"That may be," said my mother, with the quiet irony peculiar to her; "but so monstrous are the customs of England, Henry, so barbaric is this society you despise, that she, whose shoes no lady in the county is worthy to unlace, is in an anomalous position. Should she once again be seen talking familiarly with you, her character will have fled, and fled for ever. It is for you to choose whether you are set upon ruining her reputation."
I felt that what she said was true. I felt also that Winifred herself had recognised the net of conventions that kept us apart in spite of that close and tender intimacy which had been the one great fact of our lives. In a certain sense I was far more of a child of Nature than Winifred herself, inasmuch as, owing to my remarkable childish experience of isolation, I had imbibed a scepticism about the sanct.i.ty of conventions such as is foreign to the nature of woman, be she ever so unsophisticated, as Winifred"s shyness towards me had testified.
As a child I had been neglected for the firstborn, I had enjoyed through this neglect an absolute freedom with regard to a.s.sociating with fisher-boys and all the shoeless, hatless "sea-pups" of the sands, and now, when the time had come to civilise me, my mother had found that it was too late. I was bohemian to the core. My childish intercourse with Winifred had been one of absolute equality, and I could not now divest myself of this relation. These were my thoughts as I listened to my mother"s words.
My great fear now, however, was lest I should say something to compromise myself, and so make matter worse. Before another word upon the subject should pa.s.s between my mother and me I must see Winifred--and then I had something to say to her which no power on earth should prevent me from saying. So I merely told my mother that there was much truth in what she had said, and proceeded to ask particulars about my father"s recent illness. After giving me these particulars she left the room, perplexed, I thought, as to what had been the result of her mission.
IV
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 pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e-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 l.u.s.tre 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, un.o.bserved 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 pa.s.sion 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 att.i.tude 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.
Embarra.s.sment 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 p.r.o.nounced 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."