Aylwin Part 11

'What a beautiful world it is!' said she, in a half-whisper, as we were about to part at the cottage door, for I had refused to leave her on the sands or even at the garden-gate. 'I should like to live for ever,' she whispered; 'shouldn't you, Henry?'

'Well, that all depends upon the person I lived with. For instance, I shouldn't care to live for ever with Widow Shales, the pale-faced tailoress, nor yet with her humpbacked son, whose hump was such a constant source of wistful wonder and solicitude to you as a child.'

She gave a merry little laugh of reminiscence. Then she said, 'But you could live with _me_ for ever, couldn't you, Henry?' plucking a leaf from the grape-vine on the wall and putting it between her teeth.

'For ever and ever, Winifred.'

'It fills me with wonder,' said she, after a while, 'the thought of being Henry's wife. It is so delightful and yet so fearful.'

By this I knew she had not forgotten that look of hate on my mother's face.

She put her hand on the latch and found that the door was now unlocked.

'But where is the fearful part of it, Winifred?' I said. 'I am not a cannibal.'

'You ought to marry a great English lady, dear, and I'm only a poor girl; you seem to forget all about that, you silly fond boy. You forget I'm only a poor girl--just Winifred,' she continued.

'Just Winifred,' I said, taking her hand and preventing her from lifting the latch.

'I've lived,' said she, 'in a little cottage like this with my aunt and Miss Dalrymple and done everything.'

'Everything's a big word, Winifred. What may everything include in your case?'

'Include!' said Winifred; 'oh, everything, housekeeping and--'

'Housekeeping!' said I. 'Racing the winds with Rhona Boswell and other Gypsy children up and down Snowdon--that's been _your_ housekeeping.'

'Cooking,' said Winifred, maintaining her point.

'Oh, what a fib, Winifred! These sunburnt fingers may have picked wild fruits, but they never made a pie in their lives.'

'Never made a pie! I make beautiful pies and things; and when we're married I'll make your pies--may I, instead of a conceited man-cook?'

'No, Winifred. Never make a pie or do a bit of cooking in _my_ house, I charge you.'

'Oh, why not?' said Winifred, a shade of disappointment overspreading her face. 'I suppose it's unladylike to cook.'

'Because,' said I,'once let me taste something made by these tanned fingers, and how could I ever afterwards eat anything made by a man-cook, conceited or modest? I should say to that poor cook, "Where is the Winifred flavour, cook? I don't taste those tanned fingers here." And then, suppose you were to die first, Winifred, why I should have to starve, just for want of a little Winifred flavour in the pie-crust. Now I don't want to starve, and you sha'n't cook.'

'Oh, Hal, you dear, dear fellow!' shrieked Winifred, in an ecstasy of delight at this nonsense. Then her deep love overpowered her quite, and she said, her eyes suffused with tears, 'Henry, you can't think how I love you. I'm sure I couldn't live even in heaven without you.'

Then came the shadow of a lich-owl, as it whisked past us towards the apple-trees.

'Why, you'd be obliged to live without me, Winifred, if I were still at Raxton.'

'No,' said she, 'I'm quite sure I couldn't. I should have to come in the winds and play round you on the sands. I should have to peep over the clouds and watch you. I should have to follow you about wherever you went. I should have to beset you till you said, "Bother Winnie! I wish she'd keep in heaven."'

I saw, however, that the owl's shadow had disturbed her, and I lifted the latch of the cottage door for her. We were met by a noise so loud that it might have come from a trombone.

'Why, what on earth is that?' I said. I could see the look of shame break over Winifred's features as she said, 'Father.' Yes, it was the snoring of Wynne in a drunken sleep: it filled the entire cottage.

The poor girl seemed to feel that that brutal noise had, somehow, coa.r.s.ened _her_, and she actually half shrank from me as I gave her a kiss and left her.

Wondering how I should at such an hour get into the house without disturbing my mother and the servants, I pa.s.sed along that same road where, as a crippled child, I had hobbled on that, bright afternoon when love was first revealed to me. Ah, what a different love was this which was firing my blood, and making dizzy my brain! That child-love had softened my heart in its deep distress, and widened my soul. This new and mighty pa.s.sion in whose grasp I was, this irresistible power that had seized and possessed my entire being, wrought my soul in quite a different sort, concentrating and narrowing my horizon till the human life outside the circle of our love seemed far, far away, as though I were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. I had learned that he who truly loves is indeed born again, becomes a new and a different man. Was it only a few short hours ago, I asked myself, that I was listening to my mother's attack upon Winifred? Was it this very evening that I was sitting in Dullingham Church?

How far away in the past seemed those events! And as to my mother's anger against Winifred, that anger and cruel scorn of cla.s.s which had concerned me so much, how insignificant now seemed this and every other obstacle in love's path! I looked up at the moonlit sky; I leaned upon a gate and looked across the silent fields where Winifred and I used to gather violets in spring, hedge-roses in summer, mushrooms in autumn, and I said, '_I_ will marry her; she shall be mine; she _shall_ be mine, though all the powers on earth, all the powers in the universe, should say nay.'

As I spoke I saw that lights were flas.h.i.+ng to and fro in the windows of the Hall. 'My poor father is dead,' I said. I turned and ran up the road. 'Oh, that I could have seen him once again!' At the hall door I was met by a servant, and learnt that, while I had been love-making on the sands, a message had come from the Continent with news of my father's death.

VI

There was no meeting Winifred on the next night.

It was decided that my uncle's private secretary should go to Switzerland to bring the body to England. I (remembering my promise about the mementos) insisted on accompanying him. We started on the morrow, preceded by a message to my father's Swiss friends ordering an embalmment. Before starting I tried to see Winifred; but she had gone to Dullingham.

On our arrival at the little Swiss town, we found that the embalmment had been begun. The body was still in the hands of a famous embalmer--an Italian Jew settled at Geneva, the only successful rival there of Professor Laskowski. He was celebrated for having revived the old Hebraic method of embalmment in spices, and improving it by the aid of the modern discoveries in antiseptics of Laskowski, Signer Franchina of Naples, and Dr. Dupre of Paris. This physician told me that by his process the body would, without the peculiarly-sealed coffin used by the Swiss embalmers, last 'firm and white as Carrara marble for a thousand years.'

The people at the chalet had naturally been much astonished to find upon my father's breast a jewelled cross lying. As soon as I entered the house they handed it to me.

For some reason or another this amulet and the curse had haunted my imagination as much as if I believed in amulets and curses, though my reason told me that everything of the kind was sheer nonsense. I could not sleep for thinking about it, and in the night I rose from my bed, and, opening the window, held up the cross in the moonlight.

The facets caught the silvery rays and focussed them. The amulet seemed to shudder with some prophecy of woe. It was now that, for the first time, I began to feel the signs of that great struggle between reason and the inherited instinct of superst.i.tion which afterwards played so important a part in my life. I then took up the parchment scroll, and opened it and re-read the curse. The great letters in which the English version was printed seemed to me larger by the light of the moon than they had seemed by daylight.

We had to wait for some time in Switzerland. In a locked drawer I found the casket and a copy of _The Veiled Queen_. I read much in the book. Every word I found there was in flat contradiction to my own mode of thought.

Did the shock of this dreadful catastrophe drive Winifred from my mind? No, nothing could have done that. My soul seemed, as I have said, to be new-born, and all emotions, pa.s.sions, and sentiments that were not connected with her seemed to be shadowy and distant, like ante-natal dreams. It would be hypocrisy not to confess this frankly, regardless of the impression against me it may make on the reader's mind. Yet I had a real affection for my father. In spite of his extraordinary obliviousness of my very existence till the last year of his life, I was strongly attached to him, and his death made me see nothing but his virtues; yet my soul was so filled with my pa.s.sion for Winifred as to have but little room for sorrow. As to my mother, her attachment to my father knew no bounds, and her grief at her bereavement knew none.

A day or two before the funeral my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley arrived, and his presence was a great comfort to her. Owing to my father's position in the county a great deal of funereal state was considered necessary, and there was much hurry and bustle.

My uncle having known Wynne when quite a young man, before intemperance had degraded him, took an interest in him still. He had called at the cottage as he pa.s.sed along Wilderness Road towards Raxton, and the result of this was that the organist came to speak to him at our house upon some matter in connection with the funeral service. My mother was greatly vexed at this. Her conduct on the occasion alarmed me. Ever since Frank's death had made it evident not only that I should succeed to all the property of my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley, but that I might even succeed to something greater, to the earldom which was the glory and pride of the Aylwins, my mother had kept a jealous and watchful eye upon me, being, as I afterwards learned, not unmindful of the early child-loves of Winifred and myself; and the advent to Raxton of Winifred, as a beautiful tall girl, had aroused her fears as well as her wrath.

The day of the funeral came, and the question of the casket and the amulet was on my mind. The important thing, of course, was that the matter should be kept absolutely secret. The valuables must be placed in secrecy with the embalmed corpse at the last moment, before the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g down of the coffin, when servants and undertakers were out of sight and hearing.

My mother knew what had been my father's instructions to me, and was desirous that they should be fulfilled, though she scorned the superst.i.tion. She and I placed the casket and the scroll hearing the written curse upon it beneath my father's head, and hung the chain of the amulet around his neck, so that the cross lay with the jewels uppermost upon his breast. Then the undertakers were called in to screw down the coffin in my presence. My mother afterwards called me to her room, and told me that she was much troubled about the cross.

The amulet being of great value, my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley had tried to dissuade her from carrying into execution what he called 'the absurd whim of a mystic'; but my mother urged my promise, and there had been warm words between them, as my mother told me--adding, however, 'and the worst of it is, that scamp Wynne, whom your uncle introduced into this house without my knowledge or sanction, was pa.s.sing the door while your uncle was talking, and if he did not hear every word about the jewelled cross, drink must have stupefied him indeed. _He_ is my only fear in connection with the jewels.' Her dislike of Wynne had made her forget for the moment the effect her words must have upon me.

'Mother,' I said, 'your persistent prejudice and injustice towards this man astonish me. Wynne, though poor and degraded now, is a gentleman born, and is no more likely to violate a tomb than the best Aylwin that ever lived.'

I will not dwell upon the scene at the funeral. I saw my father's coffin placed in the crypt that spread beneath the deserted church.

It was by the earnest wish of my father that he was buried in a church already deserted because the grip of the resistless sea was upon it. At this very time a very large slice of the cliff behind the church was p.r.o.nounced dangerous, and I perceived that new rails were lying on the gra.s.s ready to be fixed up, further inland than ever.

VII

My mother retired to her room immediately on our return to the house.

My uncle stayed till just before dinner, and then left. I seemed to be alone in a deserted house, so still were the servants, so quiet seemed everything. But now what was this sense of undefined dread that came upon me and would not let me rest? Why did I move from room to room? and what was goading me? Something was stirring like a blind creature across my brain, and it was too hideous to confront. Why _should_ I confront it? Why scare one's soul and lacerate one's heart at every dark fear that peeps through the door of imagination, when experience teaches us that out of every hundred such dark fears ninety-nine are sure to turn out mere magic-lantern bogies?