Aylwin Part 10

'And what were these?'

'Well, the news of the death of your brother Frank of course reached us in s.h.i.+re-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 _a 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 flus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion of vanity--"the greatest of all the human pa.s.sions," as she used to say--has taken the form of money-wors.h.i.+p in our time, sapping all the n.o.blest 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 G.o.d! 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bler 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 s.h.i.+ning 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."'

V

I wonder what words could render that love-dream on the dear silvered sands, with the moon overhead, the dark shadowy cliffs and the old church on one side, and the North Sea murmuring a love-chime on the other!

Suffice it to record that Winifred, with a throb in her throat (a throb that prevented her from p.r.o.nouncing her n's with the clarity that some might have desired), said 'certumly' again to Henry's suit,--'Certumly, if in a year's time you seek me out in the mountains, and your eyes and voice show that prosperity has not spoiled you, but that you are indeed my Henry.' And this being settled in strict accordance with her aunt's injunctions, she never tried to disguise how happy she was, but told Henry again and again in answer to his importunate questions--told him with her frank courage how she had loved him from the first in the old churchyard as a child--loved him for what she called his love-eyes; told him--ah!

what did she not tell him? I must not go on. These things should not be written about at all but for the demands of my story.

And how soon she forgot that the betrothal was all on one side! I could write out every word of that talk. I remember every accent of her voice, every variation of light that came and went in her eyes, every ripple of love-laughter, every movement of her body, lissome as a greyhound's, graceful as a bird's. For fully an hour it lasted. And remember, reader, that it was on the silvered sands, every inch of which was a.s.sociated with some reminiscence of childhood; it was beneath a moon smiling as fondly and brightly as she ever smiled on the domes of Venice or between the trees of Fiesole; it was by the margin of waves whose murmurs were soft and perfumed as Winifred's own breathing's when she slept; and remember that the girl was Winifred herself, and that the boy--the happy boy--had Winifred's love. Ah! but that last element of that hour's bliss is just what the reader cannot realise, because he can only know Winifred through these poor words. That is the distressing side of a task like mine.

The beloved woman here called Winifred (no phantom of an idle imagination, but more real to me and dear to me than this soul and body I call my own)--this Winifred can only live for you, reader, through my feeble, faltering words; and yet I ask you to listen to the story of such a love as mine.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have often as a child sung songs of Snowdon to me and told me of others you used to sing. I should love to hear one of these now, with the chime of the North Sea for an accompaniment instead of the instrument you tell me your Gypsy friend used to play.

Before we go up the gangway, do sing me a verse of one of those songs.'

After some little persuasion she yielded and sang in a soft undertone the following verse:--

'I met in a glade a lone little maid, At the foot of y Wyddfa the white; Oh, lissom her feet as the mountain hind, And darker her hair than the night; Her cheek was like the mountain rose, But fairer far to see, As driving along her sheep with a song, Down from the hills came she.'

[Welsh translation]

'Mi gwrddais gynt a morwynig, Wrth odreu y Wyddfa wen, Un ysgafn ei throed fel yr ewig A gwallt fel y nos ar ei phen; Ei grudd oedd fel y rhosyn, Un hardd a gwen ei gwawr; Yn canu can, a'i defaid man, O'r Wyddfa'n d'od i lawr.'