Aylwin Part 62

When, after a while, Snowdon and the drama of the present came back to me, my brain was in such a marvellous state that it held two pictures of the same Winnie as though each hemisphere of the brain were occupied with its own vision. I was kissing Winnie's sea-salt lips in the light of the moon at the cottage door, and I was kissing them in the morning radiance by Knockers' Llyn. And yet so overwhelming was the mighty tide of bliss overflowing my soul that there was no room within me for any other emotion--no room for curiosity, no room even for wonder.

Like a spirit awakening in Paradise, I accepted the heaven in which I found myself, and did not inquire how I got there.

This did not last long, however. Suddenly and sharply the moonlight scene vanished, and I was on Snowdon, and there came a burning curiosity to know the meaning of this new life--the meaning of the life of pain that had followed the parting at the cottage door.

V

'Winnie,' I said, 'tell me where we are. I have been very ill since we parted in your father's cottage. I have had the wildest hallucinations concerning you; dreams, intolerable dreams. And even now they hang about me; even now it seems to me that we are far away from Raxton, surrounded by the hills and peaks of Snowdon. If they were real _you_ would be the dream, but you are real; this waist is real.'

'Of course we are on Snowdon, Henry!' said she. 'You must indeed have been ill--you must now be very ill--to suppose you are at Raxton.'

'But what are we doing here?' I said. 'How did we come here?'

'Let Badoura speak for herself only,' she said, with that arch smile of hers. She was alluding to the old days at Raxton, when she hoped that some day her little Camaralzaman would be carried by genii to her as she sat thinking of him by the magic llyn. 'The genie who brought me was Sinfi Lovell. But who brought Camaralzaman? That is a question,' she said, 'I am dying to have answered.'

At the name of Sinfi Lovell the past came flowing in.

'Then there _is_ a Sinfi Lovell, Winnie! And yet she is one of the figures in the dream. There was no Sinfi Lovell with us at Raxton.'

'Of course there is a Sinfi Lovell! You begin to make me as dazed as yourself. You have known her well; you and she were seeking me when I was lost.'

'Then you _were_ lost?' I said. 'That, then, is no dream. And yet if you were lost you have been--But you are alive, Winnie. Let me feel the lips on mine again. You are alive! Snowdon told me at last that you were alive, but I dared not believe it, my darling. I dared not believe that my misery would end thus--thus.'

There came upon her face an expression of distressed perplexity which did more than anything else to recall me to my senses.

'Winnie,' I said, 'my brain is whirling. Let us sit down.'

She sat down by my side.

'You thought your Winnie was dead, Henry. Sinfi Lovell has told me all about it.' Then, looking intently at me, she said, 'And how your sorrow has changed you, dear!'

'You mean it has aged me, Winnie. I have observed it myself, and people tell me it has made me look older than I am by many years.

These furrows around the eyes--these furrows on my brow--you are kissing them, dear.'

'Oh, I love them; how I love them!' she said. 'I am not kissing them to smooth them away. To me every line tells of your love for Winnie.'

'And the hair, Winnie--look, it is getting quite grizzled.' Then, as the lovely head sank upon my breast. I whispered in her ears, 'Is there at last sorrow enough in the eyes, Winnie? Has the hardening effect of wealth coa.r.s.ened my expression? Can a rich man for once enter the kingdom of love? Is the betrothal now complete? Are we both betrothed now?'

I stopped, for bliss and love were convulsing her with sobs until you might have supposed her heart was breaking.

While she lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my faculties and paralyse me.

After a while she became more composed, and sat in a trance, so to speak, of happiness.

But she remained silent. The conversation, I perceived, would have to be directed entirely by me. With the appalling seizures ever present in my mind, I felt that every word that came from my lips was dangerous.

'Look,' I said, 'the colours of the vapours round the llyn are as rich as they were when we breakfasted here together.'

'We breakfasted here together! Why, what do you mean?' she said, looking in my face. 'You forget, Henry, you never knew me in Wales at all; it was only at Raxton that you ever saw me.'

'I mean when you breakfasted with the Prince of the Mist. I was the Prince of the Mist, dear.'

She gave me a puzzled look which scared while it warned me. How cruel it seemed of Sinfi, who had planned this meeting, not to have told me how much and how little Winnie knew of the past.

'You know nothing about the Prince of the Mist except what I told you on Raxton sands,' she said. 'But you have been very ill; you will be well now.'

'Yes,' I said; 'I have found the life I had lost, and these dreams of mine will soon pa.s.s.'

As the conversation went on I began to see that she remembered our meetings on the sands--remembered everything up to a certain point.

What was that point? This was the question that kept me on tenterhooks.

Every word she uttered, however, shed light into my mind, and served as a warning that I must feel my way cautiously. It was evident to me that in some unaccountable way Sinfi at some time after she left me at Beddgelert had discovered that Winnie was not really dead, and had brought her back to me--brought her back to me restored in mind, but with all memory of what had pa.s.sed during her dementia erased from her consciousness. Everything depended now upon my learning how much of her past she did remember. A single ill-judged word of mine--a single false move--might ruin all, and bring back the life of misery which I seemed at last to have left behind me.

VI

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have not yet told me how you came here. You have not yet told me how it is that you meet me on Snowdon--meet me in this wonderful way.'

'Oh,' said she with a smile, 'Badoura has been a mere puppet in the play. She had no idea she was going to meet her prince. Sinfi was suddenly seized with a desire that she and I should come back, and visit the dear old places we knew together. I was nothing loth, as you may imagine, but I could not understand what had made her set her heart upon it. When we reached Carnarvonshire I found that Sinfi's people were all encamped near to Bettws y Coed, and we went and stayed there. We visited all the places in the neighbourhood that were a.s.sociated with her childhood and mine.'

'You went to Fairy Glen?' I said.

'Yes; we went there the night before last and saw it in the moonlight.'

'I was there, and I saw you.'

'Ah! Then the man sitting on the boulder at the bottom was you! How wonderful! Sinfi was there on the step round the corner; she must have seen you. I know now why she suddenly hurried me away. She had told me that she wanted to see the Glen by moonlight'

'Then you did not know that you would meet me here?'

'My dear Henry, do you suppose that if I had known, I could have been induced to take part in anything so theatrical? When I saw you standing here my amazement and joy were so great that I forgot the strange way in which I stood exhibited.'

I felt that the longer she chatted about such matters as these the more opportunities I should get of learning how much and how little she knew of her own story, so I said,

'But tell me how Sinfi contrived to trick you.'

'Well, this morning was the time fixed for our visiting Llyn Coblynau, as we call Knockers' Lynn, which was my favourite place as a child. We were to see it when the colours of the morning were upon it. Then we were to go right to the top of Snowdon and take a mid-day meal at the hut there, and in the evening go down to Llanberis and sleep there. To-morrow morning we were to go to dear old Carnarvon and see again the beloved sea. I find now that her plan was to bring you and me together in this sensational way.'

'Will she join us?' I asked.

'I know no more than you what will be Sinfi's next whim. At the last moment yesterday I was surprised to find that I was not to come with her here, as she was not to sleep in the camp last night because she had promised to see a friend at Capel Curig. And now, shall I tell you how she inveigled me into taking my part in this Snowdon play she was getting up? She told me that she had the greatest wish to discover how the "Knockers' echoes," as they are called, would sound if, in the early morning, she were to play her crwth in one spot and I were to answer it from another spot with a verse of a Welsh song.

It seemed a pretty idea, and it was agreed that when I reached the llyn I was to go round it to the opening at the east, pa.s.s through the crevice, and wait there till I heard her crwth.'

'Well, Winnie, I must say that the way in which our Gypsy friend manipulated you, and the way in which she manipulated me, shows a method that would have done credit to any madness.'

'You? How did she trick you?'