I
My mother had some prejudice against a public school, and I was sent
to a large and important private one at Cambridge.
And go, with Winifred on my mind, I went one damp winter's morning to
Dullingham, our nearest railway station, on my way to Cambridge.
As concerns my school-days, I feel that all that will interest the
reader is this: as I rode through mile upon mile of the flat,
wide-stretching country, I made to myself a vow in connection with
Winifred,--a vow that when I left school I would do a certain thing
in relation to her, though Fate itself should say, 'This thing shall
not be done.' I did not know then, as I know now, how weak is human
will enmeshed in that web of Circumstance that has been a-weaving
since the beginning of the world.
I left school without the slightest notion as to what my future
course in life was to be. I was to take my rich uncle's property.
That was understood now. And although my mother never talked of the
matter, I could see in the pensive gaze she bent on me an
ever-present consciousness of a future for me more golden still.
But now I formed a new intimacy, and one of a very singular kind--an
intimacy with my father, who suddenly woke up to the fact that I was
no longer a child. It occurred on my making some pertinent inquiries
about a certain Gnostic amulet representing the Gorgon's head, a
prize of which he had lately become the happy possessor. On his
telling me that the Arabic word for amulet was _hamalet_, and that
the word meant 'that which is suspended,' I said in a perfectly
thoughtless way that very likely one of the learned societies to
which he belonged might be able to trace some connection between
'hamalet' and the 'Hamlet' of Shakespeare. These idle and ignorant
words of mine fell, as I found, upon a mind ripe to receive them. He
looked straight before him at the bust of Shakespeare on the
bookshelves as he always looked when his rudderless imagination was
once well launched, and I heard him mutter, 'Hamlet--the Amleth of
Saxo-Grammaticus,--hamalet, "that which is suspended." The world, to
Hamlet's metaphysical mind, _was_ "suspended" in the wide region of
Nowhere--in an infinite ocean of Nothing. Why did I not think of this
before? Strange that this child should hit upon it.' Then looking at
me as though he had just seen me for the first time in his life, he
said. 'How old are you, child?' 'Eighteen, father, I said. 'Eighteen
_years_?' he asked. 'Yes, father,' I said with some pique. 'Did you
suppose I meant eighteen months?' 'Only eighteen years,' he muttered,
'a mere baby, in short; and yet he has hit upon what we
Shakespearians have been boggling over for many year?--the symbolical
meaning involved in Hamlet's name. Henry, I prophesy great things for
you.'
An intimacy was cemented between us at once. One of the results of
this conversation was my father's elaborate paper, read before one of
his societies, in which he maintained that Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ was
a metaphysical poem, the great central idea of which was involved in
the name Hamlet, Amleth, or Hamalet--the idea that the universe,
suspended in the wide region of Nowhere, lies, an amulet, upon the
breast of the Great Latona,--a paper that was the basis of his
reputation in 'the higher criticism.'
Shortly after this my father and I spent the autumn in various parts
of Switzerland. One night, when we were sitting outside the chalet in
the full light of the moon, I was the witness of a display of passion
on the part of one whom I had always considered to be a dreamy
book-worm--a passionless, eccentric mystic--that simply amazed me. A
flickering tongue from the central fires suddenly breaking up through
the soil of an English vegetable garden could hardly have been a more
unexpected phenomenon to me than what occurred on that memorable
night.
The incident I am going to relate showed me how rash it is to suppose
that you have really fathomed the personality of any human creature.
The mementos of his first wife, which accompanied him whithersoever
he went, absorbed his attention in Switzerland, and especially in the
little place where she was born, far more than they had done at home.
He was for ever peeping furtively into his escritoire to enjoy the
sight of them, and then looking over his shoulder to see if he was
being watched by my mother, though she was far away in Raxton Hall.
On the night in question he showed me the silver casket containing
certain of these mementos--mementos which I felt to be almost too
intimate to be shown even to his son.
'And now, Henry,' said he, 'I am going to show you something that no
one else has ever seen since she died--the most sacred possession I
have upon this earth.' He then opened his shirt and his vest, and
showed me lying upon his naked bosom a beautiful jewelled cross of a
considerable size. 'This,' said he, lifting it up, 'is an ancient
Gnostic amulet. It is called the "Moonlight Cross" of the Gnostics. I
gave it to her on the night of our betrothal. She was a Roman
Catholic. It is made of precious stones cut in facets, with rubies
and diamonds and beryls so cunningly set that, when the moonlight
falls on them, the cross flashes almost as brilliantly as when the
sunlight falls on them and is kindled into living fire. These
deep-coloured crimson rubies--almost as clear as diamonds--are not of
the ordinary kind. They are true "Oriental rubies," and the jewellers
would tell you that the mine which produced them has been lost during
several centuries. But look here when I lift it up; the most
wonderful feature of the jewel is the skill with which the diamonds
are cut. The only shapes generally known are what are called the
"brilliant" and the "rose," but here the facets are arranged in an
entirely different way, and evidently with the view of throwing light
into the very hearts of the rubies, and producing this peculiar
radiance.'
He lifted the amulet again (which was suspended from his neck by a
beautifully worked cord made of soft brown hair) into the rays from
the moon. The light the jewel emitted was certainly of a strange and
fascinating kind. The cross had been worn with the jewelled front
upon his bosom instead of the smooth back, and the sharp facets of
the cross had lacerated the scarred flesh underneath in a most cruel
manner. He saw me shudder and understood why.
'Oh, I like that!' he said, with an ecstatic smile. 'I like to feel
it constantly on my bosom. It cannot cut deep enough for me. This is
her hair,' he said, taking the hair-cord between his fingers and
kissing it.
'How do you manage to exist, father,' I said, 'with that heavy
sharp-edged jewel on your breast? you who cannot bear the gout with
patience?'
'Exist? I could not exist _without_ it. The gout is pain--this is not
pain; it is joy, bliss, heaven! When I am dead it must lie for ever
on my breast as it lies now, or I shall never rest in my grave.' He
had been talking about amulets in the most quiet and matter-of-fact
way during that morning; but the I moment he produced this cross a
strange change came over his face, something like the change that
will come over a dull wood-fire when blown by the wind into a bright
light of flame.
'Ha!' he muttered to himself, as his eyes widened and sparkled with a
look of intense eagerness and his hand shook, sending the light of
the beautiful jewel all about the room, 'it is a sad pity he was not
her son. How I should have loved him then! I like him now very much;
but how I should have loved him then, for he is a brave boy. Oh, if I
had only been born brave like him!' Then, suddenly recollecting
himself, he closed his vest, and said: 'Don't tell your mother, Hal;
don't tell your mother that I have shown you this.' Then he took it
out again. 'She who is dead cherished it,' he continued, half to
himself--'she cherished it above all things. She died, boy, and I
couldn't help her. She used to wear the cross in the bosom of her
dress; and there she was in the cove kissing it when the tide swept
over her. I ought to have jumped down and died with her. _You_ would
have done it, Hal; your eyes say so. Oh, to be an Aylwin without the
Aylwin courage!'
After a little time he said: 'This has lain on her bosom, Hal, her
bosom! It has been kissed by her, Hal, oh, a thousand thousand times!
It had her last kiss. When I took it from the cold body which had
been recovered, this cross seemed to be warm with her life and love.'
And then he wept, and his tears fell thick upon his bosom and upon
the amulet. The truth was clear enough now. The appalling death of
his first wife, his love for her, and his remorse for not having
jumped down the cliff and died with her, had affected his brain. He
was a monomaniac, and all his thoughts were in some way clustered
round the dominant one. He had studied amulets because the 'Moonlight
Cross' had been cherished by her; he came to Switzerland every year
because it was associated with her; he had joined the spiritualist
body in the mad hope that perhaps there might be something in it,
perhaps there might be a power that could call her back to earth.
Even the favourite occupation of his life, visiting cathedrals and
churches and taking rubbings from monumental brasses, had begun
after her death; it had come from the fact (as I soon learned) that
she had taken interest in monumental brasses, and had begun the
collection of rubbings.
And yet this martyr to a mighty passion bore the character of a
dreamy student; and his calm, un-furrowed face, on common occasions,
expressed nothing but a rather dull kind of content! Here was a
revelation of what, afterwards, was often revealed to me, that human
personality is the crowning wonder of this wonderful universe, and
that the forces which turn fire-mist into stars are not more
inscrutable than is human character. He lifted up his head and gazed
at me through his tears.
'Hal,' he said, 'do you know why I have shown you this? It _must_,
MUST be buried with me at my death; and there is no one upon whose
energy, truth, courage, and strength of will I can rely as I can upon
yours. You must give me your word, Hal, that you will see it and this
casket containing her letters buried with me.'
I hesitated to become a party to such an undertaking as this. It
savoured of superstition, I thought. Now, having at that very time
abandoned all the superstitions and all the mystical readings of the
universe which as a child I had inherited from ancestors, Romany and
English, having at that very time begun to take a delight in the
wonderful revelations of modern science, my attitude towards
superstition--towards all super-naturalism--oscillated between anger
and simple contempt.
'But,' I said, 'you surely will not have this beautiful old cross
buried?' And as I looked at it, and the light fell upon it, there
came from it strange flashes of fire, showing with what extraordinary
skill the rubies and diamonds had been adjusted so that their facets
should catch and concentrate the rays of the moon.
'Yes,' he said, taking the cross again in his hand and fondling it
passionately, 'it must never be possessed by any one after me.'
'But it might be stolen, father--stolen from your coffin.'
'That would indeed he a disaster,' he said with a shudder. Then a
look of deadly vengeance overspread his face and brought out all its
Romany characteristics as he said: 'But with it there will be buried
a curse written in Hebrew and English--a curse upon the despoiler,
which will frighten off any thief who is in his senses.'
And he showed me a large parchment scroll, folded exactly like a
title-deed, with the following curse and two verses from the 109th
Psalm written upon it in Hebrew and English. The English version
was carefully printed by himself in large letters:--
'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 have printed the English version in large letters,' he said, 'so
that any would-be despoiler must see it and read it at once by the
dimmest lantern light.'
'But, father,' I said, 'is it possible that you, an educated man,
really believe in the efficacy of a curse?'
'If the curse comes straight from the heart's core of a man, as this
curse comes from mine, Hal, how can it fail to operate by the mere
force of will? The curse of a man who loved as I love upon the wretch
who should violate a love-token so sacred as this--why, the
disembodied spirits of all who have loved and suffered would combine
to execute it!'
'Spirits!' I said. 'Really, father, in times like these to talk of
spirits!'
'Ah, Henry!' he replied, 'I was like you once. I could once be
content with Materialism--I could find it supportable once; but,
should you ever come to love as I have loved (and, for your own
happiness, child, I hope you never may), you will And that
Materialism is intolerable, is hell itself, to the heart that has
known a passion like mine. You will And that it is madness, Hal,
madness, to believe in the word "never"! you will And that you
_dare_ not leave untried any creed, howsoever wild, that offers
the heart a ray of hope. Every object she cherished has become
spiritualised, sublimated, has become alive--alive as this amulet
is alive. See, the lights are no natural lights.' And again he held
it up.
'If on my death-bed,' he continued, 'I thought that this beloved
cross and these sacred relics would ever get into other hands--would
ever touch other flesh--than mine, I should die a maniac, Hal, and my
spirit would never be released from the chains of earth.' It was the
superstitious tone of his talk that irritated and hardened me. He saw
it, and a piteous expression overspread his features.
'Don't desert your poor father,' he said. 'What I want is the word
of an Aylwin that those beloved relics shall be buried with me. If I
had _that_, I should be content to live, and content to die. Oh,
Hal!'
He threw such an imploring gaze into my face as he said 'Oh, Hal!'
that, reluctant as I was to be mixed up with superstition, I promised
to execute his wishes; I promised also to keep the secret from all
the world during his life, and after his death to share it with those
two only from whom, for family reasons, it could not be kept--my
uncle Aylwin of Alvanley and my mother. He then put away the amulet,
and his face resumed the look of placid content it usually wore. He
was feeling the facets of the mysterious 'Moonlight Cross'!
The most marvellous thing is this, however: his old relations towards
me were at once resumed. He never alluded to the subject of his first
wife again, and I soon found it difficult to believe that the
conversation just recorded ever took place at all. Evidently his
monomania only rose up to a passionate expression when fanned into
sudden flame by talking about the cross. It was as though the shock
of his first wife's death had severed his consciousness and his life
in twain.