Aylwin

"For several days you were in danger. Your recovery now entirely depends upon your keeping yourself calm."

"I am out at sea?"

"Yes," said my mother; "in Lord Sleaford"s yacht."

"How did I come here?"

"Well, Henry, I was so anxious to wait for a day or two to learn the sequel of the dreadful tragedy, that I persuaded Lord Sleaford to delay sailing. Next day he called at Belgrave Square, and told us he had heard that you had been taken suddenly ill and were lying unconscious at the studio. I went at once and saw the medical man, Mr. Finch, whom Mr. Wilderspin had called in. This gentleman took a serious view of your case. When I asked him what could be done he said that nothing would benefit you so much as removal from London, and recommended a sea voyage. It occurred to me at once to ask Lord Sleaford if we might take you in his yacht, and he with his usual good-nature agreed, and agreed also that Mr. Finch should accompany us as your medical attendant."

"You know all?" I said; "you know that she is dead."

"Alas! yes."

At that moment the doctor came into the cabin, and my mother retired.

"When did you last see Wilderspin?" I asked Mr. Finch.

"Before leaving England to join a friend in Paris he went to Belgrave Square to get tidings of you, and I was there."

"He told you--what had occurred to make me ill?"

"He told me that it was the death of some one in whom you took an interest, a model of his, but told it in such a wild and excited way that I lost patience with him. His addled brains are crammed with the wildest and most ignorant superst.i.tions."

"Did you ask him about her burial?"

"I did. I gathered from him that she was buried by the parish in the usual way. But I a.s.sure you the man"s account of everything that occurred was so bewildered and so incoherent that I could really make nothing out of him. What is his creed? Is it Swedenborgianism? He seems to think that the model he has lost is a spirit (or spiritual body, to use his own jargon) sent to him by the artistic-minded spirits for entirely artistic purposes, but s.n.a.t.c.hed from him now by the mean jealousy of the same spirit-world." "But what did he say about her burial?" "Well, he seems not to have ignored so completely the mundane question of burying this spiritual body as his creed would have warranted, for he gave the mother money to bury it. The mother, however, seems to have spent the money in gin and to have left the duty of burying the spiritual body to the parish, who make short work of all bodies; and, of course, by the parish she was buried, you may rest a.s.sured of that, though the artist seems to think that she was simply translated to heaven like Elijah."

"I must return to England at once," I said. "I shall apply to the Home Secretary to have the body disinterred."

"Why, sir?"

"In order that she may be buried in a proper place, to be sure."

"No use. You have no _locus standi_."

"What do you mean?"

"You are not a relative, and to ask for a disinterment for such an unimportant reason as that you, a stranger, would prefer to see her buried elsewhere, would be idle."

Sleaford now came into the cabin. I thanked him for his kindness, but told him I must return at once.

"Even if your health permitted," he said, "it is impossible for the yacht to go back. I have an appointment to meet a yachting friend.

But in any case depend upon it, old fellow, the doctor won"t hear of your returning for a long while yet. He told me not five minutes ago that nothing but sea air, and keeping your mind tranquil, you know, will restore you."

The feeling of exhaustion that came upon me as he spoke convinced me that there was only too much truth in his words. I felt that I must yield to the inevitable; but as to tranquillity of mind, my entire being was now filled with a yearning to see the New North Cemetery--to see her grave. I seemed to long for the very pang which I knew the sight of the grave would give me.

It is of course impossible for me to linger over that cruise, or to record any of the incidents that took place at the ports at which we touched and landed. My recovery, or rather my partial recovery, was slower than the doctor had antic.i.p.ated. Weeks and months pa.s.sed, and still there seemed but little improvement in me.

The result was that I was obliged to yield to the importunities of my mother, and to the urgent advice of Dr. Finch, to remain on board Sleaford"s yacht during the entire cruise, and afterwards to go with them to Italy.

Absence from England gave me not the smallest respite from the grief that was destroying me.

My parting with my mother was a very pathetic one. She was greatly changed, and I knew why. The furrows Time sets on the face can never be mistaken for those which are caused by the pa.s.sions. The struggle between pride and remorse had been going on apace; her sufferings had been as great as my own.

It was in Rome we parted. We were sitting in the cool, perfumed atmosphere of St. Peter"s, and for the moment a soothing wave seemed to pa.s.s over my soul. For some little time there had been silence between us. At length I said, "Mother, it seems strange indeed for me to have to say to you that you blame yourself too much for the part you took in the tragedy of Winnie. When you sent her into Wales you didn"t know that her aunt was dead; you did it, as you thought, for her good as well as for mine."

She rose as if to embrace me, and then sank down again.

"But you don"t know all, Henry; you don"t know all. I knew her aunt was dead, though Shales did not, or he would never have taken her.

All that concerned me was to get her away before your own recovery. I thought there might be relatives of hers or friends whom Shales might find. But I was possessed by a frenzied desire to get her away. For years my eyes had been fixed on the earldom. I had been told by your aunt that Cyril was consumptive, and also that he was very unlikely to marry."

I could not suppress a little laugh. "Ha, ha! Cyril consumptive! No man"s stronger and sounder, I am glad to tell you; but if by ill-chance he should die and the t.i.tle should come to me, then, mother, I"ll wear the coronet, and it shall be made of the best gingerbread gilt and ornamented thus. I"ll give public lectures on the British aristocracy and its origin, and its present relations to the community, and my audience shall consist of society--that society which is so much to aunt and the likes of her. Society shall be my audience, and then, after my course of lectures is over, I will join the Gypsies. But pray pardon me, mother. I had no idea I should thus lose my temper. I should not have lost it so entirely had I not witnessed how you are suffering from the tyranny of this blatant bugbear called "Society.""

"My suffering, Henry, has brought me nearer to your line of thought than you may suppose. It has taught me that when the affections are deeply touched everything which before had seemed so momentous stands out in a new light, that light in which the insignificance of the important stands revealed. In that terrible conflict between you and me on the night following the landslip, you spoke of my "cruel pride." Oh, Henry, if you only knew how that cruel pride had been wiped out of existence by remorse, I believe that even you would forgive me. I believe that even she would if she were here."

"I told you that I had entirely forgiven you, mother, and that I was sure Winnie would forgive you if she were alive."

"You did, Henry, but it did not satisfy me; I felt that you did not know all."

"I fear you have been very unhappy," I said.

"I have been constantly thinking of Winifred a beggar in the streets as described by Wilderspin. Oh, Henry, I used to think of her in the charge of that woman. And Miss Dalrymple, who educated her, tells me that in culture she was far above the girls of her own cla.s.s; and this makes the degradation into which she was forced through me the more dreadful for me to think of. I used to think of her dying in the squalid den, and then the Italian sunshine has seemed darker than a London fog. Even the comfort that your kind words gave me was incomplete, for you did not know the worst features of my cruelty."

"But have you had no respite, mother? Surely the intensity of this pain did not last, or it would have killed you."

"The crisis did pa.s.s, for, as you say, had it lasted in its most intense form, it would have killed me or sent me mad. After a while, though remorse was always with me, I seemed to become in some degree numbed against its sting. I could bear at last to live, but that was all. Yet there was always one hour out of the twenty-four when I was overmastered by pathetic memories, such as nearly killed me with pity--one hour when, in a sudden and irresistible storm, grief would still come upon me with almost its old power. This was on awaking in the early morning. I learnt then that if there is trouble at the founts of life, there is nothing which stirs that trouble like the twitter of the birds at dawn. At Florence, I would, after spending the day in wandering with you through picture galleries or about those lovely spots near Fiesole, go to bed at night tolerably calm; I would sink into a sleep, haunted no longer by those dreams of the tragedy in which my part had been so cruel, and yet the very act of waking in the morning would bring upon me a whirlwind of anguish; and then would come the struggling light at the window, and the twitter of the birds that seemed to say, "Poor child, poor child!" and I would bury my face in my pillow and moan."

When I looked in her face, I realised for the first time that not even such a pa.s.sion of pity as that which had aged me is so cruel in its ravages as Remorse. To gaze at her was so painful that I turned my eyes away.

When I could speak I said,

"I have forgiven you from the bottom of my heart, mother, but, if that does not give you comfort, is there anything that will?"

"Nothing, Henry, nothing but what is impossible for me ever to get--the forgiveness of the wronged child herself. _That_ I can never get in this world. I dare only hope that by prayers and tears I may get it in the end. Oh, Henry, if I were in heaven I could never rest until I had sought her out, and found her and thrown myself on her neck and said, "Forgive your persecutor, my dear, or this is no place for me.""

II

As soon as I reached London, thinking that Wilderspin was still on the Continent, I went first to D"Arcy"s studio, but was there told that D"Arcy was away--that he had been in the country for a long time, busy painting, and would not return for some months. I then went to Wilderspin"s studio, and found, to my surprise and relief, that he and Cyril had returned from Paris. I learnt from the servant that Wilderspin had just gone to call on Cyril; accordingly to Cyril"s studio I went.

"He is engaged with the Gypsy-model, sir," said Cyril"s man, pointing to the studio door, which was ajar. "He told me that if ever you should call you were to be admitted at once. Mr. Wilderspin is there too."

"You need not announce me," I said, as I pushed open the door.

Entering the studio, I found myself behind a tall easel where Cyril was at work. I was concealed from him, and also from Wilderspin and Sinfi. On my left stood Cyril"s caricature of Wilderspin"s "Faith and Love," upon which the light from a window was falling aslant!

Before I could pa.s.s round the easel into the open s.p.a.ce I was arrested by overhearing a conversation between Cyril, Sinfi, and Wilderspin.