My intention was to take up my residence at the cottage where Winifred had lived with her aunt. Indeed, for a few days I did this, taking with me one of the Welsh peasants with whom I had previously made friends. But of course a lengthened stay in such a house was impossible. More than ever now I needed attendance, and good attendance, for I had passed into a strange state of irritability—I had no command over my nerves, which were jarred by the most trifling thing. I went to the hotel at Peri y Gwryd, but there tourists and visitors made life more intolerable still to a man in my condition.
At first I thought of building a house as near to the cottage as possible; but this would take time, and I could not rest out of Wales. I decided at last to have a wooden bungalow built. By telling the builders that time was the first consideration with me, the cost a secondary one, I got a bungalow built in a few weeks. By the tradesmen of Chester I got it fitted up and furnished to my taste with equal rapidity. Attending to this business gave real relief.
When the bungalow was finished I removed into it the picture 'Faith and Love.' I also got in as much painting material as I might want and began to make sketches in the neighbourhood.
Time went on, and there I remained. In a great degree, however, the habit of grieving was conquered by my application to work. My moroseness of temper gradually left me.
Beautiful memories began to take the place of hideous ones—the picture of the mattress and the squalor gave place to pictures of Winifred on the sands of Raxton or on Snowdon. Yet so much of habit is there in grief that even at this time I was subject to recurrent waves of the old pain—waves which were sometimes as overmastering as ever.
I did not neglect the cottage, which was now my property, but kept it in exactly the same state as that in which it had been put by Sinfi after Winnie had wandered back to Wales.
By isolating myself from all society, by surrounding myself with mementos of Winifred, memory really did at last seem to be working a miracle such as was worked for the widowed Ja'afar.
Yet not entirely had memory passed into an objective presence. I seemed to feel Winnie near me; but that was all. I felt that more necessary than anything else in perfecting the atmosphere of memory in which I would live was the society of her in whom alone I had found sympathy—Sinfi Lovell. Did I also remember the wild theories of my father and Fenella Stanley about the crwth? To obtain the company of Sinfi had now become very difficult—her attitude towards me had so changed. When she allowed me to rejoin the Lovells at Kingston Vale she did so under the compulsion of my distress. But my leaving the Gypsies of my own accord left her free from this compulsion. She felt that she had now at last bidden me farewell for ever.
Still, opportunities of seeing her occasionally would, I knew, present themselves, and I now determined to avail myself of these. Panuel Lovell and some of the Boswells were not unfrequently in the neighbourhood, and they were always accompanied by Sinfi and Videy.