Chapter XV: Introduction: To the Snowdon Edition of 1901 (12)

I knocked up the landlord of the 'White Hart,' and, turning into bed, slept my first peaceful sleep since my trouble.

To escape awkward questions, I did not in the morning take back the keys to Shales's house myself, but sent them, and walking to Dullingham took the train to London.

X

BEHIND THE VEIL

I

When I met my mother at the solicitor's office next day, she was astonished at my cheerfulness and at the general change in me. As we left the office together, she said,

'Everything is now arranged: your aunt and I have decided to accept Lord Sleaford's invitation to go for a cruise in his yacht. We leave to-morrow evening. Lord Sleaford has promised to take me to-morrow afternoon to Mr. Wilderspin's studio, to see the great painter's portrait of me, which is now, I understand, quite finished.'

'Why did you not ask me to accompany you, instead of asking Sleaford?'

'I did not know that you would care to do so.' 'Dear mother,' I said, in a tender tone that startled her, 'you must let me go with you and Sleaford to the studio.'

She consented, and on the following afternoon I called at my aunt's house in Belgrave Square. The hall was full of portmanteaux, boxes, and packages. Sleaford had already arrived, and was waiting with stolid patience for my mother, who had gone to her room to dress. He began to talk to me about the astonishing gifts of Cyril Aylwin.

'Have you made an appointment with Wilderspin?' I said to my mother, when she entered the room. 'The last time I saw him he seemed to be much occupied with some disturbing affairs of his own.'

'Appointment? No,' said she, with an air that seemed to imply that an Aylwin, even with Gypsy blood in his veins, in calling upon Art, was conferring upon it a favour to be welcomed at any time.

'I have not seen this portrait yet,' said Sleaford, as the carriage moved off; 'but Cyril Aylwin says it is magnificent, and if anybody knows what's good and what's bad it's Cyril Aylwin.'

'Do you know,' said my mother to me, 'I have taken vastly to this eccentric kinsman of ours? I had really no idea that a bohemian could be so much like a gentleman; but, of course, an Aylwin must always be an Aylwin.'

'Haw, haw!' laughed Sleaford to himself, 'that's good about Cyril Aylwin though--that's dooced good.'

'We shall see Wilderspin's great picture, "Faith and Love," at the same time,' I said, as we approached Chelsea; 'for Wilderspin tells me that he has borrowed it from the owner to make a replica of it.'

'That is very fortunate,' said my mother. 'I have the greatest desire to see this picture and its wonderful predella. Wilderspin is one of the few painters who revert to the predella of the old masters. He is said to combine the colour of him whom he calls "his master" with the draughtsmanship and intellect of Shields, whose stained-glass windows the owner was showing me the other day at Eaton Hall; and do you know, Henry, that the painter of this wonderful "Faith and Love" is never tired of declaring that the subject was inspired by your dear father?'

When we reached the studio the servant said that Mr. Wilderspin was much indisposed that afternoon, and was also just getting ready to go to Paris, where he was to join Mr. Cyril in his studio; 'but perhaps he would see us,'--an announcement that brought a severe look to my mother's face, and another half-suppressed 'Haw, haw!' from Sleaford's deep chest.

Mounting the broad old staircase, we found ourselves in the studio of the famous spiritualist-painter--one of two studios; for Wilderspin had turned two rooms communicating with each other by folding-doors into a sort of double studio. One of these rooms, which was of moderate size, fronted the north-east, the other faced the south-west. There were (as I soon discovered) easels in both. It was the smaller of these rooms into which we were now shown by the servant. The walls were covered with sketches and drawings in various stages, and photographs of sculpture.

'By Jove, that's dooced like!' said Sleaford, pointing to my mother's portrait, which was standing on the floor, as though just returned from the frame-maker's: 'ask Cyril Aylwin if it ain't when you see him.'

It was a truly magnificent painting, but more full of imagination than of actual portraiture.

One of the windows was open, and the noise of an anvil from a blacksmith's shop in Maud Street came into the room.

'Do you know,' said my mother in an undertone, 'that this strange genius can only, when in London, work to the sound of a blacksmith's anvil? Nothing will induce him to paint a portrait out of his own studio; and I observed, when I was sitting to him here, that sometimes when the noise from the anvil ceased he laid down his brush and waited for the hideous din to be resumed.

Wilderspin now came through the folding-doors, and greeted us in his usual simple, courteous way. But I saw that he was in trouble. 'The portrait will look better yet,' he said. 'I always leave the final glazing till the picture is in the frame.'

After we had thoroughly examined the portrait, we turned to look at a large canvas upon an easel. Wilderspin had evidently been working upon it very lately.

'That's "Ruth and Boaz," don't you know?' said Sleaford. 'Finest crop of barley I ever saw in my life, judgin' from the size of the sheaves. Barley paid better than wheat last year. So the farmers all say.'

'Don't look at it,' said Wilderspin. 'I have been taking out part of Ruth, and was just beginning to repaint her from the shoulders upwards. It will never be finished now,' he continued with a sigh.

We asked him to allow us to see 'Faith and Love.'

'It is in the next room,' said he, 'but the predella is here on the next easel. I have removed it from underneath the picture to work upon.'

'The head of Ruth has been taken out,' said my mother, turning to me: 'but isn't it like an old master? You ought to see the marvellous Pre-Raphaelite pictures at Mr. Graham's and Mr. Leyland's, Henry.'

'Pre-Raphaelites?' said Wilderspin, 'the Master rhymes, madam, and Burne-Jones actually _reads_ the rhymes! However, they are on the right track in art, though neither has the slightest intercourse with the spirit world, not the slightest.'

'My exploits as a painter have not been noticeable as yet,' I said; 'but an amateur may know what a barley-field is. That is one before us. He may know what a man in love is; Boaz there is in love.'

'I wish we could see the woman's face,' said Sleaford. 'A woman, you know, without a face--'

'Come and see the predella of "Faith and Love,"' said Wilderspin, and he moved towards an easel where rested the predella, a long narrow picture without a frame. My mother followed him, leaving me standing before the picture of 'Ruth and Boaz.' Although the head of Ruth had been painted out, the picture seemed to throb with life. Boaz had just discovered the Moabitish maiden in the gleaming barley-field, as she had risen from stooping to glean the corn. Two ears of barley were in one hand. In the face of Boaz was an expression of surprise, and his eyes were alight with admiration. The picture was finished with the exception of the face of Ruth, which was but newly sketched in. Wilderspin had contrived to make her attitude and even the very barley-ears in her hand (one of which was dangling between her slender fingers in the act of falling) express innocent perturbation and girlish modesty.

II

At length I joined the others, who were standing before the easel, looking at the predella which, as Wilderspin again took care to tell us, had been removed from the famous picture of 'Faith and Love' we were about to see in the next room--'the culmination and final expression of the Renascence of Wonder in Art.'

'Perhaps it is fortunate,' said he, 'that I happen to be working at this very time upon the predella, which acts as a key to the meaning of the design. You will now have the advantage of seeing the predella before you see the picture itself. And really it would be to the advantage of the picture if every one could see it under like circumstances; it would add immensely to the effect of the design. Look well and carefully at the predella first. Try to imagine the Oriental Queen behind that veil, then observe the way in which the features are expressed through the veil; and then, but not till then, come into the adjoining room and see the picture itself, see what Isis really is (according to the sublime idea of Philip Aylwin) when Faith and Love, the twin angels of all true art, upraise the veil.'

He then turned and passed through the folding-doors into a room of great size, crowded with easels, upon which pictures were resting.

The predella before me seemed a miracle of imaginative power. At that time I had not seen the work of the great poet-painter of modern times whom Wilderspin called 'the Master,' and by whom he had been unconsciously inspired.

'Most beautiful!' my mother ejaculated, as we three lingered before the predella. 'Do look at the filmy texture of the veil.'

'Looks more like steam than a white veil, don't you know?' said Sleaford.

'Like steam, my lord?' exclaimed Wilderspin from the next room. 'The painter of that veil had peculiar privileges. As a child he had been in the habit of watching a face through the curtain of steam around a blacksmith's forge when hot iron is plunged into the water-trench, and the face, my lord, though begrimed by earthly toil, was an angel's. No wonder, then, that the painting in that veil is unique in art. The flesh-tints that are pearly and yet rosy seem, as you observe, to be breaking through it, and yet you cannot say what is the actual expression on the face. But now come and see the picture itself.'

My mother and Sleaford lingered for a moment longer, and then passed between the folding-doors.

But I did not follow them; I could not. For now there was something in the predella before me which fascinated me, I scarcely knew why. It was the figure of the queen--the figure between the two sleeping angels--the figure behind the veil, and expressed by the veil--that enthralled me.

There was a turn about the outlined neck and head that riveted my gaze; and, as I looked from these to the veil falling over the face, a vision seemed to be rapidly growing before my eyes--a vision that stopped my breath--a vision of a face struggling to express itself through that snowy film--_whose_ face?

* * * * *

'In the crypt my senses had a kind of license to play me tricks,' I murmured; 'but now and here my reason _shall_ conquer.'

And I stood and gazed at the veil. During all the time I could hear every word of the talk between Wilderspin, Sleaford, and my mother before the picture in the other room.

'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.'

'Yes, yes; but let me see the picture first. I can bear anything now. Howsoever terrible it may be, I can bear it now; for she's found--she's safe.' And I rushed into the next room, and began turning round in a wild manner one after another some dozens of canvases that were standing on the floor and leaning against the wall.

Half the canvases had been turned, and then I came upon what I sought.

I stood petrified. But I heard Wilderspin's voice at my side say, 'Do not let an imaginary scene distress you, Mr. Aylwin. The picture merely represents the scene in Coleridge's poem where the Lady Christabel, having secretly and in pity brought to her room to share her bed the mysterious lady she had met in the forest at midnight, watches the beautiful witch undress, and is spell-bound and struck dumb by some "sight to dream of, not to tell," which she sees at the lady's bosom.'

* * * * *

Christabel! It was Winifred sitting there upright in bed, confronted by a female figure--a tall lady, who with bowed head was undressing herself beneath a lamp suspended from the ceiling. Christabel! It was Winifred gazing at this figure--gazing as though fascinated; her dark hair falling and tumbling down her neck, till it was at last partly lost between her shining bosom and her nightdress. Yes, and in her blue eyes there was the same concentration of light, there was the same uprolling of the lips, there was the same dreadful gleaming of the teeth, the same swollen veins about the throat that I had seen in Wales. No wonder that at first I could see only the face and figure of Winifred. My consciousness had again dwindled to a single point. In a few seconds, however, I perceived that the scene was an antique oak-panelled chamber, corniced with large and curiously-carven figures, upon which played the warm light from a silver lamp suspended from the middle of the ceiling by a twofold silver chain fastened to the feet of an angel, quaintly carved in the dark wood of the ceiling. It was beneath this lamp that stood the majestic figure of the beautiful stranger, the Lady Geraldine. As she bent her head to look at her bosom, which she was about fully to uncover, the lamp-light gleaming among the gems and flashing in her hair and down her loosened white silken robe to her naked feet, shining, blue-veined and half-hidden in the green rushes that covered the floor, she seemed to be herself the source from which the lurid light was shed about the room. But her eyes were brighter than all. They were more dreadful by far to look at than Winifred's own--they were rolling wildly as if in an agony of hate, while she was drawing in her breath till that marble throat of hers seemed choking. It was not upon her eyes, however, that Winifred's were fixed: it was upon the lady's bosom, for out from beneath the partially-loosened robes that covered that bosom a tiny fork of flame was flickering like a serpent's tongue ruddy from the fires of a cruel and monstrous hate within.

This sight was dreadful enough; but it was not the terror on Winifred's face that now sent me reeling against Sleaford, who with my mother had followed me into the smaller room. Whose figure was that, and whose was the face which at first I had half-recognised in the Lady Geraldine? My mother's!

In painting this subject Wilderspin had, without knowing it, worked with too strong a reminiscence of my mother's portrait, unconscious that he was but giving expression to the awful irony of Heaven.

I turned round. Wilderspin was supporting with difficulty my mother's dead weight. For the first time (as I think) in her life, she whom, until I came to know Sinfi Lovell, I had believed to be the strongest, proudest, bravest woman living, had fainted.

'Dear me!' said Wilderspin, 'I had no idea that Christabel's terror was so strongly rendered,--no idea! Art should never produce an effect like this. Romantic art knows nothing of a mere sensational illusion. Dear me!--I must soften it at once.'

He was evidently quite unconscious that he had given my mother's features to Geraldine, and attributed the effect to his own superlative strength as a dramatic artist.

I ran to her: she soon recovered, but asked to be taken to Belgrave Square at once. Wild as I was with the desire to go in quest of Winifred; goaded as I was by a new, nameless, shapeless dread which certain words of Wilderspin's had aroused, but which (like the dread that had come to me on the night of my father's funeral) was too appalling to confront, I was obliged to leave the studio and take my mother to the house of my aunt, who was, I knew, waiting to start for the yacht.

XI

THE IRONY OF HEAVEN

I

As we stepped into the carriage, Sleaford, full of sympathy, jumped in. This fortunately prevented a conversation that would have been intolerable both to my mother and to me.

'Studio oppressively close,' said Sleaford; 'usual beastly smell of turpentine and pigments and things. Why the dooce don't these fellows ventilate their studios before they get ladies to go to see their paintin's!' This he kept repeating, but got no response from either of us.

As to me, let me honestly confess that I had but one thought: how much time would be required to go to Belgrave Square and back to the studio, to learn the whereabouts of Winifred. 'But she's safe,' I kept murmuring, in answer to that rising dread: 'Wilderspin said she was safe.'

During that drive to Belgrave Square, he whose bearing towards my mother was that of the anxious, loving son was not I, the only living child of her womb, but poor, simple, empty-headed Sleaford.

When we reached Belgrave Square my mother declared that she had entirely recovered from the fainting fit, but I scarcely dared to look into those haggard eyes of hers, which showed only too plainly that the triumph of remorse in her bosom was now complete. My aunt, who seemed to guess that something lowering to the family had taken place, was impatient to get on board the yacht. I saw how my mother now longed to remain and learn the upshot of events; but I told her that she was far better away now, and that I would write to her and keep her posted up in the story day by day. I bade them a hurried 'Good-bye.'

'How shall I be able to stay out of England until I know all about her?' said my mother. 'Go back and learn all about her, Henry, and write to me; and be sure to get and take care of that dreadful picture, and write to me about that also.'

When the carriage left I walked rapidly along the Square, looking for a hansom. In a second or two Sleaford was by my side. He took my arm.

'I suppose you're goin' back to cane him, aren't you?' said he.

'Cane whom?' I said impatiently, for that intolerable thought which I have hinted at was now growing within my brain, and I must, _must_ be alone to grapple with it.

'Cane the d----d painter, of course,' said Sleaford, opening his great blue eyes in wonder that such a question should be asked. 'Awfully bad form that fellow goin' and puttin' your mother in the picture. But that's just the way with these fellows.'

'What do you mean?' I asked again.

'What do I mean? The paintin' and writin' fellows. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as I've often and often said to Cyril Aylwin; and by Jove, I'm right for once. I suppose I needn't ask you if you're going back to cane him.'

'Wilderspin did what he did quite unconsciously,' I replied, as I hailed a hansom. 'It was the finger of God.'

'The finger of--Oh come! That be hanged, old chap.'

'Good-bye,' I said, as I jumped into the hansom.

'But you don't mean to say you are goin' to let a man put your mother into--'

I heard no more. The terrible idea which had been growing in my brain, shaping itself out of a nebulous mass of reminiscences of what had just occurred at the studio, was now stinging me to madness. Wilderspin's extreme dejection, the strange way in which he had seemed inclined to evade answering my question as to the safety of Winifred, the look of pity on his face as at last he answered 'quite safe'--what did all these indications portend? At every second the thought grew and grew, till my brain seemed like a vapour of fire, and my eyeballs seemed to scorch their sockets as I cried aloud: 'Have I found her at last to lose her?'

On reaching the studio door I rapped: before the servant had time to answer my summons, I rapped again till the sounds echoed along the street. When my summons was answered, I rushed upstairs. Wilderspin stood at the studio door, listening, apparently, to the sound of the blacksmith's anvil coming in from the back of Maud Street through the open window. Though his sorrowful face told all, I cried out, 'Wilderspin, she's safe? You said she was safe?'

'My friend,' said Wilderspin solemnly, 'the news I have to give you is news that I knew you would rather receive when you could hear it alone.'

'You said she was safe!'

'Yes, safe indeed! She whom you, under some strange but no doubt beneficent hallucination, believe to be the lady you lost in Wales, is safe indeed, for she is in the spirit-land with her whose blessing lent her to me--she has returned to her who was once a female blacksmith at Oldhill, and is now the brightest, sweetest, purest saint in Paradise.'

Dead! My soul had been waiting for the word--expecting it ever since I left the studio with my mother--but now it sounded more dreadful than if it had come as a surprise.

'Tell me all,' I cried, 'at once--at once. She did not return, you say, on the day following the catastrophe--when did she return?--when did you next see her?'

'I never saw her again alive,' answered Wilderspin mournfully; 'but you are so pale, Mr. Aylwin, and your eyes are so wild, I had better defer telling you what little more there is to tell until you have quite recovered from the shock.'

'No; now, now.'

Wilderspin looked with a deep sigh at the picture of 'Faith and Love,' fired by the lights of sunset, where Winnie's face seemed alive.

'Well,' said he, 'as she did not come, I worked at my painting of "Ruth" all day; and on the next morning, as I was starting for Primrose Court to seek her, Mrs. Gudgeon came kicking frantically at the street-door. When it was opened, she came stamping upstairs, and as I advanced to meet her, she shook her fists in my face, shouting out: "I could tear your eyes out, you vagabones." "Why, what is the matter?" I asked in great surprise. "You've bin and killed her, that's all," said the woman, foaming at the mouth. She then told me that her daughter, almost immediately on reaching home after having left the studio in the company of my servant, had fallen down in a swoon. A succession of swoons followed. She never rallied. She was then lying dead in Primrose Court.'

'And what then? Answer me quickly.'

'She asked me to give her money that her daughter might be buried respectably and not by the parish. I told her it was all hallucination about the girl being her daughter, and that a spiritual body could not be buried, but she seemed so genuinely distressed that I gave her the money.'

'Spiritual body! Hallucination!' I said. 'I heard her voice in the London streets, and she was seen selling baskets at the theatre door. Where shall I find the house?'

'It is of no use for you to go there,' he said.

'Nothing shall prevent my going at once.' A feverish yearning had come upon me to see the body.

'If you _will_ go,' said Wilderspin, 'it is No. 2 Primrose Court, Great Queen Street, Holborn.

II

I hurried out of the house, and soon finding a cab I drove to Great Queen Street.

My soul had passed now into another torture-chamber. It was being torn between two warring, maddening forces--the passionate desire to see her body, and the shrinking dread of undergoing the ordeal. At one moment I felt--as palpably as I felt it, on the betrothal night--her slim figure, soft as a twine of flowers in my arms: at the next I was clasping a corpse--a rigid corpse in rags. And yet I can scarcely say that I had any thoughts. At Great Queen Street I dismissed the cab, and had some little difficulty in finding Primrose Court, a miserable narrow alley. I knocked at a door which, even in that light, I could see was a peculiarly wretched one. After a considerable delay the door was opened and a face peered out--the face of the woman whom I had seen in Cyril's studio. She did not at first seem to recognise me. She was evidently far gone in liquor, and looked at me, murmuring, 'You're one o' the cussed body-snatchers; I know you: you belong to the Rose Alley "Forty Thieves." You'll swing--every man Jack o' ye'll swing yet, mind if you don't.'

At the sight of the squalid house in which Winifred had lived and died I passed into a new world of horror. Dead matter had become conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the walls,--it was these which seemed to have life--a terrible life--and to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the triumph of evil over good. I knew that the woman was still speaking, but for a time I heard no sound--my senses could receive no impressions save from the sinister eloquence of the dead and yet living matter around me. Not an object there that did not seem charged with the wicked message of the heartless Fates.

At length, and as I stood upon the doorstep, a trembling, a mighty expectance, seized me like an ague-fit; and I heard myself saying, 'I am come to see the body, Mrs. Gudgeon.' Then I saw her peer, blinking, into my face, as she said,

'Oh, oh, it's _you_, is it? It's one o' the lot as keeps the studeros, is it?--the cussed Chelsea lot as killed her. I recklet yer a-starin' at the goddess Joker! So you've come to see my poor darter's body, are you? How werry kind, to be sure! Pray come in, gentleman, an' pray let the beautiful goddess Joker be perlite an' show sich a nice kind wisiter the way upstairs.'

She took a candle, and with a mincing, mocking movement, curtseying low at every step, she backed before me, and then stood waiting at the foot of the staircase with a drunken look of satire on her features.

'Pray go upstairs fust, gentleman,' said she; 'I can't think o' goin' up fust, an' lettin' my darter's kind wisiter foller behind like a sarvint. I 'opes we knows our manners better nor that comes to in Primrose Court.'

'None of this foolery now, woman,' said I. 'There's a time for everything, you know.'

'How right he is!' she exclaimed, nodding to the flickering candle in her hand. 'There's a time for everything an' this is the time for makin' a peep-show of my pore darter's body. Oh, yes!'