XII

Weak in body and in mind as an infant, I woke again to consciousness.

Through the open window the sunlight, with that tender golden-yellow

tone which comes with morning in England, was pouring between the

curtains, and illuminating the white counterpane. Then a soft breeze

came and slightly moved the curtains, and sent the light and shadows

about the bed and the opposite wall--a breeze laden with the scent I

always associated with Wynne's cottage, the scent of geraniums. I

raised myself on my elbows, and gazed over the geraniums on the

window-sill at the blue sky, which was as free of clouds as though it

were an Italian one, save that a little feathery cloud of a palish

gold was slowly moving towards the west.

'It is shaped like a hand,' I said dreamily, and then came the

picture of Winifred in the churchyard singing, and pointing to just

such a golden cloud, and then came the picture of Tom Wynne reeling

towards us from the church porch, and then came everything in

connection with him and with her; everything down to the very

last words which I had spoken about her to my mother before

unconsciousness had come upon me. But what I did _not_ know--what I

was now burning to know without delay--was what time had passed since

then.

I called out 'Mother!' A nurse, who was sitting in the room, but

hidden from me by a large carved and corniced oak wardrobe, sprang up

and told me that she would go and fetch my mother.

'Mother,' I said, when she entered the room, 'you've been?'

'Yes,' said she, taking a seat by my bedside, and motioning the nurse

to leave us.

'And you were in time, mother!'

'More than in time,' said she. 'There was nothing to do. I have

realised, however, that your extraordinary and horrible story was

true. It was not a fever-dream. The tomb has been desecrated.'

'But, mother, you went as you promised to the sands in Church Cove,

and you waited for the ebb of the tide?'

'I did.'

'And you found--'

'Nothing; no corpse exposed.'

'And you went again the next day?'

'I did.'

'And you found--'

'Nothing.'

'But how many days have passed, mother? How many days have I been

lying here?'

'Seven.'

'And no sign of--of the body was to be seen?'

'None. The wretch must have been buried for ever beneath the great

mass of the fallen cliff. I went no more.'

'Oh, mother, you should have gone every day. Think of the frightful

risk, mother. On the very day after you ceased your visits the body

might have been turned up by the tide, and she might have gone and

seen it.'

The picture was too terrible. I fell back exhausted. I revived,

however, in a somewhat calmer mood. When my mother came into the room

again, I returned at once to the subject. I reproached her bitterly

for not having gone every day. She listened to my reproaches in

entire calmness.

'It was idle to keep repeating these visits every day,' said she,

'and I consider that I have fully performed my part of the compact. I

expect you to fulfil yours.'

I remained silent, preparing for a deadly struggle with the only

being on earth I had ever really feared.

'I have fully kept my word, Henry,' said she, 'and have done for you

more than my duty to your father's memory warranted me in doing.'

'But, mother, you did not do all that you promised to do; you did not

prevent all risk of Winifred's finding it. She may find it even yet.'

'That is not likely now. I have performed my part of the compact, and

I expect you to perform yours.'

'You did not use all means to save my Winifred from worse than

death--from madness; you did not use all means to save me from dying

of self-murder or of a broken heart; and the compact is broken.

Whether or not I could have kept my faith with you by breaking troth

with her, it is you who have set me free. Mother,' I said, fiercely,

'in such a compact it must be the letter of the bond.'

'Mean subterfuge, unworthy of your descent,' said my mother quietly,

but with one of those looks of hers that used to frighten me once.

'No, no, mother; you have not kept the letter of the bond, and I am

free. You did _not_ take the fullest and best means to save Winifred.

Your compact was to save her from the risk I told you of. And,

mother, mother, listen to me!' I cried, in a state of crazy

excitement now: 'in the darkest moment of my life, when I was

prostrate and helpless, you were pitiless as Pride. Listen, mother:

Winifred Wynne shall be mine. Not all the Aylwins that have ever

eaten of wheat and fattened the worms shall prevent that. She shall

be mine. I say, she shall be mine!'

'The daughter of the man who desecrated my husband's tomb!'

'And my father's! That man's daughter shall be my wife,' I said,

sitting up in bed and looking into those eyes, bright and proud,

which had been wont to make all other eyes blink and quail.

'Cursed by your father, and cursed by God--'

'That curse--for what it may be worth--I take upon my own head; the

curse shall be mine. Even if I believed the threat about the

"desolate places," I would be there; if bare-footed she had to beg

from door to door, rest assured, mother, that an Aylwin would hold

the wallet--would leave the whole Aylwin brood, their rank, their

money, and their stupid, vulgar British pride, to walk beside the

beggar.'

The look on my mother's face would have terrified most people. It

would have terrified me once, but in the frenzy into which I had then

passed, nothing would have made me quail.

'Your services, mother, are no longer needed,' I said. 'Wynne's

corpse might have been washed up by the tide, and your compact was to

be there to see; but now, most likely, it is hidden, not under the

loose fragments as I had feared, but under the great mass of

earth,--hidden for ever.'

'But you forget,' said my mother, 'that the amulet has to be

recovered.'

'Mother,' I said, in the state of wild suspiciousness concerning her

and her motives into which I had now passed, 'I know what your words

imply,--that Winifred is not yet out of danger; the evidence of the

curse and the crime can be dug up.'

'I have no wish to harm the girl, Henry. You mistake me.'

'Then, mother, we must _not_ mistake each other in this matter,' I

said. 'You have alluded to the word of an Aylwin. With me, as with

the best of us, the word of an Aylwin is an oath. Wynne's corpse is

now hidden; the cross is now hidden; I give you the word of an Aylwin

that the man who digs up that corpse I will kill. I will not consider

that he is an irresponsible agent of yours; I will kill him, and his

blood shall be upon the head of her who sends him, knowing, to his

death.'

'And be hanged,' said my mother.

'Perhaps. But after her father's crime has been exposed, the first

thing for me is--to kill!'

'Why, boy, there's murder in your eyes!' said my mother, taken off

her guard.

'Oh, mother, mother, can you not see that no wolf with a stolen lamb

in its mouth was ever more pitilessly shot down by the owner of that

lamb than any hireling wolf of yours would be shot down by me?'

'Boy, are you quite demented?'

'Listen, mother. To prevent Winifred from knowing that her father had

stolen that amulet, and so brought down upon her the curse, I would

have drowned her with myself in the tide. We sat waiting for the tide

to drown us, when the settlement came at the last moment and buried

it away from her. Is it likely that I should hesitate to kill a

clodhopper, or a score, if only to take my vengeance on you and Fate?

The homicide now will be yours.'

She left, giving me a glance of defiance; but before our eyes ended

that conflict, I saw which of us had conquered.

'Hate is strong,' I murmured, as I sank down on my pillow, 'and

destiny is strong; but oh, Winnie, Winnie--stronger than hate, and

stronger than destiny and death, is love. She knows, Winnie, that the

life of the man who should dig up that corpse would not be worth an

hour's purchase; she knows, Winnie, that in the court of conscience

she alone is answerable now for what may befall; and you are safe!

But poor mother! My poor dear mother, whom once I loved so dearly,

was it indeed you I struggled with just now? Mother, mother, was it

you?'

This interview retarded my recovery, and I had a serious relapse.

The fever was a severe one. The symptoms were aggravated by these

most painful and trying interviews with my mother, and by my

increasing anxiety about the fate of Winifred. Yet my vigorous

constitution began to show signs of conquering. Of Winifred I could

learn nothing, save what could be gleaned from the servants in

attendance, who seemed merely to have heard that Tom Wynne was

missing, that he had probably fallen drunk over the cliff and been

washed out to sea, and that his daughter was seeking him everywhere.

As the days passed by, however, and no hint reached me that the

corpse had been found on the sands, I concluded that, when the larger

mass finally settled on the night of the landslip, the corpse had

fallen immediately beneath it, and was buried under the main mass.

Yet, from what I had seen of the corpse's position, in the rapid view

I had of it, perched on the upright mass of sward, I did not

understand how this could be.

And so anxiety after anxiety delayed my progress. Still, on the

whole, I felt that the body would not now be dislodged by the tides,

and that Winifred would at least be spared a misery compared with

which even her uncertainty about her father's fate would be bearable.

But how I longed to be up and with her!

Dr. Mivart, who attended me, a young medical man of much ability who

had finished his medical education in Paris, and had lately settled

at Raxton, came every day with great punctuality.

One day, however, he arrived three hours behind his usual time, and

seemed to think that some explanation was necessary.

'I must apologise,' said he, 'for my unpunctuality to-day, but the

fact is that, at the very moment of starting, I was delayed by one of

the most interesting--one of the most extraordinary cases that ever

came within my experience, even at the Salpêtrière Hospital, where we

were familiar with the most marvellous cases of hysteria--a seizure

brought on by terror in which the subject's countenance mimics the

appearance of the terrible object that has caused it. A truly

wonderful case! I have just written to Marini about it.'

He seemed so much interested in his case, that he aroused a certain

interest in me, though at that time the word 'hysteria' conveyed an

impression to me of a very uncertain and misty kind.

'Where did it occur?' I asked.

'Here, in your own town,' said Mivart. 'A most extraordinary case. My

report will delight Marini, our great authority, as you no doubt are

aware, on catalepsy and cataleptic ecstasy.'

'Strange that I have heard nothing of it!' I said.

'Oh!' replied Mivart, 'it occurred only this morning. Some fishermen

passing below the old church were attracted, first by a shriek of a

peculiarly frightful and unearthly kind, and then by some unusual

appearance on the sands, at the spot where the last landslip took

place.'

My pulses stopped in a moment, and I clung to the back of my chair.

'What--did--the fishermen see?' I gasped.

'The men landed,' continued Mivart,--too much interested in the case

to observe my emotion,--'and there they found a dead body--the body

of the missing organist here, who had apparently fallen with the

landslip. The face was horribly distorted by terror, the skull

shattered, and around the neck was slung a valuable cross made of

precious stones. But the most interesting feature of the case is

this, that in front of the body, in a fit of a remarkable kind,

squatted his daughter--you may have seen her, an exceedingly pretty

girl lately come from Wales or somewhere--and on her face was

reflected and mimicked, in the most astonishing way, the horrible

expression on the face of the corpse, while the fingers of her right

hand were so closely locked around the cross--'

I felt that from my mouth there issued a voice not mine--a long

smothered shriek like that which had seemed to issue from my mouth on

that awful night when, looking out of the window, I had heard the

noise of the landslip. Then I felt myself whispering 'The Curse!'

Then I knew no more.