Far-away Stories

"Mr. Withers," he said once to the surveyor, who was raising objections, "I always get what I want because I make dead sure that what I want is attainable. I'm not an idealist. If I say a thing is to be done, it has got to be done, and it's up to you or to someone else to do it."

They went through the house from furnace to garret, the pallid secretary ever at Roger's elbow, ever rendering him imperceptible services, ever identifying himself with the sightless man, mysteriously following his thoughts, co-ordinating his individuality with that of his master. He was less a man than a trained faculty, like the Chinese servant. And again Winifred shivered and felt afraid.

More and more during the weeks that followed, did she realize the iron will and irresistible force of the man she loved. He seemed to lay a relentless grip on all those with whom he came in contact and compel them to the expression of himself. Only towards her was he gentle and considerate. Many times she accompanied him to London to the great shops, the self-effacing secretary shadow-like at his elbow, and discussed with him colours and materials, and he listened to her with affectionate deference. She often noticed that the secretary translated into other terms her description of things. This irritated her, and once she suggested leaving the secretary behind. Surely, she urged, she could do all that was necessary. He shook his head.

"No, my dear," he said very kindly. "Jukes sees for me. I shouldn't like you to see for me in the way Jukes does."

She was the only person from whom he would take advice or suggestion, and she rendered him great service in the tasteful equipment of the house and in the engagement of a staff of servants. So free a hand did he allow her in certain directions, so obviously and deliberately did he withdraw from her sphere of operations, that she was puzzled. It was not until later, when she knew him better, that the picture vaguely occurred to her of him caressing her tenderly with one hand, and holding the rest of the world by the throat with the other.

On the day when he took up his residence in the new home, they walked together through the rooms. In high spirits, boyishly elated, he gave her an exhibition of his marvellous gifts of memory, minutely describing each bit of furniture and its position in every room, the colour scheme, the texture of curtains, the pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks on mantlepieces and tables. And when he had done, he put his arm round her shoulders.

"But for you, Winnie," said he, "this would be the dreariest possible kind of place; but the spirit of you pervades it and makes it a fragrant paradise."

The words and tone were lover-like, and so was his clasp. She felt very near him, very happy, and her heart throbbed quickly. She was ready to give her life to him.

"You are making me a proud woman," she murmured.

He patted her shoulder and laughed as he released her.

"I only say what's true, my dear," he replied, and then abruptly skipped from sentiment to practical talk.

Winifred had a touch of dismay and disappointment. Tears started, which she wiped away furtively. She had made up her mind to accept him, in spite of Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes, if he should make her a proposal of marriage. She had been certain that the moment had come. But he made no proposal.

She waited. She waited a long time. In the meanwhile, she continued to be Roger's intimate friend and eagerly-sought companion. One day his highly-paid and efficient housekeeper came to consult her. The woman desired to give notice. Her place was too difficult. She could scarcely believe the master was blind. He saw too much, he demanded too much. She could say nothing explicit, save that she was frightened. She wept, after the nature of upset housekeepers. Winifred soothed her and advised her not to throw up so lucrative a post, and, as soon as she had an opportunity, she spoke to Roger. He laughed his usual careless laugh.

"They all begin that way with me, but after a while they're broken in. You did quite right to tell Mrs. Strode to stay."

And after a few months Winifred saw a change in Mrs. Strode, and not only in Mrs. Strode, but in all the servants whom she had engaged. They worked the household like parts of a flawless machine. They grew to be imperceptible, shadowy, automatic, like Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes.

*****

The months passed and melted into years. Roger Orme became a great personage in the neighbourhood. He interested himself in local affairs, served on the urban district council and on boards innumerable. They made him Mayor of Dunsfield. He subscribed largely to charities and entertained on a sumptuous scale. He ruled the little world, setting a ruthless heel on proud necks and making the humble his instruments. Mr. Jukes died, and other secretaries came, and those who were not instantly dismissed grew to be like Mr. Jukes. In the course of time Roger entered Parliament as member for the division. He became a force in politics, in public affairs. In the appointment of Royal Commissions, committees of inquiry, his name was the first to occur to ministers, and he was invariably respected, dreaded, and hated by his colleagues.

"Why do you work so hard, Roger?" Winifred would ask.

He would say, with one of his laughs: "Because there's a dynamo in me that I can't stop."

And all these years Miss Winifred Goode stayed at Duns Hall, leading her secluded, lavender-scented life when Roger was in London, and playing hostess for him, with diffident graciousness, when he entertained at The Lodge. His attitude towards her never varied, his need of her never lessened.

He never asked her to be his wife. At first she wondered, pined a little, and then, like a brave, proud woman, put the matter behind her. But she knew that she counted for much in his strange existence, and the knowledge comforted her. And as the years went on, and all the lingering shreds of youth left her, and she grew gracefully into the old lady, she came to regard her association with him as a spiritual marriage.

Then, after twenty years, the dynamo wore out the fragile tenement of flesh. Roger Orme, at sixty-five, broke down and lay on his death-bed. One day he sent for Miss Winifred Goode.

She entered the sick-room, a woman of sixty, white-haired, wrinkled, with only the beauty of a serene step across the threshold of old age. He bade the nurse leave them alone, and put out his hand and held hers as she sat beside the bed.

"What kind of a day is it, Winnie?"

"As if you didn't know! You've been told, I'm sure, twenty times."

"What does it matter what other people say? I want to get at the day through you."

"It's bright and sunny – a perfect day of early summer."

"What things are out?"

"The may and the laburnum and the lilac – "

"And the wistaria?"

"Yes, the wistaria."

"It's forty years ago, dear, and your voice is just the same. And to me you have always been the same. I can see you as you sit there, with your dear, sensitive face, the creamy cheek, in which the blood comes and goes – oh, Heavens, so different from the blowsy, hard-featured girls nowadays, who could not blush if – well – well – I know 'em, although I'm blind – I'm Argus, you know, dear. Yes, I can see you, with your soft, brown eyes and pale brown hair waved over your pure brow. There is a fascinating little kink on the left-hand side. Let me feel it."

She drew her head away, frightened. Then suddenly she remembered, with a pang of thankfulness, that the queer little kink had defied the years, though the pale brown hair was white. She guided his hand and he felt the kink, and he laughed in his old, exultant way.

"Don't you think I'm a miracle, Winnie?"

"You're the most wonderful man living," she said.

"I shan't be living long. No, my dear, don't talk platitudes. I know. I'm busted. And I'm glad I'm going before I begin to dodder. A seeing dodderer is bad enough, but a blind dodderer's only fit for the grave. I've lived my life. I've proved to this stupendous clot of ignorance that is humanity that a blind man can guide them wherever he likes. You know I refused a knighthood. Any tradesman can buy a knighthood – the only knighthoods that count are those that are given to artists and writers and men of science – and, if I could live, I'd raise hell over the matter, and make a differentiation in the titles of honour between the great man and the rascally cheesemonger – "

"My dear," said Miss Winifred Goode, "don't get so excited."

"I'm only saying, Winnie, that I refused a knighthood. But – what I haven't told you, what I'm supposed to keep a dead secret – if I could live a few weeks longer, and I shan't, I should be a Privy Councillor – a thing worth being. I've had the official intimation – a thing that can't be bought. Heavens, if I were a younger man, and there were the life in me, I should be the Prime Minister of this country – the first great blind ruler that ever was in the world. Think of it! But I don't want anything now. I'm done. I'm glad. The whole caboodle is but leather and prunella. There is only one thing in the world that is of any importance."

"What is that, dear?" she asked quite innocently, accustomed to, but never familiar with, his vehement paradox.

"Love," said he.

He gripped her hand hard. There passed a few seconds of tense silence.

"Winnie, dear," he said at last, "will you kiss me?"

She bent forward, and he put his arm round her neck and drew her to him. They kissed each other on the lips.

"It's forty years since I kissed you, dear – that day under the wistaria. And, now I'm dying, I can tell you. I've loved you all the time, Winnie. I'm a tough nut, as you know, and whatever I do I do intensely. I've loved you intensely, furiously."

She turned her head away, unable to bear the living look in the sightless eyes.

"Why did you never tell me?" she asked in a low voice.

"Would you have married me?"

"You know I would, Roger."

"At first I vowed I would say nothing," he said, after a pause, "until I had a fit home to offer you. Then the blindness came, and I vowed I wouldn't speak until I had conquered the helplessness of my affliction. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but when you came home a conqueror – "

"I loved you too much to marry you. You were far too dear and precious to come into the intimacy of my life. Haven't you seen what happened to all those who did?" He raised his old knotted hands, clenched tightly. "I squeezed them dry. I couldn't help it. My blindness made me a coward. It has been hell. The darkness never ceased to frighten me. I lied when I said it didn't matter. I stretched out my hands like tentacles and gripped everyone within reach in a kind of madness of self-preservation. I made them give up their souls and senses to me. It was some ghastly hypnotic power I seemed to have. When I had got them, they lost volition, individuality. They were about as much living creatures to me as my arm or my foot. Don't you see?"

The white-haired woman looked at the old face working passionately, and she felt once more the deadly fear of him.

"But with me it would have been different," she faltered. "You say you loved me."

"That's the devil of it, my sweet, beautiful Winnie – it wouldn't have been different. I should have squeezed you, too, reduced you to the helpless thing that did my bidding, sucked your life's blood from you. I couldn't have resisted. So I kept you away. Have I ever asked you to use your eyes for me?"

Her memory travelled down the years, and she was amazed. She remembered Mr. Jukes at the great shops and many similar incidents that had puzzled her.

"No," she said.

There was a short silence. The muscles of his face relaxed, and the old, sweet smile came over it. He reached again for her hand and caressed it tenderly.

"By putting you out of my life, I kept you, dear. I kept you as the one beautiful human thing I had. Every hour of happiness I have had for the last twenty years has come through you."

She said tearfully: "You have been very good to me, Roger."

"It's a queer mix-up, isn't it?" he said, after a pause. "Most people would say that I've ruined your life. If it hadn't been for me, you might have married."

"No, dear," she replied. "I've had a very full and happy life."

The nurse came into the room to signify the end of the visit, and found them hand in hand like lovers. He laughed.

"Nurse," said he, "you see a dying but a jolly happy old man!"

Two days afterwards Roger Orme died. On the afternoon of the funeral, Miss Winifred Goode sat in the old garden in the shade of the clipped yew, and looked at the house in which she had been born, and in which she had passed her sixty years of life, and at the old wistaria beneath which he had kissed her forty years ago. She smiled and murmured aloud:

"No, I would not have had a single thing different."

III

A LOVER'S DILEMMA

"How are you feeling now?"

Words could not express the music of these six liquid syllables that fell through the stillness and the blackness on my ears.

"Not very bright, I'm afraid, nurse," said I.

Think of something to do with streams and moonlight, and you may have an idea of the mellow ripple of the laugh I heard.

"I'm not the nurse. Can't you tell the difference? I'm Miss Deane – Dr. Deane's daughter."

"Deane?" I echoed.

"Don't you know where you are?"

"Every thing is still confused," said I.

I had an idea that they had carried me somewhere by train and put me into a bed, and that soft-fingered people had tended my eyes; but where I was I neither knew nor cared. Torture and blindness had been quite enough to occupy my mind.

"You are at Dr. Deane's house," said the voice, "and Dr. Deane is the twin brother of Mr. Deane, the great oculist of Grandchester, who was summoned to Shepton-Marling when you met with your accident. Perhaps you know you had a gun accident?"

"I suppose it was only that after all," said I, "but it felt like the disruption of the solar system."

"Are you still in great pain?" my unseen hostess asked sympathetically.

"Not since you have been in the room. I mean," I added, chilled by a span of silence, "I mean – I am just stating what happens to be a fact."

"Oh!" she said shortly. "Well, my uncle found that you couldn't be properly treated at your friend's little place at Shepton-Marling, so he brought you to Grandchester – and here you are."

"But I don't understand," said I, "why I should be a guest in your house."

"You are not a guest," she laughed. "You are here on the most sordid and commercial footing. Your friend – I forget his name – "

"Mobray," said I.

"Mr. Mobray settled it with my uncle. You see the house is large and father's practice small, as we keep a nursing home for my uncle's patients. Of course we have trained nurses."

"Are you one?" I asked.

"Not exactly. I do the housekeeping. But I can settle those uncomfortable pillows."

I felt her dexterous cool hands about my head and neck. For a moment or two my eyes ceased to ache, and I wished I could see her. In tendering my thanks, I expressed the wish. She laughed her delicious laugh.

"If you could see you wouldn't be here, and therefore you couldn't see me anyhow."

"Shall I ever see you?" I asked dismally.

"Why, of course! Don't you know that Henry Deane is one of the greatest oculists in England?"

We discussed my case and the miraculous skill of Henry Deane. Presently she left me, promising to return. The tones of her voice seemed to linger, as perfume would, in the darkness.

That was the beginning of it. It was love, not at first sight, but at first sound. Pain and anxiety stood like abashed goblins at the back of my mind. Valerie Deane's voice danced in front like a triumphant fairy. When she came and talked sick-room platitudes I had sooner listened to her than to the music of the spheres. At that early stage what she said mattered so little. I would have given rapturous heed to her reading of logarithmic tables. I asked her silly questions merely to elicit the witchery of her voice. When Melba sings, do you take count of the idiot words? You close eyes and intellect and just let the divine notes melt into your soul. And when you are lying on your back, blind and helpless, as I was, your soul is a very sponge for anything beautiful that can reach it. After a while she gave me glimpses of herself, sweet and womanly; and we drifted from commonplace into deeper things. She was the perfect companion. We discussed all topics, from chiffons to Schopenhauer. Like most women, she execrated Schopenhauer. She must have devoted much of her time to me; yet I ungratefully complained of the long intervals between her visits. But oh! those interminable idle hours of darkness, in which all the thoughts that had ever been thought were rethought over and over again until the mind became a worn-out rag-bag! Only those who have been through the valley of this shadow can know its desolation. Only they can understand the magic of the unbeheld Valerie Deane.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked one morning. "Nurse says you are fretful and fractious."

"She insisted on soaping the soles of my feet and tickling me into torments, which made me fractious, and I'm dying to see your face, which makes me fretful."

"Since when have you been dying?" she asked.

"From the first moment I heard your voice saying, 'How are you feeling now?' It's irritating to have a friend and not in the least know what she is like. Besides," I added, "your voice is so beautiful that your face must be the same."

She laughed.

"Your face is like your laugh," I declared.

"If my face were my fortune I should come off badly," she said in a light tone. I think she was leaning over the foot-rail, and I longed for her nearer presence.

"Nurse has tied this bandage a little too tightly," I said mendaciously.

I heard her move, and in a moment her fingers were busy about my eyes. I put up my hand and touched them. She patted my hand away.

"Please don't be foolish," she remarked. "When you recover your sight and find what an exceedingly plain girl I am, you'll go away like the others, and never want to see me again."

"What others?" I exclaimed.

"Do you suppose you're the only patient I have had to manage?"

I loathed "the others" with a horrible detestation; but I said, after reflection:

"Tell me about yourself. I know you are called Valerie from Dr. Deane. How old are you?"

She pinned the bandage in front of my forehead.

"Oh, I'm young enough," she answered with a laugh. "Three-and-twenty. And I'm five-foot-four, and I haven't a bad figure. But I haven't any good looks at all, at all."

"Tell me," said I impatiently, "exactly how you do look. I must know."

"I have a sallow complexion. Not very good skin. And a low forehead."

"An excellent thing," said I.

"But my eyebrows and hair run in straight parallel lines, so it isn't," she retorted. "It is very ugly. I have thin black hair."

"Let me feel."

"Certainly not. And my eyes are a sort of watery china blue and much too small. And my nose isn't a bad nose altogether, but it's fleshy. One of those nondescript, unaristocratic noses that always looks as if it has got a cold. My mouth is large – I am looking at myself in the glass – my my teeth are white. Yes, they are nice and white. But they are large and protrude – you know the French caricature of an Englishwoman's teeth. Really, now I consider the question, I am the image of the English mees in a French comic paper."

"I don't believe it," I declared.

"It is true. I know I have a pretty voice – but that is all. It deceives blind people. They think I must be pretty too, and when they see me —bon soir, la compagnie! And I've such a thin, miserable face, coming to the chin in a point, like a kite. There! Have you a clear idea of me now?"

"No," said I, "for I believe you are wilfully misrepresenting yourself. Besides, beauty does not depend upon features regular in themselves, but the way those features are put together."

"Oh, mine are arranged in an amiable sort of way. I don't look cross."

"You must look sweetness itself," said I.

She sighed and said meditatively:

"It is a great misfortune for a girl to be so desperately plain. The consciousness of it comes upon her like a cold shower-bath when she is out with other girls. Now there is my cousin – "

"Which cousin?"

"My Uncle Henry's daughter. Shall I tell you about her?"

"I am not in the least interested in your cousin," I replied.

She laughed, and the entrance of the nurse put an end to the conversation.

Now I must make a confession. I was grievously disappointed. Her detailed description of herself as a sallow, ill-featured young woman awoke me with a shock from my dreams of a radiant goddess. It arrested my infatuation in mid-course. My dismay was painful. I began to pity her for being so unattractive. For the next day or two even her beautiful voice failed in its seduction.

But soon a face began to dawn before me, elusive at first, and then gradually gaining in definition. At last the picture flashed upon my mental vision with sudden vividness, and it has never left me to this day. Its steadfastness convinced me of its accuracy. It was so real that I could see its expression vary, as she spoke, according to her mood. The plainness, almost ugliness, of the face repelled me. I thought ruefully of having dreamed of kisses from the lips that barely closed in front of the great white teeth. Yet, after a while, its higher qualities exercised a peculiar attraction. A brave, tender spirit shone through. An intellectual alertness redeemed the heavy features – the low ugly brow, the coarse nose, the large mouth; and as I lay thinking and picturing there was revealed in an illuminating flash the secret of the harmony between face and voice. Thenceforward Valerie Deane was invested with a beauty all her own. I loved the dear plain face as I loved the beautiful voice, and the touch of her fingers, and the tender, laughing womanliness, and all that went with the concept of Valerie Deane.

Had I possessed the daring of Young Lochinvar, I should, on several occasions, have declared my passion. But by temperament I am a diffident procrastinator. I habitually lose golden moments as some people habitually lose umbrellas. Alas! There is no Lost Property Office for golden moments!

Still I vow, although nothing definite was said, that when the unanticipated end drew near, our intercourse was arrant love-making.

All pain had gone from my eyes. I was up and dressed and permitted to grope my way about the blackness. To-morrow I was to have my first brief glimpse of things for three weeks, in the darkened room. I was in high spirits. Valerie, paying her morning visit, seemed depressed.

"But think of it!" I cried in pardonable egotism. "To-morrow I shall be able to see you. I've longed for it as much as for the sight of the blue sky."

"There isn't any blue sky," said Valerie. "It's an inverted tureen that has held pea-soup."

Her voice had all the melancholy notes of the woodwind in the unseen shepherd's lament in "Tristan und Isolde."

"I don't know how to tell you," she exclaimed tragically, after a pause. "I shan't be here to-morrow. It's a bitter disappointment. My aunt in Wales is dying. I have been telegraphed for, and I must go."

She sat on the end of the couch where I was lounging, and took my hands.

"It isn't my fault."

My spirits fell headlong.

"I would just as soon keep blind," said I blankly.

"I thought you would say that."

A tear dropped on my hand. I felt that it was brutal of her aunt to make Valerie cry. Why could she not postpone her demise to a more suitable opportunity? I murmured, however, a few decent words of condolence.

"Thank you, Mr. Winter," said Valerie. "I am fond of my aunt; but I had set my heart on your seeing me. And she may not die for weeks and weeks! She was dying for ever so long last year, and got round again."

I ventured an arm about her shoulders, and spoke consolingly. The day would come when our eyes would meet. I called her Valerie and bade her address me as Harold.

I have come to the conclusion that the man who strikes out a new line in love-making is a genius.