"Why, then, if it please your honour, her name be Winifred--her other
name be Bevan--_Miss_ Bevan, the school--her father be Mister Bevan of
Llaneol, steward that was to our old squire of the great house, 'the
Hall'--Talylynn Hall--where there's a fine lake. I warrant your honour
has fished there. You Saesonig gentlemen do mostly do nothing but fish
and shoot in our poor country; I beg pardon, but you look _Saesoniadd_,
(Saxonlike,) I was thinking--fine lake, but the trout be not to
compare"----
"Well," interrupted the other laughing, "your English tongue can wag as
glib as your outlandish one. A sweetheart in the case there, isn't
there? What the devil's she going down to the river for at this time of
night, else?"
"Why, to be sure there be!" the man answered. "_We_ all know that; poor
thing, she had need find some comforter in all her troubles--her father
so poor, and in debt to this strange foreigner, who's on the water
coming home now, and has made proposals for her in marriage, so they do
_say_; but it's like your honour knows more of that than I do--for be
not you Mr Lewis, I beg pardon, Lewis Lewis, esquire?"
"And what do you know of this sweetheart of hers? Is he her _first_,
think ye? _I_ doubt that," rejoined Lewis, not noticing his enquiry----
"_You_ may doubt what your honour pleases, but _we_ don't--no; never man
touched her _hand_ hardly, never one her lips, before--I did have it
from her mother; but as for this one she's found at last, we wish she'd
a better"----
"What's the matter with him, then?"
"Oh, nothing more than that he's poor, sir--poor; and that _we_ don't
know much about the stranger"----
"What '_we_' do you mean, while you talk of 'we'?"
"Lord bless ye, sir, why us all of this bankside, and this side Tivy,
the great family of us, she's just like _our_ little girl to us all; for
don't she have all our young ones to give 'em learning, whether the
Cardigan ladies pay for 'em or don't? And wasn't poor dear old John
Bevan the man who would lend every farmer in the parish a help in money
or any way, only for asking? So it is, you see, she has grown up among
us. This young man, though he may be old for what I know, never seeing
him in my life--you see, sir, we on this side of Tivy are like strangers
to the Cardy men, t'other side--_they_ are _Cardie's_, sure enow, _true_
ones, as the Saxon foreign folk do call us _all_ of this shire. I
wouldn't trust one of 'em t'other side, no further than I could throw
him. I'll tell ye a story"----
"Never mind. What about David?"
"Oh, ho! You know his name, then? Well, and that's all _I_ do--pretty
nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died
in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that
lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has
been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns,
possesses,) a beautiful harp--_beautiful_! The Lord knows, some do say,
that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon
he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings,
where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy
_Telynwr_! Yet, by my soul, we all say we'd rather see her his than this
foreigner gentleman's, who has almost broke her heart, they say, by
coming between her and her own dear one."
"He's _not_ come yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and
bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a
beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than to a gentleman."
"Why--to be sure, sir--but vows be vows--love's love--and to tell truth,
sir," (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up,) "if any
foreign, half Welsh, half wild Indian, sort of gentleman had sent his
fine letters, asking my sweetheart's friends to turn _me_ off, in my
courting days, and prepare my wench to be his lady, instead of my
wife--I'd have--I'd have"--
"_What_ would you have done?" asked the other, laughing heartily.
"Cursed him to St Elian!" roared the other; then, dropping his voice
into a solemn tone, "put him into his well.[21] _I'd_ have plagued him,
I warrant. But for _my_ part," added the man archly, "I don't believe
there's any _squire_ lover in the case--nor that your honour ever said
there is." The agent here vanished, as if in haste, abruptly, down the
steep path.
During this conversation, Winifred had reached the river. While she
stands expectant, not in happiness, but in tears, it is time to say a
few words of the lover so expected.
David, who was lately become known "on t'other side Tivy," by the name
of _Nosdethiol Telynwr_, that is, "night-walking harper," was an idle
romantic young man, almost grown out of youth, who had long lived away
from Wales, where he had neither relative nor friend but one aged woman
who had been his first nurse, he having been early left an orphan.
Without settled occupation or habits, he was understood almost to depend
for bread on the salmon he caught, and trifling presents received. A
small portable harp, of elegant workmanship, (adorned with "_real_
silver," so _ran the tale_,) was the companion of his moonlight
wanderings. He had a whim of serenading those who had never heard of a
"serenade," but were not the less sensible of a placid pleasure at being
awakened by soft music in some summer sight. The simple mountain
cottagers, whose slumbers he thus broke or soothed, often attributed the
sweet sounds to the kindness of some wandering member of the "Fair
Family," or _Tylwyth Têg_, the fairies. Nor did his figure, if
discovered vanishing between the trees, if some one ventured to peep
out, in a light night, dispel the illusion; for it appears, that the
fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature."[22] That
he was "very learned," had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books,
however little of men, was reported on both sides of the river; and
these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred,
who had so rashly given all her thoughts, all her hopes, all her heart
almost, (reserving only one sacred corner for her beloved parents,) to
this dangerous stranger--for stranger he was still to her in almost all
outer circumstances of life. This was partly owing to the interposition
of that narrow river, however trivial a line of demarcation that must
appear to English people, accustomed to cross even great rivers of
commerce, like the Thames, as they would step over a brook or ditch, by
the frequent aid of bridges and boats. In Wales, bridges are too costly
to be common. When reared, some unlucky high flood often sweeps them
away. Intercourse by ferryboats and fords is liable to long
interruptions. The dwellers of opposite sides frequent different
markets, and belong frequently to different counties. The nature of the
soil also often differs wholly. Hence it happens, that sometimes a
farmer, whose eye rests continually on the little farm and fields of
another, on the opposite "bank," rising from the river running at the
base of his own confronting hill-side, lives on, ignorant almost of the
name, quite of the character, of their tenant, to whom he could almost
make himself heard by a shout--if it happens that neither ford, ferry,
nor bridge, is within short distance.
"The people of t'other side," is an expression implying nearly as much
strangeness, and contented ignorance of these neighbours, and no
neighbours, as the same spoken by the people of Dover or Calais, of
those t'other side the Channel. It was not, therefore, surprising that
poor Winifred (albeit not imprudent, save in this new-sprung passion,)
might have said with the poet, too truly,
"I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in that heart;
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art."
This wild reckless sentiment (though scarcely true to love's nature,
which is above all things curious about all belonging to its object) did
in her case illustrate her feelings. Winifred had lately disclosed to
her dear "unknown" the ruin impending over her father, the result of his
mingled good-nature and indolence, he having permitted the tenants to
run in arrears, and suffer dilapidations, as already said;--the long
neglect, however, of the East Indian landlord being at the root of the
evil, who had been as remiss in his dealings with the steward as the
steward with the tenants. The first appearance of this newly appointed
agent, who announced the early return of his employer to take possession
of the decayed manor-house, was as sudden as ominous of the ruin of old
John Bevan. The hope he held out of the "Nabob" espousing his
long-remembered child, Winifred, and the consequent salvation of her
father, seemed too romantic to be believed. Yet this man proved himself
duly accredited by his principal, and exercised his power already with
severity. The fine old house of Talylynn, a mansion rising close to a
small beautiful lake skirted by an antique park with many deer, was
already almost prepared for the reception of the "squire from abroad."
Meanwhile--what most excited the ill-will of the tenantry--this odious
persecutor of the all-beloved John Bevan had also furbished up a neat
old house adjoining the park gate, as a residence for himself; while
poor Bevan's farm-house of Llaneol was suffered to fall into ruinous
decay--the new steward even neglecting to keep it weather-tight.
Thus decayed, and almost ruinous, it seemed more in harmony with the
fortunes of the ever resigned and patient man. But his less placid dame,
after losing the services of Winifred, had fallen into a peevish sort of
despondency, as the father, missing her society, and its finer species
of consolation, had sunk into a more placid apathy.
David had received the hint of her possible self-devotion to the coming
"squire" with very little philosophy, little temper, and no allowance
for the feelings of an only daughter expecting to see a white-headed,
fond father, dragged from his home to a jail. He had been incensed; he
had wronged her by imputations of sordid motives--of pride, of contempt
for _himself_ as a beggar; and at last broke from her in sullen
resentment, after requiring her to bring all his letters, at their next
interview, which was to be a farewell one. And now she was bringing
every thing she had received from him, in sad obedience to this angry
demand. Nor was all his wrath, his injustice, and his despair, really
unacceptable to her secret heart. She would not have had him patient
under even the prospective possibility of her marrying another.
But his manner at this meeting announced a change in his whole
sentiments.
His very first words, (cold, yet kind, but how altered in tone!) with
his constrained deportment, expressed his acquiescence in her purpose,
whether pride, jealousy, or a juster estimate of her filial virtue, had
induced the stern resolve.
Winifred had never known the full strength of her own passion till now!
The idea of an early eternal end to their ungratified loves, which had
for some time become familiar to her own secret mind, assumed a new and
strange terror for her imagination the moment it ceased to be hers
_alone_. The shock was novel and overpowering, when the separation
seemed acquiesced in by him, thus putting it out of her own power to
hesitate further between devotion to the lover or to the parent. His
reconciled manner, his calm taking her by the hand, even the kiss which
she could not resist, were more painful than his utmost resentment would
have been. Yet there was a sad severity in his look, as his fine
countenance of deep melancholy turned to the bright moon, which a little
comforted her, and indicated that it was pride rather than patience
which led to his affected contentment. _He_ had not a parent to nerve
_his_ heart to the sacrifice.
"I passed _your_ home yesterday," he began sarcastically: "it is a fine
place again, already, that hall of Talylynn, and wants only as fine a
mistress."
"You wrong me, David _bach_! on my life and soul you do, _dear_ David!"
she replied sobbing. "'Tis a hateful hall--a horrid hall! If it were
only I, your poor lost Winifred, that was to suffer, oh! how much sooner
would I be carried dead into a vault, than alive, and dressed in all the
finest silks of India, into that dreadful house you twit me
with!--unkind, unkind!" And almost fainting, her head sunk upon his
shoulder, and his arm was required to support her.
Instantly she recovered, and stood erect. "But oh, David, there is
another dreadful place, and another dear being besides you, dearest,
that I think of night and day! The horrid castle jail--my dear, dear
father! Oh, if this Lewis speaks truth, and if that strange boy--I only
knew him as a boy, you know--who has power to ruin him, (_will_ surely
ruin him!) will _indeed_ forgive him all he owes; will really become his
son--his son-in-law, instead of his merciless creditor; oh! could I
refuse _my_ part, shocking part though it be? I should not suffer long,
David--I feel I should not."
"And pray, what _kind_ of youth--_boy_ as you are pleased to call
him--was this nabob then?" enquired her lover, apparently startled at
learning the fact of her having had some previous knowledge of his
powerful rival.
"A youth! a mere child, when I last saw him," she answered. "I thought
you had known all about him."
"Nothing more than his name; how came you in his company?"
"His father, living in India, was half-brother to our old squire,
Fitzarthur of Talylynn. His mother dying, his widower father, whose
health was broken up before, came over here, this being his native
country, in hope of recovering it; but died at Talylynn, leaving one
child, that little orphan boy, heir, after his half-uncle's death, to
all this property. You have often heard me tell how like two brothers my
dear father and _our_ old squire were always--though father was only a
steward--how he used to have me at the great house, for a month at a
time, where he had me taught by a lady who lived with him, before I went
to school; and so I used often to see that little boy in black--very
queer and sullen he was thought; but he had no playfellow, except an owl
that he kept tame, I remember, and cried when he buried him in the
garden,--the only time he was ever known to cry, he was so still and
stern. It was _I_ caught him, then acting the sexton by himself, close
by the high box hedge, under a great tree. I remember the spot now, and
remember how angry I made him by laughing."
"And you did wrong to laugh, if it was so serious to him."
"Oh! but I did not know he was crying when I laughed, and _was_ sorry
when I detected it. One thing was, the old gentleman was so jovial, and
loved a good laugher, and was rather too fond of wine, and mostly out
hunting, so that the poor boy had to find his own amusement. He seemed
fond of me, but hated, he said, his uncle, and his hounds, and his ways,
and every thing there but his own owl; so that nobody was sorry when he
was fetched back to India, to be put in the where he was to make the
fortune he has now made, I suppose."
"And your little heart did throb a little, and sink for a day, when this
playfellow was shipped off for life, as you thought, and you _did_
remember his funeral tears over his owl, and"--a quaver of voice and
betrayed earnestness revealed the jealous pang shooting across the heart
of the speaker; but her own was too heavy and deeply anxious to prolong
this desultory talk.
She only added--"Heaven knows how little I thought that poor stranger
boy would ever grow to be what he is to me now."
"_What he is to you?_ Why, what then is he, Winifred?"
"The horror of my thoughts, my dreams, my"----she answered sobbing. "But
why should I say so? Wicked I am to feel him so, if he is _indeed_ to be
the saviour of my dear, dear father!" And she turned away to shed
relieving tears.
"And this little packet contains my letters--_all_, does it?" he asked,
touching the small parcel she had deposited within a cleft of the hollow
river-side tree, by which they stood, the post-office of their happier
days, where, concealed by thick moss gathered from the bole, those
letters had every one been searched for and found--with what a leap of
heart, first felt! how fondly thrust into her bosom, for the leisure
delight of opening at home--and all in vain!
"All but one," she answered tremulously; "I brought then because you
bade me--but you were so angry _then_--let me take them back?" and she
clutched them eagerly. "At least we may wait, David--we don't know yet;
I do suspect that Lewis Lewis--he shuns me as if he was conscious of
some wickedness; he's as horrid to me as his master--the thought of his
master--I do forbode something awful from that man! It was but just
before I heard you brushing among those great low branches, in your
coracle, that I fancied I saw him stealing, as if to watch, or perhaps
waylay you; but I am full of dismal thoughts."
He had not the heart to force his letters, so reluctantly resigned, from
her chilly hand. But he held in his what was calculated to inspire pain
quite as poignant. In the fond admiration of her fancy's first object,
she had vehemently longed for a portrait of that rather singular face--a
long oval, with lofty forehead, already somewhat corrugated by habits of
deep thought, in his lonely night-loving existence; its mixture of
passion, dumb poetry, its constitutional or adventitious profound
melancholy, ever present, till his countenance gradually lighted up,
after her coming and her animating discourse, like some deep gloomy
valley growing light as the sun surmounts a lofty bank, gleaming through
its pines. She had forced him to take a piece of money for procuring
this so desired keepsake, and every time they met, she had fondly hoped
to have the little portrait put into her hand. Now, instead, he
presented the unused money--would she retain the image of a sweetheart
in the home of her stern and lordly husband? Her heart confessed that
she must no longer wish for it--but it sunk within her at the thought,
how soon that innocent would be a guilty wish; and when he surprised her
with the money so suddenly, she involuntarily shuddered, forebore to
close her hand upon it, let it slide from her palm, and murmured only
with her innocent plaintiff voice, "I shall never have your picture
now--_never_!" And then she dejected her eyes to the little parcel of
letters, written, received, kissed, and kept, like something holy, so
long in vain; and all the charming hopeful hours in which each was
found, when some longer absence had given to each a deeper interest, and
higher value--those hours never to return, came shadowing over her mind,
memory, and soul, and a lethargy of despairing grief imposed a
ghost-like semblance of calm on her whole figure, and her face slowly
assumed a deadly paleness, even to the lips, visible even by the moon.
David grew alarmed, relapsed into the full fondness of former hours,
folded the dumb, drooping, and agonized young woman in his arms, to his
bosom! without her betraying consciousness, and yet she was not
fainting; she stood upright, and her eyes, though fixed as if glazed,
still expressed love in their almost shocking fixedness.
The young man grew terrified. "Look up! speak to me! Winifred, _dear_
Winifred, my _own_ Winifred, in spite of all!" he broke forth. "Smile at
me, my dearest, once more, and keep these foolish letters you so value,
keep them _all_." And he thrust them into her passive hand.
Aroused by his words and action, poor Winifred, starting with a gasp,
wildly kissed the little packet, and thanked him by an embrace more
passionate than her prudence or modesty would have permitted, had they
been happy.
"And my portrait--my ugliness in paint, and on ivory too, dearest, you
shall have yet, as you desire it," he added, forcing pleasantry; "only
do not fall into that frightful sort of trance again."
He little knew what deadliness of thoughts, almost of purpose, had
produced that long abstracted fit. The most exemplary prudence (the
result of a sound mind and heart) had characterised this young woman
till now. While yet at home, her bodily activity surprised her parents.
Their means having been long but low, they had little help in their
dairy and small farming concerns. She often surprised her mother with
the sight of the butter already churned, the ewes already milked, or the
cheeses pressed, when she arose. She was abroad in the heavy dews of
morning, when the sun at midsummer rises in what is properly the night,
regarded as the hour of rest--abroad, happy and cheerful, calling the
few cows in the misty meadows. Nor did this habit of early rising
prevent her indulging at night her _one_ unhappy habit--romance-reading;
a pleasure which she enjoyed through the kindness of many ladies of the
town of Cardigan, who afterwards established her in her school at K----.
They supplied her with these dangerous volumes that exalted
passion--love in excess--above all the aims and pursuits of
life: represented her who loves most madly as most worthy of
sympathy; and even, too often, crowned the heroine with the palm of
self-martyrdom--making suicide itself no longer a crime or folly, but
almost a virtue, under certain contingencies.
When poverty increased, the activity of her powerful intellect was
brought into display, as much as her personal activity had been, in
devising resources. She had acquired some skill in drawing, through the
kindness of the neighbouring gentry, and she improved herself so far as
to execute very respectable drawings of the ruins of Kilgerran Castle,
on her own river, and other fine scenes of Wales; and these were sold
for her (or rather for her parents) by others, at fairs and wakes, where
she never appeared herself. When residing at the village, her wheel was
heard in the morning before others were stirring, and at late night,
after every other one was still. Her little light, gleaming in the lofty
village, espied between the hanging trees, was the guiding star of the
belated fisher up the narrow goat's-path which led to the village, who
could always obtain light for his pipe at "_Miss Bevan's_, the school,"
when not a casement had exhibited a taper for hours. But the evil of all
this wear and tear of mind and body was, that it maintained an unnatural
state of excitement in the one, and of weakness (disguised by that fever
of imagination) in the other. Sleep, the preserver of health and
tranquillity of mind, was exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night
reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy, or
the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions, while nature
demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper--he
recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand, from
having fallen asleep through exertion, and restoring it with a grace
quite romance-hero like--produced a new era, and new excitement--that of
the heart. Thenceforth, she became "of imagination all compact," however
her strong sense preserved her purity and virtue. But no more dangerous
lover could be imagined than such a loose hanger-on, rather than member,
of society as David the _Telynwr_--for _his_ nature was _hers_; except,
perhaps, in virtuous resolution, he was a female Winifred. Yet he
possessed a romantic "leaning, at least, to virtue's side."
This was oddly exemplified now, (to return to their present position;)
for as soon as her partial recovery had removed his alarm, he grew cold,
and almost severe in his manner, and broke forth--
"_So_, then, Winifred would willingly pore over the love-letters of a
sweetheart while under a husband's roof! She thinks this beauty enough
for _him_--she would reserve her thoughts, wishes, every thing else, for
his old rival;--every thing but what a ring, and a few words, makes his
right by law, the poor husband is to leave to any old sweetheart that
may come prowling round his gates! That's gross! Is it _not_, Winifred?"
Alas! the heart-broken young woman had been meditating on far other
issue to their brief attachment! On death!--death on her wedding-day, as
the only means of preserving at once her father's liberty and her own
virtue; for her reading had taught her that marriage, where the mind and
heart were so wholly engaged elsewhere, was no better than legalised
prostitution. With a look of dark intensity of meaning, Winifred broke
her lengthened silence, saying hollowly--
"I was not looking so far forward--I was not looking beyond _that_
day--not to that"----_night_, she would have said, but modesty stopped
her speech. "And _you_ can be so calm! so thoughtful! _You_ can be
reasoning about my duties during a life! you can be pleading for _my_
future husband! Oh, I wish I were like you! And yet, I bless God, that
you are not like _me_! I would not have you feel as I do for the world!
No, not even know what I am feeling, thinking, dearest, at this moment."
"No!" David again muttered, more and more severely, "I cannot submit to
have my letters and trifling keepsakes to be tossed about by _him_! It
is weakness to wish it, Winifred Bevan; and worse for me to grant it."
"You shall have them all--all--all!" she exclaimed in passionate agony
composed of tenderness, anguish, anger, recklessness, with a bitterness
of irony keener to her own heart, than to him who roused that terrible
reaction of her nature. "I'll run and fetch them all this very night!
Oh, they'll serve for _your_ new love. You may copy your letters. I'm
sure, if she have a human heart, they'll move it--they'll win it! Strike
my name out, and you may send the very letters. She will not know that
another heart was broken by giving them up! She will not know the stains
are tears of pleasure dropped upon them! And you shall have _that_ too,
if you will--if you must!"
"Which? what? dearest creature, but compose yourself--pray do!" he said,
again alarmed.
"_That_ you sent with the lock of hair--_this_ hair!" she answered
wildly. "But you _will_ leave me the little lock? Oh, there's plenty to
cut for _another_ here!" and she laughed hysterically, frightfully, and
played with his profusion of raven hair; but it was mournful play.
"Leave me--_do_ leave poor Winifred that, David, for the love of God! In
mercy, leave it! I will not ask for the picture again--I will not _wish_
it, if _you_ say I must not; but the hair--the poor bit of hair--he! oh,
misery! he shall never see it! I myself will never cry over it--never
look at it, if you think it wrong--never till I'm dying, David--dying!
There will be no harm then, you know, in looking--in a poor dying
creature's look, who has done with passions, life, love, every thing.
And none--none shall see it but those who lay me out, or they who find
my--oh! we none of us know where we may die, or how! It may be alone,
dearest--_alone_! Oh, the comfort it will be to have a part of very
_you_ to hold--to hold by, like this very hand, in my death-damp one.
Let me have it!" she shrilly implored, in delirious energy. "I want it
to take with me to my death-bed--to my death-pit--my grave, whatever it
may be--to heaven itself--to our place of meeting again, if it were
possible! Oh, that it _were_ possible! and that I might bring back to
you there the kiss--the long kiss--you shall leave on these wretched
lips when we part for ever and for ever here! _Will_ you take it from
me, David, my heart, my soul? No, you will not?"
The crisis of love's parting agony was at its height. Half-conscious of
her own dangerous prostration of soul and mind under its power, she
turned from the dear object, and rested her forehead against the trunk
of their old tree of assignation; and a steady, sadder shower of tears,
relieving her full heart, followed this storm of various and rapid
emotions, sweeping over one weakened mind, like thunderclouds charged
with electric fire, borne on a whirlwind over a whole landscape, in a
few minutes of mingled gloom and glory. For, in the sublime of passion,
whatever be its nature, is there not a terrible joy, a secret glorifying
of the earthy nature, which we may compare to such elemental war--now
hanging all heaven in mourning, and bringing night on noonday, and
presently illuminating that day with a ghastly, momentary light,
brilliant even beyond its own?