The Rosary - Florence Louisa Barclay (read me a book TXT) 📗

clearly the many lovely faces I have painted and admired. All are more or less blurred and indistinct. But this one face grows clearer, thank God, as the darkness deepens. It will be with me through life, I shall see it in death, THE FACE OF THE WOMAN I LOVE. You said 'loved' of your lover, hesitating to be sure of his present state of heart. I can neither say 'love' nor 'loved' of my beloved. She never loved me. But I love her with a love which makes it impossible for me to have any 'best' to offer to another woman. If I could bring myself, from unworthy motives and selfish desires, to ask another to wed me, I should do her an untold wrong. For her unseen face would be nothing to me; always that one and only face would be shining in my darkness. Her voice would be dear, only in so far as it reminded me of the voice of the woman I love. Dear friend, if you ever pray for me, pray that I may never be so base as to offer to any woman such a husk as marriage with me would mean."

"But--" said Nurse Rosemary. "She--she who has made it a husk for others; she who might have the finest of the wheat, the full corn in the ear, herself?"

"She," said Garth, "has refused it. It was neither fine enough nor full enough. It was not worthy. O my God, little girl--! What it means, to appear inadequate to the woman one loves!"

Garth dropped his face between his hands with a groan.

Silence unbroken reigned in the library.

Suddenly Garth began to speak, low and quickly, without lifting his head.

"Now," he said, "now I feel it, just as I told Brand, and never so clearly before, excepting once, when I was alone. Ah, Miss Gray! Don't move! Don't stir! But look all round the room and tell me whether you see anything. Look at the window. Look at the door. Lean forward and look behind the screen. I cannot believe we are alone. I will not believe it. I am being deceived in my blindness. And yet--I am NOT deceived. I am conscious of the presence of the woman I love. Her eyes are fixed upon me in pity, sorrow, and compassion. Her grief at my woe is so great that it almost enfolds me, as I had dreamed her love would do ... O my God! She is so near--and it is so terrible, because I do not wish her near. I would sooner a thousand miles were between us--and I am certain there are not many yards! ... Is it psychic? or is it actual? or am I going mad? ... Miss Gray! YOU would not lie to me. No persuasion or bribery or confounded chicanery could induce YOU to deceive me on this point. Look around, for God's sake, and tell me! Are we alone? And if not, WHO IS IN THE ROOM besides you and me?"

Jane had been sitting with her arms folded upon the table, her yearning eyes fixed upon Garth's bowed head. When he wished her a thousand miles away she buried her face upon them. She was so near him that had Garth stretched out his right hand again, it would have touched the heavy coils of her soft hair. But Garth did not raise his head, and Jane still sat with her face buried.

There was silence in the library for a few moments after Garth's question and appeal. Then Jane lifted her face.

"There is no one in the room, Mr. Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary, "but YOU--and ME."


CHAPTER XXVII


THE EYES GARTH TRUSTED

"So you enjoy motoring, Miss Gray?"

They had been out in the motor together for the first time, and were now having tea together in the library, also for the first time; and, for the first time, Nurse Rosemary was pouring out for her patient. This was only Monday afternoon, and already her week-end experience had won for her many new privileges.

"Yes, I like it, Mr. Dalmain; particularly in this beautiful air."

"Have you had a case before in a house where they kept a motor?"

Nurse Rosemary hesitated. "Yes, I have stayed in houses where they had motors, and I have been in Dr. Brand's. He met me at Charing Cross once with his electric brougham."

"Ah, I know," said Garth. "Very neat. On your way to a case, or returning from a case?"

Nurse Rosemary smiled, then bit her lip. "To a case," she replied quite gravely. "I was on my way to his house to talk it over and receive instructions."

"It must be splendid working under such a fellow as Brand," said Garth; "and yet I am certain most of the best things you do are quite your own idea. For instance, he did not suggest your week-end plan, did he? I thought not. Ah, the difference it has made! Now tell me. When we were motoring we never slowed up suddenly to pass anything, or tooted to make something move out of the way, without your having already told me what we were going to pass or what was in the road a little way ahead. It was: 'We shall be passing a hay cart at the next bend; there will be just room, but we shall have to slow up'; or, 'An old red cow is in the very middle of the road a little way on. I think she will move if we hoot.' Then, when the sudden slow down and swerve came, or the toot toot of the horn, I knew all about it and was not taken unawares. Did you know how trying it is in blindness to be speeding along and suddenly alter pace without having any idea why, or swerve to one side, and not know what one has just been avoiding? This afternoon our spin was pure pleasure, because not once did you let these things happen. I knew all that was taking place, as soon as I should have known it had I had my sight."

Jane pressed her hand over her bosom. Ah, how able she was always to fill her boy's life with pure pleasure. How little of the needless suffering of the blind should ever be his if she won the right to be beside him always.

"Well, Mr. Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary, "I motored to the station with Sir Deryck yesterday afternoon, and I noticed all you describe. I have never before felt nervous in a motor, but I realised yesterday how largely that is owing to the fact that all the time one keeps an unconscious look-out; measuring distances, judging speed, and knowing what each turn of the handle means. So when we go out you must let me be eyes to you in this."

"How good you are!" said Garth, gratefully. "And did you see Sir Deryck off?"

"No. I did not SEE Sir Deryck at all. But he said good-bye, and I felt the kind, strong grip of his hand as he left me in the car. And I sat there and heard his train start and rush away into the distance."

"Was it not hard to you to let him come and go and not to see his face?"

Jane smiled. "Yes, it was hard," said Nurse Rosemary; "but I wished to experience that hardness."

"It gives one an awful blank feeling, doesn't it?" said Garth.

"Yes. It almost makes one wish the friend had not come."

"Ah--" There was a depth of contented comprehension in Garth's sigh; and the brave heart, which had refused to lift the bandage to the very last, felt more than recompensed.

"Next time I reach the Gulf of Partings in Sightless Land," continued Garth, "I shall say: 'A dear friend has stood here for my sake.'"

"Oh, and one's meals," said Nurse Rosemary laughing. "Are they not grotesquely trying?"

"Yes, of course; I had forgotten you would understand all that now. I never could explain to you before why I must have my meals alone. You know the hunt and chase?"

"Yes," said Nurse Rosemary, "and it usually resolves itself into 'gone away,' and turns up afterwards unexpectedly! But, Mr. Dalmain, I have thought out several ways of helping so much in that and making it all quite easy. If you will consent to have your meals with me at a small table, you will see how smoothly all will work. And later on, if I am still here, when you begin to have visitors, you must let me sit at your left, and all my little ways of helping would be so unobtrusive, that no one would notice."

"Oh, thanks," said Garth. "I am immensely grateful. I have often been reminded of a silly game we used to play at Overdene, at dessert, when we were a specially gay party. Do you know the old Duchess of Meldrum? Or anyway, you may have heard of her? Ah, yes, of course, Sir Deryck knows her. She called him in once to her macaw. She did not mention the macaw on the telephone, and Sir Deryck, thinking he was wanted for the duchess, threw up an important engagement and went immediately. Luckily she was at her town house. She would have sent just the same had she been at Overdene. I wish you knew Overdene. The duchess gives perfectly delightful 'best parties,' in which all the people who really enjoy meeting one another find themselves together, and are well fed and well housed and well mounted, and do exactly as they like; while the dear old duchess tramps in and out, with her queer beasts and birds, shedding a kindly and exciting influence wherever she goes. Last time I was there she used to let out six Egyptian jerboas in the drawing-room every evening after dinner, awfully jolly little beggars, like miniature kangaroos. They used to go skipping about on their hind legs, frightening some of the women into fits by hiding under their gowns, and making young footmen drop trays of coffee cups. The last importation is a toucan,--a South American bird, with a beak like a banana, and a voice like an old sheep in despair. But Tommy, the scarlet macaw, remains prime favourite, and I must say he is clever and knows more than you would think."

"Well, at Overdene we used to play a silly game at dessert with muscatels. We each put five raisins at intervals round our plates, then we shut our eyes and made jabs at them with forks. Whoever succeeded first in spiking and eating all five was the winner. The duchess never would play. She enjoyed being umpire, and screaming at the people who peeped. Miss Champion and I--she is the duchess's niece, you know--always played fair, and we nearly always made a dead heat of it."

"Yes," said Nurse Rosemary, "I know that game. I thought of it at once when I had my blindfold meals."

"Ah," cried Garth, "had I known, I would not have let you do it!"

"I knew that," said Nurse Rosemary. "That was why I week-ended."

Garth passed his cup to be refilled, and leaned forward confidentially.

"Now," he said, "I can venture to tell you one of my minor trials. I am always so awfully afraid of there being a FLY in things. Ever since I was a small boy I have had such a horror of inadvertently eating flies. When I was about six, I heard a lady visitor say to my mother: 'Oh, one HAS to swallow a