I
One day as Sinfi and I were strolling through the lovely glades
between Capel Curig and Bettws y Coed, on our way to a fishing-place,
we sat down by a stream to eat some bread and cheese we had brought
with us.
The sunlight, as it broke here and there between the thick foliage,
was playing upon the little cascades in such magical fashion--turning
the water into a torrent that seemed as though molten rubies and
sapphires and opals were ablaze in one dancing faery stream,--that
even the dark tragedy of human life seemed enveloped for a moment in
an atmosphere of poetry and beauty. Sinfi gazed at it silently, then
she said:
'This is the very place where Winnie wonst tried to save a hernshaw
as wur wounded. She wur tryin' to ketch hold on it, as the water wur
carryin' it along, and he pretty nigh beat her to death wi' his wings
for her pains. It wur then as she come an' stayed along o' us for a
bit, an' she got to be as fond o' my crwth as you be's, an' she used
to say that if there wur any music as 'ud draw her sperrit hack to
the airth arter she wur dead it 'ud be the sound o' my crwth; but
there she wur wrong as wrong could be: Romany music couldn't never
touch Gorgio sperrit; 'tain't a bit likely. But it can draw her
livin' mullo [wraith].' And as she spoke she began to play her crwth
_pizzicato_ and to sing the opening bars of the old Welsh incantation
which I had heard on Snowdon on that never-to-be-forgotten morning.
This, as usual, sent my mind at once back to the picture of Fenella
Stanley calling round her by the aid of her music the spirits of
Snowdon. And then a strange hallucination came upon me, that made me
clutch at Sinfi's arm. Close by her, reflected in a little glassy
pool divided off from the current by a ring of stones, two blue eyes
seemed gazing. Then the face and the entire figure of Winifred
appeared, but Winifred dressed as a beggar girl in rags, Winifred
standing at a street corner holding out matches for sale.
'Winifred!' I exclaimed; and then the hallucination passed, and
Sinfi's features were reflected in the water. My exclamation had the
strangest effect upon Sinfi. Her lips, which usually wore a
peculiarly proud and fearless curve, quivered, and were losing the
brilliant rosebud redness which mostly characterised them. The little
blue tattoo rosettes at the corners of her mouth seemed to be growing
more distinct as she gazed in the water through eyes dark and
mysterious as Night's, but, like Night's own eyes, ready, I thought,
to call up the throbbing fires of a million stars.
'What made you cry out "Winifred"?' she said, as the music ceased.
'What you told me about the spirits following the crwth was causing
the strangest dream,' I answered. 'I thought I saw Winnie's face
reflected in the water, and I thought she was in awful distress. And
all the time it was your face.'
'That wur her livin' mullo,' said Sinfi solemnly.
Convinced though I was that the hallucination was the natural result
of Sinfi's harping upon the literal fulfilment of the curse, it
depressed me greatly.
Close to this beautiful spot we came suddenly upon two tourists
sketching. And now occurred one of those surprises of which I have
found that real life is far more full than any fiction dares to be.
As we passed the artists, I heard one call out to the other, with a
'burr' which I will not attempt to render, having never lived in the
'Black Country':
'You have a true eye for composition; what do you think of this
tree?'
The speaker's remarkable appearance attracted my attention.
'Well,' said I to Sinfi, 'that's the first time I ever saw a painter
shaven and dressed in a coat like a Quaker's.'
Sinfi looked across at the speaker through the curling smoke from my
pipe, gave a start of surprise, and then said: 'So you've never seed
_him_? That's because you're a country Johnny, brother, and don't
know nothink about Londra life. That's a friend o' mine from Londra
as has painted me many's the time.'
'Painted you?' I said; 'the man in black, with the goggle eyes,
squatting there under the white umbrella? What's his name?'
'That's the cel'erated Mr. Wilderspin, an' he's painted me many's the
time, an' a rare rum 'un he is too. Dordi! it makes me laugh to think
on him. Most Gorgios is mad, more or less, but he's the maddest 'un I
ever know'd.'
We had by this time got close to the painter's companion, who,
sitting upright on his camp-stool, was busy with his brush. Without
shifting his head to look at us, or removing his eyes from his work,
he said, in a voice of striking power and volume: 'Nothing but an
imperfect experience of life, Lady Sinfi, could have made you
pronounce our friend there to be the maddest Gorgio living.'
'Dordi!' exclaimed Sinfi, turning sharply round in great
astonishment. 'Fancy seein' both on 'em here!'
'Mad our friend is, no doubt, Lady Sinfi,' said the painter, without
looking round, 'but not so mad as certain illustrious Gorgios I could
name, some of them born legislators and some of them (apparently)
born. R.A.'s.'
'Who should ha' thought of seein' 'em both here?' said Sinfi again.
'That,' said the painter, without even yet turning to look at us or
staying the movement of his brush, 'is a remark I never make in a
little dot of a world like this, Lady Sinfi, where I expect to see
everybody everywhere. But, my dear Romany chi,' he continued, now
turning slowly round, 'in passing your strictures upon the Gorgio
world, you should remember that you belong to a very limited
aristocracy, and that your remarks may probably fall upon ears of an
entirely inferior and Gorgio convolution.'
'No offence, I hope.' said Sinfi.
'Offence in calling the Gorgios mad? Not the smallest, save that you
have distinctly plagiarised from me in your classification of the
Gorgio race.'
His companion called out again. 'Just one moment! Do come and look at
the position of this tree.'
'In a second, Wilderspin, in a second,' said the other. 'An old
friend and myself are in the midst of a discussion.'
'A discussion!' said the person addressed as Wilderspin. 'And with
whom, pray?'
'With Lady Sinfi Lovell,--a discussion as to the exact value of your
own special kind of madness in relation to the tomfooleries of the
Gorgio mind in general.'
'Kekka! kekka!' said Sinfi, 'you shouldn't have said that.'
'And I was on the point of proving to her ladyship that in these
days, when Art has become genteel, and even New Grub Street
"decorates" her walls--when success means not so much painting fine
pictures as building fine houses to paint in--the greatest compliment
you can pay to a man of genius is surely to call him either a beggar
or a madman.'
The peculiarity of this 'chaff' was that it was uttered in a simple
and serious tone, in which not the faintest tinge of ironical intent
was apparent. The other artist looked across and said: 'Dear me!
Sinfi Lovell! I am pleased to see you, Sinfi. I will ask you for a
sitting to-morrow. A study of your head would be very suggestive
among the Welsh hills.'
The man who had been 'chaffing' Sinfi then rose and walked towards
his Quaker-like companion, and I had an opportunity of observing him
fully. I saw that he was a spare man, wearing a brown velvet coat and
a dark felt hat. The collar of the coat seemed to have been made
carefully larger than usual, in order to increase the apparent width
of his chest. His hair was brown and curly, but close cut. His
features were regular, perhaps handsome. His complexion was
bright,--fair almost,--rosy in hue, and his eyes were brown.
He shook hands with Sinfi as he passed us, and gave me a glance of
that rapid and all-comprehending kind which seems to take in, at
once, a picture in its every detail.
'What do you think of him?' said Sinfi to me, as he passed on and we
two sat down on the grass by the side of the stream.
'I am puzzled,' I replied, 'to know whether he is a young man who
looks like a middle-aged one, or a middle-aged man who looks like a
young one. How's his hair under the hat?'
'Thinnish atop,' said Sinfi laconically. 'And I'm puzzled,' I added,
still looking at him as he walked over the grass, 'as to whether he's
a little man who looks middle-sized, or a middle-sized man who looks
little.'
'He's a little big 'un,' said Sinfi; 'about the height o' Rhona
Bozzell's Tarno Rye.'
'Altogether he puzzles me, Sinfi!'
'He puzzled me same way at fust.'
What was it that made me take an interest so strange, strong, and
sudden in this man? Without a hint of hair upon his face, while
juvenile curls clustered thick and short beneath his wide-awake, he
had at first struck me as being not much more than a lad, till, as he
gave me that rapid, searching glance in passing, I perceived the
little crow's-feet round his eyes, and he then struck me immediately
as being probably on the verge of thirty-five. His figure was slim
and thin, his waist almost girlish in its fall. I should have
considered him small had not the unusually deep, loud, manly, and
sonorous voice with which he had accosted Sinfi conveyed an
impression of size and weight such as even big men do not often
produce. This deep voice, coupled with that gaunt kind of cheek which
we associate with the most demure people, produced an effect of
sedateness such as I should have expected to find (and did not find)
in the other man--the man of the shaven cheek and Quaker costume;
but, in the one glance I had got from those watchful, sagacious,
twinkling eyes, there was an expression quite peculiar to them,
quite inscrutable, quite indescribable.