Those who might suppose that Sinfi Lovell's lack of education would
be a barrier against our sympathy, know little or nothing of real
sorrow--little or nothing of the human heart--little or nothing of
the stricken soul that looks out on man and his conventions through
the light of an intolerable pain.
I now began to read and study as well as paint. But so absorbed was I
in my struggle with Fenella Stanley and Romany superstitions, that
the only subject which could distract me from memory was that of
hereditary influence--prepotency of transmission in relation to
races. Though Sinfi could neither read nor write, she loved to sit by
my side and, caressing Pharaoh, to watch me as I read or wrote. To
her there evidently seemed something mysterious and uncanny in
writing, something like 'penning dukkering.' It seemed to her, I
think, a much more remarkable accomplishment than that of painting.
And as to reading, I am not sure that the satirical Videy was
entirely wrong in saying that Sinfi believed that books 'could talk
jis' like men and women.' Not a word would she speak, save when she
now and then bent down her head to whisper to Pharaoh when that
little warrior was inclined to give a disturbing chuckle, or to shake
his wattles. And when at last she and Pharaoh got wearied by the
prolonged silence, she would begin to murmur in a tone of playful
satire to the restless bird, 'Mum, mum, Pharaoh. He's too hoot of a
mush to rocker a choori chavi.' [Hush, hush, Pharaoh. He's too proud
to speak to a poor child.]
Of course there was immense curiosity about my life at the bungalow,
not only among the visitors at the Capel Curig Hotel, but among the
Welsh residents; and rarely did the weekly papers come out without
some paragraph about me. As a result of this, some of the London
papers reproduced the paragraphs, and built upon their gossip columns
of a positively offensive nature. In a paper which I will for
convenience call the _London Satirist_ appeared a paragraph which
some one cut out of the columns of the paper and posted to me. It ran
thus:
'THE ECCENTRIC AYLWINS.--The power of heredity, which has much
exercised the mind of Balzac, has never been more strikingly
exemplified than in the case of the great family of the Aylwins. It
is matter of common knowledge that some generations ago one of the
Aylwins married a Gypsy. This fact did not, however, prevent his
branch from being respectable, and receiving the name of the proud
Aylwins; and the Gypsy blood remained entirely in abeyance until the
present generation. Mr. Percy Aylwin, it will be remembered, having
been smitten by the charms of a certain Rhona Boswell, actually set
up a tent with the Gypsies; and now Mr. Henry Aylwin, of Raxton Hall
(who, by the bye, has never been seen in that neighbourhood since the
great landslip), is said to be following a good example by living in
Wales with a Gypsy wife, but whether the wedding took place at St.
George's, Hanover Square, or in simpler fashion in an encampment of
Little Egypt, we do not know.'
One day in the bungalow, when I was reading the copious marginalia
with which my father had furnished his own copy of _The Veiled
Queen_, I came upon a passage which so completely carried my mind
back to the night of our betrothal that I heard as plainly as I had
then heard Winnie's words at the door of her father's cottage:
'I should have to come in the winds and play around you in the woods.
I should have to peep over the clouds and watch you. I should have
to follow you about wherever you went. I should have to beset you
till you said: "Bother Winnie, I wish she'd keep in heaven!"'
The written words of my father that had worked this magical effect
upon me were these:
'But after months of these lonely wanderings in Graylingham Wood and
along the sands, not even the reshaping power of memory would suffice
to appease my longing; a new hope, wild as new, was breaking in upon
my soul, dim and yet golden, like the sun struggling through a
sea-fog. While wandering with me along the sands on the eve of that
dreadful day when I lost her, she had declared that even in heaven
she could not rest without me, nor did I understand how she could.
For by this time my instincts had fully taught me that there is a
kind of love so intense that no power in the universe--not death
itself--is strong enough to sever it from its object. I knew that
although true spiritual love, as thus understood, scarcely exists
among Englishmen, and even among Englishwomen is so rare that the
capacity for feeling it is a kind of genius, this genius was hers.
Sooner or later I said to myself, "She will and must manifest
herself!"'
I looked up from the book and saw both Sinfi and Pharaoh gazing at
me.
'Sinfi,' I said, 'what were Winnie's favourite places among the
hills? Where was she most in the habit of roaming when she stayed
with your people?'
'If I ain't told you that often enough it's a pity, brother,' she
said. 'What do _you_ think, Pharaoh?'
Pharaoh expressed his acquiescence in the satire by clapping his
wings and crowing at me contemptuously.
'The place I think she liked most of all wur that very pool where she
and you breakfasted together on that morning.'
'Were there no other favourite places?'
'Yes, there wur the Fairy Glen; she wur very fond of that. And there
wur the Swallow Falls; she wur very fond of them. And there wur a
place on the Beddgelert pathway, up from the Carnarvon road, about
two miles from Beddgelert. There is a great bit of rock there where
she used to love to sit and look across towards Anglesey. And talking
about that place reminds me, brother, that our people and the
Boswells and a lot more are camped on the Carnarvon road just where
the pathway up Snowdon begins. And I wur told yesterday by a
'quaintance of mine as I seed outside the bungalow that daddy and
Videy had joined them. Shouldn't we go and see 'em?'
This exactly fitted in with the thoughts and projects that had
suddenly come to me, and it was arranged that we should start for the
encampment next morning.
As we were leaving the bungalow the next day, I said to Sinfi, 'You
are not taking your crwth.'
'Crwth! we sha'n't want that.'
'Your people are very fond of music, you know. Your father is very
fond of a musical tea.'
'So he is. I'll take it,' said Sinfi.