Aylwin Part 66

'"That," I said, "is--is quite impossible."

'"It is true," he said. And then again we sat silent.

'Then I said to him with great firmness, "Mr. D'Arcy, I'm only a peasant girl, but I'm Welsh; I have faith in you, faith in your goodness and faith in your kindness to me; but I must insist upon knowing how I came here, and how you and I were brought together."

'He smiled, and said, "I was right in thinking that your face expresses a good deal of what we call character. I should have preferred waiting for a day or two before relating all I have to tell," he said, "in answer to what you ask, but as you _insist_ upon having it now," with a playful kind of smile, "it would be ill-bred for me to insist that you must wait. But before I begin, would it not be better if you were to tell me something of what occurred to yourself when you were taken ill at Raxton?"

'"Then will your story begin where mine breaks off?" I said.

'"We shall see that," he said, "as soon as you have ended yours."

'"Do you know Raxton?" I said.

'At first he seemed to hesitate about his reply, and then said,

'"No, I do not."

'I then told him in as few words as I could our adventures on the sands on the night of the landslip, and my search for my father's body afterwards, until I suddenly sank down in a fit. When I had finished Mr. D'Arcy was silent, and was evidently lost in thought. At last he said,

'"My story, I perceive, cannot begin where yours breaks off. I first became acquainted with you in the studio of a famous painter named Wilderspin, one of the n.o.blest-minded and most admirable men now breathing, but a great eccentric."

'"Why, Mr. D'Arcy, I never was in a studio in my life until to-day,"

I said.

'"You mean, Miss Wynne, that you were not consciously there," he said. "But in that studio you certainly were, and the artist, who reverenced you as a being from another world, was painting your face in a beautiful picture. While he was doing this you were taken seriously ill, and your life was despaired of. It was then that I brought you into the country, and here you have been living and benefiting by the kind services of Mrs. t.i.twing for a long time."

'"And you know nothing of my history previously to seeing me in the London studio?" I asked.

'"All that I could ever learn about that," said he, in what seemed to me a rather evasive tone, "I had to gather from the incoherent and rambling talk of Wilderspin, a religious enthusiast whose genius is very nearly akin to mania. He was so struck by you that he actually believed you to be not a corporeal woman at all; he believed you had been sent from the spirit-world by his dead mother to enable him to paint a great picture."

'"Oh, I must see him, and make him tell me all," I said.

'"Yes," said he, "but not yet."

'What Mr. D'Arcy told me,' said Winnie, 'affected me so deeply that I remained silent for a long time. Then came a thought which made me say,

'"You. too, are a painter, Mr. D'Arcy?"

'"Yes," he said.

'"During the months that I have been living here have you used me as your model?"

'"No; but that was not because I did not wish to do so."

'Then he suddenly looked in my face and said,

'"Is your family entirely Welsh, Miss Wynne?"

'"Entirely," I said. "But why did you not use me as your model, Mr.

D'Arcy?"

'"Poor Wilderspin believed you to be a spiritual body," he said; "I did not. I knew that you were a young lady in an unconscious condition. To have painted you in such a condition and without the possibility of getting your consent would have been sacrilege, even if I had painted you as a Madonna."

'I could not speak, his words and tone were so tender. He broke the silence by saying,

'"Miss Wynne, there is one thing in connection with you that puzzles me very much. You speak of yourself as though you were a kind of Welsh peasant girl, and yet your conversation--well, I mustn't tell you what I think of that."

'This made me laugh outright, for ladies who called on Miss Dalrymple used to make the same remark.

'"Mr. D'Arcy," I said, "you are harbouring the greatest little impostor in the British Islands. I am the mere mocking-bird of one of the most cultivated women living. My true note is that of a simple Welsh bird."

'"A Welsh warbler," he said, with a smile, "but who was the original of the impostor?"

'"Miss Dalrymple," I said.

'"Miss Dalrymple, the writer!--why I knew her years ago--before you were born."

'Our talk had been so lively that we had not noticed the pa.s.sage of time, nor had we noticed that the clouds had been gathering for a summer shower. Suddenly the rain fell heavily; although we ran to the house, we were quite wet by the time we got in.

'We found poor Mrs. t.i.twing in a great state of excitement on account of the rain, and also because the dinner had been waiting for nearly an hour. That scamper in the rain, and the laughing and joking at our predicament, seemed to bring us closer together than anything else could have done. Mr. D'Arcy told Mrs. t.i.twing to take me to my room to change my dress for dinner, and he seemed quite disappointed when I told him that I could eat no dinner, and would like to retire to my room for the night. The fact was that the events of that wonderful day had exhausted all my powers; every nerve within me seemed crying out for sleep.

'I went to my room, dismissed Mrs. t.i.twing, and went to bed at once.

But no sooner had I got into bed than I began to perceive that, instead of sleep, a long wakeful night was before me. Mr. D'Arcy's story about finding me in a London studio took entire possession of my mind. How did I get there? Where had I been and what had been my adventures before I got there? Why did the painter, in whose studio Mr. D'Arcy found me, believe that I had been super-naturally sent to him? I shuddered as a thousand dreadful thoughts flowed into my mind.

"Mr. D'Arcy," I said to myself, "must know more than he has told me." Then, of course, came thoughts about you. I wondered why you had allowed me to drift away from you in this manner. True, I was probably removed from Raxton immediately after my illness, when you were very ill, as I knew; but then you had recovered!'

VII

When Winifred reached this point in her story, I said,

'And so you wondered what had become of me from your last seeing me down to your waking up in Mr. D'Arcy's house?'

'Yes, yes, Henry. Do tell me what you were doing all that time.'

As she said these words the whole tragedy of my life returned to me in one moment, and yet in that moment I lived over again every dreadful incident and every dreadful detail. The spectacle on the sands, the search for her in North Wales, the meeting in the cottage, the frightful sight as she leapt away from me on Snowdon, the heart-breaking search for her among the mountains, the sound of her voice, singing by the theatre portico in the rain, the search for her in the hideous London streets, the scenes in the studios, the soul-blasting drama in Primrose Court--all came upon me in such a succession of realities that the beautiful radiant creature now talking to me seemed impossible except as a figure in a dream. And she was asking me to tell her what I had been doing during all these months of nightmare. But I knew that I never could tell her, either now or at any future time. I knew that to tell her would be to kill her.

'Winnie,' I said, 'I will tell you all about myself, but I must hear your story first. The faster you get on with that the sooner you will hear what I have to tell.'

'Then I will get on fast,' said she. 'After a while my thoughts, as I tossed in my bed, turned from the past to the future. What was the future that was lying before me? For months I had evidently been living on the charity of Mr. D'Arcy. My only excuse for having done so was that I was entirely unconscious of it; but now that I did know the relations between us I must of course end them at once. But what was I to do? Whither was I to go? Besides Miss Dalrymple, whose address I did not know, I had no friends except Sinfi Lovell and the Gypsies and a few Welsh farmers. To live upon my benefactor's generous charity now that I was conscious of it was, I felt, impossible.

'I was penniless. I had not even money to pay my railway fare to any part of England. There was only one thing for me to do--write to you.

When I rose in the morning it was with the full determination to write to you at once. I had been told by Mrs. t.i.twing that Mr. D'Arcy always breakfasted alone in a little anteroom adjoining his bedroom, and always breakfasted late. My breakfast, she said, would be prepared in what she called the little green room. And when I left my bedroom, dressed in a morning dress that was carefully laid out for me, I found the housekeeper moving about in the pa.s.sages. She conducted me to the little green room. On the walls were two looking-gla.s.ses in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt and angels' heads hovering above them. Each frame contained two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail. The room was furnished with quaint sofas and chairs on which beautiful little old-fashioned designs were painted. She told me that as I had not named an hour for breakfasting I should have to wait about twenty minutes.

'In one corner of the room was a rather large whatnot, on which lay one or two French novels in green and yellow paper covers and a few daily and weekly newspapers, which I went and turned over. Among them I was startled to find a paper called the _Raxton Gazette_. But I saw at once how it got there, for written on the margin at the top of the paper was the address, "Dr. Mivart, Wimpole Street, London." Mr.

D'Arcy had told me that the gentleman whose voice I heard behind the screen was the medical man who attended to me during my illness, and it now suddenly flashed upon my mind that at Raxton there was a Dr.

Mivart, though I had never seen him during my stay there. These were, no doubt, one and the same person, and some one from Raxton had posted the newspaper to the doctor's house in London.