Chapter 33

All the way Sinfi's eyes were fixed on the majestic forehead of y Wyddfa and the bastions of Lliwedd which seemed to guard it as though the Great Spirit of Snowdon himself was speaking to her and drawing her on, and she kept murmuring 'The two dukkeripens.'

But still she said nothing about her wedding, though that some such mad idea as that suggested by Rhona possessed her mind was manifest enough.

'Here we are at last,' she said, when we reached the pool for which we were bound; and setting down her little basket she stood and looked over to the valley beneath.

The colours were coming more quickly every minute, and the entire picture was exactly the same as that which I had seen on the morning when we last saw Winifred on the hills, so unlike the misty panorama that Snowdon usually presents. Y Wyddfa was silhouetted against the sky, and looked as narrow and as steep as the sides of an acorn. Here we halted and set down our basket.

As we did so she said, 'Hark! the Knockers! Don't you hear them? Listen, listen!'

I did listen, and I seemed to hear a peculiar sound as of a distant knocking against the rocks by some soft substance. She saw that I heard the noise.

'That's the Snowdon spirits as guards more copper mines than ever yet's been found. And they're dwarfs. I've seed 'em, and Winnie has. They're little, fat, short folk, somethin' like the woman in Primrose Court, only littler. Don't you mind the gal in the court said Winnie used to call the woman Knocker? Sometimes they knock to show to some Taffy as has pleased 'em where the veins of copper may be found, and sometimes they knock to give warnin' of a dangerous precipuss, and sometimes they knock to give the person as is talkin' warnin' that he's sayin' or doin' somethin' as may lead to danger. They speaks to each other too, but in a v'ice so low that you can't tell what words they're a-speakin', even if you knew their language. My crwth and song will rouse every spirit on the hills.'

I listened again. This was the mysterious sound that had so captivated Winnie's imagination as a child.

The extraordinary lustre of Sinfi's eyes indicated to me, who knew them so well, that every nerve, every fibre in her system, was trembling under the stress of some intense emotion. I stood and watched her, wondering as to her condition, and speculating as to what her crazy project could be.

Then she proceeded to unpack the little basket.

'This is for the love-feast,' said Sinfi.

'You mean betrothal feast,' I said. 'But who are the lovers?'

'You and the livin' mullo that you made me draw for you by my crwth down by Beddgelert--the livin' mullo o' Winnie Wynne.'

'At last then,' I said to myself, 'I know the form the mania has taken. It is not her own betrothal, but mine with Winnie's wraith, that is deluding her crazy brain. How well I remember telling her how I had promised Winnie as a child to be betrothed by Knockers' Llyn. Poor Sinfi! Mad or sane, her generosity remains undimmed.'

Before the breakfast cloth could be laid--indeed before the basket was unpacked--she asked me to look at my watch, and on my doing so and telling her the time, she jumped up and said, 'It's later than I thought. We must lay the cloth arterwards.' She then placed me in that same crevice overlooking the tarn whence Winnie had come to me on that morning.

Knockers' Llyn, it will perhaps be remembered, is enclosed in a little gorge opening by a broken, ragged fissure at the back to the east. Leading to this opening there is on one side a narrow, jagged shelf which runs half-way round the pool. Sinfi's movements now were an exact repetition of everything she did on that first morning of our search for Winnie.

While I stood partially concealed in my crevice, Sinfi took up her crwth, which was lying on the rock.

'What are you going; to do, Sinfi?' I said.

'I'm just goin' to bring back old times for you. You remember that mornin' when my crwth and song called Winnie to us at this very llyn? I'm goin' to play on my crwth and sing the same song now. It's to draw her livin' mullo, as I did at Bettws and Beddgelert, so that the dukkeripen of the "Golden Hand" may come true.'

'But how can it come true, Sinfi?' I said.

'The dukkeripen allus does come true, whether it's good or whether it's bad.'

'Not always,' I said.

'No, not allus,' she cried, starting up, while there came over her face that expression which had so amazed me at Beddgelert. When at last breath came to her she was looking towards y Wyddfa through the kindling haze.

'There you're right, Hal Aylwin. It ain't every dukkeripen as comes true. The dukkeripen allus comes true, unless it's one as says a Gorgio shall come to the Kaulo Camloes an' break Sinfi Lovell's heart. Before that dukkeripen shall come true Sinfi Lovell 'ud cut her heart out. Yes, my fine Gorgio, she'd cut it out--she'd cut it out and fling it in that 'ere llyn. She did cut it out when she took the cuss on herself. She's a-cuttin' it out now.'

Then without saying another word Sinfi took up her crwth and moved towards the llyn.

'You'll soon come back, Sinfi?' I said.

'We've got to see about that,' she replied, still pale and trembling from the effects of that sudden upheaval of the passion of a Titaness. 'If the livin' mullo does come you can't have a love-feast without company, you know, and I sha'n't be far off if you find you want me.'

She then took up her crwth, went round the llyn, and disappeared through the eastern cleft. In a few minutes I heard her crwth. But the air she played was not the air of the song she called the 'Welsh dukkerin' gillie' which I had heard by Beddgelert. It was the air of the same idyll of Snowdon that I first beard Winifred sing on the sands of Raxton. Then I heard in the distance those echoes, magical and faint, which were attributed by Winifred and Sinfi to the Knockers or spirits of Snowdon.

IV

There I stood again, as on that other morning, in the crevice overlooking the same llyn, looking at what might well have been the same masses of vapour enveloping the same peaks, rolling as then, boiling as then, blazing as then, whenever the bright shafts of morning struck them. There I stood again, listening to the wild notes of Sinfi's crwth in the distance, as the sun rose higher, pouring a radiance through the eastern gate of the gorge, and kindling the aerial vapours moving about the llyn till their iridescent sails suggested the wings of some enormous dragon-fly of every hue.

'Her song does not come,' I said, 'but, this time, when it does come, it will not befool my senses. Sinfi's own presence by my side--that magnetism of hers which D'Arcy spoke of--would be required before the glamour could be cast over me, now that I know she is crazy. Poor Sinfi! Her influence will not to-day be able to cajole my eyes into accepting her superstitious visions as their own.'

But as I spoke a sound fell, not upon my ears alone, but upon every nerve of my body, the sound of a voice singing, a voice that was not Sinfi's, but another's,

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

It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song on Raxton Sands. It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song in the London streets--Winnie's!

And then there appeared in the eastern cleft of the gorge on the other side of the llyn, illuminated as by a rosy steam, Winnie! Amid the opalescent vapours gleaming round the llyn, with eyes now shimmering as through a veil--now flashing like sapphires in the sun--there she stood gazing through the film, her eyes expressing a surprise and a wonder as great as my own.

'It is no phantasm--it is no hallucination,' I said, while my breathing had become a spasmodic, choking gasp.

But when I remembered the vision of Fairy Glen, I said, 'Imagination can do that, and so can the glamour cast over me by Sinfi's music. It does not vanish; ah, if the sweet madness should remain with me for ever! It does not vanish--it is gliding along the side of the llyn: it is moving towards me. And now those sudden little ripples in the llyn--what do they mean? The trout are flying from her shadow. The feet are grating on the stones. And hark! that pebble which falls into the water with a splash; the glassy llyn is ribbed and rippled with rings. Can a phantom do that? It comes towards me still. Hallucination!'

Still the vision came on.

When I felt the touch of her body, when I felt myself clasped in soft arms, and felt falling on my face warm tears, and on my lips the pressure of Winnie's lips--lips that were murmuring, 'At last, at last!'--a strange, wild effect was worked within me. The reality of the beloved form now in my arms declared itself; it brought back the scene where I had last clasped it.

Snowdon had vanished; the brilliant morning sun had vanished. The moon was shining on a cottage near Raxton Church, and at the door two lovers were standing, wet with the sea-water--with the sea-water through which they had just waded. All the misery that had followed was wiped out of my brain. It had not even the cobweb consistence of a dream.

When, after a while, Snowdon and the drama of the present came back to me, my brain was in such a marvellous state that it held two pictures of the same Winnie as though each hemisphere of the brain were occupied with its own vision. I was kissing Winnie's sea-salt lips in the light of the moon at the cottage door, and I was kissing them in the morning radiance by Knockers' Llyn. And yet so overwhelming was the mighty tide of bliss overflowing my soul that there was no room within me for any other emotion--no room for curiosity, no room even for wonder.

Like a spirit awakening in Paradise, I accepted the heaven in which I found myself, and did not inquire how I got there.

This did not last long, however. Suddenly and sharply the moonlight scene vanished, and I was on Snowdon, and there came a burning curiosity to know the meaning of this new life--the meaning of the life of pain that had followed the parting at the cottage door.

V

'Winnie,' I said, 'tell me where we are. I have been very ill since we parted in your father's cottage. I have had the wildest hallucinations concerning you; dreams, intolerable dreams. And even now they hang about me; even now it seems to me that we are far away from Raxton, surrounded by the hills and peaks of Snowdon. If they were real _you_ would be the dream, but you are real; this waist is real.'

'Of course we are on Snowdon, Henry!' said she. 'You must indeed have been ill--you must now be very ill--to suppose you are at Raxton.'

'But what are we doing here?' I said. 'How did we come here?'

'Let Badoura speak for herself only,' she said, with that arch smile of hers. She was alluding to the old days at Raxton, when she hoped that some day her little Camaralzaman would be carried by genii to her as she sat thinking of him by the magic llyn. 'The genie who brought me was Sinfi Lovell. But who brought Camaralzaman? That is a question,' she said, 'I am dying to have answered.'

At the name of Sinfi Lovell the past came flowing in.

'Then there _is_ a Sinfi Lovell, Winnie! And yet she is one of the figures in the dream. There was no Sinfi Lovell with us at Raxton.'

'Of course there is a Sinfi Lovell! You begin to make me as dazed as yourself. You have known her well; you and she were seeking me when I was lost.'

'Then you _were_ lost?' I said. 'That, then, is no dream. And yet if you were lost you have been--But you are alive, Winnie. Let me feel the lips on mine again. You are alive! Snowdon told me at last that you were alive, but I dared not believe it, my darling. I dared not believe that my misery would end thus--thus.'

There came upon her face an expression of distressed perplexity which did more than anything else to recall me to my senses.

'Winnie,' I said, 'my brain is whirling. Let us sit down.'

She sat down by my side.

'You thought your Winnie was dead, Henry. Sinfi Lovell has told me all about it.' Then, looking intently at me, she said, 'And how your sorrow has changed you, dear!'

'You mean it has aged me, Winnie. I have observed it myself, and people tell me it has made me look older than I am by many years. These furrows around the eyes--these furrows on my brow--you are kissing them, dear.'

'Oh, I love them; how I love them!' she said. 'I am not kissing them to smooth them away. To me every line tells of your love for Winnie.'

'And the hair, Winnie--look, it is getting quite grizzled.' Then, as the lovely head sank upon my breast. I whispered in her ears, 'Is there at last sorrow enough in the eyes, Winnie? Has the hardening effect of wealth coarsened my expression? Can a rich man for once enter the kingdom of love? Is the betrothal now complete? Are we both betrothed now?'

I stopped, for bliss and love were convulsing her with sobs until you might have supposed her heart was breaking.

While she lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my faculties and paralyse me.

After a while she became more composed, and sat in a trance, so to speak, of happiness.

But she remained silent. The conversation, I perceived, would have to be directed entirely by me. With the appalling seizures ever present in my mind, I felt that every word that came from my lips was dangerous.

'Look,' I said, 'the colours of the vapours round the llyn are as rich as they were when we breakfasted here together.'

'We breakfasted here together! Why, what do you mean?' she said, looking in my face. 'You forget, Henry, you never knew me in Wales at all; it was only at Raxton that you ever saw me.'

'I mean when you breakfasted with the Prince of the Mist. I was the Prince of the Mist, dear.'

She gave me a puzzled look which scared while it warned me. How cruel it seemed of Sinfi, who had planned this meeting, not to have told me how much and how little Winnie knew of the past.

'You know nothing about the Prince of the Mist except what I told you on Raxton sands,' she said. 'But you have been very ill; you will be well now.'

'Yes,' I said; 'I have found the life I had lost, and these dreams of mine will soon pass.'

As the conversation went on I began to see that she remembered our meetings on the sands--remembered everything up to a certain point. What was that point? This was the question that kept me on tenterhooks.

Every word she uttered, however, shed light into my mind, and served as a warning that I must feel my way cautiously. It was evident to me that in some unaccountable way Sinfi at some time after she left me at Beddgelert had discovered that Winnie was not really dead, and had brought her back to me--brought her back to me restored in mind, but with all memory of what had passed during her dementia erased from her consciousness. Everything depended now upon my learning how much of her past she did remember. A single ill-judged word of mine--a single false move--might ruin all, and bring back the life of misery which I seemed at last to have left behind me.

VI

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have not yet told me how you came here. You have not yet told me how it is that you meet me on Snowdon--meet me in this wonderful way.'

'Oh,' said she with a smile, 'Badoura has been a mere puppet in the play. She had no idea she was going to meet her prince. Sinfi was suddenly seized with a desire that she and I should come back, and visit the dear old places we knew together. I was nothing loth, as you may imagine, but I could not understand what had made her set her heart upon it. When we reached Carnarvonshire I found that Sinfi's people were all encamped near to Bettws y Coed, and we went and stayed there. We visited all the places in the neighbourhood that were associated with her childhood and mine.'

'You went to Fairy Glen?' I said.

'Yes; we went there the night before last and saw it in the moonlight.'

'I was there, and I saw you.'

'Ah! Then the man sitting on the boulder at the bottom was you! How wonderful! Sinfi was there on the step round the corner; she must have seen you. I know now why she suddenly hurried me away. She had told me that she wanted to see the Glen by moonlight'

'Then you did not know that you would meet me here?'

'My dear Henry, do you suppose that if I had known, I could have been induced to take part in anything so theatrical? When I saw you standing here my amazement and joy were so great that I forgot the strange way in which I stood exhibited.'

I felt that the longer she chatted about such matters as these the more opportunities I should get of learning how much and how little she knew of her own story, so I said,

'But tell me how Sinfi contrived to trick you.'

'Well, this morning was the time fixed for our visiting Llyn Coblynau, as we call Knockers' Lynn, which was my favourite place as a child. We were to see it when the colours of the morning were upon it. Then we were to go right to the top of Snowdon and take a mid-day meal at the hut there, and in the evening go down to Llanberis and sleep there. To-morrow morning we were to go to dear old Carnarvon and see again the beloved sea. I find now that her plan was to bring you and me together in this sensational way.'

'Will she join us?' I asked.

'I know no more than you what will be Sinfi's next whim. At the last moment yesterday I was surprised to find that I was not to come with her here, as she was not to sleep in the camp last night because she had promised to see a friend at Capel Curig. And now, shall I tell you how she inveigled me into taking my part in this Snowdon play she was getting up? She told me that she had the greatest wish to discover how the "Knockers' echoes," as they are called, would sound if, in the early morning, she were to play her crwth in one spot and I were to answer it from another spot with a verse of a Welsh song. It seemed a pretty idea, and it was agreed that when I reached the llyn I was to go round it to the opening at the east, pass through the crevice, and wait there till I heard her crwth.'

'Well, Winnie, I must say that the way in which our Gypsy friend manipulated you, and the way in which she manipulated me, shows a method that would have done credit to any madness.'

'You? How did she trick you?'

I was determined not to talk about myself till I had felt my way.

'Winnie, dear,' I said, 'seeing you is such a surprise, and my illness has left me so weak, that I must wait before talking about myself. I shall be more able to do this after I have learnt more of what has befallen you. You say that Sinfi proposed to bring you to Wales; but where were you when she did so? And what brought you into contact with Sinfi again after--after--after you and I were parted in Raxton?'

'Ah! that is a strange story indeed,' said Winifred. 'It bewilders me to recall it as much as it will bewilder you when you come to hear it. I, too, seem to have been ill, and quite unconscious for months and months.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'tell me this strange story about yourself. Tell it in your own way, and do not let me interrupt you by a word. Whenever you see that I am about to speak, stop me--put your hand over my mouth.'

'But where am I to begin?'

'Begin from our first meeting on the sands on the night of the landslip.'

But while I spoke I thought I observed her looking at the breakfast provided by Sinfi with something like the same wistful expression that was on her face on that morning forgotten by her but remembered by me so well, when she breakfasted so heartily on the same spot.

'Winnie,' I said, 'this mountain air has given me a voracious appetite. I wonder whether you could manage to eat some of these good things provided by our theatrical manageress?'

'I wonder whether I could,' said Winnie; 'I'll try--if you'll ask me no questions, but talk about Snowdon and watch the changes of the glorious morning. But we must call Sinfi.'

'No, no. I want to talk to you alone first. By the time your story is over I at least shall be ready for another breakfast, and then we will call her.'

This was agreed upon, and I sat down to my second breakfast with Winnie beside Knockers' Llyn. I sat with my face opposite to the llyn, and we had scarcely begun when I noticed Sinfi's face peeping round a corner of the little gorge. Winnie's back being turned from the llyn she did not see Sinfi, who gave me a sign that her part of that performance was to be looker-on.

I have not time to dwell upon what was said and done during our breakfast in this romantic place, and under these more than romantic circumstances. During the whole of the time the Knockers kept up their knockings, and it really seemed as though the good-natured goblins were expressing their welcome to the child of y Wyddfa.

XV

THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON'S STORY

I