Aylwin. Theodore Watts-Dunton
method of address, and well she might be, seeing that it will be, for a long time to come, the subject of discussion in all the beer-houses which her father frequents.'
'You speak as though she were answerable for her father's faults,' I said, with heat.
'No,' said my mother; 'but your father is the owner of Raxton Hall, which to her and her class is a kind of Palace of the Cæsars. You belong to a family famous all along the coast; you are well known to be the probable heir of one of the largest landowners in England; you may be something more important still; while she, poor girl, what is she that you should rush up to her before all the churchgoers of the parish and address her as Winifred? The daughter of a penniless, drunken reprobate. Every attention you pay her is but a slur upon her good name.'
'There is not a lady in the county worthy to unlace her shoes,' I cried, unguardedly. Then I could have bitten off my tongue for saying so.
'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 sanctity 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 associating 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 pass 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 pass 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 circumstance 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 shore 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 shore-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