Chapter 14

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 trúshul as has been stole.'

'A trúshul?'

'What you call a cross. There's nothin' in the world so strong for cussin' and blessin' as a trúshul, unless the stars shinin' in the river or the hand in the clouds is as strong. Why, I tell you there's nothin' a trúshul 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 trúshul _can't_ do if it likes. Hav'n't you never heer'd o' the dukkeripen o' the trúshul 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.