 | The coming of love |  |
XI. THE HAUNTED GIRL.
(RHONA IN WALES.)
Scene: Snowdon—Knocker's Llyn.(Sinfi Lovell, being anxious to use Rhona as a clairvoyante (in order to learn the fate of a certain friend of her own believed to be in danger abroad), has enticed her to leave the camp in Rington Hollow and accompany her to a llyn on Snowdon called Knocker's Llyn, on the face of whose waters the “knockers” (or gnomes) of Snowdon paint their pictures whenever they hear the sound of Sinfi's crwth.
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SINFI.
Now that the mornin's veil o' gold grows thin
The haunted water shines so bright and clear
That I can see the trouts, as I stand here,
An' see the sunlight kindlin' every fin
To yellow an' lollo an' blue; yet Rhona's eyes
Can read no fortunes in the Haunted Llyn
Except her own and his, her tarno rei's.
But if the pennin o' the dukkerin fails,
I've brought her here for nothink—here to Wales;
I've made her leave the Dell and leave the Chace
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She loves the more because it's far away.
I plays the crwth, but all her lips can say
Is jist the words, “He'll come, he'll come pallal :
Next summer I shall see my dear, I shall.”
(Rhona in a kind of trance, talks in a dreamy voice about her recent parting with her lover in Gypsy Dell.)
SINFI.
Her sperrit's gone, jist liek a homin' dove,
To Rington where she left her tarno rei
The day they parted. She's in Rington Drove;
Ah! well I knows a Romany chi in love
Can't see no sights in water, earth or sky
But sights o' one. She's bound in sich a chain
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The knockers too 'll find it hard to throw
True pictures on the water and to show
The dukkeripen I wants to see and know.
RHONA.
(A strange kind of smile, painful and yet coaxing, passes over her features: her eyes seem filled with tears, while she murmurs in a wheedling tone.)
We'll part beside the mill-pool,—here's the stream
Where you whipped out that splutterin' boro perch;
Don't you remember what a leap an' lurch
He gave, and druv the bleaks among the bream? . . .
A little further dear! See—what a gleam
O' mornin' lollo strikes old Rington church! (She pauses for some time—then proceeds.)
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Where fust you kissed me—O it's like a dream,
Your goin' away: it is, it is my darlin'!
But you'll come back at swallow time, you will! (Again she pauses for some time: then proceeds.)
Yes, here's the birch: but let's walk up the hill:
Oh, look! A gypsy-magpie an' a starlin,
They're meetin' on the chaw !—Good luck you know
Must follow you wherever now you go.
(Sinfi looks with pitying eyes upon her face, occasionally turned up to hers. After a while she changes the measure of her music to a well-known air among the Welsh gypsies, called “The Parting Ghyllie ,” but it fails to call Rhona's spirit back from the Drove; it simply makes her thoughts on the one subject move in response to the new air.)
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This path thro' the spinny is nearest
Where the light, a quivering lace,
Falls sweet through the pattinor , dearest—
Oh! slacken the pace.
(Sinfi's music now returns to the previous movement, and Rhona's chant answers to it.)
RHONA.
Another sign o' luck! See every where
All twinklin' in the kem , the blessed drops!
On hedge an' hay-field, meadow an' lea an' copse!
A million tarno rainbows laugh in the air!
Them cows look round with wrinkled necks to stare
Stretched, chewin', chewin' in the buttercups,
See! in that furrow in the young green crops
That crouchin' shoshu —what a one to snare!
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O' blackbird, mavis, finch an' missel thrush.
An' if the cuckoo's v'ice is rather thin,
It's June you know!—I sees him in that bush:
Let's go an' look, dear—plenty o' time for that—
Lord how they hates him—linnet, finch an' chat!
(Sinfi again changes the measure to the “Parting Ghyllie,” and again Rhona's chant responds to it; but her mind cannot be drawn from Rington Drove.)
RHONA.
Let us part where the river runs clearest
Through the shadow an' shine o' the Chace
Where often we've angled my dearest,
For gudgeon and dace.
(Sinfi returns to the previous air and again Rhona answers it by the changed movement of her chant.)
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(In a still more coaxing tone.)
You say we must part here at Rington Cross—
Lord, how it minds me o' them snares we set,
That day you got me that white violet
For luck, you know: 'twur growin' in that green moss.
Now fare ye well: it's hard to lose ye thus—
I ain't a cryin'; but still it's hard—an' yet
Sweet-like, to think I've got no call to fret;
Good luck 'll come to you thro' Rhona's loss.
An' here's the clisson—what you calls a curl—
Take it an' think o' her you're leavin' here
Till swallow-time—till swallow-time, next year
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When bavals wel an' strike an' shake an' dirl
The ship. Let's walk a little farther, dear.
(Sinfi again plays a bar or two of the “Parting Ghyllie” and again Rhona answers it.)
RHONA.
You called me that mornin', my dearest,
When you see'd me at fust in the Place —
“Your Rhona, the best, the sincerest
O' the Romany race.”
(Sinfi returns to the previous air and again Rhona's chant responds to it.)
RHONA.
Let's take the meadow path an' smell the kas :
How green the swathes look 'against them brownish cocks!
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See how they're watchin' every rinkenny lass. (An expression of playful humour shines through her tears.)
Or is it that 'ere beer-cask on the grass?—
I knows them gals with sunburnt cheeks an locks
An' stick-burrs in their chuffas an' their frocks,
Tossin' them swathes an' chatterin' as we pass;
That one a starin', leanin' on her rake,
Is that one's sister paddlin' in the brook.
Hark, from the standin' chaw comes “crake, crake, crake!” (Her voice now breaks into sobs.)
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While—you walk on. (She totters and nearly falls into the llyn.)
He's gone! my heart will break.
(She sobbs hitterly in her trance.)
SINFI.
It's hard to see a lovin' woman cry,
If only in a dream. Well, well, I know
A tune 'll make the heaviest-hearted chi
Stir to the music o' the heel and toe;
The old Kas-Kairin' Ghyllie 'll change her trance
And make her think o' many a lennor dance
And then, perhaps, the thought o' him 'll go.
(Sinfi now plays “The Kas-Kairin' Ghyllie”; and at once Rhona springs away from the margin of the llyn, and begins to sing and dance to the air.)
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Dancin' an' singin' as she used to sing
An' dance one time in puvs o' Rington Hollow
As merry as a skylark on the wing
That mounts to meet the mornin' gold an' lollo
Like some poor chirickli what sorrows late
An' sorrows airly, pinin' for her mate,
Has she forgot who left her there to wait
The comin' o' the swallow?
(She begins to play softly and tentatively a bar of the “Parting Ghyllie” putting her arm round Rhona's waist. Tears at once start into Rhona's eyes, and she begins to murmur through her sobs.)
RHONA.
Closer, closer, my dearest!
Let me feel the dear breath on my face!
Closer, my nearest and dearest:
The last embrace!
| The coming of love | |