Aylwin

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 pa.s.sage 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sionate 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, _n.o.blesse 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 b.u.t.tons, 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 a.s.sociation 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 superst.i.tions 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 mult.i.tudinous 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, b.u.t.tercups 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 anch.o.r.ed to a heavy block of granite which she had fastened to a rope and heaved overboard with a strength that would have surpa.s.sed 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 gla.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.sification 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."