There was no meeting Winifred on the next night.
It was decided that my uncle's private secretary should go to
Switzerland to bring the body to England. I (remembering my promise
about the mementos) insisted on accompanying him. We started on the
morrow, preceded by a message to my father's Swiss friends ordering
an embalmment. Before starting I tried to see Winifred; but she had
gone to Dullingham.
On our arrival at the little Swiss town, we found that the embalmment
had been begun. The body was still in the hands of a famous
embalmer--an Italian Jew settled at Geneva, the only successful rival
there of Professor Laskowski. He was celebrated for having revived
the old Hebraic method of embalmment in spices, and improving it by
the aid of the modern discoveries in antiseptics of Laskowski, Signer
Franchina of Naples, and Dr. Dupré of Paris. This physician told me
that by his process the body would, without the peculiarly-sealed
coffin used by the Swiss embalmers, last 'firm and white as Carrara
marble for a thousand years.'
The people at the chalet had naturally been much astonished to find
upon my father's breast a jewelled cross lying. As soon as I entered
the house they handed it to me.
For some reason or another this amulet and the curse had haunted my
imagination as much as if I believed in amulets and curses, though my
reason told me that everything of the kind was sheer nonsense. I
could not sleep for thinking about it, and in the night I rose from
my bed, and, opening the window, held up the cross in the moonlight.
The facets caught the silvery rays and focussed them. The amulet
seemed to shudder with some prophecy of woe. It was now that, for the
first time, I began to feel the signs of that great struggle between
reason and the inherited instinct of superstition which afterwards
played so important a part in my life. I then took up the parchment
scroll, and opened it and re-read the curse. The great letters in
which the English version was printed seemed to me larger by the
light of the moon than they had seemed by daylight.
We had to wait for some time in Switzerland. In a locked drawer I
found the casket and a copy of _The Veiled Queen_. I read much in the
book. Every word I found there was in flat contradiction to my own
mode of thought.
Did the shock of this dreadful catastrophe drive Winifred from my
mind? No, nothing could have done that. My soul seemed, as I have
said, to be new-born, and all emotions, passions, and sentiments that
were not connected with her seemed to be shadowy and distant, like
ante-natal dreams. It would be hypocrisy not to confess this frankly,
regardless of the impression against me it may make on the reader's
mind. Yet I had a real affection for my father. In spite of his
extraordinary obliviousness of my very existence till the last year
of his life, I was strongly attached to him, and his death made me
see nothing but his virtues; yet my soul was so filled with my
passion for Winifred as to have but little room for sorrow. As to my
mother, her attachment to my father knew no bounds, and her grief at
her bereavement knew none.
A day or two before the funeral my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley arrived,
and his presence was a great comfort to her. Owing to my father's
position in the county a great deal of funereal state was considered
necessary, and there was much hurry and bustle.
My uncle having known Wynne when quite a young man, before
intemperance had degraded him, took an interest in him still. He had
called at the cottage as he passed along Wilderness Road towards
Raxton, and the result of this was that the organist came to speak to
him at our house upon some matter in connection with the funeral
service. My mother was greatly vexed at this. Her conduct on the
occasion alarmed me. Ever since Frank's death had made it evident not
only that I should succeed to all the property of my uncle Aylwin of
Alvanley, but that I might even succeed to something greater, to the
earldom which was the glory and pride of the Aylwins, my mother had
kept a jealous and watchful eye upon me, being, as I afterwards
learned, not unmindful of the early child-loves of Winifred and
myself; and the advent to Raxton of Winifred, as a beautiful tall
girl, had aroused her fears as well as her wrath.
The day of the funeral came, and the question of the casket and the
amulet was on my mind. The important thing, of course, was that the
matter should be kept absolutely secret. The valuables must be placed
in secrecy with the embalmed corpse at the last moment, before the
screwing down of the coffin, when servants and undertakers were out
of sight and hearing.
My mother knew what had been my father's instructions to me, and was
desirous that they should be fulfilled, though she scorned the
superstition. She and I placed the casket and the scroll hearing the
written curse upon it beneath my father's head, and hung the chain of
the amulet around his neck, so that the cross lay with the jewels
uppermost upon his breast. Then the undertakers were called in to
screw down the coffin in my presence. My mother afterwards called me
to her room, and told me that she was much troubled about the cross.
The amulet being of great value, my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley had
tried to dissuade her from carrying into execution what he called
'the absurd whim of a mystic'; but my mother urged my promise, and
there had been warm words between them, as my mother told me--adding,
however, 'and the worst of it is, that scamp Wynne, whom your uncle
introduced into this house without my knowledge or sanction, was
passing the door while your uncle was talking, and if he did not hear
every word about the jewelled cross, drink must have stupefied him
indeed. _He_ is my only fear in connection with the jewels.' Her
dislike of Wynne had made her forget for the moment the effect her
words must have upon me.
'Mother,' I said, 'your persistent prejudice and injustice towards
this man astonish me. Wynne, though poor and degraded now, is a
gentleman born, and is no more likely to violate a tomb than the best
Aylwin that ever lived.'
I will not dwell upon the scene at the funeral. I saw my father's
coffin placed in the crypt that spread beneath the deserted church.
It was by the earnest wish of my father that he was buried in a
church already deserted because the grip of the resistless sea was
upon it. At this very time a very large slice of the cliff behind the
church was pronounced dangerous, and I perceived that new rails were
lying on the grass ready to be fixed up, further inland than ever.