Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

"Never mind. What about David?"

"Oh, ho! You know his name, then? Well, and that's all I do – pretty nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns, possesses,) a beautiful harp —beautiful! The Lord knows, some do say, that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings, where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy Telynwr! Yet, by my soul, we all say we'd rather see her his than this foreigner gentleman's, who has almost broke her heart, they say, by coming between her and her own dear one."

"He's not come yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than to a gentleman."

"Why – to be sure, sir – but vows be vows – love's love – and to tell truth, sir," (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up,) "if any foreign, half Welsh, half wild Indian, sort of gentleman had sent his fine letters, asking my sweetheart's friends to turn me off, in my courting days, and prepare my wench to be his lady, instead of my wife – I'd have – I'd have" —

"What would you have done?" asked the other, laughing heartily.

"Cursed him to St Elian!" roared the other; then, dropping his voice into a solemn tone, "put him into his well.21 I'd have plagued him, I warrant. But for my part," added the man archly, "I don't believe there's any squire lover in the case – nor that your honour ever said there is." The agent here vanished, as if in haste, abruptly, down the steep path.

During this conversation, Winifred had reached the river. While she stands expectant, not in happiness, but in tears, it is time to say a few words of the lover so expected.

David, who was lately become known "on t'other side Tivy," by the name of Nosdethiol Telynwr, that is, "night-walking harper," was an idle romantic young man, almost grown out of youth, who had long lived away from Wales, where he had neither relative nor friend but one aged woman who had been his first nurse, he having been early left an orphan. Without settled occupation or habits, he was understood almost to depend for bread on the salmon he caught, and trifling presents received. A small portable harp, of elegant workmanship, (adorned with "real silver," so ran the tale,) was the companion of his moonlight wanderings. He had a whim of serenading those who had never heard of a "serenade," but were not the less sensible of a placid pleasure at being awakened by soft music in some summer sight. The simple mountain cottagers, whose slumbers he thus broke or soothed, often attributed the sweet sounds to the kindness of some wandering member of the "Fair Family," or Tylwyth Têg, the fairies. Nor did his figure, if discovered vanishing between the trees, if some one ventured to peep out, in a light night, dispel the illusion; for it appears, that the fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature."22 That he was "very learned," had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books, however little of men, was reported on both sides of the river; and these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred, who had so rashly given all her thoughts, all her hopes, all her heart almost, (reserving only one sacred corner for her beloved parents,) to this dangerous stranger – for stranger he was still to her in almost all outer circumstances of life. This was partly owing to the interposition of that narrow river, however trivial a line of demarcation that must appear to English people, accustomed to cross even great rivers of commerce, like the Thames, as they would step over a brook or ditch, by the frequent aid of bridges and boats. In Wales, bridges are too costly to be common. When reared, some unlucky high flood often sweeps them away. Intercourse by ferryboats and fords is liable to long interruptions. The dwellers of opposite sides frequent different markets, and belong frequently to different counties. The nature of the soil also often differs wholly. Hence it happens, that sometimes a farmer, whose eye rests continually on the little farm and fields of another, on the opposite "bank," rising from the river running at the base of his own confronting hill-side, lives on, ignorant almost of the name, quite of the character, of their tenant, to whom he could almost make himself heard by a shout – if it happens that neither ford, ferry, nor bridge, is within short distance.

"The people of t'other side," is an expression implying nearly as much strangeness, and contented ignorance of these neighbours, and no neighbours, as the same spoken by the people of Dover or Calais, of those t'other side the Channel. It was not, therefore, surprising that poor Winifred (albeit not imprudent, save in this new-sprung passion,) might have said with the poet, too truly,

"I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in that heart;I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art."

This wild reckless sentiment (though scarcely true to love's nature, which is above all things curious about all belonging to its object) did in her case illustrate her feelings. Winifred had lately disclosed to her dear "unknown" the ruin impending over her father, the result of his mingled good-nature and indolence, he having permitted the tenants to run in arrears, and suffer dilapidations, as already said; – the long neglect, however, of the East Indian landlord being at the root of the evil, who had been as remiss in his dealings with the steward as the steward with the tenants. The first appearance of this newly appointed agent, who announced the early return of his employer to take possession of the decayed manor-house, was as sudden as ominous of the ruin of old John Bevan. The hope he held out of the "Nabob" espousing his long-remembered child, Winifred, and the consequent salvation of her father, seemed too romantic to be believed. Yet this man proved himself duly accredited by his principal, and exercised his power already with severity. The fine old house of Talylynn, a mansion rising close to a small beautiful lake skirted by an antique park with many deer, was already almost prepared for the reception of the "squire from abroad." Meanwhile – what most excited the ill-will of the tenantry – this odious persecutor of the all-beloved John Bevan had also furbished up a neat old house adjoining the park gate, as a residence for himself; while poor Bevan's farm-house of Llaneol was suffered to fall into ruinous decay – the new steward even neglecting to keep it weather-tight.

Thus decayed, and almost ruinous, it seemed more in harmony with the fortunes of the ever resigned and patient man. But his less placid dame, after losing the services of Winifred, had fallen into a peevish sort of despondency, as the father, missing her society, and its finer species of consolation, had sunk into a more placid apathy.

David had received the hint of her possible self-devotion to the coming "squire" with very little philosophy, little temper, and no allowance for the feelings of an only daughter expecting to see a white-headed, fond father, dragged from his home to a jail. He had been incensed; he had wronged her by imputations of sordid motives – of pride, of contempt for himself as a beggar; and at last broke from her in sullen resentment, after requiring her to bring all his letters, at their next interview, which was to be a farewell one. And now she was bringing every thing she had received from him, in sad obedience to this angry demand. Nor was all his wrath, his injustice, and his despair, really unacceptable to her secret heart. She would not have had him patient under even the prospective possibility of her marrying another.

But his manner at this meeting announced a change in his whole sentiments.

His very first words, (cold, yet kind, but how altered in tone!) with his constrained deportment, expressed his acquiescence in her purpose, whether pride, jealousy, or a juster estimate of her filial virtue, had induced the stern resolve.

Winifred had never known the full strength of her own passion till now! The idea of an early eternal end to their ungratified loves, which had for some time become familiar to her own secret mind, assumed a new and strange terror for her imagination the moment it ceased to be hers alone. The shock was novel and overpowering, when the separation seemed acquiesced in by him, thus putting it out of her own power to hesitate further between devotion to the lover or to the parent. His reconciled manner, his calm taking her by the hand, even the kiss which she could not resist, were more painful than his utmost resentment would have been. Yet there was a sad severity in his look, as his fine countenance of deep melancholy turned to the bright moon, which a little comforted her, and indicated that it was pride rather than patience which led to his affected contentment. He had not a parent to nerve his heart to the sacrifice.

"I passed your home yesterday," he began sarcastically: "it is a fine place again, already, that hall of Talylynn, and wants only as fine a mistress."

"You wrong me, David bach! on my life and soul you do, dear David!" she replied sobbing. "'Tis a hateful hall – a horrid hall! If it were only I, your poor lost Winifred, that was to suffer, oh! how much sooner would I be carried dead into a vault, than alive, and dressed in all the finest silks of India, into that dreadful house you twit me with! – unkind, unkind!" And almost fainting, her head sunk upon his shoulder, and his arm was required to support her.

Instantly she recovered, and stood erect. "But oh, David, there is another dreadful place, and another dear being besides you, dearest, that I think of night and day! The horrid castle jail – my dear, dear father! Oh, if this Lewis speaks truth, and if that strange boy – I only knew him as a boy, you know – who has power to ruin him, (will surely ruin him!) will indeed forgive him all he owes; will really become his son – his son-in-law, instead of his merciless creditor; oh! could I refuse my part, shocking part though it be? I should not suffer long, David – I feel I should not."

"And pray, what kind of youth —boy as you are pleased to call him – was this nabob then?" enquired her lover, apparently startled at learning the fact of her having had some previous knowledge of his powerful rival.

"A youth! a mere child, when I last saw him," she answered. "I thought you had known all about him."

"Nothing more than his name; how came you in his company?"

"His father, living in India, was half-brother to our old squire, Fitzarthur of Talylynn. His mother dying, his widower father, whose health was broken up before, came over here, this being his native country, in hope of recovering it; but died at Talylynn, leaving one child, that little orphan boy, heir, after his half-uncle's death, to all this property. You have often heard me tell how like two brothers my dear father and our old squire were always – though father was only a steward – how he used to have me at the great house, for a month at a time, where he had me taught by a lady who lived with him, before I went to school; and so I used often to see that little boy in black – very queer and sullen he was thought; but he had no playfellow, except an owl that he kept tame, I remember, and cried when he buried him in the garden, – the only time he was ever known to cry, he was so still and stern. It was I caught him, then acting the sexton by himself, close by the high box hedge, under a great tree. I remember the spot now, and remember how angry I made him by laughing."

"And you did wrong to laugh, if it was so serious to him."

"Oh! but I did not know he was crying when I laughed, and was sorry when I detected it. One thing was, the old gentleman was so jovial, and loved a good laugher, and was rather too fond of wine, and mostly out hunting, so that the poor boy had to find his own amusement. He seemed fond of me, but hated, he said, his uncle, and his hounds, and his ways, and every thing there but his own owl; so that nobody was sorry when he was fetched back to India, to be put in the where he was to make the fortune he has now made, I suppose."

"And your little heart did throb a little, and sink for a day, when this playfellow was shipped off for life, as you thought, and you did remember his funeral tears over his owl, and" – a quaver of voice and betrayed earnestness revealed the jealous pang shooting across the heart of the speaker; but her own was too heavy and deeply anxious to prolong this desultory talk.

She only added – "Heaven knows how little I thought that poor stranger boy would ever grow to be what he is to me now."

"What he is to you? Why, what then is he, Winifred?"

"The horror of my thoughts, my dreams, my" – she answered sobbing. "But why should I say so? Wicked I am to feel him so, if he is indeed to be the saviour of my dear, dear father!" And she turned away to shed relieving tears.

"And this little packet contains my letters —all, does it?" he asked, touching the small parcel she had deposited within a cleft of the hollow river-side tree, by which they stood, the post-office of their happier days, where, concealed by thick moss gathered from the bole, those letters had every one been searched for and found – with what a leap of heart, first felt! how fondly thrust into her bosom, for the leisure delight of opening at home – and all in vain!

"All but one," she answered tremulously; "I brought then because you bade me – but you were so angry then– let me take them back?" and she clutched them eagerly. "At least we may wait, David – we don't know yet; I do suspect that Lewis Lewis – he shuns me as if he was conscious of some wickedness; he's as horrid to me as his master – the thought of his master – I do forbode something awful from that man! It was but just before I heard you brushing among those great low branches, in your coracle, that I fancied I saw him stealing, as if to watch, or perhaps waylay you; but I am full of dismal thoughts."

He had not the heart to force his letters, so reluctantly resigned, from her chilly hand. But he held in his what was calculated to inspire pain quite as poignant. In the fond admiration of her fancy's first object, she had vehemently longed for a portrait of that rather singular face – a long oval, with lofty forehead, already somewhat corrugated by habits of deep thought, in his lonely night-loving existence; its mixture of passion, dumb poetry, its constitutional or adventitious profound melancholy, ever present, till his countenance gradually lighted up, after her coming and her animating discourse, like some deep gloomy valley growing light as the sun surmounts a lofty bank, gleaming through its pines. She had forced him to take a piece of money for procuring this so desired keepsake, and every time they met, she had fondly hoped to have the little portrait put into her hand. Now, instead, he presented the unused money – would she retain the image of a sweetheart in the home of her stern and lordly husband? Her heart confessed that she must no longer wish for it – but it sunk within her at the thought, how soon that innocent would be a guilty wish; and when he surprised her with the money so suddenly, she involuntarily shuddered, forebore to close her hand upon it, let it slide from her palm, and murmured only with her innocent plaintiff voice, "I shall never have your picture now —never!" And then she dejected her eyes to the little parcel of letters, written, received, kissed, and kept, like something holy, so long in vain; and all the charming hopeful hours in which each was found, when some longer absence had given to each a deeper interest, and higher value – those hours never to return, came shadowing over her mind, memory, and soul, and a lethargy of despairing grief imposed a ghost-like semblance of calm on her whole figure, and her face slowly assumed a deadly paleness, even to the lips, visible even by the moon. David grew alarmed, relapsed into the full fondness of former hours, folded the dumb, drooping, and agonized young woman in his arms, to his bosom! without her betraying consciousness, and yet she was not fainting; she stood upright, and her eyes, though fixed as if glazed, still expressed love in their almost shocking fixedness.

The young man grew terrified. "Look up! speak to me! Winifred, dear Winifred, my own Winifred, in spite of all!" he broke forth. "Smile at me, my dearest, once more, and keep these foolish letters you so value, keep them all." And he thrust them into her passive hand.

Aroused by his words and action, poor Winifred, starting with a gasp, wildly kissed the little packet, and thanked him by an embrace more passionate than her prudence or modesty would have permitted, had they been happy.

"And my portrait – my ugliness in paint, and on ivory too, dearest, you shall have yet, as you desire it," he added, forcing pleasantry; "only do not fall into that frightful sort of trance again."

He little knew what deadliness of thoughts, almost of purpose, had produced that long abstracted fit. The most exemplary prudence (the result of a sound mind and heart) had characterised this young woman till now. While yet at home, her bodily activity surprised her parents. Their means having been long but low, they had little help in their dairy and small farming concerns. She often surprised her mother with the sight of the butter already churned, the ewes already milked, or the cheeses pressed, when she arose. She was abroad in the heavy dews of morning, when the sun at midsummer rises in what is properly the night, regarded as the hour of rest – abroad, happy and cheerful, calling the few cows in the misty meadows. Nor did this habit of early rising prevent her indulging at night her one unhappy habit – romance-reading; a pleasure which she enjoyed through the kindness of many ladies of the town of Cardigan, who afterwards established her in her school at K – . They supplied her with these dangerous volumes that exalted passion – love in excess – above all the aims and pursuits of life: represented her who loves most madly as most worthy of sympathy; and even, too often, crowned the heroine with the palm of self-martyrdom – making suicide itself no longer a crime or folly, but almost a virtue, under certain contingencies.

When poverty increased, the activity of her powerful intellect was brought into display, as much as her personal activity had been, in devising resources. She had acquired some skill in drawing, through the kindness of the neighbouring gentry, and she improved herself so far as to execute very respectable drawings of the ruins of Kilgerran Castle, on her own river, and other fine scenes of Wales; and these were sold for her (or rather for her parents) by others, at fairs and wakes, where she never appeared herself. When residing at the village, her wheel was heard in the morning before others were stirring, and at late night, after every other one was still. Her little light, gleaming in the lofty village, espied between the hanging trees, was the guiding star of the belated fisher up the narrow goat's-path which led to the village, who could always obtain light for his pipe at "Miss Bevan's, the school," when not a casement had exhibited a taper for hours. But the evil of all this wear and tear of mind and body was, that it maintained an unnatural state of excitement in the one, and of weakness (disguised by that fever of imagination) in the other. Sleep, the preserver of health and tranquillity of mind, was exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy, or the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions, while nature demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper – he recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand, from having fallen asleep through exertion, and restoring it with a grace quite romance-hero like – produced a new era, and new excitement – that of the heart. Thenceforth, she became "of imagination all compact," however her strong sense preserved her purity and virtue. But no more dangerous lover could be imagined than such a loose hanger-on, rather than member, of society as David the Telynwr– for his nature was hers; except, perhaps, in virtuous resolution, he was a female Winifred. Yet he possessed a romantic "leaning, at least, to virtue's side."

This was oddly exemplified now, (to return to their present position;) for as soon as her partial recovery had removed his alarm, he grew cold, and almost severe in his manner, and broke forth —

"So, then, Winifred would willingly pore over the love-letters of a sweetheart while under a husband's roof! She thinks this beauty enough for him– she would reserve her thoughts, wishes, every thing else, for his old rival; – every thing but what a ring, and a few words, makes his right by law, the poor husband is to leave to any old sweetheart that may come prowling round his gates! That's gross! Is it not, Winifred?"

Alas! the heart-broken young woman had been meditating on far other issue to their brief attachment! On death! – death on her wedding-day, as the only means of preserving at once her father's liberty and her own virtue; for her reading had taught her that marriage, where the mind and heart were so wholly engaged elsewhere, was no better than legalised prostitution. With a look of dark intensity of meaning, Winifred broke her lengthened silence, saying hollowly —

"I was not looking so far forward – I was not looking beyond that day – not to that" —night, she would have said, but modesty stopped her speech. "And you can be so calm! so thoughtful! You can be reasoning about my duties during a life! you can be pleading for my future husband! Oh, I wish I were like you! And yet, I bless God, that you are not like me! I would not have you feel as I do for the world! No, not even know what I am feeling, thinking, dearest, at this moment."

"No!" David again muttered, more and more severely, "I cannot submit to have my letters and trifling keepsakes to be tossed about by him! It is weakness to wish it, Winifred Bevan; and worse for me to grant it."

"You shall have them all – all – all!" she exclaimed in passionate agony composed of tenderness, anguish, anger, recklessness, with a bitterness of irony keener to her own heart, than to him who roused that terrible reaction of her nature. "I'll run and fetch them all this very night! Oh, they'll serve for your new love. You may copy your letters. I'm sure, if she have a human heart, they'll move it – they'll win it! Strike my name out, and you may send the very letters. She will not know that another heart was broken by giving them up! She will not know the stains are tears of pleasure dropped upon them! And you shall have that too, if you will – if you must!"

"Which? what? dearest creature, but compose yourself – pray do!" he said, again alarmed.

"That you sent with the lock of hair —this hair!" she answered wildly. "But you will leave me the little lock? Oh, there's plenty to cut for another here!" and she laughed hysterically, frightfully, and played with his profusion of raven hair; but it was mournful play. "Leave me —do leave poor Winifred that, David, for the love of God! In mercy, leave it! I will not ask for the picture again – I will not wish it, if you say I must not; but the hair – the poor bit of hair – he! oh, misery! he shall never see it! I myself will never cry over it – never look at it, if you think it wrong – never till I'm dying, David – dying! There will be no harm then, you know, in looking – in a poor dying creature's look, who has done with passions, life, love, every thing. And none – none shall see it but those who lay me out, or they who find my – oh! we none of us know where we may die, or how! It may be alone, dearest —alone! Oh, the comfort it will be to have a part of very you to hold – to hold by, like this very hand, in my death-damp one. Let me have it!" she shrilly implored, in delirious energy. "I want it to take with me to my death-bed – to my death-pit – my grave, whatever it may be – to heaven itself – to our place of meeting again, if it were possible! Oh, that it were possible! and that I might bring back to you there the kiss – the long kiss – you shall leave on these wretched lips when we part for ever and for ever here! Will you take it from me, David, my heart, my soul? No, you will not?"