For one moment she stood there facing him, her breath suspended, only
conscious of some deep-seated terror and dismay, and her face grew
white. Once she tried to speak and could not, for she knew that some
dreadful exclamation alone could pass her lips. Lady Dover had got up,
too, and stood by her; she looked not at Evelyn at all, but at Madge,
and before the pause had grown appreciable she whispered to her--
"Say anything. Don't be a coward."
It was therefore as well that Lady Dover had come with her, otherwise
anything might have happened, Madge might have screamed almost, or she
might have left the room without saying a word, so dreadful was the
shock. But Lady Dover's words were a lash to her, and the power of
making an effort came back.
"Ah, dearest Evelyn," she said, "how nice to see your face again."
For a moment the tremor in her voice, the imminent sob in her throat,
all but mastered her. Yet all this week he had been so brave, and for
very shame she could not but put on the semblance of bravery and try to
infuse her speech with a grain of courage.
"It is good, it is good to see you," she said, and the first physical
horror began to fade a little as her love, that eternal, abiding
principle, slid out from under the paralysis of the other. "All those
bandages gone, all the plaster and lint gone. You look yourself, do you
know, too--just, just yourself."
She turned an appealing eye on Lady Dover; that was unnecessary, because
she was quite prepared to speak as soon as Madge stopped.
"I must congratulate you too, Mr. Dundas," she said in her neat, precise
tones. "Why, you look, as Madge said, quite natural; does he not, Madge?
And really I think dark spectacles are rather becoming. I shall get some
myself."
Evelyn had not spoken yet; but reasonably or not, for he had been quite
unreasonably suspicious once before that morning, he thought he detected
some insincerity in these protestations. And with one quick movement of
his hand he took the spectacles off.
"Are they really becoming?" he asked. "Or do you like me better without,
Madge?"
Again she saw, and, with a movement uncontrollable, she hid her own eyes
for a moment. But Lady Dover again came to the rescue.
"Ah, Doctor Inglis won't allow that, Mr. Dundas," she said.
But Evelyn still held them away from his face. Brutal as it all was, the
thing had to be gone through once, and it was on the whole better to do
it now.
"Ah, I asked Madge," he said quietly.
As he spoke, with his other hand he let his fingers dwell with that firm
yet fluttering movement over his eyes. That straight, drawn-down lid was
visualised by him, that tear in the other eyelid was visualised also.
Then the hovering finger-tips traced the course of the pellet through
the eyebrow, and felt, like a dog nosing a hot scent, the course of the
scar where another had crossed his forehead. To that constructive touch
the truth was becoming hideously plain. And deliberately, as he felt and
traced, he set himself to believe the worst. He sat as judge to weigh
the evidence of his fingers as they bore witness to the state of this
wrecked face of his. Again and again, in days past, he had said, and
meant also, that he did not wish to go below the surface of things; the
eyebrow, the curve of the mouth, the light of the eye itself, as he had
said to the Hermit, were enough for him, there was symbol enough there.
And since this choice was so instinctive and natural to himself, it was
not possible to him to dissociate others from it, and as, with terrible
certainty, he framed to himself what he looked like, he put himself into
Madge's place, and seeing with her eyes, framed also the conclusion
which he believed to be inevitable. Yet she had seen him before, the
nurse had told him so, and after that he had heard with ears that
somehow seemed quickened in their sense even as touch was, the authentic
ring of love in her voice. Or had he been deceived in that?
But thought, like the electric current through wires, travels many miles
in an interval that is not appreciably greater than that which it takes
to go a yard or two, and the rapid brushing of his fingers over his face
had been almost as speedy. So when Madge answered (her thought too had
gone far) he was not conscious that there had been a pause. She had
complete command of her voice now.
"How can anybody be so silly?" she said. "I like you best without
spectacles, dear, but as you have to wear them, there's the end of it.
And"--she was embarked on a big lie, and did not mind--"you look so much
better than you did when I saw you a week ago when your face was being
dressed, that I should scarcely recognise you. At least I feel now as if
I should scarcely have recognised you then; now there is no need for
recognition. Put them on again, Evelyn; there is a strong light."
She gave a little gasp at the end of this. Lady Dover heard it, and laid
a quick hand of sympathy on her shoulder. But Evelyn did not; for the
present he was convinced, and that conviction, like some burst of sudden
sound, shut out all other impressions.
"Here we are, then," he said. "This is the new me; positively the first
appearance. A favourable reception was accorded by a sympathetic
audience. And now--are you still there, Dr. Inglis?--what manner of
reason is there that I should not get up?"
"You want to?" he asked.
"Why, certainly."
"Then, there is an excellent reason why you should. When my patients
want to do a thing it is an indication, generally correct, that it is
good for them. Yes, get up by all means."
Again the boyish delight in the new game took possession of Evelyn; yet
that delight, and the pity of it, stabbed Madge like a sword.
"And let me do it myself," he cried. "Let my clothes be put by my bed,
let my bath be put there, and let me be left quite alone. Madge, I bet
you I shall be dressed in an hour. And the parting in my hair will be
straight," he added excitedly.
This also was agreed to, with the provision that if he felt faint or
tired during these operations he was at once to desist, and lie down
again and ring his bell. The nurse busied herself with the preparations
for this great event, and the other three went out together.
Dr. Inglis paused in the corridor outside the room.
"Mrs. Dundas," he said, "you have got to keep that up, you know. You did
it well, and I don't think you ought to have done differently. Come,
come, we shall have you fainting next."
Poor Madge had been utterly overwrought by this scene, and indeed as the
doctor spoke she swayed and staggered where she stood. But they got her
to a chair, in which she sat silent with closed eyes for a minute or so.
Then she looked up at him.
"Shall I get used to it?" she asked. "Please tell me if there is a
reasonable chance of that?"
"Certainly there is--we will come down in a minute, Lady Dover, if you
will go on--yes, certainly, there is much more than a chance. You will
get used to it. I did not know, by the way, that your husband had been
told you had seen him before; but that does not matter now. But it is
idle to pretend that you will get used to it at once. You won't, you
can't. You will have to be patient, and all the time you must keep the
strictest guard on yourself, to prevent the least suspicion getting to
his mind that you are shocked by his appearance. He knows, poor fellow,
more or less what he looks like. The curious blind sense of touch is
developing in him with extraordinary rapidity. But you convinced him
just now--his whole face flushed--that you don't mind. You must keep
that up, otherwise no one can say what may happen."
"What do you mean?" asked she, still rather faintly.
"Just that. His hold on life is strong enough, quite strong enough, but
it comes to him now mainly through one channel. That is you."
The rather cruel abruptness of this was intentional and well calculated.
It did not dismay Madge, but just braced her. She got up from the chair.
"That will be all right, then," she said.
"I am sure it will. But as I shall go away to-day, I want to say a
little more to you. His recovery, his recuperative power, is excellent,
but there is one thing which I do not altogether like. His moods vary
with great rapidity and great intensity. No doubt that was always so to
some extent with him."
"Yes," said Madge eagerly, "it is just that which is so like him. Surely
that is all for the good, that he should be so like himself?"
"Yes, within limits. But, as I need not tell you, he has been through a
frightful shock, not only physical but mental, and quiet is the best
restorative of all. Keep him amused and interested in things as much as
you can; but also, as far as you can, keep him from feeling
extravagantly. His mental barometer is jumping up and down; in
proportion as it goes unnaturally high, so it will also go unnaturally
low. That is frightfully tiring; it is to the mind what fever, a
temperature that jumps about, is to the body."
He paused a moment.
"Of course I know the difficulties," he went on. "It is no use saying
'Be tranquil,' but you can certainly induce tranquility in him by being
tranquil yourself, by surrounding him with tranquility. Keep his spirits
level by keeping your own level. It won't be easy. Now, if you are quite
yourself again, shall we join Lady Dover?"
Evelyn spent several hours that afternoon downstairs, but the excitement
of coming down for the first time tired him, and before Philip's arrival
he had gone up to bed again. All day, too, to Madge's great disquietude,
his spirits had been jumping up and down; at one time he would go on
with the identification game with the most absorbed enthusiasm; then
again, even in the middle of it, he would suddenly stop.
"Oh, it's no use," he said. "Why, it takes me half an hour to find out
what is on that table, and it would take me a week to find out what the
room was like. Take me on to the terrace, will you, Madge, and let me
walk up and down a bit."
This had been medically permitted, and with his arm in hers they
strolled up and down in the warm sunlight. Evelyn sniffed the fresh air
with extraordinary gusto.
"Ah, that's good," he said; "it is warm, yet it has got the touch of
autumn in it. What sort of a day is it, Madge? Is it a blue day or a
yellow day?
"Well, the sky is blue----" she began.
"Yes, I didn't suppose it was yellow," said he. "But what's the rest? Is
the air between us and the hills yellow or blue? Oh, Lord, what would I
not give for one more sight of it! I would look so carefully just this
once. Tell me about it, dear."
So Madge, as well as she could, tried to make him see with her eyes. She
told him of the brown, foam-flecked stream that wound and crawled in the
shadowed gully below them, of the steep hillside opposite, that climbed
out of the darkness into the broad, big sunlight of the afternoon, of
the feathery birch trees, just beginning to turn yellow, that fringed
the moor, of the bracken, a tone deeper in gold, of the warm greyness of
the bare hill above, with its corries lying in shadow, and its topmost
serrated outline cutting the sky with so clear and well-defined a line
that the sky itself looked as if it was _applique,_ fitted on to it.
Away to the left was a pine wood, almost black as contrasted with the
golden of the bracken, but the red trunks of the trees burned like
flames in it. Beyond that again lay the big purple stretches of heather
over which ran the riband of the road to Golspie. Then in the immediate
foreground there was a clump of rowan trees, covered with red berries;
they found but a precarious footing, so steeply did the ground plunge
towards the river; but halfway down there was a broad, almost level
plateau, across which flowed the burn. It was covered with grass and low
bushes, bog-myrtle, she thought, and a big flock of sheep were feeding
there. The shepherd had just sent the collie to fetch them up, and the
running dog was like a yellow streak across the green.
Evelyn gave a great sigh.
"Thanks, dear," he said. "Now shall we go in? Somehow, I don't think I
can stand any more just yet. I suppose one will get more used to it. Ah,
how unfair, how damnably unfair!" he cried suddenly. "Why should I be
robbed like this? I wish to God I had been born blind, so that I could
never know how much I miss. But to give me sight, to give me a glimpse
of the world, just to take it away again! How can that be just? And I
did like it so. It was all so pleasant!"
Never before had Madge so felt the utter uselessness of words. How could
words be made to reach him? Yet how, again, could the yearning of her
whole soul to console and comfort him fail to reach him? What she said
she hardly knew; she was but conscious of the outpourings of herself in
pity and love. She held that poor blind head in her hands, she kissed
the mouth, she kissed the scars, she pushed up the dark spectacles and
kissed the dear, empty eyelids, and all the horror that had
involuntarily made her shudder when first she saw his face was gone,
melted, vanished. For it had been but a superficial thing, as little her
true self, as little to be taken as an index of what her heart felt, as
the sudden shudder of goose-flesh, and just now at any rate it was swept
away. That she would feel it again, often and often, she did not doubt,
but of that she took no heed whatever. This--this pity and love--which
had come upon her like a flash of revelation--was her true and her best
self, and though again and again she might fall back from it, her flesh
wincing and being afraid, yet there would be always the memory of this
moment to guide and direct her. There would be difficult times; the
whole of the rest of her life would be difficult, but it no longer
presented the appearance of impossibility. And how full and dear to her
heart was Evelyn's response.
"Oh, Madge," he said, "the worst of all was the thought that you would
shrink from me. I minded that so much more than anything. I should not
have reproached you, I don't think I should have done that even to
myself, after guessing, as I have guessed, what I must be like, for I
should have understood. But what I don't understand is how it is you do
not shrink. I don't want to understand, either; it is quite enough for
me that it is so. And when I am cross, as I shall be, and despondent, as
I shall be, and odious, try to remember what I have said to you now. I
want to be remembered by that."
So that was his best moment, too.
* * * * *
Philip arrived by the dinner train that night with a couple of other
guests, and when the rest of them went up at the usual early hour, to
get a good night after the journey of the day in the fresh air, he and
Madge lingered behind, for naturally he wanted to learn about Evelyn and
also about her. Both also perhaps felt that it was inevitable that they
should have one talk together; it could hardly have been otherwise.
It began abruptly enough. As soon as the door was shut behind the last
of the outgoers she came towards him with hands outstretched.
"I know you don't want me to say 'thank you,' Philip," she said, "but I
can't help it. I can't tell you how deeply I thank you."
He held her hands for a moment, pressing them closely, and smiling at
her.
"It is said, then. You mustn't say it twice, you know. That is vain
repetition, and we have so much to say to each other that we have no
time for that. I also must say once that I thank you for letting me do
what I can. It would have been easier for you to have refused my help
and to have refused to see me. Also it would have been more
conventional. Now, about that there is just one word more to be said,
and it is this. You told me once you looked upon me as an elder brother.
Well, you have got to do it again. I'm going to manage for you. You have
got, you and Evelyn, to do as I tell you in practical matters, because
I'm practical and you are not."
A great lump rose in Madge's throat. These days had tired her so; it was
such an unutterable relief to have anything taken off her hands, to feel
that the almost intolerable weight of the future was being shared by
another. But for the moment she could not speak, and but just nodded to
him.
"Now, I am the bearer of a message first of all," he said, "and the
message is from my mother. She wants you both--in fact, she insists on
your coming down to Pangbourne for--for a period which she says had
better be left indefinite. London, she truly says, is dust and ashes in
September. It really would be the best plan, so will you join with me in
persuading Evelyn, if persuasion is necessary?"
"Ah, Philip," she said, "you cut me to the heart. And--and this makes it
worse, that I accept your generosity for Evelyn's sake. It is that
which--which is so ruthless."
Philip's lip quivered a moment, but he went on bravely.
"Well, as an elder brother I recommend it, too," he said; "for it is
just that I want to be to you, dear. Ah, do you think I don't guess?"
Madge got up, and drew a chair close to him.
"Tell me about yourself, if it does not hurt you to talk of that," she
said.
"No, I want you to know what has happened to me," he said; "both because
I have to ask your forgiveness for certain things----"
"Ah, don't, don't!" said she.
"Yes, you will see, and because perhaps what I have been through may
help you. Well, Madge, I have been through deep waters, and waters as
bitter as they were deep. For that month while I was in London I hated
you and I hated him with such intensity that I think, but for the very
hard work I did, I must have gone mad. And I think the only pleasure I
felt was when I was the cause--indirectly anyhow--of his losing a large
sum of money. I could have saved him that if I chose, but I did not
choose. I must speak of that afterwards. But I loved you all the time I
hated you, Madge, if you can understand that. All that was base and hard
in me loathed you, because you had made me suffer; but there was
something below, a very little thing, like a lump of leaven perhaps
which still loved you, my infinitesimal better self. But all the time in
London I did not know there was in me anything better than this worst.
"Then one morning I fainted, and they told me to ease off. So I went
down into the country and stayed with the Hermit, who, I think, lived
the happiest life that was ever lived on this earth. It was the contrast
between him and me perhaps that first suggested to me whether it was
worth while to hate, as I was hating, for that as far as I know was the
beginning of what happened afterwards. It made me also throw away
something I had bought in order to kill myself--never mind that. Then
one night he talked about pain, on which he had turned his back, and
told me that though he could not understand how or why it was necessary,
it perhaps might be, and that he was willing himself, if so, to face
anything that might be in store for him. And then, I must suppose that
little lump of leaven began to work, because that night--we had talked
also about free will--I asked myself if I chose, deliberately chose, to
be bitter and hating. And I found I did not.
"It was not long after that--a week, I suppose--that the end came. By
then I knew but this for certain, that I was not deliberately hard any
longer. It was the contemplation of happiness and serenity that had
produced that; I had begun also not to stare at a blank wall that had
seemed to face me, but to say to myself that there was no wall except
that of my own making. Do you know Watts' picture of Hope? Of course you
do. Well, I thought all my strings were broken, but they were not. There
was just one left. But that I knew must inevitably break if I continued
to be black and bitter. My bitterness had corroded it already."
Philip paused a moment.
"I am jawing dreadfully about myself," he said.
"Go on," said she.
"Tom died in the night. I don't want to tell you that in detail, but he
died because he saw or thought he saw some revelation of the pain and
sorrow of the world. Whether he imagined it or not, and whether what I
thought I saw was imagination only, I don't really care. He was sleeping
in a hammock out of doors, and suddenly his cry rent the night. He
called on God and on Christ. And when I went out I thought I saw a
shadow like some dreadful goat skip from him. And he was dead.
"Now, how one learns anything I don't know. But what I learned was pity
for sorrow. And so, dear Madge, I am here."
Again her hand sought his.
"Oh, Philip, Philip," she said. "What can I say to you? How could I
guess what love was till I felt it? Ah, I don't say that in excuse--you
know that."
"No, dear. It is no question of excuses, of course. And I have only told
you all this that you may never need to look for any, and that you may
understand that I am sorry for having been so bitter. And if you forgive
that"--and the pressure of her hand answered him--"let us leave the past
forever behind us, and look forward only. But it was better to have
talked of it just once, so that we may dismiss it. Now, tell me about
Evelyn."
To Philip somehow she could pour out her heart in a way she could
scarcely have done to anyone else, for the knowledge of what he had been
through and of the bitterness from which he had emerged so unembittered
threw open the golden gates of sympathy, and she spoke without reserve.
She told him of the myriad dangers and difficulties that faced them, of
the loss Evelyn had sustained which she could not yet estimate, which
he, too, was only just beginning to realise, and which for a long time
yet to come must daily grow more real to him. She spoke quite frankly,
yet never without the utter sinking of herself, which is love, of his
moods and transitions from boyish cheerfulness to a sort of dumb
despair. She spoke finally of her first mortal horror when she saw his
face, and her dread lest that should suddenly overmaster her, so that
she should shrink from him and he should see it.
"But it is he," she said, "whom I tremble for. He can stand it to-day,
he will be able to stand it to-morrow, and for a week perhaps, or a
month. But will it get easier for him to bear or more difficult? He
can't stand much more. He will break."
"Ah, you mustn't think about that," said Philip. "It is no use adding up
the sorrow and the pain that may be in front of one. One is meant just
to bear the burden of the moment, and, God knows, it is heavy enough for
you and him. Face difficulties as they arise, Madge, don't make a sum of
them and say the total is intolerable."
He paused a moment.
"And let me bear all that you can shift on to me," he said. "Because
otherwise, you see, my coming here will be purposeless. And I hate,
being a practical person, doing useless things."