Part 15 (2/2)

'Very deeply, Winnie.'

Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment scroll, I said, 'It has relation to these.'

'_That_ I felt,' said she; 'how could it be otherwise? Oh, the miscreant! I curse him; I curse him!'

'Winifred,' I said, 'between me and this casket, and the cross mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is demanded.'

'Henry, you terrify me to death. What is the sacrifice? Oh G.o.d! Oh G.o.d!'

'My father's son must die, Winnie.'

She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, 'I fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must even take the calamity and bear it; for I don't mean my Henry to die, let me a.s.sure both families of _that_.'

'Ah! but, Winnie, I am under a solemn oath and pledge to bear this penalty; and we part to-night, That shriek which so appalled you--'

'Well, well, the shriek?' said she, in a frenzy of impatience.

I made no answer, but she answered herself.

'That shriek was a call to you,' she cried, and then burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. 'It _cannot_ be,' she said. 'It cannot and shall not be; G.o.d is too good to suffer it,' Then she fixed her eyes upon me, and sobbed: 'Ah, it is _true_! I feel it is all true! Yes, they are calling you, and that is why my soul answered the call. Ah, when I saw you just now lift your head from my breast with a face grey and wizened as an old man's--when I saw you look at me, I knew that something dreadful had happened. Oh, I knew, I knew! but I thought it had happened to _me_. The love and pity in your eyes when you opened them upon me made me think it was my trouble, and not yours, that disturbed you. And now I know it is yours, and you are going to die!

They are calling you. Yes, you are going to let the tide drown you!

Oh, my love my love!' and her grief was so acute that I knew not at first whether in this I had done well after all.

'Winifred,' I said, 'you must bear this. I have always been ready to take death when it should come. I have at least had one blessed time with Winifred on the sands--Winifred the beloved and beautiful girl--one night, as the crown to the happy days that have been mine with Winifred the beloved and beautiful child. And that night, as we were walking by the sea, it seemed to me that such happiness as was ours can come but once--that never again could there be a night equal to that.'

Smiles broke through her tears as she listened to me. I had struck the right chord.

'And _I_ thought so too,' she said. 'It was indeed a night of bliss.

Indeed, indeed G.o.d has been good to us, Henry,' and she fell into my arms again.

'And now, Winnie,' I said, 'we must kiss and part--part for ever.'

Yes, I had struck the right chord. As she lay in my arms I felt her soft bosom moving with a little hysterical laugh of derision when I said we must part. And then she rose and sat beside me upon the boulder, looking calm and fearless at the tide as it got nearer and nearer to Needle Point.

'Yes, dear,' I said, looking in the same direction, 'you must be going; see how the waves are surrounding the Point. You must run, Winnie--you must run, and leave me.'

'Yes,' said she, still gazing across to the Point, 'as you say, I must run, but not yet, dear; plenty of time yet,' and she smiled to herself as she used to do in the old days, when as a child she had made up her mind to do something.

Then without another word she took her shawl from her shoulders, and pulled it out to see its length. And soon I felt her fingers stealing my penknife from my waistcoat-pocket, and saw her deftly cut up the shawl, strip after strip, and weave it and knot it into a rope, and tie the rope around her waist, and then she stooped to tie it around me.

It was when I felt her warm breath about my neck as she stooped over me to tie that rope, that love was really revealed to me; it was then, and not till then, that all my previous love for Winifred seemed as the flicker of a rushlight to Salaman's cloak of fire; and a feeling of bliss unutterable came upon me, and the night air seemed full of music, and the sky above seemed opening, as she whispered, 'Henry, Henry, Henry, in a few minutes you will be mine.' But the very confidence with which she spoke these simple words startled me as from a dream. 'Suppose,' I thought, 'suppose my last drop of bliss with Winnie were being tasted now!' In a moment I felt like a coward.

But then there came a loud crash and a thunder from behind the landslip.

'The settlement!' I cried. 'The coming in of the tide has made the landslip settle!'

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