Chapter IX: Introduction: To the Snowdon Edition of 1901 (6)

'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 Salpêtrière 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 Salpêtrière, where Marini is treating such cases by transmitting through magnetism the patient's seizure to a healthy subject.'

'Will she recover?'

'Without the Salpêtrière 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'hôte_ 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-pheémous 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!'