"Several glorious days went by," continued Garth. "I realise now that I was living in the glow of my own certainty that she was the One Woman.
It was so clear and sweet and wonderful to me, that I never dreamed of it not being equally clear to her. We did a lot of music together for pure enjoyment; we talked of other people for the fun of it; we enjoyed and appreciated each other"s views and opinions; but we did not talk of ourselves, because we KNEW, at least _I_ knew, and, before G.o.d, I thought she did. Every time I saw her she seemed more grand and perfect. I held the golden key to trifling matters not understood before. We young fellows, who all admired her, used nevertheless to joke a bit about her wearing collars and stocks, top boots and short skirts; whacking her leg with a riding-whip, and stirring the fire with her toe. But after that evening, I understood all this to be a sort of fence behind which she hid her exquisite womanliness, because it was of a deeper quality than any man looking upon the mere surface of her had ever fathomed or understood. And when she came trailing down in the evening, in something rich and clinging and black, with lots of soft old lace covering her bosom and moving with the beating of her great tender heart; ah, then my soul rejoiced and my eyes took their fill of delight! I saw her, as all day long I had known her to be,--perfect in her proud, sweet womanliness."
"Is he really unconscious," thought the doctor, "of how unmistakable a word-picture of Jane he is painting?"
"Very soon," continued Garth, "we had three days apart, and then met again at another house, in a weekend party. One of the season"s beauties was there, with whom my name was being freely coupled, and something she said on that subject, combined with the fearful blankness of those three interminable days, made me resolve to speak without delay. I asked her to come out on to the terrace that evening. We were alone. It was a moonlight night."
A long silence. The doctor did not break it. He knew his friend was going over in his mind all those things of which a man does not speak to another man.
At last Garth said simply, "I told her."
No comment from the doctor, who was vividly reminded of Jane"s "Then--it happened," when SHE had reached this point in the story.
After a few moments of further silence, steeped in the silver moonlight of reminiscence for Garth; occupied by the doctor in a rapid piecing in of Jane"s version; the sad young voice continued:
"I thought she understood completely. Afterwards I knew she had not understood at all. Her actions led me to believe I was accepted, taken into her great love, even as she was wrapped around by mine. Not through fault of hers,--ah, no; she was blameless throughout; but because she did not, could not, understand what any touch of hers must mean to me. In her dear life, there had never been another man; that much I knew by unerring instinct and by her own admission. I have sometimes thought that she may have had an ideal in her girlish days, against whom, in after years, she measured others, and, finding them come short, held them at arm"s length. But, if I am right in this surmise, he must have been a blind fool, unconscious of the priceless love which might have been his, had he tried to win it. For I am certain that, until that night, no man"s love had ever flamed about her; she had never felt herself enveloped in a cry which was all one pa.s.sionate, in-articulate, inexplicable, boundless need of herself.
While I thought she understood and responded,--Heaven knows I DID think it,--she did not in the least understand, and was only trying to be sympathetic and kind."
The doctor stirred in his chair, slowly crossed one leg over the other, and looked searchingly into the blind face. He was finding these confidences of the "other man" more trying than he had expected.
"Are you sure of that?" he asked rather huskily.
"Quite sure," said Garth. "Listen. I called her--what she was to me just then, what I wanted her to be always, what she is forever, so far as my part goes, and will be till death and beyond. That one word,--no, there were two,--those two words made her understand. I see that now.
She rose at once and put me from her. She said I must give her twelve hours for quiet thought, and she would come to me in the village church next morning with her answer. Brand, you may think me a fool; you cannot think me a more egregious a.s.s than I now think myself; but I was absolutely certain she was mine; so sure that, when she came, and we were alone together in the house of G.o.d, instead of going to her with the anxious haste of suppliant and lover, I called her to me at the chancel step as if I were indeed her husband and had the right to bid her come. She came, and, just as a sweet formality before taking her to me, I asked for her answer. It was this: "I cannot marry a mere boy.""
Garth"s voice choked in his throat on the last word. His head was bowed in his hands. He had reached the point where most things stopped for him; where all things had ceased forever to be as they were before.
The room seemed strangely silent. The eager voice had poured out into it such a flow of love and hope and longing; such a revealing of a soul in which the true love of beauty had created perpetual youth; of a heart held free by high ideals from all playing with lesser loves, but rising to volcanic force and height when the true love was found at last.
The doctor shivered at that anticlimax, as if the chill of an empty church were in his bones. He knew how far worse it had been than Garth had told. He knew of the cruel, humiliating question: "How old are you?" Jane had confessed to it. He knew how the outward glow of adoring love had faded as the mind was suddenly turned inward to self-contemplation. He had known it all as abstract fact. Now he saw it actually before him. He saw Jane"s stricken lover, bowed beside him in his blindness, living again through those sights and sounds which no merciful curtain of oblivion could ever hide or veil.
The doctor had his faults, but they were not Peter"s. He never, under any circ.u.mstances, spoke BECAUSE he wist not what to say.
He leaned forward and laid a hand very tenderly on Garth"s shoulder.
"Poor chap," he said. "Ah, poor old chap."
And for a long while they sat thus in silence.
CHAPTER XXV
THE DOCTOR"S DIAGNOSIS
"So you expressed no opinion? explained nothing? let him go on believing that? Oh, d.i.c.ky! And you might have said so much!"
In the quiet of the Scotch Sabbath morning, Jane and the doctor had climbed the winding path from the end of the terrace, which zigzagged up to a clearing amongst the pines. Two fallen trees at a short distance from each other provided convenient seats in full sunshine, facing a glorious view,--down into the glen, across the valley, and away to the purple hills beyond. The doctor had guided Jane to the sunnier of the two trunks, and seated himself beside her. Then he had quietly recounted practically the whole of the conversation of the previous evening.
"I expressed no opinion. I explained nothing. I let him continue to believe what he believes; because it is the only way to keep you on the pinnacle where he has placed you. Let any other reason for your conduct than an almost infantine ignorance of men and things be suggested and accepted, and down you will come, my poor Jane, and great will be the fall. Mine shall not be the hand thus to hurl you headlong. As you say, I might have said so much, but I might also have lived to regret it."
"I should fall into his arms," said Jane recklessly, "and I would sooner be there than on a pinnacle."
"Excuse me, my good girl," replied the doctor. "It is more likely you would fall into the first express going south. In fact, I am not certain you would wait for an express. I can almost see the Honourable Jane quitting yonder little railway station, seated in an empty coal-truck. No! Don"t start up and attempt to stride about among the pine needles," continued the doctor, pulling Jane down beside him again. "You will only trip over a fir cone and go headlong into the valley. It is no use forestalling the inevitable fall."
"Oh, d.i.c.ky," sighed Jane, putting her hand through his arm; and leaning her bandaged eyes against the rough tweed of his shoulder; "I don"t know what has come to you to-day. You are not kind to me. You have harrowed my poor soul by repeating all Garth said last night; and, thanks to that terribly good memory of yours, you have reproduced the tones of his voice in every inflection. And then, instead of comforting me, you leave me entirely in the wrong, and completely in the lurch."
"In the wrong--yes," said Deryck; "in the lurch--no. I did not say I would do nothing to-day. I only said I could do nothing last night. You cannot take up a wounded thing and turn it about and a.n.a.lyse it. When we bade each other good-night, I told him I would think the matter over and give him my opinion to-day. I will tell you what has happened to me if you like. I have looked into the inmost recesses of a very rare and beautiful nature, and I have seen what havoc a woman can work in the life of the man who loves her. I can a.s.sure you, last night was no pastime. I woke this morning feeling as if I had, metaphorically, been beaten black and blue."
"Then what do you suppose _I_ feel?" inquired Jane pathetically.
"You still feel yourself in the right--partly," replied Deryck. "And so long as you think you have a particle of justification and cling to it, your case is hopeless. It will have to be: "I confess. Can you forgive?""
"But I acted for the best," said Jane. "I thought of him before I thought of myself. It would have been far easier to have accepted the happiness of the moment, and chanced the future."
"That is not honest, Jeanette. You thought of yourself first. You dared not face the possibility of the pain to you if his love cooled or his admiration waned. When one comes to think of it, I believe every form of human love--a mother"s only excepted--is primarily selfish. The best chance for Dalmain is that his helpless blindness may awaken the mother love in you. Then self will go to the wall."
"Ah me!" sighed Jane. "I am lost and weary and perplexed in this bewildering darkness. Nothing seems clear; nothing seems right. If I could see your kind eyes, Boy, your hard voice would hurt less."
"Well, take off the bandage and look," said the doctor.
"I will not!" cried Jane furiously. "Have I gone through all this to fail at the last?"
"My dear girl, this self-imposed darkness is getting on your nerves.
Take care it does not do more harm than good. Strong remedies--"
"Hush!" whispered Jane. "I hear footsteps."
"You can always hear footsteps in a wood if you hearken for them," said the doctor; but he spoke low, and then sat quiet, listening.
"I hear Garth"s step," whispered Jane. "Oh, d.i.c.ky, go to the edge and look over. You can see the windings of the path below."
The doctor stepped forward quietly and looked down upon the way they had ascended. Then he came back to Jane.
"Yes," he said. "Fortune favours us. Dalmain is coming up the path with Simpson. He will be here in two minutes."
"Fortune favours us? My dear d.i.c.ky! Of all mis-chances!" Jane"s hand flew to her bandage, but the doctor stayed her just in time.
"Not at all," he said. "And do not fail at the last in your experiment.
I ought to be able to keep you two blind people apart. Trust me, and keep dark--I mean, sit still. And can you not understand why I said fortune favours us? Dalmain is coming for my opinion on the case. You shall hear it together. It will be a saving of time for me, and most enlightening for you to mark how he takes it. Now keep quiet. I promise he shall not sit on your lap. But if you make a sound, I shall have to say you are a bunny or a squirrel, and throw fir cones at you."
The doctor rose and sauntered round the bend of the path.
Jane sat on in darkness.
"Hullo, Dalmain," she heard Deryck say. "Found your way up here? An ideal spot. Shall we dispense with Simpson? Take my arm."
"Yes," replied Garth. "I was told you were up here, Brand, and followed you."
They came round the bend together, and out into the clearing.