Part 64 (2/2)

'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 s.h.i.+ning 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--'

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