Aylwin Part 48

'What made you trick me like this? Where is the money I gave you for the funeral?'

'That's werry true, about that money, an' where is it? The orkerdest question about money allus is--"Where is it?" The money for that funeral I 'ad, I won't deny that. The orkard question ain't that: it's "Where is it?" But you see, arter I left your studero I sets on that pore gal's bed a-cryin' fit to bust; then I goes out into Clement's Alley, and I calls on Mrs. Mix--that's a werry dear friend of mine, the mother o' seven child'n as are allus a-settin' on my doorstep, an' she comes out of Yorkshire you must know, an' she's bin a streaker in her day (for she was well off wonst was Mrs. Mix afore she 'ad them seven dirty-nosed child'n as sets on her neighbours'

doorsteps)--an' she sez, sez she, "My pore Meg" (meanin' me), "I've bin the mother o' fourteen beautiful clean-nosed child'n, an' I've streaked an' buried seven on 'em, so I ought to know somethink about corpuses, an' I tell you this corpse o' your darter's must be streaked an' buried at wonst, for she died in a swownd. An' there's nothink like the parishes for buryin' folk quick, an' I dessay the coffin's ordered by this time, an' I dessay the gent gev you that money just to make you comforble like, seein' as he killed your darter." That's what Mrs. Mix says to me. So the parish comed an'

brought a coffin an' tookt her, pore dear. And I've cried myself stupid-like, bein' her pore mother as 'es lost her on'y darter--an'

I was just a-tryin' to make myself comfable when this 'ere young toff as seems so werry drunk comes a-rappin' at my door fit to rap the 'ouse down.'

'Has she been buried at all? How can a spiritual body be buried?'

'"Buried at all?" What do you mean by insinivatin' to the pore gal's conflicted mother as she p'raps ain't buried at all? You're a-makin'

me cry ag'in. She lays comfable enough underneath a lot of other coffins, in the pauper part of the New North Cimingtary.'

'Underneath a lot of others; how can that be?'

'What! ain't you toffs never seed a pauper finneral? Now that's a pity; and sich nice toffs as they are, a-settin' theirselves up to look arter the darters o' pore folks. P'raps you never thought how we was buried. We're buried, when our time comes, and then they're werry kind to us, the parish toffs is:--It's in a lump--six at a time--as they buries us, and sich nice deal coffins they makes us, the parish toffs does, an' sich nice lamp-black they paints 'em with to make 'em look as if they was covered over with the best black velvid; an' then sich a nice sarmint--none o' your retail sarmints, but a hulsale sarmint--they reads over the lot, an' into one hole they packs us one atop o' the other, jest like a pile o' the werry best Yarmith bloaters, an' that's a good deal more sociable an' comfable, the parish toffs thinks, than puttin' us in single; so it is, for the matter o' that.'

Then I heard no more; for at the intolerable picture called up by the woman's words, my soul in its misery seemed to have soared, scared and trembling, above and beyond the heavens at whose futile gates it had been moaning, till at last it sank at the feet of the mighty power that my love had striven with on the sands of Raxton when the tide was coming in--some pale and cruel ruler whose brow I saw wrinkled with the woman's mocking smile--some frightful columbine-queen, wicked, bowelless, and blind, shaking a starry cap and bells, and chanting--

I lent the drink of Day To G.o.ds for feast; I poured the river of Night On G.o.ds surceased: Their blood was Nin-ki-gal's.

And there, at the feet of the awful jesting hag, Circ.u.mstance, I could only cry 'Winnie! my poor Winnie!' while over my head seemed to pa.s.s Necessity and her black ages of despair.

When I came to myself I said to the woman,

'You can point out the grave?'

'Well, yes,' paid slip, turning round sharply; 'but may I ax who the d.i.c.kens you are?--an' what makes you so cut up about a pore woman's darter? It's right-on beautiful to see how kind gentlemen is nowadays': and she turned and tried, stumbling, to lead the way downstairs.

As we left the room I turned round to look at it. The picture of the mattress, now nearly hidden in the shadows--the picture of the other furniture in the room--two chairs--or rather one and a part of a chair, for the rails of the hack were gone--a table, a large brown jug, the handle of which had been replaced by a piece of string, and a white washhand-basin, with most of the rim broken away, and a shallow tub apparently used for a bath--seemed to sink into my flesh as though bitten in by the etcher's aquafortis. Winifred's sleeping-room!

'Of course she wasn't her daughter,' said Wilderspin meditatively, as we stood on the stairs.

'Not my darter! Why, in course she was. What an imperent thing to say, sure_lie_!'

'There is one thing I wish to say to you,' said he to the woman.

'When I agreed with you as to the sum to be paid for the model's sittings, it was clearly understood that she was to sit to no other artist, and that the match-selling was to cease.

'Well, and 'ave I broke my word?'

'A person has heard her singing and seen her selling baskets,' I said.

'The person tells a lie,' said the woman, with a dogged and sullen look, and in a voice that grew thicker with every word. 'Ain't there sich things as doubles?'

At these last words my heart gave a sudden leap. We left the house, and neither of us spoke till we got into the Strand.

'Did you see the--body at all?' I asked Wilderspin.

'Oh, yes. After I gave her the money for the funeral I went to Primrose Court. The woman took me upstairs, and there on the mattress lay--what the poor woman believed to be the earthly body of an earthly daughter. It was covered with a quilt. Over the face a ragged shawl had been thrown.'

'Yes, yes. She raised the shawl?'

'Yes, the woman went and held the candle over the head of the mattress and uncovered the face; and there lay she whom the woman believed to be her daughter, and whom you believe to be the young lady you seek, but whom I _know_ to be a spiritual body--the perfect type that was sent to me in order that I might fulfil my mission. You groan, Mr. Aylwin, but remember that you have lost only a dream, a beautiful hallucination; I have lost a reality: there is nothing real but the spiritual world.

III

As I wandered about the streets after parting from Wilderspin, what were my emotions? If I could put them into words, is there one human being in ten thousand who would understand me? Happily, no. For there is not one in ten thousand who, having sounded the darkest depths of human misery, will know how strong is Hope when at the true death-struggle with Despair. 'Hope in the human breast,' wrote my father, 'is a pa.s.sion, a wild, a lawless, and an indomitable pa.s.sion, that almost no cruelty of Fate can conquer.'

Many a pa.s.ser-by in the streets of London that night must have asked himself, What lunatic is this at large? At one moment I would bound along the pavement as though propelled by wings, scarcely seeming to touch the pavement with my feet. At the next I would stop in a cold perspiration and say to myself, 'Idiot, is it possible that you, so learned in suffering--you, whom Destiny, or Heaven, or h.e.l.l, has taken in hand as a special sport--can befool yourself with Hope now, after the terrible comedy by which you and the ancestral idiots from whom you sprang amused Queen Nin-ki-gal in Raxton crypt?'

Hope and Despair were playing at shuttlec.o.c.k with my soul. Underneath my misery there flickered a thought which, wild as it was, I dared not dismiss--the thought that, after all, it _might_ not be Winifred who had died in that den. Possible it was--however improbable--that I _might_ be labouring under a delusion. My imagination _might_ have exaggerated a resemblance into actual ident.i.ty, and Winifred and she whom Wilderspin painted might be two different persons--and there might be hope even yet. But so momentous was the issue to my soul, that the mere fact of having clearly marshalled the arguments on the side of Hope made my reason critical and suspicious of their cogency.

From the sweet sophisms that my reason had called up, I turned, and there stood Despair, ready for me behind a phalanx of arguments, which laughed all Hope's 'ragged regiment' to scorn.

Had not my mother recognised her? Could the infallible perceptive faculties of my mother be also deceived?

But to accept the fact that she who died on that mattress was little Winnie of the sands was to go stark mad, and the very instinct of self-preservation made me clutch at every sophism Hope could offer.

'Did not the woman declare that the singing-girl and the model were _not_ one and the same?' said Hope. 'And if she did not lie, may you not have been, after all, hunting a shadow through London?'

'It might not have been Winifred,' I shouted.

But no sooner had I done so than the scene in the studio--Wilderspin's story of the model's terror on seeing my mother's portrait--came upon me, and 'Dead! dead!' rang through me like a funeral knell: all the superstructure of Hope's sophisms was shattered in a moment like a house of cards: my imagination flew away to all the London graveyards I had ever heard of; and there, in the part divided by the pauper line, my soul hovered over a grave newly made, and then dived down from coffin to coffin, one piled above another, till it reached Winifred, lying pressed down by the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s; those eyes staring.

Yes; that night I was mad!

I could not walk fatigue into my restless limbs. Morning broke in curdling billows of fire over the east of London--which even at this early hour was slowly growing hazy with smoke. I found myself in Primrose Court, looking at that squalid door, those squalid windows.

I knocked at the door. No answer came to my summons, and I knocked again and again. Then a window opened above my head, and I heard the well-known voice of the woman exclaiming,

'Who's that? Poll Onion's out to-night, and the rooms are emp'y 'cept mine. Why, G.o.d bless me, man, is it you?'

'Hag! that was not your daughter.'

She slammed the window down.

'Let me in, or I will break the door.'

The window was opened again.

'Lucky as I didn't leave the front door open to-night, as I mostly do. What do you want to skear a pore woman for?' she bawled. 'Go away, else I'll call up the people in Great Queen Street.'

'Mrs. Gudgeon, all I want to do is to ask you a question.'

'Ah, but that's what you jis' _won't_ do, my fine gentleman. I don't let you in again in a hurry.'

'I will give you a sovereign.'

'Honour bright?' bawled the old woman; 'let me look at it.'