This was the beginning of Jeremy's love-story. He guarded the gate
like Cerberus or Saint Peter. Sometimes at dawn he would creep out of
his house and tramp through the dew-filled meadows to see that it was
safely shut. During the day he would do sentry-go within sight of the
sacred portal, and when the flutter of a mob-cap and a flowered muslin
met his eye he would advance merely to report that the owner ran no
danger. And then, one day, she bade him open it, and she came forth
and they walked arm-in-arm in the meadows; and this grew to be a daily
custom, to the no small scandal of the neighbourhood. Very soon,
Jeremy learned her simple history. She was an orphan, with a small
competence of her own. Till recently she had lived in Somersetshire
with her guardian; but now he was dead, and the only home she could
turn to was that of her bed-ridden Aunt Wotherspoon, her sole surviving
relative.
Jeremy, with a lamentable lack of universality, thanked God on his
knees for His great mercy. If Mistress Wotherspoon had not been
confined to her bed she would not have allowed her niece to wander at
will with a notorious scarecrow over the Bullingford meadows, and if
Barbara had not been blind she could not have walked happily in his
company and hung trustfully on his arm. For days she was but a wonder
and a wild desire. Her beauty, her laughter, her wit, her simplicity,
her bravery, bewildered him. It was enough to hear the music of her
voice, to feel the fragrance of her presence, to thrill at her light
touch. He, Jeremy Wendover, from whose distortion all human beings,
his life long, had turned shuddering away, to have this ineffable
companionship! It transcended thought. At last--it was one night, as
he lay awake, remembering how they had walked that afternoon, not
arm-in-arm, but hand-in-hand--the amazing, dazzling glory of a
possibility enveloped him. She was blind. She could never see his
deformity. Had God listened to his prayer and delivered this fair and
beloved woman into his keeping? He shivered all night long in an
ecstasy of happiness, rose at dawn and mounted guard at Barbara's gate.
But as he waited, foodless, for the thrilling sight of her, depression
came and sat heavy on his shoulders until he felt that in daring to
think of her in the way of marriage he was committing an abominable
crime.
When she came, fresh as the morning, bareheaded, her beautiful hair
done up in a club behind, into the little field, and he tried to call
to her, his tongue was dry and he could utter no sound. Accidentally
he dropped his stick, which clattered down the bars of the gate. She
laughed. He entered the enclosure.
"I knew I should find you there," she cried, and sped toward him.
"How did you know?" he asked.
"'By the pricking of my thumb,'" she quoted gaily; and then, as he took
both her outstretched hands, she drew near him and whispered: "and by
the beating of my heart."
His arms folded around her and he held her tight against him,
stupefied, dazed, throbbing, vainly trying to find words. At last he
said huskily:
"God has sent you to be the joy and comfort of a sorely stricken man.
I accept it because it is His will. I will cherish you as no man has
ever cherished woman before. My love for you, my dear, is as
infinite--as infinite--oh, God!"
Speech failed him. He tore his arms away from her and fell sobbing at
her feet and kissed the skirts of her gown.
V
The Divine Mercy, as Jeremy puts it, thought fit to remove Aunt
Wotherspoon to a happier world before the week was out; and so, within
a month, Jeremy led his blind bride into the little Tudor house. And
then began for him a happiness so exquisite that sometimes he was
afraid to breathe lest he should disturb the enchanted air. Every germ
of love and tenderness that had lain undeveloped in his nature sprang
into flower. Sometimes he grew afraid lest, in loving her, he was
forgetting God. But he reassured himself by a pretty sophistry. "O
Lord," says he, "it is Thou only that I worship--through Thine own
great gift." And indeed what more could be desired by a reasonable
Deity?
Barbara, responsive, gave him her love in full. From the first she
would hear nothing of his maimed visage.
"My dear," she said as they wandered one golden autumn day by the
riverside, "I have made a picture of you out of your voice, the plash
of water, the sunset and the summer air. 'Twas thus that my heart saw
you the first evening we met. And that is more than sufficing for a
poor, blind creature whom a gallant gentleman married out of charity."
"Charity!" His voice rose in indignant repudiation.
She laughed and laid her head on her shoulder.
"Ah, dear, I did but jest. I know you fell in love with my pretty
doll's face. And also with a little mocking spirit of my own."
"But what made you fall in love with me?"
"Faith, Mr. Wendover," she replied, "a woman with eyes in her head has
but to go whither she is driven. And so much the more a blind female
like me. You led me plump into the middle of the morass; and when you
came and rescued me I was silly enough to be grateful."
Under Jeremy's love her rich nature expanded day by day. She set her
joyous courage and her wit to work to laugh at blindness, and to make
her the practical, serviceable housewife as well as the gay companion.
The ancient crone was replaced by a brisk servant and a gardener, and
Jeremy enjoyed creature comforts undreamed of. And the months sped
happily by. Autumn darkened into winter and winter cleared into
spring, and daffodils and crocuses and primroses began to show
themselves in corners of the old-world garden, and tiny gossamer
garments in corners of the dark old house. Then a newer, deeper
happiness enfolded them.
But there came a twilight hour when, whispering of the wonder that was
to come, she suddenly began to cry softly.
"But why, why, dear?" he asked in tender astonishment.
"Only--only to think, Jeremy, that I shall never see it."