Aylwin Part 18

And she left the room.

But she had no sooner gone than there came before my eyes the insupportable picture of a slim figure walking along the sands stooping to look at some object among the _debris_, standing aghast at the sight of her dead father with the evidence of his hideous crime on his own breast; there came the sound of a cry to 'Henry' for help! I beat my head against the bedstead till I was nearly stunned.

I yelled and bellowed like a maniac: 'Mother, come back!'

When she returned to my bedside my eyes were glaring so that my mother stood appalled, and (as she afterwards owned to me) was nearly yielding her point.

'Mother,' I said,'I consent to your condition: I will give her up--but oh, save her! Let there be no dallying, let there be no risk, mother. Let nothing prevent your going upon the sands in the morning--early, quite early--and every morning at the ebbing of the tide.'

'I will keep my word,' she said.

'You will use the fullest and best means to save her?'

'I will keep my word,' she said, and left the room.

'I have saved her!' I cried over and over again, as I sank back on my pillow. Then the delirium of fever came upon me, and I lay tossing as upon a sea of fire.

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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d--'

'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 a.s.sured, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, '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.'