Chapter 25

'Awfully fine picture,' said Sleaford, 'but the Queen there--Isis: more like a European face than an Egyptian. I've been to Egypt a good deal, don't you know?'

'This is not an historical painting, my lord. As Philip Aylwin says, "the only soul-satisfying function of art is to give what Zoroaster calls 'apparent pictures of unapparent realities.'" Perfect beauty has no nationality; hers has none. All the perfections of woman culminate in her. How can she then be disfigured by paltry characteristics of this or that race or nation? In looking at that group, my lord, nationality is forgotten, and should be forgotten. She is the type of Ideal Beauty whose veil can never be raised save by the two angels of all true art, Faith and Love. She is the type of Nature, too, whose secret, as Philip Aylwin says, "no science but that of Faith and Love can read."'

'Seems to be the type of a good deal; but it's all right, don't you know? Awfully fine picture! Awfully fine woman!' said Sleaford in a conciliatory tone. 'She's a good deal fairer, though, than any Eastern women I've seen; but then I suppose she has worn a veil al her life up to now. Most of 'em take sly peeps, and let in the hot Oriental sun, and that tans 'em, don't you know?'

'And the original of this face?' I heard my mother say in a voice that seemed agitated; 'could you tell me something about the original of this remarkable face?' 'The model?' said Wilderspin. 'We are not often asked about our models, but a model like that would endow mediocrity itself with genius, for, though apparently, and by way of beneficent illusion, the daughter of an earthly costermonger, she was a wanderer from another and a better world. She is not more beautiful here than when I saw her first in the sunlight on that memorable day, at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, bare-headed, her shoulders shining like patches of polished ivory here and there through the rents in her tattered dress, while she stood gazing before her, murmuring a verse of Scripture, perfectly unconscious whether she was dressed in rags or velvet; her eyes--'

'The eyes--it _is_ the eyes, don't you know--it is the eyes that are not quite right,' said Sleaford. 'Blue eyes with black eyelashes are awfully fine; you don't see 'em in Egypt. But I suppose that's the type of something too. Types always floor me, don't you know?'

'But the scene is no longer Egypt, my lord; it is Corinth,' replied Wilderspin.

During this dialogue I stood motionless before the predella: I could not stir; my feet seemed fixed in the floor by what can only be described as a wild passion of expectation. As I stood there a marvellous change appeared to be coming over the veiled figure of the predella. The veil seemed to be growing more and more filmy--more and more like the 'steam' to which Sleaford had compared it, till at last it resolved itself into a veil of mist--into the rainbow-tinted vapours of a gorgeous mountain sunrise--and looking straight at me were two blue eyes sparkling with childish happiness and childish greeting, through flushed mists across a pool on Snowdon.

That she was found at last my heart knew, though my brain was dazed. That in the next room, within a few yards of me, my mother and Sleaford and Wilderspin were looking at the picture of Winifred's face unclouded by the veil, my heart knew as clearly as though my eyes were gazing at it, and yet I could not stir. Yes, I knew that she was now neither a beggar in the street, nor a prisoner in one of the dens of London, nor starving in a squalid garret, but was safe under the sheltering protection of a good man. I knew that I had only to pass between those folding-doors to see her in Wilderspin's picture--see her dressed in the 'azure-coloured tunic bordered with stars,' and the upper garment of the 'colour of the moon at moonrise,' which Wilderspin had so vividly described in Wales; and yet, paralysed by expectation, I could not stir.

III

Soon I was conscious that my mother, Sleaford, and Wilderspin were standing by my side, that Wilderspin's hand was laid on my arm, and that I was pointing at the predella--pointing and muttering,

'She lives! She is saved.'

My mother led me into the other studio, and I stood before the great picture. Wilderspin and Sleaford, feeling that something had occurred of a private and delicate nature, lingered out of hearing in the smaller studio.

'I must be taken to her at once,' I muttered to my mother; 'at once.'

So living was the portrait of Winifred that I felt that she must be close at hand. I looked round to see if she herself were not standing by me dressed in the dazzling draperies gleaming from Wilderspin's superb canvas.

But in place of Winifred the profile of my mother's face, cold, proud, and white, met my gaze. Again did the stress of overmastering emotion make of me a child, as it had done on the night of the landslip. 'Mother!' I said, 'you see who it is?'

She made no answer: she stood looking steadfastly at the picture; but the tremor of the nostrils, the long deep breaths she drew, told me of the fierce struggle waging within her breast between conscience and pity, with rage and cruel pride. My old awe of her returned. I was a little boy again, trembling for Winnie. In some unaccountable and, I believe, unprecedented way I had always felt that she, my own mother, belonged to some haughty race superior to mine and Winnie's; and nothing but the intensity of my love for Winnie could ever have caused me to rebel against my mother.

'Dear mother,' I murmured, 'all the mischief and sorrow and pain are ended now; and we shall all be happy; for you have a kind heart, dear, and cannot help loving poor Winnie, when you come to know her.'

She made no answer save that her lips slowly reddened again after the pallor; then came a quiver in them, as though pity were conquering pride within her breast, and then that contemptuous curl that had often in the past cowed the heart of the fearless and pugnacious boy whom no peril of sea or land could appal.

'She is found,' I said. 'And, mother, there is no longer an estrangement between you and me. I forgive you everything now.'

I leapt from her as though I had been stung, so sudden and unexpected was the look of scorn that came over her face as she said, 'You forgive me!' It recalled my struggle with her on that dreadful night: and in a moment I became myself again. The pleading boy became, at a flash, the stern and angry man that misery had made him. With my heart hedged once more with points of steel to all the world but Winnie, I turned away. I did not know then that her attitude towards me at this moment came from the final struggle in her breast between her pride and that remorse which afterwards took possession of her and seemed as though it would make the remainder of her life a tragedy without a smile in it. At that moment Wilderspin and Sleaford came in from the smaller studio. 'Where is she?' I said to Wilderspin. 'Take me to her at once--take me to her who sat for this picture. It is she whom I and Sinfi Lovell were seeking in Wales.'

A look of utter astonishment, then one of painful perplexity, came over his face--a look which I attributed to his having heard part of the conversation between my mother and myself.

'You mean the--the--model? She is not here, Mr. Aylwin,' said he. 'The same young lady you were seeking in Wales! Mysterious indeed are the ways of the spirit world!' and then his lips moved silently as though in prayer.

'Where is she?' I asked again.

'I will tell you all about her soon--when we are alone,' he said in an undertone. 'Does the picture satisfy you?'

The picture! He was thinking of his art. Amid all that gorgeous pageant in which mediæval angels; were mixed with classic youths and flower-crowned; maidens, in such a medley of fantastic beauty as could never have been imagined save by a painter; who was one-third artist, one-third madman, and one-third seer--amid all the marvels of that strange, uncanny culmination of the neo-Romantic movement in Art which had excited the admiration of one set of the London critics and the scorn of others, I had really and fully seen but one face--the face of Isis, or Pelagia, or Eve, or _Natura Benigna_, or whosoever she was looking at me with those dear eyes of Winnie's which were my very life--looking at me with the same bewitching, indescribable expression that they wore when she sat with her 'Prince of the Mist' on Snowdon. I tried to take in the _ensemble_. In vain! Nothing but the face and figure of Winifred--crowned with seaweed as in the Raxton photograph--could stay for the thousandth part of a second upon my eyes.

'Wilderspin,' I said, 'I cannot do the picture justice at this moment. I must see it again--after I have seen her. Where is she? Can I not see her now?'

'You cannot.'

'Can I not see her to-day?'

'You cannot. I will tell you soon, and I have much to tell you,' said Wilderspin, looking uneasily round at my mother, who did not seem inclined to leave us. 'I will tell you all about her when--when you are sufficiently calm.'

'Tell me now,' I said.

'Gad! this is a strange affair, don't you know? It would puzzle Cyril Aylwin himself,' said Sleaford. 'What the dooce does it all mean?'

'Is she safe?' I cried to Wilderspin.

There was a pause.

'Is she safe?' I cried again.

'Quite safe,' said Wilderspin, in a tone whose solemnity would have scared me had the speaker been any other person than this eccentric creature. 'When you are less agitated, I will tell you all about her.'

'No! now, now!'

IV

'Well, Mr. Aylwin,' said Wilderspin, 'when I first saw your father's book, _The Veiled Queen_, it was the vignette on the title-page that attracted me. In the eyes of that beautiful child-face, even as rendered by a small reproduction, there was the very expression that my soul had been yearning after--the expression which no painter of woman's beauty had ever yet caught and rendered. I felt that he who could design or suggest to a designer such a vignette must be inspired, and I bought the book: it was as an artist, not as a thinker, that I bought the book for the vignette. When, on reading it, I came to understand the full meaning of the design, such sweet comfort and hope did the writer's words give me, that I knew at once who had impressed me to read it--I knew that my mission in life was to give artistic development to the sublime ideas of Philip Aylwin. I began the subject of "Faith and Love." But the more I tried to render the expression that had fascinated me the more impossible did the task seem to me. Howsoever imaginative may be any design, the painter who would produce a living picture must paint from life, and then he has to fight against his model's expression. Do you remember my telling you the other day how the spirit of Mary Wilderspin in heaven came upon me in my sore perplexity and blessed me--sent me a spiritual body--led me out into the street, and--'

'Yes, yes, I remember; but what happened?'

'We will sit,' said Wilderspin.

He placed chairs for us, and I perceived that my mother did not intend to go.

'Well,' he continued, 'on that sunny morning I was impressed to leave my studio and go out into the streets. It was then that I found what I had been seeking,--the expression in the beautiful child-face off the vignette.'

'In the street!' I heard my mother say to herself. 'How did it come about?' she asked aloud.

'It had long been my habit to roam about the streets of London whenever I could afford the time to do so, in the hope of finding what I sought, the fascinating and indescribable expression on that one lovely child-face. Sometimes I believed that I had found this expression. I have followed women for miles, traced them home, introduced myself to them, told them of my longings; and have then, after all, come away in bitter disappointment. The insults and revilings I have, on these occasions, sometimes submitted to I will narrate to no man, for they would bring me no respect in a cynical age like this--an age which Carlyle spits at and the great and good John Ruskin chides. Sometimes my dear friend Mr. Cyril has accompanied me on these occasions, and he has seen how I have been humiliated.'

An involuntary 'haw, haw!' came from Sleaford, but looking towards my mother and perceiving that she was listening with intense eagerness, he said: 'Ten thousand pardons, but Cyril Aylwin's droll stories,--don't you know? they will--hang it all--keep comin' up and makin' a fellow laugh.'

'Well,' continued Wilderspin, 'on that memorable morning I was impressed to walk down the street towards Temple Bar. I was passing close to the wall to escape the glare of the sun, when I was stopped suddenly by a sight which I knew could only have been sent to me in that hour of perplexity by her who had said that Jesus would let her look down and watch her boy. Moreover, at that moment the noise of the Strand seemed to cease in my ears, which were rilled with the music I love best--the only music that I have patience to listen to--the tinkle of a black-smith's anvil.'

'Blacksmith's anvil in the Strand?' said Sleaford.

'It was from heaven, my lord, that the music fell like rain; it was a sign from Mary Wilderspin who lives there.'

'For God's sake be quick!' I exclaimed. 'Where was it?'

'At the corner of Essex Street. A bright-eyed, bright-haired girl in rags was standing bare-headed, holding out boxes of matches for sale, and murmuring words of Scripture. This she was doing quite mechanically, as it seemed, and unobservant of the crowd passing by,--individuals of whom would stop for a moment to look at her; some with eyes of pure admiration and some with other eyes. The squalid attire in which she was clothed seemed to add to her beauty.'

'My poor Winnie!' I murmured, entirely overcome.

'She seemed to take as little heed of the heat and glare as of the people, but stood there looking before her, murmuring texts from Scripture as though she were communing with the spiritual world. Her eyes shook and glittered in the sunshine; they seemed to emit lights from behind the black lashes surrounding them; the ruddy lips were quivering. There was an innocence about her brow, and yet a mystic wonder in her eyes which formed a mingling of the child-like with the maidenly such as--'

'Man! man! would you kill me with your description?' I cried. Then grasping Wilderspin's hand, I said, 'But,--but was she begging, Wilderspin? Not literally begging! My Winnie! my poor Winnie!'

My mother looked at me. The gaze was full of a painful interest; but she recognised that between me and her there now was rolling an infinite sea or emotion, and her eyes drooped before mine as though she had suddenly invaded the privacy of a stranger.

'She was offering matches for sale,' said Wilderspin.

'Winnie! Winnie! Winnie!' I murmured. 'Did she seem emaciated, Wilderspin? Did she seem as though she wanted food?'

'Heaven, no!' exclaimed my mother.

'No,' replied Wilderspin firmly. 'On that point who is a better judge than the painter of "Faith and Love"? She did not want food. The colour of the skin was not--was not--such as I have seen--when a woman is dying for want of food.'

'God bless you, Wilderspin, God bless you! But what then?--what followed?'

'Well, Mr. Aylwin, I stood for some time gazing at her, muttering thanks to my mother for what I had found. I then went up to her, and asked her for a box of matches. She held me out a box, mechanically, as it seemed, and, when I had taken it of her, she held out her hand just as though she had been a real earthly beggar-girl; but that was part of the beneficent illusion of Heaven.'

'That was for the price, don't you know?' said Sleaford. 'What did you give her?'

'I gave her a shilling, my lord, which she looked at for some time in a state of bewilderment. She then began to feel about her as if for something.'

'She was feelin' for the change, don't you know?' said Sleaford, not in the least degree perceiving how these interruptions of a prosaic mind were maddening me.

'I told her that I wanted to speak to her,' continued Wilderspin, 'and asked her where she lived. She gave me the same bewildered, other-world look with which she had regarded the shilling, a look which seemed to say, "Go away now: leave me alone!" As I did not go, she began to appear afraid of me, and moved away towards Temple Bar, and then crossed the street. I followed, as far behind as I could without running the danger of losing sight of her, to a wretched place running out of Great Queen Street. Holborn, which I afterwards found was called Primrose Court, and when I got there she had disappeared in one of the squalid houses opening into the court. I knocked at the first door once or twice before an answer came, and then a tiny girl with the face of a woman opened it. "Is there a beggar-girl living here?" I asked. "No," answered the child in a sharp, querulous voice. "You mean Meg Gudgeon's gal wot sings and does the rainy-night dodge. She lives next house." And the child slammed the door in my face. I knocked at the next door, and after waiting for a minute it was opened by a short, middle-aged woman, with black eyes and a flattened nose, who stared at me, and then said, "A Quaker, by the looks o' ye." She had the strident voice of a raven, and she smelt, I thought, of gin.'

'But, Mr. Wilderspin, Mr. Wilderspin, you said the girl was safe!'

It was my mother's voice, but so loud, sharp, and agonised was it that it did not seem to be her voice at all. In that dreadful moment, however, I had no time to heed it. At the description of the hideous den and the odious Mrs. Gudgeon, whose face as I had seen it in Cyril's studio had haunted me in the crypt, a dreadful shudder passed through my frame; an indescribable sense of nausea stirred within me; and for a moment I felt as though the pains of dissolution were on me. And there was something in Wilderspin's face--what was it?--that added to my alarm. 'Stay for a moment,' I said to him; 'I cannot yet bear to hear any more.'

'I know the dread that has come upon you, and upon your kind, sympathetic mother,' said he; 'but she you are disturbed about was not a prisoner in the kind of place my words seem to describe.'

'But the woman?' said my mother. 'How could she be safe in such hands?'

'Has he not said she is safe?' I cried, in a voice that startled even my own ears, so loud and angry it was, and yet I hardly knew why.

'You forget,' said Wilderspin, turning to my mother, 'that the whole spiritual world was watching over her.'

'But was the place very--was it so very squalid?' said my mother. 'Pray describe it to us, Mr. Wilderspin; I am really very anxious.'

'No!' I said; 'I want no description: I shall go and see for myself.'

'But; Henry, I am most anxious to know about this poor girl, and I want Mr. Wilderspin to tell us how and where he found her.'

'The "poor girl" concerns me alone, mother. Our calamities--Winnie's and mine--are between us two and God....You engaged her, Wilderspin, of the woman whom I saw at Cyril's studio, to sit as a model? What passed when she came?'

'The woman brought her next day,' said Wilderspin, 'and I sketched in the face of Pelagia as Isis at once. I had already taken out the face of the previous model that had dissatisfied me. I now took out the figure too, for the figure of this new model was as perfect as her face.'

'Go on, go on. What occurred?'

'Nothing, save that she stood dumb, like one who had no language save that of another world. But at the second sitting she had a fit of a most dreadful kind.'

'Ah! Tell me quickly,' I said. Her face became suddenly distorted by an expression of terror such as I had never seen and never imagined possible. I have caught it exactly in my picture "Christabel." She revived and tried to run out of the studio. Her mother and I seized her, and she then fell down insensible.'

'What occasioned the fit? What had frightened her?'

'That is what I am not quite certain about. When she entered the studio she fixed her eyes upon a portrait which I had been working upon; but that must have been merely a coincidence.'

'A portrait!' I cried. And Winifred's scared expression when she encountered my mother's look of hate in the churchyard came back to me like a scene witnessed in a flash of lightning. 'The portrait was my mother's?'

'It was the face of the kind, tender, and noble lady your mother,' said Wilderspin gently.

I gave a hurried glance at my mother, and saw the pallor of her face,--but to me the world held now only two realities, Winifred and Wilderspin; all other people were dreams, obtrusive and irritating dreams. 'Go on, go on,' I said.

'She recovered,' continued Wilderspin, 'and seemed to have forgotten all about the portrait, which I had put away.'

'Did she talk?'

'Never, Mr. Aylwin,' said Wilderspin solemnly. 'Nor did I invite her to talk, knowing whence she came--from the spirit-world. At the first few sittings Mrs. Gudgeon came with her, and would sit looking on with the intention of seeing that she came to no harm. She said her daughter was very beautiful, and she, her mother, never trusted her with men.'

'God bless the hag, God bless her; but go on!'

'Gradually Mrs. Gudgeon seemed to acquire more confidence in me; and one day, on leaving, she lingered behind the girl, and told me that her daughter, though uncommonly stupid and a little touched in the head, had now learnt her way to my studio, and that in future she should let her come alone, as she believed that she could trust her with me. She warned me earnestly, however, not to "worrit" the girl by asking her all sorts of questions.'

'And there she was right,' I cried. 'But you did ask her questions,--I see you did, you asked her about her father and brought on another catastrophe.'

'No,' said Wilderspin with gentle dignity; 'I was careful not to ask her questions, for her mother told me that she was liable to fits.'

'Mr. Wilderspin, I beg your pardon,' I said.

'I see you are deeply troubled,' said he; 'but, Mr. Aylwin, you need not beg my pardon. Since I saw Mary Wilderspin, my mother, die for her children, no words of mere Man have been able to give me pain.'

'Go on, go on. What did the woman say to you?'

'She said, "The fewer questions you ask her the better, and don't pay her any money. She'd only lose it; I'll come for it at the proper times." From that day the model came to the sittings alone, and Mrs. Gudgeon came at the end of every week for the money.'

'And did the model maintain her silence all this time?'

'She did. She would, every few minutes, sink into a reverie, and appear to be stone-deaf. But sometimes her face would become suddenly alive with all sorts of shifting expressions. A few days ago she had another fit, exactly like the former one. That was on the day preceding my call at your hotel with your father's books. This time we had much more difficulty in bringing her round. We did so at last; and when she was gone I gave the final touch to my picture of "The Lady Geraldine and Christabel." I was at the moment, however, at work upon "Ruth and Boaz," which I had painted years before--removing the face of Ruth originally there. I worked long at it; and as she was not coming for two days I kept steadily at the picture. This was the day on which I called upon you, wishing you to postpone your visit, lest you should interrupt me while at work upon the head of Ruth, which I was hoping to paint. On Thursday I waited for her at the appointed hour, but she did not come, and I saw her no more.'

V

'Mr. Wilderspin,' I said, as I rose hurriedly, with the intention of going at once in search of Winifred, 'let me see the picture you allude to--"Christabel," and then tell me where to find her.'

'Better not see it!' said Wilderspin solemnly; 'there's something to tell you yet, Mr. Aylwin.'