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!'