I soon distinguished Sinfi's commanding figure near that gorgeous
living-waggon of 'orange-yellow colour with red window-blinds' in
which she had persuaded me to invest my money at Chester. On the
foot-board sat two urchins of the Lovell family, 'making believe' to
drive imaginary horses, and yelling with all their might to Rhona
Boswell, whose laugh, musical as ever, showed that she enjoyed the
game as much as the children did. Sinfi was standing on a patch of
that peculiar kind of black ash which burnt grass makes, busy with a
fire, over which a tea-kettle was hanging from the usual iron
kettle-prop. Among the ashes left by a previous fire her bantam-cock
Pharaoh was busy pecking, scratching, and calling up imaginary hens
to feast upon his imaginary 'finds.' I entered the Dell, and before
Sinfi saw me I was close to her.
She was muttering to the refractory fire as though it were a live
thing, and asking it why it refused to burn beneath the kettle. A
startled look, partly of pleasure and partly of something like alarm,
came over her face as she perceived me. I drew her aside and told her
all that had happened in regard to Winifred's appearance as a beggar
in London. A strange expression that was new to me overspread her
features, and I thought I heard her whisper to herself, 'I will, I
will.'
'I knowed the cuss 'ud ha' to ha' its way in the blood, like the bite
of a sap' [snake], she murmured to herself. 'And yit the dukkeripen
on Snowdon said, clear and plain enough, as they'd surely marry at
last. What's become o' the stolen trúshul, brother--the cross?' she
inquired aloud. 'That trúshul will ha' to be given to the dead man
agin, an' it'll ha' to be given back by his chavo [child] as swore to
keep watch over it. But what's it all to me?' she said in a tone of
suppressed anger that startled me. 'I ain't a Gorgie,'
'But, Sinfi, the cross cannot be buried again. The reason I have not
replaced it in the tomb,--the reason I never will replace it
there,--is that the people along the coast know now of the existence
of the jewel, and know also of my father's wishes. If it was unsafe
in the tomb when only Winnie's father knew of it, it would be a
thousandfold more unsafe now.'
'P'raps that's all the better for her an' you: the new thief takes
the cuss.'
'This is all folly,' I replied, with the anger of one struggling
against an unwelcome half-belief that refuses to be dismissed. 'It is
all moonshine-madness. I'll never do it,--not at least while I retain
my reason. It was no doubt partly for safety as well as for the other
reason that my father wished the cross to be placed in the tomb. It
will be far safer now in a cabinet than anywhere else.'
'Reia,' said Sinfi, 'you told me wonst as your great-grandmother
was a Romany named Fenella Stanley. I have axed the Scollard
about her, and what do you think he says? He says that she wur my
great-grandmother too, for she married a Lovell as died.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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