Part 51 (2/2)

'How? By playin' on the hills the old Welsh dukkerin' tune [Footnote 1] as she was so fond on. If she was dead, she wouldn't hear it, but if she was alive she would, and her livin' mullo [Footnote 2] 'ud come to it,' said Sinfi.

[Footnote 1: Incantation song.]

[Footnote 2: Wraith or fetch.]

'Do you believe that possible?' said Cyril, turning to Wilderspin.

'My friend,' said Wilderspin, 'I was at that moment repeating to myself certain wise and pregnant words quoted from an Oriental book by the great Philip Aylwin--words which tell us that he is too bold who dares say what he will believe, what disbelieve, not knowing in any wise the mind of G.o.d--not knowing in any wise his own heart and what it shall one day suffer.'

'But,' said Sinfi, 'about her as sat to Mr. Wilderspin; did she never talk at all, Mr. Cyril?'

'Never; but I saw her only three times,' said Cyril.

'Mr. Wilderspin,' said Sinfi, 'did she never talk?'

'Only once, and that was when the woman addressed her as Winifred.

That name set me thinking about the famous Welsh saint and those wonderful miracles of hers, and I muttered ”St. Winifred.” The face of the model immediately grew bright with a new light, and she spoke the only words I ever heard her speak.'

'You never told me of this,' said Cyril.

'She stooped,' said Wilderspin, 'and went through a strange kind of movement, as though she were dipping water from a well, and said, ”Please, good St. Winifred, bless the holy water and make it cure--”'

'Ah, for G.o.d's sake stop!' cried Sinfi. 'Look! the Swimmin' Rei! He's in the room! There he stan's, and he's a-hearin' every word, an'

it'll kill him outright!'

I stared at Cyril's picture of Leaena for which Sinfi was sitting. I heard her say,

'There ain't nothink so cruel as seein' him take on like that; I've seed it afore, many's the time, in old Wales. You'll find her yit.

The dukkeripen says you'll marry her yit, and you will. She can't be dead when the sun and the golden clouds say you'll marry her at last.

Her as is dead _must_ ha' been somebody else.'

'Sinfi, you know there is no hope.'

'It might not ha' bin your Winnie, arter all,' said she. 'It might ha' bin some poor innocent as her feyther used to beat. It's wonderful how cruel Gorgio feythers is to poor born naterals. And she might ha' heerd in London about St. Winifred's Well a-curin' people.'

'Sinfi,' I said, 'you know there is no hope. And I have no friend but you now--I am going back to the Romanies.'

'No, no, brother,' she said, 'never no more.'

She put on her shawl. I rose mechanically. When she bade Cyril and Wilderspin good-bye and pa.s.sed out of the studio, I did so too. In the street she stood and looked wistfully at me, as though she saw me through a mist, and then bade me good-bye, saying that she must go to Kingston Vale where her people were encamped in a hired field. We separated, and I wandered I knew not whither.

III

I found myself inquiring for the New North Cemetery, and after a time I stood looking through the bars of tall iron gates at long lines of gravestones and dreary hillocks before me. Then I went in, walking straight over the gra.s.s towards a gravedigger digging in the suns.h.i.+ne. He looked at me, resting his foot on his spade.

'I want to find a grave.'

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