Chapter 10

When I now looked at Flinty Point, round which I was to turn, I saw that it was already in deep water, and that I could not reach the gangway outside the cove. It was necessary, therefore, to turn back and ascend by the gangway Winifred was making for, behind Needle Point, which did not project so far into the sea. So I turned back. As I did so, I perceived that she had reached the projecting mass of debris in the middle of the semicircle below the churchyard, and was looking at it. Then I saw her stoop, pick up what seemed a paper parcel, open it, and hold it near her face to trace out the letters by the moonlight. Then I saw her give a start as she read it. I walked towards her, and soon reached the landslip. Evidently what she read agitated her much. She seemed to read it and re-read it. When she saw me she put it behind her back, trying to conceal it from me.

'What have you picked up, Winifred?' I said, in much alarm; for my heart told me that it was in some way connected with her father and the shriek.

'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'I was in hopes you had not seen it. I am so grieved for you. This parchment contains a curse written in large letters. Some sacrilegious wretch has broken into the church and stolen a cross placed in your father's tomb.'

God!--It was the very same parchment scroll from my father's tomb on which was written the curse! I was struck dumb with astonishment and dismay. The whole terrible truth of the situation broke in upon me at one flash. The mysterious shriek was explained now. Wynne had evidently broken open the tomb as soon as his daughter was out of the way. He had then, in order to reach the cottage without running the risk of being seen by a chance passenger on the Wilderness Road, blundered about the edge of the cliff at the very moment when it was giving way, and had fallen with it. It was his yell of despair amid the noise of the landslip that Winifred and I had both heard. My sole thought was for Winifred. She had read the curse; but where was the dead body of her father that would proclaim upon whose head the curse had fallen? I stared around me in dismay. She saw how deeply I was disturbed, but little dreamed the true cause.

'Oh, Henry,' said she, 'to think that you should have such a grief as this; your dear father's tomb violated!' and she sat down and sobbed. 'But there is a God in heaven,' she added, rising with great solemnity. 'Whoever has committed this dreadful crime against God and man will rue the day he was born:--the curse of a dead man who has been really wronged no penance or prayer can cure,--so my aunt in Wales used to say, and so Sinfi says;--it clings to the wrongdoer and to his children. That cry I heard was the voice of vengeance, and it came from your father's tomb.'

'It is a most infamous robbery,' I said; 'but as to the curse, that is of course as powerless to work mischief as the breath of a baby.' And again I anxiously looked around to see where was the dead body of Wynne, which I knew must be close by.

'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'listen to these words, these awful words of your dead father, and the words of the Bible too.'

And she held up to her eyes, as though fascinated by it, the parchment scroll, and read aloud in a voice so awe-struck that it did not seem to be her voice at all:

'_He who shall violate this tomb,--he who shall steal this amulet, hallowed as a love-token between me and my dead wife,--he who shall dare to lay a sacrilegious hand upon this cross, stands cursed by God, cursed by love, and cursed by me, Philip Aylwin, lying here. "Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his fatherless children....Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread: let them seek it also out of desolate places."--Psalm cix. So saith the Lord_. Amen.'

'I am in the toils,' I murmured, with grinding teeth.

'What a frightful curse!' she said, shuddering. 'It terrifies me to think of it. How hard it seems,' she continued, 'that the children should be cursed for the father's crimes.'

'But, Winifred, they are NOT so cursed,' I cried. 'It is all a hideous superstition: one of Man's idiotic lies!'

'Henry,' said she, shocked at my irreverence, 'it _is_ so; the Bible says it, and all life shows it. Ah! I wonder what wretch committed the sacrilege, and why he had no pity on his poor innocent children!'

While she was talking, I stooped and picked up the casket from which the letters had been forced by the fall. She had not seen it. I put it in my pocket.

'Henry, I am so grieved for you,' said Winifred again, and she came and wound her fingers in mine.

Grieved for _me_! But where was her father's dead body? That was the thought that appalled me. Should we come upon it in the _débris_? What was to be done? Owing to the tide, there was no turning back now to Flinty Point. The projecting debris must be passed. There was no dallying for a moment. If we lingered we should be caught by the tide in Mousetrap Cove, and then nothing could save us. Suppose in passing the _débris_ we should come upon her father's corpse. The idea was insupportable. 'Thank God, however, I murmured, 'she will not even _then_ know the very worst; she will see the corpse of her father who has fallen with the cliff, but she need not and will not associate him with the sacrilege and the curse.'

As I picked up the letters that had been scattered from the casket, she said,

'I cannot get that dreadful curse out of my head; to think that the children of the despoiler should be cursed by God, and cursed by your father, and yet they are as innocent as I am.'

'Best to forget it,' said I, standing still, for I dared not move towards the _débris_.

'We must get on, Henry,' said she, 'for look, the tide is unusually high to-night. You have turned back, I see, because Flinty Point is already deep in the water.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I must turn Needle Point with you. But as to the sacrilege, let us dismiss it from our minds; what cannot be helped had better be forgotten.'

I then cautiously turned the corner of the _débris_, leading her after me in such a way that my body acted as a screen. Then my eyes encountered a spectacle whose horror chilled my blood, and haunts me to this day in my dreams. About twelve feet above the general level of the sand, buried to the breast behind a mass of green sward fallen from the graveyard, stood the dead body of Wynne, amid a confused heap of earth, gravestones, trees, shrubs, bones, and shattered coffins. Bolt upright it stood, staring with horribly distorted features, as in terror, the crown of the head smashed by a fallen gravestone. Upon his breast glittered the rubies and diamonds and beryls of the cross, sparkling in the light of the moon, and seeming to be endowed with conscious life. It was evident that he had, while groping his way out of the crypt, slung the cross around his neck, in order to free his hands. I shudder as I recall the spectacle. The sight would have struck Winifred dead, or sent her raving mad, on the spot; but she had not turned the corner, and I had just time to wheel sharply round, and thrust my body between her and the spectacle. The dog saw it, and, foaming with terror, pointed at it.

'I beg your pardon, Winifred,' I said, falling upon her and pushing her back.

Then I stood paralysed as the full sinister meaning of the situation broke in upon my mind. Had the _débris_ fallen in any other way I might have saved Winifred from seeing the most cruel feature of the hideous spectacle, the cross, the evidence of her father's sacrilege. I might, perhaps, on some pretence, have left her on this side the _débris_, and turning the corner, have mounted the heap and removed the cross gleaming in hideous mockery on the dead man's breast, and giving back the moonbeams in a cross of angry fire. One glance, however, had shown me that before this could be done, there was a wall of slippery sward to climb, for the largest portion of the churchyard soil had broken off in one lump. In falling, it had turned but _half_ over, and then had slid down sideways, presenting to the climber a facet or sward nearly perpendicular and a dozen feet high. Wedged in between the jaggy top of this block and the wall of the cliff was the corpse, showing that Wynne had been standing by the fissure of the cliff at the moment when it widened into a landslip.

Nor was that all; between that part of the _débris_ where the corpse was perched and the sand below was one of those long pools of sea-water edged by shingles, which are common features of that coast. It seemed that Destiny or Circumstance, more pitiless than Fate and Hell, determined on our ruin, had forgotten nothing.

The contour of the cove; the way in which the debris had been thrown across the path we now must follow in order to reach the only place of egress; the way in which the hideous spectacle of Wynne and the proof of his guilt had been placed, so that to pass it without seeing it the passenger must go blindfold; the brilliance of the moon, intensified by being reflected from the sea; the fulness of the high tide, and the swell--all was complete! As I stood there with clenched teeth, like a rat in a trap, a wind seemed to come blowing through my soul, freezing and burning. I cursed Superstition that was slaying us both. And I should have cursed Heaven but for the touch of Winnie's clasping fingers, silky and soft as when I first felt them as a child in the churchyard.

'What has happened?' asked she, looking into my face.

'Only a slip of my foot,' I said, recovering my presence of mind.

'But why do you turn back?'

'I cannot bring myself to part from you under this delicious moon, Winnie, if you will stay a few minutes longer. Let us go and sit on that very boulder where little Hal proposed to you.'

'But you want to go into the church,' said Winifred, as we moved back towards the boulder.

'No, I will leave that till the morning. I would leave _anything_ till the morning, to have a few minutes longer with you on the sands. Try to imagine that we are children again, and that I am not the despised rich man but little Hal the cripple.'

Winifred's eyes, which had begun to look very troubled, sparkled with delight.

'But,' said she with a sigh, as we sat down on the boulder, 'I'm afraid we sha'n't be able to stay long. See how the tide is rising, and the sea is wild. The tides just now, father says, come right up to the cliff in the cove, and once locked in between Flinty Point and Needle Point there is no escape.'

'Yes, darling,' I muttered to myself, drawing her to me and burying my face in her bosom, 'there is one escape, only one.'

For death seemed to me the only escape from a tragedy far, far worse than death.

If she made me any answer I heard it not; for, as I sat there with closed eyes, schemes of escape fluttered before me and were dismissed at the rate of a thousand a second. A fiery photograph of the cove was burning within my brain, my mind was absorbed in examining every cranny and every protuberance in the semicircular wall of the cliff there depicted; over and over again I was examining that brain-picture, though I knew every inch of it, and knew there was not in the cliff-wall foothold for a squirrel.

X

The moon mocked me, and seemed to say:

'The blasting spectacle shining there on the other side of that heap of earth must be passed, or Needle Point can never be reached; and unless it is reached instantly you and she can never leave the cove.'

'Then we will never leave it,' I whispered to myself, jumping up.

As I did so I found for the first time that her forehead had been resting against my head; for the furious rate at which the wheels of thought were moving left no vital current for the sense of touch, and my flesh was numbed.

'Something has happened,' she said. 'And why did you keep whispering "yes, yes"? Whom were you whispering to?'

The truth was that, in that dreadful trance, my conscience had been saying to me, 'Have you a right to exercise your power over this girl by leading her like a lamb to death?' and my love had replied, 'Yes, ten thousand times yes.'

'Winifred,' I said, 'I would die for you.'

'Yes, Henry,' said she, 'I know it; but what have we to do with death now?'

'To save you from harm this flesh of mine would rejoice at crucifixion; to save you from death this soul and body of mine would rejoice to endure a thousand years of hell-fire.'

She turned pale, amazed at the delirium into which I had passed.

'To save you from harm, dear, I would,' said I, with a quiet fierceness that scared her, 'immolate the whole human race--mothers, and fathers, and children; I would make a hecatomb of them all to save this body of yours, this sweet body, alive.'

But I could not proceed. What I had meant to say was this,--

'And yet, Winnie, I have brought you here to this boulder to die!'

But I could not say it--my tongue rebelled and would not say it.

Winifred was so full of health and enjoyment of life that, courageous as she was. I felt that the prospect of certain and imminent death must appal her; and to see the look of terror break over her face confronting death was what I could not bear. And yet the thing must be said. But at this very moment, when my perplexity seemed direst, a blessed thought came to me--a subterfuge holier than truth. I knew the Cymric superstition about 'the call from the grave,' for had not she herself just told me of it?

'I will turn Superstition, accursed Superstition itself, to account,' I muttered. 'I will pretend that I am enmeshed in a web of Fate, and doomed to die here myself. Then, if I know my Winifred, she will, of her own free mind, die with me.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'I have to tell you something that I know must distress you sorely on my account--something that must wring your heart, dear, and yet it must be told.'

She turned her head sharply round with a look of alarm that almost silenced me, so pathetic was it. On that courageous face I had not seen alarm before, and this was alarm for evil coming to me. It shook my heart--it shook my heart so that I could not speak.

'I felt,' said she, 'that something awful had happened. And it affects yourself, Henry?'

'It affects myself.'

'And very deeply?'

'Very deeply, Winnie.'

Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment scroll, I said, 'It has relation to these.'

'_That_ I felt,' said she; 'how could it be otherwise? Oh, the miscreant! I curse him; I curse him!'

'Winifred,' I said, 'between me and this casket, and the cross mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is demanded.'

'Henry, you terrify me to death. What is the sacrifice? Oh God! Oh God!'

'My father's son must die, Winnie.'

She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, 'I fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must even take the calamity and bear it; for I don't mean my Henry to die, let me assure both families of _that_.'

'Ah! but, Winnie, I am under a solemn oath and pledge to bear this penalty; and we part to-night, That shriek which so appalled you--'

'Well, well, the shriek?' said she, in a frenzy of impatience.

I made no answer, but she answered herself.

'That shriek was a call to you,' she cried, and then burst into a passion of tears. 'It _cannot_ be,' she said. 'It cannot and shall not be; God is too good to suffer it,' Then she fixed her eyes upon me, and sobbed: 'Ah, it is _true_! I feel it is all true! Yes, they are calling you, and that is why my soul answered the call. Ah, when I saw you just now lift your head from my breast with a face grey and wizened as an old man's--when I saw you look at me, I knew that something dreadful had happened. Oh, I knew, I knew! but I thought it had happened to _me_. The love and pity in your eyes when you opened them upon me made me think it was my trouble, and not yours, that disturbed you. And now I know it is yours, and you are going to die! They are calling you. Yes, you are going to let the tide drown you! Oh, my love my love!' and her grief was so acute that I knew not at first whether in this I had done well after all.

'Winifred,' I said, 'you must bear this. I have always been ready to take death when it should come. I have at least had one blessed time with Winifred on the sands--Winifred the beloved and beautiful girl--one night, as the crown to the happy days that have been mine with Winifred the beloved and beautiful child. And that night, as we were walking by the sea, it seemed to me that such happiness as was ours can come but once--that never again could there be a night equal to that.'

Smiles broke through her tears as she listened to me. I had struck the right chord.

'And _I_ thought so too,' she said. 'It was indeed a night of bliss. Indeed, indeed God has been good to us, Henry,' and she fell into my arms again.

'And now, Winnie,' I said, 'we must kiss and part--part for ever.'

Yes, I had struck the right chord. As she lay in my arms I felt her soft bosom moving with a little hysterical laugh of derision when I said we must part. And then she rose and sat beside me upon the boulder, looking calm and fearless at the tide as it got nearer and nearer to Needle Point.

'Yes, dear,' I said, looking in the same direction, 'you must be going; see how the waves are surrounding the Point. You must run, Winnie--you must run, and leave me.'

'Yes,' said she, still gazing across to the Point, 'as you say, I must run, but not yet, dear; plenty of time yet,' and she smiled to herself as she used to do in the old days, when as a child she had made up her mind to do something.

Then without another word she took her shawl from her shoulders, and pulled it out to see its length. And soon I felt her fingers stealing my penknife from my waistcoat-pocket, and saw her deftly cut up the shawl, strip after strip, and weave it and knot it into a rope, and tie the rope around her waist, and then she stooped to tie it around me.

It was when I felt her warm breath about my neck as she stooped over me to tie that rope, that love was really revealed to me; it was then, and not till then, that all my previous love for Winifred seemed as the flicker of a rushlight to Sálamán's cloak of fire; and a feeling of bliss unutterable came upon me, and the night air seemed full of music, and the sky above seemed opening, as she whispered, 'Henry, Henry, Henry, in a few minutes you will be mine.' But the very confidence with which she spoke these simple words startled me as from a dream. 'Suppose,' I thought, 'suppose my last drop of bliss with Winnie were being tasted now!' In a moment I felt like a coward. But then there came a loud crash and a thunder from behind the landslip.

'The settlement!' I cried. 'The coming in of the tide has made the landslip settle!'

When I sat with closed eyes examining my fiery photograph, I had calculated the 'settlement' at the return of the tide as being among the chances of escape. But feeling myself to be engaged in a duel with Circumstance (more cruel than the fiends), I believed that the settlement would come too late for us, or even if it did not come too late, it might not hide away the spectacle. The settlement had come; what had it done for us? This I must know at once.

'Untie the rope,' I said; 'quick, untie the rope, there is a settlement of the landslip.'

'But what has the settlement to do with us?' said Winnie.

'It _has_ to do with us, dear; untie the rope. It has much to do with us, Winnie,' I said; for now the determination to save her life came on me stronger than ever.

When the rope was untied, I said, 'Wait till I call,' and I ran round the corner of the _débris_. The great upright wall of earth and sward, from which had stared the body of Wynne, had fallen, hiding him and his crime together!

To return round the corner of the landslip and call Winifred was the work of an instant, and, quick as she was in answering my call, by the time she had reached me I had thrown off my coat and boots.

'Now for a run and a tussle with the waves, Winnie,' I said.

'Then we are not going to die?'

'We are going to live. Run; in six more returns of a wave like that there will he four feet of water at the Point.'

'Come along, Snap,' said Winifred, and she flew along the sands without another word.

Ah, she could run!--faster than I could, with my bruised heel! She was there first.

'Leap in, Winnie,' I cried, 'and struggle towards the Point; it will save time. I shall he with you in a second.'

Winifred plunged into the tide (Snap following with a bark), and fought her way so bravely that my fear now was lest she should be out of her depth before I could reach her, and then, clad as she was, she would certainly drown. But never tor a moment did her good sense leave her. When she was nearly waist-high she stopped and turned round, gazing at me as I tore through the shallow water--gazing with a wistful, curious look that her face would have worn had we been playing.

To get round the Point and pull Winifred round was no slight task, for the water was nearly up to my breast, and a woman's clothing seems designed for drowning her. Any other woman than Winifred _would_ have been drowned, and would have drowned me with her. But in straits of this kind the only safety lies in courage.

'What a night's adventures!' said Winifred, after we had turned the Point, and were walking through the shallow water towards the gangway.

We hurried towards the cottage as fast as our wet clothes would permit. On reaching it we found the door unlocked, and entered.

'Father has again gone to bed,' said Winifred, 'and left no candle burning for me.'

And without seeing her face, I knew by the tremor of the hand I clasped that she was listening with shame for the drunken snore that she would never hear again.

I lighted a match, which with a candle I found on a chair.

'Your father is no doubt sound asleep,' I said; 'you will scarcely awake him to-night?'

'Oh dear, no,' said Winifred. 'Good-night. You look quite ill. Ever since you lifted up your head from my breast, when you were thinking so hard, you have looked quite ill.'

Suddenly I remembered that I must be up and on the sands betimes in the morning, to see whether the tide had washed away the fallen earth so as to expose Wynne's body. To prevent Winifred from seeing the stolen cross was now the one important thing in the world.

I bade her good-night and walked towards home.

XI

She was right: those few minutes of concentrated agony had in truth made me ill. My wet clothes clinging round my body began to chill me now, and as I crept into the house and upstairs to my room, my teeth were chattering like castanets.

As I threw off my wet clothes and turned into bed, I was partially forewarned by the throbbing at my temples, the rolling fire at the back of my eyeballs, the thirst in my parched throat, that some kind of illness, some kind of fever, was upon me. And no wonder, after such a night!

In that awful trance, when I had sat with my face buried on Winifred's breast, not only had the physiognomy of the cove, but every circumstance of our lives together, been photographed in my brain in one picture of fire. When, after the concentrated agony of those first moments of tension, I looked up into Winifred's face, as though awakening from a dream, my flesh had 'appeared,' she told me, 'grey and wizened, like the flesh of an old man.' The mental and physical effects of this were now gathering around me and upon me.