After dinner that night, before she went to bed, Madge looked into
Evelyn's room several times and spoke to him gently. But on all these
occasions he was lying quite still and he did not answer her; so,
thinking he was asleep, she eventually retired to her own room just
opposite, and went to bed. For the last two nights she had scarcely
closed her eyes, but now, with the intense relief of knowing that Evelyn
knew, of feeling, too, that he was bearing it with such wonderful
quietness and composure, she fell asleep at once and slept long and
well.
But her husband had not been asleep any of those times that she went
into the room. He had never felt more awake in his life. But he had not
answered her, because he had felt that he must be alone: just now
nobody, not even she, could come near to him, for he had to go into the
secret place of his soul, where only he himself might come. And as at
the moment of death not even a man's nearest and dearest, she with whom
he has been one flesh, may take a single step with the soul on its
passage, but it has to go absolutely alone, so now none could go with
Evelyn; for in these hours he had to die to practically all, Madge alone
excepted, which the word "life" connoted to him. And having done that,
he had to begin, to start living again. There Madge could help him, but
for this death, this realisation of what had happened, this summing up
of all that had been cut off, he had to be alone.
There was no comfort for him anywhere: nor at any future time could
comfort come. There would be no "getting used" to it, every moment,
every hour, that passed would but put another spadeful of earth on his
coffin. There was no more night and morning for him. Sunset and sunrise
spilt like crimson flames along the sky existed no more: the green light
below forest trees was dead, the clusters of purple clematis in his
unfinished picture had grown black, there was neither green nor red nor
any colour left, it was all black. The forms of everything had gone,
too; it was as if the world had been some exquisite piece of modelling
clay, and that some gigantic hand had closed on it, reducing it to a
shapeless lump: neither shape nor colour existed any more. People had
gone, too, faces and eyes and limbs, the gentle swelling of a woman's
breast, outline and profile and the warm, radiant tint of youth were
gone, there was nothing left except voices. And voices without the sight
of the mouth that spoke, of the shades of expression playing over the
face, would be without significance: they would be dim and meaningless,
they would not reach him in this desert of utter loneliness, where he
would dwell forever out of sight of everything. And that was not all;
that was not half. Of the world there was nothing left but voices, and
of him what was left? Was he only a voice, too?
He was blind, that is to say, his eyes must have been practically
destroyed. And the bandages extended, so he could feel, right up to his
hair, and down to his upper lip. There were other injuries as well,
then. What were they? How complete was the wreck? Above all, did Madge
know, had she seen? If ever love had vibrated in a voice, it had in
her's, but did she know, or had she only seen these bandages?
With his frightfully sensitive artistic nature, this seemed to cut
deeper than anything, this thought that he was disfigured; horrible to
look on, an offence to the eye of day and to the light of the sun,
and--to the sight of her he loved. He would be pitied, too; and even as
man and woman turned away from the sight of him they would be sorry for
him, and the thought of pity was like a file on his flesh. Would it not
have been better if the shot had gone a little deeper yet? His maimed,
disfigured body would then have been decently hidden away and covered by
the kind, cool earth, he would not have to walk the earth to be stared
at--to be turned from.
His nurse not long before had made her last visit for the night, and,
seeing him lying so still supposed, like Madge, that he was asleep, and
had gone back to the dressing-room next door, to go to bed herself. His
progress during the day had been most satisfactory, the feverishness had
almost gone, and the doctor, when the wounds were dressed that
afternoon, had been amazed to see how rapidly and well the processes of
healing were going on. Certainly there was no lack of vitality or
recuperative power in his patient, nor in the keenness and utter despair
of his mental suffering was vitality absent. That same vitality coloured
and suffused that; he saw it all with the hideous vividness of an
imaginative nature. Doubt and uncertainty, however, here were worse than
the worst that the truth could hold for him, and he called to the nurse,
who came at once.
"What is it, Mr. Dundas?" she asked. "I hoped you were asleep. You are
not in pain?"
"No, not in pain. But I can't sleep. I want to ask you two or three
questions. Pray answer them: I sha'n't sleep till you do."
She did not speak, half-guessing what was coming.
"I want to know this, first of all," he said, speaking quite quietly.
"What shall I look like when these things are healed, when the bandages
come off?"
Nurse James was essentially a truthful woman, but she did not hesitate
about her reply. There are times when no decent person would hesitate
about telling a lie, the bigger the better. She laughed.
"Well, I never!" she said. "And have you brought me from my bed just to
ask that! I never heard such a thing. Why, you will look as you always
have looked, Mr. Dundas, but your eyelids will be shut."
The good, kind woman suddenly felt that the ease with which all this
came to her was almost appalling. She was a glorious liar, and had never
known it till now.
"Why, bless you," she went on, "your wife was in here when your face was
dressed to-day, and--you were still under morphia, you know, and did not
know she was there--and she said to Dr. Inglis: 'Why, he only looks as
if he was asleep.'"
"She has seen me, then?" asked Evelyn eagerly. "She has seen my face?"
"Why, of course, and she bent and kissed it, just as your wife should
do. There's a brave woman now. Is that all, sir?"
Evelyn gave one great sigh of relief.
"Yes, nurse," he said. "I am sorry I disturbed you. Yet I assure you it
was worth while. I can't tell you how you have relieved me. I
thought--oh, my God! it is not hell after all."
She arranged the bedclothes about him, and though she had been so glib,
she could not now speak at once.
"There, then; you'll go to sleep, won't you, now you know that," she
said. "But to think of you worrying here all these hours!"
Madge was, of course, told by Nurse James what happened before she saw
Evelyn again, for that diplomatist came to her room very early next
morning, and informed her of it all. She acquiesced in it, as she would
have acquiesced in anything that in the opinion of nurse or doctor
conduced to his recovery, and for the next day or two his progress was
speedy and uninterrupted. He had faced the first shock, that he was
blind, with a courage that was really heroic, and except for that hour
when he held himself in front of it, purposing and meaning to realise
once and for all exactly what it implied, he exercised wonderful
self-control in not letting himself brood over it. This was the easier
because that second fear, the roots of which went so much deeper than
the other, had proved to be groundless. Terrible as was his plight, the
knowledge that it might have been so much more terrible was ever in his
mind, casting its light into the places that he had thought were of an
impenetrable darkness.
But in this balance and adjustment of the human soul to the anguish with
which circumstance and fate visit it, the mechanism of its infliction is
wonderfully contrived, so that it shall not snap under the strain. The
Angel of Pain, we must suppose, sits by, with the screws and levers of
the rack under its control; it loosens one, as Evelyn's dread about
disfigurement had been loosened for the present at any rate, since it
was, perhaps, more than he could stand (and the Angel of Pain, with the
relentless hands but the tender eye and pitying mouth, had not finished
with him yet) but it tightens another; the fact of his blindness had
been screwed down very tight. Then as the racked sinews and tortured
nerves began to writhe and agonise less, another little torture was
added. It was but a small thing compared to the others, and though it
had been there all the time, neither Madge nor he had noticed it at
first. But now when he was weary with pain, it was like a fly that kept
buzzing and settling on his face, while his hands were bound, so that
he could not brush it off. It had seemed but fear of the imagination at
first, but gradually to both of them, as he recovered so well, and the
future as well as the present began to make itself felt again, it became
terribly real. It was simply this: What was to happen to them? How among
other things were their doctor's and nurse's bills to be paid? And how,
after that, were they going to live?
For several days each suffered the buzzing, flittings and alightings of
this without speaking of it to the other, since each believed that the
other had not yet thought of it. But one afternoon they had been talking
of that hot August month in London, with their childish tales of
Ellesdee, and the curious fact that if you only make a game out of a
privation, the privation ceases and the game becomes entrancingly real.
Evelyn had laughed over this.
"We shall have heaps of games in the future," he had said unthinkingly,
and stopped rather abruptly. In the silence that followed he heard Madge
just stir in her chair; an assent had dropped from her lips, but she had
said no more, and it was clear to them both that their thoughts had met.
Then Evelyn spoke.
"Madge, has it ever occurred to you what we are going to do?" he said.
"How we are going to live, I mean?"
"Yes, dear, I have thought about it a good deal. I didn't speak of it,
since I hoped you wouldn't begin to think about it yet."
"There were forty-three pounds?" he said; "from which you have to
subtract our railway fares."
"Yes, dear," she said almost inaudibly.
The Angel of Pain turned that screw a little more. They could bear a
little more of that.
"There is an unfinished portrait of Lady Taverner," said he. "There is
the finished portrait of you. But even if we sold those, what next, what
afterwards?"
"Ah, there is no necessity to think about it," said Madge quickly. "Of
course mother will help us. She will do what she can. And Guy Ellington,
of course----"
"We shall have to live on their alms, you mean?" said he with a sudden
dreadful bitterness. "On the pity of others? They can't do it, besides.
They can't support us. And even if they could, how could we accept it?"
His hand, with the rapid, hovering movement so characteristic of the
blind, felt over the bedclothes and found hers. He was acquiring this
blind touch with extraordinary rapidity.
"Madge, do you hate me for having married you?" he asked. "Would it have
been better for you if we had never seen each other? Here are you,
tied--eternally tied--to a beggar and a cripple, half a man with half a
face!"
For one moment she winced at the thought of that which she did not yet
know. Supposing it was very terrible, supposing she cried out at it? But
she recovered herself at once.
"I bless God every day for your love, dear," she said.
He was silent after this a little, his fingers playing over hers.
"I am getting blind man's hands already," he said. "I can feel which
your rings are. There, that is the wedding-ring, that is easy, and the
one with sapphires in it. No, it can't be that, there are four stones in
this, and there are only three sapphires. Ah, that is the ruby ring; do
you remember how you scolded me for giving it you? Then on the next
finger one pearl: that is easy. Then the first finger, no rings there,
but--yes, at that knuckle the little scar that runs up halfway to the
next knuckle, where you cut your finger to the bone when you were a girl
over the broken glass."
Madge felt herself suddenly turn white and cold. He had felt the little
scar on her finger with absolute accuracy, tracing it from where it
started to where it finished. And if he could do this with so little a
scar, what of other scars that would be within reach of his hands
always? He would find them out, too; he would guess; all their attempts
at concealment from him of what his injuries really were would be
futile. He must come to know.
But he was busy just now on the exploration of his powers of touch. It
was a new game; already touch was beginning to be a new thing to him,
and whereas he had regarded his hands hitherto as holders to grasp other
things, prehensile endings to the arms merely, he was now beginning to
find out new powers in the soft-tipped fingers. He was like a child
which has hitherto regarded its legs merely as agreeable though silent
play-fellows, who begins to see that a hitherto undreamed-of power of
locomotion resides in them.
This was fascinating to Evelyn; for the moment there was a sudden hope
springing up. It was like a message of relief coming to a beleagured
garrison.
"Why, if I can do this already," he said, "who knows what it may not
grow to? Madge, I am sure I could not have felt so much before--before
it happened. Quick, give me something, and I will tell you what it is.
What if the form and the shape of things has not been annihilated for
me?"
And so this game, for so it was, began to interest him. For him, since
some measure of the excitement, the chance, the experimentalism of life,
had begun to come back, the Angel of Pain relaxed the screws a little,
yet her hands did not altogether leave them. But poor Madge! The Angel
of the relentless hands and tender face looked gravely on her. She had
to bear very much, and bear it with a smiling face and cheerful voice,
fetching books for Evelyn to identify, and small objects from his
dressing-case and what-not. The screws were turned rather smartly for
her; it was inevitable that he should before very long identify his own
face, identify the damage there. She herself had not done so yet, but
awfully as she had feared that for herself, she now feared it more for
him. He was building so much, she knew that, on a place where no
foundation was possible. It would all sink into the mire and clay. He
would learn, as she would have to learn, how dreadful that was: his
sensitive, hovering fingers with their light touch and constructive
imagination would build up and realise by degrees. He would know that
the worst fear of all was fulfilled.
That view of his, which Madge knew so well he would take when he
learned, one way or another, of the wreck that had come to his face,
might or might not be a shallow view, but that view he would assuredly
take, and construe her love for him into mere pity and forbearance. She
did not love him for his face--he would not say that--but his face was
part of him, and if that was spoiled, so surely was part of her love
spoiled. Body and soul she had loved him, but how could a woman love a
sightless, scarred thing? He would grant, no doubt, that her love for
him went further than that which was now hideous, but would she, to put
it from her own point of view, have scarred and hacked and blinded her
own face, and gone back to him who saw, in perfect confidence that his
love for her would be undiminished and undeterred, knowing that it lay
too deep for any such superficial maiming to injure? She knew well she
would not, for love, however spiritual, includes the body as well as the
spirit, and however fine, cannot but take the body as the outward and
visible sign of the beloved soul, its expression and aura. And how could
he to whom the surface of beauty and loveliness had been by profession
such a study and worship, still think, whatever her asseverations to the
contrary, that her love for him was as complete as it had been? And, to
get nearer the truth, would not he be right? She did not know about that
yet; she had not seen. At present she could not think of his face as
other than it had been; all she knew was that, in spite of herself, she
dreaded with her whole soul the removal of those bandages. What if she
shrank and winced at the sight? Those slim, delicate fingers of the
Angel of Pain tightened the screw, and the kind eyes looked at her,
seeing how she bore it. If there was a terrible moment coming for Evelyn
when his fingers, which were now to be to him his eyes, told him what he
looked like, there was a moment, a double moment, coming for her. She
had first to control herself, to make him believe, whatever she saw,
that she saw no difference; nothing that made her love one jot less
urgent and insistent; she had also, with a feigned conviction that had
got to convince him, to assure him that his fingers were at fault, that
there was no scar where he said there was a scar, that there was no
empty hole.... That she knew. What she did not know was how to face it
all.
At present, anyhow, by a great effort, she put off the moment which she
foresaw must come. He could not remain indefinitely ignorant, his own
hands must some day inform him. But just now he was eager and interested
in this new game. By a splendid effort of vitality and will, he had
pushed into the background the fact of his blindness: he had put it for
the time being, anyhow, among the inevitable and accepted facts of life,
while he had filled his foreground with the fact that he had eyes in his
fingers. How glorious that bit of bravery was she knew well, for he was
so brave that just now he was not even acting; he genuinely looked
forward to the future, not without hope. At her bidding he had left the
grinding difficulties of the future alone, he had left the question of
the stark fact as to how they were to live, he had left also the fact of
his own supreme deprivation, and with a splendid effort he looked on the
possibilities that might lie in front of them, not on the limitations,
cramping and binding, that certainly lay there.
"Yes, all those things are easy," he said; "of course I can tell a
toothpick and a sovereign-case, that is a mere effort of memory. But
let's go on, if you are not tired of it. You see, dear, you've got to
educate me now; I am just a child again, learning a new set of letters.
Now give me really new letters."
Now Lady Dover a day before, in her quiet way, had telegraphed to London
for a couple of packs of blind cards. They had the index in raised
cardboard in the corner, and had arrived this morning. She had put them
in the dressing-room adjoining his bedroom, and had just mentioned it to
Madge, in the way that, had she been a stranger in the house, she might
have mentioned where the bath-room was.
"Mr. Dundas is so eager and alive," she had said, "that I thought, dear
Madge, that he might like to begin any moment to accustom himself a
little, poor fellow, to his new circumstances. So you will find a couple
of packs of raised cards, I think they call them, in the dressing-room.
I thought he might perhaps feel inclined to experiment with them."
So Madge fetched them now, and a couple of minutes afterwards she and
Evelyn were deep in a game of picquet. His childish pleasure in "new
things" stood him in good stead now; he got as excited as a schoolboy
over the riddle of what his hand contained. Again and again he fingered
the raised index in the corner, with sudden bursts of triumph when he
solved it to his own satisfaction.
"Ah, I used to call you slow at picquet, Madge," he cried, "but you
can't retaliate. How very good for you! If you call me slow, I shall
merely throw the cards away and burst into tears. Seven or nine, which
on earth is it? Don't look and tell me. I trust you not to look."
But he soon got tired, and it is doubtful whether Madge was not more
tired than he. When he waited long, feeling with those thin finger tips
at the index, it was bad enough for her; but it was worse when he felt
the card right almost immediately, and almost laughed with pleasure at
his newly-acquired quickness--he, who used to be so quick! And all the
time the certainty of the moment that was coming when he should learn
all that had happened darkened her with an amazement of pity. What would
he feel when he knew that? And what would she feel? And how, if that
was very bad, would she have power to conceal it, so that he should
believe, so that she could force him to believe that it was not there?
Two mornings after Madge slept on very late; but before she came down
she had been in to see Evelyn, and subsequently had a talk to the nurse,
who told her that Dr. Inglis had already seen her husband, and that he
intended to take the bandages off his eyes that day. The wounds had
healed in a manner almost marvellous, and they would now be the better
for the air and light. And though Madge as she went downstairs felt that
only thankfulness ought to be in her heart, she felt that she carried
some sort of death-warrant in her pocket.
The post had just come in, and as she entered the breakfast-room, from
which Lord Dover had already gone, but where his wife still waited for
Madge, ready to make fresh tea on her entry, she found a letter by her
plate directed in a handwriting that was very familiar to her. She
wanted to open it at once, but instead she pushed it aside.
"What a glorious morning, dear Madge," said Lady Dover. "Dr. Inglis has
already made me his morning report. He has no further anxiety, I think,
at all. I am so glad."
She herself had a pile of letters, of which she had opened only about
half, but abandoned them entirely to talk to Madge, and make her tea.
But the sight of all those letters, somehow, diverted Madge's attention
from her own, and a sudden thought struck her, which was new.
"Lady Dover," she said abruptly, "I believe you have been putting all
manner of visitors off because of poor Evelyn."
Lady Dover looked up in gentle, clear-eyed acquiescence.
"Why, my dear, it was most important he should be quite quiet," she
said.
Madge arrested the hand that was pouring out her tea.
"Ah, you dear," she said, "and all these days I never thought of it, or
thanked you."
The spout of the teapot poured a clear amber stream on to the
table-cloth.
"And I have spilt the tea, too," said Madge. "But I do thank you,
and--and I am frightened!"
"There is nothing wrong?"
"No; but they are going to take the bandages off, and what shall I see?
Will you be there, too, and help me not to mind if it is dreadful? You
see--you see, I suppose I loved his face as well, why not, and if all
that is terribly changed.... They have told me it will be. And he must
not guess that I mind, that I even see it is different. And when his
hands tell him what has happened, as they will, I must still convince
him somehow that to me there is no difference. Oh, I want help!" she
cried. "Indeed it is not only for me, I want it for him--I must convince
him that it does not matter."
But at this point Lady Dover failed a little. She was not, in spite of
her obvious kindness and sympathy, quite human enough to go to the
depths that Madge's gropings reached blind hands to. The trials and
difficulties that came within her ken, the loss of someone loved, the
parching of love in what had been a fountain, she could have understood,
but the fear of a maimed face affecting love she could not quite grasp.
Her idea of love may perhaps have been spiritually finer, it may also
perhaps have not been adequately human.
There was a pause, anyhow, and since nothing but immediate and
spontaneous reply was conceivable from Madge's point of view, she took
up her letter again.
"This, too," she said, "it is from Philip."
But to that Lady Dover responded instantly.
"Then, dear, you will want to read it alone," she said. "And if you can
tell me about it afterwards, and if I can be of any use, advising or
suggesting, you will come to me, will you not? But, dear Madge, he would
not write unless he had something very particular to say, and,
personally, whenever I see a letter that may be very private, I always
keep it till I am alone. So let me leave you alone, dear. I see they
have brought in a fresh hot dish for you of some sort, and I have just
made the tea. I shall be in my room."
Here again tact played a great part; she did not look at Madge, either
inviting or repelling confidence. And without the least suspicion of
hurry or of lingering she left the room, with her pile of letters,
opened and unopened.
Madge waited a minute or two. Then with a sudden mechanical series of
movements, she tore open the envelope, took out Philip's letter, and
read it. It was dated from Pangbourne.