by E. F. Benson
“I can’t bear to look at it,” she said. “There was a piece of white heather, too, where he fell.”
Lady Dover’s sweet, rather Quakerish face did not change at all, her quiet wisdom still held sway.
“We are wrong, I think,” she said, “to associate material things with great grief. One cannot always wholly help it, but I think one should try to discourage it in oneself. I remember so well walking on this terrace, Madge, just after my mother died. It was a day rather like this; there were the same exquisite lights on the hills. And I remember I tried consciously to dissociate them from my own grief. I think it was wise. I would do it again, at least, which, in one’s own case, comes to the same thing.”
She paused a moment; there was one thing she wanted to say, and she believed it might do Madge good to have it said. Deep and overwhelming as her grief was, Lady Dover knew well that anything that took her mind off herself was salutary.
“But sometimes, on the other hand,” she went on, “we ought to remember those people who have been most associated with it. It does not do any good to anyone to shudder at the heather. But I think, dear, it would be kind if you just wrote a line to Lord Ellington. I think you have forgotten him, and what he must feel.”
For the moment she doubted if she had done wisely, so bitter was Madge’s reply.
“Ah, I can never forgive him!” she cried. “To think that but for him — —” And she broke off with quivering lip.
Lady Dover did not reply at once, but the doubt did not gain ground.
“I think, dear, that that is better unsaid,” she replied at length. “You do not really mean it either; your best self does not mean it.”
Again she paused, for she did not think very quickly.
“And this, too,” she said, “you must consider. How can you help Mr. Dundas not to feel bitter and resentful, for he has more direct cause to feel it than you, if you have that sort of thought in your heart? You will be unable to help him, in the one way in which you perhaps can, if you feel like that. Also, dear, supposing any one of us, Dover, I, Mr. Osborne, had to become either Mr. Dundas or Lord Ellington, do you think any of us could hesitate a moment? Do you not see that of all the people who have been made miserable by this terrible accident, which of them must be the most miserable?”
Then came the second outward sign from Madge. She took Lady Dover’s hand in both of hers.
“Don’t judge me too hardly,” she said. “I spoke very hastily, very wrongly. I have been thinking of my own misery too much; I have not thought enough about poor Evelyn. But I did not know there was such sorrow in the world.”
Lady Dover looked at her a moment, and drew her gently to a seat behind some bushes. And her own pretty, neat face was suddenly puckered up.
“Oh, Madge,” she said, “just let yourself go for ten minutes, and cry, my dear, sob your heart out, as they say. Have a good cry, dear; it will do you good. It is not cowardly, that — it helps one, it softens one, and it makes one braver perhaps afterwards. Yes, dear, let it come.”
And then the fountain of tears was unloosed, and those sobs, those deep sobs which come from the heart of living and suffering men and women, and are a sign and a proof, as it were, of their humanity, poured out. Madge had surrendered, she had ceased to hold herself aloof; brave she had been before, but brave in a sort of impenetrable armour of her own reserve. But now she cast it aside, and the womanhood which her love for Evelyn had begun to wake in her, came to itself and its own, more heroic than it had been before, because the armour was cast aside, and she stood defenceless, but fearless.
Before she went up again to Evelyn’s room she wrote:
My Dear Ellington,
I had no opportunity of speaking to you ——
Then her pen paused; that was not quite honest, and she began again:
I ought to have just seen you before you went yesterday, and I must ask your pardon that I did not. I just want to say this, that I am more sorry for you than I can possibly tell you, and I ask you to say to yourself, and to keep on saying to yourself, that it was in no way your fault. Also perhaps you may like to know how entirely I recognise that, and so, I know, will he.
You will wish, of course, to hear about him. He is going on very well, though up to now they have kept him under morphia. He will be quite blind, though. We must all try to make that affliction as light as possible for him. And I want so much to make you promise not to blame yourself. Please don’t; there is no blame. It was outside the control of any of us.
I will write again and tell you how he gets on. — Your affectionate cousin,
Madge Dundas.
Evelyn’s room looked out on to the terrace, away from the direction of the wind, and the nurse had just gone to the window to open it further, for the room, warmed by the afternoon sun, was growing rather hot. But just then he stirred with a more direct and conscious movement than he had yet made, half-sat up in bed, and with both hands suddenly felt at the bandages that swathed the upper part of his face. Then he spoke in those quick, staccato tones that were so characteristic.
“What has happened?” he said. “Where am I? What’s going on? Why can’t I see? Madge — —” And then he stopped suddenly.
She bit her lip for a moment, and just paused, summoning up her strength to bear what she knew was coming. Then she went quickly to the bedside and took his hand away from his face.
“Yes, dearest, I am here,” she said. “Lie quiet, won’t you, and we will talk.”
The nurse had come back from the window, and also stood by the bed. Madge spoke to her quickly and low.
“Leave us, please, nurse,” she said. “We have got to talk privately. I will call you if I want you.”
She left the room; Evelyn had instinctively answered to Madge’s voice, and had sunk back again on his pillows, and slowly in the long silence that followed, his mind began piecing things together, burrowing, groping, feeling for the things that had made their mark on his brain, but were remembered at present only dimly. The remembrance of some shock came first to him, and some sudden, stinging pain; next the smell of heather, warm and fragrant, and another bitter-tasting smell, the smell of blood. He put out his hand, and felt fumblingly over the clothes.
“Madge, are you still there?” he said quickly.
She took his hand.
“Yes, dear, sitting by you,” she said. “I shall always be here whenever you want me.”
Then came the staccato voice again.
“But why can’t I see you?” he asked. “What’s this over my face?”
Again she gently pulled back his other hand, which was feeling the bandages with quick, hovering movements like the antennæ of some insect.
“You were hurt, dear, you know,” she said. “They had to bandage your face, over your forehead and your eyes.”
Again there was silence; his mind was beginning to move more quickly, remembrance was pouring in from all sides.
“It was at Glen — Glen something, where we came by a night train, and you flirted with a valet,” he said.
“Yes, dear, Glen Callan,” said Madge quietly. But her eyes yearned and devoured him: all her heart was ready now, when the time came, to spring towards him, enfolding him with love.
But his voice was fretful rather and irritable, from shock and suffering.
“Yes, Glen Callan, of course,” he said. “I said Glen Callan, didn’t I? We are there, still, I suppose. Yes? And you went fishing in the morning, and I went shooting. Shooting?” he repeated.
All that Madge had ever felt before in her life grew dim in the intensity of this. The moment was close now, but somehow she no longer feared it. Fear could not live in these high altitudes: it died like some fever-germ.
“Yes, dear, you went shooting,” she said. “We were to meet at lunch, you know. But just before lunch there was an accident. You were shot, shot in the face.”
His hands grew restless again, and he shifted backwards and forwards in bed.
&
nbsp; “Ah, yes,” he said, “that is just what I could not remember. I was shot — yes, yes: I remember how it stung, but it didn’t hurt very much. Then I fell down in the heather: I can’t think why, but I stumbled — I couldn’t see. I was bleeding, too; the heather was warm and sweet-smelling, but there was blood, too, that tasted so horrible — like — like blood, there is nothing — all over my face. And then — well, what then?”
“We brought you back, dear,” said she, “and you had an operation. They had to extract the shot. It was all done very satisfactorily: you are going on very well.”
Then all the nervous trembling in Evelyn’s hands and the quick twitching of his body ceased, and he lay quite still a moment, gathering himself together to hear.
“Madge,” he said, speaking more slowly, “will you please tell me all? I don’t think you have told me all yet. I want to hear it, for I feel there is more yet. I was shot: that is all I know, and am lying here with a bandaged face. Well?”
Madge’s voice did not falter; that love and pity which possessed her had for this moment anyhow complete mastery over the frailness and cowardice of the mere flesh. She just took hold of both his hands, clasping them tightly in her’s, and spoke.
“You were shot all over the upper part of your face,” she said. “You — —”
But he interrupted her.
“Who shot me?” he asked.
“Guy Ellington,” she said. “The shot ricocheted off a rock and hit you. It was not his fault.”
“By Gad, poor devil!” said Evelyn.
“Yes, dear; I wrote to him just now, saying just that, how sorry I was for him and how sorry you would be when you knew. You — you were shot very badly, dear Evelyn. You were shot in the eyes, in both eyes — —”
Again there was silence. Then he spoke hoarsely:
“Do you mean that, all that?” he said.
“Yes, dear; all that. And I had better say it. You are blind, Evelyn.”
Then deep down from the very heart of her came the next words which spoke themselves.
“I wish I could have died instead,” she said.
He lay long absolutely motionless; there was no quiver of any kind on the corners of his mouth to show that he even understood. But she knew he understood, it was because he understood that he lay like that.
At last he spoke again, and the sorrow and anguish in his voice was still comfort to her beyond all price.
“So I shall never see you again,” he said.
Then she bent over the bed, and kissed him on the mouth.
“But never have I been so utterly yours as I am now!” she said, her voice still strong and unwavering. “And, oh, how it fed my heart to know what your first thought was, my darling. I think it would have broken if it had been anything else!”
TWENTY-FIRST
AFTER dinner that night, before she went to bed, Madge looked into Evelyn’s room several times and spoke to him gently. But on all these occasions he was lying quite still and he did not answer her; so, thinking he was asleep, she eventually retired to her own room just opposite, and went to bed. For the last two nights she had scarcely closed her eyes, but now, with the intense relief of knowing that Evelyn knew, of feeling, too, that he was bearing it with such wonderful quietness and composure, she fell asleep at once and slept long and well.
But her husband had not been asleep any of those times that she went into the room. He had never felt more awake in his life. But he had not answered her, because he had felt that he must be alone: just now nobody, not even she, could come near to him, for he had to go into the secret place of his soul, where only he himself might come. And as at the moment of death not even a man’s nearest and dearest, she with whom he has been one flesh, may take a single step with the soul on its passage, but it has to go absolutely alone, so now none could go with Evelyn; for in these hours he had to die to practically all, Madge alone excepted, which the word “life” connoted to him. And having done that, he had to begin, to start living again. There Madge could help him, but for this death, this realisation of what had happened, this summing up of all that had been cut off, he had to be alone.
There was no comfort for him anywhere: nor at any future time could comfort come. There would be no “getting used” to it, every moment, every hour, that passed would but put another spadeful of earth on his coffin. There was no more night and morning for him. Sunset and sunrise spilt like crimson flames along the sky existed no more: the green light below forest trees was dead, the clusters of purple clematis in his unfinished picture had grown black, there was neither green nor red nor any colour left, it was all black. The forms of everything had gone, too; it was as if the world had been some exquisite piece of modelling clay, and that some gigantic hand had closed on it, reducing it to a shapeless lump: neither shape nor colour existed any more. People had gone, too, faces and eyes and limbs, the gentle swelling of a woman’s breast, outline and profile and the warm, radiant tint of youth were gone, there was nothing left except voices. And voices without the sight of the mouth that spoke, of the shades of expression playing over the face, would be without significance: they would be dim and meaningless, they would not reach him in this desert of utter loneliness, where he would dwell forever out of sight of everything. And that was not all; that was not half. Of the world there was nothing left but voices, and of him what was left? Was he only a voice, too?
He was blind, that is to say, his eyes must have been practically destroyed. And the bandages extended, so he could feel, right up to his hair, and down to his upper lip. There were other injuries as well, then. What were they? How complete was the wreck? Above all, did Madge know, had she seen? If ever love had vibrated in a voice, it had in her’s, but did she know, or had she only seen these bandages?
With his frightfully sensitive artistic nature, this seemed to cut deeper than anything, this thought that he was disfigured; horrible to look on, an offence to the eye of day and to the light of the sun, and — to the sight of her he loved. He would be pitied, too; and even as man and woman turned away from the sight of him they would be sorry for him, and the thought of pity was like a file on his flesh. Would it not have been better if the shot had gone a little deeper yet? His maimed, disfigured body would then have been decently hidden away and covered by the kind, cool earth, he would not have to walk the earth to be stared at — to be turned from.
His nurse not long before had made her last visit for the night, and, seeing him lying so still supposed, like Madge, that he was asleep, and had gone back to the dressing-room next door, to go to bed herself. His progress during the day had been most satisfactory, the feverishness had almost gone, and the doctor, when the wounds were dressed that afternoon, had been amazed to see how rapidly and well the processes of healing were going on. Certainly there was no lack of vitality or recuperative power in his patient, nor in the keenness and utter despair of his mental suffering was vitality absent. That same vitality coloured and suffused that; he saw it all with the hideous vividness of an imaginative nature. Doubt and uncertainty, however, here were worse than the worst that the truth could hold for him, and he called to the nurse, who came at once.
“What is it, Mr. Dundas?” she asked. “I hoped you were asleep. You are not in pain?”
“No, not in pain. But I can’t sleep. I want to ask you two or three questions. Pray answer them: I sha’n’t sleep till you do.”
She did not speak, half-guessing what was coming.
“I want to know this, first of all,” he said, speaking quite quietly. “What shall I look like when these things are healed, when the bandages come off?”
Nurse James was essentially a truthful woman, but she did not hesitate about her reply. There are times when no decent person would hesitate about telling a lie, the bigger the better. She laughed.
“Well, I never!” she said. “And have you brought me from my bed just to ask that! I never heard such a thing. Why, you will look as you always have looked, Mr. Dundas, but
your eyelids will be shut.”
The good, kind woman suddenly felt that the ease with which all this came to her was almost appalling. She was a glorious liar, and had never known it till now.
“Why, bless you,” she went on, “your wife was in here when your face was dressed to-day, and — you were still under morphia, you know, and did not know she was there — and she said to Dr. Inglis: ‘Why, he only looks as if he was asleep.’”
“She has seen me, then?” asked Evelyn eagerly. “She has seen my face?”
“Why, of course, and she bent and kissed it, just as your wife should do. There’s a brave woman now. Is that all, sir?”
Evelyn gave one great sigh of relief.
“Yes, nurse,” he said. “I am sorry I disturbed you. Yet I assure you it was worth while. I can’t tell you how you have relieved me. I thought — oh, my God! it is not hell after all.”
She arranged the bedclothes about him, and though she had been so glib, she could not now speak at once.
“There, then; you’ll go to sleep, won’t you, now you know that,” she said. “But to think of you worrying here all these hours!”
Madge was, of course, told by Nurse James what happened before she saw Evelyn again, for that diplomatist came to her room very early next morning, and informed her of it all. She acquiesced in it, as she would have acquiesced in anything that in the opinion of nurse or doctor conduced to his recovery, and for the next day or two his progress was speedy and uninterrupted. He had faced the first shock, that he was blind, with a courage that was really heroic, and except for that hour when he held himself in front of it, purposing and meaning to realise once and for all exactly what it implied, he exercised wonderful self-control in not letting himself brood over it. This was the easier because that second fear, the roots of which went so much deeper than the other, had proved to be groundless. Terrible as was his plight, the knowledge that it might have been so much more terrible was ever in his mind, casting its light into the places that he had thought were of an impenetrable darkness.
