The Rosary Part 18

"d.i.c.ky, don't tease! Oh, Boy, it is the most vital question of my whole life; and if you do not now give me wise and thoughtful advice, all this difficult confession will have been for nothing."

The doctor became grave immediately. He leaned forward and took those clasped hands between his.

"Dear," he said, "forgive me if I seemed to take it lightly. My most earnest thought is wholly at your disposal. And now let me ask you a few questions. How did you ever succeed in convincing Dalmain that such a thing as this was an insuperable obstacle to your marriage?"

"I did not give it as a reason."

"What then did you give as your reason for refusing him?"

"I asked him how old he was."

"Jane! Standing there beside him in the chancel, where he had come awaiting your answer?"

"Yes. It did seem awful when I came to think it over afterwards. But it worked."

"I have no doubt it worked. What then?"

"He said he was twenty-seven. I said I was thirty, and looked thirty-five, and felt forty. I also said he might be twenty-seven, but he looked nineteen, and I was sure he often felt nine."

"Well?"

"Then I said that I could not marry a mere boy."

"And he acquiesced?"

"He seemed stunned at first. Then he said of course I could not marry him if I considered him that. He said it was the first time he had given a thought to himself in the matter. Then he said he bowed to my decision, and he walked down the church and went out, and we have not met since."

"Jane," said the doctor, "I wonder he did not see through it. You are so unused to lying, that you cannot have lied, on the chancel step, to the man you loved, with much conviction."

A dull red crept up beneath Jane's tan.

"Oh, Deryck, it was not entirely a lie. It was one of those dreadful lies which are 'part a truth,' of which Tennyson says that they are 'a harder matter to fight.'"

"'A lie which is all a lie May be met and fought with outright; But a lie which is part a truth Is a harder matter to fight,'"

quoted the doctor.

"Yes," said Jane. "And he could not fight this, just because it was partly true. He is younger than I by three years, and still more by temperament. It was partly for his delightful youthfulness that I feared my maturity and staidness. It was part a truth, but oh, Deryck, it was more a lie; and it was altogether a lie to call him--the man whom I had felt complete master of me the evening before--'a mere boy.'

Also he could not fight it because it took him so utterly by surprise.

He had been all the time as completely without self-consciousness, as I had been morbidly full of it. His whole thought had been of me. Mine had been of him and--of myself."

"Jane," said the doctor, "of all that you have suffered since that hour, you deserved every pang."

Jane bent her head. "I know," she said.

"You were false to yourself, and not true to your lover. You robbed and defrauded both. Cannot you now see your mistake? To take it on the lowest ground, Dalmain, wors.h.i.+pper of beauty as he was, had had a surfeit of pretty faces. He was like the confectioner's boy who when first engaged is allowed to eat all the cakes and sweets he likes, and who eats so many in the first week, that ever after he wants only plain bread-and-b.u.t.ter. YOU were Dal's bread-and-b.u.t.ter. I am sorry if you do not like the simile."

Jane smiled. "I do like the simile," she said.

"Ah, but you were far more than this, my dear girl. You were his ideal of womanhood. He believed in your strength and tenderness, your graciousness and truth. You shattered this ideal; you failed this faith in you. His fanciful, artistic, eclectic nature with all its unused possibilities of faithful and pa.s.sionate devotion, had found its haven in your love; and in twelve hours you turned it adrift. Jane--it was a crime. The magnificent strength of the fellow is shown by the way he took it. His progress in his art was not arrested. All his best work has been done since. He has made no bad mad marriage, in mockery of his own pain; and no grand loveless one, to spite you. He might have done both--I mean either. And when I realise that the poor fellow I was with yesterday--making such a brave fight in the dark, and turning his head on the pillow to say with a gleam of hope on his drawn face: `Where Thou art Guide, no ill can come'--had already been put through all this by you--Jane, if you were a man, I'd horsewhip you!" said the doctor.

Jane squared her shoulders and lifted her head with more of her old spirit than she had yet shown.

"You have lashed me well, Boy," she said, "as only words spoken in faithful indignation can lash. And I feel the better for the pain.-- And now I think I ought to tell you that while I was on the top of the Great Pyramid I suddenly saw the matter from a different standpoint.

You remember that view, with its sharp line of demarcation? On one side the river, and verdure, vegetation, fruitfulness, a veritable 'garden enclosed'; on the other, vast s.p.a.ce as far as the eye could reach; golden liberty, away to the horizon, but no sign of vegetation, no hope of cultivation, just barren, arid, loneliness. I felt this was an exact picture of my life as I live it now. Garth's love, flowing through it, as the river, could have made it a veritable 'garden of the Lord.' It would have meant less liberty, but it would also have meant no loneliness. And, after all, the liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage. Then I realised that I had condemned him also to this hard desert life. I came down and took counsel of the old Sphinx. Those calm, wise eyes, looking on into futurity, seemed to say: 'They only live who love.' That evening I resolved to give up the Nile trip, return home immediately, send for Garth, admit all to him, asking him to let us both begin again just where we were three years ago in the moonlight on the terrace at Shenstone. Ten minutes after I had formed this decision, I heard of his accident."

The doctor shaded his face with his hand. "The wheels of time," he said in a low voice, "move forward--always; backward, never."

"Oh, Deryck," cried Jane, "sometimes they do. You and Flower know that sometimes they do."

The doctor smiled sadly and very tenderly. "I know," he said, "that there is always one exception which proves every rule." Then he added quickly: "But, unquestionably, it helps to mend matters, so far as your own mental att.i.tude is concerned, that before you knew of Dalmain's blindness you should have admitted yourself wrong, and made up your mind to trust him."

"I don't know that I was altogether clear about having been wrong,"

said Jane, "but I was quite convinced that I couldn't live any longer without him, and was therefore prepared to risk it. And of course now, all doubt or need to question is swept away by my poor boy's accident, which simplifies matters, where that particular point is concerned."

The doctor looked at Jane with a sudden raising of his level brows.

"Simplifies matters?" he said.

Then, as Jane, apparently satisfied with the expression, did not attempt to qualify it, he rose and stirred the fire; standing over it for a few moments in silent thought. When he sat down again, his voice was very quiet, but there was an alertness about his expression which roused Jane. She felt that the crisis of their conversation had been reached.

"And now, my dear Jeanette," said the doctor, "suppose you tell me what you intend doing."

"Doing?" said Jane. "Why, of course, I shall go straight to Garth. I only want you to advise me how best to let him know I am coming, and whether it is safe for him to have the emotion of my arrival. Also I don't want to risk being kept from him by doctors or nurses. My place is by his side. I ask no better thing of life than to be always beside him. But sick-room attendants are apt to be pig-headed; and a fuss under these circ.u.mstances would be unbearable. A wire from you will make all clear."

"I see," said the doctor slowly. "Yes, a wire from me will undoubtedly open a way for you to Garth Dalmain's bedside. And, arrived there, what then?"

A smile of ineffable tenderness parted Jane's lips. The doctor saw it, but turned away immediately. It was not for him, or for any man, to see that look. The eyes which should have seen it were sightless evermore.

"What then, Deryck? Love will know best what then. All barriers will be swept away, and Garth and I will be together."

The doctor's finger-tips met very exactly before he spoke again; and when he did speak, his tone was very level and very kind.

"Ah, Jane," he said, "that is the woman's point of view. It is certainly the simplest, and perhaps the best. But at Garth's bedside you will be confronted with the man's point of view; and I should be failing the trust you have placed in me did I not put that before you now.--From the man's point of view, your own mistaken action three years ago has placed you now in an almost impossible position. If you go to Garth with the simple offer of your love--the treasure he asked three years ago and failed to win--he will naturally conclude the love now given is mainly pity; and Garth Dalmain is not the man to be content with pity, where he has thought to win love, and failed. Nor would he allow any woman--least of all his crown of womanhood--to tie herself to his blindness unless he were sure such binding was her deepest joy. And how could you expect him to believe this in face of the fact that, when he was all a woman's heart could desire, you refused him and sent him from you?--If, on the other hand, you explain, as no doubt you intend to do, the reason of that refusal, he can but say one thing: 'You could not trust me to be faithful when I had my sight. Blind, you come to me, when it is no longer in my power to prove my fidelity. There is no virtue in necessity. I can never feel I possess your trust, because you come to me only when accident has put it out of my power either to do the thing you feared, or to prove myself better than your doubts.' My dear girl, that is how matters stand from the man's point of view; from his, I make no doubt, even more than from mine; for I recognise in Garth Dalmain a stronger man than myself. Had it been I that day in the church, wanting you as he did, I should have grovelled at your feet and promised to grow up.

Garth Dalmain had the iron strength to turn and go, without a protest, when the woman who had owned him mate the evening before, refused him on the score of inadequacy the next morning. I fear there is no question of the view he would take of the situation as it now stands."

Jane's pale, startled face went to the doctor's heart.

"But Deryck--he--loves--"

"Just because he loves, my poor old girl, where you are concerned he could never be content with less than the best."

"Oh, Boy, help me! Find a way! Tell me what to do!" Despair was in Jane's eyes.

The doctor considered long, in silence. At last he said: "I see only one way out. If Dal could somehow be brought to realise your point of view at that time as a possible one, without knowing it had actually been the cause of your refusal of him, and could have the chance to express himself clearly on the subject--to me, for instance--in a way which might reach you without being meant to reach you, it might put you in a better position toward him. But it would be difficult to manage. If you could be in close contact with his mind, constantly near him unseen--ah, poor chap, that is easy now--I mean unknown to him; if, for instance, you could be in the shoes of this nurse-companion person I am sending him, and get at his mind on the matter; so that he could feel when you eventually made your confession, he had already justified himself to you, and thus gone behind his blindness, as it were."

Jane bounded in her chair. "Deryck, I have it! Oh, send ME as his nurse-companion! He would never dream it was I. It is three years since he heard my voice, and he thinks me in Egypt. The society column in all the papers, a few weeks ago, mentioned me as wintering in Egypt and Syria and remaining abroad until May. Not a soul knows I have come home. You are the best judge as to whether I have had training and experience; and all through the war our work was fully as much mental and spiritual, as surgical. It was not up to much otherwise. Oh, d.i.c.ky, you could safely recommend me; and I still have my uniforms stowed away in case of need. I could be ready in twenty-four hours, and I would go as Sister--anything, and eat in the kitchen if necessary."

"But, my dear girl," said the doctor quietly, "you could not go as Sister Anything, unfortunately. You could only go as Nurse Rosemary Gray; for I engaged her this morning, and posted a full and explicit account of her to Dr. Mackenzie, which he will read, to our patient. I never take a case from one nurse and give it to another, excepting for incompetency. And Nurse Rosemary Gray could more easily fly, than prove incompetent. She will not be required to eat in the kitchen. She is a gentlewoman, and will be treated as such. I wish indeed you could be in her shoes, though I doubt whether you could have carried it through--And now I have something to tell you. Just before I left him, Dalmain asked after you. He sandwiched you most carefully in between the d.u.c.h.ess and Flower; but he could not keep the blood out of his thin cheeks, and he gripped the bedclothes in his effort to keep his voice steady. He asked where you were. I said, I believed, in Egypt. When you were coming home. I told him I had heard you intended returning to Jerusalem for Easter, and I supposed we might expect you home at the end of April or early in May. He inquired how you were. I replied that you were not a good correspondent, but I gathered from occasional cables and post-cards that you were very fit and having a good time. I then volunteered the statement that it was I who had sent you abroad because you were going all to pieces. He made a quick movement with his hand as if he would have struck me for using the expression. Then he said: 'Going to pieces? SHE!' in a tone of most utter contempt for me and my opinions. Then he hastily made minute inquiries for Flower. He had already asked about the d.u.c.h.ess all the questions he intended asking about you. When he had ascertained that Flower was at home and well, and had sent him her affectionate sympathy, he begged me to glance through a pile of letters which were waiting until he felt able to have them read to him, and to tell him any of the handwritings known to me. All the world seemed to have sent him letters of sympathy, poor chap. I told him a dozen or so of the names I knew,--a royal handwriting among them. He asked whether there were any from abroad.

There were two or three. I knew them all, and named them. He could not bear to hear any of them read; even the royal letter remained unopened, though he asked to have it in his hand, and fingered the tiny crimson crown. Then he asked. 'Is there one from the d.u.c.h.ess?' There was. He wished to hear that one, so I opened and read it. It was very characteristic of her Grace; full of kindly sympathy, heartily yet tactfully expressed. Half-way through she said: 'Jane will be upset. I shall write and tell her next time she sends me an address. At present I have no idea in which quarter of the globe my dear niece is to be found. Last time I heard of her she seemed in a fair way towards marrying a little j.a.p and settling in j.a.pan. Not a bad idea, my dear Dal, is it? Though, if j.a.pan is at all like the paper screens, I don't know where in that Liliputian country they will find a house, or a husband, or a what-do-you-call-'em thing they ride in, solid enough for our good Jane!' With intuitive tact of a very high order, I omitted this entire pa.s.sage about marrying the j.a.p. When your aunt's letter was finished, he asked point blank whether there was one from you. I said No, but that it was unlikely the news had reached you, and I felt sure you would write when it did. So I hope you will, dear; and Nurse Rosemary Gray will have instructions to read all his letters to him."