第84章

HEARTS MEET IN SIGHTLESS LAND

"It will be absolutely impossible, Miss Gray, for me ever to tell you what I think of this that you have done for my sake."Garth stood at the open library window.The morning sunlight poured into the room.The air was fragrant with the scent of flowers, resonant with the songs of birds.As he stood there in the sunshine, a new look of strength and hopefulness was apparent in every line of his erect figure.He held out eager hands towards Nurse Rosemary, but more as an expression of the outgoing of his appreciation and gratitude than with any expectation of responsive hands being placed within them.

"And here was I, picturing you having a gay weekend, and wondering where, and who your friends in this neighbourhood could be.And all the while you were sitting blindfold in the room over my head.Ah, the goodness of it is beyond words! But did you not feel somewhat of a deceiver, Miss Gray?"She always felt that--poor Jane.So she readily answered: "Yes.And yet I told you I was not going far.And my friends in the neighbourhood were Simpson and Margery, who aided and abetted.And it was true to say I was going, for was I not going into darkness?

and it is a different world from the land of light.""Ah, how true that is!" cried Garth."And how difficult to make people understand the loneliness of it, and how they seem suddenly to arrive close to one from another world; stooping from some distant planet, with sympathetic voice and friendly touch; and then away they go to another sphere, leaving one to the immensity of solitude in Sightless Land.""Yes," agreed Nurse Rosemary, "and you almost dread the coming, because the going makes the darkness darker, and the loneliness more lonely.""Ah, so YOU experienced that?" said Garth."Do you know, now you have week-ended in Sightless Land, I shall not feel it such a place of solitude.At every turn I shall be able to say:--'A dear and faithful friend has been here.'"He laughed a laugh of such almost boyish pleasure, that all the mother in Jane's love rose up and demanded of her one supreme effort.She looked at the slight figure in white flannels, leaning against the window frame, so manly, so beautiful still, and yet so helpless and so needing the wealth of tenderness which was hers to give.Then, standing facing him, she opened her arms, as if the great preparedness of that place of rest, so close to him must, magnet-like, draw him to her; and standing thus in the sunlight, Jane spoke.

Was she beautiful? Was she paintable? Would a man grow weary of such a look turned on him, of such arms held out? Alas! Too late! On that point no lover shall ever be able to pass judgment.That look is for one man alone.He only will ever bring it to that loving face.And he cannot pronounce upon its beauty in voice of rapturous content.

He cannot judge.He cannot see.He is blind!

"Mr.Dalmain, there are many smaller details; but before we talk of those I want to tell you the greatest of all the lessons I learned in Sightless Land." Then, conscious that her emotion was producing in her voice a resonant depth which might remind him too vividly of notes in The Rosary, she paused, and resumed in the high, soft edition of her own voice which it had become second nature to her to use as Nurse Rosemary: "Mr.Dalmain, it seems to me I learned to understand how that which is loneliness unspeakable to ONE might be Paradise of a very perfect kind for TWO.I realised that there might be circumstances in which the dark would become a very wonderful meeting-place for souls.If I loved a man who lost his sight, Ishould be glad to have mine in order to be eyes for him when eyes were needed; just as, were I rich and he poor, I should value my money simply as a thing which might be useful to him.But I know the daylight would often be a trial to me, because it would be something he could not share; and when evening came, I should long to say:

'Let us put out the lights and shut away the moonlight and sit together in the sweet soft darkness, which is more uniting than the light.'"While Jane was speaking, Garth paled as he listened, and his face grew strangely set.Then, as if under a reaction of feeling, a boyish flush spread to the very roots of his hair.He visibly shrank from the voice which was saying these things to him.He fumbled with his right hand for the orange cord which would guide him to his chair.

"Nurse Rosemary," he said, and at the tone of his voice Jane's outstretched arms dropped to her sides; "it is kind of you to tell me all these beautiful thoughts which came to you in the darkness.

But I hope the man who is happy enough to possess your love, or who is going to be fortunate enough to win it, will neither be so unhappy nor so unfortunate as to lose his sight.It will be better for him to live with you in the light, than to be called upon to prove the kind way in which you would be willing to adapt yourself to his darkness.How about opening our letters?" He slipped his hand along the orange cord and walked over to his chair.

Then, with a sense of unutterable dismay, Jane saw what she had done.She had completely forgotten Nurse Rosemary, using her only as a means of awakening in Garth an understanding of how much her--Jane's--love might mean to him in his blindness.She had forgotten that, to Garth, Nurse Rosemary's was the only personality which counted in this conversation; she, who had just given him such a proof of her interest and devotion.And--O poor dear Garth! O bold, brazen Nurse Rosemary!--he very naturally concluded she was making love to him.Jane felt herself between Scylla and Charybdis, and she took a very prompt and characteristic plunge.

She came across to her place on the other side of the small table and sat down."I believe it was the thought of him made me realise this," she said; "but just now I and my young man have fallen out.

He does not even know I am here."

Garth unbent at once, and again that boyish heightening of colour indicated his sense of shame at what he had imagined.