Part 43 (1/2)

VI

I sprang up, struck a light and relit the candle, and soon reached the coffin resting on a stone table. I found, on examining it, that although it had been screwed down after the discovery of the violation, the work had been so loosely done that a few turns of the screwdriver were sufficient to set the lid free. Then I paused; for to raise the loosened lid (knowing as I did that it was only the blood's inherited follies that had conquered my rationalism and induced me to disturb the tomb) seemed to require the strength of a giant. Moreover, the fantastic terror of old Lantoff's story, which at another time would have made me smile, also took bodily shape, and the picture of a dreadful struggle at the edge of the cliff between Winnie's father and mine seemed to hang in the air--a fascinating mirage of ghastly horror.

At last, by an immense effort of will, I closed my eyes and pushed the lid violently on one side.

The 'sweet odours and divers kinds of spices' of the Jewish embalmer rose like a gust of incense--rose and spread through the crypt like the sweet breath of a new-born blessing, till the air of the charnel-house seemed laden with a mingled odour of indescribable sweetness. Never had any odour so delighted my senses; never had any sensuous influence so soothed my soul.

While I stood inhaling the scents of opobalsam, and cinnamon and myrrh, and wine of palm and oil of cedar, and all the other spices of the Pharaohs, mingled in one strange aromatic cloud, my personality seemed again to become, in part, the reflex of ancestral experiences.

I opened my eyes. I looked into the coffin. The face (which had been left by the embalmer exposed) confronted mine. 'Fenella Stanley!' I cried, for the great transfigurer Death had written upon my father's brow that self-same message which the pa.s.sions of a thousand Romany ancestors had set upon the face of her whose portrait hung in the picture-gallery. And the rubies and diamonds and beryls of the cross as it now hung upon my breast, catching the light of the opened lantern in my left hand, shed over the features an indescribable reflex hue of quivering rose.

Beneath his head I placed the silver casket: I hung the hair-chain round his neck: I laid upon his breast the long-loved memento of his love and the parchment scroll.

Then I sank down by the coffin, and prayed. I knew not what or why.

But never since the first human prayer was breathed did there rise to heaven a supplication so incoherent and so wild as mine. Then I rose, and laying my hand upon my father's cold brow, I said: 'You have forgiven me for all the wild words that I uttered in my long agony.

They were but the voice of intolerable misery rebelling against itself. You, who suffered so much--who know so well those flames burning at the heart's core--those flames before which all the forces of the man go down like prairie-gra.s.s before the fire and wind--you have forgiven me. You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love--you have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself. You have forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb: you have removed the curse, and his child--his innocent child--is free.'

I replaced the coffin-lid, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it down left the crypt, so buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I really relieve that my restoring the amulet has removed it? Have I really come to this?'

Throughout all these proceedings--yes, even amidst that prayer to Heaven, amidst that impa.s.sioned appeal to my dead father--had my reason been keeping up that scoffing at my heart which I have before described.

I knocked up the landlord of the 'White Hart,' and, turning into bed, slept my first peaceful sleep since my trouble.

To escape awkward questions, I did not in the morning take back the keys to Shales's house myself, but sent them, and walking to Dullingham took the train to London.

X

BEHIND THE VEIL

I

When I met my mother at the solicitor's office next day, she was astonished at my cheerfulness and at the general change in me. As we left the office together, she said,

'Everything is now arranged: your aunt and I have decided to accept Lord Sleaford's invitation to go for a cruise in his yacht. We leave to-morrow evening. Lord Sleaford has promised to take me to-morrow afternoon to Mr. Wilderspin's studio, to see the great painter's portrait of me, which is now, I understand, quite finished.'

'Why did you not ask me to accompany you, instead of asking Sleaford?'

'I did not know that you would care to do so.' 'Dear mother,' I said, in a tender tone that startled her, 'you must let me go with you and Sleaford to the studio.'

She consented, and on the following afternoon I called at my aunt's house in Belgrave Square. The hall was full of portmanteaux, boxes, and packages. Sleaford had already arrived, and was waiting with stolid patience for my mother, who had gone to her room to dress. He began to talk to me about the astonis.h.i.+ng gifts of Cyril Aylwin.

'Have you made an appointment with Wilderspin?' I said to my mother, when she entered the room. 'The last time I saw him he seemed to be much occupied with some disturbing affairs of his own.'

'Appointment? No,' said she, with an air that seemed to imply that an Aylwin, even with Gypsy blood in his veins, in calling upon Art, was conferring upon it a favour to be welcomed at any time.