Aylwin Part 44

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 circ.u.mstances; 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 pa.s.sed 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ess.e.x 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 mediaeval angels; were mixed with cla.s.sic 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.