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 t.i.tle-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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d"s sake be quick!" I exclaimed. "Where was it?"
"At the corner of Ess.e.x 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 un.o.bservant of the crowd pa.s.sing 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."
"G.o.d bless you, Wilderspin, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d....You engaged her, Wilderspin, of the woman whom I saw at Cyril"s studio, to sit as a model? What pa.s.sed 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?"