Part 15 (1/2)

'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 s.h.i.+ning there on the other side of that heap of earth must be pa.s.sed, 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 h.e.l.l-fire.'

She turned pale, amazed at the delirium into which I had pa.s.sed.

'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.'

But I could not proceed. What I had meant to say was this,--

'And yet, Winnie, I have brought you here to this boulder to die!'

But I could not say it--my tongue rebelled and would not say it.

Winifred was so full of health and enjoyment of life that, courageous as she was. I felt that the prospect of certain and imminent death must appal her; and to see the look of terror break over her face confronting death was what I could not bear. And yet the thing must be said. But at this very moment, when my perplexity seemed direst, a blessed thought came to me--a subterfuge holier than truth. I knew the Cymric superst.i.tion about 'the call from the grave,' for had not she herself just told me of it?

'I will turn Superst.i.tion, accursed Superst.i.tion itself, to account,'

I muttered. 'I will pretend that I am enmeshed in a web of Fate, and doomed to die here myself. Then, if I know my Winifred, she will, of her own free mind, die with me.'

'Winnie,' I said, 'I have to tell you something that I know must distress you sorely on my account--something that must wring your heart, dear, and yet it must be told.'

She turned her head sharply round with a look of alarm that almost silenced me, so pathetic was it. On that courageous face I had not seen alarm before, and this was alarm for evil coming to me. It shook my heart--it shook my heart so that I could not speak.

'I felt,' said she, 'that something awful had happened. And it affects yourself, Henry?'

'It affects myself.'

'And very deeply?'