With a heavy sigh she turned away, and sat down in the rear room, near the arch, where an easel now stood, containing a large, unfinished picture; and, taking her ivory palette and brushes, she began to retouch the violet robe of one of the figures.
Dr. Grey had seen more beautiful women among the gilded pillars and frescoes of palaces, and amid the olives and vineyards of Parthenope; but in Mrs. Gerome he found a fascinating mystery that baffled analysis and riveted his attention. Neither young nor old, she had crowned herself with the glories of both seasons, and seemed some sweet, dewy spring, wrapped in the snows and frozen in the icy garb of winter.
He had expected to meet a middle-aged person, habited in widow’s weeds, and meek from the severe scourging of a recent and terrible bereavement; but that anomalous white face and proud, queenly form were unlike all other flesh that his keen eyes had hitherto scanned; and he regarded her as curiously as he would have examined some abnormal-looking 144 specimen of nerves and muscles laid upon the marble slab of a dissecting-table.
Recollecting suddenly that, if he did not present himself, the wagon would arrive before he had accomplished the object of his visit, he drew a card from his pocket, and, stepping over the low sill of the oriel window, advanced to the arch.
The mistress of the house sat with her back turned towards him, and was apparently absorbed in putting purple shadows into the folds of a mantle that hung from the shoulders of a kneeling figure on the canvas.
Face-downward on an ottoman near, lay a beautiful copy of Owen Meredith’s poems; and, after a few seconds, she paused, brush in hand, and, taking up the book, slowly read aloud—glancing, as she did so, from page to picture,—
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... “‘Then I could perceive
A glory pouring through an open door, And in the light five women. I believe They wore white vestments, all of them. They were Quite calm; and each still face unearthly fair, Unearthly quiet. So like statues all, Waiting they stood without that lighted hall; And in their hands, like a blue star, they held Each one a silver lamp.’” |
Standing immediately behind her, Dr. Grey saw that she had seized the weird “Vision of Virgins,” and was putting into pigment that solemn phantasm of the poet’s imagination where five radiant women were passing to their reward,—and five wailing over flickering, dying lamps, were huddled helplessly and hopelessly under a black and starless midnight sky. Although unfinished, there was marvellous power in the picture, and the sickly gleam from the expiring wicks made the surrounding gloom more supernatural, like the deep shadows skulking behind the lurid glare in some old Flemish painting.
He saw also that she had followed the general outline of the poem; but one of the faces was so supreme in its mute anguish that he thought of Reni’s “Cenci,” and of a wan “Alcestis,” and a desperate “Cassandra,” he had seen at 145 Rome; and, in comparison, the description of the poet seemed almost vapid,—
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... “One as still as death
Hollowed her hands about her lamp, for fear Some motion of the midnight, or her breath, Should fan out the last flicker. Rosy clear The light oozed through her fingers o’er her face. There was a ruined beauty hovering there Over deep pain, and dashed with lurid grace A waning bloom.” |