"Only this way. You know the doctors say my eyesight is not incurable—probably will come all to rights of itself...."

"Yes—and then?"

"I want them—her ladyship and ..."

"My wife and daughter. I understand."

"... I want them to know as little about it as possible; to know nothing about it if possible. You knew very little about it yourself till just now."

"I was misled—kindly, I know—but misled for all that. And the appearance is so extraordinary. Nobody could guess...."

"Exactly. Because the eyes are really unaffected and are sure to come right. See now what I am asking you to do for me. Help me to deceive them about it. They will not test my eyesight as you did just now...."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I heard Irene and your daughter talking in the garden a few minutes ago—just after the breakfast-bell rang—talking about me, and I eavesdropped as hard as I could. Lady Gwendolen has promised Irene to say nothing about my eyesight for my sake. She will keep her promise...."

"How do you know that?"

"By the sound of her voice."

"She is only a human girl."

"I am convinced that she will keep it; though, I grant you, circumstances are against her. And neither she nor her mother will try to find out, if they believe I see them dimly. That is where you come in. Only make them believe that. Don't let them suppose I am all in the dark. Say nothing of your crucial experiment just now. Irene—dear girl—has been a good sister to me, and has told many good round lies for my sake. But she will explain to God. I cannot ask you, Lord Ancester, to tell stories on my behalf. My petition is only for a modest prevarication—the cultivation of a reasonable misapprehension to attain a justifiable end. Consider the position analogous to that of one of Her Majesty's Ministers catechized by an impertinent demagogue. No fibs, you know—only what a truthful person tells instead of a fib! For my sake!"

"I am not thinking of my character for veracity," says the Earl thoughtfully. "You should be welcome to a sacrifice of that under the circumstances. I was thinking what form of false representation would be most likely to gain the end, and safest. Do you know, I am inclined to favour the policy of saying as little as possible? My dear wife is in the habit of imputing to me a certain slowness and defective observation of surrounding event. It is a common wifely attitude. You need not fear my being asked any questions. In any case, I fully understand your wishes, and you may rely on my doing my best. Here is your breakfast coming. I hope you will not be knocked up with all this talk."



CHAPTER XVIII

BLIND MEN CAN'T SMOKE. CAN'T THEY? HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER AT LAST INTERVIEWED THEIR GUEST. HIS SUBTLE ARRANGEMENTS FOR SEEMING TO SEE THEM. A BLUNDER OVER A HANDSHAKE, AND ALL THE FAT IN THE FIRE, NEARLY! AN ELECTRIC SHOCK. THE EXCELLENCE OF ACHILLES' HEART. HOW MR. TORRENS SPOILED IT ALL! BLUE NANKIN IS NOT CROWN DERBY. GWEN'S GREAT SCHEME. HOW SHE CARRIED IT OUT

The morning passed, with intermittent visitors, one at a time. Each one, coming away from the bedside, confirmed the report of his predecessor as to the visible improvement of the convalescent. Each one in turn, when questioned about the eyesight, gave a sanguine report—an echo of the patient's own confidence, real or affected, in its ultimate restoration. He would be all right again in a week or so.

Underhand ways were resorted to of cheating despair and getting at the pocket of Hope. Said one gentleman to the Earl—who was keeping his counsel religiously—"He can't read small print." Whereto the Earl replied—"Not yet awhile, but one could hardly expect that"; and felt that he was carrying out his promise with a minimum of falsehood. Yet his conscience wavered, because an eyesight may be unable to read small print, and yet unable to read large print, or any print at all. Perhaps he had better have left the first broad indisputable truth to impose on its hearer unassisted.

Another visitor scored a success on behalf of Optimism by reporting that the patient had smoked a cigar in defiance of medical prohibitions. "Can't be much wrong with his eyes," said this one, "if he can smoke. You shut your eyes, and try!" Put to the proof, this dictum received more confirmation than it deserved, solely to secure an audience for the flattering tales of Hope.

Much of the afternoon passed too, but without visitors. Because it would never do, said Irene, for her brother not to be at his best when Gwen and her mother came to pay their visit, resolved on this morning, at what was usually the best moment of his day—about five o'clock. Besides, he was to be got up and really dressed—not merely huddled into clothes—and this was a fatiguing operation, never carried out in dire earnest before. Doctor and Nurse had assented, on condition that Mr. Torrens should be content to remain in his room, and not insist on going downstairs. Where was the use of his doing so, with such a journey before him to-morrow? Better surely to husband the last grain of strength—the last inch-milligramme of power—for an eighteen-mile ride, even with all the tonics in the world to back it! Mr. Torrens consented to this reservation, and promised not to be rebellious.

So—in time—the hour was at hand when he would see.... No!—not see—there was the sting of it!... that girl he had spoken with at Arthur's Bridge. The vision of her in the sunset was upon him still. He had pleaded with his sister that, come what might, she should not come to him in his darkness, in the hope that this darkness might pass away and leave her image open to him as before. For this hope had mixed itself with that strong desire of his heart that his own disaster should weigh upon her as little as possible. He had kept this meeting back almost till the eleventh hour, hoping against hope that light would break; longing each day for a gleam of the dawn that was to give him his life once more, and make the whole sad story a matter of the past. And now the time had come; and here he stood awaiting the ordeal he had to pass successfully, or face his failure as he might.

If he could but rig up an hour's colourable pretext of vision, however imperfect, the reality might return in its own good time—if that was the will of Allah—and that time might be soon enough. She might never know the terrible anticipations his underthought had had to fight against.

"You look better in the blue Mandarin silk than you would in your tailor's abominations," said Irene, referring to a dressing-gown costume she had insisted on. "Only your hair wants cutting, dear boy! I won't deceive you."

"That's serious!" He lets it pass nevertheless. "Look here, 'Rene, I want you to tell me.... Where are you?—oh, here!—all right.... Now tell me—should you say I saw you, by the look of my eyes?"

"Indeed I should. Indeed, indeed, nobody could tell. Your eyes look as strong as—as that hooky bird's that sits in the sun at the Zoological and nictitates ... isn't that the word?... Goes twicky-twick with a membrane...."

"Fish eagle, I expect."

"Shouldn't wonder! Only, look here!... You mustn't claw hold of Gwen like that. How can you tell, without?"

"Where they are, do you mean? Oh, I know by the voice. You go somewhere else and speak." Whereupon Irene goes furtively behind him, and says suddenly:—"Now look at me!" It is a success, for the blind man faces round, looking full at her.

She claps her hands. "Oh, Adrian!" she cries, "are you sure you don't see—aren't you cheating?" A memory, in this, of old games of blindman's-buff. "You always did cheat, darling, you know, when we played on Christmas Eve. How do I know I can trust you?" She goes close to him again caressing his face. "Oh, do say, dear boy, you can see a little!" But it is no use. He can say nothing.

There are a few moments of distressing silence, and then the brother says:—"Never mind, dear! It will be all right. They say so. Take me to the window that I may look out!" They stand together at the open casement, listening to the voices of the birds. The shrewdest observer might fail to detect the flaw in those two full clear eyes that seem to look out at the leagues of park-land, the spotted deer in the distance, the long avenue-road soon indistinguishable in the trees. The sister sees those eyes, no other than she has always known them, but knows that they see nothing.

"When I was here first," says the brother, "the thrushes were still singing. They are off duty by now, the very last of them." He stops listening. "That's a yellow-hammer. And that's a linnet. You can't tell one from the other."

"I know. I'm shockingly ignorant.... What, dear? What is it you want?" Her brother has been exploring the window-frame with a restless hand, as though in search of some latch or blind-cord. He cannot find what he wants.

"I want to come to a clearness about the position of this blessed window," he says. "Which direction is the bed in now? Well—describe it this way, suppose! Say I'm looking north now, with my shoulder against the window. Where's the bed? South-west—south-east—due south?"

"South-west by south. Perhaps that's not nautical, but you know what I mean."

"All right! Now, look here! As I stand here—looking out slantwise—where's the sunset? I mean, where would it be?—where does it mean to be?"

"You would be looking straight at it. Of course, you are not really looking north.... There—now you are!" She had taken her hands from the shoulder they were folded on and turned his head to the right. "But, I say, Adrian dear!..." She hesitates.

"What, for instance?"

"Don't try to humbug too much. Don't try to do it, darling boy. You'll only make a hash of it."

"All right, goosey-woosey! I'll fry my own fish. Don't you be uneasy!" And then they talk of other things: the journey home to-morrow, and how it shall be as good as lying in bed to Adrian, in the big carriage with an infinity of cushions; the new friends they have made here at the Towers, with something of wonderment that this chance has been so long postponed; the kindness they have had from them, and the ill-requital Adrian made for it yesterday by breaking that beautiful blue china tea-cup—any trifle that comes foremost—anything but the great grief that underlies the whole.

For Irene would have her brother at his best, that the visit to him of her new-made friend Gwen may go off well, and steer clear of the ambushes that beset it. Better that that visit should never come off, than that her friend should be left to share their fears for the future. Each is hiding from the other a weakening confidence in the renewal of suspended eyesight, weaker at the outset than either had been prepared to admit to the other.

"Look here, 'Rene," says Adrian, an hour later, during which his sister has read aloud to him, lying by the open window. "Never mind Becky Sharp; she'll keep till the evening. Can we see Arthur's Bridge from this window, where I saw your friend Lady Gwen? It was Arthur's, wasn't it? What Arthur? King Arthur?"

"Yes, if you like. Only don't go and call it Asses' Bridge, as you did the other day—not when the family's here. It sounds disrespectful."

"Not a bit. It only looks as if Euclid had been round. But answer my question.... Oh, we can see it! Very well, then; show me which way it lies. Is it visible—the actual bridge itself, I mean—not the place it's in?"

Irene got up and looked out of the window from behind her brother's chair. "Yes," she said. "One sees the stone arch plain. How can I show you?" She took his head in her hands again to guide it to a true line of sight.

"Between us and the sunset?"

"Thereabouts. Rather on the left."

"Very good. Now we can go on with Becky Sharp."

"That's it, my lord, is it? Where was I?—oh, Sir Pitt Crawley...." And then the reading was continued, till tea portended, and Irene went away to capture her visitors.

All the sting of his darkness came upon him in its fulness as he heard that voice on the stairs. Oh, could he but see her for one moment—only one moment—to be sure that that dazzling image of three weeks since was not a mere imagination! He knew well the enchantment of the rainbow gleam on sea and earth and sky—the glory that makes Aladdin's palace of the merest hovel. He could scarcely have said to a nicety why a self-deception on this score seemed to him fraught with such evil. If it was a terror on Gwen's behalf, that a false image cherished through a period of reviving eyesight should in the end prove an injustice to her, and cast a chill over his own passionate admiration—for it was that at least that a chance of five minutes had enthralled him with—he banished that terror artificially from his mind. What could it matter to her, if he was taken aback and disappointed at her not turning out what his excited fancy had made her that evening at Arthur's Bridge? What was he to her that any chance man might not have been, after so scanty an interchange of words?

That was his dominant feeling, or underlying it, as her voice neared the door of his room, saying:—"Fancy your carrying him away without our seeing him—so much as thinking of it! I call you a wicked, unprincipled sister." To which another voice, a maternal sort of voice, said what must have been: "Don't speak so loud!"—or its equivalent. For the girl's voice dropped, her last words being:—"He won't hear, at this distance."

Then, she was actually coming in at the door! He could hear the prodigious skirt-rustle that is now a thing of womanhood's past—though we adored every comely example, mind you, we oldsters in those days, for all that she carried a milliner's shop on her back—and as it climaxed towards entry had to remember by force how slight indeed had been his interchange of words with the visitor he wished to see—to see by hearing, and to touch the hand of twice. For he had counted his coming privileges in his heart already, even if his reason had made light of its arithmetic. He would be on the safe side now—so he said to himself—and think of the elder lady as the player of the leading role. No disparagement to her subordinate; the merest deference to convention!

There was no mishap about the first meeting; only a narrow escape of one. The man in the dark reckoned it safest to extend his hand and leave it, to await the first claimant. He took for granted this would be the mother, and as his hand closed on a lady's, not small enough to call his assumption in question, said half interrogatively:—"Lady Ancester?"

"That's Gwen," said his sister's voice. And at the word an electric shock of a sort passed up his arm, the hand that still held his showing no marked alacrity to release it.

"Yes, this is me," says the voice of its owner, "that's mamma."

Lady Ancester, standing close to her, meets his outstretched hand and shakes it cordially. Then follows pleasantry about mistaking the mother for the daughter, with assumption of imperfect or dim vision only to account for it, and a declaration from Adrian that he had been cautioned not to confuse the one with the other. There is a likeness, as a matter of fact, and Irene has talked to him of it. The whole thing is slighter than the telling of it.

Then the three ladies and the one man have grouped—composed themselves—for reasonable chat. He is in his invalid chair by special edict, at the window, and the two visitors face him half-flanking it. His sister leans over him behind on the chair-back. She has kept very close to him, guiding him under pretence that he wants support, which is scarcely the case now, so rapid has been his progress in this last week. She is very anxious lest her brother should venture too rashly on fictitious proofs of eyesight that does not exist. But it can all be put down to uneasiness about his strength.

The platitudes of mere chat ensue, the Countess being prolocutrix. But she can be sincerely earnest in speaking of her own concern about the accident, and her family's. Also to the full about the rejoicing of everyone when it was "certain that all would turn out well." She has been bound over to say nothing about the eyesight, and keeps pledges; almost too transparently, perhaps. A word or two about it as a thing of temporary abeyance might have been more plausible.

Gwen has become very silent since that first warmth of her greeting. She is leaving the conversation to her mother, which puzzles Irene, who had framed a different picture of the interview, and is disappointed so far. Achilles, the dog, too, may be disappointed—may be feeling that something more demonstrative is due to the position. Irene imputes this view to him, inferring it from his restless appeals to Gwen, as he leans against her skirts, throwing back a pathetic gaze of remonstrance for something too complex for his powers of language. Her comment:—"He is always like that,"—seems to convey an image of his whereabouts to his master, confirmed perhaps by expressive dog-substitutes for speech.

"You mustn't let my bow-wow worry you, Lady Gwendolen. He presumes till he's checked, on principle. Send him to lie down over here. Here, Ply, Ply, Ply!... Oh, won't he come?" Probably Achilles knows that his master, who speaks, is only being civil.

"No—because I'm holding him. I want him here. He's a darling!" So says Gwen; and then continues:—"Oh yes, I know why he's Ply—short for Pelides. I think he thinks I think it was his fault, and wants forgiveness."

"Possibly. But it is also possible that he sees his way by cajolery to all the sweet biscuits with a little crown on them that come about with tea. He wants none of us to have any. Pray do not think any the worse of him. How is he to know that a well-bred person hungers for little crown biscuits? We are so affected that there is nothing for him to go by."

"And he's a dear, candid darling! Of course he is. He shall have everything he wants." Achilles appears to accept the concession as deserved, but to be ready to requite it with undying love.

"It is all the excellence of his heart, I am aware, and a certain simplicity and directness," says Adrian. "But all the same he mustn't spoil ladies' dresses—beyond a certain point, of course. I have been very curious to know, Lady Gwendolen, whether his paws came off—the marks of them, I mean—on that lovely India muslin I saw you in three weeks ago, just before this unfortunate affair which has given so much trouble to everybody at—at ... Arthur's Bridge, of course! Couldn't think of the name at the moment. At Arthur's Bridge. I'm afraid he didn't do that dress any good."

"It wasn't a new dress," says Gwen, "as far as I remember." A point her maid would know more about, clearly.

Lady Ancester seems to think a little ex post facto chaperonage would not be inappropriate. "Gwen was out of bounds, I understand," she says; which means absolutely nothing, but sounds well.

The remark seems somehow to focus the conversation, and become a stepping-stone to a review of the recent events. Evidently the principal actor in them takes that view. "I had no idea whom I was speaking to," he says, "still less that Lady Gwendolen had taken the trouble to come away from the house with so kind a motive. Of course, I have heard all about it from my sister."

Gwen perfectly understands. "And then you walked over to Drews Thurrock, and Achilles' collar broke, and he got away." She speaks as one who waits for more.

"He did, and I am sorry to say he forgot himself. The old Adam broke out in him in connection with the sudden springing of a hare, just under his nose. It was almost the moment after his collar broke, and it is quite possible he thought I meant to let him go. But after all, Achilles is human, and really I could not blame him in any case. Try to see the thing from his point of view. Fancy discovering an unused faculty lying dormant—art, song, eloquence—and an unprecedented opportunity for its use! Do you know, I don't believe Achilles had ever so much as seen a hare before?—not a live one! He smelt one once at a poulterer's—a dead one that was starting for the Antipodes with its legs crossed. The poulterer lost his temper, very absurdly...."

"Well—did he catch the hare? I mean the first hare."

"That I can't say. Both vanished, and I suspect the hare got away. I'm sure of one thing, that if Achilles did catch him he didn't know what to do with him. He has not the sporting spirit. Cats interest him in his native town, but when they show fight he comes and complains to me that they are out of order. He overhauled a kitten three weeks old once, that had come out to see the world, and it defied him to mortal combat. Achilles talked to me all the way down the street about that kitten."

"I want to know what happened next." From Gwen.

"Yes—silly old chatterbox!—keep to the point." Thus Irene; and Lady Ancester, who has been accepting the hare and the cats with dignity, even condescension, adds:—"We were just at the most interesting part of the story." This was practically her ladyship's first sight of the son of the man she had gone so near to marrying over five-and-twenty years ago. The search to discover a modus vivendi between a past and present at war may have thrown her a little out of her usual demeanour. Gwen wondered why mamma need be so ceremonious.

Adrian was perfectly unconscious of it, even if Irene was not. He ran on:—"Oh—the story! Yes—Achilles forgot himself, and was off after the hare like a whirlwind.... I don't know, Lady Ancester, whether you have ever blown a whistle in the middle of an otherwise unoccupied landscape, with no visible motive?"

Her ladyship had not apparently. Irene found fault with the narrator's style, suggesting a more prosaic one. But Gwen said: "Oh, Irene dear, what a perfect sister you are! Why can't you let Mr. Torrens tell his tale his own way?"

So Mr. Torrens went on:—"It doesn't matter. If you had ever done so, I believe you would confirm my experience of the position. If Orpheus had whistled, instead of singing to a lute, Eurydice would have stopped with Pluto, and Orpheus would have cut a very poor figure. I began to perceive that Achilles wasn't going to respond, and I knew the hare wouldn't, all along. So I walked on and got to a wood of oaks with an interesting appearance. The interesting appearance was inviting, so I went inside. Achilles was sure to turn up, I thought. Poor dear!—I didn't see him for some days after that, when I came to and heard all about it. He had been very uneasy about me, I'm afraid."

"But inside the wood with the interesting appearance—what happened then?" Gwen would not tolerate digression.

"Well, I came to the edge of a wall with a little sunk glade beyond, and was looking across some blackberry bushes when I heard a rifle-shot, and the whirr of a bullet. I had just time to notice that the whirr came with the gunshot—if it had been in the opposite direction it would have followed it—when I was struck on the head and fell. It was the fall that knocked me insensible, but it was the gunshot that was responsible for all that bleeding.... Do you know, I can't tell you how sorry I am for that old boy that fired the shot? I can't imagine anything more miserable than shooting a man by accident."

It was then that an uneasy feeling about those eyes, that looked so clear and might be so deceiving, took hold of Gwen's mind, and would not be ignored on any terms. The speaker's "you"—was it addressed in this case to her or to her mother? The line of his vision seemed to pass between them. If he could see at all, ever so dimly, he could look towards the person he addressed. One does not always do so; true enough! But one does not stare to right or to left of him. And she felt sure these words had been spoken to herself.

So while her mother was joining in commiseration of old Stephen, towards whom she herself felt rather brutal, she was casting about for some means of coming at the truth. Irene was no good, however altruistic her motives might be for story-telling.... No!—his eyes looked at her in quite another fashion that evening at Arthur's Bridge, in the light of the sunset. She must get at the truth, come what might!

She left her mother to express sympathy for old Stephen, remaining rather obdurately silent; checking a wish to say that it served the old man right for meddling with loaded guns. She waited for the subject to die down, and then recurred to its predecessor. Did Mr. Torrens walk straight from Arthur's Bridge to the Thurrock or go roundabout? She did not really want to know—merely wanted to get him to talk about himself again. He might say something about his sight, by accident.

He replied:—"I did not go absolutely straight. I went first to where a couple of stones—a respectable married couple, I should say—were standing close together in the fern, with big initials cut on them. Their own, I presume." Gwen said she knew them; they were parish boundaries. "Well—probably that hare was trying what it felt like to be in two parishes at once, for he jumped from behind that stone and started for the Thurrock—that's right, isn't it?"

"Drews Thurrock? Yes."

"It was unfortunately just then that the collar broke. I whistled until I felt undignified, and then went straight for the said Thurrock, rather dreading that I should find Achilles awaiting applause for an achievement in—in leporicide, I suppose...."

"I'm sure you didn't."

"I did not. So I waited a little, and was thinking what I had better do next, when the shot came. You can almost see the place from this window." He got up from his chair, standing exactly where he had stood when his sister made his hand point out Arthur's Bridge in blind show. He made a certain amount of pretence that he could see; and, indeed, seemed to do so. No stranger to the circumstances could have detected it. "I couldn't be sure about the place of the stones, though," said he, carefully avoiding direct verbal falsehood; at least, so Irene thought, trembling at his rashness. He went on:—"Oh dear, how doddery one does feel on one's legs after a turn out of this kind!" and fell back in his chair, his sister alone noticing how he touched it with his hand first to locate it. "I shall be better after a cup of tea," said he. And the whole thing was so natural that although he had not said in so many words that he could see anything, the impression that he could was so strong that Gwen could have laughed aloud for joy. "He really does see something!" she exclaimed to herself.

If he could only have been content with this much of success! But he must needs think he could improve upon it—reinforce it. His remark about the cup of tea had half-reference to its appearance on the horizon; or, rather on the little carved-oak table near the window, whose flaps were being accommodated for its reception as he spoke. The dwellers in this part of the country considered five o'clock tea at this time an invention of their own, and were rather vain of it. Another decade made it a national institution.

"If there is one thing I enjoy more than another," he said, "it is a copper urn that boils furiously by magic of its own accord. When I was a kid our old cook Ursley used to allow me to come into the kitchen and see the red-hot iron taken out of the fire and dropped into the inner soul of ours, which was glorious." This was all perfectly safe, because there was the urn in audible evidence. Indeed, the speaker might have stopped there and scored. Why need he go on? "And these blue Nankin cups are lovely. I never could go crockery-mad as some people do. But good Nankin blue goes to my heart." And he really thought, poor fellow, that he had done well, and been most convincing.

Alas for his flimsy house of cards! Down it came. For there had only been four left of that blue tea-service, and he had broken one. The urn was hissing and making its lid jump in the middle of a Crown Derby tea-set, so polychromatic, so self-assertive in its red and blue and gold, that no ghost of a chance was left of catching at the skirts of colour-blindness to find a golden bridge of escape from the blunder. The most colour-blind eyes in the world never confuse monochrome and polychrome.

There is a sudden terror-struck misgiving on the beautiful face of Gwen, and an uneasy note of doubt in her mother's voice, seeking by vague speech to elude and slur over the difficulty. "The patterns are quite alike," she says weakly. The blind man feels he has made a mistake, and is driven to safe silence. He understands his slip more clearly when the servant, speaking half-aside, but audibly, to the Countess, says:—"Mrs. Masham said the blue was spoiled for four, my lady, and to bring four of the China." Crown Derby is more distinctly China in English vernacular than Nankin blue.

Please understand that the story is giving at great length incidents that passed in fractions of a minute—incidents Time recorded currente calamo for Memory to rearrange at leisure.

The incident of the tea-cups was easily slurred over and forgotten. Adrian Torrens saw the risks of attempting too much, and gave up pretending that he could see. Irene and the Countess let the subject go; the former most willingly, the latter with only slight reluctance. Gwen alone dwelt upon it, or rather it dwelt upon her; her memory could not shake it off. Do what she would the thought came back to her: "He cannot see at all. I must know—I must know!" She could not join in the chit-chat which went on under the benevolent influence of the tea-leaf, the great untier of tongues. She could only sit looking beautiful, gazing at the deceptive eyes she felt so sure were blind to her beauty, devising some means of extracting confession from their owner, and thereby knowing the worst, if it was to come. It was interesting to her, of course, to hear Mr. Torrens talk of the German Universities, with which he seemed very familiar; and of South America, the area of which, he said, had stood in the way of his becoming equally familiar with it. He had been about the world a good deal for a man of five-and-twenty.

"Gwen thought you were more," said Irene. "At Arthur's Bridge, you know! She thought you were twenty-seven."

"Because I was so wet through. Naturally. I was soaked and streaky. Are you sure it wasn't thirty-seven, Lady Gwendolen?"

It has been mentioned that Lady Ancester had a matter-of-fact side to her character. But was it this that made her say thoughtfully:—"Twenty-five perhaps—certainly not more!" Probably her mind had run back nearly thirty years, and she was calculating from the date of this man's father's marriage, which she knew; or from that of his eldest brother's birth, which she also knew. She was not so clear about Irene. At the time of that young lady's first birthday—her only one, in fact—her close observation of her old flame's family dates was flagging. But she was clear that this Adrian's birth had followed near upon that of her own son Frank, drowned a few years since so near the very place of this gunshot accident. The coincidence may have made her identifications keener. Or Adrian's reckless chat, so like his father's in old days that she had more than once gone near to comment on it, may have roused old memories and set her a-fixing dates.

Adrian laughed at the way his age seemed to be treated as an open question. "We have the Registrar on our side, at any rate, Lady Ancester. I can answer for that. By-the-by, wasn't my father ... did not my father?..." He wanted to say: "Was not my father a friend of your brother in old days?" But it sounded as if the friendship, whatever it was, had lessened in newer days, and he knew of nothing to warrant the assumption. He knew nothing of his father's early love passages, of course. Fathers don't tell their sons what narrow escapes they have had of being somebody else, or somebody else being they—an awkward expression!

Her ladyship thought over a phrase or two before she decided on:—"Your father used to come to Clarges Street in my mother's time." She was pleased with the selection; but less so with a second, one of several she tried to herself and rejected. "We have really scarcely met since those days. I thought him wonderfully little changed."

Has a parent of yours, you who read—or of ours, for that matter—ever spoken to one or other of us, I wonder, of some fancy of his or her bygone days; one whose greeting, company manners apart, was an embrace; whose letters were opened greedily; whose smile was rapture, and whose frown a sleepless night? If he or she did so, was the outcome better than the Countess's?

She wanted to run away, but could not just yet. She made believe to talk over antecedents—making a conversation of indescribable baldness, and setting Irene's shrewd wits to work to find out why. It was not her brother, but her husband's, who had been Sir Hamilton's college-friend. Yes, her father was well acquainted with Mr. Canning, and so on. This was her contribution to general chat, until such time had elapsed as would warrant departure and round the visit plausibly off.

It was Clarges Street that had done it. Irene was sure of that! She, the daughter of the Miss Abercrombie her father had married, sitting there and coming to conclusions!

However, the Countess meant to go—no doubt of it. "You have paid my brother such a short visit, after all," said Irene. "Please don't go away because you fancy you are tiring him." But it was no use. Her ladyship meant to go, and went. Regrets of all sorts, of course; explanatory insincerities about stringent obligations elsewhere; even specific allegations of expected guests; false imputation of exacting claims to the Earl. All with one upshot—departure.

Gwen had taken little or no notice of what was passing, since that betraying incident of the Crown Derby set. Her mind was at work on schemes for discovery of the truth about those eyes. She got on the track of a good one. If she could only contrive to be alone with him for one moment. Yes—it was worth trying?

It was her mother's inexplicable alacrity to be gone that gave the opportunity. Her ladyship said good-bye to Mr. Torrens; was sorry she had to go, but the Earl was so fussy about anything the least like an appointment—some concession to conscience in the phrasing of this—in short, go she must! Having committed herself thus, to wait for her daughter would have been the merest self-stultification. She went out multiplying apologies, and Irene naturally accompanied her along the lobby, assisted and sanctioned by Achilles. Gwendolen was alone with the man who was still credited with sight enough to see something—provided that it was a palpable something. Now—if she could only play her part right!

"Mamma is always in such a fuss to go somewhere and do something else," she said, rather affecting the drawl of a fashionable young lady; for she could hide anxiety better, she felt, that way. "Do you know, Mr. Torrens, I don't believe a word of all that about people coming. Nobody's coming. If there is, they've been there ever so long. I did so want to talk to you about one of your poems. I mustn't stop now, I suppose, or I shall be in a scrape." But all the while that she was saying this she was standing with her right hand outstretched, as though to say good-bye. Only the word remained unspoken.

"Which of my poems was it?" He was to all seeming looking full at her, yet his hand did not come out to meet hers. There was hope still. How could he ratify an adieu with a handshake, on the top of a question that called for an answer?

Gwen had not arranged the point in her mind—had not thought of any particular poem in fact. She took the first that occurred to her. "It's the one called 'A Vigil in Darkness,'" she said. And then she would have been so glad to withdraw it and substitute another. That was not possible—she had to finish:—"I wanted to know if any other English poet has ever used 'starren' for stars."

Adrian laughed. "I remember," said he; then quoted: "'The daughters of the dream witch come and go,' don't they? 'The black bat hide the starren of the night.' That's it, isn't it?... No—so far as I know! But they are a queer lot. Nobody ever knows what they'll be at next in the way of jargon. It's some rubbish I wrote when I was a boy. I put it with the others to please 'Re." This was his shortest for Irene.

If he would only have toned down his blank ignorance of the beautiful white hand stretched out so appealingly to him—made the least concession! If he had but held in readiness an open-fingered palm, with intent, there would have been hope. But alas!—no such thing. When, instead, he thrust both hands into the pockets of the blue Mandarin-silk dressing-gown, Gwen felt exactly as if a knife had cut her heart. And there were his two beautiful eyes looking—looking—straight at her! Need Fate have worded an inexorable decree so cruelly?

Hope caught at a straw, more suo. What was more likely than that darkness was intermittent? Many things—most things for that matter! Any improbability to outwit despair. Anything rather than final surrender. Therefore, said Gwen to herself, her hand outstretched should await his, however sick at heart its owner felt, till the last pretext of belief had flagged and died—belief in the impossibility of so terrible a doom, consistently with any decent leniency of the Creator towards His creatures.

"Oh—to please Irene, was it?" said Gwen, talking chancewise; not meaning much, but hungering all the while for the slightest aliment for starving Hope. "Who were 'the daughters of the Dream Witch?'" And then she was sorry again. Better that a poem about darkness should have been forgotten! She kept her hand outstretched, mind you!—even though Adrian made matters worse by folding his hands round his arms on a high chair-back, and leaning on it. "I wonder who she is," was the girl's thought, as she looked at a ring.

"Let me see!" said he. "How does it go?" Then he quoted, running the lines into one: "'In the night-watches in the garden of Night ever the watchman sorrowing for the light waiteth in silence for the silent Dawn. Dead sleep is on the city far below.' Then the daughters of the Dream Witch came and went as per contract. No—I haven't the slightest idea who they were. They didn't leave their names."

"You will never be serious, Mr. Torrens." She felt too heartsick to answer his laugh. She never moved her hand, watching greedily for a sign that never came. There was Irene coming back, having disposed of her ladyship! "I must go," said Gwen, "because of mamma. She's the Dream Witch, I suppose. I must go. Good-bye, Mr. Torrens! But I can leave my name—Gwen or Gwendolen. Choose which you prefer." She had to contrive a laugh, but it caught in her throat.

"Gwen, I think." It was such a luxury to call her by her name, holding her hand in his—for, the moment she spoke "good-bye," his hand had come to meet hers like a shot—that he seemed in no hurry to relinquish it. Nor did she seem concerned to have it back at the cost of dragging. "Did you ever live abroad?" said he. "In Italy they always kiss hands—it's rather rude not to. Let's pretend it's Italy."

She was not offended; might have been pleased, in fact—for Gwen was no precisian, no drawer of hard-and-fast lines in flirtation—if it had not been for the black cloud that in the last few minutes had been stifling her heart. As it was, Adrian's trivial presumption counted for nothing, unless, indeed, it was as the resolution of a difficulty. It was good so far. Even so two pugilists are glad of a way out of a close grip sometimes. It ended a handshake neither could withdraw from gracefully. "Good-bye, Mr. Torrens," she said, and contrived another laugh. "I'll come again to talk about the poetry. I must go now." She passed Irene, coming in from a moment's speech with the nurse outside, with a hurried farewell, and ran on to her mother's room breathless.



CHAPTER XIX

GWEN'S PESSIMISM. IT WAS ALL OUR FAULT! HOW SHE KNEW THAT ADRIAN TORRENS WAS FIANCE, AND HOW HER MOTHER TOOK KINDLY TO THE IDEA. PEOPLE ONLY KNOW WHAT THE WILL OF GOD IS, NOT WHAT IT ISN'T. BUT ADRIAN TORRENS DID NOT COME TO TABLE. LONELINESS, AND NIGHT—ALL BUT SLEEPLESS. WANT OF COMMON SENSE. THE FATE OF A FEATHER. COUNTING A THOUSAND. LOOKING MATTERS CALMLY IN THE FACE. A GREAT DECISION, AND WHAT GWEN SAW IN A MIRROR

Lady Ancester, not sorry to get away from a position which involved the consideration that she was unreasonable in feeling reluctance to remain in it, endeavoured on arriving in her own room to congratulate herself on her own share in an embarrassing interview.

She had got through it very well certainly, but not so well as she had been led to expect by her meeting with his father three weeks since. She had had her misgivings before that interview, and had been pleasantly surprised to find how thoroughly the inexorable present had ridden rough-shod over the half-forgotten past. Their old identities had vanished, and it was possible to be civil and courteous, and that sort of thing; even to send messages of sympathy, quite in earnest, to the lady who up till now had been little more than the Miss Abercrombie Hamilton Torrens married. Being thus set at ease about what seemed rocks of embarrassment ahead, in the father's case, Lady Ancester had looked forward with perfect equanimity to making the acquaintance of the son—had, in fact, only connected him in her mind with this deplorable accident, which, however, she quite understood to be going to be a thing of the past. All in good time. Her equanimity had, however, been disturbed by the young man's inherited manner, which his father had so completely lost; above all things by his rapid nonsense, one of his father's leading characteristics in youth. She condemned it as more nonsensical, which probably only meant that she herself was older. But the manner—the manner of it! How it brought back Clarges Street and her mother, and the family earthquake over her resolution to marry a young Dragoon, with three good lives between him and his inheritance! She was taken aback to find herself still so sensitive about that old story.

She had not succeeded in ridding herself of her disquieting memories when her daughter followed her, choking back tense excitement until she had fairly closed the door behind her. Then her words came with a rush, for all that she kept her voice in check to say them.

"He cannot see, mamma—he cannot see at all! He is dead stone-blind—for life—for life! And we have done it—we have done it!" Then she broke down utterly, throwing herself on a sofa to hide in its cushions the torrent of tears she could no longer keep back. "We have done it—we have done it!" she kept on crying. "We have ruined his life, and the guilt is ours—ours—all!"

The Countess, good woman, tried to mix consolation with protest against such outrageous pessimism. She pointed out that there was no medical authority for such an extreme view as Gwen's. On the contrary, Sir Coupland had spoken most hopefully. And, after all, if Mr. Torrens could see Arthur's Bridge he could not be absolutely blind.

"He could not see Arthur's Bridge at all," said Gwen, sitting up and wiping her tears, self-possessed again for the moment from the stimulus of contradiction, always a great help. "I stood facing him for five minutes holding out my hand for him to shake, and he never—never—saw it!"

"Perhaps he doesn't like shaking hands," said her mother weakly. "Some people don't."

"They do mine," said Gwen. "Besides, he did in the end, and...."

"And what?"

"And nothing." At which point Gwen broke down again, crying out as before that he was blind, and she knew it. The doctors were only talking against hope, and they knew it. "Oh, mother, mother," she cried out, addressing her mother as she would often do when in trouble or excited, "how shall we bear it, years from now, to know that he can see nothing—nothing!—and to know that the guilt of his darkness lies with us—is ours—is yours and mine? Have we ever either of us said a word of protest against that wicked dog-shooting order? It was in the attempt to commit a crime that we sanctioned, that old Stephen tried to shoot that darling Achilles. Oh, I know it was no fault of old Stephen's!" She became a little calmer from indulgence of speech that had fought for hearing. "Oh no, mother dear, it's no use talking. If Mr. Torrens never recovers his eyesight he has only us to thank for it." She paused a moment, and then added:—"And how I shall look that girl in the face I don't know!"

"What girl?"

"Oh, didn't you see? The girl he's got that engaged ring on his finger about. You didn't see? You never do see, mamma dear!"

"I didn't notice any particular ring, dear." Her ladyship may have felt a relief about something, to judge by her manner. "Has Irene said anything to you?" she asked.

Gwen considered a little. "Irene talks a good deal about a Miss Gertrude Abercrombie, a cousin. But she has never said anything."

"Oh!—it's Miss Gertrude Abercrombie?..."

"I know nothing about it. I was only guessing. She may be Miss Gertrude Anybody. Whoever she is, it's the same thing. Think what she's lost!"

"She has, indeed, my dear," says the elder lady, who is not going to give up this acceptable Miss Gertrude Anybody, even at the risk of talking some nonsense about her. "And we must all feel for the cruelty of her position. But if she is—as I have no doubt she is—truly attached to Mr. Torrens, she will find her consolation in the thought that it is given to her to ... to...." But the Countess was not rhetorician enough to know that choice words should be kept for perorations. She had quite taken the edge off her best arrow-head. She could not wind up "to be a consolation to her husband" with any convincingness. So when Gwen interrupted her with:—"I see what you mean, but it's nonsense," she fell back upon the strong entrenchment of seniors, who know the Will of God. They really do, don't you know? "At least," she said, "this Miss Abercrombie must admit that no blame can fairly be laid at our door for what was so manifestly ordained by the Almighty. Sir Hamilton Torrens himself was the first to exonerate your father. His own keeper is instructed to shoot all dogs except poodles."

"It was not the Will of God at all...."

"My dear!—how can you know that?"

"Well—not more than everything else is! It was old Stephen's not hitting his mark. And he would have killed Achilles, then. Oh dear, how I do sometimes wish God could be kept out of it!... No, mamma, it's no use looking shocked. Whatever makes out that it was not our fault is wrong, and Sir Hamilton Torrens didn't mean that when he said it."

"My dear, it is his own son."

"Very well, then, all the more! Oh, you know what I mean.... No, mamma," said she as she left the room, "it isn't any use. I am utterly miserable about it."

And she was, though she herself scarcely knew yet how miserable. So long as she had someone else to speak to, the whole deadly truth lingered on the threshold of her mind and would not enter. She ascribed weight to opinions she would have disregarded had she had no stake on the chance of their correctness.

She caught at the narration of her maid Lutwyche, prolonging her hair-combing for talk's sake. Lutwyche had the peculiarity of always accommodating her pronunciation to the class she was speaking with, elaborating it for the benefit of those socially above her. So her inquiry how the gentleman was getting on was accounted for by her having seen him from the guardian. Speaking with an equal, she would have said garden. She had seen him therefrom, and been struck by his appearance of recovered vigour, especially by his visible enjoyment of the land escape. She would have said landscape to Cook. Pronounced anyhow, her words were a comfort to her young mistress, defending her a very little against the black thoughts that assailed her. Similarly, Miss Lutwyche's understanding that Mr. Torrens would come to table this evening was a flattering unction to her distressed soul, and she never questioned her omniscient handmaid's accuracy. On the contrary, she utilised a memory of some chance words of her mother to Irene, suggesting that her brother might be "up to coming down" that evening, as a warrant for replying:—"I believe so."

Nevertheless, she had no hope of seeing him make his appearance in the brilliantly illuminated Early Jacobean drawing-room, where at least two of the upstairs servants had to light wax tapers for quite ten minutes at dusk, to be even with a weakness of the Earl's for wax-candlelight and no other. And when Irene appeared without him, her "Oh dear!—your brother wasn't up to coming down, then?" was spiritless and perfunctory. Nor did she believe her friend's "No—we thought it best to be on the safe side." For she knew now why it was that this absence from the evening banquet—"family dinner-table" is too modest a phrase—had been so strenuously insisted on. There was no earthly reason why Irene's brother should not have dressed and sat at table. Were there no sofas in the Early Jacobean drawing-room? There was no reason against his presence at all except that his absolute blindness must needs have been manifest to every observer. She could see it all now.

"You know, dear," said Irene, "if Adrian were a reasonable being, there would be no harm in his dining down, as Lutwyche calls it. He could sit up to dinner perfectly, but no earthly persuasion would get him up to bed till midnight. And as for lying down on sofas in the drawing-room after dinner, you could as soon get a mad bull to lie down on a sofa as Adrian, if there was what Lutwyche calls company."

So that evening the beauty of the Earl's daughter—whose name among the countryfolk, by-the-by, was "Gwen o' the Towers"—was less destructive than usual to the one or two new bachelors who helped the variation of the party. For monumental beauty kills only poets and dreamers, and these young gentlemen were Squires. The verdict of one of them about her tells its tale:—"A stunner to look at, but too standoffish for my money!" She was nothing of the sort; and would gladly, to oblige, have shot a smile or an eye-flash at either of them if her heart had not been so heavy. But she wanted terribly to be alone and cry all the evening, and was of no use as a beauty. Perhaps it was as well that it was so, for these unattached males.

When the time came for the loneliness of night she was frightened of it, and let Irene go at her own door with reluctance. In answer to whom she said at parting:—"No—no, dear! I'm perfectly well, and nothing's the matter." Irene spoke back after leaving her:—"You know I'm not the least afraid about him. It will be all right." Then Gwen mustered a poor laugh, and with "Of course it will, dear!" vanished into her bedroom.

She got to sleep and slept awhile; then awoke to the worst solitude a vexed soul knows—those terrible "small hours" of the morning. Then, every mere insect of evil omen that daylight has kept in bounds grows to the size of an elephant, and what was the whirring of his wings becomes discordant thunder. Then palliatives lose their market-value, and every clever self-deception that stands between us and acknowledged ill bursts, bubblewise, and leaves the soul naked and unarmed against despair.

Gwen waked without provocation at about three in the morning; waked Heaven knew why!—for there was all the raw material of a good night's rest; the candidate for the sleepership; a prodigiously comfortable bed; dead silence, not so much as an owl in the still night she looked out into during an excursion warranted to promote sleep—but never sleep itself! She had been dragged reluctantly from a dreamless Nirvana into the presence of a waking nightmare—two great beautiful eyes that looked at her and saw nothing; and this coercion, she somehow felt, was really due to an unaccountable absence of mind on her part. Surely she could have kept asleep with a little more common sense. She would go back from that excursion reinforced, and bid defiance to that nightmare. Sleep would come to her, she knew, if she could find a modus vivendi with a loose flood of golden hair, and could just get hold of a feather-quill that was impatient of imprisonment and wanted to see the world. She searched for it with the tenderest of finger-tips because she knew—as all the feather-bed world knows—that if one is too rough with it, it goes in, and comes out again just when one is dropping off....

There!—it was caught and pulled out. She would not burn it. It would smell horribly and make her think of Lutwyche's remedy for fainting fits, burned feathers held to the nostrils. No!—she would put it through the casement into the night-air, and it would float away and think of its days on the breast of an Imbergoose, and believe them back again. Oh, the difference between the great seas and winds, and the inside of that stuffy ticking! Poor little breast-feather of a foolish bird! Yes—now she could go to sleep! She knew it quite well—she had only to contrive a particular attitude.... There, that was right! Now she had only to put worrying thoughts out of her head and count a thousand ... and then—oblivion!

Alas, no such thing! In five minutes the particular attitude was a thing of the past, and the worrying thoughts were back upon her with a vengeance. Or, rather, the worrying thought; for her plural number was hypocrisy. She was in for a deadly wakeful night, a night of growing fever, with those sightless eyes expelling every other image from her brain. She was left alone with the darkness and a question she dared not try to answer. Suppose that when those eyes looked upon her that evening at Arthur's Bridge for the first time—suppose it was also the last? What then? How could she know it, and know how the thing came about, and whom she held answerable for it, and go on living?...

No—her life would end with that. Nothing would again be as it had been for her. Her childhood had ended when she first saw Death; when her brother's corpse was carried home dripping from within a stone's throw of this new tragedy. But was not that what bills of lading call the "Act of God"—fair play, as it were, on the part of Fate? What was this?... Come—this would never do, with a pulse like that!

No one should ever feel his pulse, or hers, at night. Gwen was none the better for doing it. Nor did she benefit by an operation which her mind called looking matters calmly in the face. It consisted in imaginary forecasts of a status quo that was to come about. She had to skip some years as too horrible even to dream of; years needed to live down the worst raw sense of guilt, and become hardened to inevitable life. Then she filled in her scenario with Sir Adrian Torrens, the blind Squire of Pensham Steynes, and his beautiful and accomplished wife, a dummy with no great vitality, constructed entirely out of a ring on Mr. Torrens's finger and an allusion of Irene's to the Miss Gertrude Abercrombie, whose skill in needlework surpassed Arachne's. Gwen did not supply this lady with a sufficiently well-marked human heart. Perhaps the temptation to make her clever and shrewd but not sympathetic, not quite up to her husband's deserts, was irresistible. It allowed of an unprejudiced consciousness of what she, Gwen, would have been in this dummy's situation. It allowed latitude to a fancy that portrayed Lady Gwendolen Whatever-she-had-become—because, of course, she would have to marry some fool—as the staunch and constant friend of the family at Pensham. Her devotion to the dummy when in trouble—and, indeed, she piled up calamities for the unhappy lady—was monumental; an example to her sex. And when, to the bitter grief of her devoted husband, the dummy died—all parties being then, at a rough estimate, forty—and she herself, his dearest friend, stood by the dummy's grave with him, and, generally speaking, sustained him in his tribulation, a disposition to get the fool out of the way grew strong enough to make its victim doubt her own vouchers for her own absolute disinterestedness. She turned angrily upon her fancies, tore them to tatters, flung them to the winds. One does this, and then the pieces join themselves together and reappear intact.

She was no nearer sleep after looking matters calmly in the face, that way, for a full hour. Similar trials to dramatize a probable future all ended on the same lines, and each time Gwen was indignant with herself for her own folly. What was this man to her, whom she had seen twice? Little enough!—she pledged herself to it in the Court of Conscience! What was she to him, who had spoken with her twice certainly; but seen her—oh, how little! Why, she had seen him more, of the two, if one came to close quarters with Time. See how long he was stooping over that unfortunate dog-chain!

Sitting up in bed in the dim July dawn, wild-eyed in an unshepherded flock of golden locks, this young lady was certainly surpassingly beautiful. She was revolving in her poor, aching head a contingency she had not fully allowed for. Suppose—merely to look other things in the face, you see!—suppose there were no dummy! What chance would the poor fellow have then of winning the love of any woman, with those blind eyes in his head? Gwen got up restlessly and went to the casement, meeting a stream of level sunlight that the swallows outside in the ivy were making the subject of comment, and stood looking out over the leagues of the ancient domain of her forefathers. "Gwen o' the Towers"—that was her name. It seemed to join chorus with her own answer to the last question, to her satisfaction.

To offer the consolation of her love, to give all she had to give, to this man as compensation for the great curse that had fallen on him through the fault of her belongings, seemed to her in her excited state easy and nowise strange—mere difficulty of the negotiation apart. She elected to shut her eyes to a fact we and the story can guess—we are so shrewd, you see!—and to make a parade in her own eyes of a self-renunciation approaching that of Marcus Curtius. If only the gulf would open to receive her she would fling herself in. She ignored the dissimilarities of detail in the two cases, especially the conceivable promised land at the bottom of her gulf. The Roman Eques had nothing but death and darkness to look forward to.

The difficulties of the scheme shot across her fevered conception of it. How if, though he was not affianced to the dummy, or any other lay figure she might provide, his was a widowed heart left barren by the hand of Death? How if some other disappointment had marred his life?—some passion for a woman who had rashly accepted somebody else before meeting him? This happens we know; so did Gwen, and was sorry. How if some minx—Lutwyche's expression—had bewitched him and slighted him? He might nurse a false ideal of her till Doomsday. Men did sometimes, coeteris paribus. But how could she—how could she?... Anyhow, Gwen might have seen her way through that difficulty with a fair chance. But—to be invisible!

The morning sun had been at variance with some flames, hard to believe clouds, and had just dispersed them so successfully that their place in the heavens knew them no more. His rays, unveiled, bore hard upon the blue eyes, sore with watching, of the girl a hundred million miles off, and drove her from her casement. Gwen of the Towers fell back into the room, all the flowing lawn of the most luxurious robe-de-nuit France could provide turned to gold by the touch of Phoebus. She paused a moment before a mirror, to glance at her pallor in it, and to wonder at the sunlight in the wealth of its setting of ungroomed, uncontrollable locks. It was not vanity exactly that provoked the despairing thought:—"But he will never see me—never!" A girl would have been a hypocrite indeed who could shut her eyes to what Gwen saw in that looking-glass. She knew all about it—had done so from babyhood.

Some relaxation of the mind gave Morpheus an opportunity, and he took such advantage of a willing victim that Lutwyche, coming three hours later, scarcely knew how to deal with the case, and might have been uneasy at such an intensive cultivation of sleep if she had been a nervous person. But she was prosaic and phlegmatic, and held to the general opinion that nothing unusual ever happened. So she was content to make a little extra noise; and, when nothing came of it, to go away till rung for. That was how Gwen came to be so late at breakfast that morning.



CHAPTER XX

HOW THE HON. PERCIVAL GAVE MISS DICKENSON HIS ACCOUNT OF THE BLIND MAN. HOW THAT ANY YOUNG MAN SOEVER IS GLAD THAT ANY YOUNG LADY SOEVER ISN'T FIANCEE, EXCEPT SHE BE UGLY. MISS DICKENSON'S EFFRONTERY. HOW MR. PELLEW SAID "POOH!" IRENE'S ABSENCE, VISITING. EVERYONE'S ELSE ABSENCE, EXCEPT THE BLIND MAN'S, GWEN'S, AND MRS. BAILEY'S, WHO HAD A LETTER TO WRITE

The Hon. Percival Pellew had not been at the Towers continuously throughout the whole three weeks following the accident. The best club in London could not have spared him as long as that. He had returned to his place in the House a day or two later, had voted on the Expenses at Elections Bill, and had then gone to a by-election in Cornwall to help his candidate to keep his expenses at a minimum. His way back to the club did not lie near Ancester Towers, but he reconciled a renewal of his visit there to his conscience by the consideration that an unusually late Session was predicted. A little more country air would do him no harm, and the Towers was the best club in the country.

He had had absolutely no motive whatever for going there, outside what this implies. Unless, indeed, something else was implied by his pledging his honour to himself that this was the case. Self-deception is an art that Man gives a great deal of attention to, and Woman nearly as much.

The Countess said to him, on the evening of his reappearance in time to dress for dinner:—"Everybody's gone, Percy—I mean everybody of your lot a fortnight ago." Whereto he replied:—"How about the wounded man?" and her ladyship said:—"Mr. Torrens? Oh yes, Mr. Torrens is here still and his sister—they'll be here a few days longer.... There's nobody else. Yes, there's Constance Dickenson. Norbury, tell them to keep dinner back a little because of Mr. Pellew." This was all in one sentence, chiefly to the butler. She ended:—"All the rest are new," and the gentleman departed to dress in ten minutes—long ones probably. This was two or three evenings before Miss Dickenson saw that glow-worm in the garden. Perhaps three, because two are needed to account for the lady's attitude about that cigar, and twelve hours for a coolness occasioned by her ladyship's saying in her inconsiderate way:—"Oh, you are quite old friends, you two, of course—I forgot." Only fancy saying that a single lady and gentleman were "quite old friends"! Both parties exhibited mature courtesy, enriched with smiles in moderation. But for all that their relations painfully resembled civility for the rest of that evening.

However, whatever they were then, they were reinstated by now; that is to say, by the morning after Gwen's bad night. Eavesdrop, please, and overhear what you can in the arbutus walk, half-way through the Hon. Percival's first cigar.

The gentleman is accounting for something he has just said. "What made me think so was his being so curious about our friend Cumberworld. As for Gwen, I wouldn't trust her not to be romantic. Girls are."

The lady speaks discreetly:—"Certainly no such construction would have occurred to me. One has to be on one's guard against romantic ideas. She might easily be—a—eprise, to some extent—as girls are...."

"But spooney, no! Well—perhaps you're right."

"I don't know whether I ought to say even that. I shouldn't, only to you. Because I know I can rely on your discretion...."

"Rather. Only you must admit that when she appeared this morning—and last night—she was looking ..."

"Looking what?"

"Well ... rather too statuesque for jollity."

"Perhaps the heat. I know she complains of the heat; it gives her a headache."

"Come, Miss Dickenson, that's not fair. You know it was what you said began it."

"Began what?"

"Madam, what I am saying arises naturally from ..."

"There!—do stop being Parliamentary and be reasonable. What you mean is—have those two fallen head over ears in love, or haven't they?" Discussions of this subject of Love are greatly lubricated by exaggeration of style. It is almost as good as a foreign tongue. She continued more seriously:—"Tell me a little more of what Mr. Torrens said."

"When I saw him this morning?" Mr. Pellew looked thoughtfully at what was left of his cigar, as if it would remind him if he looked long enough, and then threw it abruptly away as though he gave it up as a bad job. "No," he said, falling back on his own memory. "It wasn't what he said. It was the way of saying it. Manner is incommunicable. And he said so little about her. He talked a good deal about Philippa in a chaffy sort of way—said she was exactly his idea of a Countess—why had one such firm convictions about Countesses and Duchesses and Baronets and so on? It led to great injustice, causing us to condemn nine samples out of ten as Pretenders, not real Countesses or Duchesses or Baronets at all. He was convinced his own dear dad was a tin Baronet; or, at best, Britannia-metal. Alfred Tennyson had spoken of two sorts—little lily-handed ones and great broad-shouldered brawny Englishmen. Neither would eat the sugar nor go to sleep in an armchair with the Times over his head. His father did both. I admitted the force of his criticism, but could not follow his distinction between Countesses and Duchesses. Duchesses were squarer than Countesses, just as Dukes were squarer than Earls."

"I think they are," said Miss Dickenson. She shut her eyes a moment for reflection, and then decided:—"Oh yes—certainly squarer—not a doubt of it!" Mr. Pellew formed an image in his mind, of this lady fifteen years ago, with its eyes shut. He did not the least know why he did so.

"Torrens goes on like that," he continued. "Makes you laugh sometimes! But what I was going to say was this. When he had disposed of Philippa and chaffed Tim a little—not disrespectfully you know—he became suddenly serious, and talked about Gwen—spoke with a hesitating deference, almost ceremoniously. Said he had had some conversation with Lady Gwendolen, and been impressed with her intelligence and wit. Most young ladies of her age were so frivolous. He was the more impressed that her beauty was undeniable. The brief glimpse he had had of her had greatly affected him artistically—it was an Aesthetic impression entirely. He overdid this."

Miss Dickenson nodded slightly in confidence with herself. Her insight jotted down a brief memorandum about Mr. Pellew's, and the credit it did him. That settled, she recalled a something he had left unfinished earlier. "You were asking about Lord Cumberworld, Mr. Pellew?"

"Whether there was anything afoot in that quarter? Yes, he asked that, and wanted to know if Mrs. Bailey, who had been retailing current gossip, was rightly informed when she said that there was, and that it was going to come off. He was very anxious to show how detached he was personally. Made jokes about its 'coming off' like a boot...."

"Stop a minute to see if I understand.... Oh yes—I see. 'If there was anything afoot.' Of course. Go on."

"It was a poor quip, and failed of its purpose. His relief was too palpable when I disallowed Mrs. Bailey.... By-the-by, that's a rum thing, Miss Dickenson,—that way young men have. I believe if I did it once when I was a young fillah I did it fifty times."

"Did what?"

"Well—breathed free on hearing that a girl wasn't engaged. Doesn't matter how doosid little they know of her—only seen her in the Park on horseback, p'r'aps—they'll eat a lot more lunch if they're told she's still in the market. Fact!"

Miss Dickenson said that no doubt Mr. Pellew knew best, and that it was gratifying to think how many young men's lunches her earlier days might have intensified without her knowing anything about it. The gentleman felt himself bound to reassure and confirm, for was not the lady passee? "Rather!" said he; this favourite expression this time implying that the name of these lunches was no doubt Legion. An awkward sincerity of the lady caused her to say:—"I didn't mean that." And then she had to account for it. She was intrepid enough to venture on: "What I meant was, never being engaged," but not cool enough to keep of one colour exactly. It didn't rise to the height of embarrassment, but something rippled for all that.

A cigar Mr. Pellew was lighting required unusual and special attention. It had a mission, that cigar. It had to gloss over a slight flush on its smoker's cheeks, and to take the edge off the abruptness with which he said,—"Oh, gammon!" as he threw a Vesuvian away.

He picked up the lost thread at the point of his own indiscreet excursion into young-manthropology—his own word when he apologized for it. "Anyhow," said he, "it struck me that our friend upstairs was very hard hit. He made such a parade of his complete independence. Of course, I'm not much of a judge of such matters. Not my line. I understand that he has been prorogued—I mean his departure has. He's to try his luck at coming downstairs this evening after feeding-time. He funks finding the way to his mouth in public. Don't wonder—poor chap!"

Then this lady had a fit of contrition about the way in which she had been gossiping, and tried to back out. She had the loathsome meanness to pretend that she herself had been entirely passive, a mere listener to an indiscreet and fanciful companion. "What gossips you men are!" said she, rushing the position boldly. "Fancy cooking up a romance about this Mr. Torrens and Gwen, when they've hardly so much as," she had nearly said, "set eyes on each other"; but revised it in time for press. It worked out "when she has really only just set eyes on him, and chatted half an hour."

Mr. Pellew's indignation found its way through a stammer which expressed the struggle of courtesy against denunciation. "Come—hang it all!" said he. "It wasn't my romance.... Oh, well, perhaps it wasn't yours either. Only—play fair, Miss Dickenson. Six of the one and half a dozen of the other! Confess up!"

The lady assumed the tone of Tranquillity soothing Petulance. "Never mind, Mr. Pellew!" she said. "You needn't lie awake about it. It doesn't really matter, you know.... Have you got the right time? Because I have to be ready at half-past eleven to drive with Philippa. I promised.... What!—a quarter past? I must run." She looked back to reassure possible perturbation. "It really does not matter between us," said she, and vanished down the avenue.

The Hon. Percival Pellew walked slowly in the opposite direction in a brown study, leaving his thumbs in his armholes, and playing la ci darem with his fingers on his waistcoat. He played it twice or thrice before he stopped to knock a phenomenal ash off his cigar. Then he spoke, and what he said was "Pooh!"

The story does not know why he said "Pooh!" It merely notes, apropos of Miss Dickenson's last words, that the first person plural pronoun, used as a dual by a lady to a gentleman, sometimes makes hay of the thirdness of their respective persons singular. But if it had done so, this time, "Pooh!" was a weak counter-blast against its influence.

* * * * *

Irene's friend Gretchen von Trendelenstein had written that morning that she was coming to stay with the Mackworth Clarkes at Toft, only a couple of miles off. She would only have two days, and could not hope to get as far as Pensham, but couldn't Irene come to her? She was, you see, Irene's bosom friend. The letter had gone to Pensham and been forwarded, losing time. This was the last day of visiting-possibility at Toft. So Irene asked to be taken there; and, if she stayed, would find her way back somehow. Mr. Norbury, however, after referring to Archibald, the head of the stables, made dernier ressorts needless, and Irene was driven away behind a spirited horse by the young groom, Tom Kettering.

Her brother would have devolved entirely on Mrs. Bailey and chance visitors, if he had not struck vigorously against confinement to his room, after a recovery of strength sufficient to warrant his removal to his home eighteen miles away. If he was strong enough for that, he was strong enough for an easy flight of stairs, down and up, with tea between. Mrs. Bailey, the only obstacle, was overruled. Indeed, that good woman was an anachronism by now, her only remaining function being such succour as a newly blinded man wants till he gets used to his blindness. Tonics and stimulants were coming to an end, and her professional extinction was to follow. Nevertheless, Mr. Torrens held fast to dining in solitude until he recovered his eyesight, or at least until he had become more dexterous without it.

Now, it happened that on this day of all others three attractive events came all at once—the Flower Show at Brainley Thorpe, the Sadleigh Races, and a big Agricultural Meeting at King's Grantham, where the County Members were to address constituents. The Countess had promised to open the first, and the absence of the Earl from the second would have been looked upon as a calamity. All the male non-coronetted members of the company of mature years were committed to Agriculture or Bookmaking, and the younger ones to attendance on Beauty at the Flower Show. Poor Adrian Torrens!—there was no doubt he had been forgotten. But he was not going to admit the slightest concern about that. "Go away to your Von, darling Stupid!" said he. "And turn head over heels in her and wallow. Do you want to be the death of me? Do you want to throw me back when I'm such a credit to Mrs. Bailey and Dr. Nash?" Irene had her doubts—but there!—wasn't Gretchen going to marry an Herr Professor and be a Frau when she went back to Berlin, and would she ever see her again? Moreover, Gwen said to her:—"He won't be alone if he's downstairs in the drawing-room. Some of the women are sure to stop. It's too hot for old Lady Cumberworld to go out. I heard her say so."

"She'll be no consolation for him," said Irene.

"No—that she won't! But unless there's someone else there she'll have Inez—you've seen the Spanish dame-de-compagnie?—and she'll enjoy a flirtation with your brother. He'll speak Spanish to her, and she'll sing Spanish songs. He won't hurt for a few hours."

So Tom Kettering drove Irene away in the gig, and Adrian was guided downstairs to an empty hall by Mrs. Bailey at four o'clock, so as to get a little used to the room before anyone should return. Prophecy depicted Normal Society coming back to tea, and believed in itself. Achilles sanctioned his master's new departure by his presence, accompanying him to the drawing-room. This dog was not only tolerated but encouraged everywhere. Dogs are, when their eyes are pathetic, their coats faultless, and their compliance with household superstitions unhesitating.

"Anybody in sight, Mrs. Bailey?"

"Nobody yet, Mr. Torrens."

"Speriamo! Perhaps there's a piano in the room, Mrs. Bailey?"

"There's two. One's stood up against the wall shut. The other's on three legs in the middle of the room." That one was to play upon, she supposed, the other to sing to.

"If you will be truly obliging—you always are, you know—and conduct me to the one on three legs in the middle of the room, I will play you an air from Gluck's 'Orfeo,' which I am sure you will enjoy.... Oh yes—I can do without any music-books because I have played it before, not infrequently...."

"I meant to set upon." In fact, Mrs. Bailey regarded this as the primary purpose of music-books; and so it was, at the home of her niece, who could play quite nicely. There was only two and they "just did." She referred to this while Mr. Torrens was spinning the music-stool to a suitable height for himself. He responded with perfect gravity—not a fraction of a smile—that books were apt to be too high or too low. It was the fault of the composers clearly, because the binders had to accept the scores as they found them. If the binders were to begin rearranging music to make volumes thicker or thinner, you wouldn't be able to play straight on. Mrs. Bailey concurred, saying that she had always said to her niece not to offer to play a tune till she could play it right through from beginning to end. Mr. Torrens said that was undoubtedly the view of all true musicians, and struck a chord, remarking that the piano had been left open. "How ever could you tell that now, Mr. Torrens?" said Mrs. Bailey, and felt that she was in the presence of an Artist.

Nevertheless, she seemed to be lukewarm about Che faro, merely remarking after hearing it that it was more like the slow tunes her niece played than the quick ones. The player said with unmoved gravity this was andante. Mrs. Bailey said that her niece, on the contrary, had been christened Selina. She could play the Polka. So could Mr. Torrens, rather to the good woman's surprise and, indeed, delight. He was so good-humoured that he played it again, and also the Schottische; and would have stood Gluck over to meet her taste indefinitely, but that voices came outside, and the selection was interrupted.

The voice of Lady Ancester was one, saying despairingly:—"My dear, if you're not ready we must go without you. I must be there in time." Miss Dickenson's was another, attesting that if the person addressed did not come, sundry specified individuals would be in an awful rage.

"Well, then, you must go without me. Flower shows always bore me to death." This was a voice that had not died out of the blind man's ears since yesterday; Lady Gwendolen's, of course. It added that its owner must finish her letter, or it would miss the six o'clock post and not catch the mail; which would have, somehow, some disastrous result. Then said her mother's voice, she should have written it before. Then justification and refutation, and each voice said its say with a difference—more of expounding, explaining—with a result like in Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha's mountainous fugue, that one of them, Gwen's, stood out all the stiffer hence. No doubt you know your Browning. Gwen asserted herself victor all along the line, and remonstrance died a natural death. But what was she going to do all the afternoon? A wealth of employments awaited her, she testified. Rarely had so many arrears remained unpaid. Last and least she must try through that song, because she had to send the music back to the Signore. So the Countess supposed she must go her own way, and presently Adrian Torrens was conscious that her ladyship had gone hers, by the curt resurrection of sounds in abeyance somewhile since; sounds of eight hoofs and four wheels; suddenly self-assertive, soon evanescent.

Was Gwen really going to come to sing at this piano? That was something worth living for, at least. But no!—conclusions must not be jumped in that fashion. Perhaps she had a piano in her own room. Nothing more likely.

Achilles had stepped out, hearing sounds as of a departure; and now returned, having seen that all was in satisfactory order. He sighed over his onerous responsibilities, and settled down to repose—well-earned repose, his manner suggested.

"I suppose I shall have to clear out when her young ladyship comes in to practise," said Mrs. Bailey. Mr. Torrens revolted inwardly against ostracising the good woman on social grounds; but then, did he want her to remain if Gwen appeared? Just fancy—to have that newcomer all to himself for perhaps an hour, as he had her for five minutes yesterday! Too good to be true! He compromised with his conscience about Mrs. Bailey. "Don't go away till she does, anyhow," said he. And then he sang Irish Melodies with Tom Moore's words, and rather shocked his hearer by the message the legatee of the singer received about his heart. She preferred the Polka.

It chanced that Mrs. Bailey also had weighty correspondence on hand, relating to an engagement with a new patient; and, with her, correspondence was no light matter. Pride had always stood between Mrs. Bailey and culture, ever since she got her schooling done. Otherwise she might have acquired style and a fluent caligraphy. As it was, her style was uncertain and her method slow. Knowing this—without admitting it—she was influenced by hearing a six o'clock post referred to, having previously thought her letters went an hour later. So she developed an intention of completing her letter, of which short instalments had been turned out at intervals already, as soon as ever the advent of a guest or visitor gave her an excuse for desertion. Of course a member of the household was better than either; so she abdicated without misgiving when—as she put it—she heard her young ladyship a-coming.

Her young ladyship was audible outside long enough for Mrs. Bailey to abdicate before she entered the room. They met on the stairs and spoke. Was that Mr. Torrens at the piano?—asked Gwen. Because if it was she mustn't stop him. She would cry off and try her song another time.

But Mrs. Bailey reassured her, saying:—"He won't go on long, my lady. You'll get your turn in five minutes," in an undertone. She added:—"He won't see your music-paper. Trust him for that." These words must have had a new hope in them for the young lady, for she said quickly: "You think he does see something, then?" The answer was ambiguous. "Nothing to go by." Gwen had to be content with it.

* * * * *

Is there any strain of music known to man more harrowingly pathetic than the one popularly known as Erin go bragh? Does it not make hearers without a drop of Erse blood in their veins thrill and glow with a patriotism that complete ignorance of the history of Ireland never interferes with in the least? Do not their hearts pant for the blood of the Saxon on the spot, even though their father's name be Baker and their mother's Smith? Ours does.

Adrian Torrens, though his finger-tips felt strange on the keys in the dark, and his hands were weak beyond his own suspicion of their weakness, could still play the Polka for Mrs. Bailey. When his audience no longer claimed repetition of that exciting air, he struck a chord or two of some Beethoven, but shook his head with a sigh and gave it up. However, less ambitious attempts were open to him, and he had happened on Irish minstrelsy; so, left to himself, he sang Savourneen Dheelish through.

Gwen, entering unheard, was glad she could dry her eyes undetected by those sightless ones that she knew showed nothing to the singer—nothing but a black void. The pathos of the air backed by the pathos of a voice that went straight to her heart, made of it a lament over the blackness of this void—over the glorious bygone sunlight, never a ray of it to be shed again for him! There was no one in the room, and it was a relief to her to have this right to unseen tears.

The feverish excitement of her sleepless night had subsided, but the memory of a strange resolve clung to her, a resolution to do a thing that then seemed practicable, reasonable, right; that had seemed since, more than once, insurmountable—yes! Insane—yes! But wrong—no! Now, hard hit by Savourneen Dheelish, the strength to think she might cross the barriers revived, and the insanity of the scheme shrank as its rightness grew and grew. After all, did she not belong to herself? To whom else, except her parents? Well—her duty to her parents was clear; to ransom their consciences for them; to enable them to say "We destroyed this man's eyesight for him, but we gave him Gwen." If only this pianist could just manage to love her on the strength of Arthur's Bridge and that rainbow gleam! But how to find out? She could see herself in a mirror near by as she thought it, and the resplendent beauty that she could not handle was a bitterness to her; she gazed at it as a warrior might gaze at his sword with his hands lopped off at the wrists. Still, he had seen her; that was something! She would not have acknowledged later, perhaps, that at this moment her mind was running on a foolish thought:—"Did I, or did I not, look my best at that moment?"