You had better go away and write to her daily from London."
"But why--but why?" I clamoured. "Can"t you give me any reason?"
The nurse glanced at me with a touch of feminine scorn.
"The bandages will soon be removed."
"Well?" said I.
"The sight of one eye may be gone."
"I know," said I. "She is reconciled to it. She has the courage and resignation of a saint."
"She has also the very common and natural fears of a woman."
"For Heaven"s sake," I cried, "tell me plainly what you mean."
"We don"t quite know what disfigurement will result," said the nurse bluntly. "It is certain to be very great, and the dread of your seeing her is making her ill and r.e.t.a.r.ding her recovery. So if you have any regard for her, pack up your things and go away."
"But," I remonstrated, "I"m bound to see her sooner or later."
The nurse lost patience. "Ach! Can"t you get it into your head that it is essential it should be later, when she is strong enough to stand the strain and has realised the worst and made her little preparations?"
I accepted the rebuke meekly. The situation, when explained, was comprehensible to the meanest masculine intelligence.
"I will go," said I.
When I announced this determination to Lola she breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"I shall be so much happier," she said.
Then she raised both her arms and drew my head down until our lips met.
"Dear," she whispered, still holding me, "if I hadn"t run away from you before I should run away now; but it would be silly to do it twice. So I"ll come to London as soon as the doctor will let me. But if you find you don"t and can"t possibly love me I shan"t feel hurt with you. I"ve had some months, I know, of your love, and that will last me all my life; and I know that whatever happens you"ll be my very dear and devoted friend."
"I shall be your lover always!" I swore.
She shook her head and released me. A great pity welled up in my heart, for I know now why she had forbidden me to speak of marriage, and in some dim way I got to the depth of her woman"s nature. I realised, as far as a man can, how the sudden blasting of a woman"s beauty must revolutionise not only her own att.i.tude towards the world, but her conception of the world"s att.i.tude towards her. Only a few weeks before she had gone about proudly conscious of her superb magnificence. It was the triumphant weapon in her woman"s armoury, to use when she so chose.
It had illuminated a man"s journey (I knew and felt it now) through the Valley of the Shadow. It had held his senses captive. It had brought him to her feet. It was a charm that she could always offer to his eyes.
It was her glory and her pride to enhance it for his delectation. Her beauty was herself. That gone, she had nothing but a worthless soul to offer, and what woman would dream of offering a man her soul if she had no casket in which to enshrine it? If I had presented this other aspect of the case to Lola, she would have cried out, with perfect sincerity:
"My soul! You get things like mine anywhere for twopence a dozen."
It was the blasting of her beauty that was the infinite matter. All that I loved would be gone. She would have nothing left to give. The splendour of the day had ceased, and now was coming the long, long, dreary night, to meet which with dignity she was nerving her brave heart.
The tears were not far from my eyes when I said again softly:
"Your lover always, dear."
"Make no promises," she said, "except one."
"And that is?"
"That you will write me often until I come home."
"Every day."
So we parted, and I returned to London and to my duties at Barbara"s Building. I wrote daily, and her dictated answers gave me knowledge of her progress. To my immense relief, I heard that the oculist"s skill had saved her eyesight; but it could not obliterate the traces of the cruel claws.
The days, although fuller with work and interests, appeared long until she came. I saw but little of the outside world. Dale, my sister Agatha, Sir Joshua Oldfield, and Campion were the only friends I met. Dale was ingenuously sympathetic when he head of the calamity.
"What"s going to happen?" he asked, after he had exhausted his vocabulary of abuse on cats, Providence and Anastasius Papadopoulos.
"What"s the poor dear going to do?"
"If I am going to have any voice in the matter," said I, "she is going to marry me."
He wrung me by the hand enthusiastically and declared that I was the splendidest fellow that ever lived. Then he sighed.
"I am going about like a sheep without a leader. For Heaven"s sake, come back into politics. Form a hilarious little party of your own--anything--so long as you"re back and take me with you."
"Come to Barbara"s Building," said I.
But he made a wry face, and said that he did not think Maisie would like it. I laughed and put my hand on his shoulder.
"My son, you have a leader already, and she has already tied a blue riband round your woolly neck, and she is pulling you wherever she wants to go. And it"s all to the infinite advantage of your eternal soul."
Whereupon he grinned and departed to the sheepfold.
At last Lola came. She begged me not to meet her at the station, but to go round after dinner to Cadogan Gardens.
Dawkins opened the door for me and showed me into the familiar drawing-room. The long summer day was nearing its end, and only a dim twilight came through the open windows. Lola was standing rigid on the hearthrug, her hand shielding the whole of the right side of her face.
With the free hand she checked my impetuous advance.
"Stop and look!" she said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank G.o.d, I pierced beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity--the awful, poignant pity--of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her.
What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in hers dawned a sudden wonder.
There was no recoil of shock, such as she had steeled herself to encounter. I sprang forward and clasped her in my arms. Her stiffened frame gradually relaxed and our lips met, and in that kiss all fears and doubts were dissolved for ever.
Some hours later she said: "If you are blind enough to care for a maimed thing like me, I can"t help it. I shall never understand it to my dying day," she added with a long sigh.
"And you will marry me?"
"I suppose I"ve got to," she replied. And with the old pantherine twist of her body she slid from her easy-chair to the ground and buried her face on my knees.
And that is the end of my story. We were quietly married three weeks afterwards. Agatha, wishing to humour a maniac for whom she retained an unreasonable affection, came to the wedding and treated Lola as only a sweet lady could. But my doings pa.s.sed her understanding. As for Jane, my other sister, she cast me from her. People who did these things, she maintained, must bear the consequences. I bore them bravely. It is only now that my name is beginning to be noised abroad as that of one who speaks with some knowledge on certain social questions that Jane holds out the olive branch of fraternal peace. After a brief honeymoon Lola insisted on joining me in Barbara"s Building. A set of rooms next to mine was vacant, and Campion, who welcomed a new worker, had the two sets thrown into what house-agents term a commodious flat. She is now Lady Superior of the Inst.i.tution. The t.i.tle is Campion"s, and for some odd feminine reason Lola is delighted with it.
Yes, this is the end of the story which I began (it seems in a previous incarnation) at Murglebed-on-Sea.
The maiming of Lola"s beauty has been the last jest which the Arch-Jester has practised on me. I fancy he thought that this final scurvy trick would wipe Simon de Gex for ever out of the ranks of his rivals. But I flatter myself that, having snapped my fingers in his face, the last laugh has been on my side. He has withdrawn discomfited from the conflict and left me master of the ground. Love conquers all, even the Arch-Jester.