'No,' said Winifred firmly, 'that was not the text. She believed that
the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is
nestling.'
'Then what did she believe? In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what
did she believe?'
'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes
brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's
evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and
luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the
word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is
the most perfect.'
'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love.
And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?'
'She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches
in our time.'
'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'
'She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time.
She told me that the passion of vanity--"the greatest of all the
human passions," as she used to say--has taken the form of
money-worship in our time, sapping all the noblest instincts of men
and women, and in rich people poisoning even parental affection,
making the mother thirst for the pleasures which in old days she
would only have tried to win for her child. She told me
stories--dreadful stories--about children with expectations of great
wealth who watched the poor grey hairs of those who gave them birth,
and counted the years and months and days that kept them from the
gold which modern society finds to be more precious than honour,
family, heroism, genius, and all that was held precious in less
materialised times. She told me a thousand other things of this kind,
and when I grew older she put into my hand what has been written on
the subject.'
'Good God! Has the narrow-minded tomfoolery got a literature?'
Winnie went on with her eloquent account of her aunt's doctrines, and
to my surprise I found that there actually _was_ a literature of the
subject.
Winnie's bright eyes had actually pored over old and long Chartist
tracts translated into Welsh, and books on the Christian Socialism of
Charles Kingsley, and pamphlets on more' recent kinds of Socialism.
As she went on I could not help murmuring now and then, 'What
surroundings for my Winnie!'
'And the result of all this was, Winnie, that your aunt asked you to
promise not to marry a man demoralised by privileges and made
contemptible by wealth.'
'That is what she wanted me to promise; but as I have said, I did
not. But I did promise to wait for a year and see what effect wealth
would have upon you.'
'Did your aunt not tell you also that the man who marries you can
never be unmanned by wealth, because he will know that everything he
can give is as dross when set against Winnie's love and Winnie's
beauty: Did she not also tell you that?'
'Love and beauty!' said Winnie. 'Even if a woman's beauty did not
depend for its existence upon the eyes that look upon it, I should
want to give more to my hero than love and beauty. I should want to
give him help in the battle of life, Henry. I should want to buckle
on his armour, and sharpen the point of his lance, and whet the edge
of his sword; a rich man's armour is bank-notes, and Winnie knows
nothing of such paper. His spear, I am told, is a bullion bar, and
Winnie's fingers scarcely know the touch of gold.'
'Then you agree, Winnie, with these strange views of your aunt?'
'I do partly agree with them now. Ever since I saw you to-day in the
churchyard I have partly agreed with them.'
'And why?'
'Because already prosperity or bodily vigour or something has changed
your eyes and changed the tone of your voice.'
'You mean that my eyes are no longer so full of trouble; and as to my
voice--how should my voice not change, seeing that it was the voice
of a child when you last listened to it?'
'It is impossible for me even now, after I have thought about it so
much, to put into words that expression in your eyes which won me as
a child. All I knew at the time was that it fascinated me. And as I
now recall it, all I know is that your gaze then seemed full of
something which I can give a name to now, though I did not understand
it then--the pathos and tenderness and yearning, which come, as I
have been told, from suffering, and that your voice seemed to have
the same message. That expression and that tone are gone--they will,
of course, never return to you now. Your life is, and will be, too
prosperous for that. But still I hope and believe that in a year's
time prosperity will not have worked in you any of the mischief that
my aunt feared. For you have a noble nature, Henry, and to spoil you
will not be easy. You will never be the dear little Henry I loved,
but you will still be nobler and greater than other men, I think.'
'Do you really mean that my lameness was a positive attraction to
you? Do you really mean that the very change in me which I thought
would strengthen the bond between us--my restoration to
health--weakens it? That is impossible, Winnie.'
She remained silent for a time, as though lost in thought, and then
said, 'I do not believe that any woman can understand the movements
of her own heart where love is concerned. My aunt used to say I was a
strange girl, and I am afraid I am strange and perverse. She used to
say that in my affections I was like no other creature in the world.'
'How should Winifred be like any other creature in the world?' I
said. 'She would not be Winifred if she were. But what did your aunt
mean?'
'When I was quite a little child she noticed that I was neglecting a
favourite mavis which I used to delight to listen to as he warbled
from his wicker cage. She watched me, and found that my attention was
all given to a wounded bird that I had picked up on the Capel Curig
road. "Winnie," she said, "nothing can ever win your love until it
has first won your pity. A bird with a broken wing would be always
more to you than a sound one!"'
'Your aunt was right,' I said, 'as no one should know better than I.
For was it not the new kind of pity shining in those eyes of yours
that revealed to me a new heaven in my loneliness? And when my
brother Frank on that day in the wood stood over us in all the pride
of his boyish strength, do I not remember the words you spoke?'
'What were they? I have quite forgotten them.'
'You said, "I don't think I could love any one very much who was not
lame."'
V
I wonder what words could render that love-dream on the dear silvered
sands, with the moon overhead, the dark shadowy cliffs and the old
church on one side, and the North Sea murmuring a love-chime on the
other!
Suffice it to record that Winifred, with a throb in her throat (a
throb that prevented her from pronouncing her n's with the clarity
that some might have desired), said 'certumly' again to Henry's
suit,--'Certumly, if in a year's time you seek me out in the
mountains, and your eyes and voice show that prosperity has not
spoiled you, but that you are indeed my Henry.' And this being
settled in strict accordance with her aunt's injunctions, she never
tried to disguise how happy she was, but told Henry again and again
in answer to his importunate questions--told him with her frank
courage how she had loved him from the first in the old churchyard as
a child--loved him for what she called his love-eyes; told him--ah!
what did she not tell him? I must not go on. These things should not
be written about at all but for the demands of my story.
And how soon she forgot that the betrothal was all on one side! I
could write out every word of that talk. I remember every accent of
her voice, every variation of light that came and went in her eyes,
every ripple of love-laughter, every movement of her body, lissome as
a greyhound's, graceful as a bird's. For fully an hour it lasted. And
remember, reader, that it was on the silvered sands, every inch of
which was associated with some reminiscence of childhood; it was
beneath a moon smiling as fondly and brightly as she ever smiled on
the domes of Venice or between the trees of Fiesole; it was by the
margin of waves whose murmurs were soft and perfumed as Winifred's
own breathing's when she slept; and remember that the girl was
Winifred herself, and that the boy--the happy boy--had Winifred's
love. Ah! but that last element of that hour's bliss is just what
the reader cannot realise, because he can only know Winifred through
these poor words. That is the distressing side of a task like mine.
The beloved woman here called Winifred (no phantom of an idle
imagination, but more real to me and dear to me than this soul and
body I call my own)--this Winifred can only live for you, reader,
through my feeble, faltering words; and yet I ask you to listen to
the story of such a love as mine.
'Winnie,' I said, 'you have often as a child sung songs of Snowdon to
me and told me of others you used to sing. I should love to hear one
of these now, with the chime of the North Sea for an accompaniment
instead of the instrument you tell me your Gypsy friend used to play.
Before we go up the gangway, do sing me a verse of one of those
songs.'
After some little persuasion she yielded and sang in a soft undertone
the following verse:--
'I met in a glade a lone little maid,
At the foot of y Wyddfa the white;
Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind,
And darker her hair than the night;
Her cheek was like the mountain rose,
But fairer far to see,
As driving along her sheep with a song,
Down from the hills came she.'
[Welsh translation]
'Mi gwrddais gynt a morwynig,
Wrth odreu y Wyddfa wen,
Un ysgafn ei throed fel yr ewig
A gwallt fel y nos ar ei phen;
Ei grudd oedd fel y rhosyn,
Un hardd a gwen ei gwawr;
Yn canu cân, a'i defaid mân,
O'r Wyddfa'n d'od i lawr.'
'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,
coarsened _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 passed 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 passion 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 class 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 flashing 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.