I don't remember how soon it was I spoke to Geoffrey Dawling; his
sittings were irregular, but it was certainly the very next time he gave
me one.
"Has any rumour ever reached you of Miss Saunt's having anything the
matter with her eyes?" He stared with a candour that was a sufficient
answer to my question, backing it up with a shocked and mystified
"Never!" Then I asked him if he had observed in her any symptom, however
disguised, of embarrassed sight; on which, after a moment's thought, he
exclaimed "Disguised?" as if my use of that word had vaguely awakened a
train. "She's not a bit myopic," he said; "she doesn't blink or contract
her lids." I fully recognised this and I mentioned that she altogether
denied the impeachment; owing it to him moreover to explain the ground of
my inquiry, I gave him a sketch of the incident that had taken place
before me at the shop. He knew all about Lord Iffield; that nobleman had
figured freely in our conversation as his preferred, his injurious rival.
Poor Dawling's contention was that if there had been a definite
engagement between his lordship and the young lady, the sort of thing
that was announced in the Morning Post, renunciation and retirement would
be comparatively easy to him; but that having waited in vain for any such
assurance he was entitled to act as if the door were not really closed or
were at any rate not cruelly locked. He was naturally much struck with
my anecdote and still more with my interpretation of it.
"There _is_ something, there _is_ something--possibly something very
grave, certainly something that requires she should make use of
artificial aids. She won't admit it publicly, because with her idolatry
of her beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees in such aids
nothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement. She has used them in
secret, but that is evidently not enough, for the affection she suffers
from, apparently some definite menace, has lately grown much worse. She
looked straight at me in the shop, which was violently lighted, without
seeing it was I. At the same distance, at Folkestone, where as you know
I first met her, where I heard this mystery hinted at and where she
indignantly denied the thing, she appeared easily enough to recognise
people. At present she couldn't really make out anything the shop-girl
showed her. She has successfully concealed from the man I saw her with
that she resorts in private to a pince-nez and that she does so not only
under the strictest orders from her oculist, but because literally the
poor thing can't accomplish without such help half the business of life.
Iffield however has suspected something, and his suspicions, whether
expressed or kept to himself, have put him on the watch. I happened to
have a glimpse of the movement at which he pounced on her and caught her
in the act."
I had thought it all out; my idea explained many things, and Dawling
turned pale as he listened to me.
"Was he rough with her?" he anxiously asked.
"How can I tell what passed between them? I fled from the place."
My companion stared. "Do you mean to say her eyesight's going?"
"Heaven forbid! In that case how could she take life as she does?"
"How _does_ she take life? That's the question!" He sat there
bewilderedly brooding; the tears rose to his lids; they reminded me of
those I had seen in Flora's the day I risked my enquiry. The question he
had asked was one that to my own satisfaction I was ready to answer, but
I hesitated to let him hear as yet all that my reflections had suggested.
I was indeed privately astonished at their ingenuity. For the present I
only rejoined that it struck me she was playing a particular game; at
which he went on as if he hadn't heard me, suddenly haunted with a fear,
lost in the dark possibility. "Do you mean there's a danger of anything
very bad?"
"My dear fellow, you must ask her special adviser."
"Who in the world is her special adviser?"
"I haven't a conception. But we mustn't get too excited. My impression
would be that she has only to observe a few ordinary rules, to exercise a
little common sense."
Dawling jumped at this. "I see--to stick to the pince-nez."
"To follow to the letter her oculist's prescription, whatever it is and
at whatever cost to her prettiness. It's not a thing to be trifled
with."
"Upon my honour it _shan't_ be!" he roundly declared; and he adjusted
himself to his position again as if we had quite settled the business.
After a considerable interval, while I botched away, he suddenly said:
"Did they make a great difference?"
"A great difference?"
"Those things she had put on."
"Oh the glasses--in her beauty? She looked queer of course, but it was
partly because one was unaccustomed. There are women who look charming
in nippers. What, at any rate, if she does look queer? She must be mad
not to accept that alternative."
"She _is_ mad," said Geoffrey Dawling.
"Mad to refuse you, I grant. Besides," I went on, "the pince-nez, which
was a large and peculiar one, was all awry: she had half pulled it off,
but it continued to stick, and she was crimson, she was angry."
"It must have been horrible!" my companion groaned.
"It _was_ horrible. But it's still more horrible to defy all warnings;
it's still more horrible to be landed in--" Without saying in what I
disgustedly shrugged my shoulders.
After a glance at me Dawling jerked round. "Then you do believe that she
may be?"
I hesitated. "The thing would be to make _her_ believe it. She only
needs a good scare."
"But if that fellow is shocked at the precautions she does take?"
"Oh who knows?" I rejoined with small sincerity. "I don't suppose
Iffield is absolutely a brute."
"I would take her with leather blinders, like a shying mare!" cried
Geoffrey Dawling.
I had an impression that Iffield wouldn't, but I didn't communicate it,
for I wanted to pacify my friend, whom I had discomposed too much for the
purposes of my sitting. I recollect that I did some good work that
morning, but it also comes back to me that before we separated he had
practically revealed to me that my anecdote, connecting itself in his
mind with a series of observations at the time unconscious and
unregistered, had covered with light the subject of our colloquy. He had
had a formless perception of some secret that drove Miss Saunt to
subterfuges, and the more he thought of it the more he guessed this
secret to be the practice of making believe she saw when she didn't and
of cleverly keeping people from finding out how little she saw. When one
pieced things together it was astonishing what ground they covered. Just
as he was going away he asked me from what source at Folkestone the
horrid tale had proceeded. When I had given him, as I saw no reason not
to do, the name of Mrs. Meldrum he exclaimed: "Oh I know all about her;
she's a friend of some friends of mine!" At this I remembered wilful
Betty and said to myself that I knew some one who would probably prove
more wilful still.