We were engaged upon that hospitable abomination at a shooting
party--a champagne luncheon. Having made a very fair bag for my
morning's work, and being tired with my exertions, I was inclined to
think that the serious business of the day was over for me, and that I
might take it easy as regarded further effort. Edgar, who, since his
discovery that my fervour on the subject of his sister had grown less
ardent, was inclined to assume more of the character of mentor towards
me than I cared about, had seated himself on the ground beside me; but
I had found an opportunity of changing seats, for I felt less
well-disposed towards him that morning than I had ever been before.
The fact was that the gentle Helen had snubbed me two evenings
previously for a demonstration of affection which I had carefully
prepared, lest she, too, should have noticed the waning in my love.
Upon this I had retreated, with a very odd mixture of feelings towards
my _fiancee_, and there had been a reserve between us for the whole of
the evening, which Edgar somewhat unwisely interfered to break.
Looking upon myself as the injured person, I had resented the homily
he felt himself called upon to administer, and though I made my peace
with Helen next day, I avoided her brother. He made two or three
good-natured overtures to me in the manner of an experienced nurse to
a froward child, but on the morning of the shooting party I was still
as far as ever from being reconciled to the paternal intervention of
Edgar the Wise and the Good.
'The Ladies!' cried one of the party, leaning lazily back on his arm
and raising his glass.
'Say "Woman,"' I amended; 'it's more comprehensive.'
'Well, but "The Ladies!" ought to be comprehensive enough for you just
now, Maude,' said some one, glancing mischievously at Edgar, whose
solemnity was increasing, and scenting something warmer than
controversy.
'Not now, nor ever!' said I, with more daring than good taste. 'In
"Woman" we can secretly worship an ideal better than ourselves. In
"The Ladies" we must bow down to creatures lower than ourselves, whose
beauty deceives us, whose frivolity degrades us, and whom nothing more
sacred than our care and their own coldness protects from the fate of
fellow-women whom before them we do not dare to name.'
Everybody looked up in astonishment, and Edgar's red healthy face
became purple with anger.
'A man who holds such opinions concerning ladies is probably better
qualified to judge that other class which he has the singular taste to
mention in the same sentence with them.'
'Perhaps. It is easier to find mercy for victims than for tyrants.'
Edgar rose to his feet with the ponderous dignity of an offended
giant.
'If I had known your opinions on this subject a little earlier, Mr.
Maude, I should never have allowed you to form an alliance with my
family.'
I rose too, as hot as he; and secretly alarmed and repentant at the
lengths to which my recklessness had carried me, I was not ready to
submit to the didactic rough-riding of the man who had long ago
himself instilled into me his own supreme contempt for the weaker sex.
'Perhaps I, Lord Edgar, should have thought the honour too dearly
bought if I had known that it involved my acceptance of a
self-appointed keeper of my conscience.'
Our host, Sir Wilfrid Speke, now interfered to calm the passions which
were rapidly getting the better of us, and thrusting my gun under my
arm, he literally carried me off, and marching me to a covert on the
slope of a hill where was a noted 'warm corner,' he told me
good-humouredly to 'let the birds have it,' and left me to myself and
them.
I was in a very bad temper. Enraged by the recollection of Helen's
simpering coldness, by her brother's recently-assumed dictatorship,
and by my own reckless want of self-control a few minutes before, I
was not in the mood for sport. Was this to be the result of my
determination to take life more seriously, that I discovered my
_fiancee_ to be a fool, my most honoured friend a bore, and myself
capable of undreamt-of depths of bad taste and ill-temper? I would go
back to my old life of languid chatter and irresponsible dissipation,
I would content myself again with my fame as the 'handsomest man in
town,' would accept my future wife for what she was, and not for what
she ought to be, give her the inane, half-hearted attentions which
were so much more to her taste than earnestness and devotion, and see
thought and Lord Edgar at the devil.
I felt much more inclined to shoot myself than to open fire on the
pheasants, but head-long carelessness, and not tragic intention,
caused the accident which ensued. In getting through a gap in a hedge,
my gun was caught by a briar as I mounted to the higher ground on the
other side; I tried to free it, and handling it incautiously, a sudden
shock to my face and right shoulder told me that I had shot myself. I
was blinded for the moment, and trying to raise my right arm I felt
acute pain, and the next instant I felt the warm blood trickling down
my neck.
I tried to walk, but I staggered about and could make no progress, so
I leaned against a tree and shouted; but my head growing dizzy, I soon
found myself on the ground, filled with one wish--that I might live
long enough for some one to find me, and receive the last instructions
by which I could atone to pretty Helen for the vulgar earnestness of
my love.
My next recollection is of a dull murmur of voices heard, as it
seemed, in the distance, then of pain grown suddenly more acute as I
was moved; all the time I could see nothing, and I had only just time
to understand that I was being carried along by friends whose voices I
recognised, when I fell again into unconsciousness.
I recovered to find myself back at Sir Wilfrid's; a doctor was
dressing my wounded head and examining my shoulder; there was a
bandage across my eyes, and on trying to speak I found that the right
side of my face was also bound up. I passed the night in some pain,
and must have been for part of it light-headed, as I discovered two or
three days later, when Edgar, much moved, told me that I had implored
everybody who came near me to witness that I left all I possessed to
Lady Helen Normanton, and had begged for the pen and paper I could not
have used, to execute my proposed will.
During the next few days Edgar hardly left my bedside. My head and
eyes were still kept tightly bandaged, so that I could neither see
nor speak, nor take solid food. Seeing me in this piteous condition,
Edgar, like the good fellow he was, decided that sermons were out of
season, and that I must be amused. His humour, however, being of a
somewhat slow and cumbrous kind adapted to his size, I took advantage
of my enforced silence to let him joke on unheeded, while my own
thoughts wandered dreamily away to my life of the past few years, and
to the odd, quickly discovered mistake in which it had lately
culminated. I was surprised by the persistency with which Helen's
placid silliness tormented me, fresh instances of it coming every hour
into my mind until I began to ask myself whether the little blue-eyed
lady had really been born into the world with a soul at all. And so,
no longer suffering bodily pain, I lay day after day, very much
absorbed by my own self-questionings, and by strange dreams of a new
Helen, who came to me with the fair face and soft eyes of the old, but
with bright intelligence in her gaze, whispering with her delicate
lips words of love and tenderness.
I woke up suddenly one night, still hot with my sleeping fancy that
this revised edition of my _fiancee_ had been with me. I had seemed to
feel her breath upon my cheek, even to feel the touch of her lips upon
my ear, as she told me my illness had taught her how much she loved
me. I thought I was answering her in passionate words with a great
thrill of joy in my heart, when I woke up and found myself as usual in
darkness and silence.
'Edgar!' I called out; 'Edgar!'
He answered sleepily from a little way off, 'Yes. Do you want
anything?'
'No, thank you.'
A pause.
'I say,' I went on a few moments later, 'nobody has been in the room,
have they?'
'No, no-o-body,' with a yawn. 'At least, I may have dozed, but I don't
think----'
'No, of course not.' But I was horribly wide awake by this time. Some
of the bandages round my head having been removed for the first time
the evening before, I had liberty of speech again, of which I seemed
resolved to make the most. 'I say, Edgar, there's a fire flickering in
the grate, isn't there?'
'Yes, why?'
'Well, if I can see that quite well, why on earth do they still keep
the bandages over my eyes? I know they were afraid of my going blind.
But I haven't; so what's it for?'
'I don't know,' mumbled Edgar, rather blankly. He added hastily, 'I
suppose the doctor knows best; you'd better leave them alone.'
'Oh yes.'
A long silence, during which Edgar, under the impression that it was
part of a sick nurse's duty when the patient showed signs of
restlessness, pottered about the room, and at last fell over
something.
'I say, Edgar,' I began again, 'isn't my face a good deal battered
about on the right side?'
I heard him stop, and there was a little clash of glasses. Then he
spoke, with some constraint.
'Yes, a little. I daresay it will be some time before it gets all
right. But you've no internal injuries or broken bones, and that's the
great thing.'
The last statement was made so effusively that it was not difficult
for me to gather that my face was more deeply injured than he liked to
admit.
'I know quite well,' said I composedly, 'that I shall have to swell
the proud ranks of the plain after this; I must cultivate my intellect
and my virtues, like the poor girls whom we don't dance with! I've
lost a finger, too, haven't I? On my right hand?'
'Only two joints of it,' answered Edgar, with laboured cheerfulness.
'What would poor Helen say to me if she could see me now?' I
suggested, rather diffidently.
'Say! Why, what every true woman would say, that she loved you ten
times better now you were disfigured than she did when you were the
counterpart of every other good-looking popinjay in town!'
This, uttered with much ponderous vehemence, was by no means
reassuring to me. In the first place, it confirmed the idea that my
injuries would leave permanent marks. In the second place, it led me
to ask myself whether, Helen's chief merit in my eyes having been
good looks, my chief merit in her eyes might not have been the same.
As I said nothing, Edgar, now fully awake, came nearer to the bed, and
said solemnly: 'You do Helen injustice, Harry.'
'And you taught me to do her injustice, Edgar.'
At first he said nothing to this, and I knew that he understood me.
But presently I felt his hand laid emphatically on my left shoulder,
and he began in a low earnest voice: 'Look here, old chap, that's not
quite fair. I may have inveighed against the intellectual inferiority
of women scores of times when you encouraged me by feeble protest. I
may have spoken of my own sister as an example of the sweet and silly.
When you saw her and became infatuated about her I listened to your
rhapsodies in silence because I couldn't endorse your opinion that she
was an angel. But I was glad you had taken a fancy to the child, and
I knew that you might have done much worse. Well, my opinions have
undergone no transformation. The women of the middle class, whom it is
now the fashion to educate, the women of the lower class, who have to
work, may be considered as reasoning creatures, varying, as men do, in
their reasoning powers. But the women of the upper classes, _pur
sang_, who are equally above education and labour, may be ranked all
together, with the exception of those whom alliance with the class
below has regenerated, as more or less fascinating idiots, whose minds
are cramped by unnatural and ignorant prejudices, and in whom an
occasional ray of intelligence disperses itself in mere freaks of art,
of philanthropy, or of religion.'
'Then, if you are logical, you may end by marrying a barmaid.'
'I think not. Barmaids are young women who, by the exacting demands of
their calling, are bound to be healthy, active, intelligent and
shrewd. Consider how such a woman would be thrown away in the
ridiculous and empty existence led by our wives! How she would laugh
at the shallow interests of the women around her, and despise her
do-nothing husband! Without counting that she might be demoralised by
her new position, and add the mistakes of a parvenue to the foibles of
the class into which she was admitted!'
'Then, on the whole, you will----'
'Remain single, or take for wife the usual fool of my own class, who
will have the usual fool of her own class for a husband.'
'But, Edgar,' said I, after a short pause, 'I am not so calm as you
are, and my mind is less well-regulated than yours. I want something
in my wife that you would not want from yours. The docile acceptance
of my love would never content me; I want it returned.'
But this view of the case had the effect of irritating Edgar, who
naturally resented the idea of any other nature having deeper needs
than his own.
'It is unreasonable to expect, from our physical and mental inferior,
powers equal to our own,' he said, in a tone of dismissal of the
subject.
'Then how am I to expect from Helen the power of looking at my
disfigured face without horror, when I am by no means sure that I
could have felt redoubled devotion if a similar accident had happened
to her?'
'Women are different from us, and not to be judged by the same rules.
Beauty--of some sort--is a duty with them, while every one knows that
an ugly man makes quicker progress with them than a handsome one.'
'Well, I should like to judge what sort of progress with them my
ugliness is likely to make. Give me a looking-glass.'
But he would not. He said the doctor had forbidden me to use my eyes
yet, that my face was still unhealed, and the bandages must not be
moved. And finally he declined to talk to me any longer, and told me
to go to sleep.
I was not satisfied. I knew that I was getting well fast, that there
was no need to keep me in bed, and I felt curious as to the reason of
my still being kept so close a prisoner. So I found an opportunity
when I had been left, as they thought, asleep, to remove the bandage
from my eyes with my left hand. My sight seemed as good as ever, but
the skin round about my right eye seemed to be tightly drawn. The
window-blinds were down, and as evening was coming on there was only
light enough to distinguish dimly the objects in the room by the help
of the flickering flame of the fire. I got out of bed and walked to
the toilet-table, but the looking-glass had been taken away; to the
mantelpiece, with the same result. I grew impatient, angry, and rather
anxious. There was a hand-glass in my dressing-bag, if I could only
find that; I remembered that I had left it in the dressing-room. I
dashed into the room, and as that, too, was darkened, I turned to draw
up the blind. By that movement I came face to face with a sight so
appalling that, of all the misfortunes my accident has ever brought
upon me, none, I think, has given me a shock for the first moment so
horrible. I saw before me the figure of a man with the face of a
devil.
The right eyebrow, the right side of the moustache were gone, and the
hair as far as the back of the right ear. The whole of this side of
the face, from forehead to chin, was a puckered drawn mass of
blackened shrivelled skin, distorted into grotesque seams and furrows.
The right end of the eye and the right corner of the mouth were drawn
up, giving to the whole face a sinister and evil expression.
After a few moments' contemplation of my new self, I turned away from
the glass, feeling sick with disgust and horror. In the first shock of
my discovery, no reflection that I was looking upon the fearful sight
at its worst, and that the healing work was still going on underneath
the scarred and desiccated skin, came to console me.
My back turned upon my own image, my stupefaction gave place to rapid
thought. I saw in a moment that the old course of my life was at one
blow broken up, that I must begin again as if I had been born that
day. I must go away, not only from my own friends, but from the chance
of coming in contact with them again. I must leave England. Also,
since if I were to make my resolution known I should be inundated with
kindly meant dissuasions, I must breathe no hint of my intention
until I was quite able to carry it into execution. I was sure that no
one but the doctor, and perhaps Edgar, had seen my face in its present
condition, and that no description could give to others any idea of
its appearance. I felt that my bodily health and strength were all
that they had ever been, and that nothing but the wish to keep the
knowledge of my disfigurement from me as long as possible had prompted
the doctor's orders to me to remain in bed and to retain the bandages.
It now, too, occurred to me that delay might bring some slight
modification of my hideousness, and I resolved to let nature do what
little she could, and not to set out on my travels until the mask
which now covered one-half my face had fallen off, and disclosed
whatever fresh horrors might be underneath. Then I would, without
letting any one see my face, start for some German Spa for the benefit
of my health; before I had been away three months I should be
forgotten, and free to wend my way wherever I pleased. This idea, to a
man to whom life had begun to present something like a deadlock, was
not without charm. Society was a bore, love a delusion; now was the
chance to find out what else there was worth learning in life.
I heard Edgar's voice in the distance, and had only time to rush back
to bed, put on the bandages round my face, and turn on my side as if
asleep, before he came into the room.