Arcy I found that Sinfi had already spoken to
him about our project. He seemed very reluctant for me to leave him,
although I promised him that I would return.

'"It is a strange fancy of Sinfi's, Miss Wynne," said he, "and a very
disconcerting one to me; but I feel that it must be yielded to.
Whatever can be done to serve or even gratify Sinfi Lovell, it is my
duty and yours to do."

'Mr. D'Arcy always spoke of Sinfi in this way. She seems to have done
something of a peculiarly noble kind for him and for me too, but what
it is I have tried in vain to discover.

'And a few days after this we started for Wales.

'Oh, Henry, I wonder whether any one who is not Welsh-born can
understand my delight as we passed along the railway at nightfall and
I first felt upon my cheek the soft rich breath of the Welsh meadows,
smelling partly of the beloved land and partly of the beloved sea.
"Yr Hen Wlad, yr Hen Gartref!" I murmured when at Prestatyn I heard
the first Welsh word and saw the first white-washed Welsh cottage.
From head to foot I became a Welsh girl again. The loveliness of
Hurstcote Manor seemed a dull, grey, far-away house in a dream. But
if I had known that I should also find you, my dear! If I had dreamed
that I should find Henry!'


And then silence alone would satisfy her. And Snowdon was speaking to us
both.


XIII

And what about Sinfi Lovell? In those supreme moments of bliss did
Winifred and I think much about Sinfi? Alas, that love and happiness
should be so selfish!

When at last the sound of Sinfi's crwth and song came from some spot
a good way up the rugged path leading to the summit, it quite
startled us.

'That's Sinfi's signal,' said Winnie; 'that is the way we used to
call each other when we were children. She used to sing one verse of
a Snowdon song, and I used to answer it with another. Upon my word,
Henry, I had forgotten all about her. What a shame! We have not seen
each other since we parted yesterday at the camp.'

And she sprang up to go.

'No, don't leave me,' I said; 'wait till she comes to us. She's sure
to come quite soon enough. Depend upon it she is eager to see how her
_coup de theatre_ has prospered.'

'I must really go to her,' said Winifred; 'ever since we left
Hurstcote I have fallen in with her wishes in everything.'

'But why?'

'Because I am sure from Mr. D'Arcy's words that she has rendered me
some great service, though what it is I can't guess in the least.'

'But what are really the plans of the day of this important Gypsy?'

'There again I can't guess in the least,' said Winifred. 'Probably
the walk to the top and then down to Llanberis, and then on to
Carnarvon, is really to take place, as originally arranged--only with
the slight addition that _some one_ is to join us! I shall soon be
back, either alone or with Sinfi, and then we shall know.'

She ran up the path. Against her wish I followed her for a time. She
moved towards the same dangerous ledge of rock where I had last seen
her on that day before she vanished in the mist.

I cried out as I followed her, 'Winnie, for God's sake don't run that
danger!'

'No danger at all,' she cried. 'I know every rock as well as you know
every boulder of Raxton Cliffs.'

I watched her poising herself on the ledge; it made me dizzy. Her
confidence, however, was so great that I began to feel she was safe;
and after she had passed out of sight I returned to the llyn where we
had breakfasted.

Sinfi's music ceased, but Winifred did not return. I sat down on the
rock and tried to think, but soon found that the feat was impossible.
The turbulent waves of my emotion seemed to have washed my brain
clear of all thoughts. The mystery in connection with Sinfi was now
as great as the mystery connected with the rescue of Winifred from
the mattress in Primrose Court. So numbed was my brain that I at last
pinched myself to make sure that I was awake. In doing this I seemed
to feel in one of my coat pockets a hard substance. Putting my hand
into the pocket, I felt the sharp corner of a letter pricking between
a finger and its nail. The acute pain assured me that I was awake. I
pulled out the letter. It was the one that the servant at the
bungalow had given me in the early morning when I called to get my
bath. I read the address, which was in a handwriting I did not
know:--

'HENRY AYLWIN, ESQ.,
'Carnarvon, North Wales.'

The Carnarvon postmark and the words written on the envelope, 'Try
Capel Curig,' showed the cause of the delay in the letter's reaching
me. In the left-hand corner of the envelope were written the words
'Very urgent. Please forward immediately.' I opened it, and found it
to be a letter of great length. I looked at the end and gave a start,
exclaiming, 'D'Arcy!'



XVI

D'ARCY'S LETTER

This is how the letter ran:--

HURSTCOTE MANOR.

MY DEAR AYLWIN,

I have just learned by accident that you are somewhere in Wales. I
had gathered from paragraphs in the newspapers about you that you
were in Japan, or in some other part of the East.

Miss Wynne and Sinfi Lovell are at this moment in Wales, and I write
at once to furnish you with some facts in connection with Miss Wynne
which it is important for you to know before you meet her. I can
imagine your amazement at learning that she you have lost so long
has been staying here as my guest. I will tell you all without more
preamble.

One day, some little time after I parted from you in the streets of
London, I chanced to go into Wilderspin's studio, when I found him
in great distress. He told me that the beautiful model who had sat
for his picture 'Faith and Love' had suddenly died. The mother of the
girl had on the previous day been in and told him that her daughter
had died in one of the fits to which at intervals she had been
subject.

Wilderspin, in his eccentric way, had always declared that the
model was not the woman's daughter. He did not think her, as I did,
to have been kidnapped; he believed her to be not a creature of flesh
and blood at all, but a spiritual body sent from heaven by his mother
in order that he might use her as a model. As to the woman Gudgeon,
who laid claim to be her mother, he thought she was suffering from a
delusion--a beneficent delusion--in supposing the model to be her
daughter. And now he thought that this beautiful phantom from the
spirit-world had been recalled because his picture was complete. When
I entered the studio he was just starting for the second time, as he
told me, to the woman's house, in the belief that the body of the
girl which he had seen lying on a mattress was a delusion--a
spiritual body, and must by this time have vanished.

I had reasons for wishing to prevent his going there and being again
brought into contact with the woman before I saw her myself. From my
first seeing the woman and the model, I had found it impossible to
believe that there could be any blood relationship between them, for
the girl's frame from head to foot was as delicate as the woman's
frame from head to foot was coarse and vulgar.

Naturally, therefore, it occurred to me that this was an excellent
opportunity to find out the truth of the matter. I determined to go
and bully the impudent hag into a confession; but of course
Wilderspin was the last man I should choose to accompany me on such
a mission. Your relative, Cyril Aylwin, was, as I believed, on the
Continent, expecting Wilderspin to join him there, or I might have
taken him with me.

I have always had great influence over Wilderspin, and I easily
persuaded him to remain in the studio while I went myself to the
woman's address, which he gave me. I knew that if the model were
really dead she would have to be buried by the parish at a pauper
funeral, that is to say, lowered into a deep pit with other paupers.
It was painful to me to think of this, and I determined to get her
buried myself. So I took a hansom and drove to the squalid court in
the neighbourhood of Holborn, where the woman lived.

On reaching the house, I found the door open. Wilderspin had
described to me the room occupied by Mrs. Gudgeon, so I went at once
upstairs. I found the model upon a mattress, her features horribly
contorted, lying in the same clothes apparently in which she had
fallen when seized.

In an armchair in the middle of the room was Mrs. Gudgeon, in a
drunken sleep so profound that I could not have roused her had I
tried. While I stood looking at the girl, something in the appearance
of her flesh--its freshness of hue--made me suspect that she was
still alive, and that she was only suffering from a seizure of a more
acute kind than any the woman had yet seen. As I stood looking at
these two it occurred to me that should the model recover from the
seizure this would be an excellent and quite unexpected opportunity
for me to get her away. The woman, I thought, would after a while
wake up, and find to her amazement the body gone of her whom she
thought dead. If she had really kidnapped the girl she would be
afraid to set any inquiry afoot. She might even perhaps imagine that
the girl's relations had traced her, found the dead body, and removed
it for burial while she, the kidnapper, was asleep.

After a while the expression of terror on the model's face began to
relax, and she soon awoke into that strange condition which had
caused Wilderspin to declare that she had been sent from another
world. She recognised me in the semi-conscious way in which she
recognised all those who were brought into contact with her, and
looked into my face with that indescribably sweet smile of hers. From
the first she had in her dazed way seemed attached to me, and I had
now no difficulty whatever in persuading her to accompany me
downstairs and out of the house.

Before going, however, the whim seized me to write on the wall in
large letters, with a piece of red drawing-chalk I had in my
waistcoat pocket, '_Kidnapper, beware! Jack Ketch is on your track_.'
I took the girl to my house, and put her under the care of my
housekeeper (much to the worthy lady's surprise), who gave her every
attention. I then went to Wilderspin's studio.

'Well,' said he, 'there is no body lying there, I suppose?'

'None,' I said.

'Did I not tell you that the spirit-world had called her back? What
I saw has vanished, as I expected. How could you suppose that a
material body could ever be so beautiful?'

As I particularly wished that the model should, for a time at least,
be removed from all her present surroundings, I thought it well to
let Wilderspin retain his wild theory as to her disappearance.

I had already arranged to go on the following day to Hurstcote Manor,
where several unfinished pictures were waiting for me, and I decided
to take the model with me.

Before, however, I started for the country with her, I had the
curiosity to call next morning upon the woman in Primrose Court,
in order to discover what had been the effect of my stratagem. I
found her sitting in a state of excitement, and evidently in great
alarm, gazing at the mattress. The words I had written on the wall
had been carefully washed out.

'Well, Mrs. Gudgeon,' I said, 'what has become of your daughter?'

'Dead,' she whimpered, 'dead.'

'Yes, I know she's dead,' I said. 'But where is the body?'

'Where's the body? Why, buried, in course,' said the woman.

'Buried? Who buried her?' I said.

'What a question, sure_lie_!' she said, and kept repeating the words
in order, as I saw, to give herself time to invent some story. Then a
look of cunning overspread her face, and she whimpered, 'Who _does_
bury folks in Primrose Court? The parish, to be sure.'

These words of the woman's showed that matters had taken exactly the
course I should have liked them to take. She would tell other
inquirers as she had told me, that her daughter had been buried by
the parish. No one would take the trouble, I thought, to inquire into
it, and the matter would end at once.

So I said to her, 'Oh, if the parish buried her, that's all right; no
one ever makes inquiries about people who are buried by the parish.'

This seemed to relieve the woman's mind vastly, and she said, 'In
course they don't. What's the use of askin' questions about people as
are buried by the parish?'

Not thinking that the time was quite ripe for cross-examining Mrs.
Gudgeon as to her real relations to the model, I left her, and that
same afternoon I took the model down to Hurstcote Manor, determining
to keep the matter a secret from everybody, as I intended to
discover, if possible, her identity.

I need scarcely remind you that although you told me some little of
the story of yourself and a young lady to whom you were deeply
attached, you were very reticent as to the cause of her dementia; and
your story ended with her disappearance in Wales. I, for my part, had
not the smallest doubt that she had fallen down a precipice and was
dead. Everything--especially the fact that you last saw her on the
brink of a precipice, running into a volume of mist--pointed to but
one conclusion. To have imagined for a moment that she and
Wilderspin's model, who had been discovered in the streets of London,
were the same, would have been, of course, impossible. Besides, you
had given me no description of her personal appearance, nor had you
said a word to me as to her style of beauty, which is undoubtedly
unique.

When I got the model fairly settled at Hurstcote her presence became
a delight to me such as it could hardly have been to any other man.
It is difficult for me to describe that delight, but I will try.

Do you by chance remember our talk about animals and the charm they
had for me, especially young animals? And do you remember my saying
that the most fascinating creature in the world would be a beautiful
young girl as unconscious as a child or a young animal; if such a
combination of charms were possible? Such a young girl as this it was
whom I was now seeing every day and all day. The charm she exercised
over me was no doubt partly owing to my own peculiar temperament--to
my own hatred of self-consciousness and to an innate shyness which
is apt to make me feel at times that people are watching me, when
they most likely are doing nothing of the kind.

And charming as she is now, restored to health and
consciousness--charming above most young ladies with her sweet
intelligence and most lovable nature--the inexpressible witchery I
have tried to describe has vanished, otherwise I don't know how I
should have borne what I now have brought myself to bear, parting
from her.

I seemed to have no time to think about prosecuting inquiries in
regard to her identity. I am afraid there was much selfishness in
this, but I have never pretended to be an unselfish man.

The one drop of bitterness in my cup of pleasure was the recurrence
of the terrible paroxysms to which she was subject.

I was alarmed to find that these became more and more frequent and
more and more severe. I felt at last that her system could not stand
the strain much longer, and that the end of her life was not far
distant.

It was in a very singular way that I came to know her name and also
her relations with you. In my original perplexity about finding a
model for my Zenelophon, I had bethought me of Sinfi Lovell, who,
with a friend of hers named Rhona Boswell, sat to Wilderspin, to your
cousin, and others. I had made inquiries about Sinfi, but had been
told that she was not now to be had, as she had abandoned London
altogether, and was settled in Wales.

One day, however, I was startled by seeing Sinfi walking across the
meadows along the footpath leading from the station.

She told me that she had quitted Wales for good, and had left you
there, and that on reaching London and calling at one of the studios
where she used to sit, she had been made aware of my inquiries after
her. As she had now determined to sit a good deal to painters, she
had gone to my studio in London. Being told there that I was at
Hurstcote Manor, where she had sat to me on several occasions, she
had taken the train and come down.

During our conversation the model passed through the garden gate and
walked towards the Spinney, and stood looking in a rapt way at the
sunset clouds and listening to the birds.

When Sinfi caught sight of her she stood as if petrified, and
exclaimed, 'Winnie Wynne! Then she ain't dead; the dukkeripen was
true; they'll be married arter all. Don't let her see me suddenly, it
might bring on fits.'

Miss Wynne, however, had observed neither Sinfi nor me, and we two
passed into the garden without any difficulty.

In the studio Sinfi sat down, and in a state of the deepest agitation
she told me much of the story, as far as she knew it, of yourself and
Miss Wynne, but I could see that she was not telling me all.

We were both perplexed as to what would be the best course of action
to take in regard to Miss Wynne--whether to let her see Sinfi or not,
for evidently she was getting worse, the paroxysms were getting more
frequent and more severe. They would come without any apparent
disturbing cause whatever. Now that I had to connect her you had lost
in Wales with the model, many things returned to me which I had
previously forgotten, things which you had told me in London. I had
quite lately learnt a good deal from Dr. Mivart, who formerly
practised near the town in which you lived, but who now lives in
London. He had been attending me for insomnia. While speculating as
to what would be best to do, it occurred to me that I would write to
Mivart, asking him to run down to me at Hurstcote Manor and consult
with me, because he had told me that he had given attention to cases
of hysteria. I did this, and persuaded Sinfi to remain and to keep
out of Miss Wynne's sight. Although Sinfi was still as splendid a
woman as ever, I noticed a change in her. Her animal spirits had
fled, and she had to me the appearance of a woman in trouble; but
what her trouble was I could not guess, and I cannot now guess.
Perhaps she had been jilted by some Gypsy swain.

When Dr. Mivart came he was much startled at recognising in Miss
Wynne his former patient of Raxton, whom he had attended on her first
seizure. He said that it would now be of no use for me to write to
you, as it was matter of common knowledge that you had gone to Japan.
If it had not been for this I should have written to you at once. He
took a very grave view of Miss Wynne's case, and said that her
nervous system must shortly succumb to the terrible seizures. Sinfi
Lovell was in the room at the time. I asked Dr. Mivart if there was
any possible means of saving her life.

'None,' he said, 'or rather there is one which is unavailable.'

'And what is that?' I asked.

'They have a way at the Salpetriere Hospital of curing cases of acute
hysteria By transmitting the seizure to a healthy patient by means of
a powerful magnet. My friend Marini, of that hospital, has had
recently some extraordinary successes of this kind. Indeed, by a
strange coincidence, as I was travelling here this morning I chanced
to buy a _Daily Telegraph_, in which this paragraph struck my eye.'

Mivart then pointed out to me a letter from Paris in the _Daily
Telegraph_, giving an account of certain proceedings at the
Salpetriere Hospital, and in the same paper there was a long leading
article upon the subject. The report of the experiments was to me so
amazing that at first I could not bring my mind to believe in it. As
you will, I am sure, feel some incredulity, I have cut out the
paragraph, and here it is pasted at the bottom of this page:--

'The chief French surgeons and medical professors have, for some
time, been carefully studying the effect of mesmerism on the female
patients of the Salpetriere Hospital, and M. Marini, a clinical
surgeon of that establishment, has just effected a series of
experiments, the results of which would seem to open up a new field
for medical science. M. Marini tried to prove that certain hysterical
symptoms could be transferred by the aid of the magnet from one
patient to another. He took two subjects: one a dumb woman afflicted
with hysteria, and the other a female who was in a state of hypnotic
trance. A screen was placed between the two, and the hysterical woman
was then put under the influence of a strong magnet. After a few
moments she was rendered dumb, while speech was suddenly restored to
the other. Luckily for his healthier patients, however, their
borrowed pains and symptoms did not last long.'

And Mivart was able to give me some more extraordinary instances of
the transmission of hysterical seizures from one patient to
another--instances where permanent cures were effected. [Footnote]
Naturally I asked Mivart what befell the new victims of the seizures.

[Footnote: The transmissions here alluded to were mostly effected by
M. Babinski of the Salpetriere. They excited great attention in
Paris.]

'That depends,' said Mivart, 'upon three circumstances--the acuteness
of the seizure, the strength of the recipient's nervous system, and
the kind of imagination she has. In all Marini's experiments the new
patient has quickly recovered, and the original patient has remained
entirely cured and often entirely unconscious that she has ever
suffered from the paroxysms at all.'

Mivart went on to say that the case of Miss Wynne was so severe a one
that if the new patient's imagination were very strong the risk to
her would be exceptionally great.

At the end of this discussion Mivart directed my attention to Sinfi
Lovell. She sat as though listening to some voice. Her head was bent
forward, her lips were parted, and her eyes were closed. Then I heard
her say in a loud whisper, 'Yis, mammy dear, little Sinfi's
a-listenin'. Yis, this is the way to make her dukkeripen come true,
and then mine can't. Yis, this is the very way. They shall meet again
by Knockers' Llyn, where I seed the Golden Hand, and arter that,
never shall little Sinfi go agin you, dear. And never no more shall
any one on 'em, Gorgio or Gorgie, bring their gries and their
beautiful livin'-waggins among tents o' ourn. Never no more shall
they jine our breed--never no more, never no more. And then my
dukkeripen _can't_ come true.'

Then, springing up, she said, 'I'll stand the risk anyhow. You may
pass the cuss on to me if you can.'

'The seizure has nothing to do with any curse,' said Mivart, 'but if
you think it has, you are the last person to whom it should be
transmitted.'

'Oh, never fear,' said Sinfi; 'Gorgio cuss can't touch Romany. But
if you find you can pass the cuss on to me, I'll stand the cuss all
the same.'

I always admired this noble girl very much, and I pointed out to her
the danger of the experiment to one of her temperament, but assured
her the superstition about the Gorgio curse was entirely an idle one.

'Danger or no danger,' she said, 'I'll chance it; I'll chance it.'

'It might be the death of you,' I said, 'if you believe that the
seizure is a curse.'

'Death!' she murmured, with a smile. 'It ain't death as is likely to
scare a Romany chi, 'specially if she happens to want to die;' and
then she said aloud, 'I tell you I mean to chance it, but I think my
dear old daddy ought to know about it. So if you'll jist write to him
at Gypsy Dell, by Rington, and ask him to come and see me here, I'm
right well sure he'll come and see me at wonst. He can't read the
letter hisself, of course, but the Scollard can, and so can Rhona
Boswell. One on 'em will read it to him, and I know he'll come at
wonst. I shouldn't like to run such a risk without my dear blessed
old daddy knowin' on it.'

It ended in Mivart's writing to Sinfi's father, and Panuel Lovell
turned up the next evening in a great state of alarm as to what he
was wanted for. Panuel's opposition to the scheme was so strong that
I refused to urge the point.

It was a very touching scene between him and Sinfi.

'You know what your mammy told you about you and the Gorgios,' said
he, with tears trickling down his cheeks. 'You know the dukkeripen
said as you wur to beware o' Gorgios, because a Gorgio would come to
the Kaulo Camloes as would break your heart.'

She looked at her father for a second, and then she broke into a
passion of tears, and threw herself upon the old man's neck, and I
_thought_ I heard her murmur, 'It's broke a'ready, daddy.' But I
really am not quite sure that she did not say the opposite of this.

I had no idea before how strong the family ties are between the
Gypsies. It seems to me that they are stronger than with us, and I
was really astonished that Sinfi could, in order to be of service to
two people of another race, resist the old Gypsy's appeal. She did,
however, and it was decided that at the next seizure the experiment
should be made, and Dr. Mivart telegraphed to London for his
assistant to bring one of Marini's magnets.

We had not long to wait, for the very next day, just as Mivart was
preparing to leave for London, Miss Wynne was seized by another
paroxysm. It was more severe than any previous one--so severe,
indeed, that it seemed to me that it must be the last.

It was with great reluctance that Mivart consented to use Sinfi as
the recipient of the seizure, because of her belief that it was the
result of a curse. However, he at last consented, and ordered two
couches to be placed side by side with a large magnet between them.
Then Miss Wynne was laid on one couch, and Sinfi Lovell on the other;
a screen was placed between the couches, and then the wonderful
effect of the magnetism began to show itself.

The transmission was entirely successful, and Miss Wynne awoke as
from a trance, and I saw as it were the beautiful eyes change as the
soul returned to them. She was no longer the fascinating child who
had become part of my life. She was another person, a stranger whose
acquaintance I had now to make, and whose friendship I had yet to
win. Indeed the change in the expression was so great that it was
really difficult to believe that the features were the same. This
was owing to the wonderful change in the eyes.

To Sinfi Lovell the seizure was transmitted in a way that was
positively uncanny--she passed into a paroxysm so severe that Mivart
was seriously alarmed for her. Her face assumed the same expression
of terror which I had seen on Miss Wynne's face, and she uttered the
cry, 'Father!' and then fell back into a state of rigidity.

'The transmission was just in time,' said Mivart; 'the other patient
would never have survived this.'

Strong as Sinfi Lovell was, the effect of the transmission upon her
nervous system was to me appalling. Indeed it was much greater,
Mivart said, than he was prepared for. Poor Panuel Lovell kept gazing
at us, and then said, 'It's cruel to let one woman kill herself for
another; but when her as kills herself is a Romany, and t'other a
Gorgie, it's what I calls a blazin' shame. She would do it, my poor
chavi would do it. "No harm can't come on it," says she, "because a
Gorgio cuss can't touch a Romany." An' now see what's come on it.'

Mivart would not hear of Sinfi's returning at present to the Gypsies,
as she required special treatment. Hence there was no course left
open to us but that of keeping her here attended by a nurse whom
Mivart sent. While the recurrent paroxysms were severe, Sinfi was to
be carefully kept apart from Miss Wynne until it should become quite
clear how much and how little Miss Wynne remembered of her past life.
Mivart, however, leaned to the opinion that nothing could recall to
her mind the catastrophe that caused the seizure. By an unforeseen
accident they met, and I was at first fearful of the consequences,
but soon found that Mivart's theory was right. No ill effects
whatever followed the meeting. Sinfi's transmitted paroxysms have
gradually become less acute and less frequent, and Miss Wynne has
been constantly with her and ministering to her; the affection
between them seems to have been of long standing, and very great.

I found that Miss Wynne remembered all her past life down to her
first seizure on Raxton sands, while everything that had since passed
was a blank. Since her recovery her presence here has seemed to shed
a richer sunlight over the old place, but of course she is no longer
the fairy child who before her cure fascinated me more than any other
living creature could have done.

Apart from her sweet companionship, she has been of great service to
me in my art. When I learnt who she was, I should not have dreamed of
asking her to sit to me as a model without having first taken your
views, and you were, as I understood, abroad; but she herself
generously volunteered to sit to me for a picture I had in my mind,
'The Spirit of Snowdon.' It was a failure, however, and I abandoned
it. Afterwards, knowing that I was at my wits' end for a model in the
painting I have been for a long time at work upon, 'Zenelophon,' she
again offered to sit to me. The result has been that the picture, now
near completion, is by far the best thing I have ever done.

I had noticed for some time that Sinfi's mind seemed to be running
upon some project. Neither Miss Wynne nor I could guess what it was.
But a few days ago she proposed that Miss Wynne and she should take a
trip to North Wales in order to revisit the places endeared to them
both by reminiscences of their childhood. Nothing seemed more natural
than this. And Sinfi's noble self-sacrifice for Miss Wynne had
entitled her to every consideration, and indeed every indulgence.

And yesterday they started for Wales. It was not till after they were
gone that I learnt from another newspaper paragraph that you did not
go to Japan, and are in Wales. And now I begin to suspect that
Sinfi's determination to go to Wales with Miss Wynne arose from her
having suddenly learnt that you are still there.

And now, my dear Alywin, having acted as a somewhat prosaic reporter
of these wonderful events, I should like to conclude my letter with a
word or two about what took place when I parted from you in the
streets of London. I saw then that your sufferings had been very
great, and since that time they must have been tenfold greater. And
now I rejoice to think that, of all the men in this world who have
ever loved, you, through this very suffering, have been the most
fortunate. As Job's faith was tried by Heaven, so has your love been
tried by the power which you call 'circumstance' and which Wilderspin
calls 'the spiritual world.' All that death has to teach the mind and
the heart of man you have learnt to the very full, and yet she you
love is restored to you, and will soon be in your arms. I, alas! have
long known that the tragedy of tragedies is the death of a beloved
mistress, or a beloved wife. I have long known that it is as the King
of Terrors that Death must needs come to any man who knows what the
word 'love' really means. I have never been a reader of philosophy,
but I understand that the philosophers of all countries have been
preaching for ages upon ages about resignation to Death--about the
final beneficence of Death--that 'reasonable moderator and equipoise
of justice,' as Sir Thomas Browne calls him. Equipoise of justice
indeed! He who can read with tolerance such words as these most have
known nothing of the true passion of love for a woman as you and I
understand it. The Elizabethans are full of this nonsense; but where
does Shakespeare, with all his immense philosophical power, ever show
this temper of acquiescence? All his impeachments of Death have the
deep ring of personal feeling--dramatist though he was. But, what I
am going to ask you is, How shall the modern materialist, who you
think is to dominate the Twentieth Century and all the centuries to
follow--how shall he confront Death when a beloved mistress is struck
down? When Moschus lamented that the mallow, the anise, and the
parsley had a fresh birth every year, whilst we men sleep in the
hollow earth a long, unbounded, never-waking sleep, he told us what
your modern materialist tells us, and he re-echoed the lamentation
which, long before Greece had a literature at all, had been heard
beneath Chaldean stars and along the mud-banks of the Nile. Your
bitter experience made you ask materialism, What comfort is there in
being told that death is the very nursery of new life, and that our
heirs are our very selves, if when you take leave of her who was and
is your world it is 'Vale, vale, in aeternum vale'? The dogged
resolution with which at first you fought and strove for materialism
struck me greatly. It made you almost rude to me at our last meeting.

When I parted from you I should have been blind indeed had I failed
to notice how scornfully you repudiated my suggestion that you should
replace the amulet in the tomb from which it had been stolen. I did
not then know that the tomb was your father's. Had I known it my
suggestion would have been much more emphatic. I saw that you had
the greatest difficulty in refraining from laughing in my face when I
said to you that you would eventually replace it. Yes, you had great
difficulty in refraining from laughing. I did not take offence. I
felt sure that the cross was in some way connected with the young
lady you had lost in Wales, but I could not guess how. Had you told
me that the cross had been taken from your father's tomb I should no
doubt have connected it with the cry of 'Father' which had, I knew,
several times been uttered in Wilderspin's studio by the model in her
paroxysms, and I should have earlier done what I was destined to
do--I should earlier have brought you together. From sympathy that
sprang from a deep experience I knew you better than you knew
yourself. When I learnt from Sinfi Lovell that you had fulfilled
my prophecy I did not laugh. Tears rather than laughter would have
been more in my mood, for I realised the martyrdom you must have
suffered before you were impelled to do it. I knew how you must
have been driven by sorrow--driven against all the mental methods
and traditions of your life--into the arms of supernaturalism.
But you were simply doing what Hamlet would have done in such
circumstances--what Macbeth would have done, and what he would have
done who spoke to the human heart through their voices. All men, I
believe, have Macbeth's instinct for making 'assurance doubly sure,'
and I cannot imagine the man who, entangled as you were in a net of
conflicting evidence--the evidence of the spiritual and the
evidence of the natural world--would not, if the question were that
of averting a curse from acting on a beloved mistress, have done as
you did. That paralysis of Hamlet's will which followed when the
evidence of two worlds hung in equipoise before him, no one can
possibly understand better than I. For it was exactly similar to my
own condition on that never-to-be-forgotten night when she whom I
lost...


While the marvellous sight fell, or appeared to fall, upon my eyes,
my blood, like Hamlet's, became so masterful that my reason seemed
nothing but a blind and timorous guide. No sooner had the sweet
vision fled than my reason, like Hamlet's, rose and rejected it. It
was not until I became acquainted with the _rationale_ of sympathetic
manifestations--it was not till I learnt, by means of that
extraordinary book of your father's, which seems to have done its
part in turning friend Wilderspin's head, what is the supposed
method by which the spiritual world acts upon the material
world--acts by the aid of those same natural bonds which keep the
stars in their paths--that my blood and my reason became reconciled,
and a new light came to me. And I knew that this would be your case.
Yes, my dear Aylwin, I knew that when the issues of Life are greatly
beyond the common, and when our hearts are torn as yours has been
torn, and when our souls are on fire with a flame such as that which
I saw was consuming you, the awful possibilities of this universe--of
which we, civilised men or savage, know nothing--will come before us,
and tease our hearts with strange wild hopes, 'though all the
"proofs" of all the logicians should hold them up to scorn.'

I am, my dear Aylwin,

Your sincere Friend,

T. D'ARCY.



XVII

THE TWO DUKKERIPENS

Was the mystery at an end? Was there one point in this story of
stories which this letter of D'Arcy's had not cleared up? Yes, indeed
there was one. What motive--or rather, what mixture of motives--had
impelled Sinfi to play her part in restoring Winifred to me? Her
affection for me was, I knew, as strong as my own affection for her.
But this I attributed largely to the mysterious movements of the
blood of Fenella Stanley which we both shared. In many matters there
was a kinship of taste between us, such as did not exist between me
and Winnie, who was far from being scornful of conventions, and to
whom the little Draconian laws of British 'Society' were not objects
of mere amusement, as they were to me and Sinfi.

All this I attributed to that 'prepotency of transmission in descent'
which I knew to be one of the Romany characteristics. All this I
attributed, I say, to the far-reaching influence of Fenella Stanley.

But would this, coupled with her affection for Winifred, have been
strong enough to conquer Sinfi's terror of a curse and its supposed
power? And then that colloquy recorded by D'Arcy with what she
believed to be her mother's spirit--those words about 'the two
dukkeripens'--what did they mean? At one moment I seemed to guess
their meaning in a dim way, and at the next they seemed more
inexplicable than ever. But be their import what it might, one thing
was quite certain--Sinfi had saved Winifred, and there swept through
my very being a passion of gratitude to the girl who had acted so
nobly which for the moment seemed to drown all other emotions.
I had not much time, however, for bringing my thoughts to bear upon
this new source of wonderment; for I suddenly saw Winifred and Sinfi
descending the steep path towards me.

But what a change there was in Sinfi! The traces of illness had fled
entirely from her face, and were replaced by the illumination of the
triumphant soul within--a light such as I could imagine shining on
the features of Boadicea fresh from a successful bout with the foe of
her race. Even the loveliness of Winnie seemed for the moment to pale
before the superb beauty of the Gypsy girl, whom the sun was
caressing as though it loved her, shedding a radiance over her
picturesque costume, and making the gold coins round her neck shine
like dewy whin-flowers struck by the sunrise.

I understood well that expression of triumph. I knew that, with her,
imagination was life itself. I knew that this imagination of hers had
just escaped from the sting of the dominant thought which was
threatening to turn a supposed curse into a curse indeed.

I went to meet them.

'I promised to bring her livin' mullo,' said Sinfi, 'and I have kept
my word, and now we are all going up to the top together.'

Winnie at once proceeded to pack up the breakfast things in Sinfi's
basket. While she was doing this Sinfi and I went to the side of the
llyn.

'Sinfi, I know all--all you have done for Winnie, all you have done
for me.'

'You know about me takin' the cuss?' she said in astonishment.
'Gorgio cuss can't touch Romany, they say, but it did touch me. I wur
very bad, brother. Howsomedever, it's all gone now. But how did you
come to know about it? Winnie don't know herself, so she couldn't ha'
told you; and I promised Mr. D'Arcy that if ever I wur to see you
anywheres I wouldn't talk about it--leaseways not till he could tell
you hisself or write to you full.'

'Winnie does not know about it,' I said, 'but I do. I know that in
order to save her life--in order to save us both--you allowed her
illness to pass on to you, at your own peril. But you mustn't talk of
its being a curse, Sinfi. It was just an illness like any other
illness, and the doctor passed it on to you in the same way that
doctors sometimes do pass on such illnesses. Doctors can't cure
curses, you know. You will soon be quite well again, and then you
will forget all about what you call the curse.'

'I'm well enough now, brother; but see, Winnie has packed the things,
and she's waiting to go up.'

We then began the ascent.

Ah, that ascent! I wish I had time and space to describe it. Up the
same path we went which Sinfi and I had followed on that memorable
morning when my heart was as sad as it was buoyant now.

Reaching the top, we sat down in the hut and made our simple
luncheon. Winnie was a great favourite with the people there, and
she could not get away from them for a long time. We went down to
Bwlch Glas, and there we stood gazing at the path that leads to
Llanberis.

I had not observed, but Winnie evidently had, that Sinfi wanted to
speak to me alone; for she wandered away pretending to be looking
for a certain landmark which she remembered; and Sinfi and I were
left together.

'Brother,' said Sinfi, 'I ain't a-goin' to Llanberis an' Carnarvon
with you two. You take that path; I take this.'

She pointed to the two downward paths.

'Surely you are not going to leave us at a moment like this?' I said.

'That's jist what I am a-goin' to do,' she said. 'This is the very
time an' this is the very place where I am a-goin' to leave you an'
all Gorgios.'

'Part on Snowdon, Sinfi!' I exclaimed.

'That's what we're a-goin' to do, brother. What I sez to myself when
I made up my mind to take the cuss on me wur this: "I'll make her
dukkeripen come true; I'll take her to him in Wales, and then we'll
part. We'll part on Snowdon, an' I'll go one way an' they'll go
another, jist like them two streams as start from Gorphwysfa an' go
runnin' down till one on 'em takes the sea at Carnarvon, and t'other
at Tremadoc." Yis, brother, it's on Snowdon where you an' Winnie
Wynne sees the last o' Sinfi Lovell.'

Distressed as I was at her words, that inflexible look on her face I
understood only too well. 'But there is Mr. D'Arcy to consider,' I
said. 'Winnie tells me that it is the particular wish of Mr. D'Arcy
that you and she should return to him at Hurstcote Manor. He has been
wonderfully kind, and his wishes should be complied with.'

'No, brother,' said Sinfi, 'I shall never go to Hurstcote Manor no
more.'

'Surely you will, Sinfi. Winnie tells me of the deep regard that Mr.
D'Arcy has for you.'

'Never no more. Winifred's dukkeripen on Snowdon has come true, and
it wur me what made it come true. Yis, it wur Sinfi Lovell and nobody
else what made that dukkeripen come true.'

And again her face was illuminated by the triumphant expression which
it wore when she returned to Knockers' Llyn with Winnie.

'It was indeed your noble self-sacrifice for Winnie and me that made
the dukkeripen of the Golden Hand come true.'

'It worn't all for you and Winnie, Hal. I ain't a-goin' to let you
think better on me than I desarve. It wur partly for you, and it wur
partly for my dear mammy, and it wur partly for myself. Listen to me,
Hal Aylwin. _When I made Winnie's dukkeripen come true I made my own
dukkeripen come to naught at the same time_. The only way to make a
dukkeripen come to naught is to make another dukkeripen what
conterdicks it come true. That's the only way to master a dukkeripen.
It ain't often that Romanies or Gorgios or anything that lives can
master his own dukkeripen. I've been thinkin' a good deal about sich
things since I took that cuss on me. Night arter night have I laid
awake thinkin' about these 'ere things, and, brother, I believe I
have done what no livin' creatur ever done before--I've mastered my
own dukkeripen. My mammy used to say that the dukkeripen of every
livin' thing comes true at last. "Is there anythink in the whole
world," she would say, "more crafty nor one o' those old broad-finned
trouts in Knockers' Llyn? But that trout's got his dukkeripen, an' it
comes true at last. All day long he's p'raps bin a-flashin' his fins
an' a-twiddlin' his tail round an' round the may-fly or the brandlin'
worrum, though he knows all about the hook; but all at wonst comes
the time o' the bitin', and that's the time o' the dukkeripen, when
every fish in the brook, whether he's hungry or not, begins to bite,
an' then up comes old red-spots, an' grabs at the bait because he
_must_ grab, an' swallows it because he _must_ swallow it; an'
there's a hend of old red-spots jist as sure as if he didn't know
there wur a hook in the bait." That's what my mammy used to say. But
there wur one as could, and did, master her own dukkeripen--Shuri
Lovell's little Sinfi.'

'You have mastered your dukkeripen, Sinfi?' 'Yes, I've mastered
mine,' she said, with the same look of triumph on her face--'I swore
I'd master my dukkeripen, brother, an' I done it. I said to myself
the dukkeripen is strong, but a Romany chi may be stronger still if
she keeps a-sayin' to herself "I WILL master it; I WILL, I WILL."'

'Then that explains something I have often noticed, Sinfi. I have
often seen your lips move and nothing has come from them but a
whisper, "I will, I will, I will."'

'Ah, you've noticed that, have you? Well then, _now_ you know what
it meant.'

'But, Sinfi, you have not told me what your dukkeripen is. You have
often alluded to it, but you have never allowed me even to guess what
it is.'

Sinfi's face beamed with pride of triumph.

'You never guessed it? No, you never could guess it. An' months an'
months have we lived together an' you heard me whisper "I will, I
will," an' you never guessed what them words meant. Lucky for you, my
fine Gorgio, that you didn't guess it,' she said, in an altered tone.

'Why?'

''Cos if you had a-guessed it you'd ha' cotch'd a left-hand body-blow
that 'ud most like ha' killed you. That's what you'd ha' cotch'd. But
now as we're a-goin' to part for ever I'll tell you.'

'Part for ever, Sinfi?'

'Yis, an' that's why I'm goin' to tell you what my dukkeripen wur.
Many's the time as you've asked me how it was that, for all that you
and I was pals, I hate the Gorgios in a general way as much as Rhona
Boswell likes 'em. I used to like the Gorgios wonst as well as ever
Rhona did--else how should I ever ha' been so fond o' Winnie Wynne?
Tell me that,' she said, in an argumentative way as though I had
challenged her speech. 'If I hadn't ha' liked the Gorgios wonst, how
should I ha' been so fond o' Winnie Wynne? An' why don't I like
Gorgios now? Many's the time you've ax'd me that question, an' now's
the time for me to tell you. I know'd the time 'ud come, an' this is
the time to tell you, when you and me and Winnie are a-goin' to part
for ever at the top o' the biggest mountain in the world, this 'ere
blessed Snowdon, as allus did seem somehow to belong to her an' me.
When I wur fond o' the Gorgios,--fonder nor ever Rhona Boswell wur at
that time ('cos she hadn't never met then with the Gorgio she's
a-goin' to die for),--it wur when I war a little chavi, an' didn't
know nothink about dukkeripens at all; but arterwards my mammy told
my dukkeripen out o' the clouds, an' it wur jist this: I wur to
beware o' Gorgios, 'cos a Gorgio would come among the Kaulo Camloes
an' break my heart. An' I says to her, "Mammy dear, afore my heart
shall break for any Gorgio I'll cut it out with this 'ere knife," an'
I draw'd her knife out o' her frock an' put it in my own, and here it
is.' And Sinfi pulled out her knife and showed it to me. 'An' now,
brother, I'm goin' to tell you somethink else, an' what I'm goin' to
tell you'll show we're goin' to part for ever an' ever. As sure as
ever the Golden Hand opened over Winnie Wynne's head an' yourn on
Snowdon, so sure did I feel that you two 'ud be married, even when it
seemed to you that she must he dead. An' as sure as ever my mammy
said I must beware o' Gorgios, so sure was I that you wur the very
Gorgio as wur to break the Romany chi's heart--if that Romany chi's
heart hadn't been Sinfi Lovell's. You hadn't been my pal long afore
I know'd that. Arter I had been with you a-lookin' for Winnie or
fishin' in the brooks, many's the time, when I lay in the tent with
the star-light a-shinin' through the chinks in the tent's mouth, that
I've said to myself, "The very Gorgio as my mother seed a-comin' to
the Lovells when she penned my dukkerin, he's asleep in his
livin'-waggin not five yards off." That's what made me seem so
strange to you at times, thinkin' o' my mammy's words, an' sayin'
"I will, I will." An' now, brother, fare you well.'

'But you must bid Winnie good-bye,' I said, as I saw her returning.

'Better not,' said she. 'You tell her I've changed my mind about
goin' to Carnarvon. She'll think we shall meet again, but we
sha'n't. Tell her that they expect you and her at the inn at
Llanberis. Rhona will be there to-night with Winnie's clo'es and
things.'

'Sinfi,' I said, 'I cannot part from you thus. I should be miserable
all my days. No man ever had such a noble, self-sacrificing friend as
you. I cannot give you up. In a few days I shall go to the tents and
see you and Rhona, and my old friends, Panuel and Jericho; I shall
indeed, Sinfi. I mean to do it.'

'No, no,' cried Sinfi; 'everythink says "No" to that; the clouds an'
the stars says "No," an' the win' says "No," and the shine and the
shadows says "No," and the Romany Sap says "No." An' I shall send your
livin'-waggin away, reia; yis, I shall send it arter you, Hal, and
your two beautiful gries; an' I shall tell my daddy--as never
conterdicks his chavi in nothink, 'cos she's took the seein' eye from
Shuri Lovell--I shall tell my dear daddy as no Gorgio and no Gorgie,
no lad an' no wench as ever wur bred o' Gorgio blood an' bones,
mustn't never live with our breed no more. That's what I shall tell
my dear daddy; an' why? an' why? 'cos that's what my mammy comes an'
tells me every night, wakin' an' sleepin'--that's what she comes an'
tells me, reia, in the waggin an' in the tent, an' aneath the sun an'
aneath the stars--an' that's what the fiery eyes of the Romany Sap
says out o' the ferns an' the grass, an' in the Londra streets,
whenever I thinks o' you. "The kair is kushto for the kairengro, but
for the Romany the open air." [Footnote] That's what my mammy used to
say.'

[Footnote: The house is good for the house-dweller, the open air for
the Gypsy.]

She then left me and descended the path to Capel Curig, and was soon
out of sight.



XVIII

THE WALK TO LLANBERIS

When, on coming to rejoin us, Winnie learnt that Sinfi had left for
Capel Curig, she seemed at first somewhat disconcerted, I thought.
Her training, begun under her aunt, and finished under Miss
Dalrymple, had been such that she was by no means oblivious of Welsh
proprieties; and, though I myself was entirely unable to see in what
way it was more eccentric to be mountaineering with a lover than with
a Gypsy companion, she proposed that we should follow Sinfi.

'I have seen your famous living-waggon,' she said. 'It goes wherever
the Lovells go. Let us follow her. You can stay at Bettws or Capel
Curig, and I can stay with Sinfi.'

I told her how strong was Sinfi's wish that we should not do so.
Winnie soon yielded her point, and we began leisurely our descent
westward, along that same path which Sinfi and I had taken on that
other evening, which now seemed so far away, when we walked down to
Llanberis with the setting sun in our faces. If my misery could then
only find expression in sighs and occasional ejaculations of pain,
absolutely dumb was the bliss that came to me now, growing in power
with every moment, as the scepticism of my mind about the reality of
the new heaven before me gave way to the triumphant acceptance of it
by my senses and my soul.

The beauty of the scene--the touch of the summer breeze, soft as
velvet even when it grew boisterous, the perfume of the Snowdonian
flowerage that came up to meet us, seemed to pour in upon me through
the music of Winnie's voice which seemed to be fusing them all. That
beloved voice was making all my senses one.

'You leave all the talk to me,' she said. But as she looked in my
face her instinct told her why I could not talk. She knew that such
happiness and such bliss as mine carry the soul into a region where
spoken language is not.

Looking round me towards the left, where the mighty hollow of Cwm
Dyli was partly in sunshine and partly in shade, I startled Winnie by
suddenly calling out her name. My thoughts had left the happy dream
of Winifred's presence and were with Sinfi Lovell. As I looked at the
tall precipices rising from the chasm right up to the summit of
Snowdon, I recalled how Sinfi, notwithstanding her familiarity with
the scene, appeared to stand appalled as she gazed at the jagged
ridges of Crib-y-Ddysgyl, Crib Goch, Lliwedd, and the heights of Moel
Siabod beyond. I recalled how the expression of alarm upon Sinfi's
features had made me almost see in the distance a starving girl
wandering among the rocks, and this it was that made me now exclaim
'Winnie!' With this my lost power of speech returned.

We went to the ruined huts where Sinfi had on that memorable day
lingered by the spring, and Winnie began to scoop out the water with
her hand and drink it. She saw how I wanted to drink the water out of
the little palm, and she scooped some out for me, saying, 'It's the
purest, and sweetest, and best water on Snowdon.'

'Yes,' I said, 'the purest, and sweetest, and best water in the world
when drunk from such a cup.'

She drew her hand away and let the water drop through her fingers,
and turned round to look at the scene we had left, where the summit
of Snowdon was towering beyond a reach of rock, bathed in the rapidly
deepening light.

'No idle compliments between you and me, sir,' she said, with a
smile. 'Remember that I have still time and strength to go back to
the top and follow Sinfi down to the camp.'

And then we both laughed together, as we laughed that afternoon in
Wilderness Road when she enunciated her theories upon the voices of
men and the voices of birds. She then stood gazing abstractedly into
a pool of water, upon which the evening lights were now falling. As I
saw her reflected in the surface of the stream, which was as smooth
as a mirror--saw her reflected there sometimes on an almost
colourless surface, sometimes amid a procession in which every colour
of the rainbow took part, I sighed. 'Why do you sigh?' said she.

I could not tell her why, for I was recalling Wilderspin's words
about her matchless beauty and its inspiring effect upon the painter
who painted it. It would indeed, as Wilderspin had said, endow
mediocrity with genius.

'Why do you sigh?' she repeated.

'Oh, if I could paint that, Winnie, if I could paint that picture in
the water.'

'And why should you not?' she said, in a dreamy way. And then a
sudden thought seemed to strike her, and she said with much energy,
'Become a painter, Henry! Become a painter! No man ever yet satisfied
a true woman who did not work--work hard at something--anything--if
not in the active affairs of life, in the world of art. My love you
must always have now--you must always have it under any
circumstances. I could not help under any circumstances giving you
love. But I fear I could not give a rich, idle man--even if he were
Henry himself--enough love to satisfy a yearning like yours.'

She bent her face again over the water, and looked at the picture.

'You have often told me that my face is beautiful, Henry, and you
know you never could make me believe it. But suppose you should be
right after all, and suppose that you were a painter, and used it for
a picture of the Spirit of Snowdon, I should then thank God for
having given me a beautiful face, for it would enable you to win your
goal. And afterwards, when its beauty had passed away, as it soon
would, I should have no further need for beauty, for my
painter-husband would, partly through me, have won.'

As we walked along, she pointed to the tubular bridge over the Menai
Straits and to the coast of Anglesey. The panorama had that
fairy-like expression which belongs so peculiarly to Welsh scenery.
Other mountainous countries in Europe are beautiful, and since that
divine walk I have become intimately acquainted with them, but for
associations romantic and poetic, there is surely no land in the
world equal to North Wales.

'Do you remember, Winnie,' I murmured, 'when you so delighted me by
exclaiming, "What a beautiful world it is!"?'

'Ah, yes,' said Winnie, 'and how I should love to paint its beauty.
The only people I really envy are painters.'

We were now at the famous spot where the triple echo is best heard,
and we began to shout like two children in the direction of Llyn
Ddu'r Arddu. And then our talk naturally fell on Knockers' Llyn and
the echoes to be heard there. She then took me to another famous
sight on this side of Snowdon, the enormous stone, said to be five
thousand tons in weight, called the Knockers' Anvil. While we
lingered here Winnie gave me as many anecdotes and legends of this
stone as would fill a little volume. But suddenly she stopped.

'Look!' she said, pointing to the sunset. 'I have seen that sight
only once before. I was with Sinfi. She called it "the Dukkeripen
of the Trushul."'

The sun was now on the point of sinking, and his radiance, falling on
the cloud-pageantry of the zenith, fired the flakes and vapoury films
floating and trailing above, turning them at first into a
ruby-coloured mass, and then into an ocean of rosy fire. A horizontal
bar of cloud which, until the radiance of the sunset fell upon it,
had been dull and dark and grey, as though a long slip from the slate
quarries had been laid across the west, became for a moment a deep
lavender colour, and then purple, and then red-gold. But what Winnie
was pointing at was a dazzling shaft of quivering fire where the sun
had now sunk behind the horizon. Shooting up from the cliffs where
the sun had disappeared, this shaft intersected the bar of clouds and
seemed to make an irregular cross of deep rose.

When Winnie turned her eyes again to mine I was astonished to see
tears in them. I asked her what they meant. She said, 'While I was
looking at that cross of rose and gold in the clouds it seemed to me
that there came on the evening breeze the sound of a sob, and that it
was Sinfi's, my sister Sinfi's; but of course by this time Snowdon
stands between us and her.'



POSTSCRIPT

In every case where I have brought into this story facts connected
with medical matters, I have been most cautious to avail myself of
the authority of medical men. I will give here the words of Mr. James
Douglas upon this matter. After stating the fact that the story was
in part dictated to my dear friend Dr. Gordon Hake during a stay with
him at Roehampton, he says:--

Dr. Hake is mainly known as the 'parable poet,' but as a fact he was
a physician of extraordinary talent who had practised first at Bury
St. Edmunds and afterwards at Spring Gardens, London, until he partly
retired to be private physician to the late Lady Ripon. After her
death he left practice altogether in order to devote himself to
literature, for which he had very great equipments. As _Aylwin_
touched upon certain subtle nervous phases, it must have been a great
advantage to the author to dictate these portions of the story to so
skilled and experienced a friend. The rare kind of cerebral
exaltation into which Henry Aylwin passed after his appalling
experience in the cove, in which the entire nervous system was
disturbed, was not what is known as brain fever. The record of it in
_Aylwin_ is, I understand, a literal account of a rare and wonderful
case brought under the professional notice of Dr. Hake.

But I am now going to touch upon a much more important medical
subject. Since the appearance of _Aylwin_, I have received many
letters enquiring whether the transmission of hysteria from one
patient to another by means of a magnet is an imaginary experiment,
or whether it is based on fact. It has been impossible for me to
answer all these letters. But some of them, coming from loving
relatives of those who have suffered from hysteria, have been couched
in such earnest and pathetic words that they could not be left
unanswered, and this has caused me great inconvenience. I have
therefore determined to give the reader some tangible data upon this
subject. The extract from the _Daily Telegraph_ which appears on page
465 is a real extract, and records a real case of transmission of
hysteria. Upon the same subject I take the following admirable
remarks from an article in the _Quarterly Review_ for July 1890,
called 'Mesmerism and Hypnotism.'


_The Influence of Magnets_.--We have briefly referred to the action
of magnets on the muscles in speaking of the physiological phenomena,
but they possess other properties which hardly come under that head.
They have the power of attracting hypnotised subjects. Thus, if a
good-sized magnet is placed at some little distance from the subject,
and behind a screen so that he cannot see it, after a time he will
get up and go towards it. If now another magnet be placed at an equal
distance behind him, he will stop and remain as it were balanced
between the two. By withdrawing one or other he can be drawn
backwards or forwards. Further, he can be charged with magnetism by
placing near him a large magnet with five ends. If it be suddenly
removed and hidden in another room, he is impelled to follow it with
such force that he will fling aside all obstacles in his way, and
tracking it step by step will walk straight up to it. 'Once he sights
it, he either remains in dumb contemplation of it in front of its two
poles, or else lays his hands on both of the poles with a kind of
profound satisfaction.' These experiments with magnets are very
exhausting.

*       *       *       *       *

Finally, if the senses can be so heightened as in the cases already
cited from Braid and the clinique of La Salpetriere, it requires no
great stretch of imagination to suppose them carried still further
until they become comparable to those inexplicable faculties which we
call instinct in animals, that for instance by which animals--cats,
dogs, and sheep--can find their way home, sometimes over hundreds of
miles of unknown country.

Concerning the faculty of presensation, it is worth while to say a
little more. The early mesmerists made a great point of the power of
some patients to diagnose the condition of another. Dr. Puysegur's
patient Joly, mentioned above, possessed the faculty to an unusual
degree. He was an educated man, of good position, and could express
himself intelligibly:--


C'est une sensation veritable que j'eprouve dans un endroit
correspondant a la partie qui souffre chez celui que je touche: ma
main va naturellement se porter a l'endroit de son mal, et je ne peux
pas plus m'y tromper que je ne pourrois le faire en portant ma main
ou je souffrirois moi-meme.


Now, the following experiment has been carried out by Charcot at La
Salpetriere. A young girl suffering from hysterical hemiplegia
(paralysis of one side) came up one day from the country. She was
placed in a chair behind a screen and a hypnotic patient sent for
from the wards. The latter was placed on the other side of the screen
and hypnotised. Neither of the patients was aware of the other's
presence. At the end of a minute the hypnotised patient was found to
have acquired the other's hemiplegia. The experiment was repeated
every day, and in four days the new comer was relieved of her
trouble, which had lasted over a year. The same experiment was tried
in many cases, and always succeeded, although in some of them the
affections imitated were of a very complex character, such as
paralysis of half the tongue. With these facts in view, the alleged
experiences of the older mesmerists appear by no means impossible.







APPENDICES

I.   IN DEFENCE OF A GREAT AND BELOVED POET WHOSE CHARACTER IS
     DELINEATED IN THIS STORY.

II.  A KEY TO "AYLWIN," BY THOMAS ST. E. HAKE,
     REPRINTED FROM "NOTES AND QUERIES."







APPENDIX I

                         D. G. R.

       Thou knewest that island, far away and lone,
         Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break
         In spray of music and the breezes shake
       O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone,
       While that sweet music echoes like a moan
         In the island's heart, and sighs around the lake,
         Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake.
       A damsel weeps upon her emerald throne.

       Life's ocean, breaking round thy senses' shore,
         Struck golden song, as from the strand of Day:
         For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay--
       Pain's blinking snake around the fair isle's core,
         Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play
       Around thy lovely island evermore.

Certain remarks that have been made upon the character of _D'Arcy_ in
_Aylwin_ have rendered it an imperative--nay, a sacred--duty for the
author to seize an opportunity that may never occur again of saying
here a few words upon the subject.

It is universally acknowledged that characters in fiction are not
creations projected from the author's inner consciousness, but are
founded more or less upon characters that he was brought into contact
with in real life.

Mr. A. C. Benson, in his monograph on D. G. Rossetti, in _English Men
of Letters_, says, 'It was for a long time hoped that Mr.
Watts-Dunton would give the memoir of his great friend to the world,
but there is such a thing as knowing a man too well to be his
biographer. It is, however, an open secret that a vivid sketch of
Rossetti's personality has been given to the world in Mr.
Watts-Dunton's well-known romance _Aylwin_, where the artist D'Arcy
is drawn from Rossetti.'

Since the appearance of these words many people who take an
increasing interest in the most mysterious and romantic figure in the
artistic world of the mid-Victorian period, have urged the author to
tell them whether the portrait of Rossetti in _Aylwin_ is a true one,
or whether it is not idealized as certain cynical critics have
affirmed. Nothing but the dread of being charged with egotism has
prevented the author's stating publicly, and once for all, that the
portrait of Rossetti in _Aylwin_ showing him to be the creature of
varying moods, gay and even frolicsome at one moment, profoundly
meditative at the next, deeply dejected at the next, but always the
most winsome of men, is true to the life. It is more than hinted in
the story that _D'Arcy's_ melancholy was the result of the loss of
one he deeply loved. From such a loss it was that Rossetti's
melancholy moods resulted. There are documentary evidences of the
verisimilitude of the picture in every respect. Let one be given out
of many. There exists a pathetic record that has never yet been
published, by one who knew Rossetti--knew him with special
intimacy--the poet Swinburne--depicting the great tragedy which
darkened Rossetti's life--the loss of his wife.

It gives the only authorized account of that tragedy--a tragedy which
ever since the publication of William Bell Scott's _Autobiographical
Notes_ has been so grievously misunderstood and misrepresented. In
this narrative Swinburne tells how, when first introduced to
Rossetti, he himself was an Oxford undergraduate of twenty. He
records how he and Rossetti had lived on terms of affectionate
intimacy: shaped and coloured on Rossetti's side by the cordial
kindness and exuberant generosity which, to the last, distinguished
his recognition of younger men's efforts: on his (Swinburne's) part
by gratitude as loyal and admiration as fervent as ever strove and
ever failed to express 'all the sweet and sudden passion of youth
towards greatness in its elder.' He records how, during that year, he
had come to know, and to regard with little less than a brother's
affection, the noble lady whom Rossetti had recently married. He
records how on the evening of her terrible death, they all three had
dined together at a restaurant which Rossetti had been accustomed to
frequent. He records how next morning, on coming by appointment to
sit for his portrait, he heard that she had died in the night, under
circumstances which afterwards made necessary his (Swinburne's)
appearance and evidence at the inquest held on her remains. He dwells
upon the anguish of the widower, when next they met, under the roof
of the mother with whom he had sought refuge. He records how Rossetti
appealed to his friendship in the name of the dead lady's regard for
him--a regard such as she had felt for no other of Rossetti's
friends--to cleave to him in this time of sorrow, to come and keep
house with him as soon as a residence could be found.

Can there be a more convincing and a more beautiful testimony as to a
friend's sorrow and its cause?

Over and above the touching testimony of Swinburne, no one will deny
that if ever one man knew another too well to be his biographer, as
Mr. Benson says, the author of _Aylwin_ was that man with regard to
Rossetti. No one has ever ventured to challenge the assertion in the
article on Rossetti in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ that there was a
time when with the exception of his own family the poet-painter saw
scarcely any one save the writer of this book, whom he was never
tired of designating his friend of friends. There is no need to
multiply instances of this friendship, which has been enlarged upon
by Rossetti's brother, and by many others. Elizabeth Luther Gary, in
the best of all the books upon Rossetti, published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons two years after the first edition of _Aylwin_, speaks of
_D'Arcy_ as being 'the mouthpiece of Rossetti.'

It may be added that Rossetti's _Ballads and Sonnets_, published in
1882, were dedicated to the author in these words: 'To the Friend
whom my verse won for me, these few more pages are affectionately
inscribed.' When he drew his last breath at Birchington it was in
that friend's arms. It is necessary to dwell upon such facts as the
above to show how fully equipped is the author of _Aylwin_ for
understanding and depicting the great poet-painter, to whose memory
he addressed the sonnet at the head of this note.

As to the personality of Rossetti, to which Mr. Benson alludes, to
say that it was the one that stood out among the lives of the
Victorian poets is to state the case very feebly. It has been the
fortune of the delineator of D'Arcy to be thrown intimately across
several of the great poets of his time, not one of whom displayed a
personality so dominant as Rossetti's. Fine as is Rossetti's poetry
and fine as are his paintings, they but inadequately represent the
man. As to his personal fascination, among all the poets of England
we have no record of anything equal to it. It asserted itself not
only in relation to the pre-Raphaelite group, but in relation to all
other members of society with whom he was brought into contact. To
describe the magnetism of such a man is, of course, impossible. Much
has been written upon what is called the _demonic_ power in certain
individuals--the power of casting one's own influence over all
others. Napoleon's case is generally instanced as a typical one. But
Napoleon's demonic power was of a self-conscious kind. It would seem,
however, that there is another kind of demonic power--the power of
shedding quite unconsciously one's personality upon all brought into
contact with it. The demonic power of Rossetti, like that of _D'Arcy_
in this story, was quite unconscious. In Rossetti's presence, as in
_D'Arcy's_, it was impossible not to yield to this strange,
mysterious power. At the time when he was not so entirely reclusive
as he afterwards became, when he used to meet all sorts of people,
the author had many opportunities of noticing its effect upon others.
He has seen them try to resist it, and in vain. On a certain occasion
a very eminent man, much used to society, and much used to the
brilliant literary clubs of London, was quite cowed and silenced
before Rossetti. It is necessary to dwell upon these subtle
distinctions, because this is the D'Arcy who, as a critic has
remarked, 'is the real protagonist of _Aylwin_--although the reader
does not discover it until the very end of the story, where D'Arcy
is the character who unravels and explains all.' Without D'Arcy,
indeed, and the demonic power possessed by him, the story would have
no existence.

It is, of course, in the illustrated editions of _Aylwin_ that
D'Arcy's identification with Rossetti and his importance in the story
become specially manifest. On page 204 of the illustrated editions an
exact picture has been given by Rossetti's pupil, Dunn, of the famous
studio at 16 Cheyne Walk--the studio which will always be associated
with Rossetti's name. It has been immortalized by his friend, Dr.
Gordon Hake, in the following lines addressed to the author of
_Aylwin_ in the sonnet-sequence, _The New Day_:


       Sitting with him, his tones as Petrarch's tender,
         With many a speaking vision on the wall,
       The fire, a-blaze, flashing the studio fender,
         Closed in from London shouts and ceaseless brawl--
       Twas you brought Nature to the visiting,
         Till she herself seemed breathing in the room,
       And Art grew fragrant in the glow of Spring
         With homely scents of gorse and heather bloom.
       Or sunbeams shone by many an Alpine fountain,
         Fed by the waters of the forest stream;
       Or glacier-glories in the rock-girt mountain,
         Where they so often fed the poet's dream;
       Or else was mingled the rough billow's glee
       With cries of petrels on a sullen sea.


Again on page 393 of the same editions will be found Miss May
Morris's beautiful water colour of Kelmscott Manor, the country-house
jointly occupied by Rossetti and William Morris in which takes place
what has been called 'the crucial scene in _Aylwin_.'







APPENDIX II

So many questions about the characters depicted in _Aylwin_ were put
to the editor of _Notes and Queries_ that he suggested that a key to
the novel would he found acceptable. Some weeks after this suggestion
was made there appeared in that journal (7th June 1902) the following
contribution by Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake, an intimate friend of
Rossetti, and of other leading characters of the story. The
republication of it here has been kindly sanctioned by Mr. J. C.
Francis, a name so indissolubly associated both with the _Athenaeum_
and _Notes and Queries_. Mr. Hake writes as follows:


Ever since the publication of _Aylwin_ I have, at various times, seen
in _Notes and Queries_, the _Daily Chronicle_, the _Contemporary
Review_, and other organs, inquiries as to the identification of the
characters that appear in that story. And now that an inquiry comes
from so remote a place as Libau in Russia, I think I may come forward
and say what I know on the subject. But, of course, within the limited
space that could possibly be allotted to me in _Notes and Queries_, I
can only say a few words on a subject that would require many pages to
treat adequately. Until _Aylwin_ appeared, Mr. Joseph Knight's
monograph on Rossetti in the 'Great Writers' series was, with the sole
exception of what has been written about him by his own family and by
my late father, Dr. Gordon Hake, in his _Memoirs of Eighty Years_, the
only account that gave the reader the least idea of the man--his
fascination, his brilliance, his generosity, and his whimsical
qualities. But in _Aylwin_ Rossetti lives as I knew him; it is
impossible to imagine a more living picture of the man. I have stayed
with Rossetti at 16 Cheyne Walk for weeks at a time, and at Bognor
also, and at Kelmscott--the 'Hurstcote' of _Aylwin_. With regard to
'Hurstcote,' I well knew 'the large bedroom with low-panelled walls
and the vast antique bedstead made of black carved oak' upon which
Winifred Wynne slept. In fact, the only thing in the description of
this room that I do not remember is the beautiful _Madonna and Child_
upon the frame of which was written 'Chiaro dell' Erma' (readers of
_Hand and Soul_ will remember that name). This quaint and picturesque
bedroom leads by two or three steps to the tapestried room 'covered
with old faded tapestry--so faded, indeed, that its general effect
was that of a dull grey texture'--depicting the story of Samson.
Rossetti used the tapestry room as a studio, and I have seen in it
the very same pictures that so attracted the attention of Winifred
Wynne: the 'grand brunette' (painted from Mrs. Morris) 'holding a
pomegranate in her hand'; the 'other brunette, whose beautiful eyes
are glistening and laughing over the fruit she is holding up'
(painted from the same famous Irish beauty named Smith who appears
in _The Beloved_), and the blonde 'under the apple blossoms' (painted
from a still more beautiful woman--Mrs. Stillman). These pictures
were not permanently placed there, but, as it chanced, they were
there (for retouching) on a certain occasion when I was visiting at
Kelmscott. With regard to the green room in which Winifred took her
first breakfast at 'Hurstcote' I am a little in confusion. It seems
to me more like the green dining-room in Cheyne Walk, decorated with
antique mirrors, which was painted by Dunn, showing Rossetti reading
his poems aloud. This is the only portrait of Rossetti that really
calls up the man before me. As Mr. Watts-Dunton is the owner of
Dunn's drawing, and as so many people want to see what Rossetti's
famous Chelsea house was like inside, it is a pity he does not give
it as a frontispiece to some future edition of _Aylwin_.
Unfortunately, Mr. G. F. Watts's picture, now in the National
Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti's
face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears. I think
the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two
sittings. As to the photographs, none of them is really satisfactory.

The 'young gentleman from Oxford who has been acting as my
secretary,' as mentioned in _Aylwin_, was my brother. [Footnote] With
regard to the two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs
telling the story of the Holy Grail, 'in old black oak frames carved
with knights at tilt,' I do not remember seeing these there. But they
are evidently the mirrors decorated with copies of the lost Holy
Grail frescoes once existing on the walls of the Union Reading-Room
at Oxford. These beautiful decorations I have seen at 'The Pines,'
but not elsewhere. I have often seen 'D'Arcy' in the company of
several of the other characters introduced into _Aylwin_; for
instance, 'De Castro' and 'Symonds' (the late F. R. Leyland, at that
time the owner of the Leyland line of steamers, living at Prince's
Gate, where was the famous Peacock Room painted by Mr. Whistler). I
did not myself know that quaint character Mrs. Titwing, but I have
been told by people who knew her well that she is true to the life.
With regard to 'De Castro,' it is a matter of regret to those who
knew him that, after giving us that most vivid scene between 'D'Arcy'
and 'De Castro' at Scott's oyster-rooms (a place which Rossetti was
very fond of frequenting in those nocturnal rambles that caused 'De
Castro' to give him the name of Haroun al Raschid), the author did
not go on and paint to the full the most extraordinary man of the
very extraordinary group, the centre of which was Rossetti's Chelsea
house. Rossetti was a well-known figure at Scott's and at Rule's
oyster-rooms at the time he encountered 'Henry Aylwin.' That scene at
Scott's is, in my opinion, the most living thing in the book--a
picture that whenever I turn to it makes me feel that everything said
and done must have occurred. 'De Castro' seemed to belong not merely
to the Rossetti group, but to all groups, for he was brought into
touch with almost every remarkable man of his time, and fascinated
every one of them. Literary and artistic London was once full of
stories of him, and no one that knew him doubted he was what must be
called a man of genius--although a barren genius. Among others, he
was brought into close relations with Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and, I
think, Smetham ('Wilderspin'), and others.

[Footnote: This was George Hake, who died in Central Africa a few
years ago.]

Rossetti used to say that since Blake there has been no more
visionary painter in the art world than Smetham. Rossetti had a quite
affectionate feeling towards Smetham, and several of his pictures
(small ones) were on Rossetti's studio walls. I remember one or two
extraordinary pictures of his--especially one depicting a dragon in a
fen, of which Rossetti had a great opinion; and I believe this, with
other pictures of Smetham's, is in the hands of Mr. Watts-Dunton. The
author of _Aylwin_ would have been much amused had he seen, as I did,
in an American magazine the statement that 'Wilderspin' was
identified with William Morris--a man who was as much the opposite
of the visionary painter as a man can be. Morris, whom I had the
privilege of knowing very well, and with whom I have stayed at
Kelmscott during the Rossetti period, is alluded to in _Aylwin_
(chap. ix. book xv.) as the 'enthusiastic angler' who used to
go down to 'Hurstcote' to fish. At that time this fine old
seventeenth-century manor house was in the joint occupancy of
Rossetti and Morris. 'Wilderspin' was Smetham with a variation:
certain characteristics of another painter of genius were introduced,
I believe, into the portrait of him in _Aylwin_; and the story of
'Wilderspin's' early life was not that of Smetham. The series of
'large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams' supporting
the antique roof was a favourite resort of my own; but all the
ghostly noise that I there heard was the snoring of young owls--a
peculiar sound that had a special fascination for Rossetti; and after
dinner Rossetti, my brother, and I would go to the attics to listen
to them.

But a more singular mistake with regard to the _Aylwin_ characters
than that of Morris being confounded with 'Wilderspin' was that of
confounding, as certain newspaper paragraphs at the time did, 'Cyril
Aylwin' with Mr. Whistler. I am especially able to speak of this
character, who has been inquired about more than any other in the
book. I knew him, I think, even before I knew Rossetti and Morris, or
any of that group. He was a brother of Mr. Watts-Dunton's--Mr. Alfred
Eugene Watts. He lived at Park House, Sydenham, and died suddenly
either in 1870 or 1871, very shortly after I had met him at a wedding
party. Among the set in which I moved at that time he had a great
reputation as a wit and humorist. His style of humour always struck
me as being more American than English. While bringing out humorous
things that would set a dinner-table in a roar, he would himself
maintain a perfectly unmoved countenance. And it was said of him, as
'Wilderspin' says of 'Cyril Aylwin,' that he was never known to
laugh. The pen-picture of him in _Aylwin_ is one of the most vivid
things in the book.

With regard to the most original character in the story, those who
knew Clement's Inn, where I myself once resided, and Lincoln's Inn
Fields, will be able at once to identify Mrs. Gudgeon, who lived in
one of the streets running into Clare Market. Her business was that
of night coffee-stall keeper. At one time, I believe--but I am not
certain about this--she kept a stall on the Surrey side of Waterloo
Bridge, and it might have been there that, as I have been told, her
portrait was drawn for a specified number of early breakfasts by an
unfortunate artist who sank very low, but had real ability. Her
constant phrase was 'I shall die o' laughin'--I know I shall!' On
account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible
fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an
Irishwoman. But she was not: she was cockney to the marrow. Recluse
as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very
different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of
London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends.
With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, Mrs. Gudgeon was a
great favourite with the police, who were the constant butts of her
chaff.

With regard to the gipsies, although I knew George Borrow intimately,
and saw a great deal of Mr. Watts-Dunton's other Romany Rye friend,
the late Frank Groome, I did not know Sinfi Lovell or Rhona Boswell.
But I may say that those who have said that Sinfi Lovell was painted
from the same model as Mr. Meredith's Kiomi are mistaken. Sinfi
Lovell was extremely beautiful, whereas Kiomi, I believe, was never
very beautiful. But that they are represented as being contemporaries
and friends is shown by D'Arcy's mention of Kiomi in Scott's
oyster-rooms. The characters who figure in the early Raxton scenes I
cannot speak of for reasons which may be pretty obvious; nor can I
speak of the Welsh chapters in _Aylwin_, which have been a good deal
discussed in recent numbers of _Notes and Queries_. But being myself
an East Anglian by birth--one of my Christian names is St. Edmund,
because I was born at Bury St. Edmunds--I can say something about
what the East Anglian papers call 'Aylwinland,' and of the truth of
the pictures of the east coast to be found in the story, Since
_Aylwin_ was published an interesting attempt has been made by a
correspondent in the _Lowestoft Standard_ (25th August 1900) to
identify Pakefield Church as the 'Raxton' Church of the story, and
the writer of the letter mentions the most remarkable, and to me
quite new fact, that although the guide-books of Lowestoft and the
district are quite silent as to a curious crypt at the east end of
Pakefield Church, there is exactly such a crypt as that described in
_Aylwin_, and that in the early days of the correspondent in question
it was used as a storehouse for bones. The readers of _Aylwin_ will
remember the author's words: 'The crypt is much older than the
church, and of an entirely different architecture. It was once the
depository of the bones of Danish warriors killed before the Norman
conquest.'

THOMAS ST. E. HAKE.


In _Notes and Queries_ [9th S., ix. 369, 450; x. 16] a letter had
appeared, signed 'Jay Aitch,' inquiring as to the school of mystics
founded by Lavater, alluded to on page 83 of the _Illustrated
Aylwin_. This afforded Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake another opportunity of
unloading his wallet of Rossetti and _Aylwin_ lore. And in the same
journal, for 2nd August 1902, he wrote as follows:


The question raised by Jay Aitch as to the school of mystics founded
by Lavater, and the large book _The Veiled Queen_, by 'Philip
Aylwin,' which contains quotations that Jay Aitch affirms have
haunted him ever since he read them, are certainly questions about as
interesting as any that could have been raised in connexion with the
story. And in answering these queries I find an opportunity of saying
a few authentic words on a subject upon which many unauthentic ones
have been-uttered--that of the occultism of D. G, Rossetti and some
of his friends. It has been frequently said that Rossetti was a
spiritualist, and it is a fact that he went to several _seances_; but
the word 'spiritualism' seems to have a rather elastic meaning. A
spiritualist, as distinguished from a materialist, Rossetti certainly
was, but his spiritualism was not, I should say, that which in common
parlance bears this name. It was exactly like 'Aylwinism,' which
seems to have been related to the doctrines of the Lavaterian sect
about which Jay Aitch inquires. As a matter of fact, it was not the
original of 'Wilderspin' nearly so much as the original D'Arcy who
was captured by the doctrine of what is called in the story the
'Aylwinian.'

With regard to Johann Kaspar Lavater, Jay Aitch is no doubt aware
that, although this once noted writer's fame rests entirely upon his
treatise _Physiognomische Fragmente_, he founded a school of mystics
in Switzerland. This was before what is called spiritualism came into
vogue. I believe that the doctrines of _The Veiled Queen_ are closely
related to the doctrines of the Lavaterians; but my knowledge on this
matter is of a second-hand kind, and is derived from conversations
upon Lavater and his claims as a physiognomist, which I heard many
years ago at Coombe and during walks in Richmond Park, between the
author of _Aylwin_ and my father, who, admittedly a man of
intellectual grasp, went even further than Lavater.

A writer in the _Literary World_, in some admirable remarks upon this
story, is, as far as I know, the only critic who has dwelt upon the
extraordinary character of 'Philip Aylwin.' He says:


'The melancholy, the spiritual isolation, and the passionate love of
this master-mystic for his dead wife are so finely rendered that the
reader's sympathies go out at once to this most pathetic and lonely
figure....It would be difficult for any sensitive man or woman to
follow Philip Aylwin's story as related by his son without the
tribute of aching heart and scalding tears. To our thinking, the
man's sanity is more moving, more supremely tragic, than even the
madness of Winifred, which is the culminating tragedy of the book.'


I must say that I agree with this writer in thinking 'Philip Aylwin'
to be the most impressive character in the story. The most remarkable
feature of the novel, indeed, is that, although 'Philip Aylwin'
disappears from the scene so early, his opinions, his character, and
his dreams are cast so entirely over the book from beginning to end
that the novel might have been called _Philip Aylwin_. I have a
special interest in this character, because I knew the undoubted
original of the character with a considerable amount of intimacy.
Without the permission of the author of _Aylwin_, I can only touch on
outward traits--the deep, spiritual life of this man is beyond me.
Although a very near relation, he was not, as has been so often
surmised, the author's father. [Footnote] He was a man of
extraordinary learning in the academic sense of the word, and
possessed still more extraordinary general knowledge. He lived for
many years the strangest kind of hermit life, surrounded by his
books and old manuscripts. His two great passions were philology
and occultism. He knew more, I think, of those strange writers
discussed in Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_ than any other
person--including, perhaps, Vaughan himself; but he managed to
combine with his love of Mysticism a deep passion for the physical
sciences, especially astronomy. He seemed to be learning languages up
to almost the last year of his life. His method of learning languages
was the opposite of that of George Borrow, that is to say, he made
great use of grammars; and when he died it is said that from four to
five hundred treatises on grammar were found among his books. He used
to express great contempt for Borrow's method of learning languages
from dictionaries only.

[Footnote: He was Mr. Watts-Dunton's uncle--Mr. James Orlando Watts.]

I do not think that any one connected with literature--with the
exception of Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Swinburne, my father, and Dr. R.
G. Latham--knew so much of him as I did. His personal appearance was
exactly like that of 'Philip Aylwin,' as described in the novel.
Although he never wrote poetry, he translated, I believe, a good deal
from the Spanish and Portuguese poets. I remember that he was an
extraordinary admirer of Shelley. His knowledge of Shakespeare and
the Elizabethan dramatists was a link between him and Mr. Swinburne.

At a time when I was a busy reader at the British Museum
Reading-Room, I used frequently to see him, and he never seemed to
know any one among the readers except myself, and whenever he spoke
to me it was always in a hushed whisper, lest he should disturb the
other readers, which in his eyes would have been a heinous offence.
For very many years he had been extremely well known to the
second-hand booksellers, for he was a constant purchaser of their
wares. He was a great pedestrian, and, being very much attached to
the north of London, would take long, slow tramps ten miles out in
the direction of Highgate, Wood Green, etc. I have a very distinct
recollection of calling upon him in Myddelton Square at the time when
I was living close to him in Percy Circus. Books were piled up from
floor to ceiling, apparently in great confusion, but he seemed to
remember where to find every book and what there was in it. It is a
singular fact that the only person outside those I have mentioned who
seems to have known him was that brilliant but eccentric journalist,
Thomas Purnell, who had an immense opinion of him and used to call
him 'the scholar.' How Purnell managed to break through the icy wall
that surrounded the recluse always puzzled me; but I suppose they
must have come across one another at one of those pleasant inns in
the north of London where 'the scholar' was taking his chop and
bottle of Beaune. He was a man that never made new friends, and as
one after another of his old friends died he was left so entirely
alone that, I think, he saw no one except Mr. Swinburne, the author
of _Aylwin_, and myself. But at Christmas he always spent a week at
'The Pines,' when and where my father and I used to meet him. His
memory was so powerful that he seemed to be able to recall not only
all that he had read, but the very conversations in which he had
taken a part. He died, I think, at a little over eighty, and his
faculties up to the last were exactly like those of a man in the
prime of life. He always reminded me of Charles Lamb's description
of George Dyer.

Such is my outside picture of this extraordinary man; and it is only
of externals that I am free to speak here, even if I were competent
to touch upon his inner life. He was a still greater recluse than
the 'Philip Aylwin' of the novel. I think I am right in saying that
he took up one or two Oriental tongues when he was seventy years of
age. Another of his passions was numismatics, and it was in these
studies that he sympathized with the author of _Aylwin's_ friend, the
late Lord de Tabley. I remember one story of his peculiarities which
will give an idea of the kind of man he was. He had a brother who was
the exact opposite of him in every way--strikingly good-looking, with
great charm of mariner and _savoir faire_, but with an ordinary
intellect and a very superficial knowledge of literature, or, indeed,
anything else, except records of British military and naval
exploits--where he was really learned. Being full of admiration of
his student brother, and having a parrot-like instinct for mimicry,
he used to talk with great volubility upon all kinds of subjects
wherever he went, and repeat in the same words what he had been
listening to from his brother, until at last he got to be called the
'walking encyclopedia.' The result was that he got the reputation of
being a great reader and an original thinker, while the true student
and book-lover was frequently complimented on the way in which he
took after his learned brother. This did not in the least annoy the
real student, it simply amused him, and he would give with a dry
humour most amusing stories as to what people had said to him on this
subject.

THOMAS ST. E. HAKE.


The editor of _Notes and Queries_ has the following footnote:

'We hail some acquaintance with the being Mr. Hake depicts (Mr. James
Orlando Watts) and can testify to the truth of the portraiture.'



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