Theodore Watts-Dunton

“ But what a change there was in Sinfi! The traces of illness had fled entirely from her face, and were replaced by the illumination of the triumphant soul within—a light such as I could imagine shining on the features of Boadicea fresh from a successful bout with the foe of her race. Even the loveliness of Winnie seemed for the moment to pale before the superb beauty of the Gypsy girl, whom the sun was caressing as though it loved her, shedding a radiance over her picturesque costume, and making the gold coins round her neck shine like dewy whin-flowers struck by the sunrise. ”

“ But when I remembered the vision of Fairy Glen, I said, 'Imagination can do that, and so can the glamour cast over me by Sinfi's music. It does not vanish; ah, if the sweet madness should remain with me for ever! It does not vanish—it is gliding along the side of the llyn: it is moving towards me. And now those sudden little ripples in the llyn—what do they mean? The trout are flying from her shadow. The feet are grating on the stones. And hark! that pebble which falls into the water with a splash; the glassy llyn is ribbed and rippled with rings. Can a phantom do that? ”

“ But during the time that her death, amidst surroundings too appalling to contemplate, hung before my eyes in a dreadful picture—during the time when it seemed certain that her death in a garret, her burial in a pauper pit six coffins deep, was a hideous truth and no fancy, all the beauty with which Nature seemed at one time clothed was wiped away as by a sponge. The earth was nothing more than a charnel-house, the skies above it were the roof of the Palace of Nin-ki-gal. But now that Snowdon had spoken to me, the old life which had formerly made the world so beautiful and so beloved came back. ”

“ In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what did she believe?'
'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is the most perfect.'
'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love. ”

“ I could once be content with Materialism—I could find it supportable once; but, should you ever come to love as I have loved (and, for your own happiness, child, I hope you never may) , you will And that Materialism is intolerable, is hell itself, to the heart that has known a passion like mine. You will And that it is madness, Hal, madness, to believe in the word "never"! you will And that you dare not leave untried any creed, howsoever wild, that offers the heart a ray of hope. Every object she cherished has become spiritualised, sublimated, has become alive—alive as this amulet is alive. ”

“ When I got to bed I was kept awake by recalling the sight I saw on entering the cottage. There seemed no other explanation of it than this, the tragedy of Winifred had touched Sinfi's sympathetic soul too deeply. Her imagination had seized upon the spectacle of Winifred in one of her fits, and had caused so serious a disturbance of her nervous system that through sheer fascination of repulsion her face mimicked it exactly as Winifred's face had mimicked the original spectacle of horror on the sands. ”

“ As Job's faith was tried by Heaven, so has your love been tried by the power which you call 'circumstance' and which Wilderspin calls 'the spiritual world.' All that death has to teach the mind and the heart of man you have learnt to the very full, and yet she you love is restored to you, and will soon be in your arms. I, alas! have long known that the tragedy of tragedies is the death of a beloved mistress, or a beloved wife. I have long known that it is as the King of Terrors that Death must needs come to any man who knows what the word 'love' really means. ”

“ Winnie soon yielded her point, and we began leisurely our descent westward, along that same path which Sinfi and I had taken on that other evening, which now seemed so far away, when we walked down to Llanberis with the setting sun in our faces. If my misery could then only find expression in sighs and occasional ejaculations of pain, absolutely dumb was the bliss that came to me now, growing in power with every moment, as the scepticism of my mind about the reality of the new heaven before me gave way to the triumphant acceptance of it by my senses and my soul. ”

“ How dare you leave undone anything, howsoever wild, which might seem to any one—even to an illiterate Gypsy, even to a crazy mystic—a means of finding Winifred? What is the meaning of the great instinct which has always conquered the soul in its direst need—which has always driven man when in the grip of unbearable calamity to believe in powers that are unseen? What though that scientific reason of yours tells you that Winifred's misfortunes have nothing to do with any curse? ”

“ For the first time (as I think) in her life, she whom, until I came to know Sinfi Lovell, I had believed to be the strongest, proudest, bravest woman living, had fainted.
'Dear me!' said Wilderspin, 'I had no idea that Christabel's terror was so strongly rendered,—no idea! Art should never produce an effect like this. Romantic art knows nothing of a mere sensational illusion. Dear me!—I must soften it at once.'
He was evidently quite unconscious that he had given my mother's features to Geraldine, and attributed the effect to his own superlative strength as a dramatic artist. ”

“ Sleaford.
'Like steam, my lord?' exclaimed Wilderspin from the next room. 'The painter of that veil had peculiar privileges. As a child he had been in the habit of watching a face through the curtain of steam around a blacksmith's forge when hot iron is plunged into the water-trench, and the face, my lord, though begrimed by earthly toil, was an angel's. No wonder, then, that the painting in that veil is unique in art. The flesh-tints that are pearly and yet rosy seem, as you observe, to be breaking through it, and yet you cannot say what is the actual expression on the face. ”

“ I, and scarcely, I suppose, understood it.
'He is very pretty,' she said meditatively, 'but he has not got love-eyes like you and Snap, and I don't think I could love any little boy so very, very much now who wasn't lame.'
She loved me in spite of my lameness; she loved me because I was lame, so that if I had not fallen from the cliffs, if I had sustained my glorious position among the boys of Raxton and Graylingham as 'Fighting Hal.' I might never have won little Winifred's love. Here was a revelation of the mingled yarn of life, that I remember struck me even at that childish age. ”

“ I had fallen violently against something. A human body, a woman! I thrust out my hand and seized a woman's damp arm.
'Winifred,' I cried, 'it's Henry.'
'I thought as much.' said the voice of the Gypsy girl I had met at the wayside inn, and she seized me by the throat with a fearful grip. 'You've been to the cottage and skeared her away, and now she's seed you there she'll never come back; she'll wander about the hills till she drops down dead, or falls over the brinks.'
'O God!' I cried, as I struggled away from her. 'Winifred! Winifred! ”

“ Their blood was Nin-ki-gal's.
And there, at the feet of the awful jesting hag, Circumstance, I could only cry 'Winnie! my poor Winnie!' while over my head seemed to pass Necessity and her black ages of despair.
When I came to myself I said to the woman,
'You can point out the grave?'
'Well, yes,' paid slip, turning round sharply; 'but may I ax who the dickens you are?—an' what makes you so cut up about a pore woman's darter? It's right-on beautiful to see how kind gentlemen is nowadays': and she turned and tried, stumbling, to lead the way downstairs. ”

“ But in knowledge of nature as a sublime consciousness, in knowledge of the human heart, Sinfi was far more learned than I. And believing as I did that education will in the twentieth century consist of unlearning, of unlading the mind of the trash previously called knowledge, I could not help feeling that Sinfi was far more advanced, far more in harmony than I could hope to be With the new morning of Life of which we are just beginning to see the streaks of dawn. ”

“ I knew that the tribe of Gypsies with whom she had been thrown into contact, the Lovells and the Boswells, though superior to the rest, of the Romany race, are the most superstitious of all, and that Winifred had become an object of strong affection to the most superstitious even among that tribe, one Sinfi Lovell. I knew from something that had once fallen from her as a child on the sands, when prattling about Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, that especially powerful with her was the idea (both Romany and Celtic) about the effect of a dead man's curse. ”

“ You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love—you have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself. You have forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb: you have removed the curse, and his child—his innocent child—is free.'
I replaced the coffin-lid, and screwing it down left the crypt, so buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I really relieve that my restoring the amulet has removed it? ”

“ And Winifred's scared expression when she encountered my mother's look of hate in the churchyard came back to me like a scene witnessed in a flash of lightning. 'The portrait was my mother's?'
'It was the face of the kind, tender, and noble lady your mother,' said Wilderspin gently.
I gave a hurried glance at my mother, and saw the pallor of her face,—but to me the world held now only two realities, Winifred and Wilderspin; all other people were dreams, obtrusive and irritating dreams. 'Go on, go on,' I said. ”

“ Wilderspin sketched alone, while Sinfi, Rhona, Cyril, and I went trout-fishing in one of the numerous brooks.
'What do you think of my friend by this time?' said Cyril to me.
'He is my fifth mystic,' I replied; 'I wonder what the sixth will be like. Is he really as great a painter as he takes himself to he, or does his art begin and end with flowery words?'
'I believe,' said Cyril, pointing across to where Wilderspin sat at work, 'that the strange creature under that white umbrella is the greatest artistic genius now living. ”

“ To walk like that the eye must be my darling's, that is to say, an eye as sure as a bird's the ball of the foot must be the ball of a certain little foot I have often had in my hand wet with sea-water and gritty with sand. For such work a mountaineer or a cragsman, or Winifred, is needed.' Then I recalled her love of marine creatures, her delight in seaweed, of which she would weave the most astonishing chaplets and necklaces coloured like the rainbow. ”

“ But I did promise to wait for a year and see what effect wealth would have upon you.'
'Did your aunt not tell you also that the man who marries you can never be unmanned by wealth, because he will know that everything he can give is as dross when set against Winnie's love and Winnie's beauty: Did she not also tell you that?'
'Love and beauty!' said Winnie. 'Even if a woman's beauty did not depend for its existence upon the eyes that look upon it, I should want to give more to my hero than love and beauty. I should want to give him help in the battle of life, Henry. ”

“ At first she did not see me, though she stood opposite and stopped, while the opalescent vapours from the pool steamed around her, and she shone as through a glittering veil, her eyes flashing like sapphires. The palpitation of my heart choked me; I dared not stir, I dared not speak; the slightest movement or the slightest sound might cause her to start away. There was she whom I had travelled and toiled to find—there was she, so close to me, and yet must I let her pass and perhaps lose her after all—for ever?
Where was the Gypsy girl? ”

“ Again there came upon me the involuntary laughter of heart-agony at its tensest. I cried aloud: 'Faith and Love! Faith and Love! That farce of the Raxton crypt with the great-grandmother's fool on his knees shall be repeated for the delight of Nin-ki-gal and the Danish skeletons and the ancestral ghosts from Hugh the Crusader down to the hero of the knee-caps and mittens; and there shall be a dance of death and a song, and the burden shall be—
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods:
They kill us for their sport.'
Misery had made me a maniac at last ”

“ Up to now the Fates have never set up as humorists. Now, for a man to love, to dote upon, a girl whose father is the violator of his own father's tomb—a wretch who has called down upon himself the most terrible curse of a dead man that has ever been uttered—that would be a fate too fantastically cruel to be permitted by Heaven—by any governing power whose sanctions were not those of a whimsical cruelty.'
Yet those words of my mother's about Wynne, and her suspicions of him, were flitting about the air of the room like fiery-eyed bats. ”

“ The loveliness indeed was so bewitching that one or two of the Gypsies—a race who are, as I had already noticed, among the few uncultivated people that show a susceptibility to the beauties of nature—gave a long sigh of pleasure, and lingered at the llyn of the triple echo, to see how the soft iridescent opal brightened and shifted into sapphire and orange, and then into green and gold. ”

“ More terrible because more inhuman than the agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition of the soul into which I had passed—when the cruelty that seems to work at Nature's heart, and to vitalise a dark universe of pain, loses its mysterious aspect and becomes a mockery; when the whole vast and merciless scheme seems too monstrous to be confronted save by mad peals of derisive laughter—that dreadful laughter which bubbles lower than the fount of tears—that laughter which is the heart's last language ”