"Ah, I dare say," Garth interposed half impatiently. "There was a time when I should have liked a soft little hand about me. And I dare say by now I should often enough have caught it and held it, perhaps kissed it--who knows? I used to do such things, lightly enough. But, Brand, when a man has known the touch of THE Woman, and when that touch has become nothing but a memory; when one is dashed into darkness, and that memory becomes one of the few things which remain, and, remaining, brings untold comfort, can you wonder if one fears another touch which might in any way dim that memory, supersede it, or take away from its utter sacredness?"
"I understand," said the doctor slowly. "It does not come within my own experience, but I understand. Only--my dear boy, may I say it?--if the One Woman exists--and it is excusable in your case to doubt it, because there were so many--surely her place should be here; her actual touch, one of the things which remain."
"Ah, say it," answered Garth, lighting another cigarette. "I like to hear it said, although as a matter of fact you might as well say that if the view from the terrace exists, I ought to be able to see it. The view is there, right enough, but my own deficiency keeps me from seeing it."
"In other words," said the doctor, leaning forward and picking up the match which, not being thrown so straight as usual, had just missed the fire; "in other words, though She was the One Woman, you were not the One Man?"
"Yes," said Garth bitterly, but almost beneath his breath. "I was "a mere boy.""
"Or you thought you were not," continued the doctor, seeming not to have heard the last remark. "As a matter of fact, you are always the One Man to the One Woman, unless another is before you in the field.
Only it may take time and patience to prove it to her."
Garth sat up and turned a face of blank surprise towards the doctor.
"What an extraordinary statement!" he said. "Do you really mean it?"
"Absolutely," replied the doctor in a tone of quiet conviction. "If you eliminate all other considerations, such as money, lands, t.i.tles, wishes of friends, attraction of exteriors--that is to say, admiration of mere physical beauty in one another, which is after all just a question of comparative anatomy; if, freed of all this social and habitual environment, you could place the man and the woman in a mental Garden of Eden, and let them face one another, stripped of all shams and conventionalities, soul viewing soul, naked and unashamed; if under those circ.u.mstances she is so truly his mate, that all the n.o.blest of the man cries out: "This is the One Woman!" then I say, so truly is he her mate, that he cannot fail to be the One Man; only he must have the confidence required to prove it to her. On him it bursts, as a revelation; on her it dawns slowly, as the breaking of the day."
"Oh, my G.o.d," murmured Garth brokenly, "it was just that! The Garden of Eden, soul to soul, with no reservations, nothing to fear, nothing to hide. I realised her my WIFE, and called her so. And the next morning she called ME "a mere boy," whom she could not for a moment think of marrying. So what becomes of your fool theory, Brand?"
"Confirmed," replied the doctor quietly. "Eve, afraid of the immensity of her bliss, doubtful of herself, fearful of coming short of the marvel of his ideal of her, fleeing from Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden. Don"t talk about fool theories, my boy. The fool-fact was Adam, if he did not start in prompt pursuit."
Garth sat forward, his hands clutching the arms of his chair. That quiet, level voice was awakening doubts as to his view of the situation, the first he had had since the moment of turning and walking down the Shenstone village church three years ago. His face was livid, and as the firelight played upon it the doctor saw beads of perspiration gleam on his forehead.
"Oh, Brand," he said, "I am blind. Be merciful. Things mean so terribly much in the dark."
The doctor considered. Could his nurses and students have seen the look on his face at that moment, they would have said that he was performing a most critical and delicate operation, in which a slip of the scalpel might mean death to the patient. They would have been right; for the whole future of two people hung in the balance; depending, in this crisis, upon the doctor"s firmness and yet delicacy of touch. This strained white face in the firelight, with its beads of mental agony and its appealing "I am blind," had not entered into the doctor"s calculations. It was a view of "the other man" upon which he could not look unmoved. But the thought of that patient figure with bandaged eyes sitting upstairs in suspense, stretching dear helpless hands to him, steadied the doctor"s nerve. He looked into the fire.
"You may be blind, Dalmain, but I do not want you to be a fool," said the doctor quietly.
"Am I--was I--a fool?" asked Garth.
"How can I judge?" replied the doctor. "Give me a clear account of the circ.u.mstances from your point of view, and I will give you my opinion of the case."
His tone was so completely dispa.s.sionate and matter-of-fact, that it had a calming effect on Garth, giving him also a sense of security. The doctor might have been speaking of a sore throat, or a tendency to sciatica.
Garth leaned back in his chair, slipped his hand into the breast-pocket of his jacket, and touched a letter lying there. Dare he risk it? Could he, for once take for himself the comfort of speaking of his trouble to a man he could completely trust, and yet avoid the danger of betraying her ident.i.ty to one who knew her so intimately?
Garth weighed this, after the manner of a chess-player looking several moves ahead. Could the conversation become more explicit, sufficiently so to be of use, and yet no clue be given which would reveal Jane as the One Woman?
Had the doctor uttered a word of pressure or suggestion, Garth would have decided for silence. But the doctor did not speak. He leaned forward and reached the poker, mending the fire with extreme care and method. He placed a fragrant pine log upon the springing flame, and as he did so he whistled softly the closing bars of Veni, Creator Spiritus.
Garth, occupied with his own mental struggle, was, for once, oblivious to sounds from without, and did not realise why, at this critical moment, these words should have come with gentle insistence into his mind:
"Keep far our foes; give peace at home; Where Thou art Guide, no ill can come."
He took them as an omen. They turned the scale.
"Brand," he said, "if, as you are so kind as to suggest, I give myself the extreme relief of confiding in you, will you promise me never to attempt to guess at the ident.i.ty of the One Woman?"
The doctor smiled; and the smile in his voice as he answered, added to Garth"s sense of security.
"My dear fellow," he said, "I never guess at other people"s secrets. It is a form of mental recreation which does not appeal to me, and which I should find neither entertaining nor remunerative. If I know them already, I do not require to guess them. If I do not know them, and their possessors wish me to remain in ignorance, I would as soon think of stealing their purse as of filching their secret."
"Ah, thanks," said Garth. "Personally, I do not mind what you know. But I owe it to her, that her name should not appear."
"Undoubtedly," said the doctor. "Except in so far as she herself, chooses to reveal it, the One Woman"s ident.i.ty should always remain a secret. Get on with your tale, old chap. I will not interrupt."
"I will state it as simply and as shortly as I can," began Garth. "And you will understand that there are details of which no fellow could speak.--I had known her several years in a friendly way, just staying at the same houses, and meeting at Lord"s and Henley and all the places where those in the same set do meet. I always liked her, and always felt at my best with her, and thought no end of her opinion, and so forth. She was a friend and a real chum to me, and to lots of other fellows. But one never thought of love-making in connection with her.
All the silly things one says to ordinary women she would have laughed at. If one had sent her flowers to wear, she would have put them in a vase and wondered for whom they had really been intended. She danced well, and rode straight; but the man she danced with had to be awfully good at it, or he found himself being guided through the giddy maze; and the man who wanted to be in the same field with her, must be prepared for any fence or any wall. Not that I ever saw her in the hunting-field; her love of life and of fair play would have kept her out of that. But I use it as a descriptive ill.u.s.tration. One was always glad to meet her in a house party, though one could not have explained why. It is quite impossible to describe her. She was just--well, just--"
The doctor saw "just Jane" trembling on Garth"s lips, and knew how inadequate was every adjective to express this name. He did not want the flood of Garth"s confidences checked, so he supplied the needed words.
"Just a good sort. Yes, I quite understand. Well?"
"I had had my infatuations, plenty of them," went on the eager young voice. "The one thing I thought of in women was their exteriors. Beauty of all kinds--of any kind--crazed me for the moment. I never wanted to marry them, but I always wanted to paint them. Their mothers, and aunts, and other old dowagers in the house parties used to think I meant marriage, but the girls themselves knew better. I don"t believe a girl now walks this earth who would accuse me of flirting. I admired their beauty, and they knew it, and they knew that was all my admiration meant. It was a pleasant experience at the time, and, in several instances, helped forward good marriages later on. Pauline Lister was apportioned to me for two whole seasons, but she eventually married the man on whose jolly old staircase I painted her. Why didn"t I come a cropper over any of them? Because there were too many, I suppose. Also, the attraction was skin-deep. I don"t mind telling you quite frankly: the only one whose beauty used to cause me a real pang was Lady Brand. But when I had painted it and shown it to the world in its perfection, I was content. I asked no more of any woman than to paint her, and find her paintable. I could not explain this to the husbands and mothers and chaperons, but the women themselves understood it well enough; and as I sit here in my darkness not a memory rises up to reproach me."
"Good boy," said Deryck Brand, laughing. "You were vastly misunderstood, but I believe you."
"You see," resumed Garth, "that sort of thing being merely skin-deep, I went no deeper. The only women I really knew were my mother, who died when I was nineteen, and Margery Graem, whom I always hugged at meeting and parting, and always shall hug until I kiss the old face in its coffin, or she straightens me in mine. Those ties of one"s infancy and boyhood are among the closest and most sacred life can show. Well, so things were until a certain evening in June several years ago. She--the One Woman--and I were in the same house party at a lovely old place in the country. One afternoon we had been talking intimately, but quite casually and frankly. I had no more thought of wanting to marry her than of proposing to old Margery. Then--something happened,--I must not tell you what; it would give too clear a clue to her ident.i.ty. But it revealed to me, in a few marvellous moments, the woman in her; the wife, the mother; the strength, the tenderness; the exquisite perfection of her true, pure soul. In five minutes there awakened in me a hunger for her which nothing could still, which nothing ever will still, until I stand beside her in the Golden City, where they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; and there shall be no more darkness, or depending upon sun, moon, or candle, for the glory of G.o.d shall lighten it; and there shall be no more sorrow, neither shall there be any more pain, for former things shall have pa.s.sed away."
The blind face shone in the firelight. Garth"s retrospection was bringing him visions of things to come.
The doctor sat quite still and watched the vision fade. Then he said: "Well?"
"Well," continued the young voice in the shadow, with a sound in it of having dropped back to earth and finding it a mournful place; "I never had a moment"s doubt as to what had happened to me. I knew I loved her; I knew I wanted her; I knew her presence made my day and her absence meant chill night; and every day was radiant, for she was there."
Garth paused for breath and to enjoy a moment of silent retrospection.
The doctor"s voice broke in with a question, clear, incisive. "Was she a pretty woman; handsome, beautiful?"
"A pretty woman?" repeated Garth, amazed: "Good heavens, no! Handsome?
Beautiful? Well you have me there, for, "pon my honour, I don"t know."
"I mean, would you have wished to paint her?"
"I HAVE painted her," said Garth very low, a moving tenderness in his voice; "and my two paintings of her, though done in sadness and done from memory, are the most beautiful work I ever produced. No eye but my own has ever seen them, and now none ever will see them, excepting those of one whom I must perforce trust to find them for me, and bring them to me for destruction."
"And that will be--?" queried the doctor.
"Nurse Rosemary Gray," said Garth.
The doctor kicked the pine log, and the flames darted up merrily. "You have chosen well," he said, and had to make a conscious effort to keep the mirth in his face from pa.s.sing into his voice. "Nurse Rosemary will be discreet. Very good. Then we may take it the One Woman was beautiful?"
But Garth looked perplexed. "I do not know," he answered slowly. "I cannot see her through the eyes of others. My vision of her, in that illuminating moment, followed the inspired order of things,--spirit, soul, and body. Her spirit was so pure and perfect, her soul so beautiful, n.o.ble, and womanly, that the body which clothed soul and spirit partook of their perfection and became unutterably dear."
"I see," said the doctor, very gently. "Yes, you dear fellow, I see."
(Oh, Jane, Jane! You were blind, without a bandage, in those days!)