Aylwin Part 64

'It was only in the expression of your eyes that he resembled you.

He was much older, and wore spectacles. He, on his part, gave a start when he looked into my eyes. It seemed to me that he had been expecting to see something in them which he did not find there, and was a little disappointed. I then heard voices in the room, which was evidently, from the sound of the voices, a large room, and I looked round. I saw that there was another couch close to mine, but nearly hidden from view by a large screen between the two couches. Evidently a woman was lying on the other couch, for I could see her feet; she was a tall woman, for her feet reached out much beyond my own.'

'Good heavens, Winnie,' I exclaimed, 'what on earth is coming? But I promised not to interrupt you. Pray go on, I am all impatience.'

'Well, at the sound of the voices the gentleman started, and seemed much alarmed--alarmed on my account, I thought.

'I then heard a voice say, "A most successful experiment. Look at the face of this other patient, and see the expression on it."

'The gentleman bent over me, and hurriedly raised me from the couch, and then fairly carried me out of the room. But you seem very excited, Henry, you have turned quite pale.'

It would have been wonderful if I had not turned pale. So deeply burnt into my brain had been the picture I had imagined of Winnie dead and in a pauper's grave that even now, with Winnie in my arms, it all came to me, and I seemed to see her lying in a pauper's shroud, and being restored to life, and I said to her, 'Did you observe--did you observe your dress, Winnie?'

She answered my question by a little laugh. 'Did I observe my dress at such a moment? Well, I knew you could be satirical on my s.e.x when you are in the mood, but, Henry, there are moments, I a.s.sure you, when the first thing a woman observes is not her dress, and this was one. Afterwards I did observe it, and I can tell you what it was. It was a walking-dress. Perhaps,' said she, with a smile, 'perhaps you would like to know the material? But really I have forgotten that.'

'Pardon my idle question, Winnie--pray go on. I will interrupt you no more.'

'Oh, you will interrupt me no more! We shall see. The gentleman then led me through a pa.s.sage of some length.'

'Do describe it!'

'I felt quite sure you would interrupt me no more. Well! The dim light in the windows made me guess I was in an old house, and from the sweet smell of hay and wild-flowers I thought we were near the Wilderness, at Raxton. I could only imagine that I had fallen insensible on the sands and been taken to Raxton Hall.'

'Ah! that's where you ought to have been taken.' I could not help exclaiming.

'Surely not,' said Winnie.

'Why?'

'Your mother! But why have you turned so angry?'

In spite of all that I had lately witnessed of my mother's sufferings from remorse, in spite of all the deep and genuine pity that those sufferings had drawn from me, Winnie's words struck deeper than any pity for any creature but herself, and for a moment my soul rose against my mother again.

'Go on, Winnie, pray go on,' I said.

'You _will_ make me talk about myself,' said Winifred, 'when I so much want to hear all about you. This is what I call the self-indulgence of love. Well, then, the gentleman and I mounted some steps and then we entered a tapestried room. The windows--they were quaint and old-fashioned cas.e.m.e.nts--were open, and the sunlight was pouring through them. I then saw at once that I was not anywhere near Raxton. Besides, there was no sea-smell mixed with the perfumes of the flowers and the songs of the birds. That I was not near Raxton, very much amazed me, you may be sure. And then the room was so new to me and so strange. I had never been in an artist's studio, but Sinfi had talked to me of such places, and there were many signs that I was in a studio now.'

'A studio! And not in London! Describe it, Winnie,' I said.

Although she had told me that the house was in the country, my mind flew at once to Wilderspin's studio. 'You say that the gentleman was not young, but that he had an expression of sorrow in his eyes. Had he long iron-grey hair, and was he dressed--dressed, like a--like a shiny Quaker?' So full was my mind of Mrs. Gudgeon's story that I was positively using her language.

'Like a what?' exclaimed Winnie. 'Really, Henry, you have become very eccentric since our parting. The gentleman had not iron-grey hair, and he was not dressed in the least like a Quaker, unless a loose, brown lounge coat tossed on anyhow over a waistcoat and trousers of the same colour is the costume of a shiny Quaker. But it was the room you asked me to describe. There were pictures on the walls, and there were two easels, and on one of them I saw a picture. The gentleman led me to a strange and very beautiful piece of furniture. If I attempted to describe it I should call it a divan, under a gorgeous kind of awning ornamented with Chinese figures in ivory and precious stones. Now, isn't it exactly like an _Arabian Nights_ story, Henry?'

'Yes, yes, Winnie; but pray go on. What did the gentleman do?'

'He drew a chair towards me, and without speaking looked into my face again. The expression in his eyes drew me towards him, as it had at first done when I awoke from my trance; it drew me towards him partly because it said, "I am lonely and in sorrow," and partly from another cause which I could not understand and could never define, howsoever I might try. "Where am I?" I said; "I remember nothing since I fell on the sands. Where is Henry? Is he better or worse? Can you tell me?" The gentleman said, "The friend you inquire about is a long way from here, and you are a long way from Raxton." I asked him why I was a long way from Raxton, and said, "Who brought me here? Do, please, tell me what it means. I am amongst friends--of that I am sure; there is something in your voice which a.s.sures me of that; but do tell me what this mystery means." "You are indeed among friends,"

he said. Then looking at me with an expression of great kindness, he continued, "It would be difficult to imagine where you could go without finding friends, Miss Wynne."'

'Then he knew who you were, Winnie?' I said.

'Yes, he knew who I was,' said she, looking meditatively across the hills as though my query had raised in her own mind some question which had newly presented itself. 'The gentleman told me that I had been very ill and was now recovered, but not so entirely recovered at present that I could with safety be burthened and perplexed with the long story of my illness and what had brought me there. And when he concluded by saying, "You are here for your good," I exclaimed, "Ah, yes; no need for me to be told that," for his voice convinced me that it was so. "But surely you can tell me something. Where is Henry? Is he still ill?" I said. He told me that he believed you to be perfectly well, and that you had lately been living in Wales, but had now gone to j.a.pan. "Henry lately in Wales! now gone to j.a.pan!" I exclaimed, "and he was not with me during the illness that you say I have just recovered from?"'

'Winnie,' I said, 'it was no wonder you asked those questions, but you will soon know all.'

Whilst Winnie had been talking my mind had been partly occupied with words that fell from her about the voice of her mysterious rescuer.

They seemed to recall something.

'You were saying, Winnie, that the gentleman had a peculiarly musical voice,' I said.

'So musical,' she replied, 'that it seemed to delight and charm, not my mind only, but every nerve in my body.'

'Could you describe it?'

'Describe a voice,' she said, laughing. 'Who could describe a voice?'

'You, Winnie; only you. Do describe it.'

'I wonder,' she said, 'whether you remember our first walk along the Raxton road, when I made invidious comparison between the voices of birds and the voices of men and women?'

'Indeed I do,' I said. 'I remember how you suggested that among the birds the rooks only could listen without offence to the cackle of a crowd of people.'

'Well, Henry, I can only give you an idea of the gentleman's voice by saying that the most fastidious blackbirds and thrushes that ever lived would have liked it. Indeed they did seem to like it, as I afterwards thought, when I took walks with him. It was music in every variety of tone; and, besides, it seemed to me that this music was enriched by a tone which I had learnt from your own dear voice as a child, the tone which sorrow can give and nothing else. The listener while he was speaking felt so drawn towards him as to love the man who spoke. When his voice ceased, some part of his attraction ceased.

But the moment the voice was again heard the magic of the man returned as strong as ever.'

III

For some time during Winnie's narrative glimmerings of the gentleman's ident.i.ty had been coming to me, and what she said of the voice seemed to be turning these glimmerings into shafts of light. I was now in a state of the greatest impatience to verify my surmise.

But this only gave a sharper edge to my intense curiosity as to _how_ she had been rescued by him.

'Winnie,' I said, 'you have said nothing about his appearance. Could you describe his face?'

'Describe his face?' said Winnie. 'If I were a painter I could paint it from memory. But who can paint a face in words?'

Then she launched into a description of the gentleman's appearance, and gave me a specimen of that 'objective' power which used to amaze me as a child but which I afterwards found was a speciality of the girls of Wales.

'I should like a description of him feature by feature,' I said.

She laughed, and said, 'I suppose I must begin with his forehead then. It was almost of the tone of marble, and contrasted, but not too violently, with the thin crop of dark hair slightly curling round the temples, which were partly bald. The forehead in its form was so perfect that it seemed to shed its own beauty over all the other features; it prevented me from noticing, as I afterwards did, that these other features--the features below the eyes, were not in themselves beautiful. The eyes, which looked at me through spectacles, were of a colour between hazel and blue-grey, but there were lights shining within them which were neither grey, nor hazel, nor blue--wonderful lights. And it was to these indescribable lights, moving and alive in the deeps of the pupils, that his face owed its extraordinary attractiveness. Have I sufficiently described him? or am I to go on taking his face to pieces for you?'

'Go on, Winnie--pray go on.'

'Well, then, between the eyes, across the top of the nose, where the bridge of the spectacles rested, there was a strongly marked indented line which had the appearance of having been made by long-continued pressure of the spectacle frame. Am I still to go on?'

'Yes, yes.'

'The beauty of the face, as I said before, was entirely confined to the upper portion. It did not extend lower than the cheek-bones, which were well shaped.'

'The mouth, Winnie? Describe that, and then I need not ask you his name, though perhaps you don't know it yourself.'

'A dark brown moustache covered the mouth. I have always thought that a mouth is unattractive if the lips are so close to the teeth that they seem to stick to them; and yet what a kind woman Mrs. Shales is, and her mouth is of this kind. But, on the other hand, where the s.p.a.ce between the teeth and the lips is too great no mouth can be called beautiful, I think. Now though the mouth of the gentleman was not ill-cut, the lips were too far from the teeth, I thought; they were too loose, a little baggy, in short. And when he laughed--'