A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, WHO HUNG FIRE. NATURAL HISTORY, AND
ARTIFICIAL CHRONOLOGY. NEITHER WAS TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER.
CONFIDENCES ABOUT ANOTHER LADY AND GENTLEMAN, SOME YEARS SINCE. HOW
THE FIRST GENTLEMAN FINISHED HIS SECOND CIGAR. DR. LIVINGSTONE AND
SEKELETU. MR. NORBURY'S QUORUM. WHY ADRIAN TORRENS WOKE UP, AND
WHOSE VOICE PROMISED NOT TO MENTION HIS EYES. FEUDAL BEEF-TEA, AND
MRS. BAILEY. AN EARLY VISIT, FROM AN EARL. AN EXPERIMENT THAT
DISCLOSED A PAINFUL FACT
It is three weeks later at the Castle; three weeks later, that is, than
the story's last sight of it. It is the hottest night we have had this
year, says general opinion. Most of the many guests are scattered in the
gardens after dinner, enjoying the night-air and the golden moon, which
means to climb high in the cirrus-dappled blue in an hour or so. And
then it will be a fine moonlight night.
On such a night there is always music somewhere, and this evening
someone must be staying indoors to make it, as it comes from the windows
of the great drawing-room that opens on the garden. Someone is playing a
Beethoven sonata one knows well enough to pretend about with one's
fingers, theoretically. Only one can't think which it is. So says Miss
Smith-Dickenson, in the Shrubbery, to her companion, who is smoking a
Havana large enough to play a tune on if properly perforated. But she
wishes Miss Torrens would stop, and let Gwen and the Signore sing some
Don Juan. That is Miss Dickenson's way. She always takes exception to
this and to that, and wants t'other. It does not strike the Hon.
Percival Pellew, the smoker of the big cigar, as a defect in her
character, but rather as an indication of its illumination--a set-off to
her appearance, which is, of course, at its best in the half-dark of a
Shrubbery by moonlight, but is _passee_ for all that. Can't help that,
now, can we? But Mr. Pellew can make retrospective concession; she must
have told well enough, properly dressed, fifteen years ago. She don't
exactly bear the light now, and one can't expect it.
The Hon. Percival complimented himself internally on a greater
spirituality, which can overlook such points--mere clay?--and discern a
peculiar essence of soul in this lady which, had they met in her more
palatable days, might have been not uncongenial to his own. Rather a
pity!
Miss Dickenson could identify a glow-worm and correct the ascription of
its light to any fellow's cigar-end thrown away. She made the best
figure that was compatible with being indubitably _passee_ when she went
down on one knee in connection with this identification. Mr. Pellew felt
rather relieved. Her outlines seemed somehow to warrant or confirm the
intelligence he had pledged himself to. He remarked, without knowing
anything about it, that he thought glow-worms didn't show up till
September.
"Try again, Mr. Pellew. It's partridge-shooting that doesn't begin till
September. That's what you're thinking of."
"Well--August, then!"
"No--that's grouse, not glow-worms. You see, you are reduced to July,
and it's July still. Do take my advice, Mr. Pellew, and leave Natural
History alone. Nobody will ever know you know nothing about it, if you
hold your tongue."
The Hon. Percival was silent. He was not thinking about his shortcomings
as a Natural Historian. The reflection in his mind was:--"What a pity
this woman isn't twenty years younger!" He could discriminate--so he
imagined--between mere flippancy and spontaneous humour. The latter
would have sat so well on the girl in her teens, and he would then have
accepted the former as juvenile impertinence with so much less misgiving
that he was being successfully made game of. He could not quite shake
free of that suspicion. Anyhow, it was a pity Miss Smith-Dickenson was
thirty-seven. That was the age her friend Lady Ancester had assessed her
at, in private conversation with Mr. Pellew. "Though what the deuce my
cousin Philippa"--thus ran a very rapid thought through his mind--"could
think I wanted to know the young woman's age for, I can't imagine."
"There it is!" said the lady, stooping over the glow-worm. "Little hairy
thing! I won't disturb it." She got on her feet again, saying:--"Thank
you--I'm all right!" in requital of a slight excursion towards
unnecessary help, which took the form of a jerk cut short and an
apologetic tone. "But don't talk Zoology or Botany, please," she
continued. "Because there's something I want you to tell me about."
"Anything consistent with previous engagements. Can't break any
promises."
"Have you made any promises about the man upstairs?"
"Not the ghost of a one! But he isn't 'the man upstairs' to me. He's the
man in the room at the end of my passage. That's how I came to see him."
"You did see him?"
"Oh yes--talked to him till the nurse stopped it. I found we knew each
other. Met him in the Tyrol--at Meran--ten years ago. He was quite a boy
then. But he remembered me quite well. It was this morning."
"Did he recognise you, or you him?"
"Why--neither exactly. We found out about Meran by talking. No--poor
chap!--he can't recognise anybody, by sight at least. He won't do that
yet awhile."
The lady said "Oh?" in a puzzled voice, as though she heard something
for the first time; then continued: "Do you know, I have never quite
realised that ... that the eyes were so serious. I knew all along that
there was _something_, but ... but I understood it was only weakness."
"They have been keeping it dark--quite reasonably and properly, you
know--but there is it! He can't see--simply can't see. His eyes _look_
all right, but they won't work. His sister knows, of course, but he has
bound her over to secrecy. He made me promise to say nothing, and I've
broken my promise, I suppose. But--somehow--I thought you knew."
"Only that there was _something_--no idea that he was blind. But I won't
betray your confidence."
"Thank you. It's only a matter of time, as I gather. But a bad job for
him till he gets his sight again."
"He will, I suppose, in the end?"
"Oh yes--in the end. Sir Coupland is cautious, of course. But I don't
fancy he's really uneasy. His sight might come back suddenly, he said,
at any moment. Of course, _he_ believes his eyesight will come back.
Only meanwhile he wants--it was a phrase of his own--to keep all the
excruciation for his own private enjoyment. That's what he said!"
"I see. Of course, that makes a difference. And you think Sir Coupland
thinks he will get all right again?"
Mr. Pellew says he does think so, reassuringly. "It has always struck me
as peculiar," says he, "that Tim's family ... I beg pardon--I should
have said the Earl's. But you see I remember him as a kid--we are
cousins, you know--and his sisters always called him Tim.... Well, I
mean the family here, you know, seem to know so little of the Torrenses.
Lady Gwen doesn't seem to have recognised this chap in the Park."
"I believe she has never seen him. He has been a great deal abroad, you
know."
"Yes, he's been at German Universities, and games of that sort."
"Is that your third cigar, Mr. Pellew?"
"No--second. Come, I say, Miss Dickenson, two's not much...."
But her remark was less a tobacco-crusade than a protest against too
abrupt a production of family history by a family friend. Mr. Pellew
felt confident it would come, though; and it did, at about the third
whiff of the new cigar.
"I suppose you know the story?"
"Couldn't say, without hearing it first to know."
"About Philippa and Sir Hamilton Torrens?"
"Can't say I have. But then I'm the sort of fellah nobody ever tells
things to."
"I suppose I oughtn't to have mentioned it."
"I shall not tell anyone you did so. You may rely on that." Mr. Pellew
gave his cigar a half-holiday to say this seriously, and Miss Dickenson
felt that his type, though too tailor-made, was always to be relied on;
you had only to scratch it to find a Gentleman underneath. No audience
ever fails to applaud the discovery on the stage. Evidently there was no
reserve needed--a relation of the Earl, too! Still, she felt satisfied
at this passing recognition of Prudence on her part. Preliminaries had
been done justice to.
She proceeded to tell what she knew of the episode of her friend's early
engagement to the father of the gentleman who had been shot. It was
really a very flat story; so like a thousand others of its sort as
scarcely to claim narration-space. Youth, beauty, high spirits, the
London season, first love--warranted the genuine article--parental
opposition to the union of Romeo and Juliet, on the vulgar, unpoetical
ground of Romeo having no particular income and vague expectations; the
natural impatience of eighteen and five-and-twenty when they don't get
their own way in everything; misunderstandings, ups-and-downs,
reconciliations and new misunderstandings; finally one rather more
serious than its predecessors, and judicious non-interference of
bystanders--underhanded bystanders who were secretly favouring another
suitor, who wasn't so handsome and showy as Romeo certainly, but who was
of sterling worth and all that sort of thing. Besides, he was very
nearly an Earl, and Hamilton Torrens was three-doors off his father's
Baronetcy and Pensham Steynes. This may have had its weight with Juliet.
Miss Dickenson candidly admitted that she herself would have been
influenced; but then, no doubt she was a worldling. Mr. Pellew admired
the candour, discerning in it exaggeration to avoid any suspicion of
false pretence. He did not suspect himself of any undue leniency to this
lady. She was altogether too _passee_ to admit of any such idea.
The upshot of the flat episode, of course, was that Philippa "became
engaged" to her new suitor, and did _not_ fall out with him. They were
married within the year, and three months later her former _fiance's_
father died, rather unexpectedly. His eldest son, coming home from
Burmah on sick-leave, died on the voyage, of dysentery; and his second
brother, a naval officer, was in the autumn of the same year killed by a
splinter at the Battle of Navarino. So by a succession of fatalities
Romeo found himself the owner of his father's estate, and a not very
distant neighbour of Juliet and his successful rival.
It appeared that he had consoled himself by marrying a Miss Abercrombie,
Miss Dickenson believed. These Romeos always marry a Miss Something;
who, owing to the way she comes into the story, is always on the
top-rung of the ladder of insipidity. Nobody cares for her; she appears
too late to interest us. No doubt there were several Miss Abercrombies
on draught, and he selected the tallest or the cleverest or the most
musical, avoiding, of course, the dowdiest.
However, there was Lady Ancester's romance, told to account for the
languid intercourse between the Castle and Pensham Steynes, and the
non-recognition of one another by Gwen and the Man in the Park. Miss
Dickenson added a rider to the effect that she could quite understand
the position. It would be a matter of mutual tacit consent, tempered
down by formal calls enough to allay local gossip. "I think Miss Torrens
has stopped," said she collaterally; you know how one speaks
collaterally? "Shall we walk towards the house?"
Then the Hon. Percival made a speech he half repented of later;
_videlicet_, when he woke next morning. It became the fulcrum, as it
were, of an inexplicable misgiving that Miss Dickenson would be bearing
the light worse than ever when he saw her at breakfast. The speech
was:--"It's very nice out here. One can hear the Don at Covent Garden.
Besides ... one can hear out here just as well." This must have been
taken to mean that two could. For the lady's truncated reply was:--"Till
you've finished your cigar, then!"
Combustion was lip-close when the cigar-end was thrown away. The reader
of this story may be able to understand a thing its writer can only
record without understanding--the fact that this gentleman felt grateful
to the fine moonlight night, now nearly a _fait-accompli_, for enhancing
this lady's white silk, which favoured a pretence that she was only
reasonably _passee_, and enabled him to reflect upon the contour of her
throat without interruption from its skin. For it had a contour by
moonlight. Well!--sufficient to the day is the evil thereof; daylight
might have its say to-morrow. Consider the clock put back a dozen years!
* * * * *
"Oh yes, he's asleep still, but I've seen him--looked in on my way down.
Do you know, I really believe he will be quite fit for the journey
to-morrow. He's getting such a much better colour, and last night he
seemed so much stronger." Thus the last comer to the morning-rally of
breakfast claimants, in its ante-room, awaiting its herald. Miss Irene
Torrens is a robust beauty with her brother's eyes. She has been with
him constantly since she came with her father three weeks ago, and the
two of them watched his every breath through the terrible day and night
that followed.
"Then perhaps he will let us see him," says Lady Gwen. "At last!"
"You must not expect too much," says Miss Torrens. She does not like
saying it, but facts are overpowering. Her brother has exacted a pledge
from her to say nothing, even now, about his blindness--merely to treat
him as weak-eyed temporarily. He will pass muster, he says--will squeak
through somehow. "I can't have that glorious girl made miserable," were
the words he had used to her, half an hour since. This Irene will be all
on tenterhooks till the interview is safely over. Meanwhile it is only
prudent not to sound too hopeful a note. It is as well to keep a margin
in reserve in case the performance should fall through.
Irene's response to her brother's words had been, "She is a glorious
girl," and she was on the way to "You should have seen her eyes last
night over that Beethoven!" But she broke down on the word _eyes_. How
else could it have been? Then the blind man had laughed, in the courage
of his heart, as big a laugh as his pitiable weakness could sustain, and
had made light of his affliction. He had never given way from the first
hour of his revival, when he had asked to have the shutters open, and
had been told they were already wide open, and the July sun streaming
into the room.
It was the Countess who answered Irene's caution, as accompaniment to
her morning salute. "We are not to expect _anything_, my dear. That is
quite understood. It would be unreasonable. And we won't stop long and
tire him. But this girl of mine will never be happy if he goes away
without our--well!--becoming acquainted, I might almost say. Because
really we are perfect strangers. And when one has shot a man, even by
accident...." Her ladyship did not finish, but went on to hope the
eyesight was recovering.
"Oh yes!" said Irene audaciously. "We are quite hopeful about it now. It
will be all right with rest and feeding up. Only, if I let you in to see
him you _will_ promise me, won't you--not to say a word about his eyes?
It only frightens him, and does no one any good." Of course, Miss
Torrens got her promise. It was an easy one to make, because reference
to the eyes only seemed a means towards embarrassment. Much easier to
say nothing about them. Gwen and Miss Torrens, very _liees_ already,
went out by the garden window to talk, but would keep within hearing
because breakfast was imminent.
More guests, and the newspapers; as great an event in the early fifties
as now, but with only a fraction of the twentieth century's allowance of
news. Old General Rawnsley, guilty of his usual rudeness in capturing
the _Times_ from all comers, had to surrender it to the Hon. Percival
because none but a dog-in-the-manger could read a letter from Sir C.
Napier of Scinde, and about Dr. Livingstone and Sekeletu and the
Leeambye all at the same time. All comers, or several male comers at
least, essayed to pinion the successful captor of the _Times_, thirsting
for information about their own special subjects of interest. No--the
Hon. Percival did _not_ see anything, so far, about the new Arctic
expedition that was to unearth, or dis-ice, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_;
but the inquirer, a vague young man, shall have the paper directly.
Neither has he come on anything, as yet, about a mutiny in the camp at
Chobham. But the paper shall be at the disposal of this inquirer, too,
as soon as the eye in possession has been run down to the bottom of this
column. In due course both inquirers get hold of corners at the moment
of surrender, and then have paroxysms of polite concession which neither
means in earnest, during which the bone of contention becomes the prey
of a passing wolf. Less poetically, someone else gets hold of the paper
and keeps it.
The Hon. Percival really surrendered the paper, not because his interest
in Lord Palmerston's speech had flagged, but because he had heard Miss
Dickenson come in, and that consideration about her endurance of the
daylight weighed upon him. On the whole, she is standing the glare of
day better than he expected, and her bodice seems very nicely cut. It
may have been an accident that she looked so dowdy yesterday morning. He
and she exchange morning greetings, passionlessly but with civility. The
lady may be accounting a _tete-a-tete_ by moonlight with a gentleman, an
hour long, an escapade, and he may be resolving on caution for the
future. By-the-by, _can_ a lady have a _tete-a-tete_ with another lady
by moonlight? Scarcely!
Mr. Norbury, the butler, always feels the likeness of the breakfast
rally to fish in a drop-net. If he acts promptly, he will land his usual
congregation. He must look in at the door to see if there is a quorum. A
quarum would do. A cujus is a great rarity; though even that happens
after late dances, or when influenza is endemic. Mr. Norbury looked in
at the rally and recognised its psychological moment. More briefly, he
announced that breakfast was ready, while a gong rang up distant sheep
astray most convincingly.
* * * * *
Adrian Torrens, too weak still to show alacrity in waking, hears the
sound and is convinced. How he would rejoice to join the party below! He
knows _that_, in his sleep; and resolves as soon as he can speak to
tell Mrs. Bailey the nurse he could perfectly well have got up for
breakfast. Yet he knows he is glad to be kept lying down, for all that.
He wakes cherishing his determination to say this to his tyrant, and is
conscious of the sun by the warmth, and the unanimity of the birds. He
knows, too, that the casement is open, by the sound of voices in the
garden below. His sister's voice and another, whose owner's image was
the last thing human he had seen, with the eyes that he dared not think
had looked their last upon the visible world when the crash came from
Heaven-knows-where and shut it out. He could identify it beyond a doubt;
could swear to it, now that he had come to understand the real story of
his terrible mishap, as the first sound that mixed with his returning
life, back from a painless darkness which was a Heaven compared to the
torture of his reviving consciousness. It was strange to be told now
that at that moment the medical verdict had been given that he was dead.
But he could swear to the voice--even to the words! What was it saying
now?
"You may rely on me--indeed you may--to say nothing about the eyes. He
will be just able to see us, I suppose?"
"He will hardly recognise you. How long was it altogether, do you
think?"
"At Arthur's Bridge? Five minutes--perhaps less."
"He took a good look at you?"
"I suppose so. I think he did, as soon as he had got the dog chained. Oh
yes--I should say certainly! I fancied he might have seen me before, but
it seems not."
"He says not. But you were not out when he went to Konigsberg."
"Oh no--I had quite a long innings after that.... Well!--it _does_ sound
like cricket, doesn't it? Go on."
"Oh--I see what you mean. What a ridiculous girl you are! What was I
saying!... Oh, I recollect! That was just after he graduated at Oxford.
Then he went to South America with Engelhardt. He really has been very
little at home for three years--over three years--past."
"We shall see if he knows me. I won't say anything to guide him." Then
he heard his sister's voice reply to the speaker with words she had used
before:--"You know you must not expect too much." To which Lady
Gwendolen reiterated: "Oh, you may trust me. I shall say nothing to him
about it.... Oh, you darling!" This was to Achilles, manifestly. He had
become restless at the sound of conversation below, and had been
looking round the door-jamb to see if by any chance a dog could get
out. The entry of the nurse a moment since, with a proto-stimulant on a
tray, had let him out to tear down the stairs to the garden, rudely
thrusting aside the noble owner of the house, out of bounds in a
dressing-gown and able to defy Society.
No lack of sight can quench the image in its victim's brain of Achilles'
greeting to the owners of the two voices. His sister has her fair share
of it--no more!--but her friend gets an accolade of a piece with the one
she received that morning by Arthur's Bridge, three weeks since. So his
owner's brain-image says, confirmed by sounds from without. He is
conscious of the absurdity of building so vivid and substantial a
superstructure on so little foundation, and would like to protest
against it.
"Good-morning, Nurse. I'm better. What is it?--beef-tea. Earls' cooks
make capital beef-tea. On the whole I am in favour of Feudalism. Nothing
can be sweeter or neater or completer--or more nourishing--than its
beef-tea. Don't put any salt in till I tell you.... Oh no--_I'm_ not
going to spill it!" This is preliminary; the protest follows. "Who's
talking to my sister under the window?... that's her voice." Of course,
he knew perfectly well all the time.
The nurse listens a moment. "That's her ladyship," says she, meaning the
Countess. Gwen's voice is not unlike her mother's, only fuller. "They
are just going in to breakfast. The gong went a minute ago."
Now is his time to condemn the tyranny which keeps him in bed in the
morning and lying down all day. "I _could_ have got up and gone
downstairs, Mrs. Bailey, you know I could."
Mrs. Bailey pointed out that had this scheme been carried out a life
would have been sacrificed. She explained to a newcomer, no less a
person than the Earl himself, that Mr. Torrens would kill himself in
five minutes if she did not keep the eyes of a lynx on him all the
blessed day. She is always telling him so without effect, he never being
any the wiser, even when she talks her head off. Patients never are,
being an unmanageable class at the best. A nurse with her head on ought
to be a rarity, according to Mrs. Bailey.
The image of the Earl in the blind man's mind is very little helped by
recollection of the few occasions, some years ago, on which he has seen
him. It becomes now, after a short daily chat with him each morning
since he gained strength for interviews, that of an elderly gentleman
with a hesitating manner anxious to accommodate difficulties, soothing
an unreasonable race with a benevolent optimism, pouring oil on the
troubled waters of local religion and politics, taking no real interest
in the vortices into which it has pleased God to drag him, all with one
distinct object in view--that of adding to his collections undisturbed.
That is the impression he has produced on Mr. Adrian Torrens in a dozen
of his visits to his bedside. His lordship has made it a practice to
look in at his victim--for that is the way he thinks of him, will he
nill he!--as early every day as possible, and as late. He has suffered
agonies from constant longings to talk about his Amatis or his Elzevirs
or his Petitots, checked at every impulse by the memory of the patient's
blindness. He is always beginning to say how he would like to show him
this or that, and collapsing. This also is an inference of Mr. Torrens,
drawn in the dark, from sudden hesitations and changes of subject.
"How are we this morning, Nurse?" On the mend, it seems, being more
refractory than ever; always a good sign with patients. But we must be
kept in bed, till midday at any rate, for some days yet. Or weeks or
months or years according to the degree of our intractability. The Earl
accepts this as common form, and goes to the bedside saying
sum-upwardly:--"No worse, at any rate!"
"Tremendously better, Lord Ancester! _Tremendously_ better, thanks to
you and Mrs. Bailey.... Catch hold of the cup, Nurse.... Yes, I've
drained it to the dregs.... I know what you are going to say, my
lord...."
"I was going to say that Mrs. Bailey and I are not on the same footing.
Mrs. Bailey didn't shoot you.... Yes, now grip hard! That's right!
Better since yesterday certainly--no doubt of it!"
"Mrs. Bailey didn't shoot me in the mere vulgar literal sense. But she
was contributory, if not an accessory after the fact. It was written in
the Book of Fate that Mrs. Bailey would bring me beef-tea this very day.
If she had accepted another engagement the incident would have had to be
rewritten; which is impossible by hypothesis. Moreover, so far as I can
be said to have been shot, it was as a trespasser, not as a man.... Is
there a close season for trespassers? If there is, I admit that you may
be technically right. _Qui facit per alium facit per se_.... By-the-by,
I hope poor Alius is happier in his mind...."
"Poor who?" says the Earl. He is not giving close attention to the
convalescent's disconnected chatter. He has been one himself, and knows
how returning life sets loose the tongue.
"The _alius_ you facitted per. The poor chap that had the bad luck to
shoot me. Old Stephen--isn't he? Poor old chap! _What_ a mischance!"
"Oh yes--old Stephen! I see--he's _alius_, of course. He comes over two
or three times a day to see how you are going on. They think him rather
a nuisance in the house, I believe. I have tried to comfort him as well
as I could. He will be glad of to-day's report. But he can't help being
dispirited, naturally."
"He's so unaccustomed to homicide, poor old chap! People should be
educated to it, in case of accidents. They might be allowed to kill a
few women and children for practice--should never be left to the mercy
of their consciences, all raw and susceptible. Poor old Stephen! I
really think he might be allowed to come and see me now. I'm so very
much improved that a visit from my assassin would be a pleasant
experience--a wholesome stimulus. Wouldn't throw me back at all! Poor
old Stephen!" He seemed seriously concerned about the old boy; would not
be content without a promise that he and his wife should pay him an
early visit.
He had been immensely better after that M.P. paid him a visit yesterday
morning. Mrs. Bailey confirmed this, testifying to the difficulty with
which the patient had been persuaded to remain in bed. But she had the
whip-hand of him there, because he couldn't find his clothes without her
help. This gives the Earl an idea of the condition of the patient's
eyesight beyond his previous concept of its infirmities. He has been
misled by its apparent soundness--for no one would have guessed the
truth from outward seeming--and the nurse's accident of speech rouses
his curiosity.
"Ah, by-the-by," he says, "I was just going to ask." Which is not
strictly true, but apology to himself for his own neglect, "How _are_
the eyes?"
"Oh, the eyes are right enough," says the patient. He goes on to explain
that they are no inconvenience whatever so long as he keeps them shut.
It is only when he opens them that he notices their defect; which is,
briefly, that he can't see with them. His lordship seems to feel that
eyes so conditioned are hardly satisfactory. It is really new knowledge
to him, and he accepts it restlessly. He spreads his fingers out before
the deceptive orbs that look so clear, showing indeed no defect but a
kind of uncertainty; or rather perhaps a too great stillness as though
always content with the object in front of them. "What do you see now?"
he asks in a nervous voice.
"Something dark between me and the light."
"Is that all? Can't you see what it is?"
"A book." A mere guess based on the known predilections of the
questioner.
"Oh dear!" says the Earl. "It was my hand." He sees that the nurse is
signalling with headshakes and soundless lip-words, but has not presence
of mind to catch her meaning.
The other seems to feel his speech apologetically, as though it were his
own fault. "I see better later in the day," he says. Which may be true
or not.
The nurse's signalling tells, and the questioner runs into an opposite
extreme. "One is like that in the morning sometimes," says he absurdly,
but meaning well. He is not an Earl who would be of much use in a
hospital for the treatment of nervous disorders. However, having grasped
the situation he shows tact, changing the conversation to the heat of
the weather and the probable earliness of the crops. No one should ever
_show_ tact. He will only be caught _flagrante delicto_. Mr. Torrens is
perfectly well aware of what is occurring; and, when he lies still and
unresponsive with his eyes closed, is not really resting after exertion,
which is the nurse's interpretation of the action, but trying to think
out something he wants to say to the Earl, and how to say it. It is not
so easy as light jesting.
The nurse telegraphs silently lipwise that the patient will doze now for
a quarter of an hour till breakfast; and the visitor, alive to the call
of discretion, has gone out gently before the patient knows he has left
the bedside.
Things that creak watch their opportunity whenever they hear silence. So
the Earl's gentle exit ends in a musical and penetrating _arpeggio_ of a
door-hinge, equal to the betrayal of Masonic secrecy if delivered at the
right moment. "Is Mrs. Bailey gone?" says the patient, ascribing the
wrong cause to it.
"His lordship has gone, Mr. Torrens. He thought you were dropping off."
"Stop him--stop him! Say I have something particular to say. Do stop
him!" It must be something very particular, Nurse thinks. But in any
case the patient's demand would have to be complied with. So the Earl is
recaptured and brought back.
"Is it anything I can do for you, Mr. Torrens? I am quite at your
service."
"Yes--something of importance to me. Is Mrs. Bailey there?"
"She is just going." She had not intended to do so. But this was a hint
clearly. It was accepted.
"All clear!" says the Earl. "And the door closed."
"My sister has promised to ask the Countess and your daughter--Lady
Gwen, is it not?"
"That is my daughter's name, Gwendolen. 'Has promised to ask them' ...
what?"
"To give me an opportunity before I go of thanking them both for all the
great kindness they have shown me, and of apologizing for my wish to
defer the interview."
"Yes--but why me?... I mean that that is all quite in order, but how do
I come in?" As the speaker's voice smiles as well as his face, his
hearer's blindness does not matter.
"Only this way. You know the doctors say my eyesight is not
incurable--probably will come all to rights of itself...."
"Yes--and then?"
"I want them--her ladyship and ..."
"My wife and daughter. I understand."
"... I want them to know as little about it as possible; to know
_nothing_ about it _if_ possible. You knew very little about it yourself
till just now."
"I was misled--kindly, I know--but misled for all that. And the
appearance is so extraordinary. Nobody could guess...."
"Exactly. Because the eyes are really unaffected and are sure to come
right. See now what I am asking you to do for me. Help me to deceive
them about it. They will not test my eyesight as you did just now...."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I heard Irene and your daughter talking in the garden a few
minutes ago--just after the breakfast-bell rang--talking about me, and I
eavesdropped as hard as I could. Lady Gwendolen has promised Irene to
say nothing about my eyesight for my sake. She will keep her
promise...."
"How do you know that?"
"By the sound of her voice."
"She is only a human girl."
"I am convinced that she will keep it; though, I grant you,
circumstances are against her. And neither she nor her mother will try
to find out, if they believe I see them dimly. That is where _you_ come
in. Only make them believe that. Don't let them suppose I am all in the
dark. Say nothing of your crucial experiment just now. Irene--dear
girl--has been a good sister to me, and has told many good round lies
for my sake. But she will explain to God. I cannot ask you, Lord
Ancester, to tell stories on my behalf. My petition is only for a modest
prevarication--the cultivation of a reasonable misapprehension to attain
a justifiable end. Consider the position analogous to that of one of
Her Majesty's Ministers catechized by an impertinent demagogue. No fibs,
you know--only what a truthful person tells instead of a fib! For my
sake!"
"I am not thinking of my character for veracity," says the Earl
thoughtfully. "You should be welcome to a sacrifice of that under the
circumstances. I was thinking what form of false representation would be
most likely to gain the end, and safest. Do you know, I am inclined to
favour the policy of saying as little as possible? My dear wife is in
the habit of imputing to me a certain slowness and defective observation
of surrounding event. It is a common wifely attitude. You need not fear
my being asked any questions. In any case, I fully understand your
wishes, and you may rely on my doing my best. Here is your breakfast
coming. I hope you will not be knocked up with all this talk."