THE PECULIARITIES OF DOWAGER-DUCHESSES. CAN GRIGS READ DIAMOND TYPE? THE HYPOTHESIS MR. TORRENS WAS AFFIANCED TO. ADONIS, AND THAT DETESTABLE VENUS. EARNESTNESS AND A CLIMAX. AN EARTHQUAKE, OR HEARTQUAKE
The Philosopher may see absurdity in the fact that, when two persons make concordant consecutive noises for ten minutes, the effect upon their relativities is one that without them might not have come about in ten weeks. We are not prepared to condemn the Philosopher, for once. He is prosy, as usual; but what he says refers to an indisputable truth.
Nothing turns diversity into duality quicker than Music.
Gwen did not think the breakdown of the tenor at all funny, and was rather frightened, suggesting Mrs. Bailey. "Bother Mrs. Bailey!" said Adrian. "Only it's very ungrateful of me to bother Mrs. Bailey." Said Gwen:--"She really is a good creature." He replied:--"That's what she is precisely. A good creature!" Gwen interpreted this as disposing of Mrs.
Bailey. Acting as her agent, she piloted the blind man through the perils of the furniture to a satisfactory sofa, but could not prevail on him to lie down on it. He seemed determined to assert his claim to a discharge cured; allowing a small discount, of course, in respect of this plaguy eye-affection. In defence of his position that it was a temporary inconvenience, sure to vanish with returning vigour, he simply nailed his colours to the mast--would hear of no surrender.
Tea was negotiated, as customary at the Towers, and he made a parade of his independence over it. No great risks were involved, the little malachite table placed as a cup-haven being too heavy to knock over easily. He was able, too, to make a creditable show of eyesight over the concession of little brown biscuits to Achilles; only really Achilles did all the seeing. A certain pretence of vision was possible too, in the distinguishing of those biscuits which were hard from a softer sort; which Achilles accepted, under protest always, with an implication that he did it to oblige the donor. He had sacrificed his sleep--that was his suggestion--and he did not deserve to be put off with shoddy goods.
"He always has a nap during music now," said his master. "He used to insist on singing too, if he condescended to listen. I had some trouble to convince him that he couldn't sing--hadn't been taught to produce his voice...."
"Dear creature!--his voice produced itself like mine. M. Sanson--you know the great training man?--wanted me to sing in one of my thoraxes or glottises or oesophaguses. I believe I have several, but I don't know which is which. He said my voice would last better. But I said I would have both helpings at once; a recollection of nursery dinner, you know...."
"I understand--Achilles's view. There, you see!" This was a claim that an audible tail-flap on the ground was applause. It really was nothing but its owner's courteous recognition of his own name, to which he was always alive.
Gwen continued:--"Luckily I met the Signore, who told me Sanson's view was very natural. What would become of all the trainers if people produced their own voices?"
"What, indeed? But you did get some sort of drill?"
"Of course. The dear old Signore gave me some lessons. He told me an infallible rule for people with souls. I was to sing as if the composer was listening. I might sing scales and exercises if I liked. They had a use. They prevented one's spoiling the great composers by hacking them over and over before one could sing."
Adrian felt that chat of this sort was the best after all, to keep safe for him his _modus vivendi_ with this girl, in a world she was suddenly lighting up for him in defiance of his darkness. He _could_ have friendship, and he was not prepared to admit that estrangement might be the more livable _modus_ of the two. So he shut his mental eyes as close as his physical ones, and chatted. He told a story of how a great poet, being asked a question in a lady's album:--"What is your favourite employment?" wrote in reply:--"Cursing the schoolmaster who made me hate Horace in my boyhood." It was a pity to spoil "Ah vous dirai-je, maman?"
for the young pianist, but _pluies de perles_ taught nobody anything.
Gwen for her part was becoming painfully alive to the difficulties of her Quixotic undertaking. Marcus Curtius's self-immolation was easy by comparison, with all the cheers of assembled Rome crowding the Forum to back him. If only the horse her metaphor had mounted would take the bit in his teeth and bolt, tropically, how useful a phantasy it would be!
She became terribly afraid her heroic resolve might die a natural death during intelligent conversation. Bother _pluies de perles_ and the young pianist! This dry alternation of responses quashed all serious conversation. And if this Adrian Torrens went away, to-morrow or next day, what chance would there be in the uncertain future to compare with this one? When could she be sure of being alone with him for an hour, at his father's house or elsewhere? She must--she would--at least find from him whether some other parallel of the Roman Knight had bespoken the plunge for herself. She could manage that surely without being "unmaidenly," whatever that meant. If she couldn't, she would just cut the matter short and _be_ unmaidenly. But know she _must_!
There is a time before the sun commits himself to setting--as he has done every day till now, and we all take it for granted he will do to-morrow--when the raw afternoon relents and the shadows lengthen over the land; an hour that is not sunset yet, but has begun to know what sunset means to do for roof and tree-top, and the high hills when a forecast of the night creeps round their bases; and also for the good looks of man and wench and beast, and even ugly girls. This hour had come, and with it the conviction that everybody was sure to be very late to-night, before Gwen, sitting beside the blind man on the sofa he had flouted as a couch, got a chance to turn the conversation her way--to groom the steed, so to speak, of Marcus Curtius for that appointment in the Forum. It came in a lull, consequent on the momentary dispersion of subject-matter by the recognition of Society's absence and its probable late recurrence.
"I was so sorry yesterday, Mr. Torrens." A modulation of Gwen's tone was not done intentionally. It came with her wish to change the subject.
"What for, then?" said Mr. Torrens, affecting a slight Irish accent with a purpose not quite clear to himself. It might have given his words their degree on a seriometer, granted the instrument.
"Don't laugh at me, because I'm in earnest. I mean for being so unfeeling...."
"Unfeeling?"
"Yes. I don't think talking about it again can make it any worse. But I do want you to know that I only said it because I got caught--you know how words get their own way sometimes...."
"But what?--why?--when? What words got their way this time?"
"I'm almost sorry I've spoken, if you didn't notice it. Because then I'm such a fool for raking it up again.... Why, of course, when I pitched on those lines of yours. And any others would have done just as well...."
"Lord 'a massy me!--as Mrs. Bailey says. 'The daughters of the Dream Witch'? What's the matter with _them_? _They're_ all right."
"Oh yes--they're all right, no doubt. But I was thinking of.... Oh, I can't bear to talk about it!... Oh dear!--I wish I hadn't mentioned it...."
"Yes, but _do_ mention it. Mention it again. Mention it lots of times.
Besides, I know what you mean...."
"What?"
"The 'watchman sorrowing for the light,' of course! It seemed like me.
Do you know it never crossed my mind in that connection?"
"Is that really true? But, then, what an idiot I was for saying anything about it! Only I couldn't help myself. I was so miserable! It laid me awake all night to think of it." This was not absolutely true, because Gwen had really lain awake on the main question, the responsibility of her family for that shot of old Stephen's. But, to our thinking, she was justified in using any means that came to hand. She went on:--"I'm not sure that it would not have come to nearly the same thing in any case--the sleepless night, I mean. I did not know till yesterday how ...
b-bad your eyes were"--for she had nearly said the word _blind_--"because they kept on making the best of it for our sakes, Irene and Mrs. Bailey did...."
Adrian cut her speech across with an ebullition of sound sense--a protest against extremes--a counterblast to hysterical judgments.
Obviously his duty! He succeeded in saying with a sufficient infusion of the correct bounce:--"My dear Lady Gwendolen, indeed you are distressing yourself about me altogether beyond anything that this unlucky mishap warrants. In a case of this sort we must submit to be guided by medical opinion; and nothing that either Sir Coupland Merridew or Dr. Nash has said amounts to more than that recovery will be a matter of time. We must have patience. In the meantime I am really the gainer by the accident, for I shall always look upon my involuntary intrusion on your hospitality as one of the most fortunate events of my life...."
"'Believe me to remain very sincerely yours, Adrian Torrens.'" She struck in with a ringing laugh, and finished up what really would have been a very civil letter from him. "Now, dear Mr. Torrens, do stop being artificial. Say you're sorry, and you won't do so any more."
"Please, I'm sorry and I won't do so any more.... But I did do it very well, now didn't I? You must allow that."
"You did indeed, and Heaven knows how glad I should be to be able to be taken in by it and believe every word the doctors say. But when one has been hocus-pocussed about anything one ... one feels very strongly about, one gets suspicious of everybody.... Oh yes--indeed, I think very likely the doctors are right, and if Dr. Merridew had only said that you couldn't see at all now, but that the sight was sure to come back, I should have felt quite happy yesterday when...." She stopped, hesitating, brought up short by suddenly suspecting that she was driving home the fact of his blindness, instead of helping him to keep up heart against it. But how could she get to her point without doing so? How could Marcus Curtius saddle up for his terrible leap, and keep the words of the Oracle a secret?
At any rate, he could not see her confusion at her own _malapropos_--that was something! She recovered from it to find him saying:--"But what I want to know is--_what_ happened yesterday? I mean, how came you to know anything you did not know before? Was it anything _I_ did? I thought I got through it so capitally." He spoke more dejectedly than hitherto, palpably because his efforts at pretence of vision had failed. The calamity itself was all but forgotten.
Gwen saw nothing ahead but confession. Well--it might be the best way to the haven she wanted to steer for. "It was not what you _did_," said she. "You made believe quite beautifully all the time we were sitting there, talking talk. It was when I was just going. You remember when mamma had gone away with 'Rene, and I put my foot in it over those verses?"
"Yes, indeed I do. Only, you know, that wasn't because of the Watchman.
I never mixed him in--not with my affairs. A sort of Oriental character!"
"Well--that was my mistake. You remember when, anyhow? Now, do you know, all the time I was standing there talking about the Watchman, I was holding out my hand to you to say good-night, and you never offered to take it, and put your hands in your pockets? It must have gone on for quite two minutes. And I was determined not to give a hint, and there was no one else there...." Gwen thought she could understand the gesture that made her pause, a sudden movement of the blind man's right hand as though it had been stung by the discovery of its own backwardness.
He dropped it immediately in a sort of despairing way, then threw it up impatiently. "All no use!" he said. "No use--no use--no use!" The sound of his despair was in his voice as he let the hand fall again upon his knee. He gave a heart-broken sigh:--"Oh dear!" and then sat on silent.
Gwen was afraid to speak. For all she knew, her first word might be choked by a sob. After a few moments he spoke again:--"And there was I--thinking--thinking...." and stopped short.
"Thinking what?" said Gwen timidly.
"I will tell you some time," he said. "Not now!" And then he drew a long breath and spoke straight on, as though some obstacle to speech had gone. "It has been a terrible time, Lady Gwendolen--this first knowledge of ... of what I have lost. Put recovery aside for a moment--let the chance of it lie by, until it is on the horizon. Think only what the black side of the shield means--the appalling darkness in the miserable time to come--the old age when folk will call me the blind Mr. Torrens; will say of me:--'You know, he was not born blind--it was an accident--a gunshot wound--a long while back now.' And all that long while back will have been a long vacuity to me, and Heaven knows what burden to others.... I have known it all from the first. I knew it when I waked to my senses in the room upstairs--to all my senses but one. I knew it when I heard them speak hopefully of the case; hope means fear, and I knew what the fear was they were hoping against. That early morning when stupor came to an end, and my consciousness came back, I remembered all.
But I thought the darkness was only the sweet, wholesome darkness of night, and my heart beat for the coming of the day. The day came, sure enough, but I knew nothing of it. The first voice I heard was Mrs.
Bailey's, singing paeans over my recovery. She had been lying in wait for it, in a chair beside the bed which I picture to myself as a chair of vast scope and pretensions. I did not use my tongue, when I found it, to ask where I was--because I knew I was somewhere and the bed was very comfortable. I asked what o'clock it was, and was told it was near nine.
Then, said I, why not open the shutters and let in the light?"
"What did Mrs. Bailey say?"
"Mrs. Bailey said Lord have mercy, gracious-goodness-her, and I at once perceived that I was in the hands of a good creature. I must have done so, because I exhorted her to act in her official capacity. When she said:--'Why ever now, when the sun's a-shining fit to brile the house up!' I said to her--to remove ambiguity, you see--'Do be a good creature and tell me, _is_ the room light or dark? She replied in a form of affidavit:--'So help me, Mr. Torrens, if this was the last Bible word I was to speak, this room is light, not dark, nor yet it won't be, not till this blessed evening when there come candles or the lamp, as preferred.' I had a sickening perplexity for a while whether I was sane or mad, awake or dreaming, lying there with my heart adding to my embarrassment needlessly by beating in a hurry. Then I remember how it came to me all at once--the whole meaning of it. Till now, blind men had been other people. Now I was to be one myself.... Say something!... I don't like my own voice speaking alone.... there _is_ no one else in the room, is there?"
"Not a soul. And nobody will come. The dowager-duchess is having tea in her own room, and all the others will be late."
Something in this caused Mr. Torrens to say, with ridiculous inconsecutiveness:--"Then you're not engaged to Lord Cumberworld?"
"I certainly am _not_ engaged to Lord Cumberworld," said Gwen with cold emphasis. "Why did you think I was?"
"Mrs. Bailey."