Chapter 9

Ah! but this thought about the futility of the curse, about the folly of my father's superstitions, brought me no comfort. I knew that, brave as Winifred was as a child, she was, when confronting the material world, very superstitious. I remembered that as a child, whenever I said, 'What a happy day it has been!' she would not rest until she had made me add, 'and shall have many more,' because of her feeling of the prophetic power of words. I knew that the superstitions of the Welsh hills awed her. I knew that it had been her lot to imbibe, not only Celtic, but Romany superstitions. I knew that the tribe of Gypsies with whom she had been thrown into contact, the Lovells and the Boswells, though superior to the rest, of the Romany race, are the most superstitious of all, and that Winifred had become an object of strong affection to the most superstitious even among that tribe, one Sinfi Lovell. I knew from something that had once fallen from her as a child on the sands, when prattling about Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, that especially powerful with her was the idea (both Romany and Celtic) about the effect of a dead man's curse. I knew that this idea had a dreadful fascination for her--the fascination of repulsion. I knew also that reason may strive with superstition as with the other instincts, but it will strive in vain. I knew that it would have been worse than idle for me to say to Winifred, 'There is no curse in the matter. The dreaming mystic who begot and forgot me, what curse could he call down on a soul like my Winifred's?' Her reason might partly accept my arguments; but straightway they would be spurned by her instincts and her traditional habits of thought. The terrible voice of the Psalmist would hush every other sound. Her sweet soul would pine under the blazing fire of a curse, real or imaginary; her life would be henceforth but a bitter penance. Like the girl in Coleridge's poem of 'The Three Graves,' her very flesh would waste before the fires of her imagination. 'No,' said I, 'such a calamity as this which I dread Heaven would not permit. So cruel a joke as this Hell itself would not have the heart to play.'

My meditations were interrupted by a sound, and then by a sensation such as I cannot describe. Whence came that shriek? It was like a coming from a distance--loud _there_, faint _here_, and yet it seemed to come from _me_! It was as though I were witnessing some dreadful sight unutterable and intolerable. And then it seemed the voice of Winifred, and then it seemed her father's voice, and finally it seemed the voice of my own father struggling in his tomb. My horror stopped the pulses of my heart for a moment, and then it passed.

'It comes from the church or from behind the church,' I said, as the shriek was followed by an angry murmur as of muffled thunder. All had occurred within the space of half a second. I quickly but cautiously opened my bedroom door, extinguishing my light before doing so, and began to creep downstairs, fearing to wake my mother. My shoes creaked, so I took them off and carried them. Crossing the hall, I softly drew the bolts of the front door; then I passed into the moonlight. The gravel of the carriage-drive cut through my stockings, and a pebble bruised one of my heels so that I nearly fell. When I got safely under the shadow of the large cedar of Lebanon in the middle of the lawn, I stopped and looked up at my mother's window to see if she were a watcher. The blinds were down, there was no movement, no noise. Evidently she was asleep. I put on my shoes and hurried across the lawn towards the high road. I walked at a sharp pace towards the old church. The bark of a distant dog or the baa of a waking sheep was the only sound. When I reached the churchyard, I peered in dread over the lich-gate before I opened it. Neither Wynne nor any living creature was to be seen in the churchyard.

The soothing smell of the sea came from the cliffs, making me wonder at my fears. On the loneliest coast, in the dunnest night, a sense of companionship comes with the smell of seaweed. At my feet spread the great churchyard, with its hundreds of little green hillocks and white gravestones, sprinkled here and there with square, box-like tombs. All quietly asleep in the moonlight! Here and there an aged headstone seemed to nod to its neighbour, as though muttering in its dreams. The old church, bathed in the radiance, seemed larger than it had ever done in daylight, and incomparably more grand and lonely.

On the left were the tall poplar trees, rustling and whispering among themselves. Still, there might be at the back of the church mischief working. I walked round thither. The ghostly shadows on the long grass might have been shadows thrown by the ruins of Tadmor, so quietly did they lie and dream. A weight was uplifted from my soul. A balm of sweet peace fell upon my heart. The noises I had heard had been imaginary, conjured up by love and fear; or they might have been an echo of distant thunder. The windows of the church no doubt looked ghastly, as I peered in to see whether Wynne's lantern was moving about. But all was still. I lingered in the churchyard close by the spot where I had first seen the child Winifred and heard the Welsh song.

I went to look at the sea from the cliff. Here, however, there was something sensational at last. The spot where years ago I had sat when Winifred's song had struck upon my ear and awoke me to a new life--_was gone_! 'This then was the noise I heard,' I said; 'the rumbling was the falling of the earth; the shriek was the tearing down of trees.'

Another slice, a slice weighing thousands of tons, had slipped since the afternoon from the churchyard on to the sands below. 'Perhaps the tread of the townspeople who came to witness the funeral may have given the last shake to the soil,' I said.

I stood and looked over the newly-made gap at the great hungry water. Considering the little wind, the swell on the North Sea was tremendous. Far away there had been a storm somewhere. The moon was laying a band of living light across the vast bosom of the sea, like a girdle. Only a month had elapsed since that never-to-be-forgotten moonlight walk with Winifred. But what a world of emotion since then!

VIII

I walked along the cliff to the gangway behind Flinty Point, and descended in order to see what havoc the landslip had made with the graves.

I looked across the same moonlit sands where I had seen Winifred so short a time before, when I had a father. To my delight and surprise, there she was again. There was Winifred, walking thoughtfully towards Church Cove with Snap by her side, who seemed equally thoughtful and sedate. The relief of finding that my fears about her father were groundless added to my joy at seeing her. With my own dead father lying within a few roods of me, I ran towards her in a state of high exhilaration, forgetting everything but her. With sympathetic looks for my bereavement she met me, and we walked hand-in-hand in silence.

After a little while she said: 'My father told me he was very busy to-night, and wished me to come on the sands for a walk, but I little hoped to meet you; I am very pleased we have met, for to-morrow I am going to London.'

'To London?' I said, in dismay at the thought of losing her so soon. 'Why are you going to London. Winnie?'

'Oh,' said she, with the same innocent look of business-like importance which, at our first meeting as children, had so impressed me when she pulled out the key to open the church door, 'I'm going on business.'

'On business! And how long do you stay?'

'I don't stay at all; I'm coming back immediately.'

'Come,' I exclaimed, 'there's a little comfort in that, at least. Snap and I can wait for one day.'

'Good-night,' said Winifred.

'Have you not seen the great landslip at the churchyard?' I asked, taking her hand and pointing to the new promontory which the _débris_ of the fall had made.

'Another landslip?' said she. 'Poor dear old churchyard, it will soon all be gone! Snap and I must have been far away when that fell. But I remember saying to him, 'Hark at the thunder. Snap!' and then I heard a sound like a shriek that appalled me. It recalled a sound I once heard in Shire-Carnarvon.'

'What was it, Winnie?'

'You've heard me when I was a little girl talk of my Gypsy sister Sinfi?'

'Often,' I said.

'She loves me more than anybody else in the whole world,' said Winifred simply. 'She says she would lay down her life for me, and I really believe she would. Well, there is not far from where I used to live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds on earth. On those rare nights when the full moon shines down the chasm, the wail becomes an agonised shriek. Once on a bright moonlight night Sinfi and I went to see these falls. The moonlight on the cascade had exactly the same supernatural appearance that it has now falling upon these billows. Sinfi sings some of our Welsh songs, and accompanies herself on a peculiar obsolete Welsh instrument called a crwth, which she always carries with her. While we were listening to the cataract and what she called the Wynn wail, she began to sing the wild old air. Then at once the wail sprang into a loud shriek; Sinfi said the shriek of a cursed spirit; and the shriek was exactly like the sound I heard from the cliffs a little while ago.'

'I heard the same noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and cracking of the poor churchyard trees as they fell.'

She turned back with me to the water-mark to see the waves come tumbling in beneath the moon. We sauntered along the sea-margin again, heedless of the passage of time.

And again (as on that betrothal night) Winifred prattled on, while I listened to the prattle, craftily throwing in a word or two, now and then, to direct the course of the sweet music into such channels as best pleased my lordly whim,--when suddenly, against my will and reason, there came into my mind that idea of the sea's prophecy which was so familiar to my childhood, but which my studies had now made me despise.

The sea then threw up to Winifred's feet a piece of seaweed. It was a long band of common weed, that would in the sunlight have shone a bright red. And at that very moment--right across the sparkling bar the moon had laid over the sea--there passed, without any cloud to cast it, a shadow. And my father's description of his love-tragedy haunted me, I knew not why. And right across my life, dividing it in twain like a burn-scar, came and lay for ever that strip of red seaweed. Why did my father's description of his own love-tragedy haunt me?

Before recalling the words that had fallen from my father in Switzerland, I was a boy: in a few minutes afterwards, I was a man with an awful knowledge of Destiny in my eyes--a man struggling with calamity, and fainting in the grip of dread. My manhood, I say, dates from the throwing up of that strip of seaweed. Winifred picked up the weed and made a necklace of it, in the old childish way, knowing how much it would please me.

'Isn't it a lovely colour?' she said, as it glistened in the moonlight. 'Isn't it just as beautiful and just as precious as if it were really made of the jewels it seems to rival?'

'It is as red as the reddest ruby,' I replied, putting out my hand and grasping the slippery substance.

'Would you believe,' said Winnie, 'that I never saw a ruby in my life? And now I particularly want to know all about rubies.'

'Why do you want particularly to know?'

'Because,' said Winifred, 'my father, when he wished me to come out for a walk, had been talking a great deal about rubies.'

'Your father had been talking about rubies, Winifred--how very odd!'

'Yes,' said Winifred, 'and he talked about diamonds too.'

'THE CURSE!' I murmured, and clasped her to my breast. 'Kiss me, Winifred!'

There had come a bite of sudden fire at my heart, and I shuddered with a dreadful knowledge, like the captain of an unarmed ship, who, while the unconscious landsmen on board are gaily scrutinising a sail that like a speck has appeared on the horizon, shudders with the knowledge of what the speck is, and hears in imagination the yells, and sees the knives, of the Lascar pirates just starting in pursuit. As I took in the import of those innocent words, falling from Winifred's bright lips, falling as unconsciously as water-drops over a coral reef in tropical seas alive with the eyes of a thousand sharks, my skin seemed to roughen with dread, and my hair began to stir.

At first she resisted my movement, but looking in my eyes and seeing that something had deeply disturbed me, she let me kiss her. 'What did you say, Henry?'

'That I love you so, Winnie, and cannot let you go just yet.'

'What a dear fellow it is!' she said; 'and all this ado about a poor girl with scarcely shoes to her feet.' Then, after an instant's pause, she said: 'But I thought you said something very different. I thought you said something about a curse, and _that_ scared me.'

'Scared Winifred!' I said. 'Fancy anything scaring Winnie, who threatens to hit people when they offend her.'

'Ah! but I am scared,' said she, 'at things from the other world, and especially at a curse.'

'Why, what do you know about curses, Winifred?'

'Oh, a good deal. I have never forgotten that shriek of a cursed spirit which I heard at the Swallow Falls. And only a short time ago Sinfi Lovell nearly frightened me to death by a story of a whole Gypsy tribe having withered, one after the other--grandfathers, fathers, and children--through a dead man's curse. But what is the matter with you, Henry? You surely have turned very pale!'

'Well, Winnie,' said I, 'I _am_ a little, just a little faint. After the funeral I could take no dinner. But it will he over in a minute. Let us go back a few yards and sit down upon the dry sand, and have a little more chat.'

We went and sat down, and my heart slowly resumed its function.

'Let me see, Winnie, what were we talking about? About rubies and diamonds, I think, were we not? You said that when your father bade you come out for a walk to-night, he had just been talking about rubies and diamonds. What was he saying about them, Winnie? But come and lay your head here while you tell me; lay it on my breast, Winnie, as you used to do in Graylingham Wood, and on these same sands.'

Evidently the earnestness of my manner and the suppressed passion in my voice drove out of her mind all her wise saws about the perils of wealth and all her wise determinations about the postponed betrothal, for she came and sat by my side and laid her head upon my breast.

'Yes. like _that_,' I said; 'and now tell me what your father was saying about precious stones; for I, too, take an interest in jewels, and have a great knowledge of them.'

'My father,' said Winifred, 'is going to have some diamonds and rubies given to him to-night by a friend of his, a sailor, who has come from India, and I am to go to London to-morrow to sell some of them; for you know, dear, we are very poor. That is why I am determined to go back to Shire-Carnarvon and see if I can get a situation as governess. Miss Dalrymple's recommendation will be of great aid. Poverty afflicts father more than it afflicts most people, and the rubies and diamonds and things will be of no use to us, you know.'

I could make her no answer.

'It seems a very strange kind of present from my father's friend,' she continued, meditatively; 'but it is a very kind one for all that. But, Henry, you surely are still very unwell; your heart is thumping underneath my ear like a fire-engine.'

'They are all love-thumps for Winifred,' I said, with pretended jocosity; 'they are all love-thumps for my Winnie.'

'But of course,' said she, 'this is quite a secret about the precious stones. My father enjoined me to tell no one, because the temptation to people is so great, and the cottage might be robbed, or I might be waylaid going to London. But of course I may tell you; he never thought of _you_.'

'No, Winnie, he never thought of me. You are very fond of him; very fond of your father, are you not?'

'Oh yes,' said she, 'I love him more than all the world--next to you.'

'Then he is kind to you, Winnie?' 'Ye--yes, as kind as he can be--considering--'

'Considering what, Winnie?'

'Considering that he's often--unwell, you know.'

'Winnie.' I said, as I gazed in the innocent eyes, 'whom are you considered to be the most like, your father or your mother?'

'I never knew my mother, but I am said to be partly like her. Why do you ask?'

'Only an idle question. You love me, Winnie?'

'What a question!'

'And you will do what I ask you to do, if I ask you very earnestly, Winnie?'

'Certumly,' said Winifred, giving, with a forced laugh, the lisp with which that word had been given on a now famous occasion.

'Well, Winifred, I told you that I feel an interest in precious stones, and have some knowledge of them. There are certain stones to which I have the greatest antipathy: diamonds and rubies are the chief of these.

Now I want you to promise that diamonds and rubies and beryls shall never touch these fingers, these dear fingers, Winnie, which are mine, you know; they are mine now,' and I drew the smooth nails slowly along my lips. 'You are mine now, every bit.'

'Every bit,' said Winifred, but she looked perplexed.

She saw, however, by my face that, for some reason or other, I was deeply in earnest. She gave the promise. And I knew at least that those fingers would not be polluted, come what would. As to her going to London with the spoil, I knew how to prevent that.

But what course of action was I now to take? At this very moment perhaps Winifred's father was violating my father's tomb, unless indeed the crime might even yet he prevented. There was one hope, however. The drunken scoundrel whose daughter was my world I knew to be a procrastinator in everything. His crime might, even yet, be only a crime in intent; and, if so, I could prevent it easily enough. My first business was to hurry to the church, and, if not yet too late, keep guard over the tomb. But to achieve this I must get quit of Winifred without a moment's delay. Now Winifred's most direct path to the cottage was the path I myself must take to the church, the gangway behind Flinty Point. Yet _she_ must not pass the church with me, lest an encounter with her father should take place. There was thus but one course open. I must induce her to take the gangway behind the other point of the cove; and how was this to be compassed? That was what I was racking my brain about.

'Winifred,' I said at last, as we sat and looked at the sea, 'I begin to fear we must be moving.'

She started up, vexed that the hint to move had come from me.

'The fact is,' I said, 'I particularly want to go into the old church.'

'Into the old church to-night?' said Winifred, with a look of astonishment and alarm that I could not understand.

'Yes; something was left undone there this afternoon at the funeral, and I must go at once. But why do you look so alarmed?'

'Oh, don't go into the old church to-night,' said Winifred.

I stood and looked at her, puzzled and strangely disturbed.

'Henry,' said she, 'I know you will think me very foolish, but I have not yet got over the fright that shriek gave me, the shriek we both heard the moment before the landslip. That shriek was not a noise made by the rending of trees, Henry. No, no; we both know better than that, Henry.'

I gave a start; for, try as I would, I had not really succeeded in persuading myself that what I had heard was anything but a human voice in terror or in pain.

'What do you think the noise was, then?' said I.

'I don't know; but I know what I felt as it came shuddering along the sand, and then went wailing over the sea.'

'What did you feel, Winnie?'

'My heart stood still, for it seemed to me to be the call from the grave.'

'The call from the grave! and pray what is that? I feel how sadly my education has been neglected.'

'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I felt sure it was a call from the grave, and I knelt on the sands and prayed. Henry, Henry, don't go in the church to-night.'

That Winifred's words affected me profoundly I need not say. The shriek, whatever it was, had been responded to by her soul and by mine in the same mysterious way. But the important thing to do was to prevent her from imagining that her superstitious terrors had affected me.

'Really, Winnie,' I said, 'this double-voiced shriek of yours, which is at once the shriek of the Welshman at the bottom of the swollen falls and the Celtic call from the grave, is the most dramatic shriek I ever heard of. It would make its fortune on the stage. But with all its power of being the shriek of two different people at once, it must not prevent my going into the church to do my duty; so we had better part here at this very spot. You go up the cliffs by Needle Point, and _I_ will take Flinty Point gangway.'

'But why not ascend the cliffs together?' said Winifred.

'Why, the prying coastguard might be passing, and might wonder to see us in the churchyard on the night of my father's funeral (he might take us for two ghosts in love, you know). However, we need not part just yet. We can walk on a little farther into the cove before our paths diverge.'

Winifred made no demur, though she looked puzzled, as we were then much nearer to the gangway I had selected for myself than to the gangway I had allotted to her.

IX

Winifred and I were in the little horseshoe curve called 'Church Cove,' but also called sometimes 'Mousetrap Cove,' because, as I have already mentioned, a person imprisoned in it by the tide could only escape by means of a boat from the sea.

Needle Point was at one extremity of the cove and Flinty Point at the other. In front of us, therefore, at the very centre of the cliff that surrounded the cove, was the old church, which I was to reach as soon as possible. To reach a gangway up the cliff it was necessary to pass quite out of the cove, round either Flinty Point or Needle Point; for the cliff _within_ the cove was perpendicular, and in some parts actually overhanging.

When we reached the softer sands near the back of the cove, where the walking was difficult, I bade Winifred good-night, and she turned somewhat demurely to the left on her way to Needle Point, between which and the spot where we now parted she would have to pass below the church on the cliff, and close by the great masses of debris from the new landslip that had fallen from the churchyard. This landslip (which had taken place since she had left home for her moonlight walk) had changed the shape of the cove into a figure something like the Greek epsilon.

I walked rapidly towards Flinty Point, which I should have to double before I could reach the gangway I was to take. So feverishly possessed had I become by the desire to prevent the sacrilege, if possible, that I had walked some distance away from Winifred before I observed how high the returning tide had risen in the cove.