XII (continued 4)

While the marvellous sight fell, or appeared to fall, upon my eyes, my blood, like Hamlet's, became so masterful that my reason seemed nothing but a blind and timorous guide. No sooner had the sweet vision fled than my reason, like Hamlet's, rose and rejected it. It was not until I became acquainted with the rationale of sympathetic manifestations—it was not till I learnt, by means of that extraordinary book of your father's, which seems to have done its part in turning friend Wilderspin's head, what is the supposed method by which the spiritual world acts upon the material world—acts by the aid of those same natural bonds which keep the stars in their paths—that my blood and my reason became reconciled, and a new light came to me. And I knew that this would be your case. Yes, my dear Aylwin, I knew that when the issues of Life are greatly beyond the common, and when our hearts are torn as yours has been torn, and when our souls are on fire with a flame such as that which I saw was consuming you, the awful possibilities of this universe—of which we, civilised men or savage, know nothing—will come before us, and tease our hearts with strange wild hopes, 'though all the "proofs" of all the logicians should hold them up to scorn.'

I am, my dear Aylwin,

Your sincere Friend,

T. D'ARCY.

XVII

THE TWO DUKKERIPENS

Was the mystery at an end? Was there one point in this story of stories which this letter of D'Arcy's had not cleared up? Yes, indeed there was one. What motive—or rather, what mixture of motives—had impelled Sinfi to play her part in restoring Winifred to me? Her affection for me was, I knew, as strong as my own affection for her. But this I attributed largely to the mysterious movements of the blood of Fenella Stanley which we both shared. In many matters there was a kinship of taste between us, such as did not exist between me and Winnie, who was far from being scornful of conventions, and to whom the little Draconian laws of British 'Society' were not objects of mere amusement, as they were to me and Sinfi.

All this I attributed to that 'prepotency of transmission in descent' which I knew to be one of the Romany characteristics. All this I attributed, I say, to the far-reaching influence of Fenella Stanley.

But would this, coupled with her affection for Winifred, have been strong enough to conquer Sinfi's terror of a curse and its supposed power? And then that colloquy recorded by D'Arcy with what she believed to be her mother's spirit—those words about 'the two dukkeripens'—what did they mean? At one moment I seemed to guess their meaning in a dim way, and at the next they seemed more inexplicable than ever. But be their import what it might, one thing was quite certain—Sinfi had saved Winifred, and there swept through my very being a passion of gratitude to the girl who had acted so nobly which for the moment seemed to drown all other emotions. I had not much time, however, for bringing my thoughts to bear upon this new source of wonderment; for I suddenly saw Winifred and Sinfi descending the steep path towards me.

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.

I understood well that expression of triumph. I knew that, with her, imagination was life itself. I knew that this imagination of hers had just escaped from the sting of the dominant thought which was threatening to turn a supposed curse into a curse indeed.

I went to meet them.

'I promised to bring her livin' mullo,' said Sinfi, 'and I have kept my word, and now we are all going up to the top together.'

Winnie at once proceeded to pack up the breakfast things in Sinfi's basket. While she was doing this Sinfi and I went to the side of the llyn.

'Sinfi, I know all—all you have done for Winnie, all you have done for me.'

'You know about me takin' the cuss?' she said in astonishment. 'Gorgio cuss can't touch Romany, they say, but it did touch me. I wur very bad, brother. Howsomedever, it's all gone now. But how did you come to know about it? Winnie don't know herself, so she couldn't ha' told you; and I promised Mr. D'Arcy that if ever I wur to see you anywheres I wouldn't talk about it—leaseways not till he could tell you hisself or write to you full.'

'Winnie does not know about it,' I said, 'but I do. I know that in order to save her life—in order to save us both—you allowed her illness to pass on to you, at your own peril. But you mustn't talk of its being a curse, Sinfi. It was just an illness like any other illness, and the doctor passed it on to you in the same way that doctors sometimes do pass on such illnesses. Doctors can't cure curses, you know. You will soon be quite well again, and then you will forget all about what you call the curse.'

'I'm well enough now, brother; but see, Winnie has packed the things, and she's waiting to go up.'

We then began the ascent.

Ah, that ascent! I wish I had time and space to describe it. Up the same path we went which Sinfi and I had followed on that memorable morning when my heart was as sad as it was buoyant now.

Reaching the top, we sat down in the hut and made our simple luncheon. Winnie was a great favourite with the people there, and she could not get away from them for a long time. We went down to Bwlch Glas, and there we stood gazing at the path that leads to Llanberis.

I had not observed, but Winnie evidently had, that Sinfi wanted to speak to me alone; for she wandered away pretending to be looking for a certain landmark which she remembered; and Sinfi and I were left together.

'Brother,' said Sinfi, 'I ain't a-goin' to Llanberis an' Carnarvon with you two. You take that path; I take this.'

She pointed to the two downward paths.

'Surely you are not going to leave us at a moment like this?' I said.

'That's jist what I am a-goin' to do,' she said. 'This is the very time an' this is the very place where I am a-goin' to leave you an' all Gorgios.'

'Part on Snowdon, Sinfi!' I exclaimed.

'That's what we're a-goin' to do, brother. What I sez to myself when I made up my mind to take the cuss on me wur this: "I'll make her dukkeripen come true; I'll take her to him in Wales, and then we'll part. We'll part on Snowdon, an' I'll go one way an' they'll go another, jist like them two streams as start from Gorphwysfa an' go runnin' down till one on 'em takes the sea at Carnarvon, and t'other at Tremadoc." Yis, brother, it's on Snowdon where you an' Winnie Wynne sees the last o' Sinfi Lovell.'

Distressed as I was at her words, that inflexible look on her face I understood only too well. 'But there is Mr. D'Arcy to consider,' I said. 'Winnie tells me that it is the particular wish of Mr. D'Arcy that you and she should return to him at Hurstcote Manor. He has been wonderfully kind, and his wishes should be complied with.'

'No, brother,' said Sinfi, 'I shall never go to Hurstcote Manor no more.'

'Surely you will, Sinfi. Winnie tells me of the deep regard that Mr. D'Arcy has for you.'

'Never no more. Winifred's dukkeripen on Snowdon has come true, and it wur me what made it come true. Yis, it wur Sinfi Lovell and nobody else what made that dukkeripen come true.'

And again her face was illuminated by the triumphant expression which it wore when she returned to Knockers' Llyn with Winnie.

'It was indeed your noble self-sacrifice for Winnie and me that made the dukkeripen of the Golden Hand come true.'

'It worn't all for you and Winnie, Hal. I ain't a-goin' to let you think better on me than I desarve. It wur partly for you, and it wur partly for my dear mammy, and it wur partly for myself. Listen to me, Hal Aylwin. When I made Winnie's dukkeripen come true I made my own dukkeripen come to naught at the same time. The only way to make a dukkeripen come to naught is to make another dukkeripen what conterdicks it come true. That's the only way to master a dukkeripen. It ain't often that Romanies or Gorgios or anything that lives can master his own dukkeripen. I've been thinkin' a good deal about sich things since I took that cuss on me. Night arter night have I laid awake thinkin' about these 'ere things, and, brother, I believe I have done what no livin' creatur ever done before—I've mastered my own dukkeripen. My mammy used to say that the dukkeripen of every livin' thing comes true at last. "Is there anythink in the whole world," she would say, "more crafty nor one o' those old broad-finned trouts in Knockers' Llyn? But that trout's got his dukkeripen, an' it comes true at last. All day long he's p'raps bin a-flashin' his fins an' a-twiddlin' his tail round an' round the may-fly or the brandlin' worrum, though he knows all about the hook; but all at wonst comes the time o' the bitin', and that's the time o' the dukkeripen, when every fish in the brook, whether he's hungry or not, begins to bite, an' then up comes old red-spots, an' grabs at the bait because he must grab, an' swallows it because he must swallow it; an' there's a hend of old red-spots jist as sure as if he didn't know there wur a hook in the bait." That's what my mammy used to say. But there wur one as could, and did, master her own dukkeripen—Shuri Lovell's little Sinfi.'

'You have mastered your dukkeripen, Sinfi?' 'Yes, I've mastered mine,' she said, with the same look of triumph on her face—'I swore I'd master my dukkeripen, brother, an' I done it. I said to myself the dukkeripen is strong, but a Romany chi may be stronger still if she keeps a-sayin' to herself "I WILL master it; I WILL, I WILL."'

'Then that explains something I have often noticed, Sinfi. I have often seen your lips move and nothing has come from them but a whisper, "I will, I will, I will."'

'Ah, you've noticed that, have you? Well then, now you know what it meant.'

'But, Sinfi, you have not told me what your dukkeripen is. You have often alluded to it, but you have never allowed me even to guess what it is.'

Sinfi's face beamed with pride of triumph.

'You never guessed it? No, you never could guess it. An' months an' months have we lived together an' you heard me whisper "I will, I will," an' you never guessed what them words meant. Lucky for you, my fine Gorgio, that you didn't guess it,' she said, in an altered tone.

'Why?'

''Cos if you had a-guessed it you'd ha' cotch'd a left-hand body-blow that 'ud most like ha' killed you. That's what you'd ha' cotch'd. But now as we're a-goin' to part for ever I'll tell you.'

'Part for ever, Sinfi?'

'Yis, an' that's why I'm goin' to tell you what my dukkeripen wur. Many's the time as you've asked me how it was that, for all that you and I was pals, I hate the Gorgios in a general way as much as Rhona Boswell likes 'em. I used to like the Gorgios wonst as well as ever Rhona did—else how should I ever ha' been so fond o' Winnie Wynne? Tell me that,' she said, in an argumentative way as though I had challenged her speech. 'If I hadn't ha' liked the Gorgios wonst, how should I ha' been so fond o' Winnie Wynne? An' why don't I like Gorgios now? Many's the time you've ax'd me that question, an' now's the time for me to tell you. I know'd the time 'ud come, an' this is the time to tell you, when you and me and Winnie are a-goin' to part for ever at the top o' the biggest mountain in the world, this 'ere blessed Snowdon, as allus did seem somehow to belong to her an' me. When I wur fond o' the Gorgios,—fonder nor ever Rhona Boswell wur at that time ('cos she hadn't never met then with the Gorgio she's a-goin' to die for),—it wur when I war a little chavi, an' didn't know nothink about dukkeripens at all; but arterwards my mammy told my dukkeripen out o' the clouds, an' it wur jist this: I wur to beware o' Gorgios, 'cos a Gorgio would come among the Kaulo Camloes an' break my heart. An' I says to her, "Mammy dear, afore my heart shall break for any Gorgio I'll cut it out with this 'ere knife," an' I draw'd her knife out o' her frock an' put it in my own, and here it is.' And Sinfi pulled out her knife and showed it to me. 'An' now, brother, I'm goin' to tell you somethink else, an' what I'm goin' to tell you'll show we're goin' to part for ever an' ever. As sure as ever the Golden Hand opened over Winnie Wynne's head an' yourn on Snowdon, so sure did I feel that you two 'ud be married, even when it seemed to you that she must he dead. An' as sure as ever my mammy said I must beware o' Gorgios, so sure was I that you wur the very Gorgio as wur to break the Romany chi's heart—if that Romany chi's heart hadn't been Sinfi Lovell's. You hadn't been my pal long afore I know'd that. Arter I had been with you a-lookin' for Winnie or fishin' in the brooks, many's the time, when I lay in the tent with the star-light a-shinin' through the chinks in the tent's mouth, that I've said to myself, "The very Gorgio as my mother seed a-comin' to the Lovells when she penned my dukkerin, he's asleep in his livin'-waggin not five yards off." That's what made me seem so strange to you at times, thinkin' o' my mammy's words, an' sayin' "I will, I will." An' now, brother, fare you well.'

'But you must bid Winnie good-bye,' I said, as I saw her returning.

'Better not,' said she. 'You tell her I've changed my mind about goin' to Carnarvon. She'll think we shall meet again, but we sha'n't. Tell her that they expect you and her at the inn at Llanberis. Rhona will be there to-night with Winnie's clo'es and things.'

'Sinfi,' I said, 'I cannot part from you thus. I should be miserable all my days. No man ever had such a noble, self-sacrificing friend as you. I cannot give you up. In a few days I shall go to the tents and see you and Rhona, and my old friends, Panuel and Jericho; I shall indeed, Sinfi. I mean to do it.'

'No, no,' cried Sinfi; 'everythink says "No" to that; the clouds an' the stars says "No," an' the win' says "No," and the shine and the shadows says "No," and the Romany Sap says "No." An' I shall send your livin'-waggin away, reia; yis, I shall send it arter you, Hal, and your two beautiful gries; an' I shall tell my daddy—as never conterdicks his chavi in nothink, 'cos she's took the seein' eye from Shuri Lovell—I shall tell my dear daddy as no Gorgio and no Gorgie, no lad an' no wench as ever wur bred o' Gorgio blood an' bones, mustn't never live with our breed no more. That's what I shall tell my dear daddy; an' why? an' why? 'cos that's what my mammy comes an' tells me every night, wakin' an' sleepin'—that's what she comes an' tells me, reia, in the waggin an' in the tent, an' aneath the sun an' aneath the stars—an' that's what the fiery eyes of the Romany Sap says out o' the ferns an' the grass, an' in the Londra streets, whenever I thinks o' you. "The kair is kushto for the kairengro, but for the Romany the open air." [Footnote] That's what my mammy used to say.'

[Footnote: The house is good for the house-dweller, the open air for the Gypsy.]

She then left me and descended the path to Capel Curig, and was soon out of sight.

XVIII

THE WALK TO LLANBERIS

When, on coming to rejoin us, Winnie learnt that Sinfi had left for Capel Curig, she seemed at first somewhat disconcerted, I thought. Her training, begun under her aunt, and finished under Miss Dalrymple, had been such that she was by no means oblivious of Welsh proprieties; and, though I myself was entirely unable to see in what way it was more eccentric to be mountaineering with a lover than with a Gypsy companion, she proposed that we should follow Sinfi.

'I have seen your famous living-waggon,' she said. 'It goes wherever the Lovells go. Let us follow her. You can stay at Bettws or Capel Curig, and I can stay with Sinfi.'

I told her how strong was Sinfi's wish that we should not do so. 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.

The beauty of the scene—the touch of the summer breeze, soft as velvet even when it grew boisterous, the perfume of the Snowdonian flowerage that came up to meet us, seemed to pour in upon me through the music of Winnie's voice which seemed to be fusing them all. That beloved voice was making all my senses one.

'You leave all the talk to me,' she said. But as she looked in my face her instinct told her why I could not talk. She knew that such happiness and such bliss as mine carry the soul into a region where spoken language is not.

Looking round me towards the left, where the mighty hollow of Cwm Dyli was partly in sunshine and partly in shade, I startled Winnie by suddenly calling out her name. My thoughts had left the happy dream of Winifred's presence and were with Sinfi Lovell. As I looked at the tall precipices rising from the chasm right up to the summit of Snowdon, I recalled how Sinfi, notwithstanding her familiarity with the scene, appeared to stand appalled as she gazed at the jagged ridges of Crib-y-Ddysgyl, Crib Goch, Lliwedd, and the heights of Moel Siabod beyond. I recalled how the expression of alarm upon Sinfi's features had made me almost see in the distance a starving girl wandering among the rocks, and this it was that made me now exclaim 'Winnie!' With this my lost power of speech returned.

We went to the ruined huts where Sinfi had on that memorable day lingered by the spring, and Winnie began to scoop out the water with her hand and drink it. She saw how I wanted to drink the water out of the little palm, and she scooped some out for me, saying, 'It's the purest, and sweetest, and best water on Snowdon.'

'Yes,' I said, 'the purest, and sweetest, and best water in the world when drunk from such a cup.'

She drew her hand away and let the water drop through her fingers, and turned round to look at the scene we had left, where the summit of Snowdon was towering beyond a reach of rock, bathed in the rapidly deepening light.

'No idle compliments between you and me, sir,' she said, with a smile. 'Remember that I have still time and strength to go back to the top and follow Sinfi down to the camp.'

And then we both laughed together, as we laughed that afternoon in Wilderness Road when she enunciated her theories upon the voices of men and the voices of birds. She then stood gazing abstractedly into a pool of water, upon which the evening lights were now falling. As I saw her reflected in the surface of the stream, which was as smooth as a mirror—saw her reflected there sometimes on an almost colourless surface, sometimes amid a procession in which every colour of the rainbow took part, I sighed. 'Why do you sigh?' said she.

I could not tell her why, for I was recalling Wilderspin's words about her matchless beauty and its inspiring effect upon the painter who painted it. It would indeed, as Wilderspin had said, endow mediocrity with genius.

'Why do you sigh?' she repeated.

'Oh, if I could paint that, Winnie, if I could paint that picture in the water.'

'And why should you not?' she said, in a dreamy way. And then a sudden thought seemed to strike her, and she said with much energy, 'Become a painter, Henry! Become a painter! No man ever yet satisfied a true woman who did not work—work hard at something—anything—if not in the active affairs of life, in the world of art. My love you must always have now—you must always have it under any circumstances. I could not help under any circumstances giving you love. But I fear I could not give a rich, idle man—even if he were Henry himself—enough love to satisfy a yearning like yours.'

She bent her face again over the water, and looked at the picture.

'You have often told me that my face is beautiful, Henry, and you know you never could make me believe it. But suppose you should be right after all, and suppose that you were a painter, and used it for a picture of the Spirit of Snowdon, I should then thank God for having given me a beautiful face, for it would enable you to win your goal. And afterwards, when its beauty had passed away, as it soon would, I should have no further need for beauty, for my painter-husband would, partly through me, have won.'

As we walked along, she pointed to the tubular bridge over the Menai Straits and to the coast of Anglesey. The panorama had that fairy-like expression which belongs so peculiarly to Welsh scenery. Other mountainous countries in Europe are beautiful, and since that divine walk I have become intimately acquainted with them, but for associations romantic and poetic, there is surely no land in the world equal to North Wales.

'Do you remember, Winnie,' I murmured, 'when you so delighted me by exclaiming, "What a beautiful world it is!"?'

'Ah, yes,' said Winnie, 'and how I should love to paint its beauty. The only people I really envy are painters.'

We were now at the famous spot where the triple echo is best heard, and we began to shout like two children in the direction of Llyn Ddu'r Arddu. And then our talk naturally fell on Knockers' Llyn and the echoes to be heard there. She then took me to another famous sight on this side of Snowdon, the enormous stone, said to be five thousand tons in weight, called the Knockers' Anvil. While we lingered here Winnie gave me as many anecdotes and legends of this stone as would fill a little volume. But suddenly she stopped.

'Look!' she said, pointing to the sunset. 'I have seen that sight only once before. I was with Sinfi. She called it "the Dukkeripen of the Trushul."'

The sun was now on the point of sinking, and his radiance, falling on the cloud-pageantry of the zenith, fired the flakes and vapoury films floating and trailing above, turning them at first into a ruby-coloured mass, and then into an ocean of rosy fire. A horizontal bar of cloud which, until the radiance of the sunset fell upon it, had been dull and dark and grey, as though a long slip from the slate quarries had been laid across the west, became for a moment a deep lavender colour, and then purple, and then red-gold. But what Winnie was pointing at was a dazzling shaft of quivering fire where the sun had now sunk behind the horizon. Shooting up from the cliffs where the sun had disappeared, this shaft intersected the bar of clouds and seemed to make an irregular cross of deep rose.

When Winnie turned her eyes again to mine I was astonished to see tears in them. I asked her what they meant. She said, 'While I was looking at that cross of rose and gold in the clouds it seemed to me that there came on the evening breeze the sound of a sob, and that it was Sinfi's, my sister Sinfi's; but of course by this time Snowdon stands between us and her.'

POSTSCRIPT

In every case where I have brought into this story facts connected with medical matters, I have been most cautious to avail myself of the authority of medical men. I will give here the words of Mr. James Douglas upon this matter. After stating the fact that the story was in part dictated to my dear friend Dr. Gordon Hake during a stay with him at Roehampton, he says:—

Dr. Hake is mainly known as the 'parable poet,' but as a fact he was a physician of extraordinary talent who had practised first at Bury St. Edmunds and afterwards at Spring Gardens, London, until he partly retired to be private physician to the late Lady Ripon. After her death he left practice altogether in order to devote himself to literature, for which he had very great equipments. As Aylwin touched upon certain subtle nervous phases, it must have been a great advantage to the author to dictate these portions of the story to so skilled and experienced a friend. The rare kind of cerebral exaltation into which Henry Aylwin passed after his appalling experience in the cove, in which the entire nervous system was disturbed, was not what is known as brain fever. The record of it in Aylwin is, I understand, a literal account of a rare and wonderful case brought under the professional notice of Dr. Hake.

But I am now going to touch upon a much more important medical subject. Since the appearance of Aylwin, I have received many letters enquiring whether the transmission of hysteria from one patient to another by means of a magnet is an imaginary experiment, or whether it is based on fact. It has been impossible for me to answer all these letters. But some of them, coming from loving relatives of those who have suffered from hysteria, have been couched in such earnest and pathetic words that they could not be left unanswered, and this has caused me great inconvenience. I have therefore determined to give the reader some tangible data upon this subject. The extract from the Daily Telegraph which appears on page 465 is a real extract, and records a real case of transmission of hysteria. Upon the same subject I take the following admirable remarks from an article in the Quarterly Review for July 1890, called 'Mesmerism and Hypnotism.'

The Influence of Magnets.—We have briefly referred to the action of magnets on the muscles in speaking of the physiological phenomena, but they possess other properties which hardly come under that head. They have the power of attracting hypnotised subjects. Thus, if a good-sized magnet is placed at some little distance from the subject, and behind a screen so that he cannot see it, after a time he will get up and go towards it. If now another magnet be placed at an equal distance behind him, he will stop and remain as it were balanced between the two. By withdrawing one or other he can be drawn backwards or forwards. Further, he can be charged with magnetism by placing near him a large magnet with five ends. If it be suddenly removed and hidden in another room, he is impelled to follow it with such force that he will fling aside all obstacles in his way, and tracking it step by step will walk straight up to it. 'Once he sights it, he either remains in dumb contemplation of it in front of its two poles, or else lays his hands on both of the poles with a kind of profound satisfaction.' These experiments with magnets are very exhausting.

* * * * *

Finally, if the senses can be so heightened as in the cases already cited from Braid and the clinique of La Salpêtrière, it requires no great stretch of imagination to suppose them carried still further until they become comparable to those inexplicable faculties which we call instinct in animals, that for instance by which animals—cats, dogs, and sheep—can find their way home, sometimes over hundreds of miles of unknown country.

Concerning the faculty of presensation, it is worth while to say a little more. The early mesmerists made a great point of the power of some patients to diagnose the condition of another. Dr. Puysegur's patient Joly, mentioned above, possessed the faculty to an unusual degree. He was an educated man, of good position, and could express himself intelligibly:—

C'est une sensation veritable que j'éprouve dans un endroit correspondant à la partie qui souffre chez celui que je touche: ma main va naturellement se porter à l'endroit de son mal, et je ne peux pas plus m'y tromper que je ne pourrois le faire en portant ma main où je souffrirois moi-meme.

Now, the following experiment has been carried out by Charcot at La Salpêtrière. A young girl suffering from hysterical hemiplegia (paralysis of one side) came up one day from the country. She was placed in a chair behind a screen and a hypnotic patient sent for from the wards. The latter was placed on the other side of the screen and hypnotised. Neither of the patients was aware of the other's presence. At the end of a minute the hypnotised patient was found to have acquired the other's hemiplegia. The experiment was repeated every day, and in four days the new comer was relieved of her trouble, which had lasted over a year. The same experiment was tried in many cases, and always succeeded, although in some of them the affections imitated were of a very complex character, such as paralysis of half the tongue. With these facts in view, the alleged experiences of the older mesmerists appear by no means impossible.