Waynflete

“I want you to come with me to look at the picture.”

“I’ll come,” she said, and they went slowly upstairs, and along the passage to the little octagon-room, flooded with autumn sunlight, and stood together in front of the picture.

“How could I think it was like you?” she said.

Guy smiled.

“You know,” he said. “I think you know all. I owe you my very soul, and for that which you have done, no words are holy enough.”

“It was not I!” she murmured.

“It was with you, and through you. God knows I could not have done without one help that came to me, Cuthbert Staunton – the hard work at the mill – even poor old Rawdie – I have been helped so much! And now, Florella, my body as well as my soul is free. I think that I shall never be a slave again. If my health holds out, if I can do man’s work in the world yet – when I have tested myself – will you let me come to you by-and-by? And, oh, Florella, my angel, my darling, will you be afraid to share my life then? Is it only pity you have for me? or is it – Can you love me, as well as help me?”

“A great deal more” said Florella, with half a sob. She stood for a moment, facing him with shining eyes. “I want you to take all myself – all there is of me,” she said, with a ring in her voice. “If – if that should come again to you, it shall get through my soul first.”

She hid her face on his breast; he held her in his arms, and, in the transfiguring sunlight, the sad eyes of the picture above their heads seemed at last to smile.

When there is a Prologue to a story, it should have an Epilogue as well. Should this take the sound of wedding-bells, when Flete Dale smiled in the sunlight, when the murky woods were cut away, and the dreary noise of the restless horseman was heard no more, when friends filled the old house with rejoicing, and the good days of Waynflete were come?

That would bring the story to a happy pause. But surely the true end of Guy Waynflete’s story, of the battle which every soul that is born into the world must fight, but which he waged under such strange conditions, is not here, but in that unseen world, where the souls of the old Waynfletes had gone before him, where the real issues of the battle are decided, where the real story began.

There only, where the souls of the wicked, as well as of the righteous, are in the hand of God, can be gathered the fruits of Guy’s victory.

The Epilogue of the story of Waynflete, as of all other stories, is elsewhere – is out of sight.

The End.