She sat in the garden, this blazing July afternoon, waiting for him, her heart beating with the love of years ago, and the shrinking fear in her eyes. Presently she heard the sound of wheels, and she saw the open fly of "The Red Lion"—Dunsfield's chief hotel—crawling up the drive, and in it was a man wearing a straw hat. She fluttered a timid handkerchief, but the man, not looking in her direction, did not respond. She crossed the lawn to the terrace, feeling hurt, and entered the drawing-room by the open French window and stood there, her back to the light. Soon he was announced. She went forward to meet him.
"My dear Roger, welcome home."
He laughed and shook her hand in a hearty grip.
"It's you, Winifred. How good! Are you glad to see me back?"
"Very glad."
"And I."
"Do you find things changed?"
"Nothing," he declared with a smile; "the house is just the same." He ran his fingers over the corner of a Louis XVI table near which he was standing. "I remember this table, in this exact spot, twenty years ago."
"And you have scarcely altered. I should have known you anywhere."
"I should just hope so," said he.
She realised, with a queer little pang, that time had improved the appearance of the man of forty-five. He was tall, strong, erect; few accusing lines marked his clean-shaven, florid, clear-cut face; in his curly brown hair she could not detect a touch of grey. He had a new air of mastery and success which expressed itself in the corners of his firm lips and the steady, humorous gleam in his eyes.
"You must be tired after your hot train journey," she said.
He laughed again. "Tired? After a couple of hours? Now, if it had been a couple of days, as we are accustomed to on the other side—— But go on talking, just to let me keep on hearing your voice. It's yours—I could have recognised it over a long-distance telephone—and it's English. You've no idea how delicious it is. And the smell of the room"—he drew in a deep breath—"is you and the English country. I tell you, it's good to be back!"
She flushed, his pleasure was so sincere, and she smiled.
"But why should we stand? Let me take your hat and stick."
"Why shouldn't we sit in the garden—after my hot and tiring journey?" They both laughed. "Is the old wistaria still there, at the end of the terrace?"
She turned her face away. "Yes, still there. Do you remember it?" she asked in a low voice.
"Do you think I could forget it? I remember every turn of the house."
"Let us go outside, then."
She led the way, and he followed, to the trellis arbour, a few steps from the drawing-room door. The long lilac blooms had gone with the spring, but the luxuriant summer leafage cast a grateful shade. Roger Orme sat in a wicker chair and fanned himself with his straw hat.
"Delightful!" he said. "And I smell stocks! It does carry me back. I wonder if I have been away at all."
"I'm afraid you have," said Winifred—"for twenty years."
"Well, I'm not going away again. I've had my share of work. And what's the good of work just to make money? I've made enough. I sold out before I left."
"But in your letters you always said you liked America."
"So I did. It's the only country in the world for the young and eager. If I had been born there, I should have no use for Dunsfield. But a man born and bred among old, sleepy things has the nostalgia of old, sleepy things in his blood. Now tell me about the sleepy old things. I want to hear."
"I think I have written to you about everything that ever happened in Dunsfield," she said.
But still there were gaps to be bridged in the tale of births and marriages and deaths, the main chronicles of the neighbourhood. He had a surprising memory, and plucked obscure creatures from the past whom even Winifred had forgotten.
"It's almost miraculous how you remember."
"It's a faculty I've had to cultivate," said he.
They talked about his immediate plans. He was going to put The Lodge into thorough repair, bring everything up-to-date, lay in electric light and a central heating installation, fix bathrooms wherever bathrooms would go, and find a place somewhere for a billiard-room. His surveyor had already made his report, and was to meet him at the house the following morning. As for decorations, curtaining, carpeting, and such-like æsthetic aspects, he was counting on Winifred's assistance. He thought that blues and browns would harmonise with the oak-panelling in the dining-room. Until the house was ready, his headquarters would be "The Red Lion."
"You see, I'm going to begin right now," said he.
She admired his vitality, his certainty of accomplishment. The Hall was still lit by lamps and candles; and although, on her return from a visit, she had often deplored the absence of electric light, she had shrunk from the strain and worry of an innovation. And here was Roger turning the whole house inside out more cheerfully than she would turn out a drawer.
"You'll help me, won't you?" he asked. "I want a home with a touch of the woman in it; I've lived so long in masculine stiffness."
"You know that I should love to do anything I could, Roger," she replied happily.
He remarked again that it was good to be back. No more letters—they were unsatisfactory, after all. He hoped she had not resented his business man's habit of typewriting. This was in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-two, and, save for Roger's letters, typewritten documents came as seldom as judgment summonses to Duns Hall.
"We go ahead in America," said he.
"'The old order changeth, yielding place to new.' I accept it," she said with a smile.
"What I've longed for in Dunsfield," he said, "is the old order that doesn't change. I don't believe anything has changed."
She plucked up her courage. Now she would challenge him—get it over at once. She would watch his lips as he answered.
"I'm afraid I must have changed, Roger."
"In what way?"
"I am no longer twenty."
"Your voice is just the same."
Shocked, she put up her delicate hands. "Don't—it hurts!"
"What?"
"You needn't have put it that way—you might have told a polite lie."
He rose, turned aside, holding the back of the wicker chair.
"I've got something to tell you," he said abruptly. "You would have to find out soon, so you may as well know now. But don't be alarmed or concerned. I can't see your face."
"What do you mean?"
"I've been stone blind for fifteen years."
"Blind?"
She sat for some moments paralysed. It was inconceivable. This man was so strong, so alive, so masterful, with the bright face and keen, humorous eyes—and blind! A trivial undercurrent of thought ran subconsciously beneath her horror. She had wondered why he had insisted on sounds and scents, why he had kept his stick in his hand, why he had touched things—tables, window jambs, chairs—now she knew. Roger went on talking, and she heard him in a dream. He had not informed her when he was stricken, because he had wished to spare her unnecessary anxiety. Also, he was proud, perhaps hard, and resented sympathy. He had made up his mind to win through in spite of his affliction. For some years it had been the absorbing passion of his life. He had won through like many another, and, as the irreparable detachment of the retina had not disfigured his eyes, it was his joy to go through the world like a seeing man, hiding his blindness from the casual observer. By dictated letter he could never have made her understand how trifling a matter it was.
"And I've deceived even you!" he laughed.
Tears had been rolling down her cheeks. At his laugh she gave way. An answering choke, hysterical, filled her throat, and she burst into a fit of sobbing. He laid his hand tenderly on her head.
"My dear, don't. I am the happiest man alive. And, as for eyes, I'm rich enough to buy a hundred pairs. I'm a perfect Argus!"
But Winifred Goode wept uncontrollably. There was deep pity for him in her heart, but—never to be revealed to mortal—there was also horrible, terrifying joy. She gripped her hands and sobbed frantically to keep herself from laughter. A woman's sense of humour is often cruel, only to be awakened by tragic incongruities. She had passed through her month's agony and shame for a blind man.
At last she mastered herself. "Forgive me, dear Roger. It was a dreadful shock. Blindness has always been to me too awful for thought—like being buried alive."
"Not a bit of it," he said cheerily. "I've run a successful business in the dark—real estate—buying and selling and developing land, you know—a thing which requires a man to keep a sharp look-out, and which he couldn't do if he were buried alive. It's a confounded nuisance, I admit, but so is gout. Not half as irritating as the position of a man I once knew who had both hands cut off."
She shivered. "That's horrible."
"It is," said he, "but blindness isn't."
The maid appeared with the tea-tray, which she put on a rustic table. It was then that Winifred noticed the little proud awkwardness of the blind man. There was pathos in his insistent disregard of his affliction. The imperfectly cut lower half of a watercress sandwich fell on his coat and stayed there. She longed to pick it off, but did not dare, for fear of hurting him. He began to talk again of the house—the scheme of decoration.
"Oh, it all seems so sad!" she cried.
"What?"
"You'll not be able to see the beautiful things."
"Good Heavens," he retorted, "do you think I am quite devoid of imagination? And do you suppose no one will enter the house but myself?"
"I never thought of that," she admitted.
"As for the interior, I've got the plan in my head, and could walk about it now blindfold, only that's unnecessary; and when it's all fixed up, I'll have a ground model made of every room, showing every piece of furniture, so that, when I get in, I'll know the size, shape, colour, quality of every blessed thing in the house. You see if I don't."
"These gifts are a merciful dispensation of Providence."
"Maybe," said he drily. "Only they were about the size of bacteria when I started, and it took me years of incessant toil to develop them."
He asked to be shown around the garden. She took him up the gravelled walks beside her gay borders and her roses, telling him the names and varieties of the flowers. Once he stopped and frowned.
"I've lost my bearings. We ought to be passing under the shade of the old walnut tree."
"You are quite right," she said, marvelling at his accuracy. "It stood a few steps back, but it was blown clean down three years ago. It had been dead for a long time."
He chuckled as he strolled on. "There's nothing makes me so mad as to be mistaken."
Some time later, on their return to the terrace, he held out his hand.
"But you'll stay for dinner, Roger," she exclaimed. "I can't bear to think of you spending your first evening at home in that awful 'Red Lion.'"
"That's very dear of you, Winnie," he said, evidently touched by the softness in her voice. "I'll dine with pleasure, but I must get off some letters first. I'll come back. You've no objection to my bringing my man with me?"
"Why, of course not." She laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Oh, Roger, dear, I wish I could tell you how sorry I am, how my heart aches for you!"
"Don't worry," he said—"don't worry a little bit, and, if you really want to help me, never let me feel that you notice I'm blind. Forget it, as I do."
"I'll try," she said.
"That's right." He held her hand for a second or two, kissed it, and dropped it, abruptly. "God bless you!" said he. "It's good to be with you again."
When he was gone, Winifred Goode returned to her seat by the clipped yew and cried a little, after the manner of women. And, after the manner of women, she dreamed dreams oblivious of the flight of time till her maid came out and hurried her indoors.
She dressed with elaborate care, in her best and costliest, and wore more jewels than she would have done had her guest been of normal sight, feeling oddly shaken by the thought of his intense imaginative vision. In trying to fasten the diamond clasp of a velvet band round her neck, her fingers trembled so much that the maid came to her assistance. Her mind was in a whirl. Roger had left her a headstrong, dissatisfied boy. He had returned, the romantic figure of a conqueror, all the more romantic and conquering by reason of his triumph over the powers of darkness. In his deep affection she knew her place was secure. The few hours she had passed with him had shown her that he was a man trained in the significance not only of words, but also of his attitude towards individual men and women. He would not have said "God bless you!" unless he meant it. She appreciated to the full his masculine strength; she took to her heart his masculine tenderness; she had a woman's pity for his affliction; she felt unregenerate exultancy at the undetected crime of lost beauty, and yet she feared him on account of the vanished sense. She loved him with a passionate recrudescence of girlish sentiment; but the very thing that might have, that ought to have, that she felt it indecent not to have, inflamed all her woman's soul and thrown her reckless into his arms, raised between them an impalpable barrier against which she dreaded lest she might be dashed and bruised.
At dinner this feeling was intensified. Roger made little or no allusion to his blindness; he talked with the ease of the cultivated man of the world. He had humour, gaiety, charm. As a mere companion, she had rarely met, during her long seclusion, a man so instinctive in sympathy, so quick in diverting talk into a channel of interest. In a few flashing yet subtle questions, he learned what she wore. The diamond clasp to the black velvet band he recognized as having been her mother's. He complimented her delicately on her appearance, as though he saw her clearly, in the adorable twilight beauty that was really hers. There were moments when it seemed impossible that he should be blind. But behind his chair, silent, impassive, arresting, freezing, hovered his Chinese body-servant, capped, pig-tailed, loosely clad in white, a creature as unreal in Dunsfield as gnome or merman, who, with the unobtrusiveness of a shadow from another world, served, in the mechanics of the meal, as an accepted, disregarded, and unnoticed pair of eyes for his master. The noble Tudor dining-room, with its great carved oak chimney-piece, its stately gilt-framed portraits, its Jacobean sideboards and presses, all in the gloom of the spent illumination of the candles on the daintily-set table, familiar to her from her earliest childhood, part of her conception of the cosmos, part of her very self, seemed metamorphosed into the unreal, the phantasmagoric, by the presence of this white-clad, exotic figure—not a man, but an eerie embodiment of the sense of sight.
Her reason told her that the Chinese servant was but an ordinary serving-man, performing minutely specified duties for a generous wage. But the duties were performed magically, like conjuror's tricks. It was practically impossible to say who cut up Roger's meat, who helped him to salt or to vegetables, who guided his hand unerringly to the wine glass. So abnormally exquisite was the co-ordination between the two, that Roger seemed to have the man under mesmeric control. The idea bordered on the monstrous. Winifred shivered through the dinner, in spite of Roger's bright talk, and gratefully welcomed the change of the drawing-room, whither the white-vestured automaton did not follow.
"Will you do me a favour, Winnie?" he asked during the evening. "Meet me at The Lodge tomorrow at eleven, and help me interview these building people. Then you can have a finger in the pie from the very start."
She said somewhat tremulously: "Why do you want me to have a finger in the pie?"
"Good Heavens," he cried, "aren't you the only human creature in this country I care a straw about?"
"Is that true, Roger?"
"Sure," said he. After a little span of silence he laughed. "People on this side don't say 'sure.' That's sheer American."
"I like it," said Winifred.
When he parted from her, he again kissed her hand and again said: "God bless you!" She accompanied him to the hall, where the Chinaman, ghostly in the dimness, was awaiting him with hat and coat. Suddenly she felt that she abhorred the Chinaman.
That night she slept but little, striving to analyse her feelings. Of one fact only did the dawn bring certainty—that, for all her love of him, for all his charm, for all his tenderness towards her, during dinner she had feared him horribly.
She saw him the next morning in a new and yet oddly familiar phase. He was attended by his secretary, a pallid man with a pencil, note-book, and documents, for ever at his elbow, ghostly, automatic, during their wanderings with the surveyor through the bare and desolate old house.
She saw the master of men at work, accurate in every detail of a comprehensive scheme, abrupt, imperious, denying difficulties with harsh impatience. He leaned over his secretary and pointed to portions of the report just as though he could read them, and ordered their modification.
"Mr. Withers," he said once to the surveyor, who was raising objections, "I always get what I want because I make dead sure that what I want is attainable. I'm not an idealist. If I say a thing is to be done, it has got to be done, and it's up to you or to someone else to do it."
They went through the house from furnace to garret, the pallid secretary ever at Roger's elbow, ever rendering him imperceptible services, ever identifying himself with the sightless man, mysteriously following his thoughts, co-ordinating his individuality with that of his master. He was less a man than a trained faculty, like the Chinese servant. And again Winifred shivered and felt afraid.
More and more during the weeks that followed, did she realize the iron will and irresistible force of the man she loved. He seemed to lay a relentless grip on all those with whom he came in contact and compel them to the expression of himself. Only towards her was he gentle and considerate. Many times she accompanied him to London to the great shops, the self-effacing secretary shadow-like at his elbow, and discussed with him colours and materials, and he listened to her with affectionate deference. She often noticed that the secretary translated into other terms her description of things. This irritated her, and once she suggested leaving the secretary behind. Surely, she urged, she could do all that was necessary. He shook his head.
"No, my dear," he said very kindly. "Jukes sees for me. I shouldn't like you to see for me in the way Jukes does."
She was the only person from whom he would take advice or suggestion, and she rendered him great service in the tasteful equipment of the house and in the engagement of a staff of servants. So free a hand did he allow her in certain directions, so obviously and deliberately did he withdraw from her sphere of operations, that she was puzzled. It was not until later, when she knew him better, that the picture vaguely occurred to her of him caressing her tenderly with one hand, and holding the rest of the world by the throat with the other.
On the day when he took up his residence in the new home, they walked together through the rooms. In high spirits, boyishly elated, he gave her an exhibition of his marvellous gifts of memory, minutely describing each bit of furniture and its position in every room, the colour scheme, the texture of curtains, the pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks on mantlepieces and tables. And when he had done, he put his arm round her shoulders.
"But for you, Winnie," said he, "this would be the dreariest possible kind of place; but the spirit of you pervades it and makes it a fragrant paradise."
The words and tone were lover-like, and so was his clasp. She felt very near him, very happy, and her heart throbbed quickly. She was ready to give her life to him.
"You are making me a proud woman," she murmured.
He patted her shoulder and laughed as he released her.
"I only say what's true, my dear," he replied, and then abruptly skipped from sentiment to practical talk.
Winifred had a touch of dismay and disappointment. Tears started, which she wiped away furtively. She had made up her mind to accept him, in spite of Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes, if he should make her a proposal of marriage. She had been certain that the moment had come. But he made no proposal.
She waited. She waited a long time. In the meanwhile, she continued to be Roger's intimate friend and eagerly-sought companion. One day his highly-paid and efficient housekeeper came to consult her. The woman desired to give notice. Her place was too difficult. She could scarcely believe the master was blind. He saw too much, he demanded too much. She could say nothing explicit, save that she was frightened. She wept, after the nature of upset housekeepers. Winifred soothed her and advised her not to throw up so lucrative a post, and, as soon as she had an opportunity, she spoke to Roger. He laughed his usual careless laugh.
"They all begin that way with me, but after a while they're broken in. You did quite right to tell Mrs. Strode to stay."
And after a few months Winifred saw a change in Mrs. Strode, and not only in Mrs. Strode, but in all the servants whom she had engaged. They worked the household like parts of a flawless machine. They grew to be imperceptible, shadowy, automatic, like Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes.
*****
The months passed and melted into years. Roger Orme became a great personage in the neighbourhood. He interested himself in local affairs, served on the urban district council and on boards innumerable. They made him Mayor of Dunsfield. He subscribed largely to charities and entertained on a sumptuous scale. He ruled the little world, setting a ruthless heel on proud necks and making the humble his instruments. Mr. Jukes died, and other secretaries came, and those who were not instantly dismissed grew to be like Mr. Jukes. In the course of time Roger entered Parliament as member for the division. He became a force in politics, in public affairs. In the appointment of Royal Commissions, committees of inquiry, his name was the first to occur to ministers, and he was invariably respected, dreaded, and hated by his colleagues.
"Why do you work so hard, Roger?" Winifred would ask.
He would say, with one of his laughs: "Because there's a dynamo in me that I can't stop."
And all these years Miss Winifred Goode stayed at Duns Hall, leading her secluded, lavender-scented life when Roger was in London, and playing hostess for him, with diffident graciousness, when he entertained at The Lodge. His attitude towards her never varied, his need of her never lessened.
He never asked her to be his wife. At first she wondered, pined a little, and then, like a brave, proud woman, put the matter behind her. But she knew that she counted for much in his strange existence, and the knowledge comforted her. And as the years went on, and all the lingering shreds of youth left her, and she grew gracefully into the old lady, she came to regard her association with him as a spiritual marriage.
Then, after twenty years, the dynamo wore out the fragile tenement of flesh. Roger Orme, at sixty-five, broke down and lay on his death-bed. One day he sent for Miss Winifred Goode.
She entered the sick-room, a woman of sixty, white-haired, wrinkled, with only the beauty of a serene step across the threshold of old age. He bade the nurse leave them alone, and put out his hand and held hers as she sat beside the bed.
"What kind of a day is it, Winnie?"
"As if you didn't know! You've been told, I'm sure, twenty times."
"What does it matter what other people say? I want to get at the day through you."
"It's bright and sunny—a perfect day of early summer."
"What things are out?"
"The may and the laburnum and the lilac——"
"And the wistaria?"
"Yes, the wistaria."
"It's forty years ago, dear, and your voice is just the same. And to me you have always been the same. I can see you as you sit there, with your dear, sensitive face, the creamy cheek, in which the blood comes and goes—oh, Heavens, so different from the blowsy, hard-featured girls nowadays, who could not blush if—well—well——I know 'em, although I'm blind—I'm Argus, you know, dear. Yes, I can see you, with your soft, brown eyes and pale brown hair waved over your pure brow. There is a fascinating little kink on the left-hand side. Let me feel it."
She drew her head away, frightened. Then suddenly she remembered, with a pang of thankfulness, that the queer little kink had defied the years, though the pale brown hair was white. She guided his hand and he felt the kink, and he laughed in his old, exultant way.
"Don't you think I'm a miracle, Winnie?"
"You're the most wonderful man living," she said.
"I shan't be living long. No, my dear, don't talk platitudes. I know. I'm busted. And I'm glad I'm going before I begin to dodder. A seeing dodderer is bad enough, but a blind dodderer's only fit for the grave. I've lived my life. I've proved to this stupendous clot of ignorance that is humanity that a blind man can guide them wherever he likes. You know I refused a knighthood. Any tradesman can buy a knighthood—the only knighthoods that count are those that are given to artists and writers and men of science—and, if I could live, I'd raise hell over the matter, and make a differentiation in the titles of honour between the great man and the rascally cheesemonger——"
"My dear," said Miss Winifred Goode, "don't get so excited."
"I'm only saying, Winnie, that I refused a knighthood. But—what I haven't told you, what I'm supposed to keep a dead secret—if I could live a few weeks longer, and I shan't, I should be a Privy Councillor—a thing worth being. I've had the official intimation—a thing that can't be bought. Heavens, if I were a younger man, and there were the life in me, I should be the Prime Minister of this country—the first great blind ruler that ever was in the world. Think of it! But I don't want anything now. I'm done. I'm glad. The whole caboodle is but leather and prunella. There is only one thing in the world that is of any importance."
"What is that, dear?" she asked quite innocently, accustomed to, but never familiar with, his vehement paradox.
"Love," said he.
He gripped her hand hard. There passed a few seconds of tense silence.
"Winnie, dear," he said at last, "will you kiss me?"
She bent forward, and he put his arm round her neck and drew her to him. They kissed each other on the lips.
"It's forty years since I kissed you, dear—that day under the wistaria. And, now I'm dying, I can tell you. I've loved you all the time, Winnie. I'm a tough nut, as you know, and whatever I do I do intensely. I've loved you intensely, furiously."
She turned her head away, unable to bear the living look in the sightless eyes.
"Why did you never tell me?" she asked in a low voice.
"Would you have married me?"
"You know I would, Roger."
"At first I vowed I would say nothing," he said, after a pause, "until I had a fit home to offer you. Then the blindness came, and I vowed I wouldn't speak until I had conquered the helplessness of my affliction. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but when you came home a conqueror——"
"I loved you too much to marry you. You were far too dear and precious to come into the intimacy of my life. Haven't you seen what happened to all those who did?" He raised his old knotted hands, clenched tightly. "I squeezed them dry. I couldn't help it. My blindness made me a coward. It has been hell. The darkness never ceased to frighten me. I lied when I said it didn't matter. I stretched out my hands like tentacles and gripped everyone within reach in a kind of madness of self-preservation. I made them give up their souls and senses to me. It was some ghastly hypnotic power I seemed to have. When I had got them, they lost volition, individuality. They were about as much living creatures to me as my arm or my foot. Don't you see?"
The white-haired woman looked at the old face working passionately, and she felt once more the deadly fear of him.
"But with me it would have been different," she faltered. "You say you loved me."
"That's the devil of it, my sweet, beautiful Winnie—it wouldn't have been different. I should have squeezed you, too, reduced you to the helpless thing that did my bidding, sucked your life's blood from you. I couldn't have resisted. So I kept you away. Have I ever asked you to use your eyes for me?"
Her memory travelled down the years, and she was amazed. She remembered Mr. Jukes at the great shops and many similar incidents that had puzzled her.
"No," she said.
There was a short silence. The muscles of his face relaxed, and the old, sweet smile came over it. He reached again for her hand and caressed it tenderly.
"By putting you out of my life, I kept you, dear. I kept you as the one beautiful human thing I had. Every hour of happiness I have had for the last twenty years has come through you."
She said tearfully: "You have been very good to me, Roger."
"It's a queer mix-up, isn't it?" he said, after a pause. "Most people would say that I've ruined your life. If it hadn't been for me, you might have married."
"No, dear," she replied. "I've had a very full and happy life."
The nurse came into the room to signify the end of the visit, and found them hand in hand like lovers. He laughed.
"Nurse," said he, "you see a dying but a jolly happy old man!"
Two days afterwards Roger Orme died. On the afternoon of the funeral, Miss Winifred Goode sat in the old garden in the shade of the clipped yew, and looked at the house in which she had been born, and in which she had passed her sixty years of life, and at the old wistaria beneath which he had kissed her forty years ago. She smiled and murmured aloud:
"No, I would not have had a single thing different."
"How are you feeling now?"
Words could not express the music of these six liquid syllables that fell through the stillness and the blackness on my ears.
"Not very bright, I'm afraid, nurse," said I.
Think of something to do with streams and moonlight, and you may have an idea of the mellow ripple of the laugh I heard.
"I'm not the nurse. Can't you tell the difference? I'm Miss Deane—Dr. Deane's daughter."
"Deane?" I echoed.
"Don't you know where you are?"
"Every thing is still confused," said I.
I had an idea that they had carried me somewhere by train and put me into a bed, and that soft-fingered people had tended my eyes; but where I was I neither knew nor cared. Torture and blindness had been quite enough to occupy my mind.
"You are at Dr. Deane's house," said the voice, "and Dr. Deane is the twin brother of Mr. Deane, the great oculist of Grandchester, who was summoned to Shepton-Marling when you met with your accident. Perhaps you know you had a gun accident?"
"I suppose it was only that after all," said I, "but it felt like the disruption of the solar system."
"Are you still in great pain?" my unseen hostess asked sympathetically.
"Not since you have been in the room. I mean," I added, chilled by a span of silence, "I mean—I am just stating what happens to be a fact."
"Oh!" she said shortly. "Well, my uncle found that you couldn't be properly treated at your friend's little place at Shepton-Marling, so he brought you to Grandchester—and here you are."
"But I don't understand," said I, "why I should be a guest in your house."
"You are not a guest," she laughed. "You are here on the most sordid and commercial footing. Your friend—I forget his name——"
"Mobray," said I.
"Mr. Mobray settled it with my uncle. You see the house is large and father's practice small, as we keep a nursing home for my uncle's patients. Of course we have trained nurses."
"Are you one?" I asked.
"Not exactly. I do the housekeeping. But I can settle those uncomfortable pillows."
I felt her dexterous cool hands about my head and neck. For a moment or two my eyes ceased to ache, and I wished I could see her. In tendering my thanks, I expressed the wish. She laughed her delicious laugh.
"If you could see you wouldn't be here, and therefore you couldn't see me anyhow."
"Shall I ever see you?" I asked dismally.
"Why, of course! Don't you know that Henry Deane is one of the greatest oculists in England?"
We discussed my case and the miraculous skill of Henry Deane. Presently she left me, promising to return. The tones of her voice seemed to linger, as perfume would, in the darkness.
That was the beginning of it. It was love, not at first sight, but at first sound. Pain and anxiety stood like abashed goblins at the back of my mind. Valerie Deane's voice danced in front like a triumphant fairy. When she came and talked sick-room platitudes I had sooner listened to her than to the music of the spheres. At that early stage what she said mattered so little. I would have given rapturous heed to her reading of logarithmic tables. I asked her silly questions merely to elicit the witchery of her voice. When Melba sings, do you take count of the idiot words? You close eyes and intellect and just let the divine notes melt into your soul. And when you are lying on your back, blind and helpless, as I was, your soul is a very sponge for anything beautiful that can reach it. After a while she gave me glimpses of herself, sweet and womanly; and we drifted from commonplace into deeper things. She was the perfect companion. We discussed all topics, from chiffons to Schopenhauer. Like most women, she execrated Schopenhauer. She must have devoted much of her time to me; yet I ungratefully complained of the long intervals between her visits. But oh! those interminable idle hours of darkness, in which all the thoughts that had ever been thought were rethought over and over again until the mind became a worn-out rag-bag! Only those who have been through the valley of this shadow can know its desolation. Only they can understand the magic of the unbeheld Valerie Deane.
"What is the meaning of this?" she asked one morning. "Nurse says you are fretful and fractious."
"She insisted on soaping the soles of my feet and tickling me into torments, which made me fractious, and I'm dying to see your face, which makes me fretful."
"Since when have you been dying?" she asked.
"From the first moment I heard your voice saying, 'How are you feeling now?' It's irritating to have a friend and not in the least know what she is like. Besides," I added, "your voice is so beautiful that your face must be the same."
She laughed.
"Your face is like your laugh," I declared.
"If my face were my fortune I should come off badly," she said in a light tone. I think she was leaning over the foot-rail, and I longed for her nearer presence.
"Nurse has tied this bandage a little too tightly," I said mendaciously.
I heard her move, and in a moment her fingers were busy about my eyes. I put up my hand and touched them. She patted my hand away.
"Please don't be foolish," she remarked. "When you recover your sight and find what an exceedingly plain girl I am, you'll go away like the others, and never want to see me again."
"What others?" I exclaimed.
"Do you suppose you're the only patient I have had to manage?"
I loathed "the others" with a horrible detestation; but I said, after reflection:
"Tell me about yourself. I know you are called Valerie from Dr. Deane. How old are you?"
She pinned the bandage in front of my forehead.
"Oh, I'm young enough," she answered with a laugh. "Three-and-twenty. And I'm five-foot-four, and I haven't a bad figure. But I haven't any good looks at all, at all."
"Tell me," said I impatiently, "exactly how you do look. I must know."
"I have a sallow complexion. Not very good skin. And a low forehead."
"An excellent thing," said I.
"But my eyebrows and hair run in straight parallel lines, so it isn't," she retorted. "It is very ugly. I have thin black hair."
"Let me feel."
"Certainly not. And my eyes are a sort of watery china blue and much too small. And my nose isn't a bad nose altogether, but it's fleshy. One of those nondescript, unaristocratic noses that always looks as if it has got a cold. My mouth is large—I am looking at myself in the glass—my my teeth are white. Yes, they are nice and white. But they are large and protrude—you know the French caricature of an Englishwoman's teeth. Really, now I consider the question, I am the image of the Englishmeesin a French comic paper."
"I don't believe it," I declared.
"It is true. I know I have a pretty voice—but that is all. It deceives blind people. They think I must be pretty too, and when they see me—bon soir, la compagnie! And I've such a thin, miserable face, coming to the chin in a point, like a kite. There! Have you a clear idea of me now?"
"No," said I, "for I believe you are wilfully misrepresenting yourself. Besides, beauty does not depend upon features regular in themselves, but the way those features are put together."
"Oh, mine are arranged in an amiable sort of way. I don't look cross."
"You must look sweetness itself," said I.
She sighed and said meditatively:
"It is a great misfortune for a girl to be so desperately plain. The consciousness of it comes upon her like a cold shower-bath when she is out with other girls. Now there is my cousin——"
"Which cousin?"
"My Uncle Henry's daughter. Shall I tell you about her?"
"I am not in the least interested in your cousin," I replied.
She laughed, and the entrance of the nurse put an end to the conversation.
Now I must make a confession. I was grievously disappointed. Her detailed description of herself as a sallow, ill-featured young woman awoke me with a shock from my dreams of a radiant goddess. It arrested my infatuation in mid-course. My dismay was painful. I began to pity her for being so unattractive. For the next day or two even her beautiful voice failed in its seduction.
But soon a face began to dawn before me, elusive at first, and then gradually gaining in definition. At last the picture flashed upon my mental vision with sudden vividness, and it has never left me to this day. Its steadfastness convinced me of its accuracy. It was so real that I could see its expression vary, as she spoke, according to her mood. The plainness, almost ugliness, of the face repelled me. I thought ruefully of having dreamed of kisses from the lips that barely closed in front of the great white teeth. Yet, after a while, its higher qualities exercised a peculiar attraction. A brave, tender spirit shone through. An intellectual alertness redeemed the heavy features—the low ugly brow, the coarse nose, the large mouth; and as I lay thinking and picturing there was revealed in an illuminating flash the secret of the harmony between face and voice. Thenceforward Valerie Deane was invested with a beauty all her own. I loved the dear plain face as I loved the beautiful voice, and the touch of her fingers, and the tender, laughing womanliness, and all that went with the concept of Valerie Deane.
Had I possessed the daring of Young Lochinvar, I should, on several occasions, have declared my passion. But by temperament I am a diffident procrastinator. I habitually lose golden moments as some people habitually lose umbrellas. Alas! There is no Lost Property Office for golden moments!
Still I vow, although nothing definite was said, that when the unanticipated end drew near, our intercourse was arrant love-making.
All pain had gone from my eyes. I was up and dressed and permitted to grope my way about the blackness. To-morrow I was to have my first brief glimpse of things for three weeks, in the darkened room. I was in high spirits. Valerie, paying her morning visit, seemed depressed.
"But think of it!" I cried in pardonable egotism. "To-morrow I shall be able to see you. I've longed for it as much as for the sight of the blue sky."
"There isn't any blue sky," said Valerie. "It's an inverted tureen that has held pea-soup."
Her voice had all the melancholy notes of the woodwind in the unseen shepherd's lament in "Tristan und Isolde."
"I don't know how to tell you," she exclaimed tragically, after a pause. "I shan't be here to-morrow. It's a bitter disappointment. My aunt in Wales is dying. I have been telegraphed for, and I must go."
She sat on the end of the couch where I was lounging, and took my hands.
"It isn't my fault."
My spirits fell headlong.
"I would just as soon keep blind," said I blankly.
"I thought you would say that."
A tear dropped on my hand. I felt that it was brutal of her aunt to make Valerie cry. Why could she not postpone her demise to a more suitable opportunity? I murmured, however, a few decent words of condolence.
"Thank you, Mr. Winter," said Valerie. "I am fond of my aunt; but I had set my heart on your seeing me. And she may not die for weeks and weeks! She was dying for ever so long last year, and got round again."
I ventured an arm about her shoulders, and spoke consolingly. The day would come when our eyes would meet. I called her Valerie and bade her address me as Harold.
I have come to the conclusion that the man who strikes out a new line in love-making is a genius.
"If I don't hurry I shall miss my train," she sighed at last.
She rose; I felt her bend over me. Her hands closed on my cheeks, and a kiss fluttered on my lips. I heard the light swish of her skirts and the quick opening and shutting of the door, and she was gone.
Valerie's aunt, like King Charles II, was an unconscionable time a-dying. When a note from Valerie announced her return to Grandchester, I had already gone blue-spectacled away. For some time I was not allowed to read or write, and during this period of probation urgent affairs summoned me to Vienna. Such letters as I wrote to Valerie had to be of the most elementary nature. If you have a heart of any capacity worth troubling about, you cannot empty it on one side of a sheet of notepaper. For mine reams would have been inadequate. I also longed to empty it in her presence, my eyes meeting hers for the first time. Thus, ever haunted by the beloved plain face and the memorable voice, I remained inarticulate.
As soon as my business was so far adjusted that I could leave Vienna, I started on a flying visit, post-haste, to England. The morning after my arrival beheld me in a railway carriage at Euston waiting for the train to carry me to Grandchester. I had telegraphed to Valerie; also to Mr. Deane, the oculist, for an appointment which might give colour to my visit. I was alone in the compartment. My thoughts, far away from the long platform, leaped the four hours that separated me from Grandchester. For the thousandth time I pictured our meeting. I foreshadowed speeches of burning eloquence. I saw the homely features transfigured. I closed my eyes the better to retain the beatific vision. The train began to move. Suddenly the door was opened, a girlish figure sprang into the compartment, and a porter running by the side of the train, threw in a bag and a bundle of wraps, and slammed the door violently. The young lady stood with her back to me, panting for breath. The luggage lay on the floor. I stooped to pick up the bag; so did the young lady. Our hands met as I lifted it to the rack.
"Oh, please, don't trouble!" she cried in a voice whose familiarity made my heart beat.
I caught sight of her face, for the first time, and my heart beat faster than ever. It was her face—the face that had dawned upon my blindness—the face I had grown to worship. I looked at her, transfixed with wonder. She settled herself unconcerned in the farther corner of the carriage. I took the opposite seat and leaned forward.
"You are Miss Deane?" I asked tremulously.
She drew herself up, on the defensive.
"That is my name," she said.
"Valerie!" I cried in exultation.
She half rose. "What right have you to address me?"
"I am Harold Winter," said I, taken aback by her outraged demeanour. "Is it possible that you don't recognize me?"
"I have never seen or heard of you before in my life," replied the young lady tartly, "and I hope you won't force me to take measures to protect myself against your impertinence."
I lay back against the cushions, gasping with dismay.
"I beg your pardon," said I, recovering; "I am neither going to molest you nor be intentionally impertinent. But, as your face has never been out of my mind for three months, and as I am travelling straight through from Vienna to Grandchester to see it for the first time, I may be excused for addressing you."
She glanced hurriedly at the communication-cord and then back at me, as if I were a lunatic.
"You are Miss Deane of Grandchester—daughter of Dr. Deane?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Valerie Deane, then?"
"I have told you so."
"Then all I can say is," I cried, losing my temper at her stony heartlessness, "that your conduct in turning an honest, decent man into a besotted fool, and then disclaiming all knowledge of him, is outrageous. It's damnable. The language hasn't a word to express it!"
She stood with her hand on the cord.
"I shall really have to call the guard," she said, regarding me coolly.
"You are quite free to do so," I answered. "But if you do, I shall have to show your letters, in sheer self-defence. I am not going to spend the day in a police-station."
She let go the cord and sat down again.
"What on earth do you mean?" she asked.
I took a bundle of letters from my pocket and tossed one over to her. She glanced at it quickly, started, as if in great surprise, and handed it back with a smile.
"I did not write that."
I thought I had never seen her equal for unblushing impudence. Her mellow tones made the mockery appear all the more diabolical.
"If you didn't write it," said I, "I should like to know who did."
"My Cousin Valerie."
"I don't understand," said I.
"My name is Valerie Deane and my cousin's name is Valerie Deane, and this is her handwriting."
Bewildered, I passed my hand over my eyes. What feline trick was she playing? Her treachery was incomprehensible.
"I suppose it was your Cousin Valerie who tended me during my blindness at your father's house, who shed tears because she had to leave me, who——"
"Quite possibly," she interrupted. "Only it would have been at her father's house and not mine. She does tend blind people, my father's patients."
I looked at her open-mouthed. "In the name of Heaven," I exclaimed, "who are you, if not the daughter of Dr. Deane of Stavaton Street?"
"My father is Mr. Henry Deane, the oculist. You asked if I were the daughter of Dr. Deane. So many people give him the wrong title I didn't trouble to correct you."
It took me a few moments to recover. I had been making a pretty fool of myself. I stammered out pleas for a thousand pardons. I confused myself, and her, in explanation. Then I remembered that the fathers were twin brothers and bore a strong resemblance one to the other. What more natural than that the daughters should also be alike?
"What I can't understand," said Miss Deane, "is how you mistook me for my cousin."
"Your voices are identical."
"But our outer semblances——"
"I have never seen your cousin—she left me before I recovered my sight."
"How then could you say you had my face before you for three months?"
"I am afraid, Miss Deane, I was wrong in that as in everything else. It was her face. I had a mental picture of it."
She put on a puzzled expression. "And you used the mental picture for the purpose of recognition?"
"Yes," said I.
"I give it up," said Miss Deane.
She did not press me further. Her Cousin Valerie's love affairs were grounds too delicate for her to tread upon. She turned the conversation by politely asking me how I had come to consult her father. I mentioned my friend Mobray and the gun accident. She remembered the case and claimed a slight acquaintance with Mobray, whom she had met at various houses in Grandchester. My credit as a sane and reputable person being established, we began to chat most amicably. I found Miss Deane an accomplished woman. We talked books, art, travel. She had the swift wit which delights in bridging the trivial and the great. She had a playful fancy. Never have I found a personality so immediately sympathetic. I told her a sad little Viennese story in which I happened to have played a minor part, and her tenderness was as spontaneous as Valerie's—my Valerie's. She had Valerie's woodland laugh. Were it not that her personal note, her touch on the strings of life differed essentially from my beloved's, I should have held it grotesquely impossible for any human being but Valerie to be sitting in the opposite corner of that railway carriage. Indeed there were moments when she was Valerie, when the girl waiting for me at Grandchester faded into the limbo of unreal things. A kiss from those lips had fluttered on mine. It were lunacy to doubt it.
During intervals of non-illusion I examined her face critically. There was no question of its unattractiveness to the casual observer. The nose was too large and fleshy, the teeth too prominent, the eyes too small. But my love had pierced to its underlying spirituality, and it was the face above all others that I desired.
Toward the end of a remarkably short four hours' journey, Miss Deane graciously expressed the hope that we might meet again.
"I shall ask Valerie," said I, "to present me in due form."
She smiled maliciously. "Are you quite sure you will be able to distinguish one from the other when my cousin and I are together?"
"Are you, then, so identically alike?"
"That's a woman's way of answering a question—by another question," she laughed.
"Well, but are you?" I persisted.
"How otherwise could you have mistaken me for her?" She had drawn off her gloves, so as to give a tidying touch to her hair. I noticed her hands, small, long, and deft. I wondered whether they resembled Valerie's.
"Would you do me the great favour of letting me touch your hand while I shut my eyes, as if I were blind?"
She held out her hand frankly. My fingers ran over it for a few seconds, as they had done many times over Valerie's. "Well?" she asked.
"Not the same," said I.
She flushed, it seemed angrily, and glanced down at her hand, on which she immediately proceeded to draw a glove.
"Yours are stronger. And finer," I added, when I saw that the tribute of strength did not please.
"It's the one little personal thing I am proud of," she remarked.
"You have made my four hours pass like four minutes," said I. "A service to a fellow-creature which you might take some pride in having performed."
"When I was a child I could have said the same of performing elephants."
"I am no longer a child, Miss Deane," said I with a bow.
What there was in this to make the blood rush to her pale cheeks I do not know. The ways of women have often surprised me. I have heard other men make a similar confession.
"I think most men are children," she said shortly.
"In what way?"
"Their sweet irresponsibility," said Miss Deane.
And then the train entered Grandchester Station.
I deposited my bag at the station hotel and drove straight to Stavaton Street. I forgot Miss Deane. My thoughts and longings centred in her beloved counterpart, with her tender, caressing ways, and just a subtle inflection in the voice that made it more exquisite than the voice to which I had been listening.
The servant who opened the door recognized me and smiled a welcome. Miss Valerie was in the drawing-room.
"I know the way," said I.
Impetuous, I ran up the stairs, burst into the drawing-room, and stopped short on the threshold in presence of a strange and exceedingly beautiful young woman. She was stately and slender. She had masses of bright brown hair waving over a beautiful brow. She had deep sapphire eyes, like stars. She had the complexion of a Greuze child. She had that air of fairy diaphaneity combined with the glow of superb health which makes the typical loveliness of the Englishwoman. I gaped for a second or two at this gracious apparition.
"I beg your pardon," said I; "I was told—"
The apparition who was standing by the fireplace smiled and came forward with extended hands.
"Why, Harold! Of course you were told. It is all right. I am Valerie."
I blinked; the world seemed upside down; the enchanting voice rang in my ears, but it harmonized in no way with the equally enchanting face. I put out my hand. "How do you do?" I said stupidly.
"But aren't you glad to see me?" asked the lovely young woman.
"Of course," said I; "I came from Vienna to see you."
"But you look disappointed."
"The fact is," I stammered, "I expected to see some one different—quite different. The face you described has been haunting me for three months."
She had the effrontery to laugh. Her eyes danced mischief.
"Did you really think me such a hideous fright?"
"You were not a fright at all," said I, remembering my late travelling companion.
And then in a flash I realised what she had done.
"Why on earth did you describe your cousin instead of yourself?"
"My cousin! How do you know that?"
"Never mind," I answered. "You did. During your description you had her face vividly before your mind. The picture was in some telepathic way transferred from your brain to mine, and there it remained. The proof is that when I saw a certain lady to-day I recognised her at once and greeted her effusively as Valerie. Her name did happen to be Valerie, and Valerie Deane too, and I ran the risk of a police-station—and I don't think it was fair of you. What prompted you to deceive me?"
I was hurt and angry, and I spoke with some acerbity. Valerie drew herself up with dignity.
"If you claim an explanation, I will give it to you. We have had young men patients in the house before, and, as they had nothing to do, they have amused themselves and annoyed me by falling in love with me. I was tired of it, and decided that it shouldn't happen in your case. So I gave a false description of myself. To make it consistent, I took a real person for a model."
"So you were fooling me all the time?" said I, gathering hat and stick.
Her face softened adorably. Her voice had the tones of the wood-wind.
"Not all the time, Harold," she said.
I laid down hat and stick.
"Then why did you not undeceive me afterward?"
"I thought," she said, blushing and giving me a fleeting glance, "well, I thought you—you wouldn't be sorry to find I wasn't—bad looking."
"I am sorry, Valerie," said I, "and that's the mischief of it."
"I was so looking forward to your seeing me," she said tearfully. And then, with sudden petulance, she stamped her small foot. "It is horrid of you—perfectly horrid—and I never want to speak to you again." The last word ended in a sob. She rushed to the door, pushed me aside, as I endeavoured to stop her, and fled in a passion of tears.Spretæ injuria formæ! Women have remained much the same since the days of Juno.
A miserable, remorseful being, I wandered through the Grandchester streets, to keep my appointment with Mr. Henry Deane. After a short interview he dismissed me with a good report of my eyes. Miss Deane, dressed for walking, met me in the hall as the servant was showing me out, and we went together into the street.
"Well," she said with a touch of irony, "have you seen my cousin?"
"Yes," said I.
"Do you think her like me?"
"I wish to Heaven she were!" I exclaimed fervently. "I shouldn't be swirling round in a sort of maelstrom."
She looked steadily at me—I like her downrightness.
"Do you mind telling me what you mean?"
"I am in love with the personality of one woman and the face of another. And I never shall fall out of love with the face."
"And the personality?"
"God knows," I groaned.
"I never conceived it possible for any man to fall in love with a face so hopelessly unattractive," she said with a smile.
"It is beautiful," I cried.
She looked at me queerly for a few seconds, during which I had the sensation of something odd, uncanny having happened. I was fascinated. I found myself saying: "What did you mean by the 'sweet irresponsibility of man'?"
She put out her hand abruptly and said good-bye. I watched her disappear swiftly round a near corner, and I went, my head buzzing with her, back to my hotel. In the evening I dined with Dr. Deane. I had no opportunity of seeing Valerie alone. In a whisper she begged forgiveness. I relented. Her beauty and charm would have mollified a cross rhinoceros. The love in her splendid eyes would have warmed a snow image. The pressure of her hand at parting brought back the old Valerie, and I knew I loved her desperately. But inwardly I groaned, because she had not the face of my dreams. I hated her beauty. As soon as the front door closed behind me, my head began to buzz again with the other Valerie.
I lay awake all night. The two Valeries wove themselves inextricably together in my hopes and longings. I worshipped a composite chimera. When the grey dawn stole through my bedroom window, the chimera vanished, but a grey dubiety dawned upon my soul. Day invested it with a ghastly light. I rose a shivering wreck and fled from Grandchester by the first train.
I have not been back to Grandchester. I am in Vienna, whither I returned as fast as the Orient Express could carry me. I go to bed praying that night will dispel my doubt. I wake every morning to my adamantine indecision. That I am consuming away with love for one of the two Valeries is the only certain fact in my uncertain existence. But which of the Valeries it is I cannot for the life of me decide.
If any woman (it is beyond the wit of man) could solve my problem and save me from a hopeless and lifelong celibacy she would earn my undying gratitude.
It was a tiny room at the top of what used to be a princely London mansion, the home of a great noble—a tiny room, eight feet by five, the sleeping-receptacle, in the good old days, for some unconsidered scullery-maid or under-footman. The walls were distempered and bare; the furniture consisted of a camp-bed, a chair, a deal chest of drawers, and a wash-stand—everything spotless. There was no fireplace. An aerial cell of a room, yet the woman in nurse's uniform who sat on the bed pressing her hands to burning eyes and aching brows thanked God for it. She thanked God for the privacy of it. Had she been a mere nurse, she would have had the third share of a large, comfortable bedroom, with a fire on bitter winter nights. But, as a Sister, she had a room to herself. Thank God she was alone! Coldly, stonily, silently alone.
The expected convoy of wounded officers had been late, and she had remained on duty beyond her hour, so as to lend a hand. Besides, she was not on the regular staff of the private hospital. She had broken a much needed rest from France to give temporary relief from pressure; so an extra hour or two did not matter.
The ambulances at length arrived. Some stretcher-cases, some walking. Among the latter was one, strongly knit, athletic, bandaged over the entire head and eyes, and led like a blind man by orderlies. When she first saw him in the vestibule, his humorous lips and resolute chin, which were all of his face unhidden, seemed curiously familiar; but during the bustle of installation, the half-flash of memory became extinct. It was only later, when she found that this head-bandaged man was assigned to her care, that she again took particular notice of him. Now that his overcoat had been taken off, she saw a major's crown on the sleeve of his tunic, and on the breast the ribbons of the D.S.O. and the M.C. He was talking to the matron.
"They did us proud all the way. Had an excellent dinner. It's awfully kind of you; but I want nothing more, I assure you, save just to get into bed and sleep like a dog."
And then she knew, in a sudden electric shock of certainty.
Half dazed, she heard the matron say,
"Sister, this is Major Shileto, of the Canadian army."
Half dazed, too, she took his gropingly outstretched hand. The gesture, wide of the mark, struck her with terror. She controlled herself. The matron consulted her typed return-sheet and ran off the medical statement of his injuries.
Major Shileto laughed.
"My hat! If I've got all that the matter with me, why didn't they bury me decently in France?"
She was rent by the gay laughter. When the matron turned away, she followed her.
"He isn't blind, is he?"
The matron, to whose naturally thin, pinched face worry and anxiety had added a touch of shrewishness, swung round on her.
"I thought you were a medical student. Is there anything about blindness here?" She smote the typed pages. "Of course not!"
The night staff being on duty, she had then fled the ward and mounted up the many stairs to the little room where she now sat, her hands to her eyes. Thank God he was not blind, and thank God she was alone!
But it had all happened a hundred years ago. Well, twenty years at least. In some vague period of folly before the war. Yet, after all, she was only five and twenty. When did it happen? She began an agonized calculation of dates——
She had striven almost successfully to put the miserable episode out of her mind, to regard that period of her life as a phase of a previous existence. Since the war began, carried on the flood-tide of absorbing work, she had had no time to moralize on the past. When it came before her in odd moments, she had sent it packing into the limbo of deformed and hateful things. And now the man with the gay laughter and the distinguished soldier's record had brought it all back, horribly vivid. For the scared moments, it was as though the revolutionary war-years had never been. She saw herself again the Camilla Warrington whom she had sought contemptuously to bury.
Had there been but a musk grain of beauty in that Camilla's story, she would have cherished the fragrance; but it had all been so ignoble and stupid. It had begun with her clever girlhood. The London University matriculation. The first bachelor-of-science degree. John Donovan, the great surgeon, a friend of her parents, had encouraged her ambitions toward a medical career. She became a student at the Royal Free Hospital, of the consulting staff of which John Donovan was a member. For the first few months, all went well. She boarded near by, in Bloomsbury, with a vague sort of aunt and distant cousins, folks of unimpeachable repute. Then, fired by the independent theories and habits of a couple of fellow students, she left the home of dull respectability and joined them in the slatternly bohemia of a Chelsea slum.
Oh, there was excuse for her youthful ardency to know all that there was to be known in the world at once! But if she had used her excellent brains, she would have realized that all that is to be known in the world could not be learned in her new environment. The unholy crew—they called it "The Brotherhood"—into which she plunged consisted of the dregs of a decadent art-world, unclean in person and in ethics. At first, she revolted. But the specious intellectuality of the crew fascinated her. Hitherto, she had seen life purely from the scientific angle. Material cause, material effect. On material life, art but an excrescence. She had been carelessly content to regard it merely as an interpretation of Beauty—to her, almost synonymous with prettiness.
At the various meeting-places of the crew, who talked with the interminability of a Russian Bolshevik, she learned a surprising lot of things about art that had never entered into her philosophy. She learned, or tried to learn—though her intelligence boggled fearfully at it—that the most vital thing in existence was the decomposition of phenomena, into interesting planes. All things in nature were in motion—as a scientific truth, she was inclined to accept the proposition; but the proclaimed fact that the representation of the Lucretian theory of fluidity by pictorial diagrams of intersecting planes was destined to revolutionize human society was beyond her comprehension. Still, it was vastly interesting. They got their plane-system into sculpture, into poetry, in some queer way into sociology.