III

Time went by, and I returned to Raxton.  Just when I had determined that, come what would, I would go into Wales, Wynne one day told me that Winnie was coming to live with him at Raxton, her aunt having lately died.  ‘The English lady,’ said he, ’who lived with them so long and eddicated Winifred, has gone to live at Carnarvon to get the sea air.’

This news was at once a joy and a perplexity.

Wynne, though still the handsomest and finest man in Raxton, had sunk much lower in intemperance of late.  He now generally wound up a conversation with me by a certain stereotyped allusion to the dryness of the weather, which I perfectly understood to mean that he felt thirsty, and that an offer of half-a-crown for beer would not be unacceptable.  He was a proud man in everything except in reference to beer.  But he seemed to think there was no degradation in asking for money to get drunk with, though to have asked for it to buy bread would, I suppose, have wounded his pride.  I did not then see so clearly as I now do the wrong of giving him those half-crowns.  His annuity he had long since sold.

Spite of all his delinquencies, however, my father liked him; so did my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley.  But my mother seemed positively to hate him.  It was the knowledge of this that caused my anxiety about Winifred’s return.  I felt that complications must arise.

At this time I used to go to Dullingham every day.  The clergyman there was preparing me for college.

On the Sunday following the day when I got such momentous news from Wynne, I was met suddenly, as my mother and I were leaving the church after the service, by the gaze of a pair of blue eyes that arrested my steps as by magic, and caused the church and the churchgoers to vanish from my sight.

The picture of Winifred that had dwelt in my mind so long was that of a beautiful child.  The radiant vision of the girl before me came on me by surprise and dazzled me.  Tall and slim she was now, but the complexion had not altered at all; the eyes seemed young and childlike as ever.

When our eyes met she blushed, then turned pale, and took hold of the top of a seat near which she was standing.  She came along the aisle close to us, gliding and slipping through the crowd, and passed out of the porch.  My mother had seen my agitation, and had moved on in a state of haughty indignation.  I had no room, however, at that moment for considerations of any person but one.  I hurried out of the church, and, following Winifred, grasped her gloved hand.

‘Winifred, you are come,’ I said; ‘I have been longing to see you.’

She again turned pale and then blushed scarlet.  Next she looked down me as if she had expected to see something which she did not see, and when her eyes were upraised again something in them gave me a strange fancy that she was disappointed to miss my crutches.