Part 61 (2/2)

I'm goin' to play on my crwth and sing the same song now. It's to draw her livin' mullo, as I did at Bettws and Beddgelert, so that the dukkeripen of the ”Golden Hand” may come true.'

'But how can it come true, Sinfi?' I said.

'The dukkeripen allus does come true, whether it's good or whether it's bad.'

'Not always,' I said.

'No, not allus,' she cried, starting up, while there came over her face that expression which had so amazed me at Beddgelert. When at last breath came to her she was looking towards y Wyddfa through the kindling haze.

'There you're right, Hal Aylwin. It ain't every dukkeripen as comes true. The dukkeripen allus comes true, unless it's one as says a Gorgio shall come to the Kaulo Camloes an' break Sinfi Lovell's heart. Before that dukkeripen shall come true Sinfi Lovell 'ud cut her heart out. Yes, my fine Gorgio, she'd cut it out--she'd cut it out and fling it in that 'ere llyn. She did cut it out when she took the cuss on herself. She's a-cuttin' it out now.'

Then without saying another word Sinfi took up her crwth and moved towards the llyn.

'You'll soon come back, Sinfi?' I said.

'We've got to see about that,' she replied, still pale and trembling from the effects of that sudden upheaval of the pa.s.sion of a t.i.taness. 'If the livin' mullo does come you can't have a love-feast without company, you know, and I sha'n't be far off if you find you want me.'

She then took up her crwth, went round the llyn, and disappeared through the eastern cleft. In a few minutes I heard her crwth. But the air she played was not the air of the song she called the 'Welsh dukkerin' gillie' which I had heard by Beddgelert. It was the air of the same idyll of Snowdon that I first beard Winifred sing on the sands of Raxton. Then I heard in the distance those echoes, magical and faint, which were attributed by Winifred and Sinfi to the Knockers or spirits of Snowdon.

IV

There I stood again, as on that other morning, in the crevice overlooking the same llyn, looking at what might well have been the same ma.s.ses of vapour enveloping the same peaks, rolling as then, boiling as then, blazing as then, whenever the bright shafts of morning struck them. There I stood again, listening to the wild notes of Sinfi's crwth in the distance, as the sun rose higher, pouring a radiance through the eastern gate of the gorge, and kindling the aerial vapours moving about the llyn till their iridescent sails suggested the wings of some enormous dragon-fly of every hue.

'Her song does not come,' I said, 'but, this time, when it does come, it will not befool my senses. Sinfi's own presence by my side--that magnetism of hers which D'Arcy spoke of--would be required before the glamour could be cast over me, now that I know she is crazy. Poor Sinfi! Her influence will not to-day be able to cajole my eyes into accepting her superst.i.tious visions as their own.'

But as I spoke a sound fell, not upon my ears alone, but upon every nerve of my body, the sound of a voice singing, a voice that was not Sinfi's, but another's,

'I met in a glade a lone little maid, At the foot of y Wyddfa the white; Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind, And darker her hair than the night; Her cheek was like the mountain rose, But fairer far to see.

As driving along her sheep with a song, Down from the hills came she.'

It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song on Raxton Sands. It was the same voice that I heard singing the same song in the London streets--Winnie's!

And then there appeared in the eastern cleft of the gorge on the other side of the llyn, illuminated as by a rosy steam, Winnie! Amid the opalescent vapours gleaming round the llyn, with eyes now s.h.i.+mmering as through a veil--now flas.h.i.+ng like sapphires in the sun--there she stood gazing through the film, her eyes expressing a surprise and a wonder as great as my own.

'It is no phantasm--it is no hallucination,' I said, while my breathing had become a spasmodic, choking gasp.

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 gla.s.sy llyn is ribbed and rippled with rings. Can a phantom do that? It comes towards me still.

Hallucination!'

Still the vision came on.

When I felt the touch of her body, when I felt myself clasped in soft arms, and felt falling on my face warm tears, and on my lips the pressure of Winnie's lips--lips that were murmuring, 'At last, at last!'--a strange, wild effect was worked within me. The reality of the beloved form now in my arms declared itself; it brought back the scene where I had last clasped it.

Snowdon had vanished; the brilliant morning sun had vanished. The moon was s.h.i.+ning on a cottage near Raxton Church, and at the door two lovers were standing, wet with the sea-water--with the sea-water through which they had just waded. All the misery that had followed was wiped out of my brain. It had not even the cobweb consistence of a dream.

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