I
I will not trouble the reader with details of the illness that came
upon me as the result of my mental agony and physical exhaustion. At
intervals I was aware of what was going on around me, but for the
most part I was in a semi-comatose state. I realised at intervals
that a medical man was sitting by my side, as I lay in bed. Then I
had a sense of being moved from place to place; and then of being
rocked by the waves. Slowly the periods of consciousness became more
frequent and also more prolonged.
My first exclamation was--'Dead! Have I been ill?' and I tried to
raise myself in vain.
'Yes, very ill,' said a voice, my mother's.
'Dangerously?'
'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 superstitions.'
'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 assure 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 snatched 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 assured 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 anticipated. Weeks and months passed, 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 passions. 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 pass 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 title 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 class; 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 pass, 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 passion 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."'