The room where Madge had talked with her mother on the evening of her
first day at Glen Callan was darkened, and only a faint, muffled light
came in through the blinded windows. The clean, neat apparatus of
nursing was there, a fire burned on the hearth, by which Madge sat, and
on the bed lay a figure, the face of which was swathed in bandages. The
whole of the upper part of it was thus covered, only the chin and mouth
appeared, and round the mouth was the three days' beard of a young man.
It was a little after midday; the nurse had gone to her lunch, and had
told Madge to ring for her if she wanted her. It was not the least
likely: all was going as well as it apparently could, but while Evelyn
was still feverish it was necessary to be on the guard for any one of a
myriad dangers that might threaten him. There was the danger of
blood-poisoning; there were the after-effects of the shock; other things
also were possible. Madge had not inquired into it all; she knew only
what it was right for her to know if she was in charge of the sick-room
for an hour or two. If he got very restless, if he came to himself--for
he was kept drowsy with drugs--and complained of pain, she was to ring
the bell. But the nurse did not think that there was any real likelihood
of any of these things happening.
They had carried him back over the wire bridge, above which the accident
had happened, and now for nearly forty-eight hours he had lain where he
lay now. By great good luck a surgeon of eminent skill had been staying
in a house not very far off, and he had come over at once, in answer to
this call, and done what had to be done. Madge had seen him afterwards,
and very quietly, as Evelyn's wife, had asked to be told, frankly and
fully, what had been necessary. Sir Francis Egmont, whose surgical skill
was only equalled by his human kindness, had told her all.
"He won't die, my dear lady," he had said. "I feel sure of that. He will
get over it, and live to be strong again. But--yes, you must be brave
about it, and more than that, you must help him to be brave, poor
fellow."
This happened in the sitting-room adjoining. Sir Francis took a turn up
and down before he went on. Then he sat in a chair just opposite Madge,
and took her hands in his. And his grey eyes looked at her from under
the eyebrows, which were grey also.
"Yes, you have got to make him brave," he repeated, "and there is your
work cut out for you in the world. You are young and strong, and your
youth and strength have got their mission now. Don't label me an old
preacher; old I am, but I don't preach, Mrs. Dundas, unless I am sure of
my audience. And I am sure of you. Your husband will get well. But his
face will be terribly disfigured. That must be. That could not be
helped. And there is another thing. He will be blind. Yes, yes, take the
truth of that now, for it is you who have to enable him to bear it.
Blind! Ah, my dear girl--I call you that: you are so young, and I am so
sorry!"
* * * * *
How it had happened hardly interested her. They had been walking in
line, it appeared, on the steep hill-side, where she had seen them as
she sat on the top of the cliff above the Bridge-pool. Then a hare had
got up, and Lord Ellington had fired. The shot struck a rock not far in
front, and of the whole charge some ten pellets had ricocheted back and
hit Evelyn in the face. One eye was destroyed, the other was so injured
that it had been found impossible to save it; other pellets had lodged
in his face. All this--the manner of the accident--did not matter to
Madge: the thing had happened, it was only wonderful that he was alive.
But the operation--what it was Madge did not inquire, for it would do no
good--had satisfied the surgeon. He could not have expected better
results, he would not have predicted results so good. With the
unhesitating obedience to duty, which is the motto and watchword of his
profession, he had stopped in Lady Dover's house, waiting till he could
without misgiving or fear of after-results, leave the case. All
yesterday he had been in and out of the sick-room, he had slept in the
dressing-room last night, and had only left an hour or two before, when
he could put his patient into the skilled hands of the nurse who had
come from Inverness. He was a kind, shy man, and fumbled dreadfully in
his pockets as Lady Dover saw him off.
"You will do me a great service, Lady Dover," he had said, "if you will
convey somehow to Mrs. Dundas that her debt to me, whatever it is, is
discharged. Discharged it is; to see a woman being brave is sufficient.
Besides, I am on my holiday: I could not think of taking a fee. So if so
absurd a notion occurs to her--ah, the motor is ready, I see, but if so
absurd a thing occurs--you, my dear lady, will please exercise your
tact, you will let her be under no obligation, please. A Daimler
surely--beautiful machines, are they not--yes, just a little tact--I was
in the house or something--I am sure you will manage it--besides, on my
holiday. Yes, good-bye, good-bye. I think I have told the nurse
everything, and the doctor from Inverness--dear me, his name has gone
again, whom I am very pleased to have met, is, I am sure, most reliable.
God bless my soul, poor Dundas, a rising painter too; well, I'm no
judge. But it is pitiful, isn't it? Of course, if I am wanted again,
I'll step over at once: Brora, you know, it's no trouble at all. And the
poor fellow, too, who caused this accident; I'm sorry for him,
too--nobody's fault. But tell him we'll pull Mr. Dundas through--oh,
yes, we'll pull him through, and there's Braill's system and all
afterwards. A brave woman, you know, Mrs. Dundas is; does one good, that
sort of woman. Very brave. She'll need to be, poor thing, too. Good-bye,
good-bye."
But Evelyn lay still, and there was no need for Madge to ring for the
nurse. Sometimes he shifted his head from side to side, and occasionally
he put a hand up to the bandage that covered his face, with little moans
and sighs below his breath. Madge had been warned to be on the alert for
this, and very gently, as often as he did this, she would take the
feeble, wandering fingers in hers and lay his arm back again on the
blanket. It was something even to have that to do, the slightest, most
trivial act, was a relief from absolute inaction. Yet all the time she
dreaded with ever-increasing shrinking of the heart the hour when she
should have to act indeed, when her husband would come to, and begin to
ask questions. No one but she, she was determined, should answer them;
it was she who would tell him all that he had yet to learn. Would it
kill him, she wondered, when he knew? Would he die simply because life
was no longer desirable or possible? Blind! Madge could not fully grasp
that herself yet, but she felt she must realise it, she must make haste
to realise it before she was called upon to tell him. Lady Dover, her
mother, Sir Francis, had all urged her to let him be told by someone
else; but Madge would not hear of it; some wifely instinct was stronger
than any reason that could be suggested.
There was another thing which she shrank from, too, though in part that
would be spared Evelyn, the disfigurement about which Sir Francis had
spoken. He had told her it would be terrible, and she had to get used to
that in anticipation, so that when she saw it, she should not shrink, or
let Evelyn guess. He would not be able to see it himself; as far as that
went, it was merciful. All that splendid beauty, which she loved so, the
brightness and the sunshine of his face, she would never see again. A
few details about that the surgeon had told her; it was horrible. Her
love for him, her love for his beauty were inseparable; she could not
disentangle them, the latter was part of the whole. Yet though she knew
that it was gone, it was impossible to imagine that the whole was
diminished, though a part of it was withdrawn. But she had been warned
how terrible the change would be, and what if involuntarily, without
power of control, her flesh recoiled, her nerves shrank from him? Yet
that was the one thing that must not be; all that she could do for him
was to make him know and feel that in every way the completeness of her
love for him was undiminished, and only that pity, the broad, sweet
shining of pity, framed it as with a halo. She knew that this was true
essentially and fundamentally, but she had to make it true not only in
principle, but in the conduct of the little trivial deeds of life. She
must act up to it always; his closeness, his bodily presence, must not
be one whit less physically dear to her.
Blind! Ah, if she only could take that and bear it for him, how vastly
easier even to her personally than that it should be borne by him! For
it was from that, from the exquisite pleasures of the eye, that as from
a fountain his gaiety, his joy of life, chiefly sprang. Of the five
senses that one was to him more than all the rest put together; of the
five chords that bound him to life and made the material world real the
strongest had been severed, and the others in comparison were but as
frayed strings. Any other loss would have been trivial compared with
this, and how doubly, trebly trivial would the same loss have been to
her. But that it should come to him! How could he bear it?
There was nothing to be reasoned about in all this: she had but to let
thoughts like these just go round and round in her head, till she got
more used to them. Round and round they went, yet at each recurrence
each seemed not a whit less unendurable. She tried to imagine herself
telling him; she went even over forms of words, choosing the speech that
should tell it him most gently, and even while she spoke should make
him, force him, to feel that by the very fact of her love the burden and
the misery of it all was more hers to bear than his. Yet what were
words, this mere formula, "It hurts me more than you?" That did not make
it hurt him less. A pain that is shared by another is not diminished;
there is double the pain to bear, a dreadful automatic multiplication of
it alone takes place. It was all too crushingly recent yet for poor
Madge to refrain from such a conclusion; it seemed to her as yet that
this was a dark place into which the light of sympathy could not
penetrate. She herself certainly was at present beyond its range; the
kindness, the deep pity, which all felt for her did not reach her yet.
The nurse returned from her dinner, and with her came the Inverness
doctor, a kind, rugged man. Bandages had to be changed, and fresh
dressings to be put on, and Madge left the room for this, for she had
been told that if she saw his face now she would be needlessly shocked.
When the wounds healed, it would not be nearly so bad. So, though she
would really have preferred to know worse than the worst, she yielded to
this.
Madge went downstairs while this was going on, and found Lady Dover
waiting in the hall. The rest of the party had all left yesterday, and
though Lady Ellington had offered, and, indeed, really wished to remain,
Madge had persuaded her to go; for the girl, out of the range of
sympathy and pity at present, found the consolation that Lady Ellington
tried to administer like a series of sharp raps on a sore place. Also
Madge could not help reading into it a sort of tacit reproach for her
having married him. The accident, indeed, seemed to have stained
backwards in Lady Ellington's mind, and to have re-endowed the marriage
itself with disaster.
But Lady Dover's touch was very different to her mother's; indeed it was
because it did not seem to be a "touch" at all that Madge unconsciously
answered to it.
"Ah, there you are, dear," she said; "I was expecting you. Will you not
get on your hat, and come out for a little? It will do you good to get
the air, and it is a lovely afternoon. I have never seen the lights and
shadows more exquisite."
It was this that poor Madge wanted, though she did not know she wanted
it, just the cool spring water, the wholesome white bread of a kind,
natural woman. Sympathy was no good to her yet, consolation could not
touch her, but just the quiet, patient kindness was bearable, it made
the moment bearable from its very restfulness; the lights and the
shadows were still there, Lady Dover still talked of them, and though
she did not know it, it was this very fact that other lives went on as
usual that secretly brought a certain comfort to Madge.
"Yes, I will come out," she said; "but I don't want a hat. I cannot go
far, though."
"No, we will just take a turn or two up and down the terrace. We get the
sun there, and it is sheltered from the wind, which is rather cold
to-day."
Simple and unsophisticated as the spell was, if spell indeed there was,
it worked magically on the poor girl, and for a little while that
dreadful round of the impossible images which formed the panorama of her
future ceased to turn in her head. Had Lady Dover's tone suggested
sympathy, or, which would have been worse, spoken of the healing power
of time, Madge could not have spoken. But now, when that incessant
procession of the unthinkable future was stayed, she could focus her
mind for a little on a practical question which must soon arise, and on
which she wanted advice.
"I want your counsel," she said. "They are going to give Evelyn, the
doctor told me, no more drugs, and by this evening he will be himself
again, fully conscious. Now, unless I deceive him, unless I tell him
that he is being kept for the present in absolute darkness, he must find
out that--that he is blind. Soon, anyhow, he must know it. Is it any
use, do you think, putting it off?"
Lady Dover did not, as Madge's mother would certainly have done, squeeze
her hand and utter words of sympathy. She did not even look at Madge,
but with those clear, level eyes looked straight in front of her while
she considered this. Her first instinct was, as would have been the
instinct of everyone, to say something sympathetic, but her wisdom--the
existence of which Lady Ellington really did not believe in--gave her
better counsel. For to be natural is not synonymous with doing the first
thing that happens to come into one's head.
"That must be partly for Dr. Inglis to decide," she said; "but if he
sanctions it, I should certainly say that you had better tell him at
once. I think people get used to things better and more gradually while
they are still weak and perhaps suffering, though Dr. Inglis said he
thought he would have no pain, whereas the same thing is a greater shock
if one is well; it hits harder then. He perhaps will half-guess for
himself, too; all that would torture him. To know the worst, I think, is
not so bad as to fear the worst."
They had reached the end of the terrace and looked out over the river a
couple of hundred feet below. Just opposite them was the Bridge-pool,
beyond which rose the steep moorland. Ever since it had happened, Madge
had given no outward sign of her helpless, devouring anguish; she had
been perfectly composed; there had been no tears, no raving cries. But
now she turned quickly away.
"I can't bear to look at it," she said. "There was a piece of white
heather, too, where he fell."
Lady Dover's sweet, rather Quakerish face did not change at all, her
quiet wisdom still held sway.
"We are wrong, I think," she said, "to associate material things with
great grief. One cannot always wholly help it, but I think one should
try to discourage it in oneself. I remember so well walking on this
terrace, Madge, just after my mother died. It was a day rather like
this; there were the same exquisite lights on the hills. And I remember
I tried consciously to dissociate them from my own grief. I think it was
wise. I would do it again, at least, which, in one's own case, comes to
the same thing."
She paused a moment; there was one thing she wanted to say, and she
believed it might do Madge good to have it said. Deep and overwhelming
as her grief was, Lady Dover knew well that anything that took her mind
off herself was salutary.
"But sometimes, on the other hand," she went on, "we ought to remember
those people who have been most associated with it. It does not do any
good to anyone to shudder at the heather. But I think, dear, it would be
kind if you just wrote a line to Lord Ellington. I think you have
forgotten him, and what he must feel."
For the moment she doubted if she had done wisely, so bitter was Madge's
reply.
"Ah, I can never forgive him!" she cried. "To think that but for
him----" And she broke off with quivering lip.
Lady Dover did not reply at once, but the doubt did not gain ground.
"I think, dear, that that is better unsaid," she replied at length. "You
do not really mean it either; your best self does not mean it."
Again she paused, for she did not think very quickly.
"And this, too," she said, "you must consider. How can you help Mr.
Dundas not to feel bitter and resentful, for he has more direct cause to
feel it than you, if you have that sort of thought in your heart? You
will be unable to help him, in the one way in which you perhaps can, if
you feel like that. Also, dear, supposing any one of us, Dover, I, Mr.
Osborne, had to become either Mr. Dundas or Lord Ellington, do you think
any of us could hesitate a moment? Do you not see that of all the people
who have been made miserable by this terrible accident, which of them
must be the most miserable?"
Then came the second outward sign from Madge. She took Lady Dover's hand
in both of hers.
"Don't judge me too hardly," she said. "I spoke very hastily, very
wrongly. I have been thinking of my own misery too much; I have not
thought enough about poor Evelyn. But I did not know there was such
sorrow in the world."
Lady Dover looked at her a moment, and drew her gently to a seat behind
some bushes. And her own pretty, neat face was suddenly puckered up.
"Oh, Madge," she said, "just let yourself go for ten minutes, and cry,
my dear, sob your heart out, as they say. Have a good cry, dear; it will
do you good. It is not cowardly, that--it helps one, it softens one, and
it makes one braver perhaps afterwards. Yes, dear, let it come."
And then the fountain of tears was unloosed, and those sobs, those deep
sobs which come from the heart of living and suffering men and women,
and are a sign and a proof, as it were, of their humanity, poured out.
Madge had surrendered, she had ceased to hold herself aloof; brave she
had been before, but brave in a sort of impenetrable armour of her own
reserve. But now she cast it aside, and the womanhood which her love for
Evelyn had begun to wake in her, came to itself and its own, more heroic
than it had been before, because the armour was cast aside, and she
stood defenceless, but fearless.
Before she went up again to Evelyn's room she wrote: