Part 58 (2/2)

'Sister, I will not be parted from you: I shall follow you.'

'Reia--Hal Aylwin--you knows very well that any man, Gorgio or Romany, as followed Sinfi Lovell when she told him not, 'ud ketch a body-blow as wouldn't leave him three hull ribs, nor a ounce o'

wind to bless hisself with.'

'But I am now one of the Lovells, and I shall go with you. I am a Romany myself--I mean I am becoming more and more of a Romany every day and every hour. The blood of Fenella Stanley is in us both.'

She looked at me, evidently astonished at the earnestness and the energy of my tone. Indeed at that moment I felt an alien among Gorgios.

'I am now one of the Lovells,' I said, 'and I shall go with you.'

'We part company to-night, brother, fare ye well,' she said.

As she stood delivering this speech--her head erect, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng angrily at me, her brown fists tightly clenched, I knew that further resistance would be futile.

'But now I wants to be left alone,' she said.

She bent her head forward in a listening att.i.tude, and I heard her murmur, 'I knowed it 'ud come ag'in. A Romany sperrit likes to come up in the evenin' and smell the heather an' see the s.h.i.+nin' stars come out.'

While she was speaking, she began to move off between the trees. But she turned, took hold of both my hands, and gazed into my eyes. Then she moved away again, and I was beginning to follow her. She turned and said: 'Don't follow me. There ain't no place for ye among the Romanies. Go the ways o' the Gorgios, Hal Aylwin, an' let Sinfi Lovell go hern.'

As I leaned against a tree and watched Sinfi striding through the gra.s.s till she pa.s.sed out of sight, the entire panorama of my life pa.s.sed before me.

'She has left me with a blessing after all,' I said; 'my poor Sinfi has taught me the lesson that he who would fain be cured of the disease of a wasting sorrow must burn to ashes Memory. He must flee Memory and never look back.'

VI

And did I flee Memory? When I re-entered the bungalow next day it was my intention to leave it and Wales at once and for ever, and indeed to leave England at once--perhaps for ever, in order to escape from the unmanning effect of the sorrowful brooding which I knew had become a habit. 'I will now,' I said, 'try the nepenthe that all my friends in their letters are urging me to try--I will travel. Yes, I will go to j.a.pan. My late experiences should teach me that Ja'afar's ”Angel of Memory,” who refas.h.i.+oned for him his dead wife out of his own sorrow and tears, did him an ill service. He who would fain be cured of the disease of a wasting sorrow should try to flee the ”Angel of Memory,” and never look back.'

And so fixed was my mind upon travelling that I wrote to several of my friends, and told them of my intention. But I need scarcely say that as I urged them to keep the matter secret it was talked about far and wide. Indeed, as I afterwards found to my cost, there were paragraphs in the newspapers stating that the eccentric amateur painter and heir of one branch of the Aylwins had at last gone to j.a.pan, and that as his deep interest in a certain charming beauty of an un-English type was proverbial, it was expected that he would return with a j.a.panese, or perhaps a Chinese wife.

But I did not go to j.a.pan; and what prevented me?

My reason told me that what I had just seen near Beddgelert was an optical illusion. I had become very learned on the subject of optical illusions ever since I had known Sinfi Lovell, and especially since I had seen that picture of Winnie in the water near Bettws y Coed, which I have described in an earlier chapter. Every book I could get upon optical illusions I had read, and I was astonished to find how many instances are on record of illusions of a much more powerful kind than mine.

And yet I could not leave Snowdon. The mountain's very breath grew sweeter and sweeter of Winnie's lips. As I walked about the hills I found myself repeating over and over again one of the verses which Winnie used to sing to me as a child at Raxton.

Eryri fynyddig i mi, Bro dawel y delyn yw, Lle mae'r defaid a'r wyn, Yn y mwswg a'r brwyn, Am can inau'n esgyn i fyny, A'r gareg yn ateb i fyny, i fyny, O'r lle bu'r eryrod yn byw. [Footnote]

[Footnote:

Mountain-wild Snowdon for me!

Sweet silence there for the harp, Where loiter the ewes and the lambs, In the moss and the rushes, Where one's song goes sounding up And the rocks re-echo it higher and higher In the height where the eagles live.]

But then I felt that Sinfi was the mere instrument of the mysterious magic of y Wyddfa, that magic which no other mountain in Europe exercises. I knew that among all the Gypsies Sinfi was almost the only one who possessed that power which belonged once to her race, that power which is expressed in a Scottish word now universally misused, 'glamour,' the power which Johnnie Faa and his people brought into play when they abducted Lady Casilis.

Soon as they saw her well-faured face They cast the glamour oure her.

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