Читать книгу Aylwin - Theodore Watts-Dunton - Страница 19

I remained alone for some time. Then I told the servants that I was going to walk along the cliffs to Dullingham Church, where there was an evening service, and left the house. I hastened towards the cliffs, and descended to the sands, in the hope that Winifred might be roaming about there, but I walked all the way to Dullingham without getting a glimpse of her. The church service did not interest me that evening. I heard nothing and saw nothing. When the service was over I returned along the sands, sauntering and lingering in the hope that, late as it was now growing, the balmy evening might have enticed her out.

The evening grew to night, and still I lingered. The moon was nearly at the full, and exceedingly bright. The tide was down. The scene was magical; I could not leave it. I said to myself, 'I will go and stand on the very spot where Winifred stood when she lisped "certumly" to the proposal of her little lover.'

It was not, after all, till this evening that I really knew how entirely she was a portion of my life.

I went and stood by the black boulder where I had received the little child's prompt reply. There was not a grain left, I knew, of that same sand which had been hallowed by the little feet of Winifred, but it served my mood just as well as though every grain had felt the beloved pressure. For that the very sands had loved the child, I half believed.

I said to myself, as I sat down upon the boulder, 'At this very moment she is here, she is in Raxton. In a certain little cottage there is a certain little room.' And then I longed to leave the sands, to go and stand in front of Wynne's cottage and dream there. But that would be too foolish. 'I must get home,' I thought. 'The night will pass somehow, and in the morning I shall, as sure as fate, see her flitting about the sands she loves, and then what I have sworn to say to her I will say, and what I have sworn to do I will do, come what will.'

Then came the puzzling question, how was I to greet her when we met? Was I to run up and kiss her, and hear her say, 'Oh, I'm so pleased!' as she would sometimes say when I kissed her of yore? No: her deportment in the morning forbade that. Or was I to raise my hat and walk up to her saying, 'How do you do, Miss Wynne? I'm glad to see you back, Miss Wynne,' for she was now neither child nor young woman, she was a 'girl.' Perhaps I had better rush up to her in a bluff, hearty way, and say: 'How do you do, Miss Winifred? Delighted to see you back to Raxton.' Finally, I decided that circumstance must guide me entirely, and I sat upon the boulder meditating.

After a while I saw, or thought I saw, in the far distance, close to the waves, a moving figure among the patches of rocks and stones (some black and some white) that break the continuity of the sand on that shore at low water.

When the figure got nearer I perceived it to be a woman, a girl, who, every now and then, was stooping as if to pick up something from the pools of water left by the ebbing tide imprisoned amid the encircling rocks. At first I watched the figure, wondering in a lazy and dreamy way what girl could be out there so late.

But all at once I began to catch my breath and gasp The sea-smells had become laden with a kind of paradisal perfume, ineffably sweet, but difficult to breathe all of a sudden. My heart too—what was amiss with that? And why did the muscles of my body seem to melt like wax?' The lonely wanderer by the sea could be none other than Winifred.

'It is she!' I said. 'There is no beach-woman or shore-prowling girl who, without raising an arm to balance her body, without a totter or a slip, could step in that way upon stones some of which are as slippery as ice with gelatinous weed and slime, while others are as sharp as razors. To walk like that the eye must be my darling's, that is to say, an eye as sure as a bird's the ball of the foot must be the ball of a certain little foot I have often had in my hand wet with sea-water and gritty with sand. For such work a mountaineer or a cragsman, or Winifred, is needed.' Then I recalled her love of marine creatures, her delight in seaweed, of which she would weave the most astonishing chaplets and necklaces coloured like the rainbow. 'seawood boas' and seaweed turbans, calling herself the princess of the sea (as indeed she was), and calling me her prince. 'Yes,' said I, 'it is certainly she'; and when at last I espied a little dog by her side, Tom Wynne's little dog Snap (a descendant of the original Snap of our never-to-be-forgotten seaside adventures)—when I espied all these things I said, 'Then the hour is come.'

By this time my heart had settled down to a calmer throb, the paradisal scent had become more supportable, and I grew master of myself again. I was going towards her, when I stayed my steps, for she was already making her way, entirely unconscious of my presence, towards the boulder where I sat.

'I know what I will do.' I said; 'I will fling myself flat on the sands behind the boulder and watch her. I will observe her without being myself observed.'

I was in the mood when one tries sportfully to deceive one's self as to the depth and intensity of the emotion within. Perhaps I would and perhaps I would not speak to her at all that night; but if I did speak, I would say and do what (on that day when I set out for school) I had sworn to say and do.

So there I lay hidden by the boulder and watched her. She made the circuit of each pool that lay across her path towards the cliffs—made it apparently for the childish enjoyment of balancing herself on the stones and snapping her fingers at the dog, who looked on with philosophic indifference at such a frivolous waste of force. Yes, though a tall girl of seventeen, she was the same incomparable child who had coloured my life and stirred the entire air of my imagination with the breezes of a new heaven. The voice of the tumbling sea in the distance, the caresses of the tender breeze, the wistful gaze of the great moon overhead, were companionship enough for her—for her whose loveliness would have enchanted a world. She had no idea that there was at this moment stepping round those black stones the loveliest woman then upon the earth. If she had had that idea she would still have been the star of all womanhood, but she would not have been Winifred. A charm superior to all other women's charm she still would have had; but she would not have been Winifred.

When she left the rocks and came upon the clear sand, she stopped and looked at her sweet shadow in the moonlight. Then, with the self-pleasing playfulness of a kitten, she stood and put herself into all kinds of postures to see what varying silhouettes they would make on the hard and polished sand (that shone with a soft lustre like satin); now throwing up one arm, now another, and at last making a pirouette, twirling her shawl round, trying to keep it in a horizontal position by the rapidity of her movements.

The interest of the philosophic Snap was aroused at last. He began wheeling and barking round her, tearing up the sand as he went like a little whirlwind. This induced Winifred to redouble her gymnastic exertions. She twirled round with the velocity of an engine wheel. At last, finding the enjoyment it gave to Snap, she changed the performance by taking off her hat, flinging it high in the air, catching it, flinging it up again and again, while the moving shadow it made was hunted along the sand by Snap with a volley of deafening barks. By this time she had got close to me, but she was too busy to see me. Then she began to dance—the very same dance with which she used to entertain me in those happy days. I advanced from my stone, dodging and slipping behind her, unobserved even by Snap, so intent were these two friends upon this entertainment, got up, one would think, for whatsoever sylphs or gnomes or water sprites might be looking on.

How could I address in the language of passion which alone would have expressed my true feelings, a dancing fairy such as this?

'Bravo!' I said, as she stopped, panting and breathless. 'Why,

Winifred, you dance better than ever!'

She leaped away in alarm and confusion; while Snap, on the contrary, welcomed me with much joy.

'Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,' she said, not looking at me with the blunt frankness of childhood, as the little woman of the old days used to do, but drooping her eyes. 'I didn't see you.'

'But I saw you, Winifred; I have been watching you for the last quarter of an hour.'

'Oh, you never have!' said she, in distress; 'what could you have thought? I was only trying to cheer up poor Snap, who is out of sorts. What a mad romp you must have thought me, sir!'

'Why, what's the matter with Snap?'

'I don't know. Poor Snap' (stooping down to fondle him, and at the same time to hide her face from me, for she was talking against time to conceal her great confusion and agitation at seeing me. That was perceptible enough.)

Then she remembered she was hatless.

'Oh dear, where's my hat?' said she, looking round. I had picked up the hat before accosting her, and it was now dangling behind me. I, too, began talking against time, for the beating of my heart began again at the thought of what I was going to say and do. 'Hat!' I said; 'do you wear hats, Winifred? I should as soon have thought of hearing the Queen of the Tylwyth Teg ask for her hat as you, after such goings-on as those I have just been witnessing. You see I have not forgotten the Welsh you taught me.'

'Oh, but my hat—where is it?' cried she, vexed and sorely ashamed. So different from the unblenching child who loved to stand hatless and feel the rain-drops on her bare head!

'Well, Winifred, I've found a hat on the sand,' I said; 'here it is.'

'Thank you, sir,' said she, and stretched out her hand for it.

'No,' said I, 'I don't for one moment believe in its belonging to you, any more than it belongs to the Queen of the "Fair People." But if you'll let me put it on your head I'll give you the hat I've found,' and with a rapid movement I advanced and put it on her head. I had meant to seize that moment for saying what I had to say, but was obliged to wait.

An expression of such genuine distress overspread her face, that I regretted having taken the liberty with her. Her bearing altogether was puzzling me. She seemed instinctively to feel as I felt, that raillery was the only possible attitude to take up in a situation so extremely romantic—a meeting on the sands at night between me and her who was neither child nor woman—and yet she seemed distressed at the raillery.

Embarrassment was rapidly coming between us.

There was a brief silence, during which Winifred seemed trying to move away from me.

'Did you—did you see me from the cliffs, sir, am; come down?' said

Winifred.

'Winifred,' said I, 'the polite thing to say would be "Yes"; but you know "Fighting Hal" never was remarkable for politeness, so I will say frankly that did not come down from the cliff's on seeing you. But when I did see you, I wasn't very likely to return without speaking to you.'

'I am locked out,' said Winifred, in explanation of her moonlight ramble. 'My father went off to Dullingham with the key in his pocket while I and Snap were in the garden, so we have to wait till his return. Good-night, sir,' and she gave me her hand. I seemed to feel the fingers around my heart, and knew that I was turning very pale. 'The same little sunburnt fingers.' I said, as I retained them in mine 'just the same, Winifred! But it's not "good-night" yet. No, no, it's not good-night yet; and, Winifred if you dare to call me "sir" again, I declare I'll kiss you where you stand. I will, Winifred. I'll put my arms right round that slender waist and kiss you under that moon, as sure as you stand on these sands.'

'Then I will not call you "sir."' said Winifred laughingly.

'Certainly I will not call you "sir," if that is to be the penalty.'

'Winifred,' said I, 'the last time that I remember to have heard you say "certainly" was on this very spot. You then pronounced it "certumly," and that was when I asked you if I might be your lover. You said "certumly" on that occasion without the least hesitation.'

Winifred, as I could see, even by the moonlight, was blushing. 'Ah, those childish days!' she said. 'How delightful they were, sir!'

'"Sir" again!' said I. 'Now, Winifred, I am going to execute my threat—I am indeed.'

She put up her hands before her face and said,

'Oh, don't! please don't.'

The action no doubt might seem coquettish, but the tone of her voice was so genuine, so serious—so agitated even—that I paused:—I paused in bewilderment and perplexity concerning us both. I observed that her fingers shook as she held them before her face. That she should be agitated at seeing me after so long a separation did not surprise me, I being deeply agitated myself. It was the nature of her emotion that puzzled me, until suddenly I remembered my mother's words.

I perceived then that, child of Nature as she still was, some one had given her a careful training which had transfigured my little Welsh rustic into a lady. She had not failed to apprehend the anomaly of her present position—on the moonlit sands with me. Though could not break free from the old equal relations between us. Winifred had been able to do so.

'To her,' I thought with shame, 'my offering to kiss her at such a place and time must have seemed an insult. The very fact of my attempting to do so must have seemed to indicate an offensive consciousness of the difference of our social positions. It must have, seemed to show that I recognised a distinction between the drunken organist's daughter and a lady.'

I saw now, indeed, that she felt this keenly; and I knew that it was nothing but the sweetness of her nature, coupled with the fond recollection of the old happy days, that restrained that high spirit of hers, and prevented her from giving expression to her indignation and disgust.

All this was shown by the appealing look on her sweet, fond face, and

I was touched to the heart.

'Winifred—Miss Wynne,' I said, 'I beg your pardon most sincerely. The shadow-dance has been mainly answerable for my folly. You did look so exactly the little Winifred, my heart's sister, that I felt it impossible to treat you otherwise than as that dear child-friend of years ago.'

A look of delight broke over her face.

'I felt sure it was so,' she said. 'But it is a relief that you have said it.' And the tears came to her eyes.

'Thank you, Winifred, for having pardoned me. I feel that you would have forgiven no one else as you have forgiven me. I feel that you would not have forgiven any one else than your old child-companion, whom on a memorable occasion you threatened to hit, and then had not the heart to do so.'

'I don't think I could hit you,' said she, in a meditative tone of perfect unconsciousness as to the bewitching import of her speech.

'Don't you think you could?' I said, drawing nearer, but governing my passion.

'No,' said she, looking now for the first time with those wide-open confiding eyes which, as a child, were the chief characteristic of her face. 'I don't think I could hit you, whatever you did.'

'Couldn't you, Winifred?' I said, coming still nearer, in order to drink to the full the wonder of her beauty, the thrill at my heart bringing, as I felt, a pallor to my cheek. 'Don't you think you could hit your old playfellow, Winifred?'

'No,' she said, still gazing in the same dreamy, reminiscent way straight into my eyes as of yore. 'As a child you were so delightful. And then you were so kind to me!'

At that word 'kind' from her to me I could restrain myself no longer; I shouted with a wild laughter of uncontrollable passion as I gazed at her through tears of love and admiration and deep gratitude—gazed till I was blind. My throat throbbed till it ached: I Could get out no more words; I could only gaze. At my shout Winifred stood bewildered and confused. She did not understand a mood like that. Having got myself under control, I said,

'Winifred, it is not my doing; it is Fate's doing that we meet here on this night, and that I am driven to say here what I had as a schoolboy sworn should be said whenever we should meet again.'

'I think,' said Winifred, pulling herself up with the dignity of a queen, 'that if you have anything important to say to me it had better be at a more seasonable time than at this hour of night, and at a more seasonable place than on these sands.'

'No, Winifred,' said I, 'the time is now, and the place is here—here on this very spot where, once on a time, you said "certumly" when a little lover asked your hand. It is now and here, Winifred, that I will say what I have to say.'

'And what is that, sir?' said Winifred, much perplexed and disturbed.

'I have to say, Winifred, that the man does not live and never has lived,' said I, with suppressed vehemence, who loved a woman as I love you.'

Oh, sir! oh, Henry!' returned Winifred, trembling, then standing still and whiter than the moon. 'And the reason why no man has ever loved a woman as I love you, Winifred, is because your match, or anything like your match, has never trod the earth before.'

'Oh, Henry, my dear Henry! you must not say such things to me, your poor Winifred.'

'But that isn't all that I swore I'd say to you, Winifred.'

'Don't say any more—not to-night, not to-night.'

'What I swore I would ask you, Winifred, is this: Will you be Henry's wife?'

She gave one hysterical sob, and swayed till she nearly fell on the sand, and said, while her face shone like a pearl,

'Henry's wife!'

She recovered herself and stood and looked at me; her lips moved, but I waited in vain—waited in a fever of expectation—for her answer. None came. I gazed into her eyes, but they now seemed rilled with visions—visions of the great race to which she belonged—visions in which her English lover had no place. Suddenly, and for the first time, I felt that she who had inspired within me this all-conquering passion, though the penniless child of a drunken organist, was a daughter of Snowdon—a representative of the Cymric race that was once so mighty, and is still more romantic in its associations than all others. Already in the little talk I had had with her I began to guess what I realised before the evening was over, that owing to the influence of the English lady, Miss Dalrymple, who had lodged at the cottage with her, she was more than my own equal in culture, and could have held her own with almost any girl of her own age in England. It was only in her subjection to Cymric superstitions that she was benighted.

'Winnie,' I murmured, 'what have you to say?'

After a while her eyes seemed to clear of the visions, and she said,

'What changes have come upon us both, Henry. since that childish betrothal on the sands!'

'Happy changes for one of the child-lovers,' I said—'happy changes for the one who was then a lonely cripple shut out from all sympathy save that which the other child-lover could give.'

'And yet you then seemed happy, Henry—happy with Winnie to help you up the gangways. And how happy Winnie was! But now the child-lover is a cripple no longer: he is very, very strong—he is so strong that he could carry Winnie up the gangways in his arms, I think.'

The thrill of natural pride which such recognition of my physical powers would otherwise have given me was quelled by a something in the tone in which she spoke.

'And he is powerful in every way,' she went on, as if talking to herself. 'He is a great rich Englishman to whom (as auntie was never tired of saying) that childish betrothal must needs seem a dream—a quaint and pretty dream.'

'And so your aunt said that, Winnie. How far from the truth she was you see to-night.'

'Yes, she thought you would forget all about me; and yet she could not have felt quite confident about it, for she made me promise that if you should not forget me—if you should ever ask me what you have just asked—she made me promise—'

'What, Winnie? what? She did not make promise that you would refuse me?'

'That is what she asked me to promise.'

'But you did not.'

'I did not.'

'No, no! you did not, Winnie. My darling refused to make any such cruel, monstrous promise as that.'

'But I promised her that I would in such an event wait a year—at least a year—before betrothing myself to you.'

'Shame! shame! What made her do this cruel thing? A year! wait for a year!'

'She brought forward many reasons, Henry, but upon two of them she was constantly dwelling.'

'And what were these?'

'Well, the news of the death of your brother Frank of course reached us in Shire-Carnarvon, and how well I remember hearing my aunt say, "Henry Aylwin will be one of the wealthiest landowners in England." And I remember how my heart sank at her words, for I was always thinking of the dear little lame boy with the language of suffering in his eyes and the deep music of sorrow in his voice.'

'Your heart sank, Winnie, and why?'

'I felt as if a breath of icy air had blown between us, dividing us for ever. And then my aunt began to talk about you and your future.'

After some trouble I persuaded Winnie to tell me what was the homily that this aunt of hers preached à propos of Frank's death. And as she talked I could not help observing what, as a child, I had only observed in a dim, semi-conscious way—a strange kind of double personality in Winnie. At one moment she seemed to me nothing but the dancing fairy of the sands, objective and unconscious as a young animal playing to itself, at another she seemed the mouthpiece of the narrow world-wisdom of this Welsh aunt. No sooner had she spoken of herself as a friendless, homeless girl, than her brow began to shine with the pride of the Cymry.

'My aunt,' said she, 'used to tell me that until disaster came upon my uncle, and they were reduced to living upon a very narrow income, he and she never really knew what love was—they never really knew how rich their hearts were in the capacity of loving.'

'Ah, I thought so,' I said bitterly. 'I thought the text was,

Love in a hut, with water and a crust.'

'No,' said Winifred firmly, 'that was not the text. She believed that the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is nestling.'

'Then what did she believe? In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what did she believe?'

'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is the most perfect.'

'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love. And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?'

'She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches in our time.'

'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'

'She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time. She told me that the passion of vanity—"the greatest of all the human passions," as she used to say—has taken the form of money-worship in our time, sapping all the noblest instincts of men and women, and in rich people poisoning even parental affection, making the mother thirst for the pleasures which in old days she would only have tried to win for her child. She told me stories—dreadful stories—about children with expectations of great wealth who watched the poor grey hairs of those who gave them birth, and counted the years and months and days that kept them from the gold which modern society finds to be more precious than honour, family, heroism, genius, and all that was held precious in less materialised times. She told me a thousand other things of this kind, and when I grew older she put into my hand what has been written on the subject.'

'Good God! Has the narrow-minded tomfoolery got a literature?'

Winnie went on with her eloquent account of her aunt's doctrines, and to my surprise I found that there actually was a literature of the subject.

Winnie's bright eyes had actually pored over old and long Chartist tracts translated into Welsh, and books on the Christian Socialism of Charles Kingsley, and pamphlets on more' recent kinds of Socialism.

As she went on I could not help murmuring now and then, 'What surroundings for my Winnie!'

'And the result of all this was, Winnie, that your aunt asked you to promise not to marry a man demoralised by privileges and made contemptible by wealth.'

'That is what she wanted me to promise; but as I have said, I did not. But I did promise to wait for a year and see what effect wealth would have upon you.'

'Did your aunt not tell you also that the man who marries you can never be unmanned by wealth, because he will know that everything he can give is as dross when set against Winnie's love and Winnie's beauty: Did she not also tell you that?'

'Love and beauty!' said Winnie. 'Even if a woman's beauty did not depend for its existence upon the eyes that look upon it, I should want to give more to my hero than love and beauty. I should want to give him help in the battle of life, Henry. I should want to buckle on his armour, and sharpen the point of his lance, and whet the edge of his sword; a rich man's armour is bank-notes, and Winnie knows nothing of such paper. His spear, I am told, is a bullion bar, and Winnie's fingers scarcely know the touch of gold.'

'Then you agree, Winnie, with these strange views of your aunt?'

'I do partly agree with them now. Ever since I saw you to-day in the churchyard I have partly agreed with them.'

'And why?'

'Because already prosperity or bodily vigour or something has changed your eyes and changed the tone of your voice.'

'You mean that my eyes are no longer so full of trouble; and as to my voice—how should my voice not change, seeing that it was the voice of a child when you last listened to it?'

'It is impossible for me even now, after I have thought about it so much, to put into words that expression in your eyes which won me as a child. All I knew at the time was that it fascinated me. And as I now recall it, all I know is that your gaze then seemed full of something which I can give a name to now, though I did not understand it then—the pathos and tenderness and yearning, which come, as I have been told, from suffering, and that your voice seemed to have the same message. That expression and that tone are gone—they will, of course, never return to you now. Your life is, and will be, too prosperous for that. But still I hope and believe that in a year's time prosperity will not have worked in you any of the mischief that my aunt feared. For you have a noble nature, Henry, and to spoil you will not be easy. You will never be the dear little Henry I loved, but you will still be nobler and greater than other men, I think.'

'Do you really mean that my lameness was a positive attraction to you? Do you really mean that the very change in me which I thought would strengthen the bond between us—my restoration to health—weakens it? That is impossible, Winnie.'

She remained silent for a time, as though lost in thought, and then said, 'I do not believe that any woman can understand the movements of her own heart where love is concerned. My aunt used to say I was a strange girl, and I am afraid I am strange and perverse. She used to say that in my affections I was like no other creature in the world.'

'How should Winifred be like any other creature in the world?' I said. 'She would not be Winifred if she were. But what did your aunt mean?'

'When I was quite a little child she noticed that I was neglecting a favourite mavis which I used to delight to listen to as he warbled from his wicker cage. She watched me, and found that my attention was all given to a wounded bird that I had picked up on the Capel Curig road. "Winnie," she said, "nothing can ever win your love until it has first won your pity. A bird with a broken wing would be always more to you than a sound one!"'

'Your aunt was right,' I said, 'as no one should know better than I. For was it not the new kind of pity shining in those eyes of yours that revealed to me a new heaven in my loneliness? And when my brother Frank on that day in the wood stood over us in all the pride of his boyish strength, do I not remember the words you spoke?'

'What were they? I have quite forgotten them.'

'You said, "I don't think I could love any one very much who was not lame."'