"Why certainly," he said. "Did we not finish it?"
"I thought," said Jane nervously, looking away from his blank face, "I thought perhaps--after Dr. Rob"s story--you might--"
"Dr. Rob"s story could make no possible difference as to whether I should let her come here or not," said Garth emphatically; then added more gently: "It only reminded me--"
"Of what?" asked Jane, her hands upon her breast.
"Of what a glorious woman she is," said Garth Dalmain, and blew a long, steady cloud of smoke into the summer air.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE ONLY WAY
When Deryck Brand alighted at the little northern wayside station, he looked up and down the gravelled platform, more than half expecting to see Jane. The hour was early, but she invariably said "So much the better" to any plan which involved rising earlier than usual. Nothing was to be seen, however, but his portmanteau in the distance--looking as if it had taken up a solitary and permanent position where the guard had placed it--and one slow porter, who appeared to be overwhelmed by the fact that he alone was on duty to receive the train.
There were no other pa.s.sengers descending; there was no other baggage to put out. The guard swung up into his van as the train moved off.
The old porter, shading his eyes from the slanting rays of the morning sun, watched the train glide round the curve and disappear from sight; then slowly turned and looked the other way,--as if to make sure there was not another coming,--saw the portmanteau, and shambled towards it.
He stood looking down upon it pensively, then moved slowly round, apparently reading the names and particulars of all the various continental hotels at which the portmanteau had recently stayed with its owner.
Dr. Brand never hurried people, He always said: "It answers best, in the long run, to let them take their own time. The minute or two gained by hurrying them is lost in the final results." But this applied chiefly to patients in the consulting-room; to anxious young students in hospital; or to nurses, too excitedly conscious at first of the fact that he was talking to them, to take in fully what he was saying. His habit of giving people, even in final moments, the full time they wanted, had once lost him an overcoat, almost lost him a train, and won him the thing in life he most desired. But that belongs to another story.
Meanwhile he wanted his breakfast on this fresh spring morning. And he wanted to see Jane. Therefore, as porter and portmanteau made no advance towards him, the doctor strode down the platform.
"Now then, my man!" he called.
"I beg your pardon?" said the Scotch porter.
"I want my portmanteau."
"Would this be your portmanteau?" inquired the porter doubtfully.
"It would," said the doctor. "And it and I would be on our way to Castle Gleneesh, if you would be bringing it out and putting it into the motor, which I see waiting outside."
"I will be fetching a truck," said the porter. But when he returned, carefully trundling it behind him, the doctor, the portmanteau, and the motor were all out of sight.
The porter shaded his eyes and gazed up the road.
"I will be hoping it WAS his portmanteau," he said, and went back to his porridge.
Meanwhile the doctor sped up into the hills, his mind alight with eagerness to meet Jane and to learn the developments of the last few days. Her non-appearance at the railway station filled him with an undefinable anxiety. It would have been so like Jane to have been there, prompt to seize the chance of a talk with him alone before he reached the house. He had called up, in antic.i.p.ation, such a vivid picture of her, waiting on the platform,--bright, alert, vigorous, with that fresh and healthy vigour which betokens a good night"s rest, a pleasant early awakening, and a cold tub recently enjoyed,--and the disappointment of not seeing her had wrought in him a strange foreboding. What if her nerve had given way under the strain?
They turned a bend in the winding road, and the grey turrets of Gleneesh came in sight, high up on the other side of the glen, the moor stretching away behind and above it. As they wound up the valley to the moorland road which would bring them round to the house, the doctor could see, in the clear morning light, the broad lawn and terrace of Gleneesh, with its gay flower-beds, smooth gravelled walks, and broad stone parapet, from which was a drop almost sheer down into the glen below.
Simpson received him at the hall door; and he just stopped himself in time, as he was about to ask for Miss Champion. This perilous approach to a slip reminded him how carefully he must guard words and actions in this house, where Jane had successfully steered her intricate course.
He would never forgive himself if he gave her away.
"Mr. Dalmain is in the library, Sir Deryck," said Simpson; and it was a very alert, clear-headed doctor who followed the man across the hall.
Garth rose from his chair and walked forward to meet him, his right hand outstretched, a smile of welcome on his face, and so direct and unhesitating a course that the doctor had to glance at the sightless face to make sure that this lithe, graceful, easy-moving figure was indeed the blind man he had come to see. Then he noticed a length of brown silk cord stretched from an arm of the chair Garth had quitted to the door. Garth"s left hand had slipped lightly along it as he walked.
The doctor put his hand into the one outstretched, and gripped it warmly.
"My dear fellow! What a change!"
"Isn"t it?" said Garth delightedly. "And it is entirely she who has worked it,--the capital little woman you sent up to me. I want to tell you how first-rate she is." He had reached his chair again, and found and drew forward for the doctor the one in which Jane usually sat, "this is her own idea." He unhitched the cord, and let it fall to the floor, a fine string remaining attached to it and to the chair, by which he could draw it up again at will. "There is one on this side leading to the piano, and one here to the window. Now how should you know them apart?"
"They are brown, purple, and orange," replied the doctor.
"Yes," said Garth. "You know them by the colours, but I distinguish them by a slight difference in the thickness and in the texture, which you could not see, but which I can feel. And I enjoy thinking of the colours, too. And sometimes I wear ties and things to match them. You see, I know exactly how they look; and it was so like her to remember that. An ordinary nurse would have put red, green, and blue, and I should have sat and hated the thought of them knowing how vilely they must be clashing with my Persian carpet. But she understands how much colours mean to me, even though I cannot see them."
"I conclude that by "she" you mean Nurse Rosemary," said the doctor. "I am glad she is a success."
"A success!" exclaimed Garth. "Why, she helped me to live again! I am ashamed to remember how at the bottom of all things I was when you came up before, Brand,--just pounding the wall, as old Robbie expresses it.
You must have thought me a fool and a coward."
"I thought you neither, my dear fellow. You were coming through a stiffer fight than any of us have been called to face. Thank G.o.d, you have won."
"I owe a lot to you, Brand, and still more to Miss Gray. I wish she were here to see you. She is away for the week-end."
"Away! J--just now?" exclaimed the doctor, almost surprised into another slip.
"Yes; she went last night. She is week-ending in the neighbourhood. She said she was not going far, and should be back with me early on Monday morning. But she seemed to want a change of scene, and thought this a good opportunity, as I shall have you here most of the time. I say, Brand, I do think it is extraordinarily good of you to come all this way to see me. You know, from such a man as yourself it is almost overwhelming."
"You must not be overwhelmed, my dear chap; and, though I very truly came to see you, I am also up, about another old friend in the near neighbourhood in whom I am interested. I only mention this in order to be quite honest, and to lift from off you any possible burden of feeling yourself my only patient."
"Oh, thanks!" said Garth. "It lessens my compunction without diminishing my grat.i.tude. And now you must be wanting a brush up and breakfast, and here am I selfishly keeping you from both. And I say, Brand,"--Garth coloured hotly, boyishly, and hesitated,--"I am awfully sorry you will have no companion at your meals, Miss Gray being away. I do not like to think of you having them alone, but I--I always have mine by myself. Simpson attends to them."
He could not see the doctor"s quick look of comprehension, but the understanding sympathy of the tone in which he said: "Ah, yes. Yes, of course," without further comment, helped Garth to add: "I couldn"t even have Miss Gray with me. We always take our meals apart. You cannot imagine how awful it is chasing your food all round your plate, and never sure it is not on the cloth, after all, or on your tie, while you are hunting for it elsewhere."
"No, I can"t imagine," said the doctor. "No one could who had not been through it. But can you bear it better with Simpson than with Nurse Rosemary? She is trained to that sort of thing, you know."
Garth coloured again. "Well, you see, Simpson is the chap who shaves me, and gets me into my clothes, and takes me about; and, though it will always be a trial, it is a trial to which I am growing accustomed.
You might put it thus: Simpson is eyes to my body; Miss Gray is vision to my mind. Simpson"s is the only touch which cores to me in the darkness. Do you know, Miss Gray has never touched me,--not even to shake hands. I am awfully glad of this. I will tell you why presently, if I may. It makes her just a MIND and VOICE to me, and nothing more; but a wonderfully kind and helpful voice. I feel as if I could not live without her."
Garth rang the bell and Simpson appeared.
"Take Sir Deryck to his room; and he will tell you what time he would like breakfast. And when you have seen to it all, Simpson, I will go out for a turn. Then I shall be free, Brand, when you are. But do not give me any more time this morning if you ought to be resting, or out on the moors having a holiday from minds and men."
The doctor tubbed and got into his knickerbockers and an old Norfolk jacket; then found his way to the dining-room, and did full justice to an excellent breakfast. He was still pondering the problem of Jane, and at the same time wondering in another compartment of his mind in what sort of machine old Margery made her excellent coffee, when that good lady appeared, enveloped in an air of mystery, and the doctor immediately propounded the question.
"A jug," said old Margery. "And would you be coming with me, Sir Deryck,--and softly, whenever you have finished your breakfast?"
"Softly," said Margery again, as they crossed the hall, the doctor"s tall figure closely following in her portly wake. After mounting a few stairs she turned to whisper impressively: "It is not what ye make it IN; it is HOW ye make it." She ascended a few more steps, then turned to say: "It all hangs upon the word FRESH," and went on mounting.