"It is," said he, "but blindness isn't."
The maid appeared with the tea-tray, which she put on a rustic table.
It was then that Winifred noticed the little proud awkwardness of the
blind man. There was pathos in his insistent disregard of his
affliction. The imperfectly cut lower half of a watercress sandwich
fell on his coat and stayed there. She longed to pick it off, but did
not dare, for fear of hurting him. He began to talk again of the
house--the scheme of decoration.
"Oh, it all seems so sad!" she cried.
"What?"
"You'll not be able to see the beautiful things."
"Good Heavens," he retorted, "do you think I am quite devoid of
imagination? And do you suppose no one will enter the house but
myself?"
"I never thought of that," she admitted.
"As for the interior, I've got the plan in my head, and could walk
about it now blindfold, only that's unnecessary; and when it's all
fixed up, I'll have a ground model made of every room, showing every
piece of furniture, so that, when I get in, I'll know the size, shape,
colour, quality of every blessed thing in the house. You see if I
don't."
"These gifts are a merciful dispensation of Providence."
"Maybe," said he drily. "Only they were about the size of bacteria
when I started, and it took me years of incessant toil to develop them."
He asked to be shown around the garden. She took him up the gravelled
walks beside her gay borders and her roses, telling him the names and
varieties of the flowers. Once he stopped and frowned.
"I've lost my bearings. We ought to be passing under the shade of the
old walnut tree."
"You are quite right," she said, marvelling at his accuracy. "It stood
a few steps back, but it was blown clean down three years ago. It had
been dead for a long time."
He chuckled as he strolled on. "There's nothing makes me so mad as to
be mistaken."
Some time later, on their return to the terrace, he held out his hand.
"But you'll stay for dinner, Roger," she exclaimed. "I can't bear to
think of you spending your first evening at home in that awful 'Red
Lion.'"
"That's very dear of you, Winnie," he said, evidently touched by the
softness in her voice. "I'll dine with pleasure, but I must get off
some letters first. I'll come back. You've no objection to my
bringing my man with me?"
"Why, of course not." She laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Oh,
Roger, dear, I wish I could tell you how sorry I am, how my heart aches
for you!"
"Don't worry," he said--"don't worry a little bit, and, if you really
want to help me, never let me feel that you notice I'm blind. Forget
it, as I do."
"I'll try," she said.
"That's right." He held her hand for a second or two, kissed it, and
dropped it, abruptly. "God bless you!" said he. "It's good to be with
you again."
When he was gone, Winifred Goode returned to her seat by the clipped
yew and cried a little, after the manner of women. And, after the
manner of women, she dreamed dreams oblivious of the flight of time
till her maid came out and hurried her indoors.
She dressed with elaborate care, in her best and costliest, and wore
more jewels than she would have done had her guest been of normal
sight, feeling oddly shaken by the thought of his intense imaginative
vision. In trying to fasten the diamond clasp of a velvet band round
her neck, her fingers trembled so much that the maid came to her
assistance. Her mind was in a whirl. Roger had left her a headstrong,
dissatisfied boy. He had returned, the romantic figure of a conqueror,
all the more romantic and conquering by reason of his triumph over the
powers of darkness. In his deep affection she knew her place was
secure. The few hours she had passed with him had shown her that he
was a man trained in the significance not only of words, but also of
his attitude towards individual men and women. He would not have said
"God bless you!" unless he meant it. She appreciated to the full his
masculine strength; she took to her heart his masculine tenderness; she
had a woman's pity for his affliction; she felt unregenerate exultancy
at the undetected crime of lost beauty, and yet she feared him on
account of the vanished sense. She loved him with a passionate
recrudescence of girlish sentiment; but the very thing that might have,
that ought to have, that she felt it indecent not to have, inflamed all
her woman's soul and thrown her reckless into his arms, raised between
them an impalpable barrier against which she dreaded lest she might be
dashed and bruised.
At dinner this feeling was intensified. Roger made little or no
allusion to his blindness; he talked with the ease of the cultivated
man of the world. He had humour, gaiety, charm. As a mere companion,
she had rarely met, during her long seclusion, a man so instinctive in
sympathy, so quick in diverting talk into a channel of interest. In a
few flashing yet subtle questions, he learned what she wore. The
diamond clasp to the black velvet band he recognized as having been her
mother's. He complimented her delicately on her appearance, as though
he saw her clearly, in the adorable twilight beauty that was really
hers. There were moments when it seemed impossible that he should be
blind. But behind his chair, silent, impassive, arresting, freezing,
hovered his Chinese body-servant, capped, pig-tailed, loosely clad in
white, a creature as unreal in Dunsfield as gnome or merman, who, with
the unobtrusiveness of a shadow from another world, served, in the
mechanics of the meal, as an accepted, disregarded, and unnoticed pair
of eyes for his master. The noble Tudor dining-room, with its great
carved oak chimney-piece, its stately gilt-framed portraits, its
Jacobean sideboards and presses, all in the gloom of the spent
illumination of the candles on the daintily-set table, familiar to her
from her earliest childhood, part of her conception of the cosmos, part
of her very self, seemed metamorphosed into the unreal, the
phantasmagoric, by the presence of this white-clad, exotic figure--not
a man, but an eerie embodiment of the sense of sight.
Her reason told her that the Chinese servant was but an ordinary
serving-man, performing minutely specified duties for a generous wage.
But the duties were performed magically, like conjuror's tricks. It
was practically impossible to say who cut up Roger's meat, who helped
him to salt or to vegetables, who guided his hand unerringly to the
wine glass. So abnormally exquisite was the co-ordination between the
two, that Roger seemed to have the man under mesmeric control. The
idea bordered on the monstrous. Winifred shivered through the dinner,
in spite of Roger's bright talk, and gratefully welcomed the change of
the drawing-room, whither the white-vestured automaton did not follow.
"Will you do me a favour, Winnie?" he asked during the evening. "Meet
me at The Lodge tomorrow at eleven, and help me interview these
building people. Then you can have a finger in the pie from the very
start."
She said somewhat tremulously: "Why do you want me to have a finger in
the pie?"
"Good Heavens," he cried, "aren't you the only human creature in this
country I care a straw about?"
"Is that true, Roger?"
"Sure," said he. After a little span of silence he laughed. "People
on this side don't say 'sure.' That's sheer American."
"I like it," said Winifred.
When he parted from her, he again kissed her hand and again said: "God
bless you!" She accompanied him to the hall, where the Chinaman,
ghostly in the dimness, was awaiting him with hat and coat. Suddenly
she felt that she abhorred the Chinaman.
That night she slept but little, striving to analyse her feelings. Of
one fact only did the dawn bring certainty--that, for all her love of
him, for all his charm, for all his tenderness towards her, during
dinner she had feared him horribly.
She saw him the next morning in a new and yet oddly familiar phase. He
was attended by his secretary, a pallid man with a pencil, note-book,
and documents, for ever at his elbow, ghostly, automatic, during their
wanderings with the surveyor through the bare and desolate old house.
She saw the master of men at work, accurate in every detail of a
comprehensive scheme, abrupt, imperious, denying difficulties with
harsh impatience. He leaned over his secretary and pointed to portions
of the report just as though he could read them, and ordered their
modification.
"Mr. Withers," he said once to the surveyor, who was raising
objections, "I always get what I want because I make dead sure that
what I want is attainable. I'm not an idealist. If I say a thing is
to be done, it has got to be done, and it's up to you or to someone
else to do it."
They went through the house from furnace to garret, the pallid
secretary ever at Roger's elbow, ever rendering him imperceptible
services, ever identifying himself with the sightless man, mysteriously
following his thoughts, co-ordinating his individuality with that of
his master. He was less a man than a trained faculty, like the Chinese
servant. And again Winifred shivered and felt afraid.
More and more during the weeks that followed, did she realize the iron
will and irresistible force of the man she loved. He seemed to lay a
relentless grip on all those with whom he came in contact and compel
them to the expression of himself. Only towards her was he gentle and
considerate. Many times she accompanied him to London to the great
shops, the self-effacing secretary shadow-like at his elbow, and
discussed with him colours and materials, and he listened to her with
affectionate deference. She often noticed that the secretary
translated into other terms her description of things. This irritated
her, and once she suggested leaving the secretary behind. Surely, she
urged, she could do all that was necessary. He shook his head.
"No, my dear," he said very kindly. "Jukes sees for me. I shouldn't
like you to see for me in the way Jukes does."
She was the only person from whom he would take advice or suggestion,
and she rendered him great service in the tasteful equipment of the
house and in the engagement of a staff of servants. So free a hand did
he allow her in certain directions, so obviously and deliberately did
he withdraw from her sphere of operations, that she was puzzled. It
was not until later, when she knew him better, that the picture vaguely
occurred to her of him caressing her tenderly with one hand, and
holding the rest of the world by the throat with the other.
On the day when he took up his residence in the new home, they walked
together through the rooms. In high spirits, boyishly elated, he gave
her an exhibition of his marvellous gifts of memory, minutely
describing each bit of furniture and its position in every room, the
colour scheme, the texture of curtains, the pictures on the walls, the
knick-knacks on mantlepieces and tables. And when he had done, he put
his arm round her shoulders.
"But for you, Winnie," said he, "this would be the dreariest possible
kind of place; but the spirit of you pervades it and makes it a
fragrant paradise."
The words and tone were lover-like, and so was his clasp. She felt
very near him, very happy, and her heart throbbed quickly. She was
ready to give her life to him.
"You are making me a proud woman," she murmured.
He patted her shoulder and laughed as he released her.
"I only say what's true, my dear," he replied, and then abruptly
skipped from sentiment to practical talk.
Winifred had a touch of dismay and disappointment. Tears started,
which she wiped away furtively. She had made up her mind to accept
him, in spite of Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes, if he should make her a
proposal of marriage. She had been certain that the moment had come.
But he made no proposal.
She waited. She waited a long time. In the meanwhile, she continued
to be Roger's intimate friend and eagerly-sought companion. One day
his highly-paid and efficient housekeeper came to consult her. The
woman desired to give notice. Her place was too difficult. She could
scarcely believe the master was blind. He saw too much, he demanded
too much. She could say nothing explicit, save that she was
frightened. She wept, after the nature of upset housekeepers.
Winifred soothed her and advised her not to throw up so lucrative a
post, and, as soon as she had an opportunity, she spoke to Roger. He
laughed his usual careless laugh.
"They all begin that way with me, but after a while they're broken in.
You did quite right to tell Mrs. Strode to stay."
And after a few months Winifred saw a change in Mrs. Strode, and not
only in Mrs. Strode, but in all the servants whom she had engaged.
They worked the household like parts of a flawless machine. They grew
to be imperceptible, shadowy, automatic, like Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes.
* * * * *
The months passed and melted into years. Roger Orme became a great
personage in the neighbourhood. He interested himself in local
affairs, served on the urban district council and on boards
innumerable. They made him Mayor of Dunsfield. He subscribed largely
to charities and entertained on a sumptuous scale. He ruled the little
world, setting a ruthless heel on proud necks and making the humble his
instruments. Mr. Jukes died, and other secretaries came, and those who
were not instantly dismissed grew to be like Mr. Jukes. In the course
of time Roger entered Parliament as member for the division. He became
a force in politics, in public affairs. In the appointment of Royal
Commissions, committees of inquiry, his name was the first to occur to
ministers, and he was invariably respected, dreaded, and hated by his
colleagues.
"Why do you work so hard, Roger?" Winifred would ask.
He would say, with one of his laughs: "Because there's a dynamo in me
that I can't stop."
And all these years Miss Winifred Goode stayed at Duns Hall, leading
her secluded, lavender-scented life when Roger was in London, and
playing hostess for him, with diffident graciousness, when he
entertained at The Lodge. His attitude towards her never varied, his
need of her never lessened.
He never asked her to be his wife. At first she wondered, pined a
little, and then, like a brave, proud woman, put the matter behind her.
But she knew that she counted for much in his strange existence, and
the knowledge comforted her. And as the years went on, and all the
lingering shreds of youth left her, and she grew gracefully into the
old lady, she came to regard her association with him as a spiritual
marriage.
Then, after twenty years, the dynamo wore out the fragile tenement of
flesh. Roger Orme, at sixty-five, broke down and lay on his death-bed.
One day he sent for Miss Winifred Goode.
She entered the sick-room, a woman of sixty, white-haired, wrinkled,
with only the beauty of a serene step across the threshold of old age.
He bade the nurse leave them alone, and put out his hand and held hers
as she sat beside the bed.
"What kind of a day is it, Winnie?"
"As if you didn't know! You've been told, I'm sure, twenty times."
"What does it matter what other people say? I want to get at the day
through you."
"It's bright and sunny--a perfect day of early summer."
"What things are out?"
"The may and the laburnum and the lilac----"
"And the wistaria?"
"Yes, the wistaria."
"It's forty years ago, dear, and your voice is just the same. And to
me you have always been the same. I can see you as you sit there, with
your dear, sensitive face, the creamy cheek, in which the blood comes
and goes--oh, Heavens, so different from the blowsy, hard-featured
girls nowadays, who could not blush if--well--well----I know 'em,
although I'm blind--I'm Argus, you know, dear. Yes, I can see you,
with your soft, brown eyes and pale brown hair waved over your pure
brow. There is a fascinating little kink on the left-hand side. Let
me feel it."
She drew her head away, frightened. Then suddenly she remembered, with
a pang of thankfulness, that the queer little kink had defied the
years, though the pale brown hair was white. She guided his hand and
he felt the kink, and he laughed in his old, exultant way.
"Don't you think I'm a miracle, Winnie?"
"You're the most wonderful man living," she said.
"I shan't be living long. No, my dear, don't talk platitudes. I know.
I'm busted. And I'm glad I'm going before I begin to dodder. A seeing
dodderer is bad enough, but a blind dodderer's only fit for the grave.
I've lived my life. I've proved to this stupendous clot of ignorance
that is humanity that a blind man can guide them wherever he likes.
You know I refused a knighthood. Any tradesman can buy a
knighthood--the only knighthoods that count are those that are given to
artists and writers and men of science--and, if I could live, I'd raise
hell over the matter, and make a differentiation in the titles of
honour between the great man and the rascally cheesemonger----"
"My dear," said Miss Winifred Goode, "don't get so excited."
"I'm only saying, Winnie, that I refused a knighthood. But--what I
haven't told you, what I'm supposed to keep a dead secret--if I could
live a few weeks longer, and I shan't, I should be a Privy
Councillor--a thing worth being. I've had the official intimation--a
thing that can't be bought. Heavens, if I were a younger man, and
there were the life in me, I should be the Prime Minister of this
country--the first great blind ruler that ever was in the world. Think
of it! But I don't want anything now. I'm done. I'm glad. The whole
caboodle is but leather and prunella. There is only one thing in the
world that is of any importance."
"What is that, dear?" she asked quite innocently, accustomed to, but
never familiar with, his vehement paradox.
"Love," said he.
He gripped her hand hard. There passed a few seconds of tense silence.
"Winnie, dear," he said at last, "will you kiss me?"
She bent forward, and he put his arm round her neck and drew her to
him. They kissed each other on the lips.
"It's forty years since I kissed you, dear--that day under the
wistaria. And, now I'm dying, I can tell you. I've loved you all the
time, Winnie. I'm a tough nut, as you know, and whatever I do I do
intensely. I've loved you intensely, furiously."
She turned her head away, unable to bear the living look in the
sightless eyes.
"Why did you never tell me?" she asked in a low voice.
"Would you have married me?"
"You know I would, Roger."
"At first I vowed I would say nothing," he said, after a pause, "until
I had a fit home to offer you. Then the blindness came, and I vowed I
wouldn't speak until I had conquered the helplessness of my affliction.
Do you understand?"
"Yes, but when you came home a conqueror----"
"I loved you too much to marry you. You were far too dear and precious
to come into the intimacy of my life. Haven't you seen what happened
to all those who did?" He raised his old knotted hands, clenched
tightly. "I squeezed them dry. I couldn't help it. My blindness made
me a coward. It has been hell. The darkness never ceased to frighten
me. I lied when I said it didn't matter. I stretched out my hands
like tentacles and gripped everyone within reach in a kind of madness
of self-preservation. I made them give up their souls and senses to
me. It was some ghastly hypnotic power I seemed to have. When I had
got them, they lost volition, individuality. They were about as much
living creatures to me as my arm or my foot. Don't you see?"
The white-haired woman looked at the old face working passionately, and
she felt once more the deadly fear of him.
"But with me it would have been different," she faltered. "You say you
loved me."
"That's the devil of it, my sweet, beautiful Winnie--it wouldn't have
been different. I should have squeezed you, too, reduced you to the
helpless thing that did my bidding, sucked your life's blood from you.
I couldn't have resisted. So I kept you away. Have I ever asked you
to use your eyes for me?"
Her memory travelled down the years, and she was amazed. She
remembered Mr. Jukes at the great shops and many similar incidents that
had puzzled her.
"No," she said.
There was a short silence. The muscles of his face relaxed, and the
old, sweet smile came over it. He reached again for her hand and
caressed it tenderly.
"By putting you out of my life, I kept you, dear. I kept you as the
one beautiful human thing I had. Every hour of happiness I have had
for the last twenty years has come through you."