When they came to tell her that he had arrived she had glanced at herself in the mirror, then remembering that he was blind, she thought, “Absurd!”
“Who is with him?” she asked the servant.
“A young woman, my lady.”
“Very well; give her some tea in the housekeeper’s room. Bring Dene up here.”
She lay on her sofa, waiting for him to be brought up. She hoped his blindness was not disfiguring, and suddenly the matter lost its almost mystical value, and she saw it in a prosaic light: why had she been so foolish as to obey her whim and send for this man? she knew that she was very unskilled at talking to what she called “common people,” even when she came across them accidentally, such as gardeners; they were always taciturn and hostile, and she thought vaguely that they would be more so within four walls even than in the open air. The prospect of being closeted in her sitting-room alone with a factory-hand,—he was nothing else,—appalled her. Perhaps he would spit. Perhaps hewould smell.... In any case, what should she find to say to him?
He was there, standing by the door where the servant had left him, with the special stillness of the blind in a strange place. Contrary to her expectation, he did not wear a beard. She saw at once that he had an extraordinary proud, fine-featured face, and that his blindness was not in the least disfiguring. Indeed, his eyes were so dark and so full of fire that it was hard to believe them sightless. He had nothing of the smartened-up appearance that she was accustomed to associate with the poor when visiting the rich. He had so clearly taken no trouble either to brush his hair or change his coat, that she remembered with a twinge of annoyance her own glance into the mirror when his arrival was announced. Her embarrassment diminished as she realised that he was himself neither intimidated nor impressed.
“Oh, Dene,” she said, “I am glad to see you. Sir Robert has been telling me a little about your circumstances, and I wondered whether I could help you in any way? So I asked you to come up here to speak to me.” She was satisfied with her opening, but felt the last phrase to be weak, a fallingaway; his quietness, and the knowledge that he could not see her, disconcerted her.
“In what way did you mean exactly, my lady?” he asked.
How could she answer that question? Mention of money was impossible; she knew that already, although she had only heard him pronounce nine words. She was driven up against the truth that she had wanted to see him for no other purpose than her own distraction, that any other reason would be a mere pretext, and she had a swift impulse to tell him this, confident that he would not misunderstand. So much already did she feel him to be not only her social, but also her intellectual equal. (Social was a wrong word, an absurd word; it could never be used, with all the artifice and fallacy that it implied, in connection with Silas Dene. Her discoveries went rapidly. But she must give some sort of answer.)
“I meant nothing exactly. I thought that if there was anything I could do, you would tell me.”
“This is the first time, my lady, that I remember your sending for any one from the factory up to Malleson Place.”
She was astonished at that; his tone amountedto an accusation. He was so grave, and she used in her mind the word “chained,” as most nearly expressing his obvious reserve of force.
“The truth is,” she said, ceasing to lie at full length upon the sofa, and sitting upright, “that I was very much interested in what Sir Robert told me, and thought I would like to see you for myself.”
“As your ladyship has seen me now,” he suggested, “and there is nothing I want, I can go?”
As soon as he wanted to go, she wanted him to stay. She got up and came to help him, saying, “But I should like to talk to you for a little, Dene; give me your hand and I will take you to a chair.”
He shook his head, and said that he preferred to stand. She had to go back to her sofa thwarted, though in so small a thing, while he remained by the door. He made her sitting-room appear tawdry, with its little gilt chairs and lacy cushions and pink carpet, so much did he rob people and objects of all but their true significance. She was almost ashamed of her surroundings, and was thankful that he could not see them, but she thought that it would take more than mere blindness to stay his more perilous vision down through the embellishments into anybody’s soul. She was conscious of saying to herself,“Thiswon’t do,” and of taking herself sharply in hand. “This is to bemygame,” she insisted, “not his.”