Part 32 (1/2)

”Never!” said Garth. ”Never, while life shall last! Can you not see that if when I had sight, and fame, and all heart could desire, I could not win her love, what she might feel for me now, in my helpless blindness, could be but pity? And pity from her I could never accept.

If I was 'a mere boy' three years ago, I am 'a mere blind man' now, an object for kind commiseration. If indeed you are right, and she mistrusted my love and my fidelity, it is now out of my power forever to prove her wrong and to prove myself faithful. But I will not allow the vision of my beloved to be dimmed by these suggestions. For her completion, she needed so much more than I could give. She refused me because I was not fully worthy. I prefer it should be so. Let us leave it at that.”

”It leaves you to loneliness,” said the doctor sadly.

”I prefer loneliness,” replied Garth's young voice, ”to disillusion.

Hark! I hear the first gong, Brand. Margery will be grieved if we keep her Sunday dishes waiting.”

He stood up and turned his sightless face towards the view.

”Ah, how well I know it,” he said. ”When Miss Gray and I sit up here, she tells me all she sees, and I tell her what she does not see, but what I know is there. She is keen on art, and on most of the things I care about. I must ask for an arm, Brand, though the path is wide and good. I cannot risk a tumble. I have come one or two awful croppers, and I promised Miss Gray--The path is wide. Yes, we can walk two abreast, three abreast if necessary. It is well we had this good path made. It used to be a steep scramble.”

”Three abreast,” said the doctor. ”So we could--if necessary.” He stepped back and raised Jane from her seat, drawing her cold hand through his left arm. ”Now, my dear fellow, my right arm will suit you best; then you can keep your stick in your right hand.”

And thus they started down through the wood, on that lovely Sabbath morn of early summer; and the doctor walked erect between those two severed hearts, uniting, and yet dividing them.

Just once Garth paused and listened. ”I seem to hear another footstep,”

he said, ”besides yours and mine.”

”The wood is full of footsteps,” said the doctor, ”just as the heart is full of echoes. If you stand still and listen you can hear what you will in either.”

”Then let us not stand still,” said Garth, ”for in old days, if I was late for lunch, Margery used to spank me.”

CHAPTER XXVI

HEARTS MEET IN SIGHTLESS LAND

”It will be absolutely impossible, Miss Gray, for me ever to tell you what I think of this that you have done for my sake.”

Garth stood at the open library window. The morning sunlight poured into the room. The air was fragrant with the scent of flowers, resonant with the songs of birds. As he stood there in the suns.h.i.+ne, a new look of strength and hopefulness was apparent in every line of his erect figure. He held out eager hands towards Nurse Rosemary, but more as an expression of the outgoing of his appreciation and grat.i.tude than with any expectation of responsive hands being placed within them.

”And here was I, picturing you having a gay weekend, and wondering where, and who your friends in this neighbourhood could be. And all the while you were sitting blindfold in the room over my head. Ah, the goodness of it is beyond words! But did you not feel somewhat of a deceiver, Miss Gray?”

She always felt that--poor Jane. So she readily answered: ”Yes. And yet I told you I was not going far. And my friends in the neighbourhood were Simpson and Margery, who aided and abetted. And it was true to say I was going, for was I not going into darkness? and it is a different world from the land of light.”

”Ah, how true that is!” cried Garth. ”And how difficult to make people understand the loneliness of it, and how they seem suddenly to arrive close to one from another world; stooping from some distant planet, with sympathetic voice and friendly touch; and then away they go to another sphere, leaving one to the immensity of solitude in Sightless Land.”

”Yes,” agreed Nurse Rosemary, ”and you almost dread the coming, because the going makes the darkness darker, and the loneliness more lonely.”

”Ah, so YOU experienced that?” said Garth. ”Do you know, now you have week-ended in Sightless Land, I shall not feel it such a place of solitude. At every turn I shall be able to say:--'A dear and faithful friend has been here.'”

He laughed a laugh of such almost boyish pleasure, that all the mother in Jane's love rose up and demanded of her one supreme effort. She looked at the slight figure in white flannels, leaning against the window frame, so manly, so beautiful still, and yet so helpless and so needing the wealth of tenderness which was hers to give. Then, standing facing him, she opened her arms, as if the great preparedness of that place of rest, so close to him must, magnet-like, draw him to her; and standing thus in the sunlight, Jane spoke.

Was she beautiful? Was she paintable? Would a man grow weary of such a look turned on him, of such arms held out? Alas! Too late! On that point no lover shall ever be able to pa.s.s judgment. That look is for one man alone. He only will ever bring it to that loving face. And he cannot p.r.o.nounce upon its beauty in voice of rapturous content. He cannot judge. He cannot see. He is blind!

”Mr. Dalmain, there are many smaller details; but before we talk of those I want to tell you the greatest of all the lessons I learned in Sightless Land.” Then, conscious that her emotion was producing in her voice a resonant depth which might remind him too vividly of notes in The Rosary, she paused, and resumed in the high, soft edition of her own voice which it had become second nature to her to use as Nurse Rosemary: ”Mr. Dalmain, it seems to me I learned to understand how that which is loneliness unspeakable to ONE might be Paradise of a very perfect kind for TWO. I realised that there might be circ.u.mstances in which the dark would become a very wonderful meeting-place for souls.

If I loved a man who lost his sight, I should be glad to have mine in order to be eyes for him when eyes were needed; just as, were I rich and he poor, I should value my money simply as a thing which might be useful to him. But I know the daylight would often be a trial to me, because it would be something he could not share; and when evening came, I should long to say: 'Let us put out the lights and shut away the moonlight and sit together in the sweet soft darkness, which is more uniting than the light.'”

While Jane was speaking, Garth paled as he listened, and his face grew strangely set. Then, as if under a reaction of feeling, a boyish flush spread to the very roots of his hair. He visibly shrank from the voice which was saying these things to him. He fumbled with his right hand for the orange cord which would guide him to his chair.