Chapter 34

After the breakfast was ended Winifred went over the entire drama of that night of the landslip as far as she knew it. There was not an important incident that she missed. Every detail of her narrative was so vividly given that I lived it all over again. She recalled our meeting on the sands, and my inexplicable bearing when she told me of the seaman's present of precious stones to her father. She dwelt upon my mysterious conduct in insisting upon our ascending the cliff by different gangways. She recalled her picking up from the sands a parchment scroll and spelling out by the moonlight the words of the curse it called down upon the head of any one who should violate the tomb from which the parchment and the jewel had been stolen, but as she repeated the words of the curse she was evidently unconscious of the tremendous import of the words in regard to herself and her father. She told me of her desire to conceal from me, for my own sake merely, the evidence afforded by the scroll that my father's tomb had been violated. She recalled my seeing the parchment and being thrown thereby into a state of the greatest mental agony. She recalled my taking her hand as we neared the new tongue of land made by the _débris_, and peering round it as though in dread of some concealed foe, but evidently she had no idea of _what_ was behind there. She described the way in which my 'foot slipped on the sand,' and how I was thrown back upon her as she stood waiting to pass the _débris_ herself. She spoke of my unaccountable and apparently mad suggestion that we should, although the tide was coming in, and we were already in danger of being imprisoned in the cove and drowned, sit down on the boulder made sacred to us both by our childish betrothal. She spoke of her own suspicion, and then her conviction, that some great calamity was threatening me on account of the violation of the tomb, and that the knowledge of this was governing all these strange movements of mine. She reminded me of my telling her that the shriek we both heard at the moment when the cliff fell was connected with the crime against my father, and that it was the call from the grave which, according to wild traditions, will sometimes come to the heir of an old family. She recalled the very words I used when I told her that in answer to this call I intended to remain there until the tide came in and drowned me. She dwelt upon the way in which I urged her to go and leave me, her own resolution to die with me, and her cutting up her shawl into a rope and tying herself to me. She recalled the sudden thunderous noise of the settlement in response to the tide, and my springing up and running to the mass of _débris_ and looking round it, and then my calling her to join me; and finally she described her running toward Needle Point in order to pass round it before the tide should get any higher, her plunging into the sea and my pulling her round the Point.

It was manifest, from the first word she uttered to the last, that she had no idea who was the 'miscreant,' to use her oft-repeated word, who committed the sacrilege; and nothing could express what relief this gave my heart. I felt as though I had just escaped from some peril too dire to think of with calmness.

'You remember, Henry,' said she, 'how we ran to the cottage in our wet clothes. You remember how we parted at the cottage door. From that night till now we have never met, and now we meet--here on Snowdon--at the very llyn I was always so fond of.

'But tell me more, Winnie--tell me what occurred to you on the next morning.'

'Well,' said she, 'I was always a sound sleeper, but my fatigue that night made me sleep until quite late the next morning. I hurried up and got breakfast ready for father and myself. I then went and rapped at his door, but I got no answer. His room was empty.'

Winifred paused here as though she expected me to say something. A thousand things occurred to me to ask, but until I knew more--until I knew how much and how little she remembered of that dreadful time, I dared ask her nothing--I dared make no remark at all. I said, 'Go on, Winnie; pray do not break your story.'

'Well,' said she, 'I found that my father had not returned during the night. I did not feel disturbed at that, his ways were so uncertain. I did not even hurry over my breakfast, but dallied over it, recalling the scenes of the previous night, and wondering what some of them could mean. I then went down the gangway at Needle Point to walk on the sands. I thought I might meet father coming from Dullingham. I had to pass the landslip, where a great number of Raxton people were gathered. They were looking at the frightful relics of Raxton churchyard. They were too dreadful for me to look at. I walked right to Dullingham without meeting my father. At Dullingham I was told that he had not been there for some days. Then, for the first time, I began to be haunted by fears, but they took no distinct shape. When I returned to the landslip the people were still there, and still very excited about it. In the afternoon I went again on the sands, thinking that I might see my father and also that I might see you. I walked about till dusk without seeing either of you, and then I went back to the cottage. I had now become very anxious about my father, and sat up all night. The next morning after breakfast I went again on the sands. The number of people collected round the landslip seemed greater than ever, and many of them, I think, came from Graylingham, Rington, and Dullingham. They seemed more excited than they had been on the previous day, and they did not notice me as I joined them. I heard some one say in a cracked and piping voice, "Well, it's my belief as Tom lays under that there settlement. It's my belief that he wur standing on the edge of the churchyard cliff, and when the cliff fell he fell with it." Then the kind and good-natured little tailor Shales saw me, and I thought he must have made some signal to the others, for they all stood silent. I felt sure now that for some reason, unknown to me, it was generally believed that my father had perished in the landslip. Mrs. Shales took me by the hand, and gently led me away up the gangway. When we reached the cottage I asked her whether my father's body had been found. She told me that it had not, and was not likely to be found, for if he had really fallen with the landslip his body lay under tons upon tons of earth. I shall never forget the misery of that night; kind Mrs. Shales would not leave me, but slept in the cottage. I had very little doubt that the Raxton people were right in their dreadful guesses about my father. I had very little doubt that while walking along the cliff, either to or from the cottage, he had reached the point at the back of the church at the moment of the landslip, and been carried down with it, and I now felt sure that the shriek you and I both heard was his shriek of terror as he fell. I bethought me of the jewels that my father's sailor friend was to give him, and searched the cottage for them. As I could not find them, I felt sure that it was on his return from his meeting with his sailor friend, when the jewels were upon him, that he fell with the landslip.'

Again Winnie paused as if awaiting some question, or at least some remark from me.

'Did you make no inquiries about me?' I said.

'Oh yes,' said she; 'my grief at the loss of my father was very much increased by my not being able to see you. Mrs. Shales told me that you were ill--very ill. And altogether, you may imagine my misery. Day after day I got worse and worse news of you. 'And day after day it became more and more certain, that my father had perished in the way people supposed. I used to spend most of the day on the sands, gazing at the landslip, and searching for my father's body. Every one tried to persuade me to give up my search, as it was hopeless, for his body was certain to be buried deep under the new tongue of land.'

'But you still continued your search, Winnie?' I said, remembering every word Dr. Mivart had told me in connection with her being found by the fishermen.

'Yes, I found it impossible not to go on with it. But one morning after there had been a great storm followed by a further settlement of the landslip, I went out alone on the cliffs. I said to myself, "This shall be my last search." By this time the news of your illness and the anxiety I felt about you helped much in blunting the anxiety I felt about my father's loss. But on this very morning I am speaking of something very extraordinary happened.

'Don't tell me, Winnie. For God's sake, don't tell me! It will disturb you; it will make you ill again.'

She looked at me in evident astonishment at my words.

'Don't tell you, Henry? Why, there is nothing to tell,' said she. 'As I was walking along the sands, looking at the new tongue of land made by the landslip, I seem to have lost consciousness.'

'And you don't know what caused this?'

'Not in the least; unless it was my anxiety and want of sleep. This was the beginning of the long illness that I spoke of, and I seem to have remained quite without consciousness until a few weeks ago. I often try to make my mind bring back the circumstances under which I lost consciousness. I throw my thoughts, so to speak, upon a wall of darkness, and they come reeling back like waves that are dashed against a cliff.'

'Then don't do so any more, Winnie. I know enough of such matters to tell you confidently that you never will recall the incidents connected with your collapse, and that the endeavour to do so is really injurious to you. What interests me very much more is to know the circumstances under which you came to yourself. I am dying with impatience to know all about that.'

II

'When I came to myself,' said Winifred, 'I was in a world as new and strange and wonderful as that in which Christopher Sly found himself when he woke up to his new life in Shakespeare's play.'

She paused. She little thought how my flesh kindled with impatience.

'Yes, Winnie,' I said; 'you are going to tell me how, and where, and when you were restored to life--regained your consciousness, I mean--unless it will too deeply agitate you to tell me.'

'It would not agitate me in the least, Henry, to tell you all about it. But it is a long story, and this seems a strange place in which to tell it, surrounded by these glorious peaks and covered by this roof of sunrise. But do you tell me all about yourself, all about your illness, which seems to have been a dreadful one.'

My story, indeed! What was there in my story that I could or dare tell her? My story would have to be all about herself, and the tragedy of the supposed curse, and the terrible seizures from which she had recovered, and of which she must never know. I set to work to persuade her to tell me all she knew.

At last she yielded, and said, 'Well, I awoke as from a deep sleep, and found myself lying on a couch, with a man's face bending over mine. I could not help exclaiming, "Henry!'"

'Then did he resemble me?' I asked.

'Only in this--that in his eyes there was the expression which has always appealed to me more than any other expression, whether in human eyes or in the eyes of animals. I mean the pleading, yearning expression of loneliness that there was in your eyes when they were the eyes of a little, lame boy who could not get up the gangways without me.'

'Ah, the egotism of love!' I exclaimed. 'You mean, Winnie, that expression which my unlucky eyes had lost when we met upon the sands after our childhood was passed.'

'But which love,' said she, 'love of Winnie, sorrow for the loss of Winnie, have brought back, increased a thousandfold, till it gives me pain and yet a delicious pain to look into them. Oh, Henry, I can't go on; I really can't, if you look--'

She burst into tears.

When she got calmer she proceeded.

'It was only in the expression of your eyes that he resembled you. He was much older, and wore spectacles. He, on his part, gave a start when he looked into my eyes. It seemed to me that he had been expecting to see something in them which he did not find there, and was a little disappointed. I then heard voices in the room, which was evidently, from the sound of the voices, a large room, and I looked round. I saw that there was another couch close to mine, but nearly hidden from view by a large screen between the two couches. Evidently a woman was lying on the other couch, for I could see her feet; she was a tall woman, for her feet reached out much beyond my own.'

'Good heavens, Winnie,' I exclaimed, 'what on earth is coming? But I promised not to interrupt you. Pray go on, I am all impatience.'

'Well, at the sound of the voices the gentleman started, and seemed much alarmed--alarmed on my account, I thought.

'I then heard a voice say, "A most successful experiment. Look at the face of this other patient, and see the expression on it."

'The gentleman bent over me, and hurriedly raised me from the couch, and then fairly carried me out of the room. But you seem very excited, Henry, you have turned quite pale.'

It would have been wonderful if I had not turned pale. So deeply burnt into my brain had been the picture I had imagined of Winnie dead and in a pauper's grave that even now, with Winnie in my arms, it all came to me, and I seemed to see her lying in a pauper's shroud, and being restored to life, and I said to her, 'Did you observe--did you observe your dress, Winnie?'

She answered my question by a little laugh. 'Did I observe my dress at such a moment? Well, I knew you could be satirical on my sex when you are in the mood, but, Henry, there are moments, I assure you, when the first thing a woman observes is not her dress, and this was one. Afterwards I did observe it, and I can tell you what it was. It was a walking-dress. Perhaps,' said she, with a smile, 'perhaps you would like to know the material? But really I have forgotten that.' 'Pardon my idle question, Winnie--pray go on. I will interrupt you no more.'

'Oh, you will interrupt me no more! We shall see. The gentleman then led me through a passage of some length.'

'Do describe it!'

'I felt quite sure you would interrupt me no more. Well! The dim light in the windows made me guess I was in an old house, and from the sweet smell of hay and wild-flowers I thought we were near the Wilderness, at Raxton. I could only imagine that I had fallen insensible on the sands and been taken to Raxton Hall.'

'Ah! that's where you ought to have been taken.' I could not help exclaiming.

'Surely not,' said Winnie.

'Why?'

'Your mother! But why have you turned so angry?'

In spite of all that I had lately witnessed of my mother's sufferings from remorse, in spite of all the deep and genuine pity that those sufferings had drawn from me, Winnie's words struck deeper than any pity for any creature but herself, and for a moment my soul rose against my mother again.

'Go on, Winnie, pray go on,' I said.

'You _will_ make me talk about myself,' said Winifred, 'when I so much want to hear all about you. This is what I call the self-indulgence of love. Well, then, the gentleman and I mounted some steps and then we entered a tapestried room. The windows--they were quaint and old-fashioned casements--were open, and the sunlight was pouring through them. I then saw at once that I was not anywhere near Raxton. Besides, there was no sea-smell mixed with the perfumes of the flowers and the songs of the birds. That I was not near Raxton, very much amazed me, you may be sure. And then the room was so new to me and so strange. I had never been in an artist's studio, but Sinfi had talked to me of such places, and there were many signs that I was in a studio now.'

'A studio! And not in London! Describe it, Winnie,' I said.

Although she had told me that the house was in the country, my mind flew at once to Wilderspin's studio. 'You say that the gentleman was not young, but that he had an expression of sorrow in his eyes. Had he long iron-grey hair, and was he dressed--dressed, like a--like a shiny Quaker?' So full was my mind of Mrs. Gudgeon's story that I was positively using her language.

'Like a what?' exclaimed Winnie. 'Really, Henry, you have become very eccentric since our parting. The gentleman had not iron-grey hair, and he was not dressed in the least like a Quaker, unless a loose, brown lounge coat tossed on anyhow over a waistcoat and trousers of the same colour is the costume of a shiny Quaker. But it was the room you asked me to describe. There were pictures on the walls, and there were two easels, and on one of them I saw a picture. The gentleman led me to a strange and very beautiful piece of furniture. If I attempted to describe it I should call it a divan, under a gorgeous kind of awning ornamented with Chinese figures in ivory and precious stones. Now, isn't it exactly like an _Arabian Nights_ story, Henry?'

'Yes, yes, Winnie; but pray go on. What did the gentleman do?'

'He drew a chair towards me, and without speaking looked into my face again. The expression in his eyes drew me towards him, as it had at first done when I awoke from my trance; it drew me towards him partly because it said, "I am lonely and in sorrow," and partly from another cause which I could not understand and could never define, howsoever I might try. "Where am I?" I said; "I remember nothing since I fell on the sands. Where is Henry? Is he better or worse? Can you tell me?" The gentleman said, "The friend you inquire about is a long way from here, and you are a long way from Raxton." I asked him why I was a long way from Raxton, and said, "Who brought me here? Do, please, tell me what it means. I am amongst friends--of that I am sure; there is something in your voice which assures me of that; but do tell me what this mystery means." "You are indeed among friends," he said. Then looking at me with an expression of great kindness, he continued, "It would be difficult to imagine where you could go without finding friends, Miss Wynne."'

'Then he knew who you were, Winnie?' I said.

'Yes, he knew who I was,' said she, looking meditatively across the hills as though my query had raised in her own mind some question which had newly presented itself. 'The gentleman told me that I had been very ill and was now recovered, but not so entirely recovered at present that I could with safety be burthened and perplexed with the long story of my illness and what had brought me there. And when he concluded by saying, "You are here for your good," I exclaimed, "Ah, yes; no need for me to be told that," for his voice convinced me that it was so. "But surely you can tell me something. Where is Henry? Is he still ill?" I said. He told me that he believed you to be perfectly well, and that you had lately been living in Wales, but had now gone to Japan. "Henry lately in Wales! now gone to Japan!" I exclaimed, "and he was not with me during the illness that you say I have just recovered from?"'

'Winnie,' I said, 'it was no wonder you asked those questions, but you will soon know all.'

Whilst Winnie had been talking my mind had been partly occupied with words that fell from her about the voice of her mysterious rescuer. They seemed to recall something.

'You were saying, Winnie, that the gentleman had a peculiarly musical voice,' I said.

'So musical,' she replied, 'that it seemed to delight and charm, not my mind only, but every nerve in my body.'

'Could you describe it?'

'Describe a voice,' she said, laughing. 'Who could describe a voice?'

'You, Winnie; only you. Do describe it.'

'I wonder,' she said, 'whether you remember our first walk along the Raxton road, when I made invidious comparison between the voices of birds and the voices of men and women?'

'Indeed I do,' I said. 'I remember how you suggested that among the birds the rooks only could listen without offence to the cackle of a crowd of people.'

'Well, Henry, I can only give you an idea of the gentleman's voice by saying that the most fastidious blackbirds and thrushes that ever lived would have liked it. Indeed they did seem to like it, as I afterwards thought, when I took walks with him. It was music in every variety of tone; and, besides, it seemed to me that this music was enriched by a tone which I had learnt from your own dear voice as a child, the tone which sorrow can give and nothing else. The listener while he was speaking felt so drawn towards him as to love the man who spoke. When his voice ceased, some part of his attraction ceased. But the moment the voice was again heard the magic of the man returned as strong as ever.'

III

For some time during Winnie's narrative glimmerings of the gentleman's identity had been coming to me, and what she said of the voice seemed to be turning these glimmerings into shafts of light. I was now in a state of the greatest impatience to verify my surmise. But this only gave a sharper edge to my intense curiosity as to _how_ she had been rescued by him.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have said nothing about his appearance. Could you describe his face?'

'Describe his face?' said Winnie. 'If I were a painter I could paint it from memory. But who can paint a face in words?'

Then she launched into a description of the gentleman's appearance, and gave me a specimen of that 'objective' power which used to amaze me as a child but which I afterwards found was a speciality of the girls of Wales.

'I should like a description of him feature by feature,' I said.

She laughed, and said, 'I suppose I must begin with his forehead then. It was almost of the tone of marble, and contrasted, but not too violently, with the thin crop of dark hair slightly curling round the temples, which were partly bald. The forehead in its form was so perfect that it seemed to shed its own beauty over all the other features; it prevented me from noticing, as I afterwards did, that these other features--the features below the eyes, were not in themselves beautiful. The eyes, which looked at me through spectacles, were of a colour between hazel and blue-grey, but there were lights shining within them which were neither grey, nor hazel, nor blue--wonderful lights. And it was to these indescribable lights, moving and alive in the deeps of the pupils, that his face owed its extraordinary attractiveness. Have I sufficiently described him? or am I to go on taking his face to pieces for you?'

'Go on, Winnie--pray go on.'

'Well, then, between the eyes, across the top of the nose, where the bridge of the spectacles rested, there was a strongly marked indented line which had the appearance of having been made by long-continued pressure of the spectacle frame. Am I still to go on?'

'Yes, yes.'

'The beauty of the face, as I said before, was entirely confined to the upper portion. It did not extend lower than the cheek-bones, which were well shaped.'

'The mouth, Winnie? Describe that, and then I need not ask you his name, though perhaps you don't know it yourself.'

'A dark brown moustache covered the mouth. I have always thought that a mouth is unattractive if the lips are so close to the teeth that they seem to stick to them; and yet what a kind woman Mrs. Shales is, and her mouth is of this kind. But, on the other hand, where the space between the teeth and the lips is too great no mouth can be called beautiful, I think. Now though the mouth of the gentleman was not ill-cut, the lips were too far from the teeth, I thought; they were too loose, a little baggy, in short. And when he laughed--'

'What about that, Winnie? I specially want to know about his laugh.'

'Then I will tell you. When he laughed his teeth were a little too much seen; and this gave the mouth a somewhat satirical expression.'