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.'