Aylwin

[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" c.o.c.k."

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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body."

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 superst.i.tions, 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 pa.s.sage 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.