IX

Winifred and I were in the little horseshoe curve called 'Church

Cove,' but also called sometimes 'Mousetrap Cove,' because, as I have

already mentioned, a person imprisoned in it by the tide could only

escape by means of a boat from the sea.

Needle Point was at one extremity of the cove and Flinty Point at the

other. In front of us, therefore, at the very centre of the cliff

that surrounded the cove, was the old church, which I was to reach as

soon as possible. To reach a gangway up the cliff it was necessary to

pass quite out of the cove, round either Flinty Point or Needle

Point; for the cliff _within_ the cove was perpendicular, and in some

parts actually overhanging.

When we reached the softer sands near the back of the cove, where the

walking was difficult, I bade Winifred good-night, and she turned

somewhat demurely to the left on her way to Needle Point, between

which and the spot where we now parted she would have to pass below

the church on the cliff, and close by the great masses of debris from

the new landslip that had fallen from the churchyard. This landslip

(which had taken place since she had left home for her moonlight

walk) had changed the shape of the cove into a figure something like

the Greek epsilon.

I walked rapidly towards Flinty Point, which I should have to double

before I could reach the gangway I was to take. So feverishly

possessed had I become by the desire to prevent the sacrilege, if

possible, that I had walked some distance away from Winifred before I

observed how high the returning tide had risen in the cove.

When I now looked at Flinty Point, round which I was to turn, I saw

that it was already in deep water, and that I could not reach the

gangway outside the cove. It was necessary, therefore, to turn back

and ascend by the gangway Winifred was making for, behind Needle

Point, which did not project so far into the sea. So I turned back.

As I did so, I perceived that she had reached the projecting mass of

debris in the middle of the semicircle below the churchyard, and was

looking at it. Then I saw her stoop, pick up what seemed a paper

parcel, open it, and hold it near her face to trace out the letters

by the moonlight. Then I saw her give a start as she read it. I

walked towards her, and soon reached the landslip. Evidently what she

read agitated her much. She seemed to read it and re-read it. When

she saw me she put it behind her back, trying to conceal it from me.

'What have you picked up, Winifred?' I said, in much alarm; for my

heart told me that it was in some way connected with her father and

the shriek.

'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'I was in hopes you had not seen it. I am so

grieved for you. This parchment contains a curse written in large

letters. Some sacrilegious wretch has broken into the church and

stolen a cross placed in your father's tomb.'

God!--It was the very same parchment scroll from my father's tomb on

which was written the curse! I was struck dumb with astonishment and

dismay. The whole terrible truth of the situation broke in upon me at

one flash. The mysterious shriek was explained now. Wynne had

evidently broken open the tomb as soon as his daughter was out of the

way. He had then, in order to reach the cottage without running the

risk of being seen by a chance passenger on the Wilderness Road,

blundered about the edge of the cliff at the very moment when it was

giving way, and had fallen with it. It was his yell of despair amid

the noise of the landslip that Winifred and I had both heard. My sole

thought was for Winifred. She had read the curse; but where was the

dead body of her father that would proclaim upon whose head the curse

had fallen? I stared around me in dismay. She saw how deeply I was

disturbed, but little dreamed the true cause.

'Oh, Henry,' said she, 'to think that you should have such a grief as

this; your dear father's tomb violated!' and she sat down and sobbed.

'But there is a God in heaven,' she added, rising with great

solemnity. 'Whoever has committed this dreadful crime against God and

man will rue the day he was born:--the curse of a dead man who has

been really wronged no penance or prayer can cure,--so my aunt in

Wales used to say, and so Sinfi says;--it clings to the wrongdoer and

to his children. That cry I heard was the voice of vengeance, and it

came from your father's tomb.'

'It is a most infamous robbery,' I said; 'but as to the curse, that

is of course as powerless to work mischief as the breath of a baby.'

And again I anxiously looked around to see where was the dead body of

Wynne, which I knew must be close by.

'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'listen to these words, these awful words of

your dead father, and the words of the Bible too.'

And she held up to her eyes, as though fascinated by it, the

parchment scroll, and read aloud in a voice so awe-struck that it did

not seem to be her voice at all:

'_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 am in the toils,' I murmured, with grinding teeth.

'What a frightful curse!' she said, shuddering. 'It terrifies me to

think of it. How hard it seems,' she continued, 'that the children

should be cursed for the father's crimes.'

'But, Winifred, they are NOT so cursed,' I cried. 'It is all a

hideous superstition: one of Man's idiotic lies!'

'Henry,' said she, shocked at my irreverence, 'it _is_ so; the Bible

says it, and all life shows it. Ah! I wonder what wretch committed

the sacrilege, and why he had no pity on his poor innocent children!'

While she was talking, I stooped and picked up the casket from which

the letters had been forced by the fall. She had not seen it. I put

it in my pocket.

'Henry, I am so grieved for you,' said Winifred again, and she came

and wound her fingers in mine.

Grieved for _me_! But where was her father's dead body? That was the

thought that appalled me. Should we come upon it in the _débris_?

What was to be done? Owing to the tide, there was no turning back now

to Flinty Point. The projecting debris must be passed. There was no

dallying for a moment. If we lingered we should be caught by the tide

in Mousetrap Cove, and then nothing could save us. Suppose in passing

the _débris_ we should come upon her father's corpse. The idea was

insupportable. 'Thank God, however, I murmured, 'she will not even

_then_ know the very worst; she will see the corpse of her father who

has fallen with the cliff, but she need not and will not associate

him with the sacrilege and the curse.'

As I picked up the letters that had been scattered from the casket,

she said,

'I cannot get that dreadful curse out of my head; to think that the

children of the despoiler should be cursed by God, and cursed by your

father, and yet they are as innocent as I am.'

'Best to forget it,' said I, standing still, for I dared not move

towards the _débris_.

'We must get on, Henry,' said she, 'for look, the tide is unusually

high to-night. You have turned back, I see, because Flinty Point is

already deep in the water.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I must turn Needle Point with you. But as to the

sacrilege, let us dismiss it from our minds; what cannot be helped

had better be forgotten.'

I then cautiously turned the corner of the _débris_, leading her

after me in such a way that my body acted as a screen. Then my eyes

encountered a spectacle whose horror chilled my blood, and haunts me

to this day in my dreams. About twelve feet above the general level

of the sand, buried to the breast behind a mass of green sward fallen

from the graveyard, stood the dead body of Wynne, amid a confused

heap of earth, gravestones, trees, shrubs, bones, and shattered

coffins. Bolt upright it stood, staring with horribly distorted

features, as in terror, the crown of the head smashed by a fallen

gravestone. Upon his breast glittered the rubies and diamonds and

beryls of the cross, sparkling in the light of the moon, and seeming

to be endowed with conscious life. It was evident that he had, while

groping his way out of the crypt, slung the cross around his neck, in

order to free his hands. I shudder as I recall the spectacle. The

sight would have struck Winifred dead, or sent her raving mad, on the

spot; but she had not turned the corner, and I had just time to wheel

sharply round, and thrust my body between her and the spectacle. The

dog saw it, and, foaming with terror, pointed at it.

'I beg your pardon, Winifred,' I said, falling upon her and pushing

her back.

Then I stood paralysed as the full sinister meaning of the situation

broke in upon my mind. Had the _débris_ fallen in any other way I

might have saved Winifred from seeing the most cruel feature of the

hideous spectacle, the cross, the evidence of her father's sacrilege.

I might, perhaps, on some pretence, have left her on this side the

_débris_, and turning the corner, have mounted the heap and removed

the cross gleaming in hideous mockery on the dead man's breast, and

giving back the moonbeams in a cross of angry fire. One glance,

however, had shown me that before this could be done, there was a

wall of slippery sward to climb, for the largest portion of the

churchyard soil had broken off in one lump. In falling, it had turned

but _half_ over, and then had slid down sideways, presenting to the

climber a facet or sward nearly perpendicular and a dozen feet high.

Wedged in between the jaggy top of this block and the wall of the

cliff was the corpse, showing that Wynne had been standing by the

fissure of the cliff at the moment when it widened into a landslip.

Nor was that all; between that part of the _débris_ where the corpse

was perched and the sand below was one of those long pools of

sea-water edged by shingles, which are common features of that coast.

It seemed that Destiny or Circumstance, more pitiless than Fate and

Hell, determined on our ruin, had forgotten nothing.

The contour of the cove; the way in which the debris had been thrown

across the path we now must follow in order to reach the only place

of egress; the way in which the hideous spectacle of Wynne and the

proof of his guilt had been placed, so that to pass it without seeing

it the passenger must go blindfold; the brilliance of the moon,

intensified by being reflected from the sea; the fulness of the high

tide, and the swell--all was complete! As I stood there with clenched

teeth, like a rat in a trap, a wind seemed to come blowing through my

soul, freezing and burning. I cursed Superstition that was slaying us

both. And I should have cursed Heaven but for the touch of Winnie's

clasping fingers, silky and soft as when I first felt them as a child

in the churchyard.

'What has happened?' asked she, looking into my face.

'Only a slip of my foot,' I said, recovering my presence of mind.

'But why do you turn back?'

'I cannot bring myself to part from you under this delicious moon,

Winnie, if you will stay a few minutes longer. Let us go and sit on

that very boulder where little Hal proposed to you.'

'But you want to go into the church,' said Winifred, as we moved back

towards the boulder.

'No, I will leave that till the morning. I would leave _anything_

till the morning, to have a few minutes longer with you on the sands.

Try to imagine that we are children again, and that I am not the

despised rich man but little Hal the cripple.'

Winifred's eyes, which had begun to look very troubled, sparkled with

delight.

'But,' said she with a sigh, as we sat down on the boulder, 'I'm

afraid we sha'n't be able to stay long. See how the tide is rising,

and the sea is wild. The tides just now, father says, come right up

to the cliff in the cove, and once locked in between Flinty Point and

Needle Point there is no escape.'

'Yes, darling,' I muttered to myself, drawing her to me and burying

my face in her bosom, 'there is one escape, only one.'

For death seemed to me the only escape from a tragedy far, far worse

than death.

If she made me any answer I heard it not; for, as I sat there with

closed eyes, schemes of escape fluttered before me and were dismissed

at the rate of a thousand a second. A fiery photograph of the cove

was burning within my brain, my mind was absorbed in examining every

cranny and every protuberance in the semicircular wall of the cliff

there depicted; over and over again I was examining that

brain-picture, though I knew every inch of it, and knew there was not

in the cliff-wall foothold for a squirrel.

X

The moon mocked me, and seemed to say:

'The blasting spectacle shining there on the other side of that heap

of earth must be passed, or Needle Point can never be reached; and

unless it is reached instantly you and she can never leave the cove.'

'Then we will never leave it,' I whispered to myself, jumping up.

As I did so I found for the first time that her forehead had been

resting against my head; for the furious rate at which the wheels of

thought were moving left no vital current for the sense of touch, and

my flesh was numbed.

'Something has happened,' she said. 'And why did you keep whispering

"yes, yes"? Whom were you whispering to?'

The truth was that, in that dreadful trance, my conscience had been

saying to me, 'Have you a right to exercise your power over this girl

by leading her like a lamb to death?' and my love had replied, 'Yes,

ten thousand times yes.'

'Winifred,' I said, 'I would die for you.'

'Yes, Henry,' said she, 'I know it; but what have we to do with death

now?'

'To save you from harm this flesh of mine would rejoice at

crucifixion; to save you from death this soul and body of mine would

rejoice to endure a thousand years of hell-fire.'

She turned pale, amazed at the delirium into which I had passed.

'To save you from harm, dear, I would,' said I, with a quiet

fierceness that scared her, 'immolate the whole human race--mothers,

and fathers, and children; I would make a hecatomb of them all to

save this body of yours, this sweet body, alive.'