II

So sweet a sound as that childish voice I had never heard before.

I held my breath and listened.

Into my very being that child-voice passed, and it was a new music

and a new joy. I can give the reader no notion of it, because there

is not in nature anything with which I can compare it. The blackcap

has a climacteric note, just before his song collapses and dies, so

full of pathos and tenderness that often, when I had been sitting on

a gate in Wilderness Road, it had affected me more deeply than any

human words. But here was a note sweet and soft as that, and yet

charged with a richness no blackcap's song had ever borne, because no

blackcap has ever felt the joys and sorrows of a young human soul.

The voice was singing in a language which seemed strange to me then,

but has been familiar enough since:

Bore o'r cymwl aur,

Eryri oedd dy gaer.

Bren o wyllt a gwar,

Gwawr ysbrydau.[Footnote]

[Footnote: Morning of the golden cloud,

Eryrl was thy castle,

King of the wild and tame,

Glory of the spirits of air!]

[Eryri--the Place of Eagles, i.e. Snowdon.]

Intense curiosity now made me suddenly forget my troubles. I

scrambled back through the trees not tar from that spot and looked

around. There, sitting upon a grassy grave, beneath one of the

windows of the church, was a little girl, somewhat younger than

myself apparently. With her head bent back she was gazing up at the

sky and singing, while one of her little hands was pointing to a tiny

cloud that hovered like a golden feather over her head. The sun,

which had suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair

(for she was bare-headed) gave it a metallic lustre, and it was

difficult to say what was the colour, dark bronze or black. So

completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her

strange song or incantation seemed addressed, that she did not

observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up

in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was

singing, as if in rivalry. As I slowly approached the child, I could

see by her forehead (which in the sunshine gleamed like a globe of

pearl), and especially by her complexion, that she was uncommonly

lovely, and I was afraid lest she should look down before I got close

to her, and so see my crutches before her eyes encountered my face.

She did not, however, seem to hear me coming along the grass (so

intent was she with her singing) until I was close to her, and

throwing my shadow over her. Then she suddenly lowered her head and

looked at me in surprise. I stood transfixed at her astonishing

beauty. No other picture has ever taken such possession of me. In its

every detail it lives before me now. Her eyes (which at one moment

seemed blue grey, at another violet) were shaded by long black

lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way, and these matched

in hue her eyebrows, and the tresses that were tossed about her

tender throat and were quivering in the sunlight.

All this picture I did not take in at once; for at first I could see

nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up

into my face. Gradually the other features (especially the sensitive

full-lipped mouth) grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here

seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my

loveliest dreams of beauty beneath the sea. Yet it was not her beauty

perhaps, so much as the look she gave me, that fascinated me, melted

me.

As she gazed in my face there came over hers a look of pleased

surprise, and then, as her eyes passed rapidly down my limbs and up

again, her face was not overshadowed with the look of disappointment

which I had waited for--yes, waited for, like a pinioned criminal for

the executioner's uplifted knife; but the smile of pleasure was still

playing about the little mouth, while the tender young eyes were

moistening rapidly with the dews of a kind of pity that was new to

me, a pity that did not blister the pride of the lonely wounded

sea-gull, but soothed, healed, and blessed.

Remember that I was a younger son--that I was swarthy--that I was a

cripple--and that my mother--had Frank. It was as though my heart

must leap from my breast towards that child. Not a word had she

spoken, but she had said what the little maimed 'fighting Hal'

yearned to hear, and without _knowing_ that he yearned.

I restrained myself, and did not yield to the feeling that impelled

me to throw my arms round her neck in an ecstasy of wonder and

delight. After a second or two she again threw back her head to gaze

at the golden cloud.

'Look!' said she, suddenly clapping her hands, 'it's over both of us

now.'

'What is it?' I said.

'The Dukkeripen,' she said, 'the Golden Hand. Sinfi and Rhona both

say the Golden Hand brings luck: what _is_ luck?'

I looked up at the little cloud which to me seemed more like a golden

feather than a golden hand. But I soon bent my eyes down again to

look at her.

While I stood looking at her, the tall figure of a man came out of

the church. This was Tom Wynne. Besides being the organist of Raxton

'New Church,' Tom was also (for a few extra shillings a week)

custodian of the 'Old Church,' this deserted pile within whose

precincts we now were. Tom's features wore an expression of virtuous

indignation which puzzled me, and evidently frightened the little

girl. He locked the door, and walked unsteadily towards us. He seemed

surprised to see me there, and his features relaxed into a bland

civility.

'This is (hiccup) Master Aylwin, Winifred,' he said.

The child looked at me again with the same smile. Her alarm had fled.

'This is my little daughter Winifred,' said Tom, with a pompous bow.

I was astonished. I never knew that Wynne had a daughter, for

intimate as he and I had become, he had actually never mentioned his

daughter before.

'My _only_ daughter,' Tom repeated.

He then told me, with many hiccups, that, since her mother's death

(that is to say from her very infancy), Winifred had been brought up

by an aunt in Wales. 'Quite a lady, her aunt is,' said Tom proudly,

'and Winifred has come to spend a few weeks with her father.'

He said this in a grandly paternal tone--a tone that seemed meant to

impress upon her how very much obliged she ought to feel to him for

consenting to be her father; and, judging from the look the child

gave him, she did feel very much obliged.

Suddenly, however, a thought seemed to come back upon Tom, a thought

which my unexpected appearance on the scene had driven from his

drunken brain. The look of virtuous indignation returned, and staring

at the little girl through glazed eyes, he said with the tremulous

and tearful voice of a deeply injured parent,

'Winifred, I thought I heard you singing one of them heathen Gypsy

songs that you learnt of the Gypsies in Wales.'

'No, father,' said she, 'it was the song they sing in Shire-Carnarvon

about the golden cloud over Snowdon and the spirits of the air.'

'Yes,' said Tom, 'but a little time ago you were singing a Gypsy

song--a downright heathen Gypsy song. I heard it about half an hour

ago when I was in the church.'

The beautiful little head drooped in shame.

'I'm s'prised at you, Winifred. When I come to think whose daughter

you are.--mine!--I'm s'prised at you,' continued Torn, whose virtuous

indignation waxed with every word.

'Oh. I'm so sorry!' said the child. 'I won't do it any more.'

This contrition of the child's only fanned the flame of Tom's

virtuous indignation.

'Here am I,' said he, 'the most (hiccup) respectable man in two

parishes,--except Master Aylwin's father, of course,--here am I, the

organ-player for the Christianest of all the Christian churches along

the coast, and here's my daughter sings heathen songs just like a

Gypsy or a tinker. I'm s'prised at you, Winifred.'

I had often seen Tom in a dignified state of liquor, but the pathetic

expression of injured virtue that again overspread his face so

changed it, that I had some difficulty myself in realising how

entirely the tears filling his eyes and the grief at his heart were

of alcoholic origin. And as to the little girl, she began to sob

piteously.

'Oh dear, oh dear, what a wicked girl I am !' said she.

This exclamation, however, aroused my ire against Tom; and as I

always looked upon him as my special paid henchman, who, in return

for such services as supplying me with tiny boxing-gloves, and

fishing-tackle, and bait, during my hale days, and tame rabbits now

that I was a cripple, mostly contrived to possess himself of my

pocket-money, I had no hesitation in exclaiming,

'Why, Tom, you know you're drunk, you silly old fool!'

At this Tom turned his mournful and reproachful gaze upon me, and

began to weep anew. Then he turned and addressed the sea, uplifting

his hand in oratorical fashion:--

'Here's a young gentleman as I've been more than a father to--yes,

more than a father to--for when did his own father ever give him a

ferret-eyed rabbit, a real ferret-eyed rabbit thoroughbred?'

'Why, I gave you one of my five-shilling pieces for it,' said I; 'and

the rabbit was in a consumption and died in three weeks.'

But Tom still addressed the sea.

'When did his own father give him,' said he, 'the longest thigh-bone

that the sea ever washed out of Raxton churchyard?'

'Why, I gave you _two_ of my five-shilling pieces for

_that_,' said I, 'and next day you went and borrowed the bone,

and sold it over again to Dr. Munro for a quart of beer.'

'When did his own father _give_ him a beautiful skull for a

money-box, and make an oak lid to it, and keep it for him because his

mother wouldn't have it in the house?'

'Ah, but where's the money that was in it, Tom? Where's the money?'

said I, flourishing one of my crutches, for I was worked up to a

state of high excitement when I recalled my own wrongs and Tom's

frauds, and I forgot his relationship to the little girl. 'Where are

the bright new half-crowns that were _in_ the money-box when I

left it with you--the half-crowns that got changed into pennies, Tom?

Where are they? What's the use of having a skull for a money-box if

it's got no money in it? That's what _I_ want to know, Tom!'

'Here's a young gentleman,' said Tom, 'as I've done all these things

for, and how does he treat me? He says, "Why, Tom, you know you're

drunk, you silly old fool."'

At this pathetic appeal the little girl sprang up and turned towards

me with the ferocity of a young tigress. Her little hands were

tightly clenched, and her eyes seemed positively to be emitting blue

sparks. Many a bold boy had I encountered on the sands before my

accident, and many a fearless girl, but such an impetuous antagonist

as this was new. I leaned on my crutches, however, and looked at her

unblenchingly.

'You wicked English boy, to make my father cry,' said she, as soon as

her anger allowed her to speak. 'If you were not lame I'd--I'd--I'd

hit you.'

I did not move a muscle, but stood lost in a dream of wonder at her

amazing loveliness. The fiery flush upon her face and neck, the

bewitching childish frown of anger corrugating the brow, the dazzling

glitter of the teeth, the quiver of the full scarlet lips above and

below them, turned me dizzy with admiration.

Her eyes met mine, and slowly the violet flames in them began to

soften. Then they died away entirely as she murmured,

'You wicked English boy, if you hadn't--beautiful--beautiful eyes,

I'd kill you.'

By this time, however, Tom had entirely forgotten his grievance

against me, and gazed upon Winifred in a state of drunken wonderment.

'Winifred,' he said, in a tone of sorrowful reproach, 'how dare you

speak like that to Master Aylwin, your father's best friend, the only

friend your poor father's got in the world, the friend as I give

ferret-eyed rabbits to, and tame hares, and beautiful skulls? Beg his

pardon this instant, Winifred. Down on your knees and beg my friend's

pardon this instant, Winifred.'

The poor little girl stood dazed, and was actually sinking down on

her knees on the grass before me.