I
The Gypsies I had never seen since leaving them in Wales, and I knew
that by this time they were either making their circuit of the
English fairs or located in a certain romantic spot called Gypsy
Dell, near Rington Manor, the property of my kinsman Percy Aylwin,
whither they often went after the earlier fairs were over.
The next evening I went to the Great Eastern Railway station, and
taking the train to Rington I walked to Gypsy Dell, where I found the
Lovells and Boswells.
Familiar as I was with, the better class of Welsh Gypsies, the camp
here was the best display of Romany well-being I had ever seen. It
would, indeed, have surprised those who associate all Gypsy life with
the squalor which in England, and especially near London, marks the
life of the mongrel wanderers who are so often called Gypsies. In a
lovely dingle, skirted by a winding, willow-bordered river, and
dotted here and there with clumps of hawthorn, were ranged the
'living-waggons' of those trading Romanies who had accompanied the
'Griengroes' to the East Anglian and Midland fairs.
Alongside the waggons was a single large brown tent that for
luxuriousness might have been the envy of all Gypsydom. On the
hawthorn bushes and the grass was spread, instead of the poor rags
that one often sees around a so-called Gypsy encampment, snowy
linen, newly washed. The ponies and horses were scattered about the
Dell feeding.
I soon distinguished Sinfi's commanding figure near that gorgeous
living-waggon of 'orange-yellow colour with red window-blinds' in
which she had persuaded me to invest my money at Chester. On the
foot-board sat two urchins of the Lovell family, 'making believe' to
drive imaginary horses, and yelling with all their might to Rhona
Boswell, whose laugh, musical as ever, showed that she enjoyed the
game as much as the children did. Sinfi was standing on a patch of
that peculiar kind of black ash which burnt grass makes, busy with a
fire, over which a tea-kettle was hanging from the usual iron
kettle-prop. Among the ashes left by a previous fire her bantam-cock
Pharaoh was busy pecking, scratching, and calling up imaginary hens
to feast upon his imaginary 'finds.' I entered the Dell, and before
Sinfi saw me I was close to her.
She was muttering to the refractory fire as though it were a live
thing, and asking it why it refused to burn beneath the kettle. A
startled look, partly of pleasure and partly of something like alarm,
came over her face as she perceived me. I drew her aside and told her
all that had happened in regard to Winifred's appearance as a beggar
in London. A strange expression that was new to me overspread her
features, and I thought I heard her whisper to herself, 'I will, I
will.'
'I knowed the cuss 'ud ha' to ha' its way in the blood, like the bite
of a sap' [snake], she murmured to herself. 'And yit the dukkeripen
on Snowdon said, clear and plain enough, as they'd surely marry at
last. What's become o' the stolen trúshul, brother--the cross?' she
inquired aloud. 'That trúshul will ha' to be given to the dead man
agin, an' it'll ha' to be given back by his chavo [child] as swore to
keep watch over it. But what's it all to me?' she said in a tone of
suppressed anger that startled me. 'I ain't a Gorgie,'
'But, Sinfi, the cross cannot be buried again. The reason I have not
replaced it in the tomb,--the reason I never will replace it
there,--is that the people along the coast know now of the existence
of the jewel, and know also of my father's wishes. If it was unsafe
in the tomb when only Winnie's father knew of it, it would be a
thousandfold more unsafe now.'
'P'raps that's all the better for her an' you: the new thief takes
the cuss.'
'This is all folly,' I replied, with the anger of one struggling
against an unwelcome half-belief that refuses to be dismissed. 'It is
all moonshine-madness. I'll never do it,--not at least while I retain
my reason. It was no doubt partly for safety as well as for the other
reason that my father wished the cross to be placed in the tomb. It
will be far safer now in a cabinet than anywhere else.'
'Reia,' said Sinfi, 'you told me wonst as your great-grandmother
was a Romany named Fenella Stanley. I have axed the Scollard
about her, and what do you think he says? He says that she wur my
great-grandmother too, for she married a Lovell as died.'
'Good heavens, Sinfi! Well, I'm proud of my kinswoman.'
'And he says that Fenella Stanley know'd more about the true
dukkerin, the dukkerin of the Romanies, than anybody as were ever
heerd on.'
'She seems to have been pretty superstitious,' I said, 'by all
accounts. But what has that to do with the cross?'
'You'll put it in the tomb again.'
'Never!'
'Fenella Stanley will see arter that.'
'Fenella Stanley! Why, she's dead and dust.'
'That's what I mean; that's why she can make you do it, and will.'
'Well, well! I did not come to talk about the cross; I want to have
a quiet word with you about another matter.'
She sprang away as if in terror or else in anger. Then recovering
herself she took the kettle from the prop. I followed her to the
tent, which, save that it was made of brown blanket, looked more like
a tent on a lawn than a Gypsy-tent. All its comfort seemed, however,
to give no great delight to Videy, the cashier and female
financier-general of the Lovell family, who, in a state of absorbed
untidiness, sitting at the end of the tent upon a palliasse covered
with a counterpane of quilted cloth of every hue, was evidently
occupied in calculating her father's profits and losses at the recent
horse-fair. The moment Videy saw us she hurriedly threw the coin into
the silver tea-pot by her side, and put it beneath the counterpane,
with that instinctive and unnecessary secrecy which characterised
her, and made her such an amazing contrast both to her sister Sinfi
and to Rhona Boswell.
After Panuel had received me in his usual friendly manner, we all sat
down, partly inside the tent and partly outside, around the white
table-cloth that had been spread upon the grass. The Scollard took no
note of me; he had no eyes for any one but Rhona Boswell.
When tea was over Sinfi left the camp, and strode across the Dell
towards the river. I followed her.