'Now, let me calmly consider the case in all its bearings, I said to
myself, drawing a chair to the window and sitting down with my elbows
resting on the sill. 'Suppose Wynne really did overhear the
altercation between my mother and my uncle, which seems scarcely
probable, has drink really so demoralised him, so brutalised him,
that for drink he would commit the crime of sacrilege? There are no
signs of his having sunk so low as that. But suppose the crime were
committed, what then? Do I really believe that the curse of my father
and of the Psalmist would fall upon Winifred's pure and innocent
head? Certainly not. I do not believe in the effect of curses at all.
I do not belief in any supernatural interference with the natural
laws of the universe.'
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!