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!