From that evening Jeremy's martyrdom began. Hitherto he had regarded
the blindness of his wife as a special dispensation of Divine
Providence. She had not seen him save on that first afternoon as a
shadowy mass, and had formed no conception of his disfigurement beyond
the vague impression conveyed to her by loving fingers touching his
face. She had made her own mental picture of him, as she had said, and
whatever it was, so far from repelling her, it pleased her mightily.
Her ignorance indeed was bliss--for both of them. And now, thought
poor Jeremy, knowledge would come with the restored vision, and, like
our too-wise first parents, they would be driven out of Eden.
Sometimes the devil entered his heart and prompted cowardly
concealment. Why tell Barbara of Mr. Hattaway's proposal? Why disturb
a happiness already so perfect? All her other senses were eyes to her.
She had grown almost unconscious of her affliction. She was happier
loving him with blinded eyes than recoiling from him in horror with
seeing ones. It was, in sooth, for her own dear happiness that she
should remain in darkness. But then Jeremy remembered the only cry her
brave soul had ever uttered, and after wrestling long in prayer he knew
that the Evil One had spoken, and in the good, old-fashioned way he
bade Satan get behind him. "_Retro me, Satanas_." The words are in
his diary, printed in capital letters.
But one day, when she repeated her cry, his heart ached for her and he
comforted her with the golden hope. She wept tears of joy and flung
her arms around his neck and kissed him, and from that day forth filled
the house with song and laughter and the mirth of unbounded happiness.
But Jeremy, though he bespoke her tenderly and hopefully, felt that he
had signed his death-warrant. Now and then, when her gay spirit danced
through the glowing future, he was tempted to say: "When you see me as
I am your love will turn to loathing and our heaven to hell." But he
could not find it in his heart to dash her joy. And she never spoke of
seeing him--only of seeing the child and the sun and the flowers and
the buttons of his shirts, which she vowed must seem to be sewed on by
a drunken cobbler.