第91章

JANE LOOKS INTO LOVE'S MIRROR

Behind the yellow screen, Jane found a great confusion of canvases, and unmistakable evidence of the blind hands which had groped about in a vain search, and then made fruitless endeavours to sort and rearrange.Very tenderly, Jane picked up each canvas from the fallen heap; turning it the right way up, and standing it with its face to the wall.Beautiful work, was there; some of it finished; some, incomplete.One or two faces she knew, looked out at her in their pictured loveliness.But the canvases she sought were not there.

She straightened herself, and looked around.In a further corner, partly concealed by a Cairo screen, stood another pile.Jane went to them.

Almost immediately she found the two she wanted; larger than the rest, and distinguishable at a glance by the soft black gown of the central figure.

Without giving them more than a passing look, she carried them over to the western window, and placed them in a good light.Then she drew up the chair in which she had been sitting; took the little brass bear in her left hand, as a talisman to help her through what lay before her; turned the second picture with its face to the easel; and sat down to the quiet contemplation of the first.

The noble figure of a woman, nobly painted, was the first impression which leapt from eye to brain.Yes, nobility came first, in stately pose, in uplifted brow, in breadth of dignity.Then--as you marked the grandly massive figure, too well-proportioned to be cumbersome, but large and full, and amply developed; the length of limb; the firmly planted feet; the large capable hands,--you realised the second impression conveyed by the picture, to be strength;--strength to do; strength to be; strength to continue.Then you looked into the face.And there you were confronted with a great surprise.The third thought expressed by the picture was Love--love, of the highest, holiest, most ideal, kind; yet, withal, of the most tenderly human order; and you found it in that face.

It was a large face, well proportioned to the figure.It had no pretensions whatever to ordinary beauty.The features were good;there was not an ugly line about them; and yet, each one just missed the beautiful; and the general effect was of a good-looking plainness; unadorned, unconcealed, and unashamed.But the longer you looked, the more desirable grew the face; the less you noticed its negations; the more you admired its honesty, its purity, its immense strength of purpose; its noble simplicity.You took in all these outward details; you looked away for a moment, to consider them; you looked back to verify them; and then the miracle happened.Into the face had stolen the "light that never was on sea or land." It shone from the quiet grey eyes,--as, over the head of the man who knelt before her, they looked out of the picture--with an expression of the sublime surrender of a woman's whole soul to an emotion which, though it sways and masters her, yet gives her the power to be more truly herself than ever before.The startled joy in them; the marvel at a mystery not yet understood; the passionate tenderness; and yet the almost divine compassion for the unrestrained violence of feeling, which had flung the man to his knees, and driven him to the haven of her breast; the yearning to soothe, and give, and content;--all these were blended into a look of such exquisite sweetness, that it brought tears to the eyes of the beholder.

The woman was seated on a broad marble parapet.She looked straight before her.Her knees came well forward, and the long curve of the train of her black gown filled the foreground on the right.On the left, slightly to one side of her, knelt a man, a tall slight figure in evening dress, his arms thrown forward around her waist; his face completely hidden in the soft lace at her bosom; only the back of his sleek dark head, visible.And yet the whole figure denoted a passion of tense emotion.She had gathered him to her with what you knew must have been an exquisite gesture, combining the utter self-surrender of the woman, with the tender throb of maternal solicitude; and now her hands were clasped behind his head, holding him closely to her.Not a word was being spoken.The hidden face was obviously silent; and her firm lips above his dark head were folded in a line of calm self-control; though about them hovered the dawning of a smile of bliss ineffable.

A crimson rambler rose climbing some woodwork faintly indicated on the left, and hanging in a glowing mass from the top left-hand corner, supplied the only vivid colour in the picture.

But, from taking in these minor details, the eye returned to that calm tender face, alight with love; to those strong capable hands, now learning for the first time to put forth the protective passion of a woman's tenderness; and the mind whispered the only possible name for that picture: The Wife.

Jane gazed at it long, in silence.Had Garth's little bear been anything less solid than Early Victorian brass; it must have bent and broken under the strong pressure of those clenched hands.