II

'Can you reckon him up, brother?' said Sinfi, taking my meerschaum

from my lips to refill it for me, as she was fond of doing.

'No.'

'Nor I nuther,' said Sinfi. 'Nor I can't pen his dukkerin' nuther,

though often's the time I've tried it.'

During this time the two friends seemed to have finished their

colloquy upon 'composition'; for they both came up to us. Sinfi rose;

I sat still on the grass, smoking my pipe, listening to the chatter

of the water as it rushed over the rocks. By this time my curiosity

in the younger man had died away. My mind was occupied with the

dream-picture of a little blue-eyed girl struggling with a wounded

heron. I had noticed, however, that he of the piercing eyes did not

look at me again, having entirely exhausted at a glance such interest

as I had momentarily afforded him; while his companion seemed quite

unconscious of my presence as he stood there, his large, full, deep,

brown eyes gazing apparently at something over my head, a long way

off. Also I had noticed that 'Visionary' was stamped upon this man's

every feature--that he seemed an inspired baby of forty, talking

there to his companion and to Sinfi, the sun falling upon his long,

brown, curly hair, mixed with grey, which fell from beneath his hat,

and floated around his collar like a mane.

When my reverie had passed, I found the artists trying to arrange

with Sinfi to give an open-air sitting to one of them, the man

addressed as Wilderspin. Sinfi seemed willing enough to come to

terms; but I saw her look round at me as if saying to herself, 'What

am I to do with you?'

'I should like for my brother to sit too,' I heard her say.

'Surely!' said Wilderspin. 'Your brother would be a great gain to my

picture.'

Sinfi then came to me, and said that the painter wanted me to sit to

him.

'But,' said I in an undertone, 'the Gorgios will certainly find out

that I am no Romany.'

'Not they,' said Sinfi, 'the Gorgios is sich fools. Why, bless you, a

Gorgio ain't got eves and ears like a Romany. You don't suppose as a

Gorgio can hear or see or smell like a Romany can?'

'But you forget, Sinfi, that I am a Gorgio, and there are not many

Romanies can boast of better senses than your brother Hal.'

'Dordi!' said Sinfi, 'that's jist like your mock-modesty. Your

great-grandmother wur a Romany, and it's my belief that if you only

went back fur enough, you'd find you had jist as good Romany blood in

your veins as I have, and my daddy is a duke, you know, a real,

reg'lar, out-an'-out Romany duke.'

'I'm afraid you flatter me, sister,' I replied. 'However, let's try

the Gorgios;' and I got up and walked with her close to the two

sketchers.

Wilderspin was on the point of engaging me, when the other man,

without troubling to look at me again, said:

'He's no more a Romany than I am.'

'Ain't a Romany?' said Sinfi. 'Who says my brother ain't a Romany?

Where did you ever see a Gorgio with a skin like that?' she said,

triumphantly pulling up my sleeve and exposing one of my wrists.

'That ain't sunburn, that's the real Romany brown, an' we's twinses,

only I'm the biggest, an' we's the child'n of a duke, a real,

reg'lar, out-an'-out Romany duke.'

He gave a glance at the exposed wrist.

'As to the Romany brown,' said he, 'a little soap would often make a

change in the best Romany brown--ducal or other.'

'Why, look at his neck,' said Sinfi, turning down my neckerchief; 'is

that sunburn, or is it Romany brown, I should like to know?'

'I assure you,' said the speaker, still addressing her in the same

grave, measured voice, 'that the Romanies have no idea what a little

soap can do with the Romany brown.'

'Do you mean to say,' cried Sinfi, now entirely losing her temper

(for on the subject of Romany cleanliness she, the most cleanly of

women, was keenly sensitive)--'do you mean to say as the Romany dials

an' the Romany dries don't wash theirselves? I know what you fine

Gorgios _do_ say,--you're allus a-tellin' lies about us Romanies.

Brother,' she cried, turning now to me in a great fury, 'I'm a duke's

chavi, an' mustn't fight no mumply Gorgios; why don't _you_ take an'

make his bed for him?'

And certainly the man's supercilious impertinence was beginning to

irritate me.

'I should advise you to withdraw that about the soap,' I said

quietly, looking at him.

'Oh! and if I don't?'

'Why, then I suppose I must do as my sister bids,' said I. 'I must

make your bed,' pointing to the grass beneath his feet. 'But I think

it only fair to tell you that I am somewhat of a fighting man, which

you probably are not.'

'You mean...?' said he (turning round menacingly, but with no more

notion of how to use his fists than a lobster).

'I mean that we should not be fighting on equal terms,' I said.

'In other words,' said he, 'you mean...?' and he came nearer.

'In other words, I mean that, judging from the way in which you are

advancing towards me now, the result of such an encounter might not

tend to the honour and glory of the British artist in Wales.'

'But,' said he, 'you are no Gypsy. Who are you?'

'My name is Henry Aylwin,' said I; 'and I must ask you to withdraw

your words about the virtues of soap, as my sister objects to them.'

'What?' cried he, losing for the first time his matchless

_sang-froid_. 'Henry Aylwin?' Then he looked at me in silent

amazement, while an expression of the deepest humorous enjoyment

overspread his features, making them positively shine as though

oiled. Finally, he burst into a loud laugh, that was all the more

irritating from the manifest effort he made to restrain it.

'Did I hear His Majesty of Gypsydom aright?' he said, as soon as his

hilarity allowed him to speak. 'Is the humble bed of a mere painter

to be made for him by the representative of the proud Aylwins, the

genteel Aylwins, the heir-presumptive Aylwins--the most respectable

branch of a most respectable family, which, alas! has its ungenteel,

its bohemian, its vulgar offshoots? Did I hear His Majesty of

Gypsydom aright?'

He leant against a tree, and gave utterance to peal after peal of

laughter.

I advanced with rapidly rising anger, but his hilarity had so

overmastered him that he did not heed it.

'Wilderspin,' cried he, 'come here! Pray come here. Have I not often

told you the reason why I threw up my engagement with my theatrical

manager, and missed my high vocation in ungenteel comedy? Have I not

often told you that it sprang from no disrespect to my friends, the

comic actors, but from the feeling that no comedian can hope to be

comic enough to compete with the real thing--the true harlequinade of

everyday life, roaring and screaming around me wherever I go?'

Then, without waiting for his companion's reply, he turned to me, and

giving an added volume to his sonorous voice, said:

'And you, Sir King, do you know whose bed Your Majesty was going to

make at the bidding of--well, of a duke's chavi?'

I advanced with still growing anger. 'Stay, King Bamfylde, stay,'

said he; 'shall the beds of the mere ungenteel Aylwins, "the outside

Aylwins," be made by the high Gypsy-gentility of Raxton?'

A light began to break in upon me. 'Surely,' I said, 'surely you are

not Cyril Aylwin, the------?'

'Pray finish your sentence, sir, and say the low bohemian painter,

the representative of the great ungenteel--the successor to the

Aylwin peerage.'

The other painter, looking in blank amazement at my newly-found

kinsman's extraordinary merriment, exclaimed, 'Bless me! Then you

really can laugh aloud, Mr. Cyril. What has happened? What can have

happened to make my dear friend laugh aloud?'

'Well he may ask,' said Cyril, turning to me. 'He knows that ever

since I was a boy in jackets I have despised the man who, in a world

where all is so comic, could select any particular point of the farce

for his empty guffaw. But I am conquered at last. Let me introduce

you, Wilderspin, to my kinsman, Henry Aylwin of Raxton Hall, alias

Lord Henry Lovell of Little Egypt--one of Duke Panuel's interesting

twinses.'

But Wilderspin's astonishment, apparently, was not at the

_rencontre_: it was at the spectacle of his companion's hilarity.

'Wonderful!' he murmured, with his eyes still fastened upon Cyril.

'My dear friend can laugh aloud. Most wonderful! What can have

happened?'

This is what had happened. By one of those strange coincidences which

make the drama of real life far more wonderful than the drama of any

stage, I, in my character of wandering Gypsy, had been thrown across

the path of the _bête noire_ of my mother and aunt, Cyril Aylwin, a

painter of bohemian proclivities, who (under the name of 'Cyril') had

obtained some considerable reputation. This kinsman of mine had been

held up to me as a warning from my very childhood, though wherein lay

his delinquencies I never did clearly understand, save that he had

once been an actor--before acting had become genteel. Often as I had

heard of this eccentric painter as the representative of the branch

of the family which preceded mine in the succession to the coveted

earldom, I had never seen him before.

He stood and looked at me in a state of intense amusement, but did

not speak.

'So you are Cyril Aylwin?' I said. 'Still you must withdraw what you

said to my sister about the soap.'

'Delicious!' said he, grasping my hand. 'I had no idea that high

gentility numbered chivalry among its virtues. Lady Sinfi,' he

continued, turning to her, 'they say this brother of yours is a

character, and, by Jove! he is. And as to you, dear lady, I am proud

of the family connection. The man who has two Romany Rye kinsmen may

be excused for showing a little pride. I withdraw every word about

the virtues of soap, and am convinced that it can do nothing with the

true Romany-Aylwin brown.'

On that we shook hands all round. 'But, Sinfi,' said I, 'why did you

not tell me that this was my kinsman?'

''Cause I didn't know,' said she. 'I han't never seed him since I've

know'd you. I always heerd his friends call him Cyril, and so I used

to call him Mr. Cyril.'

'But, Lady Sinfi, my Helen of Little Egypt,' said Cyril, 'suppose

that in my encounter with my patrician cousin--an encounter which

would have been entirely got up in honour of you--suppose it had

happened that I had made your brother's bed for him?'

'You make _his_ bed!' exclaimed Sinfi, laughing.

'Dordi! how you would ha' went down afore the Swimmin' Rei!'

[Footnote]

[Footnote: By the Welsh Gypsies, but few of whom can swim, I was

called 'the Swimmin' Rei,' a name which would have been far more

appropriately given to Percy Aylwin (Rhona Boswell's lover), one of

the strongest swimmers in England; but he was simply called the

Tarno Rye (the young gentleman).]

'But suppose that, on the contrary, he had gone down before me,' said

Cyril; 'suppose I had been the death of your Swimming Rei, I should

have been tried for the wilful murder of a prince of Little Egypt,

the son of a Romany duke. Why, Helen of Troy was not half so

mischievous a beauty as you.'

'You was safe enough, no fear,' said Sinfi. 'It 'ud take six o' you

to settle the Swimmin' Rei.'

I found that Cyril and his strange companion were staying at 'The

Royal Oak,' at Bettws y Coed. They asked me to join them, but when I

told them I 'could not leave my people, who were encamped about two

miles off,' Cyril again looked at me with an expression of deepest

enjoyment, and exclaimed 'delightful creature.'

Turning to Sinfi, he said: 'Then we'll go with you and call upon the

noble father of the twins, my old friend King Panuel.'

'He ain't a king,' said Sinfi modestly; 'he's only a duke.'

'You'll give us some tea, Lady Sinfi?' said Cyril.

'No tea equal to Gypsy tea.'

'Romany tea, Mr. Cyril,' replied Sinfi, with perfect dignity and

grace. 'My daddy, the duke, will be pleased to welcome you.'

We all strolled towards the tents. I offered to carry an umbrella and

a camp-stool. Cyril walked briskly away with Sinfi, leaving me to get

on with Wilderspin as best I could. Before the other two were out of

earshot, however, I heard Cyril say,

'You shouldn't have taken so seriously my chaff about the soap,

Sinfi. You ought to know me better by this time than to think that I

would really insult you.'

'How you would ha' went down afore the Swimmin' Rei!' replied Sinfi

regretfully.