Aylwin Part 14

'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I felt sure it was a call from the grave, and I knelt on the sands and prayed. Henry, Henry, don't go in the church to-night.'

That Winifred's words affected me profoundly I need not say. The shriek, whatever it was, had been responded to by her soul and by mine in the same mysterious way. But the important thing to do was to prevent her from imagining that her superst.i.tious terrors had affected me.

'Really, Winnie,' I said, 'this double-voiced shriek of yours, which is at once the shriek of the Welshman at the bottom of the swollen falls and the Celtic call from the grave, is the most dramatic shriek I ever heard of. It would make its fortune on the stage. But with all its power of being the shriek of two different people at once, it must not prevent my going into the church to do my duty; so we had better part here at this very spot. You go up the cliffs by Needle Point, and _I_ will take Flinty Point gangway.'

'But why not ascend the cliffs together?' said Winifred.

'Why, the prying coastguard might be pa.s.sing, and might wonder to see us in the churchyard on the night of my father's funeral (he might take us for two ghosts in love, you know). However, we need not part just yet. We can walk on a little farther into the cove before our paths diverge.'

Winifred made no demur, though she looked puzzled, as we were then much nearer to the gangway I had selected for myself than to the gangway I had allotted to her.

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s below the church on the cliff, and close by the great ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.s 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.'

G.o.d!--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 pa.s.senger 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 G.o.d in heaven,' she added, rising with great solemnity. 'Whoever has committed this dreadful crime against G.o.d 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 G.o.d, cursed by love, and cursed by me, Philip Aylwin, lying here.

"Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compa.s.sion 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 superst.i.tion: 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 _debris_?

What was to be done? Owing to the tide, there was no turning back now to Flinty Point. The projecting debris must be pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sing the _debris_ we should come upon her father's corpse. The idea was insupportable. 'Thank G.o.d, 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 a.s.sociate 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 G.o.d, 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 _debris_.

'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 _debris_, 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 ma.s.s 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 pus.h.i.+ng her back.

Then I stood paralysed as the full sinister meaning of the situation broke in upon my mind. Had the _debris_ 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 _debris_, 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 _debris_ where the corpse was perched and the sand below was one of those long pools of sea-water edged by s.h.i.+ngles, which are common features of that coast.

It seemed that Destiny or Circ.u.mstance, more pitiless than Fate and h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.s it without seeing it the pa.s.senger 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 Superst.i.tion 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.