Then came the second outward sign from Madge. She took Lady Dover’s hand in both of hers.
“Don’t judge me too hardly,” she said. “I spoke very hastily, very wrongly. I have been thinking of my own misery too much; I have not thought enough about poor Evelyn. But I did not know there was such sorrow in the world.”
Lady Dover looked at her a moment, and drew her gently to a seat behind some bushes. And her own pretty, neat face was suddenly puckered up.
“Oh, Madge,” she said, “just let yourself go for ten minutes, and cry, my dear, sob your heart out, as they say. Have a good cry, dear; it will do you good. It is not cowardly, that—it helps one, it softens one, and it makes one braver perhaps afterwards. Yes, dear, let it come.”
And then the fountain of tears was unloosed, and those sobs, those deep sobs which come from the heart of living and suffering men and women, and are a sign and a proof, as it were, of their humanity, poured out. Madge had surrendered, she had ceased to hold herself aloof; brave she had been before, but brave in a sort of impenetrable armour of her own reserve. But now she cast it aside, and the womanhood which her love for Evelyn had begun to wake in her, came to itself and its own, more heroic than it had been before, because the armour was cast aside, and she stood defenceless, but fearless.
Before she went up again to Evelyn’s room she wrote:
My Dear Ellington,I had no opportunity of speaking to you——
My Dear Ellington,
I had no opportunity of speaking to you——
Then her pen paused; that was not quite honest, and she began again:
I ought to have just seen you before you went yesterday, and I must ask your pardon that I did not. I just want to say this, that I am more sorry for you than I can possibly tell you, and I ask you to say to yourself, and to keep on saying to yourself, that it was in no way your fault. Also perhaps you may like to know how entirely I recognise that, and so, I know, will he.You will wish, of course, to hear about him. He is going on very well, though up to now they have kept him under morphia. He will be quite blind, though. We must all try to make that affliction as light as possible for him. And I want so much to make you promise not to blame yourself. Please don’t; there is no blame. It was outside the control of any of us.I will write again and tell you how he gets on.—Your affectionate cousin,Madge Dundas.
I ought to have just seen you before you went yesterday, and I must ask your pardon that I did not. I just want to say this, that I am more sorry for you than I can possibly tell you, and I ask you to say to yourself, and to keep on saying to yourself, that it was in no way your fault. Also perhaps you may like to know how entirely I recognise that, and so, I know, will he.
You will wish, of course, to hear about him. He is going on very well, though up to now they have kept him under morphia. He will be quite blind, though. We must all try to make that affliction as light as possible for him. And I want so much to make you promise not to blame yourself. Please don’t; there is no blame. It was outside the control of any of us.
I will write again and tell you how he gets on.—Your affectionate cousin,
Madge Dundas.
Evelyn’s room looked out on to the terrace, away from the direction of the wind, and the nurse had just gone to the window to open it further, for the room, warmed by the afternoon sun, was growing rather hot. But just then he stirred with a more direct and conscious movement than hehad yet made, half-sat up in bed, and with both hands suddenly felt at the bandages that swathed the upper part of his face. Then he spoke in those quick, staccato tones that were so characteristic.
“What has happened?” he said. “Where am I? What’s going on? Why can’t I see? Madge——” And then he stopped suddenly.
She bit her lip for a moment, and just paused, summoning up her strength to bear what she knew was coming. Then she went quickly to the bedside and took his hand away from his face.
“Yes, dearest, I am here,” she said. “Lie quiet, won’t you, and we will talk.”
The nurse had come back from the window, and also stood by the bed. Madge spoke to her quickly and low.
“Leave us, please, nurse,” she said. “We have got to talk privately. I will call you if I want you.”
She left the room; Evelyn had instinctively answered to Madge’s voice, and had sunk back again on his pillows, and slowly in the long silence that followed, his mind began piecing things together, burrowing, groping, feeling for the things that had made their mark on his brain, but were remembered at present only dimly. The remembrance of some shock came first to him, and some sudden, stinging pain; next the smell of heather, warm and fragrant, and another bitter-tasting smell, the smell of blood. He put out his hand, and felt fumblingly over the clothes.
“Madge, are you still there?” he said quickly.
She took his hand.
“Yes, dear, sitting by you,” she said. “I shall always be here whenever you want me.”
Then came the staccato voice again.
“But why can’t I see you?” he asked. “What’s this over my face?”
Again she gently pulled back his other hand, which was feeling the bandages with quick, hovering movements like the antennæ of some insect.
“You were hurt, dear, you know,” she said. “They had to bandage your face, over your forehead and your eyes.”
Again there was silence; his mind was beginning to move more quickly, remembrance was pouring in from all sides.
“It was at Glen—Glen something, where we came by a night train, and you flirted with a valet,” he said.
“Yes, dear, Glen Callan,” said Madge quietly. But her eyes yearned and devoured him: all her heart was ready now, when the time came, to spring towards him, enfolding him with love.
But his voice was fretful rather and irritable, from shock and suffering.
“Yes, Glen Callan, of course,” he said. “I said Glen Callan, didn’t I? We are there, still, I suppose. Yes? And you went fishing in the morning, and I went shooting. Shooting?” he repeated.
All that Madge had ever felt before in her life grew dim in the intensity of this. The moment was close now, but somehow she no longer feared it. Fear could not live in these high altitudes: it died like some fever-germ.
“Yes, dear, you went shooting,” she said. “We were to meet at lunch, you know. But just before lunch there was an accident. You were shot, shot in the face.”
His hands grew restless again, and he shifted backwards and forwards in bed.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “that is just what I could not remember. I was shot—yes, yes: I remember how it stung, but it didn’t hurt very much. Then I fell down in the heather: I can’t think why, but I stumbled—I couldn’t see. I was bleeding, too; the heather was warm and sweet-smelling, but there was blood, too, that tasted so horrible—like—like blood, there is nothing—all over my face. And then—well, what then?”
“We brought you back, dear,” said she, “and you had an operation. They had to extract the shot. It was all done very satisfactorily: you are going on very well.”
Then all the nervous trembling in Evelyn’s hands and the quick twitching of his body ceased, and he lay quite still a moment, gathering himself together to hear.
“Madge,” he said, speaking more slowly, “will you please tell me all? I don’t think you have told me all yet. I want to hear it, for I feel there is more yet. I was shot: that is all I know, and am lying here with a bandaged face. Well?”
Madge’s voice did not falter; that love and pity which possessed her had for this moment anyhow complete mastery over the frailness and cowardice of the mere flesh. Shejust took hold of both his hands, clasping them tightly in her’s, and spoke.
“You were shot all over the upper part of your face,” she said. “You——”
But he interrupted her.
“Who shot me?” he asked.
“Guy Ellington,” she said. “The shot ricocheted off a rock and hit you. It was not his fault.”
“By Gad, poor devil!” said Evelyn.
“Yes, dear; I wrote to him just now, saying just that, how sorry I was for him and how sorry you would be when you knew. You—you were shot very badly, dear Evelyn. You were shot in the eyes, in both eyes——”
Again there was silence. Then he spoke hoarsely:
“Do you mean that, all that?” he said.
“Yes, dear; all that. And I had better say it. You are blind, Evelyn.”
Then deep down from the very heart of her came the next words which spoke themselves.
“I wish I could have died instead,” she said.
He lay long absolutely motionless; there was no quiver of any kind on the corners of his mouth to show that he even understood. But she knew he understood, it was because he understood that he lay like that.
At last he spoke again, and the sorrow and anguish in his voice was still comfort to her beyond all price.
“So I shall never see you again,” he said.
Then she bent over the bed, and kissed him on the mouth.
“But never have I been so utterly yours as I am now!” she said, her voice still strong and unwavering. “And, oh, how it fed my heart to know what your first thought was, my darling. I think it would have broken if it had been anything else!”
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AFTER dinner that night, before she went to bed, Madge looked into Evelyn’s room several times and spoke to him gently. But on all these occasions he was lying quite still and he did not answer her; so, thinking he was asleep, she eventually retired to her own room just opposite, and went to bed. For the last two nights she had scarcely closed her eyes, but now, with the intense relief of knowing that Evelyn knew, of feeling, too, that he was bearing it with such wonderful quietness and composure, she fell asleep at once and slept long and well.
But her husband had not been asleep any of those times that she went into the room. He had never felt more awake in his life. But he had not answered her, because he had felt that he must be alone: just now nobody, not even she, could come near to him, for he had to go into the secret place of his soul, where only he himself might come. And as at the moment of death not even a man’s nearest and dearest, she with whom he has been one flesh, may take a single step with the soul on its passage, but it has to go absolutely alone, so now none could go with Evelyn; for in these hours he had to die to practically all, Madge alone excepted, which the word “life” connoted to him. And having done that, he had to begin, to start living again. There Madge could help him, but for this death, this realisation of what had happened, this summing up of all that had been cut off, he had to be alone.
There was no comfort for him anywhere: nor at any future time could comfort come. There would be no “getting used” to it, every moment, every hour, that passed would but put another spadeful of earth on his coffin. There was no more night and morning for him. Sunset and sunrise spilt like crimson flames along the sky existed no more: the green light below forest trees was dead, the clusters of purple clematis in his unfinished picture had grown black,there was neither green nor red nor any colour left, it was all black. The forms of everything had gone, too; it was as if the world had been some exquisite piece of modelling clay, and that some gigantic hand had closed on it, reducing it to a shapeless lump: neither shape nor colour existed any more. People had gone, too, faces and eyes and limbs, the gentle swelling of a woman’s breast, outline and profile and the warm, radiant tint of youth were gone, there was nothing left except voices. And voices without the sight of the mouth that spoke, of the shades of expression playing over the face, would be without significance: they would be dim and meaningless, they would not reach him in this desert of utter loneliness, where he would dwell forever out of sight of everything. And that was not all; that was not half. Of the world there was nothing left but voices, and of him what was left? Was he only a voice, too?
He was blind, that is to say, his eyes must have been practically destroyed. And the bandages extended, so he could feel, right up to his hair, and down to his upper lip. There were other injuries as well, then. What were they? How complete was the wreck? Above all, did Madge know, had she seen? If ever love had vibrated in a voice, it had in her’s, but did she know, or had she only seen these bandages?
With his frightfully sensitive artistic nature, this seemed to cut deeper than anything, this thought that he was disfigured; horrible to look on, an offence to the eye of day and to the light of the sun, and—to the sight of her he loved. He would be pitied, too; and even as man and woman turned away from the sight of him they would be sorry for him, and the thought of pity was like a file on his flesh. Would it not have been better if the shot had gone a little deeper yet? His maimed, disfigured body would then have been decently hidden away and covered by the kind, cool earth, he would not have to walk the earth to be stared at—to be turned from.
His nurse not long before had made her last visit for the night, and, seeing him lying so still supposed, like Madge, that he was asleep, and had gone back to the dressing-room next door, to go to bed herself. His progress during the day had been most satisfactory, the feverishness had almost gone, and the doctor, when the wounds were dressed thatafternoon, had been amazed to see how rapidly and well the processes of healing were going on. Certainly there was no lack of vitality or recuperative power in his patient, nor in the keenness and utter despair of his mental suffering was vitality absent. That same vitality coloured and suffused that; he saw it all with the hideous vividness of an imaginative nature. Doubt and uncertainty, however, here were worse than the worst that the truth could hold for him, and he called to the nurse, who came at once.
“What is it, Mr. Dundas?” she asked. “I hoped you were asleep. You are not in pain?”
“No, not in pain. But I can’t sleep. I want to ask you two or three questions. Pray answer them: I sha’n’t sleep till you do.”
She did not speak, half-guessing what was coming.
“I want to know this, first of all,” he said, speaking quite quietly. “What shall I look like when these things are healed, when the bandages come off?”
Nurse James was essentially a truthful woman, but she did not hesitate about her reply. There are times when no decent person would hesitate about telling a lie, the bigger the better. She laughed.
“Well, I never!” she said. “And have you brought me from my bed just to ask that! I never heard such a thing. Why, you will look as you always have looked, Mr. Dundas, but your eyelids will be shut.”
The good, kind woman suddenly felt that the ease with which all this came to her was almost appalling. She was a glorious liar, and had never known it till now.
“Why, bless you,” she went on, “your wife was in here when your face was dressed to-day, and—you were still under morphia, you know, and did not know she was there—and she said to Dr. Inglis: ‘Why, he only looks as if he was asleep.’”
“She has seen me, then?” asked Evelyn eagerly. “She has seen my face?”
“Why, of course, and she bent and kissed it, just as your wife should do. There’s a brave woman now. Is that all, sir?”
Evelyn gave one great sigh of relief.
“Yes, nurse,” he said. “I am sorry I disturbed you. Yet I assure you it was worth while. I can’t tell you how youhave relieved me. I thought—oh, my God! it is not hell after all.”
She arranged the bedclothes about him, and though she had been so glib, she could not now speak at once.
“There, then; you’ll go to sleep, won’t you, now you know that,” she said. “But to think of you worrying here all these hours!”
Madge was, of course, told by Nurse James what happened before she saw Evelyn again, for that diplomatist came to her room very early next morning, and informed her of it all. She acquiesced in it, as she would have acquiesced in anything that in the opinion of nurse or doctor conduced to his recovery, and for the next day or two his progress was speedy and uninterrupted. He had faced the first shock, that he was blind, with a courage that was really heroic, and except for that hour when he held himself in front of it, purposing and meaning to realise once and for all exactly what it implied, he exercised wonderful self-control in not letting himself brood over it. This was the easier because that second fear, the roots of which went so much deeper than the other, had proved to be groundless. Terrible as was his plight, the knowledge that it might have been so much more terrible was ever in his mind, casting its light into the places that he had thought were of an impenetrable darkness.
But in this balance and adjustment of the human soul to the anguish with which circumstance and fate visit it, the mechanism of its infliction is wonderfully contrived, so that it shall not snap under the strain. The Angel of Pain, we must suppose, sits by, with the screws and levers of the rack under its control; it loosens one, as Evelyn’s dread about disfigurement had been loosened for the present at any rate, since it was, perhaps, more than he could stand (and the Angel of Pain, with the relentless hands but the tender eye and pitying mouth, had not finished with him yet) but it tightens another; the fact of his blindness had been screwed down very tight. Then as the racked sinews and tortured nerves began to writhe and agonise less, another little torture was added. It was but a small thing compared to the others, and though it had been there all the time, neither Madge nor he had noticed it at first. But now when he was weary with pain, it was like a fly that kept buzzing and settling on his face, while his hands were bound, so that hecould not brush it off. It had seemed but fear of the imagination at first, but gradually to both of them, as he recovered so well, and the future as well as the present began to make itself felt again, it became terribly real. It was simply this: What was to happen to them? How among other things were their doctor’s and nurse’s bills to be paid? And how, after that, were they going to live?
For several days each suffered the buzzing, flittings and alightings of this without speaking of it to the other, since each believed that the other had not yet thought of it. But one afternoon they had been talking of that hot August month in London, with their childish tales of Ellesdee, and the curious fact that if you only make a game out of a privation, the privation ceases and the game becomes entrancingly real. Evelyn had laughed over this.
“We shall have heaps of games in the future,” he had said unthinkingly, and stopped rather abruptly. In the silence that followed he heard Madge just stir in her chair; an assent had dropped from her lips, but she had said no more, and it was clear to them both that their thoughts had met. Then Evelyn spoke.
“Madge, has it ever occurred to you what we are going to do?” he said. “How we are going to live, I mean?”
“Yes, dear, I have thought about it a good deal. I didn’t speak of it, since I hoped you wouldn’t begin to think about it yet.”
“There were forty-three pounds?” he said; “from which you have to subtract our railway fares.”
“Yes, dear,” she said almost inaudibly.
The Angel of Pain turned that screw a little more. They could bear a little more of that.
“There is an unfinished portrait of Lady Taverner,” said he. “There is the finished portrait of you. But even if we sold those, what next, what afterwards?”
“Ah, there is no necessity to think about it,” said Madge quickly. “Of course mother will help us. She will do what she can. And Guy Ellington, of course——”
“We shall have to live on their alms, you mean?” said he with a sudden dreadful bitterness. “On the pity of others? They can’t do it, besides. They can’t support us. And even if they could, how could we accept it?”
His hand, with the rapid, hovering movement so characteristicof the blind, felt over the bedclothes and found hers. He was acquiring this blind touch with extraordinary rapidity.
“Madge, do you hate me for having married you?” he asked. “Would it have been better for you if we had never seen each other? Here are you, tied—eternally tied—to a beggar and a cripple, half a man with half a face!”
For one moment she winced at the thought of that which she did not yet know. Supposing it was very terrible, supposing she cried out at it? But she recovered herself at once.
“I bless God every day for your love, dear,” she said.
He was silent after this a little, his fingers playing over hers.
“I am getting blind man’s hands already,” he said. “I can feel which your rings are. There, that is the wedding-ring, that is easy, and the one with sapphires in it. No, it can’t be that, there are four stones in this, and there are only three sapphires. Ah, that is the ruby ring; do you remember how you scolded me for giving it you? Then on the next finger one pearl: that is easy. Then the first finger, no rings there, but—yes, at that knuckle the little scar that runs up halfway to the next knuckle, where you cut your finger to the bone when you were a girl over the broken glass.”
Madge felt herself suddenly turn white and cold. He had felt the little scar on her finger with absolute accuracy, tracing it from where it started to where it finished. And if he could do this with so little a scar, what of other scars that would be within reach of his hands always? He would find them out, too; he would guess; all their attempts at concealment from him of what his injuries really were would be futile. He must come to know.
But he was busy just now on the exploration of his powers of touch. It was a new game; already touch was beginning to be a new thing to him, and whereas he had regarded his hands hitherto as holders to grasp other things, prehensile endings to the arms merely, he was now beginning to find out new powers in the soft-tipped fingers. He was like a child which has hitherto regarded its legs merely as agreeable though silent play-fellows, who begins to see that a hitherto undreamed-of power of locomotion resides in them.
This was fascinating to Evelyn; for the moment there wasa sudden hope springing up. It was like a message of relief coming to a beleagured garrison.
“Why, if I can do this already,” he said, “who knows what it may not grow to? Madge, I am sure I could not have felt so much before—before it happened. Quick, give me something, and I will tell you what it is. What if the form and the shape of things has not been annihilated for me?”
And so this game, for so it was, began to interest him. For him, since some measure of the excitement, the chance, the experimentalism of life, had begun to come back, the Angel of Pain relaxed the screws a little, yet her hands did not altogether leave them. But poor Madge! The Angel of the relentless hands and tender face looked gravely on her. She had to bear very much, and bear it with a smiling face and cheerful voice, fetching books for Evelyn to identify, and small objects from his dressing-case and what-not. The screws were turned rather smartly for her; it was inevitable that he should before very long identify his own face, identify the damage there. She herself had not done so yet, but awfully as she had feared that for herself, she now feared it more for him. He was building so much, she knew that, on a place where no foundation was possible. It would all sink into the mire and clay. He would learn, as she would have to learn, how dreadful that was: his sensitive, hovering fingers with their light touch and constructive imagination would build up and realise by degrees. He would know that the worst fear of all was fulfilled.
That view of his, which Madge knew so well he would take when he learned, one way or another, of the wreck that had come to his face, might or might not be a shallow view, but that view he would assuredly take, and construe her love for him into mere pity and forbearance. She did not love him for his face—he would not say that—but his face was part of him, and if that was spoiled, so surely was part of her love spoiled. Body and soul she had loved him, but how could a woman love a sightless, scarred thing? He would grant, no doubt, that her love for him went further than that which was now hideous, but would she, to put it from her own point of view, have scarred and hacked and blinded her own face, and gone back to him who saw, in perfect confidence that his love for her would be undiminished and undeterred, knowing that it lay too deep for any such superficialmaiming to injure? She knew well she would not, for love, however spiritual, includes the body as well as the spirit, and however fine, cannot but take the body as the outward and visible sign of the beloved soul, its expression and aura. And how could he to whom the surface of beauty and loveliness had been by profession such a study and worship, still think, whatever her asseverations to the contrary, that her love for him was as complete as it had been? And, to get nearer the truth, would not he be right? She did not know about that yet; she had not seen. At present she could not think of his face as other than it had been; all she knew was that, in spite of herself, she dreaded with her whole soul the removal of those bandages. What if she shrank and winced at the sight? Those slim, delicate fingers of the Angel of Pain tightened the screw, and the kind eyes looked at her, seeing how she bore it. If there was a terrible moment coming for Evelyn when his fingers, which were now to be to him his eyes, told him what he looked like, there was a moment, a double moment, coming for her. She had first to control herself, to make him believe, whatever she saw, that she saw no difference; nothing that made her love one jot less urgent and insistent; she had also, with a feigned conviction that had got to convince him, to assure him that his fingers were at fault, that there was no scar where he said there was a scar, that there was no empty hole.... That she knew. What she did not know was how to face it all.
At present, anyhow, by a great effort, she put off the moment which she foresaw must come. He could not remain indefinitely ignorant, his own hands must some day inform him. But just now he was eager and interested in this new game. By a splendid effort of vitality and will, he had pushed into the background the fact of his blindness: he had put it for the time being, anyhow, among the inevitable and accepted facts of life, while he had filled his foreground with the fact that he had eyes in his fingers. How glorious that bit of bravery was she knew well, for he was so brave that just now he was not even acting; he genuinely looked forward to the future, not without hope. At her bidding he had left the grinding difficulties of the future alone, he had left the question of the stark fact as to how they were to live, he had left also the fact of his own supreme deprivation, and with a splendid effort he looked on the possibilities thatmight lie in front of them, not on the limitations, cramping and binding, that certainly lay there.
“Yes, all those things are easy,” he said; “of course I can tell a toothpick and a sovereign-case, that is a mere effort of memory. But let’s go on, if you are not tired of it. You see, dear, you’ve got to educate me now; I am just a child again, learning a new set of letters. Now give me really new letters.”
Now Lady Dover a day before, in her quiet way, had telegraphed to London for a couple of packs of blind cards. They had the index in raised cardboard in the corner, and had arrived this morning. She had put them in the dressing-room adjoining his bedroom, and had just mentioned it to Madge, in the way that, had she been a stranger in the house, she might have mentioned where the bath-room was.
“Mr. Dundas is so eager and alive,” she had said, “that I thought, dear Madge, that he might like to begin any moment to accustom himself a little, poor fellow, to his new circumstances. So you will find a couple of packs of raised cards, I think they call them, in the dressing-room. I thought he might perhaps feel inclined to experiment with them.”
So Madge fetched them now, and a couple of minutes afterwards she and Evelyn were deep in a game of picquet. His childish pleasure in “new things” stood him in good stead now; he got as excited as a schoolboy over the riddle of what his hand contained. Again and again he fingered the raised index in the corner, with sudden bursts of triumph when he solved it to his own satisfaction.
“Ah, I used to call you slow at picquet, Madge,” he cried, “but you can’t retaliate. How very good for you! If you call me slow, I shall merely throw the cards away and burst into tears. Seven or nine, which on earth is it? Don’t look and tell me. I trust you not to look.”
But he soon got tired, and it is doubtful whether Madge was not more tired than he. When he waited long, feeling with those thin finger tips at the index, it was bad enough for her; but it was worse when he felt the card right almost immediately, and almost laughed with pleasure at his newly-acquired quickness—he, who used to be so quick! And all the time the certainty of the moment that was coming when he should learn all that had happened darkened her with an amazement of pity. What would he feel when he knew that?And what would she feel? And how, if that was very bad, would she have power to conceal it, so that he should believe, so that she could force him to believe that it was not there?
Two mornings after Madge slept on very late; but before she came down she had been in to see Evelyn, and subsequently had a talk to the nurse, who told her that Dr. Inglis had already seen her husband, and that he intended to take the bandages off his eyes that day. The wounds had healed in a manner almost marvellous, and they would now be the better for the air and light. And though Madge as she went downstairs felt that only thankfulness ought to be in her heart, she felt that she carried some sort of death-warrant in her pocket.
The post had just come in, and as she entered the breakfast-room, from which Lord Dover had already gone, but where his wife still waited for Madge, ready to make fresh tea on her entry, she found a letter by her plate directed in a handwriting that was very familiar to her. She wanted to open it at once, but instead she pushed it aside.
“What a glorious morning, dear Madge,” said Lady Dover. “Dr. Inglis has already made me his morning report. He has no further anxiety, I think, at all. I am so glad.”
She herself had a pile of letters, of which she had opened only about half, but abandoned them entirely to talk to Madge, and make her tea. But the sight of all those letters, somehow, diverted Madge’s attention from her own, and a sudden thought struck her, which was new.
“Lady Dover,” she said abruptly, “I believe you have been putting all manner of visitors off because of poor Evelyn.”
Lady Dover looked up in gentle, clear-eyed acquiescence.
“Why, my dear, it was most important he should be quite quiet,” she said.
Madge arrested the hand that was pouring out her tea.
“Ah, you dear,” she said, “and all these days I never thought of it, or thanked you.”
The spout of the teapot poured a clear amber stream on to the table-cloth.
“And I have spilt the tea, too,” said Madge. “But I do thank you, and—and I am frightened!”
“There is nothing wrong?”
“No; but they are going to take the bandages off, and what shall I see? Will you be there, too, and help me not to mind if it is dreadful? You see—you see, I suppose I loved his face as well, why not, and if all that is terribly changed.... They have told me it will be. And he must not guess that I mind, that I even see it is different. And when his hands tell him what has happened, as they will, I must still convince him somehow that to me there is no difference. Oh, I want help!” she cried. “Indeed it is not only for me, I want it for him—I must convince him that it does not matter.”
But at this point Lady Dover failed a little. She was not, in spite of her obvious kindness and sympathy, quite human enough to go to the depths that Madge’s gropings reached blind hands to. The trials and difficulties that came within her ken, the loss of someone loved, the parching of love in what had been a fountain, she could have understood, but the fear of a maimed face affecting love she could not quite grasp. Her idea of love may perhaps have been spiritually finer, it may also perhaps have not been adequately human.
There was a pause, anyhow, and since nothing but immediate and spontaneous reply was conceivable from Madge’s point of view, she took up her letter again.
“This, too,” she said, “it is from Philip.”
But to that Lady Dover responded instantly.
“Then, dear, you will want to read it alone,” she said. “And if you can tell me about it afterwards, and if I can be of any use, advising or suggesting, you will come to me, will you not? But, dear Madge, he would not write unless he had something very particular to say, and, personally, whenever I see a letter that may be very private, I always keep it till I am alone. So let me leave you alone, dear. I see they have brought in a fresh hot dish for you of some sort, and I have just made the tea. I shall be in my room.”
Here again tact played a great part; she did not look at Madge, either inviting or repelling confidence. And without the least suspicion of hurry or of lingering she left the room, with her pile of letters, opened and unopened.
Madge waited a minute or two. Then with a sudden mechanical series of movements, she tore open the envelope, took out Philip’s letter, and read it. It was dated from Pangbourne.
My Dearest Madge.I have every right to say that, and you must not mind. I heard only last night of the terrible thing that has happened to Evelyn, and unless I am stopped by a telegram from you or Lady Dover I shall come up to Glen Callan at once to see if I can be of any use. You will want somebody, anyhow, to look after you both when you move. I write to Lady Dover by the same post; she will receive my letter at the time you receive this. She will not mind my proposing myself—in fact she has asked me to before now.I have just come here from the New Forest: you will not have heard what has happened. Tom Merivale is dead, the Hermit, you know. I will tell you about it all when we meet; now I can only say that the sorrows of the world were, I believe, suddenly revealed to him, and he died of it. And some of the sorrows of the world, you poor dear, have been revealed to Evelyn and you, and perhaps to me. Only we have got to live and not die.And before we meet I want very sincerely and humbly to ask your pardon for all the hard things I have thought and said and done. Please try to grant it me before you see me, so that I know that it is implied in your handshake.So unless you stop me you will see me on the evening of the day on which you get this, and before then I want you to grant me a further favour. You must accept, please, tacitly and without any word on the subject, just the little material assistance that I can give you and him. In other words, do not let any material anxiety increase or aggravate what you twohaveto endure, and which no one can help you about. Only where you can be helped, accept such help, and let the privilege of helping you be mine. In doing this you will be helping me more than I can say: you will be helping me to learn the lesson of the sorrows of the world, which, as I now know, we must all learn. And I am,—Your loving friend,Philip Home.P.S.—I express myself badly; but I think you can easily understand what I mean. Just read my letter straightforwardly, I mean all I have said, and I think I have said all I mean. How fully my mother endorses it all, I need not tell you. She says (she has just read it) that it is too business-like. Well, I’m a business man, but her criticism encourages me to think that it is clear.
My Dearest Madge.
I have every right to say that, and you must not mind. I heard only last night of the terrible thing that has happened to Evelyn, and unless I am stopped by a telegram from you or Lady Dover I shall come up to Glen Callan at once to see if I can be of any use. You will want somebody, anyhow, to look after you both when you move. I write to Lady Dover by the same post; she will receive my letter at the time you receive this. She will not mind my proposing myself—in fact she has asked me to before now.
I have just come here from the New Forest: you will not have heard what has happened. Tom Merivale is dead, the Hermit, you know. I will tell you about it all when we meet; now I can only say that the sorrows of the world were, I believe, suddenly revealed to him, and he died of it. And some of the sorrows of the world, you poor dear, have been revealed to Evelyn and you, and perhaps to me. Only we have got to live and not die.
And before we meet I want very sincerely and humbly to ask your pardon for all the hard things I have thought and said and done. Please try to grant it me before you see me, so that I know that it is implied in your handshake.
So unless you stop me you will see me on the evening of the day on which you get this, and before then I want you to grant me a further favour. You must accept, please, tacitly and without any word on the subject, just the little material assistance that I can give you and him. In other words, do not let any material anxiety increase or aggravate what you twohaveto endure, and which no one can help you about. Only where you can be helped, accept such help, and let the privilege of helping you be mine. In doing this you will be helping me more than I can say: you will be helping me to learn the lesson of the sorrows of the world, which, as I now know, we must all learn. And I am,—Your loving friend,
Philip Home.
P.S.—I express myself badly; but I think you can easily understand what I mean. Just read my letter straightforwardly, I mean all I have said, and I think I have said all I mean. How fully my mother endorses it all, I need not tell you. She says (she has just read it) that it is too business-like. Well, I’m a business man, but her criticism encourages me to think that it is clear.
Madge read this through once without comprehension: the predominant feeling in her mind was that it was some kind stranger who was writing to her; she did not know the man. Yet even as she read there were things very familiar to her: Philip somehow was in it all. Then at the second reading the simplicity and clearness of it—that which Mrs. Home had called business-like—made itself felt, and it was Philip, after all, the potential Philip. But some immense change had happened, yet immense though it was, she saw now it was no stranger who had written it, but he himself, only—only he had learned something, as he said.
But how his begging for her forgiveness cut her to the heart! That he should do this, while it was she whose part it was, only she had not been woman enough. She had been sorry—God knows she had been sorry for him, and sorry for her own part in the catastrophe of July. But she had known it was inevitable, she could not have married him, she could not have done otherwise than marry Evelyn, and it was perhaps this sense that she was but a tool in the hands of the irresistible law which had excused her to herself, so that she had said almost that it was the Power that made them all three what they were that had done this. And thus her human pity and sorrow had been veiled. But now that veil was plucked aside; whatever great and inexorable laws ruled feeling and action, nothing could alter the fact that here was she, unhappy and sick at heart, and that another man, who loved her, unhappy, too, was man enough to forget his own unhappiness, to forget, too, that it was she who, willing or unwilling, had brought it on him, and let himself be guided only by the divine and human impulse of Pity, so that he desired nothing in the world more than to be allowed to help her.
Yet how bitter it was, somehow, that it should be he of all men in the world who should offer to help. And his offer was so humble, yet so assured, it was made so simply, and yet—here was Philip’s hand again—so authoritatively. “You will want someone with you to look after you....” That was Philip, too, and though it was all bitter, what unspeakable comfort it was to feel that somebody strong and tender was waiting to take care of them, only asking to be allowed to take care of them. In spite of Lady Dover and all herkindness, Madge felt so lonely: no one could understand that so well as Philip, who had felt lonely, too.
And Tom Merivale was dead! Ah, what was happening to the world? Was happiness being slowly withdrawn from it, leaving misery only there? It seemed indeed as if sorrow, like some dreadful initiation, had to be submitted to by everyone, even those who appeared to have been born in the royal purple of happiness. How much had come into her own immediate circle in so short a time! To Merivale it had come in so blinding and overwhelming a flood that it had killed him who had radiated happiness. To Evelyn, it had come, blinding, also, and that cruel stroke, more cruel because it was so illogical, like the blasting of the tree by lightning down in the Forest, had stricken her, too, and had not perhaps dealt its worst blow yet. It had come to Philip through her in a way perhaps not less illogical. For it was not in her to control love or not to love; her meeting with Evelyn, her loving him, was as much an accident as the descent of the lightning-flash or the scattering of the lead pellets. Yet Philip had not died, and though he might have said that his life was wrecked, that all that remained for him was hatred and despair, he had struggled to shore, he stood there now strong and unembittered, and held out his hands to her. He had learned something it seemed from these accidents. He had learned, perhaps, not to call them accidents. Was he right? Were these vague lines part of a pattern, of a design so huge that she could not yet see it was a design at all?
Madge had forgotten about her breakfast; it lay still untasted, while she mused with wide eyes. And as this struck her, she stood up and pushed her plate from her. Greatly as she had grown in human strength and tenderness, since that day so few weeks ago, when she had promised to marry Philip, she felt now suddenly like a little child, who wanted to be led. There were dark places, she knew, before her. She must try not to be frightened, she must realise that there was nothing to be frightened about. And thus, feebly, hesitatingly, she put out her hand.
EVELYN woke that morning out of one of those cruel, dreamless sleeps that seem for a little while on waking to have expunged all memory, and he lay a few minutes conscious vaguely of something a little wrong, but for the moment not knowing where he was, and not caring to make the effort to guess. Then suddenly, like the stroke of a black wing across the sky, memory came home for the day. Whenever he woke in the hereafter he would awake to that, to his maimed, ruined life. The knowledge of it was more unbearable to-day than it had been yesterday; to-morrow it would be worse; it would keep growing worse.
Then out of that utter darkness there grew a little light. It might have been even more desperate—how was that? Then he remembered Madge. She had seen, and the worst of all that he had imagined was not true.
This morning he felt within himself a sudden accession of strength; his long sleep-acting with his extraordinary recuperative powers, had set fresh tides of vitality on the flow. Something had happened lately which in spite of all, interested him—ah, yes, the gradual compensating sensitiveness in his hands. He had played a wholepartieof picquet with Madge, using those cards with raised indexes. Thepartiehad only taken an hour—not bad for a beginning; to-day perhaps he would be a little quicker. To-day also these bandages that worried him with their close-clinging, sticky feeling would be removed, and with regard to them he could not help half-thinking that when they were gone, some light, however dim, must reach him. Surely the blackness would become a sort of grey. It was unreasonable, he knew well, but he could not help feeling that it must be so. But the fact that he thought about the picquet he had played and the greater celerity with which he was going to play it, even the idea, which he himself knew to be purely imaginary, thathe would not feel so terribly alone and in the dark when these bandages were removed, all pointed one way: he looked, or tried to look, forward instead of brooding backwards. And in such matters, as indeed in all others, the will is the deed, provided only that the will be undivided. So for the time the utter blackness of his waking moments was gone, the tiny things of life, as well as life’s ultimate possibilities, still retained their interest, and while he waited for his breakfast, he kept feeling with his nimble, hovering hands at all objects within reach: the woolliness of the blankets, the cool texture of the sheets, a certain slipperiness of counterpane, which eventually he determined to be silk-covered. Then there was wall-paper above his head; there was a pattern on that, and with both hands he traced his way up the slight raising of the design, stopping often, visualising to himself what the picture of the course of his fingers would be like.... There was a spray of some sort; it branched to the left and ended in narrow, slender leaves. On the right it went higher before it branched; there were leaves there, too, and above again there started a stem like the one he had traced a minute before. Yes; it repeated here, for first to the left went out a thinner stem with narrow leaves; then again to the right it branched, and narrow leaves forked out from it. He had seen it, of course, before, on the evening he arrived here, but he could not remember it from that.... Thin stem and narrow leaves—ah, a Morris paper of willow twigs! But the feeling fingers had given it him; without this exploration he could not have known it.
This was an enormous advance, and, without pause, for he instinctively knew the step that came through the dressing-room adjoining, he called out:
“Oh, Madge, such a discovery!” he cried. “Blanket here, sheet here, a coverlet with silk on the top, and the paper—it is a Morris willow paper. I found that out. And I want breakfast.”
Yet somehow Madge’s heart sank at his elation. The Evelyn who spoke was the old Evelyn: it was in such a voice and with such joy of discovery that he had told her at Pangbourne how the purple of the clematis would heighten the value of the pink and butter-haired Jewess who sat in the centre. There was just the same triumphant ring about it.And as such it was unnatural; she feared he was recovering too quickly: for this elation there would be a corresponding depression. It was too sudden to satisfy her. All this was instantaneous and instinctive; she feared really without knowing she feared. But she had come prepared for the further development of his newly-awakened interest in the senses that resided in fingers, and had brought with her some small objects of baffling shape. She had, too, in her hand Philip’s letter.
The first two or three were easy to him. A knife certainly, but a knife with no edge to it. And of this he talked.
“Dessert knife,” he said. “No, not dessert knife, because the blade of a dessert knife would, anyhow, be as cold as the handle, even if both were made of metal. And the blade of this is warmer than the handle. Oh, shade of Sherlock Holmes! Cold handle, warmer blade. Oh, Madge, how easy. Paper-knife of course; silver handle, ivory cutter. Ask another.”
“I haven’t asked how you are yet,” said she.
“Quite well. And I want breakfast. I say, Madge, do you know just for the moment, I don’t mind being blind. You see there’s a new sense to cultivate. I always love experiments. Ah, damn it, there’s no colour left. But there is shape; somehow, I feel there’s a lot to learn in shape. There’s warmth, too; of course I knew that ivory was warmer—less cold than metal, but now I have found it true without help. Give me another.”
This time it was an absurd Dutch cow, spindle-legged and huge of body and head, a cream-jug cow, into which the cream was put via an aperture in the back, on which sat a gigantic fly, and from which,viathe mouth, it was conveyed to tart. This was puzzling, and he thought aloud over it.
“Four legs,” he said, “as thin as a stag’s. So where’s the head? That won’t do; horn each side, and—good Lord! what’s this on the middle of the back? It’s movable, too. Shall I break anything?”
“Not if you are not violent.”
“Well, a big head with a switch-horn, and a mouth, why it’s from ear to ear. And a lid on the abortion’s back. Tail—is it a tail; oh, yes, it must be, it comes from there—curled up till it nearly reaches the hole in the back.”
He paused a moment, feeling it with nimble fingers, andthough Madge could not see his forehead, she knew from his mouth that he was frowning. Then it came to him.
“Dutch cow,” he cried. “There’s an insect, a fly, I should think, sitting on the hole at its back, where you put the cream in. And it comes out of its mouth, you know. Looks rather as if it was being sick.”
Madge’s letter slipped to the ground as she applauded this.
“Give me that letter,” he said. “I’ll tell you whom it is from. Oh, there’s nurse; is it breakfast? I am so hungry. I’ll tell you about the letter afterwards.”
Then for a moment he was silent, and his mouth grew grave. He had insisted late the evening before on being shaved, and the smooth chin, the smooth upper lip, were clean below the white bandages. The nurse had been confederate to this.
“You see, the bandages are coming off to-morrow,” he had said, “and Madge would hate to see me with this awful stubble. Sometimes, nurse, I usen’t to shave before breakfast, and she always cut me—figuratively, you know—till I did. You’ll find a razor about somewhere. Clip it first, please.”
So to-day he had cleanness of lip and chin, and now when the breakfast was being brought in, Madge drew her thumb and fourth finger down from his cheek to meet and pinch his chin.
“You were afraid I should cut you,” she said gently.
“Yes, so I got shaved by nurse. Ah, Madge, sit on the bed, just there, and see me have breakfast. Have you had yours, by-the-way?”
Madge recalled the events of the morning.
“I don’t think I have,” she said.
“Then may we have another cup, nurse?” said he. “Oh, it’s bacon, I can smell bacon. Now, Madge, I’m boss of this show. You may think you were going to feed me; not at all—I’m going to feed you. How elusive bacon is. Are you sure the plate is there? Oh, I felt it, then.”
Here the nurse intervened, but with laughter.
“Oh, Mr. Dundas, do lie quiet, and we will give you your breakfast. Yes, another cup. I’ll send for one. But your bed will be ‘all over’ bacon.”
Madge made a negative sign to her.“There, you’ve got a piece,” she said. “Raise it slowly, you clumsy boy! That’s right; now wait. Your hand is really very steady. There!”
And she slipped it off the fork into her mouth.
“Oh, Madge,” he cried, “how greedy! I thought I was going to get it. And I can’t manage everything. I’ll give you bacon if you’ll give me toast and butter.”
So she buttered the toast, and they ate it like children, bite and bite about, and Evelyn chivied bacon round the plate, and fed now himself and now her. The extra cup lingered on its way, and one cup did for them, and all this to Madge was a sort of rehearsal of what would be. And it was a rehearsal of the best possible. For what if his gaiety, his interest in this new game was but a last flare-up? He could not feel this childish excitement in the entrancing sport of feeding each other, always. Besides, even if he did, she herself did not know all yet. What horror perhaps awaited her under the bandages of that swathed face? Tender and womanly and loving as she was, she could not help wondering as to that. She had put up her hand for guidance and leading; she wanted nothing else. But she wanted to be led very strongly, very firmly.
Then when breakfast was done, Evelyn went straight back to this identification game. A match-box was easy, because of its rough sides, a cigarette could not be a pencil, because of its smell. “And——”
“Oh, the letter!” he said.
“Dear, it’s quite impossible,” said Madge. “I’ll tell you whom it is from with pleasure; in fact I meant to talk to you about it. I brought it up here for that purpose, to read it to you——”
But he interrupted again, rather peevishly.
“Ah, that’s finished then,” he said, dropping the envelope.
“What nonsense; you can’t guess,” said she.
“It’s no question of guessing. You brought a letter in with you, and didn’t mention it. You knew I shouldn’t—see. You were meaning to talk about it afterwards. Well, it’s either the Hermit or Philip. Besides, if the Hermit wrote to you, you would have told me. No, it’s Philip.”
This was no more than ordinary reason could have done.
“What does he say?” asked Evelyn in a harsh, dry tone. “Does he say he is very sorry, and it serves us right? That is the correct attitude, I should think.”
Madge put a cigarette in his lips.
“Won’t you smoke?” she asked.
“No, it doesn’t taste. It’s like smoking in a tunnel. About Philip now?”
“He doesn’t take the correct attitude,” said she. “If he had, how could I have wanted to talk to you about him? He wants to help us, Evelyn. And he will arrive here to-night, unless we stop him on his way at Inverness or Golspie.”
The corners of his mouth were compressed; she knew he was frowning.
“Philip?” he said. “That isn’t Philip.”
“It wasn’t perhaps,” said Madge, “but it is, I think. Things have happened—Mr. Merivale is dead. Philip was there.”
“Dead?” he asked.
“Yes; I only know about it from Philip. Oh, yes, you have guessed right. I can only tell you what he said. Mr. Merivale died because—because sorrow, pain were revealed to him. He died very suddenly—that I gather, and he died terribly, somehow. I know no more than what I tell you.”
Evelyn was silent a little.
“Yet he was the happiest man I ever saw,” he said. “I used to feel like a convict in chains beside him. What does it all mean? Have we all got to suffer in proportion——”
Again he broke off.
“And Philip is coming here?” he asked. Then his voice got suddenly shriller and more staccato. “I won’t see him!” he cried. “He has come to gloat over me. My God, is it not enough——”
Madge laid her two hands on his chest, pressing him gently down again.
“No, my darling,” she said, “he will not come for that.”
“Well, then, to make love to you again,” he cried. “He knows I am a cripple, a blind man, a blot on the earth!”
Madge gave a great sigh.
“Ah, why say things you don’t mean?” she said. “And why make those dagger-thrusts at me, that cannot touch me? No, don’t go on. Be silent, dear, or else beg my pardon, and his. I am sorry I should have to ask that, but you have said what is abominable! Oh, I don’t want words. Just nod your head, my darling, and that will mean it is said. But for the sake of love, I must have that token.”
“Why does he come here, then?” he asked.
Madge could not reply for the moment; she felt so sick at heart and helpless. She had fancied, poor thing, that she had catalogued, so to speak, all the troubles and difficulties which Evelyn had to face, which she had to face with him, but here was a fresh one, that attitude of suspicion which besets those who have a sense missing, and who imagine that even those whom they love and trust most may be taking advantage of their defect. Had he been able to see her face, the absolute frankness of her expression, the candour of her eyes would have made it impossible that the merest shadow of suspicion should have crossed his mind, that peevish cry “he has come to gloat over me or to make love to you,” could not have crossed his lips, for there would have been no impulse in his mind which could determine the words. Yet they had been spoken by him, fretfully, irritably, all but causelessly.
But cause there had been, and that cause was an instinct to ascribe the worst motive to the action of others instead of assuming the best. That was to be a foe to him more bitter and relentless than his sightlessness; even that which his bandages concealed would not draw so deeply on the healthful spring of kindly sanity which alone can carry a man smiling and indulgent through the frets of the world.
But for the present Madge restored his balance.
“Oh, Evelyn,” she said, “don’t disappoint me, dear, or make yourself bitter. You have been so brave and so splendid. Philip is coming here—or proposes to come because—he is sorry for you, because in spite of the injury we did him he still loves me—why not? But when you ask if he is coming to make love to me, then, dear, you let something which is not yourself speak for you. You utter counterfeit coin. It rings false. Besides, you have not heard his letter yet; I will read it you. And then you shall take back what you said, but did not mean to say.”
She read it through, every word.
“And now, dear?” she said.
But the corners of his mouth were tremulous, and that was enough; she knew well why he could not speak. So she kissed him again, and no more was said.
Lady Dover usually came up to see Evelyn after breakfast,and thus it was quite natural that she should be there when Dr. Inglis made his morning visit. She had already asked him whether she might be there when the bandages were removed, and so, when he came in now, she said:
“We are going to make quite a little festival of congratulation this morning, Mr. Dundas—that is to say, if you and Dr. Inglis will allow me to stop and see how wonderfully Sir Francis’ surgery and Dr. Inglis’ doctoring have succeeded.”
So while this was going on, she and Madge sat in the window, looking out on to the broad sunny day. The bracken on the hillsides was already beginning to turn colour, and Lady Dover said in a low voice, for fear Evelyn should hear, and be wounded, that the gold of the sunlight striking the gold of the bracken made each appear more golden. There was time, indeed, for a good deal of leisurely art-criticism of this nature, for the unswathing of his face, the gentle withdrawal of the lint dressings from the healed wounds took time, and more than once the nurse went out to get more water for the sponging away of the gum of plaster. For Dr. Inglis, kind man of silent sympathy as he was, knew well what this moment must inevitably be to Madge—knew the torture of suspense in which she must be awaiting the sight of her husband’s face. Brave as he well knew her to be, he knew also that she would have here to summon her bravery to her aid; and he wanted to make it as easy for her as he could, and thus took great pains to render the sight as little painful as might be. But he could do so little; whatever sponging and smoothing was possible, it still was so small a salvage. For the shot had struck him sideways, ricocheting off the rock, and on his forehead there was a long wound, healed indeed as well as it would ever be healed, but the outer skin had been destroyed, and it showed a long, pink line, as if perhaps some corrosive match had been struck on it. Another such went across the right cheek, another had crossed the left eyebrow, leaving a little hairless lane between the two severed sides of it. One eyelid had been struck and torn before the pellet did its deadlier work, and the other, though intact and drawn down over the hole of the eye-socket, was not like the eyelid of a man whose eyes were closed in rest or sleep, swelling gently over the eyeball and lying on the lower lashes; it hung straight, like the blind ofa window, for there was nothing beneath to cause its curvature.
His kind, twinkle-eyed Scotch face had grown grave over his operations, but he guessed what the suspense to Madge was, and rightly decided that nothing could be gained by lengthening it. Then he completed the shaving operations which the nurse had begun the evening before to the uncovered part of the face, and brushed into order his thick brown hair. Finally he adjusted a pair of large dark spectacles. Evelyn demurred at this.
“What is that for?” he asked.
“Ah, that is necessary,” said the doctor; “we have to protect the—the place of the worst injury. You will always have to wear them, I am afraid. And now I think we are ready.”
Madge got up from the window-seat. Though she had wished Lady Dover to be there, at this moment she cared not one farthing who was there or who was not. It was only she and Evelyn who mattered; Piccadilly might have buzzed round them, and she would have been unconscious of the crowd.
And she looked—she saw——
For one moment she stood there facing him, her breath suspended, only conscious of some deep-seated terror and dismay, and her face grew white. Once she tried to speak and could not, for she knew that some dreadful exclamation alone could pass her lips. Lady Dover had got up, too, and stood by her; she looked not at Evelyn at all, but at Madge, and before the pause had grown appreciable she whispered to her—
“Say anything. Don’t be a coward.”
It was therefore as well that Lady Dover had come with her, otherwise anything might have happened, Madge might have screamed almost, or she might have left the room without saying a word, so dreadful was the shock. But Lady Dover’s words were a lash to her, and the power of making an effort came back.
“Ah, dearest Evelyn,” she said, “how nice to see your face again.”
For a moment the tremor in her voice, the imminent sob in her throat, all but mastered her. Yet all this week he had been so brave, and for very shame she could not but put onthe semblance of bravery and try to infuse her speech with a grain of courage.
“It is good, it is good to see you,” she said, and the first physical horror began to fade a little as her love, that eternal, abiding principle, slid out from under the paralysis of the other. “All those bandages gone, all the plaster and lint gone. You look yourself, do you know, too—just, just yourself.”
She turned an appealing eye on Lady Dover; that was unnecessary, because she was quite prepared to speak as soon as Madge stopped.
“I must congratulate you too, Mr. Dundas,” she said in her neat, precise tones. “Why, you look, as Madge said, quite natural; does he not, Madge? And really I think dark spectacles are rather becoming. I shall get some myself.”
Evelyn had not spoken yet; but reasonably or not, for he had been quite unreasonably suspicious once before that morning, he thought he detected some insincerity in these protestations. And with one quick movement of his hand he took the spectacles off.
“Are they really becoming?” he asked. “Or do you like me better without, Madge?”
Again she saw, and, with a movement uncontrollable, she hid her own eyes for a moment. But Lady Dover again came to the rescue.
“Ah, Doctor Inglis won’t allow that, Mr. Dundas,” she said.
But Evelyn still held them away from his face. Brutal as it all was, the thing had to be gone through once, and it was on the whole better to do it now.
“Ah, I asked Madge,” he said quietly.
As he spoke, with his other hand he let his fingers dwell with that firm yet fluttering movement over his eyes. That straight, drawn-down lid was visualised by him, that tear in the other eyelid was visualised also. Then the hovering finger-tips traced the course of the pellet through the eyebrow, and felt, like a dog nosing a hot scent, the course of the scar where another had crossed his forehead. To that constructive touch the truth was becoming hideously plain. And deliberately, as he felt and traced, he set himself to believe the worst. He sat as judge to weigh the evidence of his fingers as they bore witness to the state of this wrecked faceof his. Again and again, in days past, he had said, and meant also, that he did not wish to go below the surface of things; the eyebrow, the curve of the mouth, the light of the eye itself, as he had said to the Hermit, were enough for him, there was symbol enough there. And since this choice was so instinctive and natural to himself, it was not possible to him to dissociate others from it, and as, with terrible certainty, he framed to himself what he looked like, he put himself into Madge’s place, and seeing with her eyes, framed also the conclusion which he believed to be inevitable. Yet she had seen him before, the nurse had told him so, and after that he had heard with ears that somehow seemed quickened in their sense even as touch was, the authentic ring of love in her voice. Or had he been deceived in that?
But thought, like the electric current through wires, travels many miles in an interval that is not appreciably greater than that which it takes to go a yard or two, and the rapid brushing of his fingers over his face had been almost as speedy. So when Madge answered (her thought too had gone far) he was not conscious that there had been a pause. She had complete command of her voice now.
“How can anybody be so silly?” she said. “I like you best without spectacles, dear, but as you have to wear them, there’s the end of it. And”—she was embarked on a big lie, and did not mind—“you look so much better than you did when I saw you a week ago when your face was being dressed, that I should scarcely recognise you. At least I feel now as if I should scarcely have recognised you then; now there is no need for recognition. Put them on again, Evelyn; there is a strong light.”
She gave a little gasp at the end of this. Lady Dover heard it, and laid a quick hand of sympathy on her shoulder. But Evelyn did not; for the present he was convinced, and that conviction, like some burst of sudden sound, shut out all other impressions.
“Here we are, then,” he said. “This is the new me; positively the first appearance. A favourable reception was accorded by a sympathetic audience. And now—are you still there, Dr. Inglis?—what manner of reason is there that I should not get up?”
“You want to?” he asked.
“Why, certainly.”
“Then, there is an excellent reason why you should. When my patients want to do a thing it is an indication, generally correct, that it is good for them. Yes, get up by all means.”
Again the boyish delight in the new game took possession of Evelyn; yet that delight, and the pity of it, stabbed Madge like a sword.
“And let me do it myself,” he cried. “Let my clothes be put by my bed, let my bath be put there, and let me be left quite alone. Madge, I bet you I shall be dressed in an hour. And the parting in my hair will be straight,” he added excitedly.
This also was agreed to, with the provision that if he felt faint or tired during these operations he was at once to desist, and lie down again and ring his bell. The nurse busied herself with the preparations for this great event, and the other three went out together.
Dr. Inglis paused in the corridor outside the room.
“Mrs. Dundas,” he said, “you have got to keep that up, you know. You did it well, and I don’t think you ought to have done differently. Come, come, we shall have you fainting next.”
Poor Madge had been utterly overwrought by this scene, and indeed as the doctor spoke she swayed and staggered where she stood. But they got her to a chair, in which she sat silent with closed eyes for a minute or so. Then she looked up at him.
“Shall I get used to it?” she asked. “Please tell me if there is a reasonable chance of that?”
“Certainly there is—we will come down in a minute, Lady Dover, if you will go on—yes, certainly, there is much more than a chance. You will get used to it. I did not know, by the way, that your husband had been told you had seen him before; but that does not matter now. But it is idle to pretend that you will get used to it at once. You won’t, you can’t. You will have to be patient, and all the time you must keep the strictest guard on yourself, to prevent the least suspicion getting to his mind that you are shocked by his appearance. He knows, poor fellow, more or less what he looks like. The curious blind sense of touch is developing in him with extraordinary rapidity. But you convinced him just now—his whole face flushed—that you don’t mind.You must keep that up, otherwise no one can say what may happen.”
“What do you mean?” asked she, still rather faintly.
“Just that. His hold on life is strong enough, quite strong enough, but it comes to him now mainly through one channel. That is you.”
The rather cruel abruptness of this was intentional and well calculated. It did not dismay Madge, but just braced her. She got up from the chair.
“That will be all right, then,” she said.
“I am sure it will. But as I shall go away to-day, I want to say a little more to you. His recovery, his recuperative power, is excellent, but there is one thing which I do not altogether like. His moods vary with great rapidity and great intensity. No doubt that was always so to some extent with him.”
“Yes,” said Madge eagerly, “it is just that which is so like him. Surely that is all for the good, that he should be so like himself?”
“Yes, within limits. But, as I need not tell you, he has been through a frightful shock, not only physical but mental, and quiet is the best restorative of all. Keep him amused and interested in things as much as you can; but also, as far as you can, keep him from feeling extravagantly. His mental barometer is jumping up and down; in proportion as it goes unnaturally high, so it will also go unnaturally low. That is frightfully tiring; it is to the mind what fever, a temperature that jumps about, is to the body.”
He paused a moment.
“Of course I know the difficulties,” he went on. “It is no use saying ‘Be tranquil,’ but you can certainly induce tranquility in him by being tranquil yourself, by surrounding him with tranquility. Keep his spirits level by keeping your own level. It won’t be easy. Now, if you are quite yourself again, shall we join Lady Dover?”
Evelyn spent several hours that afternoon downstairs, but the excitement of coming down for the first time tired him, and before Philip’s arrival he had gone up to bed again. All day, too, to Madge’s great disquietude, his spirits had been jumping up and down; at one time he would go on with the identification game with the most absorbed enthusiasm;then again, even in the middle of it, he would suddenly stop.
“Oh, it’s no use,” he said. “Why, it takes me half an hour to find out what is on that table, and it would take me a week to find out what the room was like. Take me on to the terrace, will you, Madge, and let me walk up and down a bit.”
This had been medically permitted, and with his arm in hers they strolled up and down in the warm sunlight. Evelyn sniffed the fresh air with extraordinary gusto.