Part 47 (1/2)

'The finger of--Oh come! That be hanged, old chap.'

'Good-bye,' I said, as I jumped into the hansom.

'But you don't mean to say you are goin' to let a man put your mother into--'

I heard no more. The terrible idea which had been growing in my brain, shaping itself out of a nebulous ma.s.s of reminiscences of what had just occurred at the studio, was now stinging me to madness.

Wilderspin's extreme dejection, the strange way in which he had seemed inclined to evade answering my question as to the safety of Winifred, the look of pity on his face as at last he answered 'quite safe'--what did all these indications portend? At every second the thought grew and grew, till my brain seemed like a vapour of fire, and my eyeb.a.l.l.s seemed to scorch their sockets as I cried aloud: 'Have I found her at last to lose her?'

On reaching the studio door I rapped: before the servant had time to answer my summons, I rapped again till the sounds echoed along the street. When my summons was answered, I rushed upstairs. Wilderspin stood at the studio door, listening, apparently, to the sound of the blacksmith's anvil coming in from the back of Maud Street through the open window. Though his sorrowful face told all, I cried out, 'Wilderspin, she's safe? You said she was safe?'

'My friend,' said Wilderspin solemnly, 'the news I have to give you is news that I knew you would rather receive when you could hear it alone.'

'You said she was safe!'

'Yes, safe indeed! She whom you, under some strange but no doubt beneficent hallucination, believe to be the lady you lost in Wales, is safe indeed, for she is in the spirit-land with her whose blessing lent her to me--she has returned to her who was once a female blacksmith at Oldhill, and is now the brightest, sweetest, purest saint in Paradise.'

Dead! My soul had been waiting for the word--expecting it ever since I left the studio with my mother--but now it sounded more dreadful than if it had come as a surprise.

'Tell me all,' I cried, 'at once--at once. She did not return, you say, on the day following the catastrophe--when did she return?--when did you next see her?'

'I never saw her again alive,' answered Wilderspin mournfully; 'but you are so pale, Mr. Aylwin, and your eyes are so wild, I had better defer telling you what little more there is to tell until you have quite recovered from the shock.'

'No; now, now.'

Wilderspin looked with a deep sigh at the picture of 'Faith and Love,' fired by the lights of sunset, where Winnie's face seemed alive.

'Well,' said he, 'as she did not come, I worked at my painting of ”Ruth” all day; and on the next morning, as I was starting for Primrose Court to seek her, Mrs. Gudgeon came kicking frantically at the street-door. When it was opened, she came stamping upstairs, and as I advanced to meet her, she shook her fists in my face, shouting out: ”I could tear your eyes out, you vagabones.” ”Why, what is the matter?” I asked in great surprise. ”You've bin and killed her, that's all,” said the woman, foaming at the mouth. She then told me that her daughter, almost immediately on reaching home after having left the studio in the company of my servant, had fallen down in a swoon. A succession of swoons followed. She never rallied. She was then lying dead in Primrose Court.'

'And what then? Answer me quickly.'

'She asked me to give her money that her daughter might be buried respectably and not by the parish. I told her it was all hallucination about the girl being her daughter, and that a spiritual body could not be buried, but she seemed so genuinely distressed that I gave her the money.'

'Spiritual body! Hallucination!' I said. 'I heard her voice in the London streets, and she was seen selling baskets at the theatre door.

Where shall I find the house?'

'It is of no use for you to go there,' he said.

'Nothing shall prevent my going at once.' A feverish yearning had come upon me to see the body.

'If you _will_ go,' said Wilderspin, 'it is No. 2 Primrose Court, Great Queen Street, Holborn.

II

I hurried out of the house, and soon finding a cab I drove to Great Queen Street.

My soul had pa.s.sed now into another torture-chamber. It was being torn between two warring, maddening forces--the pa.s.sionate desire to see her body, and the shrinking dread of undergoing the ordeal. At one moment I felt--as palpably as I felt it, on the betrothal night--her slim figure, soft as a twine of flowers in my arms: at the next I was clasping a corpse--a rigid corpse in rags. And yet I can scarcely say that I had any thoughts. At Great Queen Street I dismissed the cab, and had some little difficulty in finding Primrose Court, a miserable narrow alley. I knocked at a door which, even in that light, I could see was a peculiarly wretched one. After a considerable delay the door was opened and a face peered out--the face of the woman whom I had seen in Cyril's studio. She did not at first seem to recognise me. She was evidently far gone in liquor, and looked at me, murmuring, 'You're one o' the cussed body-s.n.a.t.c.hers; I know you: you belong to the Rose Alley ”Forty Thieves.” You'll swing--every man Jack o' ye'll swing yet, mind if you don't.'

At the sight of the squalid house in which Winifred had lived and died I pa.s.sed into a new world of horror. Dead matter had become conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the walls,--it was these which seemed to have life--a terrible life--and to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the triumph of evil over good. I knew that the woman was still speaking, but for a time I heard no sound--my senses could receive no impressions save from the sinister eloquence of the dead and yet living matter around me. Not an object there that did not seem charged with the wicked message of the heartless Fates.

At length, and as I stood upon the doorstep, a trembling, a mighty expectance, seized me like an ague-fit; and I heard myself saying, 'I am come to see the body, Mrs. Gudgeon.' Then I saw her peer, blinking, into my face, as she said,