CHAPTER XIII
DURRANCE BEGINS TO SEE
Ethne stood at the drawing-room window of the house in Hill Street. Mrs.Adair sat in front of her tea-table. Both women were waiting, and theywere both listening for some particular sound to rise up from the streetand penetrate into the room. The window stood open that they might hearit the more quickly. It was half-past five in the afternoon. June hadcome round again with the exhilaration of its sunlight, and London hadsparkled into a city of pleasure and green trees. In the housesopposite, the windows were gay with flowers; and in the street below,the carriages rolled easily towards the Park. A jingle of bells roseupwards suddenly and grew loud. Mrs. Adair raised her head quickly.
"That's a cab," she said.
"Yes."
Ethne leaned forward and looked down. "But it's not stopping here;" andthe jingle grew fainter and died away.
Mrs. Adair looked at the clock.
"Colonel Durrance is late," she said, and she turned curiously towardsEthne. It seemed to her that Ethne had spoken her "yes" with much moreof suspense than eagerness; her attitude as she leaned forward at thewindow had been almost one of apprehension; and though Mrs. Adair wasnot quite sure, she fancied that she detected relief when the cab passedby the house and did not stop. "I wonder why you didn't go to thestation and meet Colonel Durrance?" she asked slowly.
The answer came promptly enough.
"He might have thought that I had come because I looked upon him asrather helpless, and I don't wish him to think that. He has his servantwith him." Ethne looked again out of the window, and once or twice shemade a movement as if she was about to speak and then thought silencethe better part. Finally, however, she made up her mind.
"You remember the telegram I showed to you?"
"From Lieutenant Calder, saying that Colonel Durrance had gone blind?"
"Yes. I want you to promise never to mention it. I don't want him toknow that I ever received it."
Mrs. Adair was puzzled, and she hated to be puzzled. She had been shownthe telegram, but she had not been told that Ethne had written toDurrance, pledging herself to him immediately upon its receipt. Ethne,when she showed the telegram, had merely said, "I am engaged to him."Mrs. Adair at once believed that the engagement had been of somestanding, and she had been allowed to continue in that belief.
"You will promise?" Ethne insisted.
"Certainly, my dear, if you like," returned Mrs. Adair, with anungracious shrug of the shoulders. "But there is a reason, I suppose. Idon't understand why you exact the promise."
"Two lives must not be spoilt because of me."
There was some ground for Mrs. Adair's suspicion that Ethne expectedthe blind man to whom she was betrothed, with apprehension. It is truethat she was a little afraid. Just twelve months had passed since, inthis very room, on just such a sunlit afternoon, Ethne had biddenDurrance try to forget her, and each letter which she had since receivedhad shown that, whether he tried or not, he had not forgotten. Even thatlast one received three weeks ago, the note scrawled in the handwritingof a child, from Wadi Halfa, with the large unsteady words stragglingunevenly across the page, and the letters running into one anotherwherein he had told his calamity and renounced his suit--even thatproved, and perhaps more surely than its hopeful forerunners--that hehad not forgotten. As she waited at the window she understood veryclearly that it was she herself who must buckle to the hard work offorgetting. Or if that was impossible, she must be careful always thatby no word let slip in a forgetful moment she betrayed that she had notforgotten.
"No," she said, "two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," and sheturned towards Mrs. Adair.
"Are you quite sure, Ethne," said Mrs. Adair, "that the two lives willnot be more surely spoilt by this way of yours--the way of marriage?Don't you think that you will come to feel Colonel Durrance, in spite ofyour will, something of a hindrance and a drag? Isn't it possible thathe may come to feel that too? I wonder. I very much wonder."
"No," said Ethne, decisively. "I shall not feel it, and he must not."
The two lives, according to Mrs. Adair, were not the lives of Durranceand Harry Feversham, but of Durrance and Ethne herself. There she waswrong; but Ethne did not dispute the point, she was indeed rather gladthat her friend was wrong, and she allowed her to continue in her wrongbelief.
Ethne resumed her watch at the window, foreseeing her life, planning itout so that never might she be caught off her guard. The task would bedifficult, no doubt, and it was no wonder that in these minutes whileshe waited fear grew upon her lest she should fail. But the end was wellworth the effort, and she set her eyes upon that. Durrance had losteverything which made life to him worth living the moment he wentblind--everything, except one thing. "What should I do if I werecrippled?" he had said to Harry Feversham on the morning when for thelast time they had ridden together in the Row. "A clever man might putup with it. But what should I do if I had to sit in a chair all mydays?" Ethne had not heard the words, but she understood the man wellenough without them. He was by birth the inheritor of the other places,and he had lost his heritage. The things which delighted him, the longjourneys, the faces of strange countries, the camp-fire, a mere spark ofred light amidst black and empty silence, the hours of sleep in the openunder bright stars, the cool night wind of the desert, and the work ofgovernment--all these things he had lost. Only one thing remained tohim--herself, and only, as she knew very well, herself so long as hecould believe she wanted him. And while she was still occupied with herresolve, the cab for which she waited stopped unnoticed at the door. Itwas not until Durrance's servant had actually rung the bell that herattention was again attracted to the street.
"He has come!" she said with a start.
Durrance, it was true, was not particularly acute; he had never beeninquisitive; he took his friends as he found them; he put them under nomicroscope. It would have been easy at any time, Ethne reflected, toquiet his suspicions, should he have ever come to entertain any. But_now_ it would be easier than ever. There was no reason forapprehension. Thus she argued, but in spite of the argument she rathernerved herself to an encounter than went forward to welcome herbetrothed.
Mrs. Adair slipped out of the room, so that Ethne was alone whenDurrance entered at the door. She did not move immediately; she retainedher attitude and position, expecting that the change in him would forthe first moment shock her. But she was surprised; for the particularchanges which she had expected were noticeable only through theirabsence. His face was worn, no doubt, his hair had gone grey, but therewas no air of helplessness or uncertainty, and it was that which for hisown sake she most dreaded. He walked forward into the room as though hiseyes saw; his memory seemed to tell him exactly where each piece of thefurniture stood. The most that he did was once or twice to put out ahand where he expected a chair.
Ethne drew silently back into the window rather at a loss with whatwords to greet him, and immediately he smiled and came straight towardsher.
"Ethne," he said.
"It isn't true, then," she exclaimed. "You have recovered." The wordswere forced from her by the readiness of his movement.
"It is quite true, and I have not recovered," he answered. "But youmoved at the window and so I knew that you were there."
"How did you know? I made no noise."
"No, but the window's open. The noise in the street became suddenlylouder, so I knew that some one in front of the window had moved aside.I guessed that it was you."
Their words were thus not perhaps the most customary greeting between acouple meeting on the first occasion after they have become engaged, butthey served to hinder embarrassment. Ethne shrank from any perfunctoryexpression of regret, knowing that there was no need for it, andDurrance had no wish to hear it. For there were many things which thesetwo understood each other well enough to take as said. They did no morethan shake hands when they had spoken, and Ethne moved back into theroom.
"I will give you some tea," she said, "then we can talk
."
"Yes, we must have a talk, mustn't we?" Durrance answered seriously. Hethrew off his serious air, however, and chatted with good humour aboutthe details of his journey home. He even found a subject of amusement inhis sense of helplessness during the first days of his blindness; andEthne's apprehensions rapidly diminished. They had indeed almostvanished from her mind when something in his attitude suddenly broughtthem back.
"I wrote to you from Wadi Halfa," he said. "I don't know whether youcould read the letter."
"Quite well," said Ethne.
"I got a friend of mine to hold the paper and tell me when I was writingon it or merely on the blotting-pad," he continued with a laugh."Calder--of the Sappers--but you don't know him."
He shot the name out rather quickly, and it came upon Ethne with a shockthat he had set a trap to catch her. The curious stillness of his faceseemed to tell her that he was listening with an extreme intentness forsome start, perhaps even a checked exclamation, which would betray thatshe knew something of Calder of the Sappers. Did he suspect, she askedherself? Did he know of the telegram? Did he guess that her letter wassent out of pity? She looked into Durrance's face, and it told hernothing except that it was very alert. In the old days, a year ago, theexpression of his eyes would have answered her quite certainly, howeverclose he held his tongue.
"I could read the letter without difficulty," she answered gently. "Itwas the letter you would have written. But I had written to you before,and of course your bad news could make no difference. I take back noword of what I wrote."
Durrance sat with his hands upon his knees, leaning forward a little.Again Ethne was at a loss. She could not tell from his manner or hisface whether he accepted or questioned her answer; and again sherealised that a year ago while he had his sight she would have been inno doubt.
"Yes, I know you. You would take nothing back," he said at length. "Butthere is my point of view."
Ethne looked at him with apprehension.
"Yes?" she replied, and she strove to speak with unconcern. "Will youtell me it?"
Durrance assented, and began in the deliberate voice of a man who hasthought out his subject, knows it by heart, and has decided, moreover,the order of words by which it will be most lucidly developed.
"I know what blindness means to all men--a growing, narrowing egotismunless one is perpetually on one's guard. And will one be perpetually onone's guard? Blindness means that to all men," he repeated emphatically."But it must mean more to me, who am deprived of every occupation. If Iwere a writer, I could still dictate. If I were a business man, I couldconduct my business. But I am a soldier, and not a clever soldier.Jealousy, a continual and irritable curiosity--there is no Paul Pry likeyour blind man--a querulous claim upon your attention--these are myspecial dangers." And Ethne laughed gently in contradiction of hisargument.
"Well, perhaps one may hold them off," he acknowledged, "but they are tobe considered. I have considered them. I am not speaking to you withoutthought. I have pondered and puzzled over the whole matter night afternight since I got your letter, wondering what I should do. You know howgladly, with what gratitude, I would have answered you, 'Yes, let themarriage go on,' if I dared. If I dared! But I think--don't you?--that agreat trouble rather clears one's wits. I used to lie awake at Cairo andthink; and the unimportant trivial considerations gradually droppedaway; and a few straight and simple truths stood out rather vividly.One felt that one had to cling to them and with all one's might,because nothing else was left."
"Yes, that I do understand," Ethne replied in a low voice. She had gonethrough just such an experience herself. It might have been herself, andnot Durrance, who was speaking. She looked up at him, and for the firsttime began to understand that after all she and he might have much incommon. She repeated over to herself with an even firmer determination,"Two lives shall not be spoilt because of me."
"Well?" she asked.
"Well, here's one of the very straight and simple truths. Marriagebetween a man crippled like myself, whose life is done, and a woman likeyou, active and young, whose life is in its flower, would be quite wrongunless each brought to it much more than friendship. It would be quitewrong if it implied a sacrifice for you."
"It implies no sacrifice," she answered firmly.
Durrance nodded. It was evident that the answer contented him, and Ethnefelt that it was the intonation to which he listened rather than thewords. His very attitude of concentration showed her that. She began towonder whether it would be so easy after all to quiet his suspicions nowthat he was blind; she began to realise that it might possibly on thatvery account be all the more difficult.
"Then do you bring more than friendship?" he asked suddenly. "You willbe very honest, I know. Tell me."
Ethne was in a quandary. She knew that she must answer, and at once andwithout ambiguity. In addition, she must answer honestly.
"There is nothing," she replied, and as firmly as before, "nothing inthe world which I wish for so earnestly as that you and I should marry."
It was an honest wish, and it was honestly spoken. She knew nothing ofthe conversation which had passed between Harry Feversham and LieutenantSutch in the grill-room of the Criterion Restaurant; she knew nothing ofHarry's plans; she had not heard of the Gordon letters recovered fromthe mud-wall of a ruined house in the city of the Dervishes on the Nilebank. Harry Feversham had, so far as she knew and meant, gone forevercompletely out of her life. Therefore her wish was an honest one. But itwas not an exact answer to Durrance's question, and she hoped that againhe would listen to the intonation, rather than to the words. However, heseemed content with it.
"Thank you, Ethne," he said, and he took her hand and shook it. His facesmiled at her. He asked no other questions. There was not a doubt, shethought; his suspicions were quieted; he was quite content. And uponthat Mrs. Adair came with discretion into the room.
She had the tact to greet Durrance as one who suffered under nodisadvantage, and she spoke as though she had seen him only the weekbefore.
"I suppose Ethne has told you of our plan," she said, as she took hertea from her friend's hand.
"No, not yet," Ethne answered.
"What plan?" asked Durrance.
"It is all arranged," said Mrs. Adair. "You will want to go home toGuessens in Devonshire. I am your neighbour--a couple of fields separateus, that's all. So Ethne will stay with me during the interval beforeyou are married."
"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Adair," Durrance exclaimed; "because, ofcourse, there will be an interval."
"A short one, no doubt," said Mrs. Adair.
"Well, it's this way. If there's a chance that I may recover my sight,it would be better that I should seize it at once. Time means a gooddeal in these cases."
"Then there is a chance?" cried Ethne.
"I am going to see a specialist here to-morrow," Durrance answered."And, of course, there's the oculist at Wiesbaden. But it may not benecessary to go so far. I expect that I shall be able to stay atGuessens and come up to London when it is necessary. Thank you verymuch, Mrs. Adair. It is a good plan." And he added slowly, "From mypoint of view there could be no better."
Ethne watched Durrance drive away with his servant to his old rooms inSt. James's Street, and stood by the window after he had gone, in muchthe same attitude and absorption as that which had characterised herbefore he had come. Outside in the street the carriages were now comingback from the park, and there was just one other change. Ethne'sapprehensions had taken a more definite shape.
She believed that suspicion was quieted in Durrance for to-day, at allevents. She had not heard his conversation with Calder in Cairo. She didnot know that he believed there was no cure which could restore him tosight. She had no remotest notion that the possibility of a remedy mightbe a mere excuse. But none the less she was uneasy. Durrance had grownmore acute. Not only his senses had been sharpened,--that, indeed, wasto be expected,--but trouble and thought had sharpened his mind as well.It had become more penetrating.
She felt that she was entering upon anencounter of wits, and she had a fear lest she should be worsted. "Twolives shall not be spoilt because of me," she repeated, but it was aprayer now, rather than a resolve. For one thing she recognised quitesurely: Durrance saw ever so much more clearly now that he was blind.