Aylwin. Theodore Watts-Dunton
side! I could write out every word of that talk. I remember every accent of her voice, every variation of light that came and went in her eyes, every ripple of love-laughter, every movement of her body, lissome as a greyhound's, graceful as a bird's. For fully an hour it lasted. And remember, reader, that it was on the silvered sands, every inch of which was associated with some reminiscence of childhood; it was beneath a moon smiling as fondly and brightly as she ever smiled on the domes of Venice or between the trees of Fiesole; it was by the margin of waves whose murmurs were soft and perfumed as Winifred's own breathing's when she slept; and remember that the girl was Winifred herself, and that the boy—the happy boy—had Winifred's love. Ah! but that last element of that hour's bliss is just what the reader cannot realise, because he can only know Winifred through these poor words. That is the distressing side of a task like mine. The beloved woman here called Winifred (no phantom of an idle imagination, but more real to me and dear to me than this soul and body I call my own)—this Winifred can only live for you, reader, through my feeble, faltering words; and yet I ask you to listen to the story of such a love as mine.
'Winnie,' I said, 'you have often as a child sung songs of Snowdon to me and told me of others you used to sing. I should love to hear one of these now, with the chime of the North Sea for an accompaniment instead of the instrument you tell me your Gypsy friend used to play. Before we go up the gangway, do sing me a verse of one of those songs.'
After some little persuasion she yielded and sang in a soft undertone the following verse:—
'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.'
[Welsh translation]
'Mi gwrddais gynt a morwynig,
Wrth odreu y Wyddfa wen,
Un ysgafn ei throed fel yr ewig
A gwallt fel y nos ar ei phen;
Ei grudd oedd fel y rhosyn,
Un hardd a gwen ei gwawr;
Yn canu cân, a'i defaid mân,
O'r Wyddfa'n d'od i lawr.'
'What a beautiful world it is!' said she, in a half-whisper, as we were about to part at the cottage door, for I had refused to leave her on the sands or even at the garden-gate. 'I should like to live for ever,' she whispered; 'shouldn't you, Henry?'
'Well, that all depends upon the person I lived with. For instance, I shouldn't care to live for ever with Widow Shales, the pale-faced tailoress, nor yet with her humpbacked son, whose hump was such a constant source of wistful wonder and solicitude to you as a child.'
She gave a merry little laugh of reminiscence. Then she said, 'But you could live with me for ever, couldn't you, Henry?' plucking a leaf from the grape-vine on the wall and putting it between her teeth.
'For ever and ever, Winifred.'
'It fills me with wonder,' said she, after a while, 'the thought of being Henry's wife. It is so delightful and yet so fearful.'
By this I knew she had not forgotten that look of hate on my mother's face.
She put her hand on the latch and found that the door was now unlocked.
'But where is the fearful part of it, Winifred?' I said. 'I am not a cannibal.'
'You ought to marry a great English lady, dear, and I'm only a poor girl; you seem to forget all about that, you silly fond boy. You forget I'm only a poor girl—just Winifred,' she continued.
'Just Winifred,' I said, taking her hand and preventing her from lifting the latch.
'I've lived,' said she, 'in a little cottage like this with my aunt and Miss Dalrymple and done everything.'
'Everything's a big word, Winifred. What may everything include in your case?'
'Include!' said Winifred; 'oh, everything, housekeeping and—'
'Housekeeping!' said I. 'Racing the winds with Rhona Boswell and other Gypsy children up and down Snowdon—that's been your housekeeping.'
'Cooking,' said Winifred, maintaining her point.
'Oh, what a fib, Winifred! These sunburnt fingers may have picked wild fruits, but they never made a pie in their lives.'
'Never made a pie! I make beautiful pies and things; and when we're married I'll make your pies—may I, instead of a conceited man-cook?'
'No, Winifred. Never make a pie or do a bit of cooking in my house, I charge you.'
'Oh, why not?' said Winifred, a shade of disappointment overspreading her face. 'I suppose it's unladylike to cook.'
'Because,' said I,'once let me taste something made by these tanned fingers, and how could I ever afterwards eat anything made by a man-cook, conceited or modest? I should say to that poor cook, "Where is the Winifred flavour, cook? I don't taste those tanned fingers here." And then, suppose you were to die first, Winifred, why I should have to starve, just for want of a little Winifred flavour in the pie-crust. Now I don't want to starve, and you sha'n't cook.'
'Oh, Hal, you dear, dear fellow!' shrieked Winifred, in an ecstasy of delight at this nonsense. Then her deep love overpowered her quite, and she said, her eyes suffused with tears, 'Henry, you can't think how I love you. I'm sure I couldn't live even in heaven without you.'
Then came the shadow of a lich-owl, as it whisked past us towards the apple-trees.
'Why, you'd be obliged to live without me, Winifred, if I were still at Raxton.'
'No,' said she, 'I'm quite sure I couldn't. I should have to come in the winds and play round you on the sands. I should have to peep over the clouds and watch you. I should have to follow you about wherever you went. I should have to beset you till you said, "Bother Winnie! I wish she'd keep in heaven."'
I saw, however, that the owl's shadow had disturbed her, and I lifted the latch of the cottage door for her. We were met by a noise so loud that it might have come from a trombone.
'Why, what on earth is that?' I said. I could see the look of shame break over Winifred's features as she said, 'Father.' Yes, it was the snoring of Wynne in a drunken sleep: it filled the entire cottage.
The poor girl seemed to feel that that brutal noise had, somehow, coarsened her, and she actually half shrank from me as I gave her a kiss and left her.
Wondering how I should at such an hour get into the house without disturbing my mother and the servants, I passed along that same road where, as a crippled child, I had hobbled on that, bright afternoon when love was first revealed to me. Ah, what a different love was this which was firing my blood, and making dizzy my brain! That child-love had softened my heart in its deep distress, and widened my soul. This new and mighty passion in whose grasp I was, this irresistible power that had seized and possessed my entire being, wrought my soul in quite a different sort, concentrating and narrowing my horizon till the human life outside the circle of our love seemed far, far away, as though I were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. I had learned that he who truly loves is indeed born again, becomes a new and a different man. Was it only a few short hours ago, I asked myself, that I was listening to my mother's attack upon Winifred? Was it this very evening that I was sitting in Dullingham Church?
How far away in the past seemed those events! And as to my mother's anger against Winifred, that anger and cruel scorn of class which had concerned me so much, how insignificant now seemed this and every other obstacle in love's path! I looked up at the moonlit sky; I leaned upon a gate and looked across the silent fields where Winifred and I used to gather violets in spring, hedge-roses in