Part 123 (1/2)

As he entered the dark hall that led to the consulting-room a man cannoned against him. d.i.c.k saw the face as it hurried out into the street.

”That's the writer-type. He has the same modelling of the forehead as Torp. He looks very sick. Probably heard something he didn't like.”

Even as he thought, a great fear came upon d.i.c.k, a fear that made him hold his breath as he walked into the oculist's waiting room, with the heavy carved furniture, the dark-green paper, and the sober-hued prints on the wall. He recognised a reproduction of one of his own sketches.

Many people were waiting their turn before him. His eye was caught by a flaming red-and-gold Christmas-carol book. Little children came to that eye-doctor, and they needed large-type amus.e.m.e.nt.

”That's idolatrous bad Art,” he said, drawing the book towards himself.

”From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany.” He opened in mechanically, and there leaped to his eyes a verse printed in red ink--

The next good joy that Mary had, It was the joy of three, To see her good Son Jesus Christ Making the blind to see; Making the blind to see, good Lord, And happy we may be.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost To all eternity!

d.i.c.k read and re-read the verse till his turn came, and the doctor was bending above him seated in an arm-chair. The blaze of the gas-microscope in his eyes made him wince. The doctor's hand touched the scar of the sword-cut on d.i.c.k's head, and d.i.c.k explained briefly how he had come by it. When the flame was removed, d.i.c.k saw the doctor's face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. d.i.c.k caught allusions to ”scar,” ”frontal bone,” ”optic nerve,” ”extreme caution,” and the ”avoidance of mental anxiety.”

”Verdict?” he said faintly. ”My business is painting, and I daren't waste time. What do you make of it?”

Again the whirl of words, but this time they conveyed a meaning.

”Can you give me anything to drink?”

Many sentences were p.r.o.nounced in that darkened room, and the prisoners often needed cheering. d.i.c.k found a gla.s.s of liqueur brandy in his hand.

”As far as I can gather,” he said, coughing above the spirit, ”you call it decay of the optic nerve, or something, and therefore hopeless. What is my time-limit, avoiding all strain and worry?”

”Perhaps one year.”

”My G.o.d! And if I don't take care of myself?”

”I really could not say. One cannot ascertain the exact amount of injury inflicted by the sword-cut. The scar is an old one, and--exposure to the strong light of the desert, did you say?--with excessive application to fine work? I really could not say?”

”I beg your pardon, but it has come without any warning. If you will let me, I'll sit here for a minute, and then I'll go. You have been very good in telling me the truth. Without any warning; without any warning.

Thanks.”

d.i.c.k went into the street, and was rapturously received by Binkie.

”We've got it very badly, little dog! Just as badly as we can get it.

We'll go to the Park to think it out.”

They headed for a certain tree that d.i.c.k knew well, and they sat down to think, because his legs were trembling under him and there was cold fear at the pit of his stomach.

”How could it have come without any warning? It's as sudden as being shot. It's the living death, Binkie. We're to be shut up in the dark in one year if we're careful, and we shan't see anybody, and we shall never have anything we want, not though we live to be a hundred!” Binkie wagged his tail joyously. ”Binkie, we must think. Let's see how it feels to be blind.” d.i.c.k shut his eyes, and flaming commas and Catherine-wheels floated inside the lids. Yet when he looked across the Park the scope of his vision was not contracted. He could see perfectly, until a procession of slow-wheeling fireworks defiled across his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

”Little dorglums, we aren't at all well. Let's go home. If only Torp were back, now!”

But Torpenhow was in the south of England, inspecting dockyards in the company of the Nilghai. His letters were brief and full of mystery.

d.i.c.k had never asked anybody to help him in his joys or his sorrows. He argued, in the loneliness of his studio, henceforward to be decorated with a film of gray gauze in one corner, that, if his fate were blindness, all the Torpenhows in the world could not save him. ”I can't call him off his trip to sit down and sympathise with me. I must pull through this business alone,” he said. He was lying on the sofa, eating his moustache and wondering what the darkness of the night would be like. Then came to his mind the memory of a quaint scene in the Soudan.