5 
 
The Eyes of the 'Blind 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/eyesofblindnovelOOwillrich 
 
The Eyes of the Blind 
 
 :: :: :: :: A Kovel :: :: :: :: 
 
 *By M. P. Willcocks, Author of 
 M Wings of "Desire," "The Way Up," "Change,*' etc. 
 
 LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO. 
 "PATERNOSTER ROW :: :: 1917 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I.— A Wayfaring ..... i 
 
 II. — Entrance and Exit . 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 III. — Rebels 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 IV.— A Wise Wife 
 
 
 
 . 35 
 
 V. — Love in a Valley 
 
 
 
 • 47 
 
 VI. — Metier de Femme 
 
 
 
 . 62 
 
 VII. — Leap and Rebound 
 
 
 
 • 79 
 
 VIII. — The Plain Dealer 
 
 
 
 . 91 
 
 IX. — Love's Treason . 
 
 
 
 in 
 
 X. — The Kindling of Coals 
 
 
 
 131 
 
 XI. — A Close Seal 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 XII.*— A Crowning Mercy 
 
 
 
 172 
 
 XIII. — Merchandise 
 
 
 
 186 
 
 XIV.— Fiat Lux . 
 
 
 
 203 
 
 XV.— Heritage .... 
 
 
 
 216 
 
 XVI.— Life with its Bars . 
 
 
 
 234 
 
 XVII.— The Strength of the Stroi> 
 
 ig 
 
 
 253 
 
 439834 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XVIIL— Aere Perennius . 
 
 XIX. — The Gauntlet of the Gods 
 XX. — Hammer and Anvil 
 
 XXL— A Primitive 
 XXII. — The Eleventh Commandment 
 XXIIL— Jungle Law 
 XXIV.— Sand in the Machine 
 
 XXV.— The Turning Wheel . 
 XXVI. — Image and Superscription . 
 XXVIL— The Reward of Virtue 
 
 PAGE 
 264 
 
 284 
 
 304 
 326 
 
 350 
 360 
 
 375 
 
 391 
 406 
 
 4i3 
 
THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A WAYFARING 
 
 SUDDENLY raising his head from the young couple 
 before him at the altar steps, Parson Retallack 
 paused, the ring held up between finger and thumb. The 
 bridegroom, his lips already parted for the triumphant 
 profession, " With this ring I thee wed," followed the 
 direction of the vicar's glance and stared up at the rain- 
 lashed windows under the roof. For it was a wild day in 
 February and the light that filled the church was sullen 
 with storm-clouds. The moisture from walls and vaults 
 lay thick on the pillars of black Cataclew stone between 
 the low arches of the church. The remote parish of 
 St. Meryn must once have boasted of fine stone-carvers, 
 for every capital carried an exquisite design of wild flowers 
 and ferns. 
 
 Though well accustomed in a stormy land to the roar 
 of the wind, the wedding company yet stood as if turned 
 to stone by the sudden stoppage in the ceremony. Glance 
 sought glance in puzzled questioning, till at length in a 
 lull of the wind they caught the sound which the vicar 
 had heard long before. It was the clucking of a hen who 
 announces the arrival of an egg. The next moment the 
 parson had thrust the ring into the bridegroom's hand, 
 and was hurrying down the nave in the direction of the 
 door. 
 
 " I knew she'd stolen her nest," he cried, " for I've 
 
2 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 missed her these three weeks and more. But now I'll 
 have her right enough." 
 
 While Mr. Retallack was wrestling with the latch of the 
 door, a buzz of indignation followed the silence of con- 
 sternation. The bride, being assisted to a seat in the 
 choir-stalls, had to be plied with smelling-salts and the 
 groom with indignant comment. 
 
 But on the whole, parson being what he was, two- 
 thirds farmer and one-third churchman, it was felt by 
 the majority that to ask him to lose a sitting of eggs purely 
 for the exigencies of time and space was more than could 
 justly be demanded of mortal man. Besides, he had 
 married and buried and christened for them for thirty 
 years and more, so that he was now, like the weather, a 
 perpetual occasion of complaint and endurance. Some 
 talk there certainly was of reporting the affair to the 
 Bishop, but this only came from the people's warden, who 
 doubtless felt it to be his duty to show special severity. 
 To put it bluntly, since the parson's pigs and poultry were 
 valued more highly than his spiritual ministrations, they 
 therefore waited patiently for his return. Everyone, 
 however, felt it to be particularly hard on all bashful 
 females involved in the case, and more especially on the 
 bride who, as being neither maid nor wife, declared she 
 was ready to sink into the ground. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Retallack appeared once more, 
 hurrying up the nave with a clutch of eggs in the sexton's 
 hat, he was greeted with a murmur of applause. Everyone 
 bore in mind the fact that he could rattle through a 
 service faster than any other incumbent in the county, 
 that his progeny in children and grandchildren numbered 
 fifteen, and that in the holidays, when they were all at 
 home, the vicarage was popularly reported to cook half 
 a stone of potatoes a day. Such a family certainly could 
 not afford to be deprived of a good sitting of eggs. 
 
 " Now then, let's get this job over," said he, cheerfully 
 depositing the sexton's hat in a side pew. 
 
 When it was over, he clicked his watch-case with the 
 congratulatory remark : 
 
A WAYFARING 3 
 
 " That's a record. Not lost ten minutes over the 
 whole thing." 
 
 In the vestry he always patted the bridegroom on the 
 back and on suitable occasions kissed the bride, being of 
 the opinion, in fact, that there is nothing like putting the 
 best face on a bad matter. Only the sexton, being 
 naturally a man of gloom, saw fit to grumble as the parson 
 stood taking off his surplice. 
 
 " 'Twas a mischancy thing to happen," said he, " to 
 be held up between heaven and hell, as you mid say, 
 especially when 'twas come to such a pitch with the man 
 that, as like as not, he was dying to say, ' I won't have 
 her.' Enough to try the spirit of any female and the make 
 of any man, even if 'twas but a matter of ten minutes." 
 
 "Well," replied Mr. Retallack, as they heard the noise 
 of a horse's hoofs galloping down the road, " they may 
 lose their train, for they cut it fine in fixing the ceremony 
 so late." 
 
 " Besides," said the sexton, " the man did it on the 
 cheap and wouldn't hear of a pair of horses, for mean he 
 is, enough to grow potatoes on his father's grave. Ay, 
 they'll miss their train, and the maid'll find out the make 
 of the man she's got afore the corn's had time to get 
 used to the cut of the boot, so to say." 
 
 The pair struggled for a moment with the heavy door 
 curtain that flapped in their faces like a sail. The parson 
 passed out first, carefully protecting the eggs which he 
 carried now in his own hat. Not even the marriage 
 prospects of his parishioners could depress him to-day, 
 for was it not a Wednesday ? And every Wednesday 
 evening it was his custom to spend at Lanvean, playing 
 whist with his crony, William Carlyon. 
 
 Those afield early that morning, weatherwise as such 
 folks usually are, had plainly foreseen the coming of a 
 gale from the south-west. Now, at high noon, the wind 
 was twisting the limbs of the tamarisk bushes and sweep- 
 ing across the uplands in flying scuds of hail and 
 rain. 
 
 11 So old Tom Geake's sinking fast, they tell me," said 
 
 1* 
 
4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the sexton, as they sheltered for a second under the mossy 
 wall of the churchyard. M Well, the day's more vitty 
 for a burying than a marrying." 
 
 " Glad you reminded me, Job," said Mr. Retallack. 
 " They did send up this morning to tell me, but it clean 
 slipped my memory. I ought to go over and see the 
 old chap, though." 
 
 " Ay, and he'll want 'ee, too, sir, to strike the best 
 bargain you can for'n with Them Above. For Tom 
 Geake's the man as was cheated with a bad florin. But 
 when the fellow that had passed it come back from South 
 Africa, there was old Geake waitin' for 'en upon platform 
 with a police sergeant by his side. Saith he : ' Here's 
 the bad coin you paid me off with, and I can prove it.' 
 And so a did, though 'twas five years since he'd clapped 
 eyes on the chap. Now a man as busy as that with this 
 world could never find time to give thought to the other. 
 For what I allays says is, that rogues want lawyers to 
 pass 'em through this life and skinflints must have parsons 
 to shove 'em into t'other. But 'tis the Almighty Hisself 
 that takes in hand the generous sinner — both here and 
 there." 
 
 With a laugh the vicar stepped into the road, his hatful 
 of eggs in the curve of his arm, and his umbrella bent in 
 the teeth of the driving rain. The sexton's mouth water- 
 ing at the thought of the midday stew, he turned up the 
 street and presently heard the bang of the vicar's front 
 door. 
 
 Within Mrs. Retallack met her husband, carrying his 
 wool-work slippers, worked in pansies, in her hand. Her 
 business in life was now to wrap her husband in warmth 
 and softness, as long ago she had wrapped her babies. 
 A tall woman, with pink cheeks in which the colour had 
 run in streaks, she carried her head set far back on sloping 
 shoulders. Everything about her was billowy, from the 
 blonde hair that refused to show its greyness to the flutter- 
 ing cap-strings of dark violet and the dimpled chins that 
 lost themselves in the curves of her neck. 
 
 " What weather, my dear ! " she exclaimed. " How- 
 
A WAYFARING 5 
 
 ever will you get down to Lanvean to-night ? " Her 
 voice was a full contralto. 
 
 " I must get over to Trevose, I'm afraid. For old 
 Geake's dying, and Job thinks it's a case that calls for 
 my professional services." 
 
 " Never, John ! Not to Trevose on such a day ! But, 
 of course, anybody'd be the better for seeing you." 
 
 Mr. Retallack smiled at her as he sank into his shabby 
 leather-covered arm-chair. 
 
 " But if you've got that walk before you, you must 
 just have your dinner comfortably before the fire and a 
 bit of a rest before you start." 
 
 The parson ate his boiled mutton and capers on a little 
 table in the study. But over his second course Mrs. 
 Retallack pursed up her mouth in deliberation. John 
 hated rice pudding, the dish provided for the household, 
 and he must have something special to-day in view of his 
 expedition. Mrs. Retallack's mind was untroubled by 
 perspective ; in her view, Geake's death and the parson's 
 pudding were about on the same level of importance. 
 Moreover, though she had lived in St. Meryn all her life, 
 to her the country beyond her garden was still, like the 
 background of a saint's temptation in a medieval painter's 
 view, a place of lurking adders and prowling beasts. 
 
 ** The preserved pears ! " she murmured at last. 
 
 That was the way she lived ; to ply her people with 
 good things to eat, her store cupboard being the altar of 
 her worship. With rosy cheeks and shining eyes she 
 plumped down the dish of pears before the parson and 
 pushed up to him the glass of clotted cream. 
 
 Stewed pears in that household were not, as town- 
 dwellers know them, tasteless pallid slabs of vegetable 
 pulp, but richly red from their own essence, not from 
 cochineal, and boiled with pounds and pounds of lump 
 sugar till the whole is honey-sweet and thick like pre- 
 served ginger. This the parson ate, piled up with cream, 
 while Mrs. Retallack watched him, hand on flowing hips. 
 She could stand so and never suggest a notion of the virago 
 with arms akimbo. 
 
6 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 At length, when the pears were no longer a joy to the 
 palate, but a possibly distressful weight within, she 
 appeared once more, this time with a steaming glass of 
 whisky and water. 
 
 " On account of the pears, dear," she said, " and then 
 you've been scrambling among the tombs after the eggs. 
 But such luck as it was to get them, and after three weeks 
 too." 
 
 To both frugal souls the luck of the eggs justified the 
 extra extravagance of that glass of whisky. 
 
 It was then, since one glass leads to another even with 
 a parson of the Established Church, a pot-valiant vicar 
 who at length took the road leading from the village of 
 St. Meryn to the headland between the bays of Con- 
 stantine and Lanvean. From the top of the hill he could 
 look across the rushy stream of the valley to the foam- 
 flecked waters of the bay, could hear the roar of the in- 
 coming tide. Just beyond the sandy stretches of 
 Lanvean, amid a clump of trees, rose the dark walls of 
 Lanvean House, where the green card-table already 
 waited in front of the fire. But between Mr. Retallack 
 and this paradise lay the long tramp to Trevose, either by 
 inland roads deep in sand between sheltering walls of 
 slate and tamarisk, or shorter and more wind-swept, by 
 the direct way across the sand-dunes. 
 
 With an emphatic nod of his head and a fierce glint in 
 his bulging eyes of clouded blue, he turned towards the 
 dunes, for the zest of the liquor hummed in his brain 
 and put a curtain of illusion between himself and the 
 rough, uneven way. It even deadened the noise of the 
 sea that buffeted his ear-drums with the roar of water 
 rushing through a mill-dam. Crossing a field in which, 
 from soil that was half sand, grew a scanty crop of 
 mangolds, he reached the dunes. Here the spray beat 
 upon his skin, and knots of foam like moving heads of 
 bog-cotton fluttered across the hummocks of turf. The 
 rocks at the sea-board jutted upwards from a sea so white 
 that the surf at its edge shone yellow with the churning 
 of the sand. High in air over the breakers hung a veil 
 
A WAYFARING 7 
 
 of mist which blotted out the distance and brought the 
 horizon close. 
 
 To the parson's senses, drugged as they were by noise 
 and liquor, it soon seemed that he had been struggling with 
 the wind for years. Thought faded while his eye yet 
 registered everything, the bleached heads of sea-thrift 
 no less clearly than the wreckage of planks tossed high 
 on the turf or half-buried in the niches of the sand- 
 banks. Here every rabbit burrow runs into the recesses 
 of a burial place of early man. Wherever the soil is 
 displaced, these middens yield strange treasure of urn or 
 cist. 
 
 At the stream which in winter intersects the flats, he 
 stopped dead, for below him a wide current was flowing 
 across a sandy bottom that shifted incessantly as he 
 watched the streamlets. Eddies boiled upwards and 
 sent rows of bubbles floating downward to the sea. While 
 he hesitated at this meeting-place of stream and tide, a 
 wave swept inland that seemed, white-crested as it was, 
 to carry everything before it with a noiseless irresistible 
 onrush. New banks appeared in the sand, and a surge of 
 foam drove far up the ravine in the teeth of the down- 
 flowing stream. 
 
 At the sight of this something more than the dread of 
 wet feet mastered Parson Retallack. His teeth chattered 
 with the fear of quicksands, of the power of soft things, 
 as of wind and tide, that obey strange laws and summon 
 the ninth wave from the deep. He remembered the 
 bore of the Severn even as, outwardly resolute, he stooped 
 to turn up the bottom of his trousers for the crossing. 
 Still more vividly did he recall the whist- table at Lanvean, 
 now further off than ever, since, if he was to get to Trevose, 
 he must turn back by the way he had come and begin the 
 walk all over again. 
 
 At this moment he heard a shout from the beach and 
 saw a rider drawing near on a shaggy horse, whose fetlocks 
 sank deep in the sand at every step. The parson waved 
 his hat in reply and stood watching the horse take the 
 ford. More than once the whip came smartly down, ere 
 
8 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 in a series of scrambles it had mounted the sand-bank to 
 Mr. Retallack's side. 
 
 " You're too late, sir," said the man. " Mr. Geake's 
 gone. He passed away an hour or two ago." 
 
 The parson sighed with relief, but drooped the muscles 
 of his face. 
 
 " You knew where I was going then ? " he asked. 
 
 " I saw you about a mile away. That's why I headed 
 round to meet you, for, said I, it'll save him a long walk. 
 And at Trevose you're not wanted. For old Geake's 
 sisters and the widow were flying at one another about the 
 will almost before the breath was out of his body." 
 
 " Ugh," grunted Mr. Retallack, " well, we must all go. 
 And now, I suppose I'd better make for Lanvean, though 
 it's over early for card-playing. Cards by daylight, too ; 
 the devil's own bait, I used to be told." 
 
 " Not on a Wednesday, sir," laughed Gilbert Carlyon. 
 " Father never plays on any other day, but I believe he 
 spends all the rest of the week waiting for Wednesday to 
 come round." 
 
 " It's not half-past three yet," objected the parson. 
 
 " If you mount at the next gate, we'll be in before four. 
 I'll run by the side of her," answered Carlyon. 
 
 " And," said the parson, full of satisfaction, " we don't 
 generally start till six. But 'twas a Providence that you 
 met me at all." 
 
 At the first field gate they halted for Gilbert to dis- 
 mount and give the parson a lift. 
 
 " All right ? " asked Mr. Retallack as the mare, getting 
 into her stride with the new weight, quickened her 
 pace. 
 
 The young man nodded, gripping the stirrup. He was 
 running at the horse's side now at a pace unexpectedly 
 swift in a man of his build. For he stooped as though his 
 shoulders were too heavy for his frame and his legs were 
 curved in the manner of a man more at home in the saddle 
 than on his feet. Tanned features, rough in the moulding, 
 were set in an oval face and thatched by strong black 
 hair growing in natural curves unflattened by a hat. 
 
A WAYFARING 9 
 
 His irregular teeth were bluish-white, like porcelain, and 
 projected slightly. 
 
 At the entrance to Lanvean, while the vicar dismounted 
 at the lifting stock, Gilbert stood to get his breath back, 
 the mare nuzzling her head under his arm. He returned 
 the caress by a slight pressure, but his expression scarcely 
 changed. His was a face unused to the quick play of 
 emotion. 
 
 The Lanvean pack, a setter, a collie, and an Irish 
 terrier, leaping the hedge from the farmyard, rushed 
 barking through the colt's-foot of the plantation. Gilbert 
 Carlyon led the mare towards the stables that, open in 
 parts to the sky where the slates had been torn off by the 
 wind, ran alongside the wall. In a ray of light from a 
 rift in the clouds the slates of the bell-tower overhead 
 gleamed like metal. 
 
 " I'll go round to the back," said Mr. Retallack, " for I 
 must put on dry socks before I sit down." 
 
 Quite at home, he walked briskly up the path to the 
 yard, while Gilbert disappeared in the stable. The light 
 now was broadening to a belt of stormy gold, and against 
 it the shapes of the dogs crouching on the hedge stood 
 out as though cut in bronze. Raising his stick, the parson 
 began to hammer lustily on the low door that, framed in 
 a granite archway and studded with nails, was as strong 
 as a church. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ENTRANCE AND EXIT 
 
 FIVE times William Carlyon sneezed that afternoon 
 as his housekeeper set down the tray on the deal 
 table in front of him and poured the tea over the broken 
 pieces of toast in his cup. 
 
 " Been sleeping in a field with the gate open seemingly," 
 she observed tartly. 
 
 It was a figurative expression, since for nine years he 
 had been paralysed and during all that time had never 
 entered one of his own fields. Then she threw a fresh log 
 on the fire ; salted wreck-wood it was that burnt blue 
 at the edges and was pitted with nail marks. The high 
 carved mantelpiece was of the same black marble as the 
 pillars in St. Meryn Church and beneath it the fire glowed 
 like a furnace. There were three long windows to the 
 room and every sill was lined with red baize, yet in the 
 draught the matting billowed across the floor. 
 
 Having gulped down his tea, the old man signed to Mrs. 
 Parsons to remove the tray. 
 
 " Bring the book," he said curtly, wheeling his chair 
 closer by a heave of his whole body. 
 
 Instead of one book, she placed two, the first a Bible 
 and the second a ledger. The latter it was that Mr. 
 Carlyon opened first, passing his forefinger down the 
 long pages. Every one of the farm accounts he carried 
 in his head, but the ledger came in useful to confound his 
 son's statements by a written record. Suddenly he 
 pushed the book away and leant back. His tall domed 
 
 10 
 
ENTRANCE AND EXIT n 
 
 forehead was as white as a skull and over his speculative 
 eyes hung heavy cowl-like lids that only rose with reluct- 
 ance. On the other side of the hearth Mrs. Parsons settled 
 to her sock. Hers was quiet knitting, done with an almost 
 imperceptible movement of hands and arms. 
 
 In the warm room an old man might have been ex- 
 pected to sleep. But the housekeeper knew him to be 
 tensely expectant. Suddenly he bent forward. 
 
 " Wind's rising. That's all," she observed. 
 
 To anyone strange to the coast it would have seemed 
 impossible to imagine any further increase of the hurly- 
 burly. 
 
 " Old Geake's dying, is he ? " asked Mr. Carlyon 
 suddenly. " Well, he'll have a rough passage." 
 
 Mrs. Parsons cackled with laughter. 
 
 " I never did see," she answered, " that weather makes 
 a pin of difference to them that's homeward bound." 
 
 Any softness there might have been in the word " home- 
 ward " was entirely contradicted by her tone. 
 
 " A rough passage," he repeated, his mind wandering 
 among the cloud-borne angels of the picture of the Last 
 Judgment in his Bible. " I hope parson won't be late, 
 though, for his rubber." 
 
 " Parson won't lose his whist, and that you may be 
 sure of," said she soothingly. 
 
 " He's missed three times in four years," he answered 
 sternly. 
 
 " Twice was for illness, and once when he was away. 
 And a man must die, even of a Wednesday." 
 
 " Parson can't die for anybody but himself," he snapped. 
 
 " No more he can," she assented. " But I'd best get 
 the cloth down, for he'll be sharp set after the walk to 
 Trevose. Mr. Retallack mostly saves up for a feed when 
 he's coming to Lanvean. D'you mind how he sat down 
 in Gilbert's place when the boy had got up to go from 
 table, and before I could clear for'n, the man had eaten 
 up all the crumbs ? A saving man, parson." 
 
 " Ay, he'll cut up well. Not a penny short of eight 
 thousand I should say. And married money." 
 
12 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 She bustled out, returning with a vast yellow pie-dish 
 in her hands. Mr. Carlyon's grim mouth relaxed as his 
 fancy pictured the juicy limbs of the rabbits within it, and 
 at the sight of the stuffed chine which followed he forgot 
 for a moment his restless expectation of Mr. Retallack's 
 arrival. Pulling aside a curtain, the housekeeper looked 
 out, but nothing could be seen except the swaying trunks 
 of the ever-green oaks that, growing close against the 
 frontage of the house, protect it from the sea-winds. In 
 the two great rooms that are shaded by these trees the 
 light fails early in the afternoon. Mrs. Parsons, then, lit 
 the lamp in the outer one which leads straight to the open 
 air. The table here was littered with wreckage ; strangest 
 of all was a chemist's globe that had ridden through the 
 surf and come ashore unbroken. 
 
 " Ten minutes to four," she called out, holding up the 
 lamp to the clock in the corner. 
 
 Mr. Carlyon shuffled impatiently from the inner room, 
 and she smiled, knowing him to be on tenterhooks of ex- 
 pectation and herself looking forward to another two hours 
 of fidgets from him. 
 
 Naturally Mrs. Parsons had never seen the hairy wen 
 in the middle of her forehead except in the looking-glass, 
 but her small ferret eyes squinted towards it. Her body 
 was pear-shaped, with a fleshy trunk and large limbs, 
 supporting a head that was almost feline in its flatness 
 and sparsely covered with hair which had once been 
 reddish. 
 
 At this moment Mr. Retallack's stick came smartly 
 down on the back door. 
 
 " Parsons, Parsons, there's someone knocking," shouted 
 the old man. 
 
 The housekeeper moved swiftly and noiselessly for all 
 her bulk ; she had been a dancer in her youth. But half- 
 way down the passage to the back she was stopped short 
 by a second knocking, even more emphatic than the first 
 and this time at the front door. 
 
 " A'mighty ! " cried she. " 'Tis the parson and the 
 clerk. One begins when t'other leaves off." 
 
ENTRANCE AND EXIT 13 
 
 Hesitating between the two, she went back a few steps, 
 and then, shaking her head angrily, pursued her first 
 intention and admitted the vicar. Obstinately compressing 
 her lips every time Mr. Carlyon shouted and every time 
 the second comer belaboured the door, she quietly seated 
 Mr. Retallack by the kitchen fire and found him a pair of 
 socks. 
 
 " Damn the man," she said, at last answering the front 
 door, " does he think the floods are out and the devil 
 driving the sea-horses behind 'em ? " 
 
 On the doorstep she found a middle-aged man, red with 
 his exertions, yet lifting his hat with an air of gracious 
 condescension. Behind him stood a dog-cart and steam- 
 ing horse, the driver sitting with his shoulders humped 
 against the dripping of the leaves. 
 
 " You, Mr. James ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Just half a minute," he said hurriedly, " before you 
 tell my brother. I'll send the man round to the stables, 
 though." 
 
 When he returned from his errand, he found that the 
 discreet woman had closed the doors leading into the 
 rest of the house. 
 
 " Well, how's everything ? " he began, tossing his 
 gloves down. His clothes were new and costly, though 
 the tweed suit he wore was of a rough hairiness probably 
 guaranteed by his tailor as truly rustic. He was a man 
 who dressed himself carefully for every occasion, and would 
 have stage-managed an anchorite's hut with an invisible 
 hair-shirt, to say nothing of the live-stock on it. 
 
 " Look here, Parsons," he said, " I've come down all 
 the way from town and, by Gad, at the greatest possible 
 inconvenience, to fix up a bit of business with William 
 before my wife comes down to-morrow. She's going to 
 stay with her aunt and I want her to find everything 
 fixed up all right before she comes. Twig ? " 
 
 Mrs. Parsons screwed up her mouth and nodded. In 
 the world Mr. Carry on' s brother, Jemmy, was regarded 
 as a success, but at Lanvean they saw the seamy side 
 of him. 
 
H THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " He's got the vicar with him now, Mr. James," she 
 said sternly. " It's Wednesday." 
 
 " What ? now ? Why, it isn't four yet, and they 
 never start playing till six." 
 
 " He got here two hours earlier than usual. Mr. 
 Gilbert's doing that was." 
 
 " The devil take Gilbert, then," exclaimed Jemmy 
 Carlyon. " There'll be no chance of getting William to 
 talk business till the man's gone, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I should say not," she answered primly. " Master's 
 got his mind set on his game, you see, sir, and when he's 
 like that you know how he is. Of course, if parson wasn't 
 here. . . . But there 'tis. You must wait till to-morrow, 
 Mr. James." 
 
 " Why ever didn't I get here earlier, Parsons ? " he 
 asked pettishly. " But you're right, you're quite right. 
 It's most important I should get him in the mood." 
 
 Standing at the door of the inner room he listened. 
 
 " They're together there now," he said. 
 
 " Then they'll want me in a minute for the game," said 
 she ; " Master Gilbert never plays now. Muzzing over his 
 books, he is every day, and leaves the farm to Master 
 Steve, which oughtn't to be, for Steve's no good to any- 
 body, though master'll not hear a word against him." 
 
 But Mr, James Carlyon was too occupied with his own 
 affairs to heed her. 
 
 " Look here," he said in a low voice, " I heard in 
 Petrockstow that he's actually working the Cataclew 
 quarries again . . . and after talking about it all these 
 years, too. That so ? " 
 
 " Yes, he is, and making money by it. They can't 
 get it out fast enough either, for they say it's the finest 
 road-mending stuff in the country. The railway, too, will 
 take all — and more — than they can bring up." 
 
 " Well," he laughed angrily, " so my words come true. 
 Said I to him years ago : ' Will, there's money in the 
 quarries, if you'd only stir your sluggish old stumps and 
 risk a bit on them.' Why, Lanvean's a gold mine. Fish 
 too, if he'd only set up a pilchard-curing factory, same as 
 
ENTRANCE AND EXIT 15 
 
 they had here in bygone days, only on a bigger scale. 
 Good Lord ! what a man with any enterprise in him 
 could do with it all." 
 
 '* Master's not done so bad, perhaps," Mrs. Parsons 
 observed, her eyes maliciously amused. 
 
 " Oh," he said loftily, " only in a small way though. 
 Now with brains But there ! " 
 
 Mrs. Parsons nodded thoughtfully. She knew perfectly 
 well that James Carlyon had come to borrow money 
 and that, spy-glass at eye, he was viewing the promised 
 land for its milk and honey. Moreover, she was also 
 aware that spy-glasses have a trick of magnifying. Every- 
 thing she knew, in fact, except the precise figure of the 
 elder brother's banking account, and here, too, she pre- 
 tended to be wiser than she was. 
 
 " Still," said Jemmy thoughtfully, " for the moment 
 he'll have sunk all his available capital in the quarry." 
 
 " That I'm sure I couldn't say," she replied demurely. 
 " But you'll have to stay the night, if you want to get 
 him in the mood, Mr. James. And now you'd like to 
 see him ? " 
 
 The two men at the card-table turned as she opened 
 the door. They were in act to cut for partners. 
 
 " Well, James ? " said Mr. Carlyon, showing no surprise 
 as he held out a palsied hand. 
 
 94 I came down on a matter of business, Will," began 
 Jemmy. 
 
 But his brother waved it aside ; obviously he had the 
 whip-hand, notwithstanding his corduroys and his ill- 
 shaved chin. 
 
 While Mrs. Parsons was dealing and Jemmy sipping 
 from a steaming glass, the vicar traced back the events 
 of the day which had brought him so opportunely to the 
 green table of his desire. From the ford to the whisky, 
 from the whisky to the pears and thence to the sitting of 
 eggs, he meandered, mightily cock-a-whoop, while Jemmy 
 eyed the braggart sulkily through his gold-edged pince-nez 
 
 As the men played Mrs. Parsons watched their faces, 
 she herself answering her partner's lead automatically. 
 
16 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 When their fingers groped for an empty glass she filled 
 it quietly. Once or twice, when the wind blew in a gust 
 against the panes, she pulled her three-cornered shawl 
 closer round her, but in general the whirl of outdoor 
 noises passed unheeded ; the wind among the chimney- 
 tops, the sluice of rushing gutters was less present to the 
 players than the soft fall of the cards on the baize table. 
 Gradually, as Jemmy fell back into the inner workings of 
 his brother's play, he felt more hopeful of his errand. 
 William, too, would surely remember the old days of 
 their boyhood. This very evening he had seen the two 
 cottages they once tied together by the door handles, so 
 that in the morning the labourers had to shout from their 
 windows for release. 
 
 Once or twice the parson wiped his face, for he was 
 weary after the over-eating and the over-walking. He 
 seemed to himself to be still fighting the wind on the 
 dunes, and then again at moments he was aware of the 
 room, cold to the feet, warm to the head, and strangely 
 full of mist. Out of the mist there emerged at last the 
 nine of spades which he held in his hand. It was a trump 
 card, and already he could hear Mr. Carlyon's emphatic 
 voice saying : " That's the odd trick. And the rub." 
 
 When the nine of spades, too, faded, Mr. Retallack 
 drew it closer to him by a great effort, whereupon the 
 spades turned into the elongated faces to be seen in a 
 spoon. They leapt at him like falling stars, and were 
 gone in the blackness of night. 
 
 Jemmy, at his left hand, was the first to notice some- 
 thing wrong, for he was splashed with the liquor from the 
 parson's glass. Mrs. Parsons hurried round and together 
 they got the falling mass to the floor. Old Carlyon, pinned 
 to his chair, bent down, his rigid face like a mask. 
 
 " Christ ! he's a stiff 'un," cried Jemmy, who always 
 resented any reference to his latter end and would go 
 a mile round to avoid any suggestion of death. This 
 helpless figure, this laboured breathing, irritated him ; to 
 relieve his own irritation, rather than the patient's distress, 
 he rushed to a window, and, unbarring the shutters, flung 
 
ENTRANCE AND EXIT 17 
 
 up the sash. Doors banged right through the house in the 
 incoming current of wind. Outside in the hall he shouted 
 for Gilbert, and when the young man came running down- 
 stairs three steps at a time, he himself collapsed on a 
 chair. 
 
 At Lanvean, which turns a back and one shoulder to 
 the sea, the foam gathers on stormy days in a cloud on 
 the central dome of glass over the hall, filling the house 
 with grey light. Now the carved canopy over the clock 
 on the hall landing threw a monstrous dome of shadow on 
 the red-washed walls, and a long ray of light lay across 
 the shallow stairs of polished oak. Bedroom doors opened 
 on the square gallery running all round ; in the dark 
 shadows these black doors seemed menacing. In fancy 
 Jemmy was a boy once more ; he could see Mrs. Parsons, 
 then a young woman, putting her hands suddenly over 
 his eyes as he had sat by the fire. 
 
 " Don't look," she had cried. 
 
 The house was ill-omened in its old walls, and especially 
 in its carved woodwork brought from the ruined church 
 on the middens whose one gable end still survives the 
 storms of centuries. 
 
 " Wish I'd never come," said Jemmy to himself. Then 
 he smelt dead rat behind the wainscot and his terrors 
 were of a new kind. For Jemmy always fumed about 
 the sanitation of the hotels where he stayed. 
 
 It was a relief when Gilbert came out and announced 
 that he must fetch the doctor ; Mrs. Retallack ought 
 also to be summoned. For this latter task Jemmy offered, 
 thankful to get rid of bogies and rats. 
 
 In the dining-room the parson's shaggy breast rose and 
 fell, till it reminded Jemmy of a wheezy accordion. For, 
 though he blamed himself for callousness, his agitation 
 brought the most incongruous similes incessantly to the 
 surface of his mind. The housekeeper, always sparing 
 of effort, had steadily opposed the idea of carrying the 
 patient upstairs, for, as she pointed out, it would only 
 mean the carrying of him down again. 
 
 Outside Jemmy hurried up the lane to St. Meryn, his 
 
1 8 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 lanthorn glinting on the hedges and disturbing the birds. 
 His terrors were gone by now at feeling himself to be 
 alive and in all the zest of vigorous living. But at the 
 vicarage gate he bethought himself of decency. 
 
 " How the devil does one break it to a woman ? " he 
 wondered. " Gad ! she's bound to make a fuss." 
 
 The tinkling of the bell sounded as though from an 
 empty house. But when at last Mrs. Retallack answered 
 it, she showed herself to be unusually intelligent. 
 
 " John ? It's John ? " she cried. 
 
 He nodded, wondering that the great inert mass on 
 the couch at Lanvean could have been " John " to any- 
 body. 
 
 11 Oh, I'll never, never see him alive again," Mrs. 
 Retallack wailed. Yet when a maid appeared with a 
 bonnet and cloak she began a fresh outcry : " Oh, it's 
 raining, and you've brought my best. It'll be spoiled, 
 but now I can't stop to change. How could you be so 
 stupid ? And this satin won't stand a spot on it. You 
 know that as well as I do. But oh, Johnnie, Johnnie, 
 Johnnie ! " 
 
 When the two reached Lanvean it was to find old 
 William outside in the hall, while the doctor was examin- 
 ing the patient. He kept his eyes fixed on the door and 
 neither stirred nor changed the direction of his glance 
 when his brother entered. Jemmy wiped his forehead, 
 for Mrs. Retallack had been almost a dead weight on his 
 arm long before they turned into the plantation. 
 
 " Look here," cried Jemmy to his brother, in a rage at 
 everything, " I came down to see you, Will, because I'm 
 in trouble . . . not this trouble, but my own." He felt 
 as though he were addressing the stony imperturbability 
 of a Buddha. 
 
 " I want a loan," went on Jemmy, " want it at once. 
 It's all U.P. with me if I don't get it." Truculency was 
 a cloak for fear. 
 
 " My wife," he went on, his last remnant of courage 
 evaporating, "... she's never cut up rough 
 before. . . ." 
 
ENTRANCE AND EXIT 19 
 
 He stopped before the folly of his own babble. 
 
 " You had money the last time you came," said William 
 Carlyon, speaking so suddenly that his brother jumped. 
 Yet Jemmy brightened perceptibly, for the Buddha had 
 shown signs of life. 
 
 " But I've paid my interest regularly," he said, " and 
 now I'm in a far worse fix. My wife says she won't stand 
 it, and talks of a separation." 
 
 " A wife leave her husband ! That shows how far 
 you've drifted." 
 
 " Yes," said Jemmy, calculating on the impression he 
 had made, " it does. It's ruin and disgrace to the family. 
 That's what it is." 
 
 " Not to mine, for you went your separate road long 
 ago. What falls on you can't touch me." 
 
 " Oh, yes, it can. If I have to go through the bank- 
 ruptcy court, to wash my linen in public — and you here 
 piling up money. ..." 
 
 " What I had I had, and I've made it breed. What 
 you've had you've had, and it's barren." 
 
 " Then you'll not lift a finger to help me?" 
 
 " Here's the wrath of God come upon this house . . ." 
 began the old man. But when Mrs. Parsons came out of 
 the dining-room he broke off, contemptuously dismissing 
 his brother. " Wheel me back again," he exclaimed. 
 
 Jemmy's voice burst out with a trumpet note, as he 
 inflated his chest, eyes flaming and cheeks burning. 
 
 " And I say that talk like that is damnable hypocrisy," 
 he shouted after the vanishing invalid chair. 
 
 Dr. Rudd was leaning against the mantelpiece in the 
 dining-room. At the noise he looked up. Then he came 
 forward, and shutting the door behind him, left the two 
 old men alone with Mrs. Retallack, who was kneeling by 
 the couch. 
 
 " Hark to that," said Mrs. Parsons, holding up her 
 hand. 
 
 " Not for me, oh, Lord, not for me," said Mr. Carlyon's 
 voice from within. It was strong now, like a young 
 man's. 
 
20 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Religious melancholy," commented Dr. Rudd, " often 
 goes with his state of health." 
 
 "He's farmer one side and Methody the other," said 
 Mrs. Parsons, " and you never can tell, when you come 
 upon 'en, which side's uppermost for the moment." 
 
 " He's a stiffish sort of a customer in general," com- 
 mented the doctor, lighting up. 
 
 Dr. Daniel Rudd was a swarthy, beardless man, appar- 
 ently about thirty. In his fisherman's jersey and blue 
 trousers he seemed sailor rather than professional man, 
 as, under bent shaggy brows, he stared at the old woman. 
 Apparently he hardly noted Jemmy, though he had 
 already named him " the pouter pigeon." For Dr. Dan 
 shared the facility of the common people among whom 
 he lived for throwing epithets that cruelly hit off the 
 persons described. 
 
 The voice came from within once more : 
 
 " Not for me, oh, blessed Lord, not for me!" 
 
 " The atonement, eh ? " asked the doctor with a shrug 
 of his shoulders. 
 
 " He's been took so, off and on, since his wife died," 
 said Mrs. Parsons with all the air of a showman. " He's 
 in streaks, is Master. When he's got something to sell 
 and his mind's on the business, he's like other men — - 
 ready to cry, ' Fresh fish all alive,' with anybody. But 
 the next minute 'twill be, ' And stinking four out of five.' 
 That's when he's got his Methodist fit on him and wants 
 to tell the truth. You got on the wrong side to-night, 
 Mr. James, and that's all there is to it." 
 
 " Faith, Parsons, you're right," said Jemmy ruefully. 
 
 " Can I offer you a lift, Mr. Carlyon ? " asked the doctor, 
 turning to him. " It's useless my staying here. It'll be 
 a matter of hours, but, likely enough, he won't even regain 
 consciousness." 
 
 Jemmy pulled a long face, yet his most active sentiment 
 was hatred of the clumsy fool who had got in his way. 
 
 The doctor's horse was dancing with nerves when they 
 got outside, for the plantation was full of noises. As 
 they drove down the avenue, Jemmy noticed the gleam 
 
ENTRANCE AND EXIT 21 
 
 of light from the stable windows which no one had been 
 able to trace to a reflection. Then he caught his breath 
 as they narrowly turned the corner into the lane, for 
 Dr. Rudd held the reins loosely, bending forward in his 
 seat like a fish-hawker. Where the road turns downward 
 towards the bay, he pulled up suddenly to light his pipe, 
 and Jemmy noticed the lips that sucked greedily at the 
 stem. Compressed lips or loose are the main signs of a 
 man's make, but this one seemed to show each in turn. 
 
 The lighted match described a glowing circle and fell 
 with a hiss on the wet road. In the stillness they could 
 hear the surf beating on miles of coast, in the half darkness 
 could see a faint greyness over the Atlantic. 
 
 " Click," said Dr. Rudd, and on they drove. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 REBELS 
 
 THE cart jerked up the bridge over the stream and 
 down the other side. The going was heavy here 
 across sand piled with strips of oreweed. 
 
 " Get out, will you ? " said Dr. Rudd. " Steep hill 
 ahead." 
 
 As they wound up the other side of the valley, the 
 burden of the waves fell gradually behind them. Beyond 
 the humming telegraph wires at the top of the hill stretched 
 the vague outlines of wind-swept country. Jemmy 
 shivered. 
 
 " I suppose he isn't really conscious — the old parson, 
 I mean ? " he asked, as they seated themselves again. 
 
 " Conscious ? That depends on what you mean by the 
 word. Consciousness isn't a matter of one plane, mind 
 you. And what molecular consciousness is, nobody 
 knows. ..." 
 
 " Ugh ! " grunted Mr. Carlyon. 
 
 " Yes, doesn't sound pleasant, does it ? Stuffy . . . 
 feverish . . . the brain cells half acting . . . pictures 
 perhaps, too. You see, there's so much buried in a man's 
 cells. ..." 
 
 " Only in his cells ? " asked Jemmy, eyeing the doctor 
 curiously. 
 
 " I never lay down the law either way. Know nothing 
 about it," answered he. 
 
 It was, Jemmy concluded, hard to pick this man's 
 brain. Later on, he decided it was not so hard, if one 
 
 22 
 
REBELS 23 
 
 only raised the topic of himself, a matter on which many 
 men are eloquent. 
 
 " Scat goes a blood vessel ... in a man of full habit, 
 and there you are," observed the doctor cheerfully. 
 
 " It's put me in a deuce of a hole, anyway," grumbled 
 Mr. Carlyon. " And he'll be dead before morning." 
 
 " Probably," said Dr. Rudd. 
 
 V But I shan't be," said Jemmy, flinging a challenge of 
 defiance. 
 
 " You might. Couldn't say," answered the other. 
 
 They laughed, and the doctor whipped up the horse, 
 for by the lights in the distance they were coming to a 
 hamlet. At the entrance to it Dr. Rudd pulled the horse 
 up so sharply that he almost brought him to his haunches. 
 Then, leaning forward in front of Mr. Carlyon, he took out 
 the carriage lamp and flashed it up and down over the 
 hedge. 
 
 " There he is again," he exclaimed, " I knew he would 
 be." 
 
 Jemmy caught a glimpse of a bantam cock roosting 
 in a niche. At the glint of the lantern he uncurled a leg, 
 shifted his pose and again tucked his head under a wing. 
 
 " That's a bird of character," said the doctor as they 
 drove on. " He's always here when I drive by, night or 
 day." 
 
 " Got the pip, perhaps." 
 
 " Not a bit. He eats well, for I inquired. Only he 
 doesn't follow with the ruck. He's got away from the 
 instinct of the herd. His mates roost in sheds, verminous, 
 whiffy ; he prefers a hedge . . . and stays there. Like 
 a man who's got away from the strait jacket." 
 
 " The strait jacket ? " 
 
 " Customs, laws, prejudices, what my neighbour thinks 
 right, in fact." 
 
 " Must have a morality, you know," said Jemmy, 
 fiercely virtuous in theory, " run amuck else, everybody 
 would." 
 
 " Well, why not ? " 
 
 " Twouldn't do, you see. Why, where should we all 
 
24 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 be ? Must have something to grow by . . ." Jemmy 
 grew philosophic in his zeal for the code he seldom 
 regarded in act, " like a climbing plant, you know ; scarlet- 
 runner, that sort of thing. Must have something to prop 
 us up. Very like a scarlet-runner is man. Just climbing 
 sticks, that's law, custom, and all the rest of it. See ? " 
 
 " From silk hats to the gallows and the gaol, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Just so. Got to conform up to a certain point. Why, 
 you yourself ..." 
 
 " I don't conform at all. When I want to do a thing, I 
 do it. When I don't, I don't. I'm like the bantam, I 
 sleep in a hedge, if I want to." 
 
 " But your practice ? " 
 
 " They summon me, if t'other old mole fails, the regular 
 practitioner, I mean, or if they think it's a bad enough 
 case to call for the devil's own skill. Oh, take it all the 
 way round, a diabolical reputation isn't half a bad adver- 
 tisement. And if the case is likely to be interesting, I go. 
 And if it isn't, I don't." 
 
 " But, my dear sir, the debt you owe your fellow 
 creatures . . ." 
 
 " Bunkum ! Don't acknowledge any debt. Every- 
 thing I've got . . . and that's a grain of knowledge, of 
 skill, perhaps . . . I've won myself. After a tooth and 
 nail fight, too." 
 
 " But one can't live without some sort of quid pro quo." 
 
 " I've brought down my needs. That's the way to get 
 even with the folks who'd put you in a strait jacket 
 the minute they get the whip hand over you. Baccy in 
 pouch, wool to keep me warm, a bit of grub ; all to be 
 got on very easy terms. Sometimes they pay me. My 
 patients, I mean. Mostly they don't. But I work for 
 a fisherman, go out for a night's work, if he wants to lie 
 between the sheets. That sort of thing." 
 
 The cart was descending the hill into Petrockstow by 
 now, with elms round the church tower on one side and 
 lighted houses on the other. The doctor pointed with 
 his whip to the tombstones, grey shadows under the 
 bare branches. 
 
REBELS 25 
 
 " How many of those chaps that lie there," he said, 
 " d'you suppose didn't pass all their days like tail-piped 
 dogs, with worries, duties, notions of every sort to plague 
 them ? Systems regularly undermined by morality, so 
 that at the first shock, over they go into the open grave." 
 
 Jemmy Carlyon sighed, remembering his own tail- 
 piped condition. For the next week would be impossible 
 at Lanvean, filled with the smell of crape and funeral 
 feasts, with William inaccessible to business cares and 
 buried in thoughts of death and the judgment. 
 
 Outside Cross House a horseman passed them, spurring 
 madly up the street, his seat none too firm in the saddle. 
 To right and left the public-houses were disgorging knots 
 of babbling men. 
 
 " Closing time," said Dr. Rudd, pulling up to avoid a 
 rambling figure that was almost under his horse's head. 
 
 " That's your nephew," he added, with a backward 
 nod in the direction of the hoofnotes that were now dying 
 away in the distance. " That's Steve Carlyon. Didn't 
 you notice him ? He's going the pace, too. No strait 
 jacket for him." 
 
 " Wild ? " 
 
 " In here every night. Last week there was an accident. 
 Man fell over the quay and broke his thigh. That was at 
 closing time, too. They got me out and there in the 
 middle of the crowd was Master Steve kneeling by him. 
 As white as a codfish and as sober he was, for the moment. 
 
 " ' Christ ! he's a stiff 'un,' said he, looking up." 
 
 Jemmy Carlyon started, remembering his own words 
 when the parson fell. All the time at Lanvean he seemed 
 to have been entering another air, where instincts, pictures 
 and thoughts, even phrases, had been waiting for him on 
 some invisible plane. It happened so every time he 
 re- visited Lanvean. 
 
 " Queer," resumed Dr. Rudd, " how unlike they are, 
 those brothers. There's Gilbert as steady as Old Time 
 .... Ambitious ! Isn't he though ? Yet he turns his 
 back on the position that's made for him. For he's the 
 eldest son, isn't he ? " 
 
26 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Yes," said Jemmy, " and Lanvean will be his when 
 my brother dies." 
 
 " That's where you're wrong. It's Steve ; Steve, the 
 ne'er-do-well, who's to have Lanvean. T'other — Gilbert 
 — is all for a step in life. Indian Civil, he's working for. 
 There's a girl in it, they say, 'Torney Rosewarne's daughter. 
 Rosewarne, the solicitor, you know. That's one way of 
 tail-piping yourself. Commonest, I suppose." 
 
 " Young fool ! " grumbled Jemmy Carlyon. " Why, 
 the railway's made Lanvean. It might be one of the 
 finest dairy farms in the country, and then there are the 
 quarries. And you say he's turning his back on his own 
 good fortune." 
 
 " Just so ! but the Civil Service is . . . genteel. 
 That's the long and the short of it. And when he gets 
 it, and his wife, she'll sit down in the first dak bungalow 
 and cry, because she misses the curtains and all the other 
 comforts of Peckham." 
 
 " In this case, of Teravel. That's where they live, 
 isn't it ? " asked Jemmy. 
 
 " The Rosewarnes ? Yes. The father's gone blind, 
 you know. Cataract ! And my fellow servant of the 
 public, Old Mole, knows as much about cataract as I do 
 about the geography of the moon." 
 
 " Come in and have supper with me," said Jemmy, 
 as they reached the bottom of the hill. " I shall put 
 up at the ' New London.' " 
 
 " Thanks," said Dr. Rudd, " I don't mind if I do." 
 
 Whenever Jemmy Carlyon came to Petrockstow he 
 always stayed at Laskey's, otherwise the New London 
 Inn. This he did, partly from sentiment, because he had 
 been at the Board School with Laskey and was not ashamed 
 of the fact, and partly because at the " New London " 
 one could reckon on the old English quality of the food. 
 For Jemmy not only liked his meat juicy, but preferred 
 old friends — or, for the matter of that, old enemies — to 
 new. Neither did he ever try to conceal his origin, which 
 he described as being of yeoman stock, or, as a variant, of 
 farmering blood. The former phrase was used in fine 
 
REBELS 27 
 
 company and the latter in humble. The essence of 
 Jemmy's being lay in the fact that he alternated between 
 two worlds, the gentle and the simple. He enjoyed both, 
 but especially the former. 
 
 When Dr. Rudd returned from disposing of his horse 
 with the jobber from whom he hired, he found Jemmy 
 trying to get a rise out of his old school-fellow by ordering 
 a supper of aldermanic scope. For Laskey had professed 
 to have access, even at this hour, to every shop in the town. 
 
 " So," said Jemmy to himself, " we'll put him to it." 
 
 The innkeeper always suspected, as Jemmy well knew, 
 a certain lordliness of condescension on the great man's 
 part ; suspected and resented it, as was natural. For 
 had they not started on the same rung of the ladder ? 
 Yet here was Jemmy, not only the head of a firm of dealers 
 in antiquities known in two hemispheres — a contemptible 
 matter enough in the eyes of Petrockstow — but the husband 
 of Madame Peters' niece up at Denzell, a very considerable 
 position indeed^ while Laskey himself was still at the 
 " New London," where he had been born. Jemmy in 
 his career had worn seven-leagued boots, while Laskey 
 had not moved an inch. 
 
 Now, tall, gaunt, and lantern- jawed, the innkeeper 
 took down Mr. Carlyon's orders, while he eyed Mr. Carlyon's 
 fat barrel of a body with an air of cadaverous gloom. The 
 manageress, leaning a plump breast on the office counter 
 after handing Dr. Rudd his " usual," prepared to enjoy 
 the spectacle, too. 
 
 " A bit of turbot or best sole," said Jemmy firmly. 
 
 " Filleted plaice," corrected Laskey. 
 
 Dr. Rudd settled his elbow on the mahogany of the 
 office counter and grinned. 
 
 Jemmy stared out in the direction of the harbour, 
 probably chock full at the moment of trawl-boats. 
 
 " Must be bringing in good fish," he ejaculated. 
 
 '• Everything goes up to town," replied the innkeeper. 
 
 " Saddle of mutton," said Jemmy. 
 
 " Chump chops," corrected Laskey, all simple and 
 homely. 
 
28 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Jemmy frowned, suspecting a smile on the yellow- 
 haired manageress's face. 
 
 " Roast chicken and ham," he observed, raising his 
 voice and fiercely eyeing Dr. Rudd and the woman, both 
 now imperturbably calm. 
 
 " Boiled fowl and cheek of pork," countered Laskey ; 
 " no spring chicken in yet, only boilers." 
 
 " Give me," his manner said, " home-made wits against 
 all your town brains." 
 
 But Jemmy was a well-plucked one. He stared at the 
 " yellow canary," as he called the manageress, and 
 remembered that Laskey at school had always been 
 named " Holy Joe " because he couldn't keep the truth 
 inside him. 
 
 " Asparagus," he murmured. 
 
 " Sprouts," cried Laskey. 
 
 Nor would he so much as acknowledge his cheese to be 
 English Cheddar. 
 
 " Damned if he didn't finish up with ' best American/ " 
 chuckled Jemmy to himself, as he fussed down the passage. 
 " But his whisky's Scotch, though if I'd asked him, he'd 
 have sworn it was Irish. Poor old Laskey ! " 
 
 At the coffee-room door Dr. Rudd stopped. 
 
 " Now then," he said, " suppose you chuck all that and 
 come over with me to supper. You've sweated to get five 
 courses out of Laskey and done proper penance before the 
 fetish of hospitality. Over at my place Mother Cornish 
 will wipe out a frying-pan with a newspaper and cook 
 you a bit of hake and you'll go home to bed far more 
 comfortable than you would be with all that in your 
 inside. Isn't that sense, Laskey ? " 
 
 " Tisn't sense from the licensed victualler's point of 
 view, sir," retorted the man of truth. 
 
 " Ah," said the doctor, " that's another point of view — 
 altogether. I spoke from the man's standpoint, not the 
 licensed victualler's. You can't have it both ways. 
 There's the man of the world's point of view and the 
 licensed victualler's. ..." 
 
 " And the doctor's," said Laskey. 
 
REBELS 29 
 
 " Quite so. And they're all different from the man's. 
 Come along, Mr. Carlyon, cut all this poison and try 
 supper with me." 
 
 " You must have your joke, Dr. Rudd," said the land- 
 lord dolefully, seeing a profitable order snatched from him. 
 
 " So I must," laughed the other. " I must have my 
 joke and everything else I want. That's where I differ 
 from other people, who only want what they think other 
 people ought to want. ' Ought ' is the one word I bar. 
 Come along, Mr. Carlyon, cut the cod and the loin chop 
 and the sprouts, and all the rest of it, and come and try 
 Mam Cornish's idea of a fry." 
 
 With the air of a desperate dog, Jemmy turned his 
 back on Laskey's dinner and followed the doctor through 
 the opening on to the quay. The town lamps nickered 
 in the inky darkness of the basin and the smell of tar 
 filled the air. Overhead, riding high in flying clouds, a 
 star or two peeped out. A dog barked furiously from a 
 heap of nets on the deck of one of the boats, as their 
 feet scraped and slipped on the cobbles. Before the Priory 
 House, with its outside steps of granite, the doctor 
 stopped and led the way up to a landing which through 
 granite window arches looked out on the harbour. Two 
 huge Cornish ovens, like gigantic terra-cotta crab-pots, 
 were posted in the cobbled niche below the staircase. 
 The door into the house was open and Dr. Rudd walked 
 in, shouting down the passage as he went : 
 
 " Mam Cornish, where are you ? What have 'ee got for 
 supper ? " 
 
 In the light of the fire a woman sat putting a dark- 
 headed baby to sleep. She had just given him his bath 
 and the high fender was hung with baby clothes and coarse 
 knitted men's socks. Opposite the laden dresser a low 
 window looked out into the darkness. The back door was 
 screened off by a clothes-horse laden with shirts and 
 children's clothes. The table under the window was 
 laid with a cloth and littered with tea things which had 
 been used, but not cleared away. 
 
 " This is Mr. James Carlyon, Mam," said the doctor, 
 
30 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " and he's come in for supper. He prefers it to Laskey's 
 table d'hote, so you must do the best you can for him." 
 
 She had fair hair, beautifully arranged and shining, 
 a large mouth, capable hands, and a confident smile. 
 
 " All right, Dan," said she, laying the baby down in 
 the cradle and standing for a moment with her foot on 
 the rockers. 
 
 Her tone was full of the forbearing tolerance a woman 
 shows to a robustious but overgrown boy. The doctor 
 shouldered the bath and disappeared with it into the 
 backyard, where presently they heard him emptying it. 
 
 The two men sat down to the whiting she fried for them 
 and placed straight from the pan, hot and hot, on their 
 plates. The doctor finished his meal with chunks of 
 bread piled up with plum jam from a two-pound jar 
 with the label of the C. W. S. on it. But at the jam 
 Jemmy rebelled, declaring that sweet things upset his 
 liver. Every now and then he referred to the various 
 organs of the body in connection with food in a way that 
 made the doctor raise his eyebrows, suddenly fiercely 
 refined on points where men of the world were not 
 squeamish. Yet Jemmy knew how to be genial, and 
 when Dr. Rudd, flinging out his feet towards the fender, 
 began to tap a cigarette on the palm of his hand, he was 
 quite warmed up to his surroundings. By now, the 
 frying-pan, duly wiped out with a newspaper, was back in 
 the coal cupboard again. The doctor cocked an inquisi- 
 tive eye at his guest during this performance, and after- 
 wards was extra severe in his comments on artificial 
 refinement as compared with the simple acceptance of 
 facts by " coarse living " country people. 
 
 In short, the Cornishes were on show. If Mrs. Cornish 
 felt it, she made no sign, not even when Dr. Rudd insisted 
 on going three stories up in the long narrow house to show 
 the back bedroom packed with sleeping children. They 
 slept three in a big bed, with others in improvised cots. 
 
 " Do be careful, Dan. Don't wake 'em up," whispered 
 Mrs. Cornish at the bottom of the steep stairs. 
 
 " One hundred pounds apiece wrenched out of poor 
 
REBELS 31 
 
 old Sam's arms to bring up every one of 'em," said Dr. 
 Rudd, when they had returned to his own rooms on the 
 second story. 
 
 " Then why so many ? " asked Jemmy, taking a chair 
 by the dusty fire in the old-fashioned grate. In one 
 corner of the room stood an old flock bed, with books 
 scattered about on its bumpy surface. There were books 
 on the untidy shelves, books piled on the table, and in 
 front of the window a typewriter with a litter of papers. 
 
 " They're due to the bar of the New London Inn, most 
 of 'em," said Dr. Rudd, " that puts a haze between Dan 
 and unpleasant facts. Home he goes with a ' Darn the 
 consequences ' in his mind. And presently there's another 
 young Cornish." 
 
 " A hard drinker, this Cornish ? " asked Jemmy, raising 
 his eyebrows. 
 
 '■ Not at all. But he likes to be jolly now and then. 
 Mam curses a bit, but she's made him, and he doesn't 
 knock her about much ... if at all. No nonsense about 
 Mam, except in the matter of curtains in the best room. 
 There, she's your woman of the bourgeoisie over again, 
 thinking of the neighbours and of what they'd say if every 
 window in the house wasn't covered with sprawly Notting- 
 ham lace, and if that front room downstairs wasn't a 
 museum of family photographs and plush mats. Oh, 
 Mam burns incense, too, to the fetish of respectability." 
 
 The window of this room was bare to the sky. Jemmy 
 glanced at it. 
 
 " Oh, that ! " said Dr. Rudd, " I have my own way 
 here. There's Sam," he added, leaning out of window 
 and whistling three notes. The answer came from below 
 in the three notes reversed. 
 
 Sam Cornish looked much older than his wife. He 
 was tanned and wrinkled by sun and wind, but the merry 
 blue eyes were full of a childlike boldness. With hat 
 rakishly cocked over one eye he would stand at the street 
 corner, sending the girls into squeals of delighted laughter 
 with jokes as hoary as ever Rabelais had coined. He was 
 slightly deaf, so that Dr. Rudd often had to repeat the 
 
32 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 visitor's words. The pair went everywhere together, it 
 seemed, and the doctor, with roars of laughter, described 
 Sam in Paris learning to say, " Ah — we," from the French 
 girls. 
 
 " Forward, pretty little hussies," laughed Sam, " mighty 
 proud, and as neat as ninepence, but Dan here was so 
 proper as a parson with 'em. Talked of sending me 
 home, too, for fear I should get too fond of one of 'em." 
 
 He winked elaborately and Jemmy laughed with 
 delight ; here was the doctor in a new role, that of a 
 Simon Pure. 
 
 " Strait jacket ? Eh, my son ? " asked Mr. Carlyon. 
 " What about the strait jacket of morality and all the 
 rest of it ? Good for other folks, eh ? " 
 
 Dr. Dan looked sheepish. 
 
 " Mam's a good sort," said he grimly. " Besides, Sam 
 was in a strange land, the customs of which were new to 
 him. Why should he be allowed to make a fool of him- 
 self for the amusement of French hussies ? " 
 
 Put so, Sam's protection became a patriotic duty, no 
 less. Sam himself, however, seemed to have for sole 
 guide the motto, " Must make the day good," must, in 
 fact, snatch enough grub out of the hurly-burly to feed 
 the eight children he'd got stowed away under the hatches 
 of the family ship. This got him up of a morning and 
 kept him at sea when other trawlers, not so heavily 
 weighted, made for harbour. 
 
 " You've got to wring the necks of some things in 
 yourself, of course," said Dr. Rudd. 
 
 It was his sole concession to the moral theory. From 
 the moment of Sam's entry he had been another man, 
 shouting questions to the fisherman and watching with 
 his own dull, grey eyes, the flash of the latter's lusty 
 blue ones. 
 
 " Here's the real thing," said his manner, " here's the 
 man who knows how to live." Nor would he grant that 
 the many births in the cottages behind the quay were 
 events of anything but colossal importance. As great as 
 the birth of king or statesman any of these entrances of 
 
REBELS 33 
 
 the common man on a stage which he knows better how 
 to enjoy than most of the great ones. For, in Sam's 
 phrase, they " found it pretty sweet down here." The 
 doctor caught up the expression, repeated it, and flung 
 another question at his comrade, evidently regarding him 
 as the simple mouthpiece of the people's wisdom. Dr. 
 Rudd, in short, made an epic hero of the fellow. It 
 appeared, thought Jemmy, that if you wouldn't accept 
 other people's conventions, you must make your own ; 
 such as, for instance, the greatness of the common folk. 
 To Jemmy, Sam was a good-natured animal, but in 
 Dr. Rudd's eyes he evidently shone with the earth's own 
 joy in existence. 
 
 Then they got to ambitions : Dr. Dan wanted a grand 
 piano ; Sam couldn't think of anything to desire except 
 the capacity to drink a bottle of beer again. Beer, he 
 explained, hand on stomach, " turned him up." 
 
 " Oh," said the doctor, " I want . . . not even to have 
 to go fishing. I want to be free to run over to Paris when 
 I like without earning the money for it. Oh, not the 
 Paris you know," he continued, catching the gleam in 
 Jemmy's eyes, " but the Paris where the wonderful French 
 brain gets to work on the life in nerve and brain cell. 
 Gad ! there's no crime I wouldn't commit to make sure 
 of five hundred a year for the rest of my life." 
 
 He rose, stretching out his arms in a yawn. 
 
 " What for ? " asked Jemmy ; " same as my nephews ? 
 To drink it away, or to set up in a silk-hatted trade ? " 
 
 " Lord, no ! Not the second anyway. Fancy, selling 
 your freedom for a wife who'd want a housemaid with 
 streamers down her back, and then 'twould be nothing 
 but an imitation of the real thing. Madame Peters, old 
 Madame Felicia, you know, she's the real thing, if you 
 like ; looks on the doctor as a cross between a barber 
 and a male lady's maid. But I made her knuckle 
 under." 
 
 " You didn't ought to have, and so I told you at the. 
 time," said Sam, his blood full of inherited deference, 
 not to position, but his own needs. He damned the 
 
34 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 quality in his moments of expansion and cheated them 
 as a matter of principle, but he knew his manners. 
 
 " What's that ? " asked Jemmy. 
 
 " Why," answered the doctor, " she wrote me in the 
 third person, a sort of royal command, to come up to 
 attend her. We'd had a turn up before, and she'd got the 
 better of me. But I said I wouldn't come, and this made 
 me even with her." 
 
 " No, it didn't," interposed Sam ; " you might have 
 made a good thing out of Denzell if you'd minded your 
 p's and q's. And that would have made you even with her." 
 
 " Shut up, Sam, don't be a fool," said the doctor 
 angrily. 
 
 Jemmy wondered, as he returned to his bed at Laskey's, 
 how he, too, could make a good thing out of Madame 
 Felicia. Something must be done to pacify his wife, 
 and only money could do it — Madame Felicia's, if possible, 
 now that his brother had failed him. 
 
 His brain was brighter next morning, for suddenly as 
 he ate his eggs and bacon he laid a broad, manicured 
 forefinger on his nose, flattening the cartilage. It was 
 a trick he had in moments of confidence. 
 
 " That'll do the job," he thought. " Madame wants 
 Dr. Dan's professional services. Dr. Dan says he won't 
 go. She'll want him all the more for that, and I'm the 
 boy to arrange it for her with him. In short, I do her 
 a service with Dan, and she does me one with a cheque- 
 book. When Frances comes down, I meet her. 
 
 " ' My dear,' say I, ' all is arranged. We'll take a 
 larger flat, a house if you like. No one will ever know 
 there's been this trouble. JVe'll start again,, have a 
 second honeymoon, a golden wedding, any blessed thing 
 you please.' Providential, my going to Lanvean, very." 
 
 Jemmy was an india-rubber ball when hit by misfortune. 
 
 Then the waiter came up and whispered to him that 
 the vicar of St. Meryn was gone, had passed away in the 
 early morning. 
 
 Jemmy's " Very sad, very sad," was as benevolent as 
 the purring of a contented cat. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A WISE WIFE 
 
 YET, after all, Jemmy's wife had stolen a march on 
 him so that, while he was eating his breakfast 
 at Laskey's, she was already installed at Denzell Place 
 and had, in fact, reached it just at the time when Jemmy 
 and the doctor were driving in from Lanvean. 
 
 As Mrs. Carlyon put it, for she was in excellent spirits, 
 u he took the high road, otherwise the morning train, and 
 I took the low, otherwise the evening one, but I got to 
 Denzell before him." 
 
 Madame Peters, being in bed when her niece arrived 
 the night before, had not been disturbed, but this morning 
 while Jemmy was routing out all the dealers' shops in the 
 town by way of killing time before it would be decent to 
 call, the two ladies were sitting in the hall discussing the 
 situation. 
 
 Dissension in a united family is like a fire in the hold 
 of a passenger vessel, for it produces feverish bustle under 
 the surface and an aspect of studied calm when spectators 
 are about. In the Carlyon quarrel it was Jemmy who 
 fumed while his wife remained imperturbable. She 
 simply, in fact, put her foot down and kept it there ; a 
 simple attitude enough, yet one calculated to induce 
 terror in a husband who could boast that, after twenty 
 years of married life, he still envied the man who took 
 his Frances in to dinner. For Frances was reckoned to 
 be " brilliant " and the Carlyons valued nothing so much 
 
 35 3* 
 
36 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 as brilliancy. It was the quality they connected with 
 all that is successful. Mrs. Carlyon, then, remained calm. 
 
 Madame Felicia, as everyone called her at Petrockstow, 
 leant back in her corner of the Chesterfield and sighed 
 impatiently. 
 
 " My dear Frances," she said, " Jemmy has been 
 writing to me as if the bottom had fallen out of the 
 universe. And here you come ..." she hesitated for a 
 word ..." cavorting as if you'd been left a fortune. 
 What in the world is it all about ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon laughed ; she was excellently corseted, 
 looked her best in large-patterned garments and as a 
 girl had bounced. Nimble as she was in wit, physically 
 it took her some time to turn round. 
 
 " To the best of my belief," she said, " at this moment 
 he's trying to get money out of his patriarchal brother. 
 When Jemmy's had ill luck at a flutter, he invariably 
 tries that. Poor Jemmy ! " 
 
 Smiling placidly she stretched her ringed hand towards 
 the fire. 
 
 " Frances," said Madame sternly, " you're up to some- 
 thing." 
 
 Privately she felt that Frances was too managing. 
 Still, her own femininity took a malicious delight in this 
 masterful tone towards a man. 
 
 " Dear Aunt Felicia," laughed Mrs. Carlyon, " when I 
 married Jemmy I soon saw that if I adopted a tragic 
 attitude, life with him would be unbearable. Now, I ask 
 you frankly, is he built for tragedy ? " 
 
 Mrs. Peters allowed her lips to relax from their pose 
 of severity. More than once, as she had explained to 
 her confessor, she had experienced a shock at finding 
 herself related, even by marriage, to anyone so jolly in 
 build as Jemmy Carlyon. " Silenus like," she called it in 
 her grandest moments, but Father Tyacke had been 
 accustomed for years to Madame's uncharitable phraseo- 
 logy. For Mr. Carlyon was, in figure, very like the old- 
 fashioned wine-cooler which stood in his London office, 
 being roundabout, short-legged and full of mixed liquors. 
 
A WISE WIFE 37 
 
 Of course he was thick-necked and above his collar the 
 skin rucked in reddish folds. 
 
 Suddenly both ladies, this vision inwardly before them, 
 burst into frank laughter. The sound of it rang out 
 pleasantly in the flower-scented place, with its air of ease 
 and long established leisure. 
 
 Madame Felicia was eighty and beautiful ; her rose- 
 leaf skin, silver curls and dark eyes were but subservient 
 now to a grace and dignity given by a life-time of happiness. 
 Three husbands had adored her and been ruled by her. 
 Nothing was left of them now, in tangible form, but three 
 portraits hanging on the walls of her house, yet their 
 respectful worship seemed to linger in the air she breathed. 
 This was always Denzell air, since at Petrockstow she was 
 a person of the first importance, whereas in London her 
 carriage might be held up any day by a policeman to 
 whom Madame of Denzell Place meant no more than 
 Mrs. Jones of Clapham. Therefore, she avoided town 
 and the unpleasant process of " finding her level " by 
 going up to it. 
 
 It had always been thus with Madame, for instinctively 
 she sought smooth waters. Neither passion nor deep 
 pain ; neither loneliness, nor struggle, had she ever 
 known. Not even child-birth had cost her a tooth or a 
 wrinkle. Every beautiful line in her face had been cut 
 by care-free hours. Whenever Jemmy Carlyon came to 
 see her, he would stand looking down in admiration on 
 the delicate ivory face that was usually seen with its 
 back to the light from the long window of the gallery 
 above the hall. At the sight the pride of possession 
 swelled in him, for, though Madame was only his aunt by 
 marriage, he had annexed her as a personal asset long 
 ago. And possession was the mainspring of Jemmy's 
 existence. Madame, then, took her place by the side 
 of the antiquities in which he dealt and hundreds of times 
 he would quote the words of a painter whom he once took 
 to see Mrs. Peters : 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me before what a beautiful thing 
 you have in your family ? " 
 
38 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Well, no, Frances," said Madame quietly, " I don't 
 know that he's cut for a tragic part." 
 
 She had been furiously angry at the marriage, for, though 
 the Carlyons possessed family skeletons in the vaults of 
 St. Meryn's Church as old as her own in St. Petrock's, 
 they were but yeomen nowadays who farmed their own 
 land. Yet, by habit, she had come to tolerate Jemmy, 
 finding him too naively natural to be anything of an offence. 
 
 " Yet he's quite knightly sometimes," she added, 
 remembering his bow when he stooped to kiss her hand. 
 
 " Gracious, Aunt Felicia ! don't you know that Jemmy 
 keeps a copy of Dowson's poems on his bookshelf at the 
 office and takes it down every time a girl comes ? Then he 
 reads to her from ' To the hands of a girl.' They tell me 
 the leaf is quite dog-eared, he's turned it up so many 
 times. Can't you hear him, our Jemmy, mouthing it out : 
 
 ' I know not the way from your finger-tips, 
 Nor how I shall gain the higher lands, 
 The citadel of your sacred lips.' " 
 
 " My dear," said Madame, " you're a wise woman." 
 
 " Why, I told him," said Mrs. Carlyon, " the first week 
 we were married that I didn't mind how he amused himself 
 as long as he never let me know anything about it. And 
 Jemmy trusts me now so thoroughly that he brings his 
 protegees to me — after they've passed the Dowson ordeal. 
 And some of them have had such ugly hands, Auntie dear ! 
 But I always look after them for him, for he's as careless 
 with girls as he is with papers, you know. Once, though, 
 I lost one in the lift when I was taking her to a party." 
 
 " Then it isn't one of his affairs, my dear ? I thought 
 it might be a more excessive Dowson episode." 
 
 "As if I should bother about that ! I don't care a 
 button what he does, as long as he keeps quiet about it. 
 He's sure to come trotting home again. And to do him 
 justice, Jemmy seeks the twilight quite as much as I could 
 wish." 
 
 She spoke dryly. 
 
 Madame Felicia bent forward, her hands crossed on the 
 
A WISE WIFE 39 
 
 lilac satin of her gown. Her head and neck were framed in 
 Brussels lace. Then she nodded slowly ; to her all this 
 aloofness on Frances' part was simply due to the fact 
 that she was a gentlewoman. Frances in a farmyard 
 killing fowls for her dinner was quite as conceivable as 
 Frances poring beneath the surface of her husband's 
 life. 
 
 " No," continued Mrs. Carlyon, " Jemmy's simply lost 
 money. Bad speculation and bad buying, no doubt. 
 He's had these upsets several times, as you know, but 
 he's generally avoided publishing it to the world. But 
 this time he actually brought the man to whom he was 
 letting the flat back to dinner with him. At first I thought 
 it was business and the visitor just a collector. I was as 
 sweet as could be, in fact, and wasted sweetbread and 
 asparagus on the fellow. I never suspected anything 
 till I heard him asking about the drains. Then I charged 
 Jemmy with letting the flat over my head, never really 
 thinking he'd actually done it. At that the whole 
 thing came out. He'd not only let the flat, but put our 
 week-end cottage on the market." 
 
 Madame Felicia exclaimed : 
 
 " Without consulting you ? " 
 
 " Without a word to me. Of course, then I saw that 
 Jemmy must have his lesson. And I'm giving it to him, 
 that's all." 
 
 " But, Frances ? A separation ? Even to punish 
 Jemmy, though of course I quite see that he deserves it." 
 
 " You think," said Mrs. Carlyon, " that it's throwing 
 one's cap over the windmill . . . making it all public ? " 
 
 " I certainly do," replied Madame. " It isn't like you 
 either, Frances." 
 
 ". It wouldn't be, if I really contemplated anything of 
 the kind," said Mrs. Carlyon, " but I want Jemmy to be 
 so frightened that he won't interfere with my province 
 again. And I intend to frighten him, but without letting 
 all the world into our confidence." 
 
 " Yes, but how ? " cried Madame. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon laughed, swinging her fine foot to and fro 
 
40 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 in its lace stocking. Jemmy always attached immense 
 importance to the stockings of his charmers ; he liked 
 them in cashmere or plain silk, and at the sight of " open 
 work " his buried Puritanism protested. His wife accord- 
 ingly always took to lace hosiery at a domestic crisis. 
 
 " My dear aunt, have you forgotten that there is such a 
 solicitor as Philip Rosewarne in Petrockstow, and do you 
 imagine that he won't hold his tongue till the trump of 
 doom about any affairs even remotely connected with 
 you ? And don't you see that, once Jemmy is abased 
 and has promised me a judicial separation and an allow- 
 ance, I can make it up with him, if I like ? For a humble, 
 contrite, broken-hearted Jemmy he will be, and don't 
 you realize, auntie, how good a woman can be to a man 
 when she's got all she wants out of him ? " 
 
 Madame Felicia shaded her eyes and smiled gently. 
 "It's just like you, Frances." 
 " And it's feasible ? " asked her niece sharply. 
 " Oh, quite, but it doesn't get over the main difficulty 
 How is Jemmy to tide over what he's sure to call his 
 ' crisis ' ? Where's the money to come from ? " asked 
 Madame. 
 
 " He reckons on you," replied Mrs. Carlyon. 
 " You mean that you both do," said Madame sharply. 
 " Well, perhaps we may," laughed Frances. " But 
 women never make such a stumbling-block of money as 
 men do. And part of Jemmy's plan was to send me down 
 to stay the year with you. He'd get the rents, you see, 
 and you'd find board and house-room for me. How 
 would you like that ? " 
 
 " To bury you alive," murmured Madame maliciously. 
 " Oh, I don't intend to be buried alive," said Mrs. 
 Carlyon frankly. " Jemmy's put paragraphs in the 
 papers about Mrs. Carlyon 's health preventing her enter- 
 taining and so I shall run over to Paris. Jemmy won't 
 come there, for he's always like a cat on hot bricks in a 
 country where he can't understand a word that's said. 
 It's better than a tariff, is a language, to keep Jemmy 
 from bothering one." 
 
A WISE WIFE 41 
 
 " And the money for the trip ? And the Paris show- 
 rooms ? " asked Madame dryly. 
 
 " Oh, you won't be hard on me in the matter of a cheque, 
 will you ? And, besides, you'll be wanting new clothes, 
 too. But if you're tiresome about the money I shall 
 plant myself on you and put up a brass bedstead in the 
 hall. I could hold a bed of justice, with all the magnates 
 calling to see me in it, perhaps." 
 
 " Hum, I see," said Madame. " You'll be glad of a 
 holiday." 
 
 " Well, housekeeping is such a bore. I have a domestic 
 crisis every three months at least, and of late Jemmy's 
 got so much on my nerves that I've had to forbid him to 
 walk round the drawing-room with a reel on a string, 
 playing with the cat. Sometimes the reel got on the 
 bare floor and the noise was appalling. Yes, Paris and the 
 hotel chej will be a comfort after Jemmy — and cook, who 
 can't be depended on not to quarrel with the parlour 
 maid. But you'll work Jemmy and see Philip Rosewarne 
 for me, won't you ? " 
 
 " I'll do my best," said Madame, " but I'm not at all 
 well, and I've had to dismiss Dr. Trevan. He didn't 
 understand my constitution in the least." 
 
 Lightly as she spoke, in her eyes sat fear, the only fear 
 possible to her — of ugliness and pain. Lifting a hand and 
 finger, she showed their stiffness. 
 
 " Yes," she nodded, " rheumatic gout. It's in both 
 ankles, too. And it's hereditary. Great Aunt Sybella 
 used to be ironed for it, you know. And at my age . . . 
 I shall soon be a cripple." 
 
 " But, surely," exclaimed Mrs. Carlyon, "it's curable 
 now ? I'm certain I heard it was." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon herself enjoyed bad health at times ; 
 during her worst attacks she would send Jemmy or the 
 parlour maid flying to the chemist for the newest fad in 
 drugs, from aspirin to Sanatogen. 
 
 Madame Felicia remained grimly silent, for she had no 
 intention whatever of revealing to Frances' unsympathetic 
 laughter the story of the rebuff she had suffered at the 
 
42 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 hands of Dr. Rudd. For, however objectionable he might 
 be, Dr. Dan was, speaking by the book, a Man, and to no 
 mere woman would Madame reveal her own failure to turn 
 such a being round her little finger. 
 
 Every part of Mrs. Peters' system, from her massaged 
 body to her devoutly tended soul, was well cared for. Of 
 a family that was Catholic by heredity, she regarded the 
 old faith as part of the organization of a gentlewoman. 
 The nunnery and chapel at Teravel were constant recipients 
 of her bounty ; so, too, was Father Tyacke of the same 
 place, a humble, but sometimes critical, father in God. 
 For Madame was devout, but she occasionally found the 
 priest something of a trial, except, of course, when she 
 wanted to whet her teeth on something strong. 
 
 On the stroke of noon Jemmy himself was standing 
 outside the outer door of Denzell, looking down over the 
 estuary below. For Denzell is built on the brow of the 
 hill and guarded by yucca trees and a machicolated wall 
 that is pierced by two gateways. The one opposite the 
 entrance porch faces the deer park, which slopes between 
 masses of trees towards the mouth of the river. Under 
 the oaks to the left, as Jemmy mopped his brow and waited 
 for the door to open, groups of dappled does were cropping 
 the short grass. In the harbour town below, the making 
 of that deer park has never been forgotten, for it still 
 recalls the houses that once stood on what is now park, 
 as well as the folks who were huddled into narrow, tortuous 
 courts and lanes. 
 
 Long and grey, built in the Elizabethan E, the house 
 showed itself, as the outer door opened and admitted Mr. 
 James Carlyon to the flagged path leading to the flight 
 of entrance steps. Above the mansard roof the grey 
 clouds were massed. The air was delicate and sea-clean 
 from the Atlantic. In the porch stood Parker, the white- 
 haired butler, for Madame never could endure to be 
 waited upon by women wherever it was possible to 
 avoid it. 
 
 To the day of her death Mrs. Peters never quite under- 
 stood Jemmy's manner that morning, for he surprised 
 
A WISE WIFE 43 
 
 her in the tone he took, as he would not have done could 
 she have realized that Parker had been indiscreetly com- 
 municative in the porch, and furthermore that Jemmy 
 himself, being thus on the alert, had caught sight of the 
 unmistakable trail of his wife's black and white silk skirt 
 disappearing along the gallery at the back of the hall. 
 For Frances wore " tail-gowns " in the house and, more- 
 over, had made a hurried departure upstairs just as 
 Jemmy came round the corner of the screen at the far 
 end of the great room. 
 
 Even had Madame known of this, she would never 
 have suspected, as Jemmy certainly did, that every word 
 he spoke was actually being heard by Frances " up aloft " 
 at the end of the balcony. However that may have been, 
 whether Frances were eavesdropping or not, Jemmy 
 assuredly was dignified, pathetic, and altogether worthy 
 of a great occasion. He was willing, of course, were it 
 for his wife's good, to live on a chop a day at his club. 
 On her account alone was he grieved, that she should 
 come even within the shadow of penury, she whom he 
 would have died to protect. He touched lightly, yet 
 affectingly, on his own loneliness. 
 
 Madame, impressed with his histrionic gifts, found him 
 as funny a spectacle as the penniless gentleman who, in 
 the marriage service, endows an heiress with all his worldly 
 goods. Then she suddenly turned the tables by demand- 
 ing how much he wanted of her, whereupon, like the maid- 
 servant on a famous occasion, Jemmy could but plead 
 the smallness of his trouble. For always on these occasions 
 he was unwilling to come to actual figures. If she would, 
 at any rate, offer house-room to Frances, till he had made 
 headway against his sea of troubles ? 
 
 " House-room to Frances ? " said Madame severely. 
 " And do you know what Frances did the last time she 
 came here to stay ? Well, I'll tell you ; she found it 
 impossible to sleep in any of the beds here, the death- 
 beds, birth-beds and marriage-beds of generations of the 
 Peters family, as she called them. She was perfectly 
 indecent, in fact. So she bought a French bedstead for 
 
44 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 herself, a horrible, brassy Brummagem thing ! That 
 wasn't all. Old Venetian glass mirrors are good enough 
 for me, but Frances, forsooth, must have plate glass in 
 which to reflect her charms. Of course, I sent all this 
 modern vulgarity straight down to Tonkin's the moment 
 she'd gone." 
 
 Jemmy was silent in dismay, for well he knew his wife's 
 tastes and her fondness for steam-heated rooms, with the 
 sound of purring motor-cars, not unaccompanied by 
 hansom whistles, outside. For a moment he remained 
 silent, overcome by this tragedy of a bedstead. Then, 
 rallying, he tried to trail a red herring across the path of 
 conversation. He found Madame Felicia looking not so 
 well as usual. Was she sure Trevan understood her ? 
 And had she thought of calling in this new man, this 
 Daniel Rudd ? He had heard the fellow was clever, 
 thought him so himself, but eccentric, of course. Eccen- 
 tricity so often goes with talent. Anyway, he was just 
 off the irons and full of all that Paris could teach him. 
 
 " James," snapped Madame, for it is always tiresome to 
 play a fish too long, " why should you throw Paris at 
 me ? I'm not a case for the Salpetriere and I don't suffer 
 from stigmata. Nor am I a hysteric nun." 
 
 Jemmy laughed, but felt his spirits rising, for there 
 was nothing Madame liked so well as a new doctor. He 
 enlarged on the events of the evening before, and found 
 the hand of Providence in the fact that Dr. Rudd should 
 have been called in to expedite the departure of the 
 vicar of St. Meryn's. 
 
 Madame listened intently, for she had set her heart on 
 Dr. Rudd's professional services. He was a man of 
 character, since he had defied her, the little great lady. 
 She didn't know that he had also told the story of her 
 discomfiture in Petrockstow with the tag, " A woman, a 
 dog, and a mulberry tree," yet, had she known, it would 
 only have made her the more determined to break down 
 his opposition. Every time she used her crippled joints 
 he seemed more desirable than all the science of Harley 
 Street. 
 
A WISE WIFE 45 
 
 " He's a boor," said Madame, " this Spudd, or Budd. 
 The first I heard of him was when he wrote me an abomin- 
 able letter asking me to help a kitchen maid who'd ' got 
 into trouble in my house.' Conceive the impertinence 
 of the man ! And Parker a grandfather ! I never 
 answered it, of course, but I turned the girl out, and 
 afterwards heard that this man Rudd was paying for the 
 child's keep." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " said Jemmy, bursting into a fit of 
 laughter, " I didn't know he was a dog like that." 
 
 " He isn't," replied Madame tartly, " not the sort of 
 dog you mean. He isn't gentleman enough for that. 
 He lives among the fishermen and respects their women- 
 kind, I am told." 
 
 Jemmy laughed delightedly at this seigneurial touch on 
 Madame's part. But he grew grave instantly when she 
 passed on to tell him how Dr. Rudd " regretted " he could 
 not attend Mrs. Peters professionally. The spectacle of 
 Dr. Rudd regretting, in the third person, must, of course, 
 be appalling to a well-regulated mind. 
 
 None the less, such things being the peccadilloes of 
 genius, for to this pitch in Jemmy's mind had the doctor 
 attained, he made Madame clearly understand that he was 
 in touch with the man and could bring him to her feet 
 ... for a consideration. 
 
 There are two sides to a bargain, and before the interview 
 closed these two sides were clearly defined : Dr. Rudd 
 once at the doors of Denzell and Mr. Carlyon's more 
 pressing debts would be swept off the slate. 
 
 Jemmy sighed with relief at this point, but over the 
 matter of the satisfaction of Frances he proved himself 
 difficult. Rosewarne was a Catholic and so not to be 
 trusted, for the undermining of English society by the 
 coming of the Jesuits was a settled article of Jemmy's 
 creed. He saw, then, in the confiding of the separation 
 affair to a Catholic solicitor a new Popish Plot. True, 
 Frances called herself a Catholic, but she was a very poor 
 one, after all, and actually no better than a pagan. Other- 
 wise he would never have married her. Madame knew 
 
46 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 all this mass of prejudice to be in Jemmy's mind, though 
 he never ventured any " anti-Popery " talk in her presence. 
 Now she eyed him firmly as he squirmed, hook in jaws. 
 
 Frances, she remarked again, had been sorely tried, and 
 to repeat the experiment of the bedstead was impossible. 
 In fact, Madame refused to have her to stay at Denzell 
 for any length of time. The minimum, however, which 
 Jemmy's wife could possibly accept would be seven 
 hundred a year settled on her, and a deed of separation. 
 Mrs. Peters played up loyally for her own sex, though she 
 never trusted her secrets to it. 
 
 Jemmy threw up his hands. Then he thirstily applied 
 himself to the whisky and seltzer apparatus which Parker 
 had deposited at his elbow. Madame listened to the 
 angry squirt of the syphon with an inward smile. 
 
 .* Philip Rosewarne," she said quietly, " is indebted 
 to me. He would lose two-thirds of his professional 
 income if he showed the slightest indiscretion in relation 
 to my affairs or yours." 
 
 She was about to add, " And Philip Rosewarne is a 
 gentleman as well as a lawyer," but forbore ; she knew 
 Jemmy too well to use that argument. 
 
 " Oh, all Catholics stick together," snorted he. 
 
 It was the first rude word he had spoken, but Madame 
 undoubtedly had pressed him hard. She smiled, then, 
 forgivingly, and so the affair was settled. Anyway, as 
 Jemmy thankfully reflected, an obscure country attorney 
 such as Rosewarne could not possibly gossip among the 
 people who mattered, that is, the friends and clients who 
 were the objects of Mr. Carlyon's worship. Also, although 
 Jemmy loved being a ninth wonder of the world occa- 
 sionally in Petrockstow, one must forego many pleasures 
 in order to obtain security. He need never put his nose 
 inside the place again. 
 
 Still, he refused to stay to lunch at Denzell, since to 
 eat cutlets with Frances, just after he had arranged to 
 meet her at a solicitor's office, would almost amount to, 
 collusion. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 LOVE IN A VALLEY 
 
 IN the quiet of early morning the only sound to be 
 heard was the wind from the Porth ruffling the top- 
 most branches of the Cornish elms that, in valleys such as 
 this, grow to the height and grace of poplars. 
 
 Dorothy Rosewarne closed the door of the chapel 
 behind her and stood for a moment on the step looking 
 out over the lawns and box-hedges of the nunnery garden. 
 Inset in the wall were the tombstones of a line of abbesses 
 going back to the days of the post-Napoleonic persecutions, 
 when the Arundels gave this manor house as a place of 
 refuge to an order of Carmelite sisters from Antwerp. 
 In the flatness of the turf above their bones, as in the 
 tombstones level with the walls, there was an effect of 
 humility, as though, like waves receding on the sands, 
 they would leave behind them but a faint ripple by way 
 of record. The wind was driving masses of clouds from 
 the Atlantic across the sky ; against this background the 
 carved pinnacles of the church tower flushed like the 
 petals of a stoneflower. Over the deep granite arch of 
 the Convent entrance door, at the far end of the long 
 building, the pale flowers of a monthly rose still hung 
 below the feet of the figure of St. Joseph in its niche. For 
 this valley scarcely knows the touch of frost, though the 
 bleak uplands all around are the play -places of the winds. 
 
 Flinging down a heap of mats at the Convent door, the 
 portress smiled and curtseyed as the girl passed. She 
 was of canonical age, with bristling tufts of white hair 
 
 47 
 
48 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 on her chin. At the top of the elm avenue leading to the 
 village, Dorothy paused to look back on the long grey 
 frontage of the Convent, on its lines of mullioned windows 
 and high grey roof. Not a sound came from this hive of 
 women, only the noise of the portress's mat-beating. In 
 the vigour of her efforts she was sending up a little cloud 
 of dust as incense towards St. Joseph. The exercise 
 ground of the sisters was at the back of the house, in their 
 garden behind high walls to which there is no entrance 
 except by a locked doorway surmounted by a cross. 
 Here, too, the nuns sleep their long sleep, and in autumn 
 the grey encircling walls glow with the purple of valerian, 
 in spring with the red-brown and yellow of the wild 
 wallflower. 
 
 Suddenly the girl started. 
 
 " Gracious ! " she exclaimed, " Father Tyacke's eggs ! " 
 
 Hurrying back to the chapel, she found the egg-basket 
 under her rush-bottomed chair, and going round to the 
 side door of the Presbytery, behind the pulpit, invaded 
 the priest's study. 
 
 The only fire ever seen in Father Tyacke's den was a 
 heap of smouldering logs ; a thousand times had Mr. 
 Rosewarne worked like a nigger to put life into it, and a 
 thousand times had he failed. People's fires are very 
 characteristic ; this one was truly Tyackian. So, too, 
 was the skinny terrier reposing in the dog-basket by the 
 hearth. At this moment, meagre and chilled to the bone, 
 Father Tyacke sat in a cushionless chair, like a plain 
 choir-stall in a poverty-stricken church, pouring himself 
 out a cup of watery tea. 
 
 It was Dorothy's part — and her mother's — to supply 
 the Presbytery with the delicate meats that the Father 
 would never buy for himself, with the game, chicken, and 
 eggs that only too often, even then, found their way into 
 the larders of plump, but devout, parishioners. He had 
 long given up protesting when, as now, the girl descended 
 upon him, calling for saucepan and boiling water from the 
 whey-faced housekeeper. In fact, the Father enjoyed 
 these attentions as much as it was possible for him to 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 49 
 
 enjoy anything, and even murmured as a reminder, " four 
 minutes, child," with regard to the cooking. Then he 
 sat egg-spoon in hand, waiting for the moment of 
 consumption. 
 
 Meanwhile he began on what, to Dorothy and her 
 father, was known irreverently as the Father's Litany of 
 Sorrows. One immense section of these was, naturally, 
 the conflict between himself and the Anglican Church, 
 now, alas, in possession of the church of St. Morwenna. 
 When the Father's long face, with its sunken cheeks, broke 
 into a smile, the wrinkles ran the entire half-circuit of 
 cheeks and jaws, like the widening ripples when a stone 
 is thrown into a pond. They played now as he described 
 how the Established Church had got a rise out of the 
 Catholic by distributing illustrated Church Almanacks, 
 even to the households of the Faithful. 
 
 " What do you think is their latest story ? " asked 
 Dorothy. " Mother heard it yesterday — that every time 
 we make a woman convert, Madame Felicia gives her a 
 silk dress that will stand upright with its own richness. 
 And this is where you come in, Father Tyacke ! For you 
 carry it to her. Father, how can you be so light- 
 minded ? " 
 
 The vision of the good man contributing to the pomps 
 and vanities of canny housewives was rich — to anyone 
 who knew him. For he habitually cherished gloom. His 
 dining-room was hung with pictures of the Crucifixion, 
 and he devoted his staircase walls to details of the martyr- 
 dom of the saints, all faithfully realistic. In Dorothy's 
 childhood the Presbytery had been no better than Foxe's 
 " Book of Martyrs." School-treats were to him a night- 
 mare, for, being extremely nervous, he always anticipated 
 that the horses would run away on the road to Denzell, 
 where, of course, these Church festivals were held. 
 Tradition declared that when the lightning conductor of St. 
 Morwenna needed repair, Father Tyacke crossed the 
 precincts of the churchyard, and clasping the legs of the 
 mason, presumably Anglican, who was going aloft, 
 implored him to be careful of his limbs. 
 
So THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Oh, my child, my child," he cried with hands uplifted, 
 " what will they say next ? " 
 
 One of the disappointments of his life was that he 
 would never be privileged to see Dorothy Rosewarne 
 walking up the elm avenue to enter the nunnery as a 
 novice. He was quite unable to say why he had failed 
 in this matter, but in the depths of his sad heart he 
 ascribed the fact mainly to Dorothy's father. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne was a strange Catholic, almost as strange 
 in his Catholicism as in his Radicalism. Devout at times, 
 zealous in politics at others, in a lightning flash of comment 
 he would occasionally stop and strip away the veil of 
 sanctitude from some hallowed legend, or, even more 
 joyfully, find a biting phrase in which to damn Demos 
 for a swinish fool. Dorothy loved his " ribaldry," for she 
 had — a fact that distressed her mother — caught his habit 
 of vigorous speech. Mr. Rosewarne certainly seemed 
 most himself when, looking over the top of his round 
 glasses, he prefaced some scathing piece of destructive 
 criticism by an " Has it ever struck you that . . . ? " 
 This was the formula Mrs. Rosewarne dreaded, though 
 after twenty-five years of marriage it did not strike her 
 with quite the same sense of shock as at first. Dorothy, 
 on the other hand, loved the words and would greet them 
 with the low chuckle which passed with her for laughter. 
 
 With the oncoming of Mr. Rosewarne's blindness and 
 his consequent dependence on his daughter, Father 
 Tyacke's hopes of yet another Bride for the spiritual 
 Bridegroom passed away for ever. Yet, half wistfully, 
 the girl was always present to watch the walk up the elm 
 avenue which all the valley understood as the prelude to 
 the religious life. The novices made it a practice to sleep 
 for a night or two at the Falcon Inn opposite the nunnery 
 gates before their entry, and always each one turned from 
 under the shadow of the trees to wave a hand at the 
 watching group of spectators. Sometimes against the 
 background of grey walls at the end of the alley the light 
 fell on dark furs, at others on white dresses and flower- 
 trimmed hats. Dorothy remembered each girl by the 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 51 
 
 picture she made, set in a frame of green leaves or of 
 bare branches. Then later on, after prophecies that 
 " she would never stand it," from the villagers, there came 
 the final ceremony with its tremulous joy. 
 
 On these days Dorothy felt like a ghost looking in at 
 a window of Paradise, but none the less, after such an 
 occasion, there was new zest in the joy with which she 
 fought Father Tyacke ; on one such occasion he met 
 her dressed for a dance. She was decorously be-scarfed, 
 but none the less decolletee. The Reverend Father flung 
 up his hands at the sight and exclaimed : 
 
 " And do you dance with men ? " 
 
 Flushing to the eyes, and furious, the girl drew herself 
 up, spread out her chest, and swept magnificently on, 
 replying : " With whom else, Father ? " 
 
 Yet this priest, who aroused scorn by his rigid gloom, 
 his paltry fears, who would only eat bacon cooked in 
 the oven, who discoursed on pill-taking, and scuttled home, 
 his skirts tucked round lean shanks, because it was 
 threatening rain or nightfall, was after all a Master in his 
 own realm, that world of sin and pain which common 
 minds spend all their force in trying to forget. When he 
 bore the Host to the dying, he was transfigured ; when he 
 took the hand of one who lay in terror of the moment 
 when body and soul are torn asunder, he was strong with 
 the strength that utter conviction alone can bring. At 
 death-beds his face was always wreathed in smiles, strange 
 and terrible. Others, besides Dorothy, then feared the 
 man whose chills and pills they derided forty times a 
 week. 
 
 " Father," asked Dorothy mischievously, as he pushed 
 away the breakfast tray this morning, " do you know 
 what the nuns have chosen for their treat at the Reverend 
 Mother's jubilee ? " 
 
 Father Tyacke glared ; secretly he considered that 
 the holy men who laid down the rules for convents had 
 not framed them half stringently enough. Still, he held 
 his tongue, since he often felt powerless before the girl's 
 mockery. 
 
 4* 
 
52 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " They've asked to have a piano for a fortnight," she 
 continued, nodding impudently. 
 
 Father Tyacke groaned ; all music, except the Gregorian 
 mode, was distasteful to him, but the rattle of piano was 
 anathema. 
 
 " You'll have waltzes and polkas all day long, Father," 
 said Dorothy, maliciously nodding at the party wall which 
 separated the Presbytery from the nuns' quarters. 
 
 " A perfect scandal to the valley," he observed tartly. 
 For the Jubilee of the Reverend Mother would be a trial 
 to him only a degree less terrible than the gold or silver 
 weddings of the aged nuns. These women he hated with 
 the venom of an elderly cat. In his view they had nothing 
 to do but gossip, and the sight of an ugly white face, withered 
 or even bearded, crowned with a marriage wreath at these 
 joyous rites, made him like a furious bear. 
 
 Father Tyacke had brought many white lambs to the 
 Bridegroom, but his love for them failed the moment 
 they turned into elderly sheep. And never did a more 
 appalling memento mori appear among any roses, pagan 
 or christian, than the spectacle of the Reverend Father 
 assisting at a Jubilee or a nun's marriage fete. " And," 
 he continued, trying to change the subject, " there's 
 sorrow and scandal coming, as I hear, to our dear lady 
 at Denzell." 
 
 He crossed his feet, as Dorothy thought, very cheerfully, 
 for, notwithstanding his scorn of the nuns' tittle- 
 tattle, he himself took a healthy interest in other folks' 
 affairs. 
 
 44 Oh," said Dorothy, " if there's scandal, I'm surprised 
 you listen to it, Father Tyacke." 
 
 " She told me herself, of course," he said, " or I should 
 never have mentioned it. But, of course, it must be a 
 trial to Mrs. Peters, this dissension between Mrs. Carlyon 
 and her husband." 
 
 To Dorothy's mind the priest was simply feeling his 
 way ; fishing, in fact. 
 
 94 Father," she said, rising, " I don't like you this 
 morning. You know very well that if Madame Felicia 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 53 
 
 said anything to you, she wouldn't wish you to talk about 
 it to anyone . . . not even to me, or to father." 
 
 Dorothy kept her own soul very carefully swept and 
 garnished in the matter of honour and straight dealing. 
 
 " My dear child, you mistake me," he cried, following 
 her to the door. " I know that all secrets are safe with 
 you, as with your father . . . especially our dear Madame 's 
 secrets. She would, I know, speak as frankly to you as 
 to me." 
 
 " Then I'd wait till she did, if I were you," said Dorothy 
 pertly. 
 
 There was no paternal benediction in the air as Dorothy 
 walked away, shoulders set square and nose in air. 
 
 " Horrible old toad," she cried to herself, " mother's 
 overfeeding him, I believe. What does he want with 
 jellies and beef tea ? They only make him more 
 venomous." 
 
 As she breasted the hill homewards, she held the back of 
 her hand to her cheeks to cool them. The next moment she 
 burst into a fit of chuckles at her own peppery departure 
 from the Presbytery. After all, it was perfectly true 
 that, while her father's blindness grew on him, she had 
 gradually come to hold a confidential position in the firm 
 of Rosewarne and Willyams, of which her father was 
 senior partner. It began with lessons in shorthand and 
 ended in her using that accomplishment to take down 
 notes of instructions when her father was interviewing a 
 client. In this task the bonds of affection between father 
 and daughter drew them even closer, for almost always, 
 in a woman's love, there is need of some sense of helpful- 
 ness on her part, of dependence on his. 
 
 " I want the eyes of me," said Mr. Rosewarne, as he 
 heard his daughter's footsteps on the gravel. He was 
 sitting on the terrace outside the house, facing the scene 
 he could not see with that masklike look on his face 
 which, to spectators, marks the tragedy of blindness. 
 " Have been wanting them this half hour." 
 
 Drawing her hand through his arm he began to walk 
 up and down. Teravel stands on the hill above Mawgan, 
 
54 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 with a long garden that stretches downwards to the river. 
 From it to the left stretch the woods of Carnanton, follow- 
 ing the line of the valley as far as the eyes can see. To 
 the right the woods of the valley end in the sandflats of 
 the Porth. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne lifted his face to the light. There were 
 as many odd corners in the bosses of his prominent nose, 
 in his crooked smile and big, humorous lips as ever the 
 features of any Jerry from Cork could show. He looked 
 as if he loved his ease, as well as a good fight. Nor did his 
 face belie him, for, though he could perfectly appreciate 
 an arm-chair by the fire with a cat on each side, with 
 cream and muffins for tea, and a wife and daughter to 
 minister to him, he loved even better the conflict with 
 the powers of evil, meaning by that, the force of Toryism. 
 Now, whilst Mr. Rosewarne was a fervent Radical, his 
 wife was instinctively conservative and in part felt actual 
 pleasure at seeing his energies curtailed by his blindness. 
 Not that she was hard-hearted ; on the contrary. But 
 she believed in the sheltered life and now devoted her 
 very considerable energies to turning her " quaint man " 
 into what he, sometimes with a wry face, called an 
 enclosed garden, or, in more poetic moments, a lodge 
 in a garden of cucumbers. Unfortunately, however, the 
 cucumbers were sometimes bitter, as when, for instance, 
 she deluged him with music, although he not only could 
 not tell one note from another, but actually at times 
 found the noise distressing. 
 
 " Well ? " he asked after a turn up and down. 
 
 Dorothy knew what he wanted. It was one of the 
 services daily expected of her that she should tell him 
 the scene actually before his eyes. Only a word or two 
 was needed, for Mr. Rosewarne knew Cornwall even 
 better than he knew his wife, which is saying a good deal. 
 
 " All the hill," said she, the flood of colour rising in 
 her cheeks, for even with her father she was shy of 
 " showing off," " all the hill is purple with leaf -buds. 
 And the church tower stands out among the trees with 
 the light on it. The shadows chase one another over 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 55 
 
 the hills, the shadows of the clouds. But still the light 
 always falls on the tower. Over the sea it's dark and 
 threatening and the gulls are flying in low circles." 
 
 With his lips open, as though he were drinking, Mr. 
 Rosewarne stood, holding his daughter by the arm as 
 she gazed up at him. Her head just reached to his 
 shoulder, for she was what the cottage women call 
 " delicate built." Her dark hair was of the blue-black 
 seen only in a bird's plumage, or in the beauty of Iiiah *■ 
 or Cornish women. The whole face curved curiously 
 upwards towards the right, in hazel eyes, and aquiline 
 nose, no less than in the quaint upward curve of the 
 lips. Dead white in complexion, at moments of feeling 
 she flushed shell pink, and as her life moved to the delicate 
 undercurrents of things felt, though often not seen, the 
 expression that, in repose, was quiet as still water, yet 
 broke in moments of excitement into colour and sparkle. 
 
 " I say, D.," said her father, " if you go on like this, 
 you'll be writing prose-poetry, or poetic prose, or some- 
 thing awful like that." 
 
 At this point Mrs. Rosewarne tapped on the window to 
 call them to breakfast. She was in good spirits this 
 morning as she watched the sunlight dancing on the 
 china and silver. For one of the disappointments of the 
 house was the fact that not a corner in the dining-room 
 could be found from which the breakfast table would 
 catch the morning sunlight. Without this Mrs. Rose- 
 warne found it impossible to exist ; she therefore threw 
 out another window by the fireplace, had a bay built 
 for it and — triumphantly — trapped her sunbeam. 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne's part in life, as she would have told 
 you, was to beautify the ways of common life. Thus she 
 kept a table delicate rather than lavish, one that was 
 more mindful of the refinements of the fancy than 
 of the tastes of the palate. With Horace, she studied 
 the shapes of boiling eggs, and every farm round Teravel 
 knew that Mrs. Rosewarne would pay extra for brown ones. 
 None the less, after dining with the Rosewarnes, the 
 guests sometimes went away hungry for more delicate 
 
56 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 morsels, for more sips of nectareous wine-flavoured soups 
 and sauces, a condition hygienically perfect, of course, 
 but not pleasing to Cornish stomachs. 
 
 Everything she did, small or great, she tried to do 
 gracefully, life being the greatest art. To her credit it 
 should be added that she carried the same sense of per- 
 fection into the world of ideas. Thus, her ears of a 
 morning having been horrified by the squealing of a pig, 
 she wrote up to town — of course without mentioning such 
 a subject in the magic circle of home — ordered a dozen 
 humane killers and sent Father Tyacke to distribute them 
 among Catholic pig-owners. The Protestants she tackled 
 in person and became known — this dainty artist in life — 
 as the pig lady. 
 
 One necessary result of this delicacy of feeling was, of 
 course, that many subjects of conversation were tacitly 
 tabooed. This morning Mr. Rosewarne offended by 
 announcing with a sigh that he would not be home till 
 late, as he would have to go to Parson Retallack's funeral. 
 Mrs. Rosewarne promptly changed the subject, and 
 Dorothy smiled to herself ; to the girl's way of thinking 
 there was something cold and almost repellent in this 
 studied seeking for the pleasant side of life. A cloud on 
 her daughter's brow was often the sole response Mrs. 
 Rosewarne gained for her efforts — a cloud from her 
 daughter and a bantering laugh from her husband. 
 
 " Father's ' blacks ' are getting fearfully shabby," said 
 Dorothy mischievously, " and so old-fashioned." 
 
 " Then let him order a new suit," said Mrs. Rosewarne, 
 smiling lightly. On these occasions of Dorothy's mockery 
 she would place forefinger and thumb on her own fore- 
 head and gaily press out the two folds between the eye- 
 brows. As a matter of fact, her plump, mature face was 
 almost entirely without wrinkles. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne's funeral suit was always kept at the 
 office, for his wife refused, laughingly, to confess that his 
 trade had any connection with an undertaker's. On 
 occasions when he had to attend funerals professionally 
 he would change his clothes in the well-like back-room of 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 57 
 
 the office in Petrockstow. Many devices of this kind 
 were adopted in the Rosewarne household in order to 
 save Mrs. Rosewarne 's susceptibilities from shock. 
 
 " Well, little Shem," said Mr. Rosewarne, as the dogcart 
 turned out of the avenue into the road across the downs 
 that lead to Petrockstow, " we've got a tiresome day 
 before us." 
 
 " Little Shem " was one of his special names for her. 
 Her father's delicacy, indeed, was of a different kind 
 from her mother's, and full of reticence. " Shem " in his 
 vocabulary stood for " gem " and, like a masonic sign, 
 was supposed to be understood only by the initiate. In 
 the country phrase her father " jewelled " her, but all 
 the world must not know. She was also Eyes of Mine, 
 or Memory, or, occasionally, the Little Scrubbed Clerk. 
 
 " What besides the funeral then, dad ? " she asked. 
 
 When they were alone together, as now, with the sea 
 in the distance a line of silver against the horizon, the 
 girl felt the restfulness of their unstudied joy in each other. 
 
 " Oh, there's that nonsense about the Carlyons, you 
 know," he said, irritably rubbing his nose, " they're 
 coming to-day about their deed of separation. Why 
 on earth they can't quarrel comfortably up in town, I 
 can't imagine. It's bound to be a worry to Madame 
 Felicia, for, disagreeable as Mrs. Carlyon is, I believe 
 Madame 's really fond of her. To my mind, ' Frances ' 
 is a thorough knave, though, to be sure, she's a cheerful 
 one, and that's something to the good." 
 
 With a puzzled frown on her face, the girl sat bolt 
 upright, delicately stroking the mare's back with her whip. 
 
 " I wish you'd go up to-day and see Madame," con- 
 tinued Mr. Rosewarne. " She seemed terribly old and 
 frail on Sunday. I didn't like her looks at all." 
 
 Dorothy flushed ; she was painfully shy, especially 
 when, as in the case of Madame Felicia, she adored. 
 
 " Must I, father ? " she pleaded. " Perhaps she'd 
 rather not see me." 
 
 " Then she'll say so," he answered sharply. 
 
 Dorothy laughed, recovering her sang-froid. For, 
 
58 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 indeed, it was undoubtedly true that Madame made her 
 wishes known pretty plainly. An invitation to Denzell 
 was a royal command. 
 
 At Music Water, the valley deep in tangled wild plants, 
 a woman came to a cottage door. It was nothing unusual 
 for Mr. Rosewarne to be asked to take a parcel into town. 
 But this time it was something different, for the woman 
 was holding up a baby. 
 
 " Where am I to take this one, then, Lizzie ? " he asked. 
 He smiled quizzingly at his daughter's flushed cheeks, for, 
 by now, the baby was in the girl's arms. 
 
 " I thought Miss Dorothy 'd like to see the new one, 
 sir. Twas always the tiniest with her that was the 
 dearest," said Lizzie with a smile, as she watched the 
 dark head against the girl's shoulder. " And how's 
 Wobbler, miss ? " 
 
 Dorothy laughed. " Splendid," she said with a flash 
 of her white teeth. 
 
 Of the many cats at Teravel " the tiniest " was Wobbler, 
 Dorothy's special, a little abortion, undergrown, wizened 
 and split-eared, but jolly and mightily indifferent to the 
 ways of humans. 
 
 " A proper heller, that Wobbler," said Lizzie, who was 
 an old servant of Teravel. All three of them had a sudden 
 vision of the small contemptuous topsy careering down 
 the passage with a flip, flip of her wicked little legs. 
 Wobbler was a perfect incarnation of the Miller of the 
 Dee. 
 
 '• Nice girl, Lizzie, nice and homely ; not Cornish 
 though," said Mr. Rosewarne as, the baby being restored 
 to its mother, the cart began to wind up the hill. " No, 
 not Cornish," he continued musingly, " fat legs, soft heart, 
 but the true Cornish woman's got a streak of the sinister 
 in her. There's nothing of that about Lizzie. Remember 
 to read to me to-night that passage in Pater about the 
 transmutation of ideas into images. It's the other way 
 about, in Cornwall. For here, Nature's given us the 
 image ; we've to find the idea. And it's something 
 sinister and untamed . . . yet homely, too ... to those 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 59 
 
 of the Blood. By Jove ! there are images enough ; the 
 threatening colour of the sea over ridges of black rock, 
 the veining of the cliffs, the etching on the sand, the 
 green shadow of rocks, the brime of the moonlit sea, and 
 the Cornish people . . . you and I, too. But ah, the 
 soul of her ! — the image, as Pater has it, for she has a soul 
 as distinct as Ireland's. My dear, we'll read Pater 
 to-night." 
 
 They laughed together, caught up for a second into the 
 over-world of thought which at moments thrills so vividly 
 for minds as alert as these. 
 
 Then Mr. Rosewarne added gaily, not without a thought 
 of malice, " Your mother will approve of Pater." 
 
 It was only Dorothy who sighed, for she knew that 
 always at the beginning of a disagreeable day's work her 
 father liked to arrange some delicate after-pleasure for 
 himself to which his mind could fly as a refuge amid all 
 the boring details of sordid interviews, and still more 
 sordid arrangements. Thus far, certainly, Mr. Rosewarne 
 fell into line with his wife's sybaritish humour. 
 
 Yet sometimes, though less often since he had been 
 blind, as Dorothy observed sadly, he would rebel at the 
 Feather-bedasia to which he was being systematically 
 subjected. On such an occasion the newsagent in Pet- 
 rockstow would be ordered to send to Teravel the Nation 
 as well as the seemly Spectator. 
 
 There was a tradition that early in their married life 
 Mrs. Rosewarne had burnt, as it were by the hand of the 
 hangman, a pile of Humanitarians and Free Russias ; but 
 that, of course, was long ago, when the crudity of youth 
 was upon her. Now she merely raised her eyebrows at 
 erring Radical or Socialist organs, and the result was far 
 more successful than any holocaust. For after a week or 
 two, Mr. Rosewarne would humbly go off and counter- 
 mand the order himself. 
 
 The office of Rosewarne and Willyams stands towards 
 the bottom of the steep street of Petrockstow behind wire 
 blinds emblazoned with the name of the firm. On market 
 days the tops of hay-carts sweep the walls, and at all 
 
6o THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 times dashing fish-jowters splash mud over the front 
 windows. At the door of the office Mr. Sara waited for 
 the dog-cart, looking up the street and down, as though 
 he expected it to arrive by land or sea. Sara had the 
 peculiarly lean appearance common to solicitors' clerks 
 which suggests that the Law should be regarded as a 
 superior kind of drying-oven. This morning he had to 
 announce that Mr. Willy ams, the partner in Camelstock, 
 where the principal part of the firm's business was centred, 
 a ad already called up Mr. Rosewarne twice on the 
 telephone. 
 
 Apart from the management of the Denzell estate, the 
 business of Rosewarne and Willyams in Petrockstow was 
 chiefly concerned with the trawling fleet. This year the 
 most important case had been the suit arising out of the 
 injuries sustained by a trawler who had fallen over a 
 heap of coal dumped on the quay. The question of the 
 responsibility of the Harbour Commissioners for that 
 coal was Dorothy's first introduction to the science of 
 law. It struck her, on the whole, as an ingenious game, 
 but one scarcely worth all the fuss that was made about it. 
 
 Leaving the dog-cart at the livery stable, she turned 
 down the opening to the quay. With her feminine gift 
 for casting observant side-glances, she soon became aware 
 that Dr. Rudd, pipe in mouth, was watching her critically, 
 from the archway of the Priory House. Her trim figure 
 naturally detached itself from the roughly-clad fellows 
 all around, as did that of the meagre curate in a shabby 
 overcoat who crossed the quay head at the same time. 
 It was a matter of debate in the girl's mind as to whether 
 the curl of contempt on the doctor's lips was meant for 
 her or for the " devil-dodger." 
 
 The trawlers were going out on the morning tide. Jets 
 of smoke issued from the steam-capstans, tackle creaked 
 and hoarse voices shouted against the stir of the waves. 
 Round the basin the weather-beaten roofs and house- 
 fronts glowed in the light. As the sunlight caught the 
 barked sails of the trawl -boats outside the harbour, they 
 seemed to pulse and breathe, afire with every tint of red 
 
LOVE IN A VALLEY 61 
 
 and ochre. Co-partners of sea and sky and answering to 
 the winds as perfectly as birds, they passed between the 
 sand-dunes of the estuary towards the open sea. East- 
 coasters they were, in Petrockstow for the spring fishing, 
 and still in winter rig. 
 
 When Dorothy returned from the quay-end the lounging 
 blue jersey had disappeared from the outlook of the 
 Priory House. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 METIER DE FEMME 
 
 [~\0 you know," asked Mr. Rosewarne, while Jemmy 
 
 1 ) Carlyon bowed before Dorothy and expressed 
 himself surprised at finding anything so young and charm- 
 ing in the dusty purlieus of the law, " do you know how 
 my daughter started on her legal career ? " 
 
 Mr. Carlyon found himself unable to guess, and Dorothy's 
 entreaties being unheeded, her father proceeded to tell 
 the little story by which he often bridged the gulf of an 
 introduction. 
 
 " Well," he said, " it was the first time Dorothy had 
 ever been in Court and at a very dramatic moment, too. 
 For I was just cross-examining a woman and getting her 
 quite comfortably to convict herself, when everybody was 
 electrified by a low, agonized voice floating across the 
 crowded room. ' Don't, father, oh, don't,' it said, and 
 at the sound something snapped. Everybody moved, 
 and some smiled." 
 
 " And the woman ? " asked Jemmy. 
 
 " Got four months hard," said Mr. Rosewarne. 
 
 " That was in an English court," replied Jemmy 
 gallantly. " It could not have happened in a French 
 one." 
 
 Dorothy flushed angrily and tried to smile, but at the 
 moment the room was invaded by Mrs. Carlyon, ushered 
 deferentially in by Sara. At once the centre of interest 
 shifted, as it had a habit of doing when Mrs. Carlyon 
 appeared. The brisk aigrette, the drooping yet billowy 
 
 62 
 
METIER DE FEMME 63 
 
 taffeta, struck exactly the right note of firmness tempered 
 with docility. 
 
 Dorothy settled herself in her chair and felt that her 
 father had been right in insisting that she should be 
 present, for Mrs. Carlyon was undoubtedly capable of 
 giving a lesson in character. At first she was surprised, 
 then patronizing, at finding the solicitor's clerk, in this 
 instance, to be so young and naive. 
 
 " For her discretion of course Mr. Rosewarne could 
 answer ? " 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne bowed gravely, while Dorothy drew in 
 her breath with a little hiss as though she had been chucked 
 under the chin. Vaguely uncomfortable, Jemmy in his 
 good nature began to fuss. 
 
 " Business, business," said he, " let's get to business. 
 No time to be lost." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon started on her first speech, and Dorothy 
 felt more and more as though she were present at an 
 auction, with a skilful manipulator organizing the bids. 
 
 " You understand, Mr. Rosewarne," said Mrs. Jemmy, 
 " that this is merely a mutual agreement which we con- 
 sider will be for the happiness of us both. It need not, I 
 understand, go into Court ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said Mr. Rosewarne, turning towards 
 her. His only trouble, at the beginning of an interview, 
 was in the orientation of the separate speakers. 
 
 "It is merely the question of my support that is at 
 issue," said Mrs. Carlyon, with evident appreciation of 
 her own good taste. "I do not think "... she hesi- 
 tated ..." that ten pounds a week would be too much." 
 
 Dorothy's eyes flashed ; it seemed that by descending 
 to the artisan's level of calculation Mrs. Carlyon would 
 prove her humility. 
 
 " Make it twelve," said Jemmy, rather insensibly, 
 " and guineas." 
 
 He was always very much at home in sale rooms. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon bowed in his direction. She hadn't 
 glanced at him once since she entered the room, but now 
 her bosom was pleasingly agitated with the sense of her 
 
64 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 own fitness to earn twelve guineas a week. " She looks 
 like a prize ox," thought Dorothy, who now knew what 
 simile had been running in her mind all the time ; it was 
 that of the butcher's shop in Anatole France where the 
 butcher's family, full fed and drowsy with meat, sleep 
 among the joints and bloodstained furniture. 
 
 " How much is that a year ? " asked Mr. Rosewarne, 
 and they all began to calculate. After many false starts, 
 which occasioned laughter that was prolonged because it 
 eased the tension of the moment, they arrived at the 
 correct figure, £650 paid quarterly. 
 
 " Then," said Mrs. Carlyon sweetly, " I should wish 
 some of the furniture to be mine, all that my aunt gave 
 me on my marriage, all that is at the flat, anyway." 
 
 " In both the flat and the cottage," said Jemmy firmly. 
 
 " An inventory, perhaps . . ." began Mr. Rosewarne. 
 
 " No need, no need," declared Jemmy airily. " What 
 do I want with furniture ? " He sighed, his mind on the 
 club-chop, the club armchairs. " Settle it all on Mrs. 
 Carlyon, of course. Put it all in her name . . . the 
 cottage, the flat, the furniture in both." 
 
 " Naked I came into the world," said his manner, 
 " naked I go out." His directions issued from his lips 
 like a flood let loose. By now, Mrs. Carlyon's volubility 
 was quite out-paced. Jemmy was heavily insured. Put 
 it in Her name, of course. His will ? Oh, yes, Mr. Rose- 
 warne would glance through it. Everything for Her, of 
 course. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon's expression became distinctly uneasy. 
 She opened her mouth to speak, but Jemmy chipped in 
 before her. 
 
 " I retain," said he grandly, " nothing but the business 
 and what appertains to it. My private life is at an end ; 
 it was bound up in Mrs. Carlyon, but since she wishes the 
 tie to be broken . . ." he paused, but continued again 
 firmly, "I, of course, accede to her wish. I become once 
 more a purely business man, my task to build more surely 
 than before on the old foundations of my respect . . . 
 and love ... for her, my only object to leave her at 
 
METIER DE FEMME 65 
 
 my death as wealthy as she had a right to expect to be 
 when she married me." 
 
 He got up and made for the door, but presently turned, 
 his hand on the door knob. 
 
 1 Frances," said he, " have I done everything you 
 wish ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carlyon kept her eyes down, but her colour rose. 
 
 " Everything, James," she answered gently. 
 
 The general impression in the room, when the door 
 closed behind him, was that the honours were with Jemmy. 
 Compared with his exit, Mrs. Carlyon's was hurried, not 
 to say undignified, but to Dorothy's keen eyes she seemed 
 to be struggling, not with rising tears, but with incipient 
 laughter. 
 
 Father and daughter left alone, drew breath as though 
 a whirlwind had passed. 
 
 " What in the world does it all mean ? " said Dorothy, 
 while he reached for his tobacco pouch. 
 
 He puffed in silence for a moment ; then he said : 
 " What do you think ? " 
 
 " Well, I know she wanted to laugh . . . anyway. 
 I suppose it was because she got everything she wanted. 
 But, dad, wasn't there anything more to it than . . . 
 they showed here ? And they've lived together for 
 years ! " 
 
 " Oh, heaps more, little one . . . heaps more than 
 they showed. But as for the money side of it which 
 gives her so much satisfaction ..." 
 
 " Well, dad ? " 
 
 " Hollow, hollow, hollow, my dear, all hollow as a 
 drum, for either he's so rich that the swag she goes off 
 with is a mere fleabite ... or he's near being stone- 
 broke. Either things are so bad that he doesn't care a 
 tinker's cuss what he promises, or else he's giving her a 
 drop in an ocean and the silly woman is so clever she 
 doesn't see it." 
 
 Suddenly he pulled himself up short with a sense of 
 the unsuit ability of expressing his conjectures to this 
 particular hearer. 
 
66 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Dorothy," he said, as she stood with a hand on his 
 shoulder, " write your notes out and give them to Sara 
 and dismiss these people from your mind. And then go 
 up and see Madame, but, whatever you do, don't say a 
 word to her about this affair. I tell you I don't like the 
 looks of it. No, I don't." 
 
 " Father," said she, " Father Tyacke tried to get some- 
 thing out of me about this . . . scandal, as he called it. 
 Madame told him about it." 
 
 " Tshuh ! how could she be so foolish ? But I'll see 
 Tyacke, and do you ..." 
 
 " Get off to my play. Eh, dad ? Oh, you dear 
 old man," she cried, dropping a kiss on the top of his 
 head. 
 
 Ruefully Mr. Rosewarne retired to the back office to 
 prepare himself for the parson's funeral. He was full of 
 compunction at having involved his daughter in a business 
 that struck him instinctively as very far from being open 
 and above board. 
 
 As to one side of life, Dorothy had remained singularly 
 ignorant. Tenderly now he recalled his wife's stories of 
 her historical reading, of how difficult it was to explain 
 the matter of Fair Rosamond, for instance. At his wife's 
 laughter he had frowned, and then with a sigh corrected 
 his anger, for, assuredly, these things must be left to the 
 management of women. Yet all the while, he knew 
 perfectly that he wished it need not be so left, for, in his 
 man's more delicate appreciation of a young girl's 
 simplicity, Mrs. Rosewarne's laughter even seemed coarse. 
 Yet to imagine his wife to be coarse was an impossible 
 thing ! He only felt that personally he must take off 
 his shoes when he entered such regions in a child's mind. 
 Yet to-day, in this Carlyon affair, he had been guilty of 
 bringing her into contact with duplicity of a kind strange 
 even to himself, for that puppets had been dancing on 
 wires he knew perfectly, though for what reason he was 
 unable to grasp. 
 
 Dorothy saw him off to the funeral, sitting wedged 
 between two of the parson's sons and faced by the auc 
 
METIER DE FEMME 6 7 
 
 tioneer, who weighed down the trap by his bulk. Con- 
 trasted with the beefy regularity of these faces, her 
 father looked like a white-faced gnome. She hated them, 
 too, for their patronage of his affliction and then despised 
 herself. 
 
 " Poor dears, they meant well after all," she said, as 
 the cart turned the corner of Petrockstow. She was 
 making a praiseworthy effort to be charitable. 
 
 Some natures there are too sensitive, too nervously 
 alive to the electric currents from the unseen, to endure 
 contact easily with the actual. They resemble persons 
 born without the right number of skins. For such To-day 
 has its' possibilities, nay, its certainties, of discomfort, if 
 not of agony ; every To-day, that is, for no century has 
 the entire monopoly of these clairvoyants, though possibly 
 our own age has produced more of them than any pre- 
 ceding one. The natural refuge for such natures is a 
 dream-world, often a dream-world incarnated from the 
 Past, in which everything has become etherealized and 
 therefore innocuous. 
 
 This it was that Denzell offered to Dorothy Rosewarne, 
 for all the past, to her fancy, was in it, with every touch 
 of the sordid, the horrible, bleached away from it, as the 
 crude colours of a tapestry are toned by the passing of 
 the centuries. The dream spirit, too, that clung so wist- 
 fully to the old walls, to its miniatures, its galleries and 
 portraits, found living expression in Madame herself. 
 In her the beauty and dignity, the graceful sorrow and 
 the old-world leisurely loveliness was all alive. Occa- 
 sionally, too, guests would arrive who brought the same 
 air of dream with them, like birds from an unknown 
 clime. Once she heard Chopin played in the hall, lit only 
 by wax lights, by a Dominican who bridged the gulf of 
 the ages for her. For at Denzell, Life, whose hand is 
 ever at her lips bidding farewell, seemed somehow to 
 have won for itself a longer breathing space than else- 
 where. Spiritual essences, lost in the modern world, 
 appeared under Madame's sway to revive in the old house. 
 Even more fiercely than Madame herself had Dorothy 
 
 5* 
 
68 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 resented the Brummagem bedstead. In the did oak of 
 Madame's room, its carved mirrors and ancient presses, 
 even in the bed itself, long-dead gracious lives seemed 
 to have attained an eternity of peace. 
 
 Always Madame Felicia represented calm and the slow 
 sunny passage of happy hours. Even the gates of eternity 
 itself would only open to admit her to a higher beatitude 
 of precisely the same quality as she enjoyed here. Nothing 
 terrible, certainly nothing gross, could ever touch this 
 magic being whose laces and soft satins seemed as much a 
 part of her personality as the fine, sweet-scented delicacy 
 of the body itself. 
 
 Such was the girl's dream ; the awakening from it was 
 the roughest experience she had ever known. 
 
 To no one probably, save Dorothy, would Madame 
 have shown herself so frankly as she did to-day. Never 
 to her maid, at any rate, for between Mrs. Peters and the 
 lower orders the gulf was unbridgeable. Certainly to no 
 man, for this hour of shivering weakness meant to her 
 nothing but utter dethronement from all her sovereignty. 
 
 When the maid had gone, Madame said harshly to 
 Dorothy, who was standing just inside the door : 
 
 " Come here. Close. I want to speak to you." 
 
 She was lying on the couch at the foot of the bed so 
 that her full length figure was reflected in the mirror 
 against the opposite wall. When Dorothy knelt beside 
 her, with the dark head close to the white one, they both 
 instinctively turned, as women will, to their reflected 
 images. 
 
 Madame laughed harshly. It was a sound so utterly 
 unexpected that it startled as some purely animal noise 
 might have done. There were no tears from first to last, 
 for tears had been so strange to Madame for years that 
 she had lost the trick of them. But, to the girl's horror, 
 she put up her hands, palms upward, as though to push 
 back some horrible thing that was advancing on her, 
 slowly and inexorably. She lay on her back, breathing 
 with difficulty. 
 
 " I shall soon be hideous, horrible, child/' she cried. 
 
METIER DE FEMME 69 
 
 " No one will want to come near me. Look, you don't 
 believe. Oh, but I've known it for months, months, but 
 I wouldn't know. . . . Dorothy, Dorothy, what shall I 
 do ? What shall I do ? " 
 
 Then, at the girl's hesitation, at her exclamation : 
 " But perhaps it isn't true," she showed her hand, already 
 with the suggestion of a claw in it. She told how every 
 morning she struggled with exercises, moving joints already 
 stiff. More horrible still, she slipped from the couch, 
 and looking tinier than was conceivable, lifted her knees 
 several times. The hollow cracking sound they gave 
 out filled them both with horror. 
 
 "I'm like an armadillo already," said Madame, and 
 set her fancy to work on the grotesques of Nature, finding 
 analogies in objects as remote from one another as possible, 
 between twisted limbs and the writhing shapes of ancient 
 tree-roots, carrying the simile on to the contortions of the 
 evil in Nature when it rises to expression in animal atti- 
 tudes, in the horrible, low twist of a furious cat's neck, 
 in the poise of a snake's head before it strikes, even to the 
 shapes of embryo and skeleton. She followed in the wake 
 of Leonardo's worst fancies, till they were both in the 
 hysteric condition in which the horror of the fleshy envelope 
 masters the sanity of the soul enshrined in it. 
 
 " Don't, you mustn't," cried Dorothy, " we shall go 
 mad. Listen, dearest, they must cure you, I know they 
 can. . . . Science. ..." 
 
 Then she got eau-de-Cologne and water and bathed the 
 aching face, opening the window so that the air played 
 across the place of fancies. The sweetness of it struck 
 as cool and fresh as though they had been breathing a 
 furnace blast. 
 
 Then she knelt down again, for Madame was still now 
 with exhaustion, and lay with her head quietly beside the 
 older one. 
 
 So this was Madame — Madame of the tranquil hours. 
 It seemed incredible, yet Dorothy understood, as probably 
 no one else on earth could have done. For Dorothy alone 
 was imbued with all Madame's views of what it is to be a 
 
70 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 woman, and a beautiful one. No definite word had ever 
 passed between them, but the girl had breathed in the 
 faith as inevitably as one breathes environing air. 
 
 Every human being knows, deep down and instinctively, 
 its own part on the stage of life, the part it was born to 
 play, which is often not the role for which it is cast by 
 the world's stage manager. For the card-sharper may 
 be cast for a king's part, though more often it is the other 
 way. Nevertheless, come down to bed-rock with the 
 teeming slut of the alley, or the scheming brain of the 
 organizer, and though their parts may for the hour fit 
 them badly, they will each know the thing they were 
 really born to do. 
 
 Madame's view, that on which she had fed Dorothy, was 
 one which is now infinitely debased because it has been 
 obliged to yield to another, a newer conception, as the 
 old moon wanes before the new one. It was that a 
 woman stands always a thing apart, to be enskied among 
 the lovely, leisurely things of the world. No great picture 
 is greater, save for its longer life, than a woman who 
 knows her metier. Men to toil, to fight, to soil themselves 
 in the conflict ; women to be the prize these strive for. 
 Grace and beauty and the noble image of the noble idea : 
 do not artists torment themselves just to express these ? 
 Is not every cathedral, every cunningly wrought jewel, 
 only another attempt to incarnate in dead matter what 
 Nature, in an exquisite woman, has enshrined in living 
 energy ? 
 
 " Exquisite woman," of course : as for the others — 
 workers, travailing mothers of men — Madame swept them 
 all aside as flies. 
 
 This vision seen vaguely through mists had become to 
 Dorothy, for the moment at any rate, the measure of her 
 own possibilities. For her nature answered to Madame's 
 inspiration as the material answers to the hand of the 
 artist who was born to work in it. In a coarser character 
 than hers this inspiration would have blossomed into 
 vulgarity. For as high as the Monna Lisa and as low as 
 the fille de jou goes this ideal ... as do most of the 
 
METIER DE FEMME 71 
 
 ideals, since both the God's clear gaze and the swine's 
 bleared vision may fall on the same object. 
 
 To Dorothy it was a refuge from dreaded forces in her 
 own nature, from the first message of the leaping blood, 
 and especially from the cruelty of Nature to man, and of 
 man to man. To her, who knew nothing of the facts 
 from which the ideal derives its life, it seemed to offer 
 the refuge of an abiding peace. 
 
 Yet, as she looked down on Madame, broken with 
 exhaustion now and quiet, some strength rose up in 
 herself that was as far removed from the conception of 
 woman the reward of conflict as ever any spirit could be. 
 It was that same fiery spirit of defiance which a thousand 
 times had thrown the gauntlet in the face of poor Father 
 Tyacke, who knew it as the devil within her. Thus 
 when the priest met Dorothy's pity for the misery of a 
 woman dying of her eleventh child, with complacency, 
 with the words : 
 
 " Ah, my child, my child ... as many as God 
 sends ! . . ." 
 
 " Father Tyacke," said timid, modest Dorothy — " I 
 call it sin to talk like that. I only wish you'd bear 'em 
 yourself." 
 
 Her eyes afire, her cheeks burning, she swept on, 
 though afterwards she had laughed aloud — at this and 
 the pendant picture of the good priest bending over a 
 basketful of kittens who were ploughing their mother's 
 teeming body. When he cried with uplifted hands : 
 " Oh, beautiful, beautiful, how beautiful is Nature ! " 
 she replied, with a ribaldry all her father's : " Hang 
 Nature, Father, the poor old cat's so tired. But thank 
 God for the bucket of water." 
 
 In the same spirit she now knelt by Madame. 
 
 " Listen to me," she said, taking the twisted hand in 
 her own, " don't give in. Fight it. Go up to town and 
 see a specialist." 
 
 " I'm too ill," moaned Madame. " The journey would 
 kill me." 
 
 " Then send for a man down here." 
 
72 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 u No, no," said Mrs. Peters, " there's no need. There's 
 a new man already here. But he won't attend me. He's 
 refused to." 
 
 " You asked him and he wouldn't come ? " 
 
 " He wouldn't, for I'd offended him. But Jemmy 
 Carlyon is to get him to come." 
 
 " Is it Dr. Rudd ? " asked Dorothy. 
 
 " Yes. They say he's done some wonderful things, but 
 I don't know. They always do wonderful things, these 
 new men, but when you try them yourself, they're very 
 like the old ones." 
 
 " He can't stand and look on, anyway, now. If Mr. 
 Carlyon can't get him, father must." 
 
 Madame roused herself at this. " Dorothy, your 
 father ... no one . . . must hear a word of this. 
 You promise me." 
 
 " Of course, I promise. But listen, listen ... if no 
 one else will get him for you, I will. Do you understand, 
 dear Madame, I will. I will." 
 
 With what intensity of purpose the girl spoke not even 
 Madame could guess. Yet in her passion of pity every 
 fear was forgotten. In the leaping strength that she 
 felt in herself she was ready to sweep aside obstacles, to 
 bear down any and every opposition. 
 
 It was Madame 's hands, more than anything else, 
 which wrought the miracle ; hands always possessed an 
 enormous power over Dorothy, from the handlike paws 
 of rat or field mouse to the sensitive hands of the artist. 
 To the passion of pity must be added the passion of scorn 
 for one who possessed the power to help and refused to 
 use it. Before callousness like this she stood aghast, 
 with that total lack of comprehension with which we 
 face some angelic or diabolic trait in a being hitherto 
 regarded as merely human. 
 
 That night father and daughter drove home in almost 
 perfect silence save that, as was her custom, Dorothy 
 mentioned each landmark as they passed it : the point 
 in the road whence could be seen the revolving lights of 
 three lighthouses, the torn and jagged ridge of pines, 
 
METIER DE FEMME 73 
 
 the widely scattered farms, twinkling points of light in 
 the half darkness, each in its clump of trees ; the wisps 
 of mist, that blew inland from the sea, like smoke-drift. 
 
 " We've got the Crown Derby tea-set," said Mr. Rose- 
 warne at last. " Mrs. Retallack wished it, for there's a 
 deal of business to be done. It's bad for her to have to 
 leave the Vicarage. She's a dear, you know, and soft, 
 like the matrons in George Eliot." 
 
 "Was it rather awful, father ? " 
 
 " Oh, much as usual, everyone behaving like a naughty 
 child who just manages for decency's sake to keep from 
 bursting into abuse when he eyes the goodies in front of 
 the other child. Everybody wanting to say to everybody 
 else : ' You're a liar, and what's more you ain't truthful.' ' 
 
 This last was an old family joke. 
 
 " You hate it more every time, I believe, father," said 
 Dorothy with a sigh. 
 
 " The sins of the fathers, duckie. That's all. My 
 father and his father before him . . . that's it, the tragedy 
 of caste. Well, some of us have dry ways of getting a 
 living, and some of us a wet one." 
 
 They were both glad, when they reached Teravel, to 
 find the sea-fog rolling in from the Porth and pressing up 
 against the windows of the house in a curtain of darkness, 
 for it had the effect of shutting them off, in a quiet corner, 
 from the rest of the world, a world in travail. 
 
 This was the impression Mrs. Rosewarne was always 
 anxious to produce. Now in her soft dress, with her 
 grey hair in a beautifully arranged pompadour, she was 
 delightfully aware of the coming of her hour, of the wel- 
 coming fires, the shaded lamps and flower-scented air of 
 the house. 
 
 " Come, tired people," she said, moving forward to 
 meet them with a pleasant rustle, and holding out a hand 
 to each. " Go upstairs quickly and get ready. ..." 
 
 The new-comers savoured to the full the sense of port 
 after stormy seas. But they both had to dress for dinner, 
 for Mrs. Rosewarne was always most careful to see that, 
 in his blindness, her husband showed no sign of slovenliness. 
 
74 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Thanks to her care, he was always well tailored and trim, 
 though, as a fact, he liked loose old garments, and the 
 observance of the rites of dress, insisted on by his wife, 
 was to Mr. Rosewarne a part of his affliction. Never now 
 by daylight or by starlight could he accomplish that 
 illusion of perfect freedom which he craved for. Mrs. 
 Rosewarne did all things too well. 
 
 He was acquiring the delicate senses of the blind, and 
 as Dorothy slipped into her place at the dining table, he 
 put out a hand to touch her skirt. 
 
 " White, isn't it ? " he asked, " white and very soft ? " 
 
 " Madame Felicia's gift," said Mrs. Rosewarne, with a 
 laugh that, for all its softness, seemed vexed. " She is 
 so good to Dorothy ... all the loveliest frocks . . . one 
 from Paris with lace on it . . . oh, lace beyond every- 
 thing . . . woven on a fairy's loom." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne smiled ; his wife loved delicate phrases, 
 and he loved Madame' s description of Dorothy's style ; 
 " the milk-white doe," were the words she had used. 
 Mr. Rosewarne understood something of the cult of woman 
 which Madame was teaching, and on the whole found it 
 none too wholesome. 
 
 " Gilbert Carlyon was at the funeral to-day," he said 
 suddenly. " I asked him over to dinner to-morrow night. 
 Poor chap seems a bit out of things at Lanvean." 
 
 " I'm so glad, dear," said Mrs. Rosewarne softly, 
 glancing across at her daughter, " I always liked Gilbert 
 Carlyon. Such an honest, simple fellow." 
 
 Mother and daughter exchanged glances with a little 
 feminine gleam of green fire in both pairs of eyes, while 
 Mrs. Rosewarne' s lips became a trifle malicious in their 
 curves, as she eyed the girl's bright colour. Then, when 
 Dorothy's head gave a toss, her mother spoke again in a 
 voice that tinkled like glass lightly struck : 
 
 " He will get on in the world, I feel sure, in spite of 
 all his handicaps." 
 
 " Handicaps ? What handicaps has he ? " said Mr. 
 Rosewarne. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, the atmosphere of Lanvean ! That 
 
METIER DE FEMME 75 
 
 weird father of his, and their extraordinary menage. Now 
 Gilbert's modern . . . but the rest of them belong to 
 the Dark Ages." 
 
 " Anyway, the old man knows how to make money. 
 They say the Cataclew quarries are already bringing in 
 something between eleven and twelve hundred a year." 
 
 " And Gilbert's the eldest son, isn't he ? " asked Mrs. 
 Rosewarne. 
 
 She carefully refrained from glancing in her daughter's 
 direction. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne nodded. " There's the other son, Steve, 
 though." 
 
 "Oh, an impossible person," said Mrs. Rosewarne in a 
 voice that dismissed the subject. 
 
 Her husband acquiesced in the suggestion, for he fully 
 shared his wife's views as to the desirability of reticence 
 before Dorothy about " impossible people." It was a 
 favourite phrase of Mrs. Rosewarne's. Yet evidently the 
 Carlyons interested her husband. 
 
 " Gilbert," he said meditatively, " yes, he's a fine 
 fellow, I think, and as straight as they make them. But 
 simple I should not call him. He is indigenous, of the 
 soil here — all the Carlyons are. And not one of them is 
 simple. They are sea-born, tidal ... in their lives, 
 their natures, and their very stomachs. What d'you 
 think old Carlyon said to me one day when there were 
 mussels on the table, and I wouldn't touch 'em for fear 
 of the poison in their beards ? Said he : ' Eat 'em when 
 the tide's going out and the poison'll pass with it. Eat 
 'em when the tide's coming in and the poison'll bide 
 with 'ee.' And I find that's the common belief here." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne laughed. 
 
 " But how gluttonous to eat them at all, if they're as 
 horrible as that," she said. 
 
 Dorothy was leaning across the table, with bright eyes 
 and flushed cheeks, evidently keenly interested. Mrs. 
 Rosewarne drew her husband on to talk of Lanvean and 
 the Carlyons. He told the story, discovered by Gilbert 
 and himself among the family papers, of how a certain 
 
76 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 owner of Lanvean in the eighteenth century had carried 
 on the work of pilchard salting for the Italian market. 
 These " fumadoes," or Fair Maids, were shipped direct 
 from Lanvean to the seaport of Genoa, but one boat- 
 load, arriving too late for the Easter market, was sent 
 back to Cornwall to the lazy Carlyon who had shipped 
 it. Instead of distributing them to the poor, he manured 
 the field called Green Close with them, and for reward 
 was cursed by the hungry folk. The spell on Green Close 
 was that it could never be ploughed, for if it were, the 
 eldest son of the house would die." 
 
 " That would be Gilbert, of course," said Mrs. 
 Rosewarne. 
 
 " It's been tried . . . and the spell worked," said her 
 husband dryly, " for there's another strange thing : every 
 family that's possessed the place, for it's not always been 
 held by the Carlyons — there are two other names on the 
 title deeds — has dwindled to an heiress only, who has 
 married and so brought in another family." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne had evidently had enough of the 
 Carlyons. She, therefore, proposed a move to the 
 drawing-room, but nothing would tear him from the 
 subject. With his hand on his daughter's arm as they 
 crossed the hall, he still discoursed on the annual rent 
 paid to Lanvean by the shepherd who lived on the sand- 
 dunes, up to the eighteenth century at any rate, in the 
 form of a pie made of mussels, squab and mutton. 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Rosewarne, " I can imagine Lanvean 
 turned into something quite delightful. One would 
 extend the avenue properly across that desolate field in 
 front of the oaks, which would have to go, of course. It 
 would make quite a fine park." 
 
 Dorothy's face flushed. 
 
 " With geranium beds, mother," she said, " and a 
 tennis lawn, of course ? " 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne laughed. " Well," she said, " I don't 
 mind the tragic note in literature, you know, and of course, 
 • Wuthering Heights ' gives one splendid thrill*, but, ugh, 
 it must have been bleak and draughty ! " 
 
METIER DE FEMME 77 
 
 '* Yes, I shouldn't imagine daily life at Lanvean would 
 suit either of you, my dear," said Mr. Rosewarne 
 lightly. " No hot baths and only ancestral feather- 
 beds." 
 
 All the by-play of his wife's glance across the room at 
 Dorothy was naturally lost to him. 
 
 " But," said Mrs. Rosewarne, " if Gilbert passes into 
 the Civil Service there won't be any chance of his living 
 at Lanvean. It isn't entailed, is it ? " 
 
 " No," said her husband, " it's rather a pity it isn't." 
 
 " Ah, well, there are always the Cataclew quarries to 
 fall back on, and old Mr. Carlyon isn't likely to leave a 
 successful son penniless." 
 
 " You can't quite calculate on old Will Carlyon, my 
 dear," said Mr. Rosewarne. " But it doesn't concern 
 us. And Dorothy was going, I thought, to read us some- 
 thing from ' The Renaissance.' " 
 
 At the end of the evening, when Pater was closed and 
 Mrs. Rosewarne's piano silenced — she played very well, 
 especially the music which displays technique — Mr. 
 Rosewarne sighed. 
 
 " How happy your mother has been to-night," he said 
 to Dorothy. Mrs. Rosewarne had gone to concoct a 
 drink of hot black-currant syrup for the child, who was 
 supposed to have caught cold. 
 
 She won't be so happy to-morrow night," said the 
 girl grimly. 
 
 " Why, are you going to be naughty, chick ? " asked 
 her father. 
 
 " That's just what I am, father," chuckled she, and 
 escaped from him. 
 
 Upstairs, her room was filled with the sound of the 
 tide coming up the valley from the Porth. The mist had 
 cleared by now, and in the starlight the dark mass of the 
 opposite hill seemed to have moved nearer to the house. 
 Now the thoughts she had kept at bay all the evening 
 came crowding in on her ; how cruel it was to laugh and 
 forget the suffering she had shared that day : yet how 
 short it must inevitably be ; only a few years and then 
 
78 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 would come the fall of the curtain and that unbroken 
 silence which covers we know not what. 
 
 To have lived is all that matters when the darkness rolls 
 down on us. Madame Felicia had lived. The girl set 
 her teeth fiercely in her lower lip and let the images of 
 the day pass over her in a flood : the child's head on her 
 breast at Music Water ; the voices of the great jumper- 
 clad fellows at the quay head ; the mocking smile of the 
 man she hated for his cruelty to Madame ; the Carlyons, 
 and their traditions . . . she laughed aloud at her 
 mother's park, feeling certain that there had been un- 
 confessed geraniums and tennis lawns in the picture . . . 
 and Gilbert, the heir of such traditions, who could be 
 made to dance like a bear in front of her own little circling 
 finger. 
 
 By now she had plaited her hair in two long strands ; 
 drawing them forward over her shoulders she pulled them 
 down among the frills on the breast of her nightdress 
 where they lay like dark ropes amid the lace. 
 
 " Gilbert ! " she cried mockingly as she blew out the 
 candle, and then in the darkness, " poor dear old Gilbert ! " 
 
 For neither traditions, nor a man's will, nor even her 
 mother's notions were of much avail here. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 LEAP AND REBOUND 
 
 SHADING her eyes with her hand, Mrs. Rosewarne 
 leant back in her chair. This she did, the better 
 to consider Gilbert Carlyon, who, with right arm flung 
 across the back of a chair, was holding the attention of 
 his audience with a story of love and sorrow such as only 
 country places find time to remember and only country 
 people find time to tell. In the ease of his posture there 
 was a sign that the restraint or, as Mrs. Rosewarne would 
 have called it, the left-handed country breeding of her 
 guest, had passed away. His face was in shadow, for the 
 light from the shaded candles fell only on the powerful 
 left hand that was outstretched on the cloth. 
 
 As the Rosewarnes listened, the lighted table faded 
 from their sight, and instead of the dining-room at Teravel, 
 with its drawn curtains and crackling fire, the scene 
 shifted to a vault under the pavement of St. Meryn Church 
 in the heavy silence of midnight. The girl who lay there 
 in her coffin had been hurried thither with unseemly haste 
 during her lover's absence. Nor, throughout all the 
 months of her illness, for she was a lily-white maid who 
 died of " decline," had he been allowed to see her. When 
 then the news of her death reached him, although he was 
 two counties away, he swore he would spend an hour 
 with her ere corruption did its work. So Gilbert told of 
 the bribing of the sexton, of the opened coffin and the 
 echoes of the falling lid. 
 
 79 
 
8o THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 The story was related with a quiet intensity that went 
 well with the stillness of his hands. 
 
 " And the lover was a Carlyon ? " said Mr. Rosewarne. 
 
 " My great-grandfather," replied Gilbert ; " she was a 
 farmer's daughter, you see, and the Carlyons were squires 
 then. That was the way of it. The father brought an 
 action against the lover that dragged on for years." 
 
 " But he got his way," said Mrs. Rosewarne. " Are 
 most of the Carlyons like that, I wonder ? " 
 
 The young man smiled. " We've mostly got a will of 
 our own, I believe," said he. 
 
 " But," said Dorothy, apparently resenting this nimbus 
 of the heroic for the Carlyons, "if he was your great- 
 grandfather, he must have forgotten and married someone 
 else." 
 
 " Oh, as to that ..." said Gilbert, flinging out his 
 hand. 
 
 " He's the old gentleman over the mantelpiece at 
 Lanvean, isn't he ? " asked Mr. Rosewarne, " the old 
 fellow with the stock." 
 
 " Oh, that one," cried Dorothy in disdain. 
 
 They all laughed at her tone, but it was left to Mrs. 
 Rosewarne to draw the moral. 
 
 " We can't be young for ever, Dorothy," said she. 
 " That's a lesson for you, too. And that reminds me, 
 you were to show Mr. Carlyon what he swears he's never 
 seen ... the will-o'-the-wisp of our valley." 
 
 " Oh, not to-night, mother," protested Dorothy. 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Mrs. Rosewarne, pulling the 
 curtains apart with an emphatic rattle of the rings. 
 " It's a warm sultry night, too. Go up and put on a 
 cloak at once, child, and do you, Gilbert, come and talk 
 to me in the drawing-room whilst you're waiting." 
 
 The young man flushed with pleasure at her proprietary 
 tones. Then, in the drawing-room, under cover of her 
 music, she began to talk, half -nonchalantly, as she watched 
 her fingers flying over the keys. From the dining-room 
 on the opposite side of the hall they heard the door softly 
 close ; Mr. Rosewarne was minded to snatch forty winks. 
 
LEAP AND REBOUND 81 
 
 " Thank you, Mrs. Rosewarne," said Gilbert in a low 
 voice, " you are very good to me." 
 
 " I think I am," she answered, swaying to the rhythm 
 of her music. She was playing a waltz with a gaiety and 
 abandon rare in her touch. The echoes of it rang through 
 her daughter's room upstairs. 
 
 " You know," she said, " you've your work cut out for 
 you. For Dorothy isn't awake yet. But as for you, I 
 hope you realize that I'm trusting to your future in a 
 way most people would think simply reckless. I'm not 
 thinking of what you are . . . but of what you will 
 be." 
 
 " What I shall be," he said slowly, not as a question, 
 but as a statement. Where his own projects were con- 
 cerned he was always a young man who regarded a map 
 of the Promised Land as being almost as valuable as a 
 title deed. This was not fool-hardiness but well-tested 
 self-confidence. 
 
 " You understand," she continued, stopping her music, 
 and speaking more seriously, " at the present moment 
 you are a detrimental, but I do not believe you always 
 will be." 
 
 " You mean that I have nothing to offer Dorothy ? " 
 
 " Well, have you ? Could Dorothy live at Lanvean ? 
 She must never have to fall to a lower standard of comfort 
 and position than she has enjoyed all her life." 
 
 " Oh, of course I know that perfectly. Lanvean would 
 be impossible for her at present. And my father may 
 reach a great age. Besides, it's ill waiting for dead 
 men's shoes. But, you know, as like as not he'll cut me 
 off with nothing if I threaten to leave Lanvean." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne raised her eyebrows superciliously. 
 Secretly she thought him a fool for putting the case so 
 frankly. 
 
 " Then where does Dorothy come in ? " she asked with 
 a smile. " Though I don't believe what you say about 
 your father." 
 
 " Yet," he said gravely, even urgently, " it's the exact 
 truth. My father cares for nothing but Lanvean. To his 
 
 6 
 
82 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 mind, the man who turns his back on Lanvean to gain a 
 kingdom elsewhere would be a worthless fool." 
 
 " Yet you persist ? " she said. 
 
 " Of course I persist," he answered, lifting his head 
 with a squaring of the shoulders that pleased her. " Lan- 
 vean, you tell me, couldn't be Dorothy's home. Then 
 Lanvean can go. I can get for her what she wants . . . 
 in another way." 
 
 Inwardly, if he was surprised at an ambitious woman 
 accepting such a remote prospect for an idolized daughter, 
 he swept the feeling away in the quite confident sense 
 that the worth of a man lies precisely in what he is. How 
 laughably far he was from understanding Mrs. Rose- 
 warne's real ideas, he would never know. Yet she liked 
 his arrogance, for like many clever women when they 
 come to judge men, she was baffled by his simplicity. 
 Earlier in the evening she had been amused at his interest 
 in local reforms, at his talk with her husband of back-to- 
 back cottages in Petrockstow and a main drainage scheme. 
 
 " Oh, you thorough-paced Englishman," she said to 
 herself with a smile as she listened ; a thing well done, 
 however simple, was to him a solid source of satisfaction, 
 no doubt, but he was no more able to describe the pleasure 
 he took in its accomplishment than a tree can paint the 
 joy it feels in sunshine and warm rain. 
 
 " What a wooer ! " she said to herself as she listened to 
 the sound of the two young voices outside the window. 
 It delighted her, however, to think of the fitness of their 
 search for the will-o'-the-wisp. 
 
 " Poor Gilbert ! ** she laughed, u how in the world is he 
 going to fare to-night, crashing like an elephant through 
 the jungle of poor little Dorothy's sensibilities ? Yet, 
 after all, she may find him restful . . . only later on, 
 not to-night. Poor dear Dorothy, too ! " 
 
 On the whole she was satisfied with his intelligence 
 where plain meanings were concerned, at any rate. For 
 one thing, at least, he realized : that if he was to marry 
 Dorothy, he must make himself something better than a 
 country man, half farmer and half squire. She laughed 
 
LEAP AND REBOUND 83 
 
 again as she recalled his matter-of-fact account of the 
 mass of reading he was getting through daily for the 
 Civil Service examination. He had shown her a time- 
 table, something like ten hours a day on top of his farm 
 work. She could see his method of study : a grip on 
 the throat of all learning and a shake like a terrier's to 
 make it yield up its secrets. Yet of course he never 
 realized that a mesalliance is only tolerated, under certain 
 circumstances, because it will be a mesalliance on the other 
 side of the globe. Mrs. Rosewarne had insisted on the 
 Indian Civil for that reason. 
 
 Nor did she exactly acknowledge this, even to herself. 
 She wanted to see Dorothy married to a strong, a rich 
 man. That Gilbert Carlyon was strong and might, one 
 day, be rich, she felt assured. And young eligible men 
 do not grow on the blackberry bushes of a remote sea- 
 board parish. As the wife, then, of, say, an Indian Judge, 
 Dorothy would be in an incomparably better position 
 than her mother, who was but the wife of a country lawyer, 
 commonly known to the natives as Torney Rosewarne. 
 As to the question of how this same 'Torney Rosewarne 
 would do without his Scrubbed Clerk, Mrs. Rosewarne 
 refused to inquire. It is always hard for a mother to 
 acknowledge the very possibility of such a passion as 
 jealousy as between her daughter and herself. For, as 
 she would sometimes remark, " dearer " and " dearest " 
 are meaningless in such relations. 
 
 Thus, like two dancers unconscious of the crossed 
 swords above their heads, Gilbert and Dorothy passed 
 out of the grounds of Teravel and down the valley towards 
 the sea. 
 
 The night was quiet, with a velvety darkness lying over 
 sea and land. Only the waves at the Porth broke the 
 line of the coast in a wide bow of light that was just appreci- 
 ably brighter than the sky. 
 
 " Probably we shall see nothing," said Dorothy ; " one 
 may come hundreds of times without luck." 
 
 She was talking for the sake of the comparative ease it 
 gave her to prattle. Then, half afraid of the answering 
 
 6* 
 
84 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 silence, she ceased. But she would not look round at her 
 companion as he walked a little way above her, so that she 
 might have to herself the narrow path on the steep side 
 of the field. Then they stopped and stood, their eyes 
 peering through the dusk at the steep hillside opposite 
 them. The breath of the valley, even in a month when 
 the flower scents are wanting, was sweet to their senses, 
 the moor behind them alive with the babble of the curlews. 
 
 Still Dorothy would not turn her head towards Gilbert. 
 Yet, when she shivered, she was conscious that he took 
 a step nearer. Their eyes, by now accustomed to 
 the darkness, could discern by its greyness the water- 
 clogged surface which held more dampness than the rest 
 of the valley side. A silent contest of wills was going 
 on between the two, while the hillside opposite grew in 
 its contours as clear as a map to the strained eyes that 
 were watching. Then it seemed suddenly as though a 
 lighted lanthorn had started from the field and was being 
 carried across it. 
 
 " That's not it, surely ? " said Gilbert. 
 
 " Look," said the girl ; the flickering of the light from 
 tussock to tussock was enough, for no country labourer 
 leaps like that at the end of a day's work. The flame 
 seemed to be blown by a breath from an unseen bellows, 
 flickering into blackness and then again appearing at 
 some distant point. 
 
 " Oh, I don't like it," cried Dorothy, " it always frightens 
 me." 
 
 The night was growing darker as the clouds came closer 
 over the valley, the wind was close and steamy with 
 vapour. In the darkness the flame was flickering as from 
 a bed of half-dead embers. 
 
 In general, Gilbert Carlyon despised those whose nerves 
 play them tricks. The flow of his life was not only even 
 and steady by temperament, but was constantly stead- 
 fast, in part by the dogged purpose of his will. He never 
 smoked or felt the need of it, despising those who require 
 sedatives. Yet to-night he knew what the girl meant 
 when she moved closer to him and drew a deep breath. 
 
LEAP AND REBOUND 85 
 
 " Oh, I don't like it," she repeated, " the night and 
 the darkness and the strangeness of it all. ..." 
 
 " The strangeness, Dorothy," he repeated, like someone 
 in a dream, u the strangeness of it all." 
 
 His shaken voice surprised himself, for in the sense of 
 nearness to her, in the feeling of withdrawal from all 
 evidence of other life, save a few scattered lights from the 
 houses among the trees, he was caught up to bear in some 
 degree the tremulous beat of a woman's life. 
 
 At the sound of his voice, she put out her hand to him, 
 and with his strong enveloping clasp of it, a little thrill 
 of laughter and delight ran through her as though at the 
 touch of hands a new personality was born, neither his 
 nor hers, but somehow made up of both. 
 
 So they stood for a second, his eyes in the dim light 
 seeking hers, as he stood above her on the hill. The jack- 
 o'-lanthorn forgotten, the encompassing stillness of sky 
 and hill all about them, they realized nothing but the 
 secrets of this double personality in which the woman 
 gained a courage and the man an uplift that was like the 
 passion of glory in which children laugh for joy. 
 
 " Gilbert," she whispered at length, " what is it ? Oh, 
 what is it ? " 
 
 At her words the spell broke and he drew her up to 
 him, his calmness all foregone. For the same touch that 
 had given her new confidence, had suddenly broken up 
 the foundations of his defence, as when the rock is struck 
 and the waters break forth. The cry that burst from 
 him was so much born of the depths that it held surprise 
 and revelation of himself even to the man who uttered it. 
 
 " Oh, Dorothy, Dorothy, I'm so lonely," he exclaimed. 
 
 If he had ever thought of the words he would speak to 
 her, what he had planned was assuredly quite different. 
 Yet now that they were uttered he felt they expressed 
 the profoundest depths of his nature. The impulse carried 
 him deeper yet ; not easily, as in the emotional person, 
 but sharply as though with the edge of a knife which cut 
 deep into some inexplicable tract of his nature that till 
 now had been unknown even to himself. 
 
86 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " The loneliness of the heart, that's it. My dear, come 
 into it. Come and show me what there is that I don't 
 know in my heart. I only know that it's empty, aching, 
 longing for you." 
 
 As the girl stood with her eyes fixed on his, he drew her 
 nearer. She yielded to his clasp and, thus touching, they 
 looked into each other's souls, one seeking in the other's 
 nature for that answer of life to life which men usually 
 expect only from the divine. Even then it was not the 
 hunger of the flesh at all that moved him, though all 
 the sweetness of her beat through his being. The craving 
 that possessed him was more terrible far, such greatness 
 it demanded in the answering nature on whom it called. 
 Staring up at him, Dorothy stood still, her senses held 
 fast by the working of the brain which tried to understand. 
 
 " The loneliness of the heart," she repeated. The 
 phrase possessed a dreadful urgency, although it seemed 
 to be in a language she could not understand. 
 
 Measured in seconds the time in which they waited for 
 each other was a mere nothing, yet sufficient to reveal 
 reverberating chasms of emptiness in both. Dorothy 
 knew that the call now being made on her was far more 
 insistent than Madame's, for that was merely an affair 
 of an overthrown idol and no tragedy of humpty-dumpty 
 beyond all the king's horses and all the king's men. For 
 that, Dr. Rudd, or somebody else, could be brought to the 
 rescue with a little glue and a few tacks. But this, from 
 Gilbert, was a call on herself ... for something it was 
 not in her to give. 
 
 " Oh, Gilbert," she exclaimed, " if only I could help 
 you, if only there was something I could do." 
 
 Yet when she turned him thus empty away, she under- 
 stood what he meant well enough, had herself carried this 
 same loneliness of the heart a thousand times before the 
 presence of the divine, and had forgotten it, after all, 
 most perfectly in her father's homely affection. 
 
 Gilbert woke suddenly from his dream ; calling himself 
 back from the infinite distance into which he had wandered, 
 he shivered as she had done at the darkness of the night 
 
LEAP AND REBOUND 87 
 
 and the wisp lights. And with the awakening another 
 Gilbert was aroused to another loneliness, the loneliness 
 of the flesh. He forgot what was habitually the strongest 
 instinct of his bodily control, the will to protect the 
 woman. This was lost now in the other will, the will to 
 dominate. 
 
 Something lawless in the girl's blood, the something 
 that defied Father Tyacke's asceticism, it was that awoke 
 this Gilbert. Laying a hand softly under her chin, he 
 drew her lips to his and the fire in her awoke so much 
 more terrible a fire in him that she was horrified. 
 
 " Oh, Gilbert, Gilbert," she cried. " Oh, no, no, no, 
 no — you must not." And then added more savagely, 
 " Do you want to make me hate you ? " 
 
 Sobered suddenly, as though by a douche of cold water, 
 he released her. It was impossible to believe this to be 
 the mere mock heroics of a flirt, for behind her words there 
 was the reality of something very like hatred. Not 
 pausing, as an older man would have done, to inquire 
 whether this was hatred of herself or of him, he turned 
 away, possessed now with a white heat of anger. 
 
 " You'd better go home," he said, turning to lead the 
 way back. 
 
 " Thanks," she said with a catch in her breath, perhaps 
 of self-pity as much as anything else, " I'll go back alone." 
 
 " As you will, of course," he answered, angrily standing 
 aside for her to pass, " but your mother will think it 
 strange." 
 
 " My mother . . . oh," she cried, shaken by a sudden 
 spasm of fury, M she knew what she sent me out to endure 
 No, don't speak another word, and don't come back 
 with me." 
 
 Yet he followed her to the foot of the hill and there 
 stood watching her figure disappear under the darkness 
 of the trees. They were both possessed by the rage of 
 revulsion, for when one has boxed the compass from 
 divine to earthly hunger and satisfied neither, one is 
 seldom capable of parlour manners. 
 
 In Mrs. Rosewarne's view, Dorothy was a girl bound 
 
88 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 to be intense about everything, especially awakenings. 
 To that wise woman, therefore, the vanishing of Gilbert 
 and her daughter's obvious agitation seemed by no means 
 unpromising for the young man's chances. 
 
 " Bronteish, decidedly, not Austenish," she said, 
 nodding to herself and placidly covering her child's 
 traces with Mr. Rosewarne by the remark that Dorothy's 
 headache had been bad all day. Besides, chasing a 
 will-o'-the-wisp is not good for headaches. 
 
 Smiling at her metaphor she went to bed, while on the 
 other side of the house Dorothy lay with her face buried 
 in her pillows, sounding over again the gamut of the 
 night's emotions. By now she was no longer angry with 
 Gilbert, but rather terrified at herself with all a girl's 
 dread of a side of her nature on which social practice has 
 laid its bann of secrecy and consequently of dread. Every 
 other passion is openly mentioned, yet this one, though 
 apparently driven underground on account of its cloven 
 hoof, comes none the less to a girl with the wings of a 
 god, of a god trailing clouds behind it of borrowed shame. 
 It is, too, on the artificial clouds and not the natural wings 
 that a child's first glance is riveted. 
 
 Meanwhile Gilbert made no such mistake, for although 
 he might seem in the girl's eyes to have played a cur's 
 part, yet, after all, as every man knows, it is but a single 
 step in love from the sacred to the profane. And the 
 profane is never very profane, after all, as long as a man's 
 senses are unsated. 
 
 None the less, as he rode home, he was in an infernal 
 temper, and where Dorothy felt herself humbled to the 
 dust, Gilbert wanted nothing in the world so much as an 
 object on which to wreak his anger. Fortunately, in this 
 world, one need never go far without finding a whipping- 
 boy for one's own weakness. 
 
 When he was half-way on his return journey to Lanvean, 
 he noticed in the distance a dark shadow across the road 
 that proved to be a dog-cart in difficulties. From the 
 man stooping by the horse came a string of oaths, some 
 of them even strange and terrible to a plain young man 
 
LEAP AND REBOUND 89 
 
 who believed in the principle of Yea, yea, and Nay, nay. 
 It was Dr. Rudd, of course, for no other man in the district 
 had so large a vocabulary of complaint, and the trouble 
 a stone in his horse's hoof. 
 
 " Here, get down and see to this," said he, looking up 
 at Gilbert, " it's more in your line than mine, and I'm 
 only digging the infernal thing deeper." 
 
 At the other's contemptuous tones, as to a yokel, Gilbert 
 hesitated, but the mare was obviously running a risk of 
 serious injury. He, therefore, dismounted, and tying up 
 his own horse to a gate, bent over the upturned hoof. 
 The doctor set the carriage lamp on the ground and dis- 
 appeared. When the hoof was at last free, Gilbert led 
 the mare a few steps to test her paces, and then looked 
 round for the doctor. 
 
 He was nowhere to be seen, but when the young 
 man shouted, an answering cry came from the quarry 
 that opened on the road. Here he found the doctor 
 staring up at the towering walls on either side. # The 
 clouds were gone by now, and the edge of the chasm 
 stood out solid and dark against the moonlit sky. Dr. 
 Rudd's face in a patch of light at the entrance to the 
 place looked white and shapeless. 
 
 " Queer place in this light," said he. 
 
 " There used to be a path up," said Gilbert, pushing his 
 way through the bushes. Presently after a scramble he 
 came out on a ledge just above the doctor's head. 
 
 " Where 've you been to-night ? " said Dr. Rudd, 
 looking up. 
 
 " Oh, over at Mawgan," said Gilbert. 
 
 " Oh," said Rudd with a short laugh, " burning your 
 wings, I suppose, like a silly moth." 
 
 His laugh was smothered in the tangle of undergrowth 
 as he pushed himself up on the quarry side. 
 
 " What d'you mean ? " asked Gilbert quietly. 
 
 " Well, I suppose you know what they say about that 
 divinity there. Oh, no, not what you think," he said, 
 as Gilbert moved restlessly in the dimness above him, 
 " not at all. She's cold enough, I believe. That's the 
 
9 o THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 devil of it, in fact. Every old woman in the place will 
 tell you that you're neither the first nor the last that's 
 singed himself uselessly at that flame. Pious, too, though 
 it's more a matter of temperament of course. And those 
 cold girls can be the devil and all, if they like." 
 
 " Cold girl ! " " Cold girl ! " the words echoed in 
 Gilbert's brain, and the spice of truth in them as well as 
 the lie he knew them to express, brought the brute to 
 the surface in his nature. Always the country man, he 
 took refuge in acts and was slow in words. Besides, he 
 wanted effectively, not only to wipe out the smile on the 
 fellow's face, but to see it wiped out. The devil himself 
 had supplied the means, too, for his foot was at that very 
 moment pressing against a great stone on the ledge just 
 above the doctor. Instinctively he kicked against it 
 with all his might ; its mass leapt in air, and as Dr. Rudd 
 swerved aside, it fell with a crash on his right foot. 
 
 " What are you about, Carlyon ? " he shouted, but 
 the other with a laugh was quicker and half-way out of 
 quarry before the doctor had recovered from his 
 astonishment. " Curse you for a lout," he cried, stumbling 
 through the undergrowth. 
 
 " That's what you thought before, wasn't it ? " shouted 
 Gilbert, swinging himself into the saddle and meanly 
 enjoying his own lithe movements as he watched the 
 difficulty with which Dr. Rudd hoisted himself on his 
 bruised foot into the trap. 
 
 Both in a white rage, they galloped down the road 
 side by side, almost knocking down a man who stood 
 aside to let them pass. But the lanthorn he carried so 
 startled the doctor's mare that she shied half across the 
 road. Seizing his chance, Gilbert rode ahead with a 
 yell of derision. The man of clay was elated, the blood 
 dancing in his veins at an encounter more tangible than 
 the strange world of his inner man. He shouted aloud to 
 the sleeping countryside, while the doctor lashed his 
 horse in the vain attempt to catch up with him. At the 
 clatter of hoofs sleepy cottagers peered out of their doors 
 into the dimness. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PLAIN DEALER 
 
 THE daffodils that appeared next day on Madame 
 Felicia's breakfast tray suggested Dorothy Rose- 
 warne and the idea of getting her to spend the day at 
 Denzell. Madame, in fact, always regarded the Scrubbed 
 Clerk's professional duties in the light of a joke. She 
 was lonely, too, for Frances Carlyon had returned to town, 
 and although Jemmy still slept at Laskey's, he had made 
 no reference whatever to his task of bringing Dr. Rudd 
 to Denzell. And silence about a job with Jemmy always 
 meant that he had failed. Hence Mrs. Peters felt worried 
 and restless, though she still relied on Jemmy's instinct 
 of self-preservation and found it impossible to believe 
 that he would actually ignore the bunch of carrots dangled 
 in front of his nose. No doctor ; no cheque : Madame 
 had laid down the law, and the fact of his still lingering 
 in Petrockstow proved to her mind that he had not given 
 up the task in front of him. 
 
 A message, then, having been sent to the office of 
 Rosewarne and Willyams, when Madame was dressed she 
 found Dorothy waiting for her on the terrace. From this 
 they could look down on Petrockstow, its huddle of roofs 
 hung about with the smoke from the chimneys. Beyond, 
 on the opposite side of the estuary, all the pathways across 
 the sun-bathed sandbanks were pencilled in delicate 
 lines as if they were crevasses on far-off mountains. 
 From the ferry-boat a row of passengers straggled across 
 the driven sand like mountaineers on a snow-slide. To 
 
 9i 
 
92 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the left the curve of the river mouth was lost in the grey 
 distance of the sea, beyond the line of foam with hovering 
 gulls overhead that marked the incoming tide. Two 
 blue clouds in the far distance, Brown Willy and Rough 
 Tor hung in mid-air. Over all lay the high lights of the 
 spring. 
 
 At the end of the terrace Madame paused, her glance 
 wandering over the serenity of the scene. The cooing of 
 the wood-pigeons, the rustle of the wind in the trees, were 
 the only sounds to break the silence. Then there came 
 the ringing of the bell in the outer hall, the sound of 
 footsteps on the flagged path and a man's voice in the 
 hall. 
 
 " There he is," exclaimed Madame. " That must be 
 Mr. Carlyon. Perhaps he has come to tell me about 
 Dr. Rudd." 
 
 Dorothy flushed and then said in a low voice : " You 
 know, don't you, dear Madame, that I meant what I 
 said ? There is nothing I wouldn't do to get him to 
 come to you. But surely, surely Mr. Carlyon will find 
 no difficulty." 
 
 " I don't know, I don't know, child. Jemmy's always 
 very quiet about a thing he can't do. And he hasn't 
 said a word. That's why I'm bothered. But let us go 
 into the dining-room. The light is glaring out here." 
 
 She led the way through the open French window into 
 the house and sank, trembling, on the couch in the plea- 
 sant room where every inch of carpet and wall-paper had 
 been steeped so long in sunlight that their colours were 
 bleached to the hue of desert sands. Nobody at Denzell 
 ever sat for choice in the dining-room, though it was 
 shaded, cool, and full of the scent of pot-pourri in Chinese 
 vases. For the popular parts of the house were sun- 
 baked, and all the rest shadowed by the trees that in the 
 rear came close up to the windows. 
 
 Presently Jemmy appeared in the doorway, his face 
 wreathed in smiles, his handkerchief mopping his jolly 
 cheeks. Against the drab surface of the self-coloured silk 
 the pinkness of his skin, the curve of his manicured nails 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 93 
 
 shone like porcelain. He was in great spirits, yet, as he 
 stooped down to kiss Madame's hand, both women noticed 
 a contraction of his eyelids that was almost a wince. 
 Then boisterously he fell on his Joyful News. 
 
 " Congratulate me, both of you," he cried, " I've heard 
 from Frances and I've just seen your father, Miss Rose- 
 warne. I'm no longer to live like a moaning turtle, and 
 he's as surprised as I am." 
 
 " Do you mean, James," asked Madame dryly, " that 
 you contemplate bigamy ? " 
 
 " Listen to this from Frances," said he, expanding his 
 chest and standing, eyeglasses on nose, with the letter 
 held out before him : 
 
 " ' Dear Jemmy, 
 
 " ' Against generosity like yours I cannot fight. 
 No one could have remained untouched by your surrender 
 of everything — and more — that I asked for. I have written 
 to Mr. Rosewarne telling him to tear up the deed of 
 separation. Let all be as it was between us ; if you will, 
 that is. Let us make a new beginning. . . .' and so on 
 and so forth. 
 
 " Frances is herself again, the noblest woman on earth. 
 My dear Aunt, you cannot possibly realize the relief of it 
 all. My generosity has conquered her ; ah, I thought it 
 would," he purred, " we've never had a harsh word before, 
 or hardly ever. Why, when for the sake of sleeping 
 better, we determined on the new fashion of twin bed- 
 steads she wouldn't hear of it for a long time. She thought 
 the servants would talk. And it was this Frances who 
 demanded a legal separation from bed and board ! But 
 let bygones be bygones, as she says, or words to that 
 effect." 
 
 Madame sat silently watching him with a smile on her 
 lips. It must be confessed that Frances Carlyon had 
 gone up many paces in her estimation. 
 
 Dorothy Rosewarne alone it was who sat with cheeks 
 flushed and eyes bright with anger. Would he never, 
 she wondered angrily, remember the other matter which 
 
94 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 still awaited his attention ? With this affair of Dr. Rudd's 
 visit still hanging in the balance, even with his own marital 
 troubles on him, he had gone off in jolly, bustling self- 
 confidence to his daily business with curio dealers and 
 collectors : men were beyond comprehension. 
 
 It was Madame, after all, who took the matter quietly, 
 for it was not Frances, but herself, who held the master- 
 key. 
 
 " And Dr. Rudd ? " she asked gently. 
 
 Jemmy quarter-decked a bit, Madame's gaze full on 
 him, flung out his chest, and finally sat down, with thumbs 
 stuck in the armholes of his waistcoat and fingers padding 
 on his chest. 
 
 " Ah, yes, of course," he said, " next there's that 
 business of yours." 
 
 He had come to heel, in fact ; Madame sighed, half in 
 anger, half in relief. 
 
 " That doctor, you know ! Must get him in to see you. 
 Preposterous nonsense, his behaving like this, of course. 
 He's got a queer temper, though. You'd think a young 
 fellow on the make, as he is, would jump at the chance of 
 getting into a house like this. A poseur; that's it. But 
 I took his measure right enough. Tell you what we'll 
 do. I'll celebrate the occasion and give a little dinner. 
 Not at the ' New London,' though ; we'll make more of 
 a splash than that. A man's dinner, and we'll have 
 man's food, too. I'll ask my nephews, Gilbert and Steve 
 Carlyon. Yes, that'll work the trick. Warm him up 
 first, this doctor of yours. For when a man is full you 
 can get anything you like out of him. Rely on me, the 
 thing shall be done. I'll go and see about it at once. 
 That'll be killing two birds with one stone, too. Good 
 for my nephews to see some society. Then we'll fix up 
 your business as well. Nothing like a bottle or two of 
 good wine to oil a bit of business." 
 
 Jemmy was never seen to better advantage than when 
 jovially dispensing the good flavours of meat and drink. 
 In a bustle of hospitality he sent a telegram to Lanvean, 
 interviewed Sam Cornish, who promised to bring the 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 95 
 
 doctor to the dinner — after all, in deference to the fact 
 that Sam himself would be present, the dinner was to be 
 at Laskey's — and finally put in a strenuous hour with 
 mine host himself, for Laskey was, he guessed, only a 
 Methody, and Methodies are constitutionally incapable 
 of understanding flavours. 
 
 It was to be a real West-country dinner, with laver 
 from Bideford, mutton from Dartmoor, and for the 
 homely flavour, pickled pork with broad beans, finishing 
 up with junket and bottled whortleberries buried in 
 cream. Over the matter of the beans, since the season 
 was early, Jemmy displayed the same masterful activity 
 as he showed in affairs of moment. By telegrams to all 
 the greengrocers in Plymouth the beans were finally 
 procured. Next he dived into Laskey's cellar and 
 finished up with the cook and the manageress, to the 
 latter of whom he lent a novel, highly recommended as 
 being thoroughly " meaty." 
 
 All through the morning at intervals he turned up at 
 Denzell for the purpose of explaining his progress in every 
 essential particular. Whereupon Madame Felicia would 
 demurely explain to her companion the agreeable principle 
 of the " refresher," as understood in the Law. 
 
 Many acquaintances all over the country found a 
 kindlier warmth steal over their talk when they struck 
 reminiscently on Jemmy as a subject of conversation, 
 and recalled his taste in creature comforts or his richness 
 of dialect. He was remembered in dozens of inns as the 
 gentleman who took cold baths, and all through the district 
 he could be traced as the man who demanded leek pie. 
 If Jemmy was a sinner, he was a jolly one, and jollity in 
 a somewhat lugubrious universe ought to cover a multitude 
 of sins. 
 
 The dinner was fixed for eight o'clock, and at twenty 
 minutes to the hour the courts round the quay were seeth- 
 ing with excitement. Sam's two eldest boys, the fair- 
 faced, sleepy one and the squint-eyed lively gnome who 
 had monopolized all the energy of the family, were on 
 the look out to warn intruders from the Priory House. 
 
96 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 For father was getting into a clean shirt and his Sunday 
 suit, and Dr. Dan himself was to be arrayed in a white 
 shirt-front and dress clothes. With wild rushes down 
 " drangways," with ambushes round corners and shrieks 
 of battle, they carried out their task. Another batch of 
 the Cornish family was on scout duty outside Laskey's 
 Court to warn watchers off from the vantage point at the 
 corner whence could be seen the dinner table glittering 
 under pink lamp-shades. For like Dr. Rudd, Laskey's 
 was putting its best foot forward. Petrockstow wives in 
 the courts round knew every item in the menu, every 
 garnishing of the dishes, from the shrimp sauce to the 
 cut lemons. When Jemmy rushed into the inn and 
 upstairs to wash, he thrilled not only the chamber-maid 
 and the hotel staff, but the Cornish family and the courts. 
 
 By the time the Carlyon brothers appeared at the head 
 of the street, the loiterers round Laskey's included 
 loungers from the trawling fleet. Through these Dr. 
 Dan's progress from the Priory House was almost a 
 triumph, for his dress combined the splendour of a glazed 
 shirt-front and dinner jacket with the everyday familiarity 
 of the sou'wester flung over his shoulders in lieu of over- 
 coat. By his side, Sam Cornish, smiling but sheepish, 
 was struggling in the grip of an overtight collar. 
 
 Laskey's stands in a sleepy quadrangle fronted by 
 low buildings which cut off all view of the harbour. It 
 is just the corner to be sought by storm-tossed mariners, 
 being tucked away in a niche at the bottom of the hill 
 where the hurtling winds can scarcely reach the chimney 
 tops. To-night the square in front was filled with soft, 
 rosy light from the dining-room till Jemmy, seated at the 
 head of the table with napkin tucked under his chin, 
 signed to the waiter to pull down the blinds in face of 
 the excited world outside. By the noise of rushing feet, 
 however, one could judge that the clan of the Cornishes 
 was still in action outside. 
 
 " Your boys ? " asked Jemmy blandly of Sam. 
 
 " Ay, the young rips," answered Cornish proudly. 
 
 But when Jemmy proposed inviting them all in to 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 97 
 
 dessert it was Dr. Rudd who frowned upon the sugges- 
 tion ; he was far more resentful of patronage than Sam 
 himself, who, indeed, was too busy with the multitude of 
 implements set before him in the way of knives and forks 
 to attend to conversation. Still, on a similar occasion, 
 he had learnt the first lesson in this matter, which is simply 
 to watch one's neighbour's attack on the tools and then 
 to imitate him. And, after all, the affair of the wine- 
 glasses, in some way the most puzzling item, was the 
 waiter's job. 
 
 Although Jemmy, as host, had a queer team to drive 
 to-night, he was helped by the doctor's shirt-front far 
 more than he realized, since by this concession Dr. Rudd's 
 mind was unconsciously composed to a greater degree of 
 conventionality than was customary with him. As a 
 matter of fact, he was as fiercely insistent on his own 
 dignity as any woman, and still more so on Sam Cornish's. 
 He even resented the fact that the dinner was at Laskey's 
 and not at that glittering shrine of gentility, the hotel 
 on the hill, for he shrewdly suspected Jemmy of a feeling 
 of shame at inviting Sam there. Altogether Dr. Rudd 
 was in as prickly a condition as could be conceived ; 
 yet insensibly the quills were laid upon this fretful por- 
 cupine, not only by Jemmy's air of state, but still more 
 by the succulent flavours of Jemmy's food. 
 
 After all, it was Steve Carlyon who came to the fore 
 first. Jemmy was tired and hungry after a busy day ; 
 the doctor was testing the flavour of the occasion, from 
 its imaginary slights to its wines ; Sam was immersed in 
 cares and Gilbert Carlyon a naturally silent watcher in 
 most assemblies. Steve Carlyon alone, however, was 
 driven by his excitable nature to force himself into 
 prominence. 
 
 How Steve came to be born of old William Carlyon was 
 one of Nature's own mysteries. In build slight and small, 
 he appeared especially puny by the side of his brother's 
 heavy shoulders and massive head. The nose projecting 
 abruptly from a pallid face that no sun could tan, the 
 pale blue eyes and sleek fair hair were such as commonly 
 
98 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 denote a slack individuality, yet the tense lines of his 
 old-young face showed a nature driven by restless energy. 
 The tragedy, indeed, of his whole being was that the 
 energy found no grist to grind, but was merely spent in 
 wearing down the machinery by its restless power. 
 
 No one but his brother Gilbert knew how shy Steve 
 was, as no one, again, but Gilbert, ever guessed the urge 
 of the soul within this hard-driven body to put the best 
 face it could on itself and its doings. It was, then, because 
 he was shy that he talked in every company with a self- 
 assertion that made him impudent. Again, he was 
 afraid of many things that other men scorn to fear, yet 
 he would therefore rush in the face of a danger which more 
 prudent men avoid. Not to be left behind in the march : 
 this restless zeal filled his timid soul. Hence, good 
 company being denied him, he took refuge in bad, and 
 where the prudent Gilbert gave himself to books and 
 ambition, Steve fled to tavern haunting and women who 
 preyed on him. 
 
 " Anything that cuts a dash is Steve's line," said the 
 censorious Gilbert. And, although the younger brother 
 damned the elder for a prig, yet the saying cut deep, if 
 only for its truthful edge. 
 
 To-night Steve's subject was, as usual, his conquests 
 over women. A veritable Turk in his own eyes, he 
 expatiated at great length over one affair with a girl 
 who, finding herself married to a dull husband, had 
 planned to turn Steve Carlyon into the romance of her 
 life. 
 
 " Regularly threw herself at my head," he said. " I 
 couldn't get away from her, though the husband spotted 
 it. 'Twas devilish dangerous. I could see that with 
 half an eye. But I did meet her once : at Swindon it 
 was, of all places. We were to meet, so she said, once 
 every six months and sit for half an hour holding hands 
 in a bun-shop. That's all there was to be to it, too. 
 Fancy running all those risks for thirty minutes in a bun- 
 shop. But I said : ' And what am I to get out of this, 
 my dear ? ' But she wouldn't see anything to it but 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 99 
 
 the holding hands and the living on the memory of it 
 for months at a time. She'd have been satisfied with 
 that for years and years. ..." 
 
 "Or so she said," laughed Jemmy, while Steve blew 
 smoke rings. He was expansive in his smoking as in 
 everything else. 
 
 Dr. Rudd looked across at Gilbert Carlyon, mischievously 
 desirous of inquiring how Simon Pure took the narrative. 
 But the other remained as placid in face of his brother's 
 levity as he had been at sight of the limping right foot 
 from which Dr. Rudd still suffered. Only on each occasion 
 there was a gleam of meaning, possibly of satisfaction, in 
 his eyes. Gilbert enjoyed two things especially ; first, 
 to pay a man back in his own coin, and second, to watch 
 a human being reveal the exact mettle of his pasture. 
 Both these pleasures he was enjoying to-night. 
 
 Besides, there were no surprises for him as far as his 
 brother Steve was concerned. He knew his bravado as 
 well as his tempers, how he flung his hat on his head and 
 strode out of the house after a quarrel, how he would 
 complain to the old man of being " put upon " by his 
 stern elder brother. Will Carlyon's answer was always 
 the same to grumbles of this kind. " There, that's 
 enough," he would growl ; " you and your brother must 
 pull together, or one of you will have to clear out. And 
 with my will, 'twon't be Gilbert that goes." 
 
 Yet Steve was something of an artist, too, and when 
 after dinner, with only a battered hat by which to produce 
 the illusion, he sang a song in the character of an " East 
 End Old Clothes Man," he showed his true place in the 
 order of creation. In his element at last, he was enjoying 
 what he always lived for . . . the gaze of the company 
 upon him and the liquor humming in his head to keep 
 off all fear of critical eyes. Suddenly he flung himself 
 flat on the floor on his hands ; this was merely to startle 
 the inn cat and to express his own joie de vivre. He was 
 now, as he put it, " jolly in his tinpot way." 
 
 Dr. Rudd yawned aloud, intensely bored by a display 
 of egotism so crude as this, 
 
 7* 
 
ioo THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Queer chap, your brother," he said, turning to Gilbert. 
 
 " You think so ? " asked the other. " Well, he does 
 his best to amuse the company, I suppose." 
 
 " Meaning by that, to pay for his grub," said the doctor. 
 
 In a moment the latent animosity of the two was awake. 
 
 " If you like to take it so," answered Gilbert. 
 
 " Meaning, too," said Dr. Rudd still more offensively, 
 " that some of the rest of us don't pay. Well, that's 
 true, but we haven't all of us got the small change to pay 
 it with." 
 
 " I wonder," said Gilbert, his eyes brightening, " that, 
 if you despise your company, you demean yourself to 
 join it." 
 
 " Despise my company ? " drawled Dr. Rudd, " that's 
 where your puritanism leads you all wrong. If the 
 company amuses me, I come. If it doesn't, I don't. Now 
 to-night, as it happens, I've had a ripping good feed and 
 a Christy Minstrel entertainment afterwards. It's your 
 being here that surprises me. Because it apparently 
 doesn't amuse you, and if I can do nothing to pay for my 
 entertainment, neither can you." 
 
 " Are you sure you can't ? " asked Gilbert insolently. 
 
 " Pay ? " repeated Dr. Rudd. " Damned if I know. 
 Pay ? Why on earth should anyone pay for anything if 
 he doesn't find a satisfaction in doing so ? I don't. If 
 people seek me out they do it at their own risk. But 
 come to that, you fiddle, don't you ? " 
 
 "I learnt a bit once ... to play dance tunes to the 
 children. But my father said I was playing them straight 
 to Hell," said Gilbert, flinging his legs apart, not without 
 an attempt to catch the other's tone of truculency. 
 
 " Queer family, yours," commented Dr. Rudd, roping 
 all the Carlyons in by one comprehensive phrase. 
 
 At this moment, up came Jemmy and sank down, 
 cigar in hand, to discuss his nephew Steve with the doctor. 
 
 For all his apparent simplicity, Jemmy possessed to 
 the full that instinct for character without which no 
 man can succeed who depends for his living on the weak- 
 nesses of others. It was, of course, as he often boasted, 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 101 
 
 on these weaknesses for Age in Art and bric-a-brac that 
 Mr. Carlyon flourished ; yet, after all, as he also explained, 
 a clod of rich smelling earth was good enough for him in 
 regard to memories. " A lump of English soil ! " he 
 would exclaim ecstatically. " What picture could out- 
 rival this for memories ? " The poetry of common things 
 was Jemmy's passion. 
 
 " That's a first-class egotist, that chap, Steve," he said 
 to Dr. Rudd, " like you and me, of course, but childish 
 about it, too. He wants to carry us all off our feet with 
 his funning. I've seen him, as a boy, dash down on a 
 bull that was lowering his head. Yet all the time he was 
 in a funk, but he wouldn't let anybody know it. That's 
 Steve all over. Don't know but what it's finer than 
 Gilbert's cocksureness. Was never over fond of Gilbert, 
 myself. Unco' guid, you know. But . . . Steve . . 
 well there, he makes you feel on better terms with your- 
 self, because he pays you the deference of being afraid of 
 you. And that's something you understand, too, don't 
 you, my boy ? " 
 
 " What d'you mean ? " asked the doctor, his vigilance 
 awake in self-defence. 
 
 " Oh, all that talk of yours of doing what you jolly well 
 please. It's bluff, of course, like Steve's ' Old Clo ' song, 
 but it pays. I'll not deny it. And that reminds me. 
 I'm a sort of ambassador, you know." 
 
 " It wasn't from the paying standpoint . . ." began 
 Dr. Rudd stiffly. " I simply meant to say that I do what 
 I like without asking whether what I like pleases other 
 people. Take my words at their face value and you'll 
 get at what they mean." 
 
 Jemmy laughed and put out a hand in protest. 
 
 " By Gad ! " he exclaimed, " you're as bad as Steve. 
 Touch you and every bristle's alive. No, but seriously 
 though, what an ass you must be to put your head out of 
 window and shout that you're not at home when good 
 fortune knocks at your door. There's my wife's aunt, 
 Madame Peters, that's got the gout in every joint . . . 
 hereditary, too . . . and swears you're the man to cure 
 
ioz THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 her. But you'll attend any old woman in an almshouse 
 and yet you won't go near her." 
 
 " Did she ask you to speak to me ? " began Dr. Rudd 
 stormily. 
 
 " Of course not," said Jemmy, lying stoutly, " but I 
 want to do you a good turn, and if you could drive the 
 cursed stuff out of her, why you'd make a county reputa- 
 tion for yourself. See ? " 
 
 Dr. Dan shook himself angrily, white with rage, partly 
 at the vulgar supposition that he could cherish such an 
 ambition and partly suspicious that this dinner, to which 
 it had pleased Jemmy to invite him, he had not earned 
 solely by his own merits. Like Steve, he was to pay for 
 his supper, in fact, only by skill not by buffoonery. The 
 notion was fatal to Jemmy's diplomacy. 
 
 Dr. Dan refused curtly to attend Madame and left 
 Jemmy fuming. In the latter's phrase, " The fool wouldn't 
 so much as make a bid, where he had been expected to 
 buy the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel." 
 
 When Jemmy got up to Denzell that night, a crest- 
 fallen, if not a wiser man, he sighed with relief to find 
 Dorothy sitting by the fire alone. Madame, she ex- 
 plained, had gone up to bed, too exhausted to wait any 
 longer. 
 
 " Well," sighed Jemmy, " I've failed. I put my foot 
 in it, somehow, and he set his hoofs like a cursed mule 
 and wouldn't budge an inch." 
 
 " Do you actually mean that he won't come ? " asked 
 the girl. 
 
 " I do. Tell you what," said he, leaning back ex- 
 hausted in his chair. " He's been made a deuce of a fuss 
 of, and he wants it to go on. Cursed egotist. But tell 
 you what, I'll go up to town and get a first-class man to 
 come down and overhaul the old lady." 
 
 " And then she'll not see him," sighed Dorothy. 
 
 Jemmy groaned in his turn. 
 
 " Well," he said, "it's worse for me than for anybody. 
 For, after all, I don't get . . . what I've been fooling 
 about for all this time in order to earn." 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 103 
 
 " Oh, don't," cried Dorothy. " What does money matter 
 compared to her suffering ? " 
 
 Jemmy grimaced, for, as he often explained, money 
 troubles were the worst he knew . . . except, perhaps, 
 fear of the Last Things, and, as he never expected to be 
 ready for those, he had given up thinking of them. 
 
 Now he sidled up, ready to slip an easy, and, as he 
 supposed, consolatory arm round the girl's waist, but 
 Dorothy never so much as noticed the attempt. She 
 was half wav up the stairs to the gallery before she even 
 heard his voice calling to her, Romeo-like, from below. 
 
 " Come, say good-night," he cried, holding up his hand 
 and seizing hers, " those eyes are too young to be dimmed 
 by sorrow, those cheeks ..." 
 
 But when she stopped his rhapsodies brusquely, Jemmy 
 felt himself growing old. He knew, too, that he would 
 look in vain for a copy of Dowson's poems among the 
 classical poets at Denzell. Sighing for his lost youth, he 
 made for the door and confided to Parker his disappoint- 
 ment in life ; a scurvy Artist, she, whose best effects, though 
 long promised, never seem to come off. Parker ascribed 
 the sentiment to a mixing of drinks, though he avoided 
 expressing his idea aloud. 
 
 Outside Madame Felicia's room Dorothy paused. The 
 door was half open, but between her and the interior a 
 screen was drawn. In the dim light thrown by the night- 
 light standing on a side table the listener's glance fell on 
 the rows of books stacked on low shelves. One, bound 
 in white vellum, Madame had often shown her ; it bore 
 the inscription on the back in a fine Italian hand — 
 " Queenie's copy " — and contained Madame's own youthful 
 poems, printed years ago for her first husband. So 
 remote in time did this husband seem to the girl that he 
 was almost a medieval memory. 
 
 Then she heard from the room within the sound she 
 had been dreading, a sigh and the creaking of the bed. 
 Madame Felicia was not asleep, but lying there in misery. 
 Moving noiselessly and holding her skirts, lest a rustle 
 should betray her, Dorothy stole back once more to the 
 
104 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 gallery. The lights were out and the hall given over to 
 silence and half darkness. 
 
 Was she to be as helpless before this call as she had 
 been last night in Gilbert Carlyon's need ? This question 
 it was that was driving the blood through her veins till 
 she could hear her own heart-beats. With a cry for help 
 in her ears, was she once more to be helpless, and that 
 through some fibre of weakness in herself ? Here was 
 Gilbert crying out in his loneliness ; here was Madame 
 Felicia asking that the last flicker in her lamp might be 
 guarded ere the gathering darkness came. 
 
 Flinging her head up, and running down the- stairs to 
 the door, Dorothy seized Madame' s garden cloak and 
 flung it round her with shaking hands. Yet it was not 
 courage, but despair, that drove her, since it seemed at 
 that moment far easier to face any hardness in the doctor 
 than to go back to Madame and bring to her nothing but 
 disappointment. Noiselessly crossing hall and dining- 
 room, she softly opened one of the French windows of the 
 latter. Outside on the terrace she looked up at the 
 sleeping house ; the long rows of windows, with their 
 blinds drawn, would look like that when Madame was 
 gone. The outer door by the yuccas was never locked, 
 for two boarhounds guarded the house at night. They 
 knew her, however, and pushed long moist noses into her 
 hand. Yet had it been barred and bolted, she would 
 have gone to the gardener to unfasten it, as certain of 
 finding a tale to tell him as she felt of the fact that, will 
 for will, hers was equal to Dr. Rudd's . . . with this 
 present urgency upon her. 
 
 To the hour she gave no thought, nor, in fact, was it 
 yet eleven, for Jemmy's party had broken up early. By 
 the basin the few boats in harbour floated on an oily tide 
 that swelled at the quay head like the rise and fall of a 
 gigantic bosom. The front window over the stone stair- 
 case at the Priory House was lit up behind a yellow blind. 
 As she went up the steps, she pressed close to the wall, 
 her mind dreamily recalling a nightmare she suffered from, 
 as of a staircase winding up with never a rail, only an 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 105 
 
 infinite depth into which to fall, and a giddying spiral 
 above, with the merest foothold all the way. 
 
 The passage into the house was dark, but voices came 
 from a room at the far end and a light from under the 
 door. 
 
 ! Sam Cornish, who opened it in answer to her knock, 
 had apparently been preparing for bed, for his jersey was 
 off and he in shirt and trousers. Mrs. Cornish hurried 
 forward, as she always did when Sam's mouth opened in 
 an ineffective grin. The smell of lamp-oil and of a family 
 living with tight-closed windows filled the little place. 
 The three faces stared at each other, smiling vacantly, 
 till Mrs. Cornish recovered herself. 
 
 " 'Tis the doctor missie wants, you great gaby," she 
 cried to Sam ; " go up over and tell'n he's wanted." 
 
 Presently in his stockinged feet Dr. Rudd appeared, 
 tumbling down the steep staircase like a sailor down a 
 companion way. 
 
 " Can I see you alone ? " asked Dorothy bluntly. 
 
 While he hesitated, Mrs. Sam laughed ; her broad mouth 
 seemed extraordinarily full of teeth. 
 
 " Oh, take her upstairs, Dan," said she, " or Sam and 
 me'll clear out, if that's what you want." 
 
 With a quick gesture he seized the lamp from the table 
 and led the way upstairs. The flaming signals flying in 
 her face, Dorothy followed him. With a glance round 
 at the littered room, its bed half hidden under books, 
 the doctor turned into his den and pulled forward a 
 beehive chair for his visitor. Leaning his arm on the 
 narrow bedroom mantelpiece, he stood looking down on 
 her. She was bareheaded, and Madame's cloak hung 
 amply round the narrow girlish shoulders. 
 
 " I'm Dorothy Rosewarne," she began, " you know 
 my father, I think ? " 
 
 He nodded gravely, his eyes on her. 
 
 " I've been with Madame Peters all day," she faltered, 
 " we waited for you. We even thought you might come 
 to-night, for we knew Mr. Carlyon was going to ask you 
 to." 
 
106 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Recovering her breath fully and with it her composure, 
 she looked up at him, while they measured glances, as 
 good swordsmen will, till Dorothy felt her courage rise. 
 For there was a power within herself equal to all the 
 demands of this situation. In him, after all, she per- 
 ceived a plain dealer, subtle as he might think himself. 
 With him she would never, as she was with Gilbert Carlyon, 
 be caught and carried beyond her depths by a force as 
 powerful as she guessed it to be lawless. 
 
 " You've come, then, on the same errand as Mr. Car- 
 lyon ? " he asked, harshly clearing his voice, and playing 
 the devil's tattoo on the mantelshelf. " Doesn't it strike 
 you," he continued, " that there's an absurd fuss being 
 made about a matter of very little moment ? You know 
 it's really preposterous that you should pester me like 
 this, though it's very flattering to my self-love, of course." 
 
 " That's why," said Dorothy, quietly, " you persist in 
 refusing." 
 
 He stared at her a second and then laughed. She 
 noticed how the whole surface of his face broke into 
 innumerable wrinkles. On the wall beside him hung a 
 pencil sketch drawn in bold detail ; she recognized it, as 
 she had not done before, for a picture of the doctor 
 laughing. 
 
 " Well, and suppose it is," he said, " why on earth 
 should you all insist on burning incense before me over 
 this affair of an old woman's whim ? " 
 
 " Just because it is an old woman's whim, because she's 
 very old and frail and, if you like, very full of fancies . . . 
 because she hasn't, anyway, many years to live, and 
 because those who love her would ..." 
 
 " Get the moon for her, if they could," he interrupted 
 with a sneer. 
 
 14 Just so," said Dorothy, " if we could. But you're 
 not the moon and so we intend to get you for her." 
 
 " But I tell you I haven't any panacea different from 
 that of any other modern man of medicine." 
 
 v I don't suppose you have," said Dorothy placidly, 
 " but that's not the point, which is that Madame has 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 107 
 
 never been frustrated in all her life, and so, because you've 
 set yourself up as something unattainable, you're a great 
 prize to her. That's all." 
 
 " That's better," he cried, " that's more like truth." 
 
 " Oh, if it's truth you want," said Dorothy as she flared 
 at him, " you shall have it. We don't want at all — at 
 least I don't — to break down your opposition and win a 
 victory over you. Nothing of the kind. We aren't 
 thinking of you at all. We're only thinking of how to 
 get Madame what she wants." 
 
 " Why should she have what she wants ? " he asked, 
 shrugging his shoulders. 
 
 " Why shouldn't she ? You know perfectly well you're 
 only making all this fuss because it gratifies your own 
 vanity. Oh, I don't care how angry you are with me. 
 I want you to come to Madame, and I say you shall." 
 
 " And if I say I won't ? " he asked. " Look here, Miss 
 Rosewarne, I only ask of people that they'll leave me 
 alone. It isn't much to ask, I think, and yet everyone 
 comes bothering round me with futilities of all sorts." 
 
 14 That's just what you really like," she cried ; " here 
 we are all begging and praying you for what every other 
 doctor would be only too glad to do." 
 
 " I'm not a doctor. At least I don't mean to be treated 
 as one. I'm as free as the winds, and I intend to remain 
 so. And if I like to see you all on your knees to me, why 
 on earth shouldn't I take my pleasure in that way, if it is a 
 pleasure ? " 
 
 " Oh, I suppose you want Madame to come and fetch 
 you ... in the Denzell carriage and pair ? " 
 
 " She's been once," he said grimly, " and only got 
 ' no ' for her pains. Mam Cornish cursed me for a fool . . . 
 but there you are ! I take my pleasure where I can get 
 it, like another man." 
 
 At that picture of little proud Madame turned away, 
 all the strength of her own scorn broke down in the girl. 
 She glanced away from the doctor with trembling lips. 
 
 " Look here," he said, " you oughtn't to be going about 
 ake this, a girl like you . . . worrying yourself so." 
 
108 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " As if a girl, a woman, can't go about and bear things 
 just as well as a man." 
 
 " They can't though," he said with a smile. " No, no ; 
 they're quite different ; not so tough." 
 
 This smile changed his face ; mellowed and with white 
 hair, instead of a thatch of black bristles, she thought he 
 might not be quite so hideous. Then a new rage seized 
 her at the idea of her own thoughts deserting Madame in 
 her need. 
 
 " There's one reason," she said coldly, " why you 
 should come, and that's for your own sake. For you've 
 taken your pleasure out of everybody's humiliation, 
 including Madame's. But you'll soon be bored with the 
 same sensation. I think you'd better try a new one, and 
 that is the enjoyment of your own benevolence." 
 
 He laughed, as she stood up. 
 
 " You think then," he asked, " that I'm a pure-blooded 
 egoist ? " 
 
 ?'■ Don't you pride yourself on it ? " she answered. 
 " That's why I appeal to you. For you are coming, 
 aren't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, carefully avoiding her glance, " I'm 
 coming. I'll be up to-morrow morning." 
 
 She drew a long breath, trembling at her own victory. 
 Then, as he opened the door for her, a spirit of another 
 sort possessed her ; she understood why Madame valued 
 so highly that which was hard to win. 
 
 " Now why," she asked, " did you give in like that ? " 
 
 " Do you really want to know ? " he asked, looking her 
 up and down, from her shining head of dark hair to the 
 tips of her delicate shoes. Then, as her eyes fell before 
 his, he laughed. 
 
 " I think you do know why," he answered, " but I'll 
 tell you if you like, if you want it in plain black and 
 white." 
 
 " No, no, never mind," she stammered, her self-control 
 failing her for the first time, as a man who has walked the 
 tight-rope may feel his nerve desert him only when he 
 touches firm ground. " But," she laughed, recovering 
 
 V 
 
A PLAIN DEALER 109 
 
 herself, " I haven't eaten more humble-pie than I need, 
 have I ? " 
 
 " Good Lord, humble-pie ! " he exclaimed ; " if that's 
 your humble-pie, what the deuce will your other concoctions 
 be like, I wonder ? " 
 
 When he had lighted her to the door, she knew, by the 
 sound of voices and laughter from the house, that he had 
 returned to the kitchen where Sam Cornish was making 
 his own comments. Nor had she quitted the house 
 unnoticed, for, while Dr. Rudd stood at the top of the 
 steps with the lamp in his hand, Steve Carlyon, pausing 
 in the shadow of a house two doors above, caught a clear 
 glimpse of her face. With a low whistle he followed her 
 half-way up the hill. 
 
 " So, my lady," he smiled to himself, " two strings to 
 your bow, I see. And one of them is my pious brother. 
 Co ! who'd have thought it ? " 
 
 But her heart afire with joy, Dorothy stole upstairs at 
 Denzell, and slipping a hand into Madame's little bent 
 one, whispered : 
 
 " Dearest, dearest, it's all right. He's coming to- 
 morrow." 
 
 While they held each other, it seemed as though the 
 shadow had already rolled away. Then Dorothy made 
 tea for them both with the spirit lamp. To suit Madame's 
 taste there was only lemon provided, but since Dorothy 
 loved cream, nothing would serve but that she must steal 
 down to the pantry for a jug of it. And never was any 
 nectar of the gods more delicious than that tea drunk at 
 midnight. 
 
 " And," said Dorothy, being minded to cover up her 
 traces, " you'll send down . . . what you promised . . . 
 to Mr. Carlyon, won't you ? He wouldn't like to ask you 
 for it, but of course he must be fearfully anxious." 
 
 " Not ask for it ! Jemmy not ask for it ! Oh, you sweet 
 innocent, come here and kiss me," cooed Madame. " But 
 don't you fret, Jemmy shall have his money." 
 
 Before he was out of bed next morning there was 
 handed to Mr. Carlyon an envelope marked " Urgent " and 
 
no THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 containing Madame's cheque for £2,000, with an amazing 
 note to cover it, a note of five words, which ran thus : 
 " In acknowledgment for service rendered." 
 
 " Bless me ! " cried he, " what's the meaning of this ? 
 Was I . . . drunk last night ? No, I was never more 
 sober in my life. And I couldn't have been mistaken, 
 for he did say he wouldn't go and see her." 
 
 But, lest the cheque should be recalled, he hurried 
 down and ordered Laskey to send out scouts with instruc- 
 tions to watch the doctor's movements. And since there 
 had been bets in Petrockstow as to which side would win 
 in this Pull-devil-pull-baker of Madame Peters and 
 Dr. Dan, the scouts showed unusual intelligence, and 
 soon bore back the news to Laskey that the doctor was 
 waiting at the front door of Denzell for admittance. 
 
 " By the Lord ! " said Jemmy to himself, " I must have 
 been as drunk as a fiddler last night. That's why I 
 couldn't kiss the little girl, I suppose. Or did I do it, 
 though ? " he added, gazing at himself proudly in the 
 gilt pier glass of Laskey's coffee room. " Yet, drunk or 
 sober, don't I know the way to manage a man ? " 
 
 But the letter he left behind for Madame was full of 
 humble thankfulness that he had been able to serve her. 
 
 " I have done all things well," said Jemmy, spreading 
 his chest in the first-class carriage up to town. Then he 
 counted his victories, as though he were returning from 
 a hunting tour in the dealers' shops. " First, there was 
 Frances, and now there's Madame. Got what I want, 
 after all ! And poor old Parson Retallack didn't do so 
 badly for me, as things turned out." 
 
 Even Parson Retallack had not died in vain. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 LOVE'S TREASON 
 
 TO Father Tyacke, who took the deepest interest 
 in diseases and was an authority on pills, it was 
 a source of great annoyance that Madame Felicia should 
 have changed her medical adviser without consulting 
 him. Consequently when he arrived at Denzell late one 
 afternoon, after bicycling all the way from Mawgan 
 through a persistent drizzle, he was not only mud-stained, 
 but distinctly cross. 
 
 " Yes," said Parker, " Madame is at home and at 
 tea." 
 
 When the priest turned the corner of the gold dragon 
 screen he always hated as " pagan," he at first thought 
 her asleep in the warm air that was full of the scent of 
 burning pine cones. Then she looked up suddenly and 
 smiled a radiant welcome, for the idea that he might have 
 come to scold simply never occurred to her ; she was 
 far too much of a grande dame to expect even her confessor 
 to criticize any worldly proceedings of hers. 
 
 Presently, hot scone in one hand and tea-cup in the 
 other, and drinking the beverage brewed from the six- 
 shillings a pound China blend that his soul loved, he was 
 as usual the tame cat of the place. Madame sent Parker 
 away at once, and the priest wielded the teapot deftly 
 when their cups needed refilling. 
 
 Yet, although all this was as usual, Madame was 
 changed ; she had a new toy. Brisk and animated, she 
 told her story like a girl, with trills of laughter, while the 
 
 III 
 
ii2 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Father groaned within himself at such levity. The doctor 
 posed in her talk as the savage bear, the untamed one, 
 though, after all, so gentle . . . under her charm, as her 
 manner hinted. And when they quarrelled, as they 
 had done even in the first interview, it was plainly but 
 the falling out that all the more endears. 
 
 Father Tyacke's long yellow face grew longer as he 
 listened with hands uplifted in horror. The man had, it 
 appeared, showed not the faintest delicacy ; Madame was, 
 he declared, poisoned with toxins. For pathology the 
 priest had a natural leaning ; he listened thirstily to the 
 doctor's account of the condition of Mrs. Peters' blood. 
 
 " Brutal, oh, of course," said Madame, " those who 
 know don't mince matters." 
 
 Dr. Rudd was already to her the great man, the master. 
 
 " It's like a skilled tailor, too," she remarked medita- 
 tively ; " you know how it is, a coat hangs all wrong at 
 the waist . . . and he attacks it on the shoulders. So 
 with Dr. Rudd ; my joints ache, and he flies to the last 
 place you'd think of and says, ' Open your mouth, please,' 
 and looks at my gums." 
 
 Father Tyacke was absorbed in interest, drinking in 
 her words with rapt expression, yet he was inclined to 
 feel that these toxins were applied too generally. Once 
 it was nothing but appendicitis ; now the watchword 
 was toxin. Those medical men ride an idea to death ; 
 Madame paid no attention whatever to his babble. 
 
 " Not that he says much," said she ; "he grunts mostly 
 and flings a word at you. But he knows. Now Dr. Trevan 
 was a cat upon hot bricks with me, and always talking 
 about age. Age, as Dr. Rudd says, has nothing to do 
 with it. The system may be poisoned at any age." 
 
 She enjoyed her own condition hugely, but at the 
 doctor's talk of his other patients, her temper was not 
 so sweet. 
 
 " He's curious," she declared, " an original, and talked 
 as keenly about some wretched ignorant fisherman who 
 wouldn't have his house disinfected after a consumptive 
 child had died in it as he did of my illness. He even said 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 113 
 
 you couldn't tell the difference between a germ from a 
 tinker or a lord. Oh, yes, he's an original decidedly." 
 
 She spread her twisted fingers on her lap and smiled. 
 Father Tyacke all but groaned aloud, for decidedly she 
 was as silly as a love-sick girl. Yet he had seen manias 
 of this sort before ; tout passe was as true of Madame's 
 infatuations as of the law of the universe. 
 
 " Then he said," she continued, purring softly, " I 
 must have all my teeth out. The gums, it appears, have 
 pi-something, that is starting the toxins. They are 
 white-edged, and he sent for a glass, so that I could look 
 at them." 
 
 " Most curious, these new theories," murmured Father 
 Tyacke. " And the teeth ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course, I refused. My teeth are perfectly 
 sound. I told him so. ' Never,' said I. ' I will not 
 sacrifice them at the orders of any doctor.' " She snapped 
 her double row of pearls to show her defiance of any such 
 tyranny. 
 
 " They're always despots, these men," she observed 
 placidly, " but of course one doesn't yield to them." 
 
 Father Tyacke stared ; his brain whirled at these 
 feminine contradictions. 
 
 " But I thought," he gasped, " you believed in his 
 diagnosis. It is, of course, an appalling order, but stil 
 ... if there is no other way of cure ? " 
 
 He palpitated with alarm, being torn in two by his 
 inherent belief in the power of authority and his horror at 
 such drastic measures for a being so sacred as Madame. 
 
 " I should get a second opinion," he said, seeking refuge 
 in the commonplace. 
 
 " Fudge ! the man knows." 
 
 " Then, if he knows . . . ? " 
 
 " Oh, he's young and rash. I took a firm line. One 
 has to with these hot bloods. I said, ' No, I will not 
 submit to this outrage.' Then he became quite disgusting 
 in his details about my blood. But I stopped these 
 extravagances. Said I : 'I never did allow anyone to 
 talk to me of my inside, and I won't begin now ! ' " 
 
 8 
 
ii4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " But, dear Madame," protested the priest, who him- 
 self was a fellow of no delicacy where these secrets are 
 concerned. 
 
 Madame held up her hand. " I also said — very firmly : 
 ' There is one thing I will not do. I will not allow myself 
 to be mutilated in any shape or form, and I will not have 
 any disgusting injections.' ' H'm,' sniffed he rudely, 
 ' your blood couldn't be made any fouler than it is,' and 
 launched again into description." 
 
 " Horrible ! horrible ! " exclaimed the priest, with 
 uplifted hands. 
 
 Madame laughed lightly as at the pranks of a beloved 
 child. 
 
 " Oh," she exclaimed, " but he was so delightfully 
 frank and cross — just like a vexed baby. You know he 
 has a big brute of a head, like a mastiff's, and his jersey 
 was very tight . . . oh, yes, he came in his fisherman's 
 dress, and there were actually fish scales on his trousers. 
 The jersey was shrunk, too, and his neck isn't a bit full, 
 so that he looked like a tadpole. ' Never,' said I, ' will I 
 sacrifice my teeth. You must find another way round. 
 I am convinced you can.' " 
 
 " ' And to think,' said he, ' that you've lived all these 
 years and haven't learnt more sense than this. And 
 you call yourself an educated woman ! Why, the folk 
 down here who don't hold with germs, wouldn't dare to 
 stand up to me like this. But, thank God, blue blood 
 secretes poisons rather better than the common variety.' 
 Oh, he was delightfully rude. They are always so 
 masterful, these clever young men. Now poor old Trevan 
 would have known how useless it was to demand my 
 teeth in this fashion. He is a perfect highwayman, this 
 Dr. Dan, and so I told him." 
 
 " And what did he say then ? " 
 
 " Snorted, and said he washed his hands of the case. 
 That when I was prepared to obey him he would attend to 
 me. But if I wasn't, it was useless sending again for him." 
 
 " Then," sighed Father Tyacke thankfully, "it's all 
 at an end ? " 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 115 
 
 " Oh, dear me, no. I shall make him find a way. Of 
 course I shall. It's a little tiresome, this delay, but I 
 shall send for him again soon . . . he's simply like a 
 lively young trout I'm playing." 
 
 Father Tyacke could not but be pleased in his secret 
 heart at this anti-climax. He smiled behind his hand 
 at the prospect of Madame's failure in the landing of 
 this very excitable fish. Yet, after all, he himself was 
 in two minds ; for, while to violate Nature seemed to 
 him to be an impious crime — and how could one remove 
 anything so perfect as Madame's teeth without violating 
 Nature ? — yet, after all, he was too much of a professional 
 not to resent the idea of a layman refusing to obey the 
 voice of authority. 
 
 Then it occurred to him that this was an affair of a 
 lay woman, and women, as he knew from professional 
 experience, were not half as obedient as tradition accounted 
 them to be. 
 
 " This Rudd," he asked, " who is he ? He seems to 
 have no relatives, no background." 
 
 " Background ? " sniffed Madame, M he may be the son 
 of a cobbler, for all I care . . . you remember Bishop 
 Philpotts, of course . . . but, anyway, he took a degree 
 in Paris. Obviously, too, there's nothing of the soft- 
 soapishness of the shopkeeper about him. He belongs to 
 the class that expects to be obeyed . . . the great test, 
 of course." 
 
 Father Tyacke sighed softly, though, to do her justice, 
 she had quite forgotten his origin, which was drapery. 
 He forbore, then, to remind her that obedience was 
 precisely the virtue Dr. Rudd was demanding of her high 
 mightiness. 
 
 Next Mrs. Peters turned to an old subject : the question 
 of Philip Rosewarne and his blindness. It had been a 
 surprise to everyone, and to no one more than Madame, 
 to find the Rosewarnes all acquiescing so quietly in an 
 affliction that seemed perfectly curable by modern methods. 
 Yet even Trevan, who pressed for operation on the cataract, 
 had to confess they must wait for the moment of maturity. 
 
 8* 
 
n6 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Since then nothing had been done, and the family seemed 
 to have fallen into the apathetic condition of accepting 
 Philip's blindness as an incurable stroke of fate. 
 
 Father Tyacke got up and walked to the fire. Standing 
 with his back to it, he rubbed his chilly hands in the blaze. 
 Madame was struck by his sudden quietness. 
 
 " Do you know," asked she, " why they are all so 
 patient about this ? They're none of them in the least 
 like that usually about ordinary troubles. And there's 
 Philip Rosewarne himself been up here several times on 
 his own account to urge me to get someone down from 
 town about my rheumatism. He's a man, too, who has 
 always been a fighter. And yet he sits down under this 
 . . . this, that even Trevan thinks curable." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders half angrily, for on the one 
 occasion on which she had referred to the matter, Philip 
 had unmistakably winced, as though he, the frankest 
 man on earth, could not bear a reference to so obvious a 
 trouble. 
 
 Now something in the priest's silence struck Mrs. Peters 
 as ominous. 
 
 " What is it, Father Tyacke ? " she asked. 
 
 He hesitated ; then he spoke. 
 
 " Hasn't it really occurred to you, Madame," he asked, 
 " why Philip Rosewarne bears this so quietly . . . this, 
 the hand of God on him ? " 
 
 " No," said Madame sharply, " it hasn't. But, if it's 
 any of your doing, surely, surely, Father, there's no more 
 resistance to the Divine Will involved in getting operated 
 on for cataract than there would be in taking a liver 
 pill ? " 
 
 " I have never," said Father Tyacke, " given a moment's 
 encouragement to such views as those you speak of. God 
 sends the disease and the skill to deal with it, and both 
 for His own good purposes. In any case, too, Philip 
 Rosewarne is the last man on earth to attach importance 
 to such a crude superstition." 
 
 " What then ? " she asked. 
 
 Before answering, the priest walked up the hall and 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 117 
 
 down, opening doors and glancing into passages. Having 
 satisfied himself that no servants were about, he sat down 
 by Mrs. Peters and spoke to her in a low voice across the 
 tea-table. 
 
 " It has often occurred to me," he began, " to wonder 
 whether you have any idea. . . " 
 
 " I've no idea at all," said Madame sharply ; " do go 
 on, Father Tyacke." 
 
 " I have my fears," he said, " my very grave fears that 
 in that household an influence, a very selfish influence, is 
 at work. And yet, perhaps, I should not call it selfish 
 altogether." 
 
 " Do you want me to die with impatience ? " cried 
 Madame. 
 
 " It's so difficult to put into words," said the priest, 
 opening and shutting his fingers in the air, as though he 
 were handling cobwebs, " faint, faint impressions only, of 
 course. But it has come to me again and again, this idea 
 of mine. Madame Felicia," he asked abruptly, leaning 
 back and looking at her keenly, " has it never occurred to 
 you that Mrs. Rosewarne rejoices in her husband's 
 blindness ? " 
 
 " Marian Rosewarne rejoice ! " exclaimed Madame. 
 " Father Tyacke, how can you bring such a charge against 
 her ? " 
 
 " I bring no charge," he said, holding up his hand to 
 stop her, " I don't for a moment think she recognizes the 
 fact herself. Yet I believe, none the less, that what I 
 have said is true." 
 
 Madame Felicia's face in its turn wore a look of un- 
 wonted gravity. When she shaded her eyes with her hand, 
 it was a gesture that recalled Mrs. Rosewarne herself to 
 the priest. Leaning forward and speaking in low, intense 
 tones, he said : 
 
 "It is one of love's pitfalls, dear Madame, of all love, 
 save the highest, save the Divine love, that it wants exclu- 
 sive possession, to have and to hold alone, to share with 
 none other. All her life Mrs. Rosewarne has striven to set 
 her husband apart. She has been jealous of his wide 
 
u8 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 interests, of his politics, his work for reform. If she could, 
 she would have thrown a net round him long ago, have 
 withdrawn him from the world of struggle. Can I call it 
 wrong ? I don't know. But this blindness at last makes 
 him all her own. By her he is now wrapped round in the 
 delicate attentions from which he cannot escape. He is 
 hers. Even what he knows of the way the world wags, he 
 knows only from her. She can read one extract from a 
 newspaper and omit another. She even resents his 
 business, and rejoices when the office calls him only once 
 a week to Petrockstow. And when that last link snaps 
 she will have vanquished the world. At Teravel, in her 
 arms, she will have her beloved ... all her own, as never 
 before." 
 
 Madame drew a long breath, her face lit up with the 
 interest a keen brain always feels at some dissection, 
 minute and skilful, of the spiritual facts behind the daily 
 life of action. This priest was not a priest for nothing, 
 she thought to herself ; something, at any rate, he had 
 learnt, for all his simplicity, that common men never 
 learn. 
 
 " And Dorothy," she said musingly, " beautiful, fresh, 
 with all the charm of youth about her . . . and Marian's 
 grizzled hair, the lines round her eyes. Ah, poor Marian ! 
 But now he sees neither of them, except as he saw them 
 last. And Marian's at the age when every week makes a 
 difference in a woman's looks." 
 
 " That I never said, never suggested," exclaimed the 
 priest. 
 
 " No, but I do," said Madame, " I'm a woman, you know. 
 I see what a woman sees and you see what a priest sees. 
 That's the difference between us." 
 
 She bent forward, wincing painfully, for, by now, all 
 the elation had gone from her bearing. 
 
 " But what," she asked, " does Philip know of all this ? " 
 
 " Nothing, nothing, nothing," answered Father Tyacke. 
 
 " I'm not so sure," said Madame. " Father, how long 
 have you suspected this ? " 
 
 " Ever since I've seen her face grow quieter and 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 119 
 
 happier . . . since his disease became established. It has 
 spread to both eyes now, you know." 
 
 " And she has, I suppose, been more resigned in her 
 religion ? " asked Madame. 
 
 The priest made no reply. 
 
 " Poor Marian," said Madame softly. 
 
 When he had gone, Mrs. Peters sat for a long time deep 
 in thought. That the priest's interpretation was the right 
 one she felt no real doubt. Nor again was her knowledge 
 of the world small enough to make her condemn Mrs. 
 Rosewarne. For, as Madame knew, she had never passed 
 through the usual phases of a woman's life. Though she 
 loved her daughter, and wanted to see her make a success 
 of life, it was Philip himself who remained the centre of her 
 own affections. Where Marian Rosewarne's love had been 
 passionate and self-craving, as the love of the young must 
 be, it was now spiritualized, since it desired his happiness 
 even before her own. Yet . . . last subtle touch of love's 
 smallness ... it craved that, for his happiness, he should 
 still depend on herself alone. 
 
 Madame Felicia did her friend no wrong. She even 
 acknowledged, what the priest would never have done, 
 that Mrs. Rosewarne had reached a far higher level than 
 herself, who had never actually adored anything but her 
 own power. Madame' s own goodness consisted in the fact 
 that, while permitting men to honour her by laying rever- 
 ence and adoration at her feet, she had always seen to it 
 that the shrine before which they burnt incense was a 
 worthy one. 
 
 In this conquest of Dr. Rudd, too, she was probably as 
 deeply intrigued as ever she had been when in youth men 
 had worshipped her loveliness. That amusement mingled 
 with Dr. Rudd's interest in his troublesome patient, 
 she was perfectly aware, but this troubled her not a 
 whit. 
 
 Now, as she put Mrs. Rosewarne's case before herself, 
 she asked : had she any right whatever to interfere ? 
 Philip was a man of the world ; he must know quite well 
 that his trouble yielded to treatment in a high percentage 
 
120 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 of cases. These things being so, must he not be left to 
 release himself, if, indeed, he wished to be released ? 
 
 There, in that wishing, lay the crux of her problem. 
 " Dorothy, Dorothy," she whispered to herself, feeling the 
 child must somehow be the clue to the puzzle. In the 
 mood in which a man fills a pipe and sits down with two 
 frowns between his eyes to puzzle a thing out, Madame 
 sent for her maid and demanded her smelling-salts. Then, 
 snifhng with her eyes screwed up, she awaited what Father 
 Tyacke would have called " guidance." That the priest, 
 subtle old dog, was right, instinct told her. And to 
 Madame, who considered Dominicans rough, and Francis- 
 cans alone to be tolerated for their manners, it was a marvel 
 to find that a simple country priest had solved the riddle 
 which had often puzzled herself, a far acuter critic. 
 
 Insensibly now, Madame was scarcely thinking of Philip 
 at all, for he was but of the passing generation, and, as 
 such, was claiming more of his child's strength and life 
 than was just or bearable. 
 
 " Turning that child into a clerk," thought Madame 
 indignantly, " so that she breathes the dusty air from law 
 papers and reflects her youth only in japanned boxes." 
 
 Then she ordered the carriage to be ready next day at 
 twelve to drive her to Mawgan. For, after all, Madame 
 was ruled by the old-world tradition, which, Jove-like, 
 believes in the power of its nod to make or to unmake. 
 This was the fact that Father Tyacke had most indiscreetly 
 forgotten. 
 
 Next day she directed the coachman to drive her first 
 to Dr. Trevan, half-way down Petrockstow High Street. 
 Here his house stood at the end of a long garden, buried 
 in magnolias and guarded by the two yellow cottages he 
 had built half a century ago. His gaiety of mood was 
 shown by the lozenge windows that lighted them, and by 
 their names, which were " Skylark " and " Greenhill." 
 
 Dr. Trevan was that rara avis among doctors, a bachelor 
 who, after all the vicissitudes of a country practice, was 
 still afraid of a woman, and would never travel in a railway 
 carriage alone with a marriageable one. Gossip accredited 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 121 
 
 him with a love-affair at twenty-five and subsequent 
 despair when that lady jilted him. But, as a matter of 
 fact, his housekeeper was more influential than despair, for 
 she was a genius at cooking. 
 
 When he came out to the carriage-door, Madame asked 
 him point-blank if Mr. Rosewarne had been to consult him 
 lately. He shook his head, and Madame gathered from 
 his manner that the delay had seriously alarmed him. 
 Secretly, he was by no means sorry to have to hand over 
 Madame's gout to the reckless hands of that Rudd fellow. 
 For more than once before he had been cast off, only to be 
 recalled after an interval, to hear a scathing analysis of 
 some other fool's predilection for sulphur baths or arsenic. 
 He knew that the moment she was bored he would be 
 summoned to Denzell. Even at this crisis, and in defiance 
 of the coachman's solemn air, he found time to tell her a 
 naughty story. 
 
 " Mrs. Cayzer," he said, " you know whom I mean : 
 Mrs. Cayzer of Trevayle. Just been to see me about a 
 mole on her back. In great distress, too. But I told her 
 I couldn't see it mattered to anybody, except her husband, 
 and he must be quite used to it by now." 
 
 " And," exclaimed Madame, " the woman's got such 
 commonplace shoulders, too ! She ought to be glad to 
 possess something to distinguish them. Praise be to God 
 for His great gift of diversity ! Why don't you teach her 
 that, Dr. Trevan ? " 
 
 Madame cherished such stories of her neighbours, for 
 Dr. Trevan knew these distinguished families, root and 
 branch, for miles round. He wrinkled up his hard-bitten, 
 carbuncled face and watched her drive up the hill. 
 
 Mrs. Peters' ostensible reason for a call on Mrs. Rose- 
 warne was a rumour with which the whole place was ring- 
 ing, a rumour that reflected painfully on Cornish hospitality. 
 For the freedom of the valley of Mawgan had been gladly 
 given to these Antwerp nuns, whose residence, in fact, 
 was regarded now as an honour. Yet it was one of these 
 who had been kissed by an unknown man, while she was 
 innocently engaged in picking primroses. Mrs. Rose- 
 
122 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 warne was inclined to blame the mistress of the novices, 
 for allowing her charges to be out at an hour when the 
 valley was often visited by strangers. Yet, as she believed, 
 the fellow's name was known to some who were concealing 
 it, lest he should be tarred and feathered. 
 
 " Oh, only a novice ! " exclaimed Madame, with a 
 wicked twinkle, " then perhaps she hasn't forgotten what 
 it was to be kissed — in the world. 'Twould have been 
 fifty times more cruel had it been a nun, for 'tis always hard 
 to be given a mere taste for an appetite that cannot be 
 satisfied." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne stiffened visibly ; really, in this mood, 
 Madame was positively unbearable. Little did she imagine 
 her guest to be beating the tom-tom, as it were, to get up 
 her courage for the real object of her visit. 
 
 " But," continued Mrs. Peters, " if Reverend Mother 
 had been sensible, she would have kept the affair quiet. 
 People are only too glad to make Catholics look ridiculous." 
 
 She had in mind the absurd affair of Father Tyacke's 
 battle with the Vicar of St. Morwenna. When, during 
 the winter, the body of a black sailor had been washed 
 ashore, the vicar scrupled about reading the Burial Service 
 over it ; whereupon Father Tyacke wrote to the papers 
 denouncing this as typical of the ignorance of the Anglican 
 Church. But the last word remained with the vicar, after 
 all, for he was able to instance the priest's refusal to 
 baptize an illegitimate baby, whom they had been obliged 
 to convey to Bodmin for the ministrations of a less 
 intolerant ecclesiastic. 
 
 When, however, Mrs. Rosewarne would have continued 
 the subject, Madame brushed it aside. 
 
 " Fiddle-faddle, Marian," cried she, " we're not a 
 couple of priests at a presbytery dinner," and straightway 
 laid a jeweller's box on the table. 
 
 " This," she said, opening it, and showing a string of 
 fine pearls, " is for Dorothy's twenty-first birthday. I 
 had put them down for her after my death, but, after all, 
 why should she wait for them ? And, anyway, there are 
 other things for the child in my will." 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 123 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne flushed with excitement, for here had 
 Madame answered a question which had often exercised 
 her own mind : Dorothy, then, was to be " remembered." 
 
 " That horrible man," continued Mrs. Peters, " my 
 late husband's nephew, will get whatever he must, of 
 course. But everything I can keep from him, I shall." 
 
 " Ah," cried Mrs. Rosewarne, " how good, how dear 
 you are, Madame Felicia. But the child has such brilliant 
 prospects. It's not every country lawyer's daughter 
 that is so sought after." 
 
 Ecstatically she burst into jubilation ; of course nothing 
 was arranged definitely, but the strange cold child seemed 
 awake at last. At one time she had thought of a religious 
 vocation, but then, of course, her father had such peculiar 
 views. 
 
 " Gilbert Carlyon," exclaimed Madame, " did I hear 
 you say ? Is the child engaged to him ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ; only, of course, he is fascinated and 
 Dorothy not indifferent. Distinctly her fancy, a girl's 
 delicate fancy, is aroused." 
 
 " Then," said Madame, closing the case with a snap, 
 " I'll take back my pearls. For Gilbert Carlyon's wife 
 most certainly won't need them." 
 
 " But," stammered Mrs. Rosewarne, "in a way, he's 
 a relative, by marriage, of yourself." 
 
 " Hoots ! " jeered Mrs. Peters, " and when Frances was 
 fool enough to marry Jemmy Carlyon, it didn't mean that 
 I adopted all the raggle-taggle of the Carlyon clan, I 
 hope." 
 
 " But such excellent prospects, dear Madame . . . you 
 know he has brains and, under the stimulus of Dorothy, 
 he's using them. Woman, the reward of strife, you 
 know, as Ruskin so beautifully says." 
 
 " Mrs. Bennett was a fool to you, Marian," quoth the 
 great lady, the aigrette in her bonnet dancing a war dance. 
 
 Brains ? What does a Carlyon want with brains ? 
 He'll have money, I don't deny that, and will be able to 
 dash about the country in motor-cars. But that won't 
 undo the fact that he's old Will Carlyon's son, miserly old 
 
i2 4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 ' Blow-the-Duck,' as they call him, for selling skinny 
 ducklings at market." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne was not without a spirit of her own. 
 She spoke almost solemnly, indeed, as though Gilbert 
 were already a luminary of the law, a jewel in the crown 
 of England's empire in India. 
 
 " Nonsense," said Madame, " on the strength of . . . 
 what is it ? . . . conic sections ? My dear Marian, if 
 ever a woman bought a pig in a poke, it's you. The lad's 
 all right in his place, and will be rich, but he's more or 
 less of a country bumpkin, as you could see if you'd only 
 open your eyes. And why on earth should you want 
 your only child to go to the other side of the earth ? " 
 
 Then she paused, and with an exclamation of disgust, 
 saw daylight. This, too, she realized was only another 
 sacrifice offered up on the altar of Mrs. Rosewarne's 
 adoration of her husband. 
 
 When Madame Felicia liked, she could give points to 
 a Red Indian and easily beat him in cruelty. Now, she 
 not only stripped Mrs. Rosewarne's egotism bare, but 
 pierced it with a thousand barbed arrows, touching subtly 
 on Mr. Rosewarne's patience, on the horrors he must 
 have meekly endured as he watched the vague and terrible 
 advance of blindness. Yet, after all, how magnificent 
 were the resources of science, for here was she herself on 
 the way to be cured of a disease that used to be a terror 
 to old age, as, no doubt. Philip Rosewarne himself would 
 be, with no further need to keep his daughter like a slave 
 at his elbow. Then she would be as free as other daughters 
 to follow the husband of her choice . . . where her freshness 
 would not show up the sallow skins of the old folk. 
 
 " Still," concluded Madame, " if she is to marry this 
 . . . Indian nabob, she won't need my pearls. He can 
 hang her round with more barbaric trophies than these." 
 
 And, in fact, the pearls were carried back to Mrs. Peters' 
 jewel case. 
 
 But at last, noticing Mrs. Rosewarne's stricken face, she 
 softened. 
 
 " Marian," she half whispered, " if you try, beyond a 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 125 
 
 certain point, to play Providence to any man, you become 
 inevitably his curse." 
 
 None the less, for all her wise words, Madame fully 
 intended herself to play Providence to man and maid, 
 so hard is it for a woman not to meddle with the affairs 
 of creation. 
 
 Halfway home she stopped the carriage and asked if 
 it would be possible to go round by way of Lanvean, as 
 she wished to enjoy more of the sea air. Were the horses 
 fresh enough ? 
 
 Being reassured on this point, Madame set out, once 
 more, to play Providence on her own account. 
 
 At Lanvean the spring wind was filled with the scent 
 of burning seaweed, for in the fields above Mother Ivy's 
 bay, brown men in earth-stained clothes strode from 
 heap to heap of the seaweed that was piled in stacks 
 across the dry burnt surface of the ground. When they 
 stirred the weed the pungent smell rose into the sun 
 filled air, while wisps of smoke trailed out to sea. Against 
 the deep blue of the sky the leaping flame burnt red-gold, 
 and died away to smoky ashes under the sun's glare. 
 
 As Madame's carriage waited, a man rode by, his head 
 appearing above the golden-green of the tamarisk hedges. 
 Bare-headed and sweating from the sun, with only a 
 red shirt and corduroy breeches to cover him, he sat his 
 horse as though he and it were one. His fore-arms, bare 
 to the elbow, were shaggy with dark hair ; yet in his air 
 of unkempt strength there was the serenity of fitness with 
 the fire and the salt scent of the wind. 
 
 " That was Mr. Carlyon, wasn't it ? " asked Madame. 
 
 " Young Mr. Gilbert, ma'am," said the coachman. 
 
 Madame's lips curled, although ... it always had 
 been her talent . . . she knew a man when she saw one. 
 Yet, in fact, this man was, for all his serenity, like the 
 goat-herds, or the vine-dressers, of her first wedding 
 journey through Switzerland and Italy. To hand Dorothy, 
 slim, white Dorothy, over to him was impossible, for all 
 he leapt as justly from his background as the very tamarisk 
 hedges themselves. 
 
126 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 At the door of Lanvean, Mrs. Parsons answered the 
 coachman's knock. Madame Felicia's clear tones inquiring 
 for Mr. Carlyon sounded bell-like against the woman's 
 rough country burr. 
 
 " He's not so well, Madam," said the housekeeper, 
 " these last few days. For, indeed, he's never been the 
 same since the old parson's death. You'll have heard 
 how he took to his bed soon after." 
 
 Then she laid a hand on the carriage door, country 
 hospitality overcoming her awe. 
 
 " Ye'll come in, ma'am," said she, " and let me make 
 you a cup of tea, surely ? The kettle's on the boil, too." 
 
 " Thanks, Parsons, I will," said Madame, " I shall be 
 glad of it." 
 
 On the green table, drawn away now from the wreck- 
 wood fire that almost always burnt in the dining-room, the 
 old woman set the tea-tray and poured the cream into 
 fine red and purple cups of old Spode leaf design. The 
 room was bright with light reflected from the hall, whose 
 red-washed walls glowed as though with the warmth of 
 a fire. 
 
 A cry, that was half a groan, came floating down the 
 staircase ; it was an old man's voice, yet still with the 
 heavy notes of virile strength in it. 
 
 " Is he so ill ? " asked Madame, " and in pain ? " 
 
 " No, not in pain. 'Tis his mind. No rest, mostly — 
 by night nor day." 
 
 She would have shut the door, but Mrs. Peters stopped her. 
 
 " What is that he says ? " she asked, for his voice was 
 blurred with the stroke of semi- paralysis. 
 
 " It's always, Madame," answered Mrs. Parsons, " the 
 sixth chapter of Revelations. ' And I looked, and behold 
 a pale horse ; and his name that sat on him was Death, 
 and Hell followed with him.' " 
 
 " And why that ? " 
 
 " I don't know, ma'am. Whimsies, no more. You'd 
 have your work cut out to say why or wherefore with 
 folks so bad as he." 
 
 Mrs. Peters shivered, for there was more than a touch 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 127 
 
 of hardness in the woman's tones. Old Carlyon, Madame 
 reflected, belonged to a class where soft ways are not 
 practised, even with the weak and ailing. 
 
 " But he'll not be here for long now," continued Mrs. 
 Parsons. " He'll not last the summer. Stroke upon 
 stroke he's had. Tis like a great oak brought down by 
 blow after blow. He was a strong man and no mistake." 
 
 Madame smiled graciously, for this tone was more to 
 her fastidious taste. 
 
 " There'll be changes then," said Mrs. Parsons, " a 
 new mistress, or I'm mistaken. The Carlyons allays 
 mate young, but she's tender and nesh, and 'tis a rough 
 old place, Lanvean. But there, young master '11 pad it 
 soft for her, I'll warn." 
 
 Madame looked at her. 
 
 " Parsons," said she sharply, " what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, Miss Rosewarne, that's who I mean. Mrs. 
 Rosewarne's got her eye on our Gilbert. Her's been here 
 two or three times, has Mrs. Rosewarne. I heard of her 
 long ago, too. She all but looked in the cupboards. As 
 'twas, she had me turn out the old silver." 
 
 " Wreckage ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't say not," smiled the old woman. " What 
 they get, they keep, the Carlyons do." 
 
 " What would happen do you think if, when old Mr. 
 Carlyon dies, Gilbert gave over the estate to his brother." 
 
 " He can't do it, ma'am. 'Tis Gilbert's. I know, for 
 I've seen how 'tis all left." 
 
 " But if Mr. Gilbert chose to leave, and got an appoint- 
 ment abroad . . . with these studies of his. You know 
 how he studies, don't you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Parsons lifted her hands in amazement. 
 
 " So that's it, is it ! " she exclaimed. " Why, ma'am, 
 he gets through pounds and pounds of candles, and takes 
 no pleasure in his days, and sits as mum as a stone, with 
 his face getting yellow and old. All for that ! " 
 
 " That's it, Parsons," smiled Madame, " ambition ; to 
 get on in the world and to win . . . what men have 
 always been ready to lose their wits for ... a woman." 
 
iz8 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " And for that chit, as finds Lanvean and its acres not 
 good enough for her, he'd turn his back on everything that's 
 his ! " exclaimed the old woman. 
 
 " Yet it is so," said Madame. " He's been told he can't 
 get Miss Rosewarne unless he . . . takes a step in life, 
 or what looks like a step in life to Mrs. Rosewarne." 
 
 " That sniffing-nose-in-air ! " exclaimed Parsons. " I 
 heard of her ten years ago, how she'd beat down the 
 farmers' wives as had a bit of old Chiney and give 'em not 
 a quarter of what 'twas worth." 
 
 " But what," persisted Madame, " would happen if 
 his father found out all this ? " 
 
 " Why, he'd turn 'en out . . . and all for that white- 
 faced slip of mischief, and Steve, he'd get it, Steve ! " 
 
 " Not, I hear," asked Madame placidly, " a very desirable 
 young man ? " 
 
 But here Mrs. Parsons' loyalty came to her help. On 
 the question of Steve she was not to be drawn. 
 
 " Steve," said she evasively, " is what the Lord made 
 'en. But, sure to God, Master Gilbert'll never turn his 
 back on Lanvean. You'd say he loved every sod of it. 
 Tis in his blood." 
 
 " Parsons," said Madame, standing in the window and 
 looking through the dark leaves of the oaks at the gold 
 of the sunset beyond, " Parsons, you know the strongest 
 thing in the world, don't you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Parsons believed it to be money, but she considered 
 it probable that Madame's rank shut her off from much 
 contact with first-hand facts. 
 
 " It's woman, Parsons, woman. But, after all, there 
 are more women than one in existence, though Gilbert 
 naturally doesn't think so. And they sometimes work 
 like sums in fractions, and cancel one another." 
 
 When she had driven away, Mrs. Parsons stood in the 
 doorway watching the carriage. 
 
 " Now what," said she, " is she after ? Nothing good, 
 I'll warn. For when a lady lets a woman talk free to 
 her, she's got a purpose behind it. I doubt I've made 
 too free by half." 
 
LOVE'S TREASON 129 
 
 To Mrs. Rosewarne at Teravel it seemed that until now 
 she had never realized the meaning of her own desire. 
 Yet, even under the hail of Madame's mockery, she 
 realized her best excuse : that, after all, her intention 
 had been but to keep her husband free from the bitterness 
 of the modern world, that is so much more bitter than 
 the old. For the pain of a travailing globe is caught 
 together now in one vast web of knowledge which, gather- 
 ing its threads from all the points of the compass, seems to 
 extinguish half the joy of sentient existence. In old days 
 people suffered in corners, and but the faintest whisper 
 ever sounded of their troubles ; to-day every agency is 
 alive to paint upon the walls the world's misery. Philip 
 Rosewarne had the busiest fancy, the tenderest heart, 
 where suffering was involved. His wife had seen him 
 restless, agonized, over all sorts of things, from the crimes 
 of the Russian autocracy to the squalid pain of the 
 slaughter house, till everything clear and beautiful seemed 
 vanishing, while he gazed at evils of which, left to herself, 
 she would never even have acknowledged the existence. 
 
 To her, then, his blindness had come like the merciful 
 veil of dusk which falls at the end of a burning day. 
 And, if ever an uneasy wonder at his silence came to 
 harass her, she pushed it away in the thought of how 
 beautiful it was in her power to make the grey quiet of 
 his days. 
 
 Outside the drawing-room door she paused to listen 
 to her daughter's voice, as she read aloud the story of 
 Captain McWhirr's fight with the typhoon. When the 
 girl's voice stopped, Philip Rosewarne spoke : 
 
 " Roughness and dullness I " he said. " Could there 
 be any worse things . . . except cruelty ? But 'tis all 
 subtilized till everything that isn't beautiful is gone, and 
 yet nothing essential is lost. Truly, the divine miracle 
 of the mind." 
 
 In the calmness and happiness of his tones, Mrs. Rose- 
 warne found her own justification. 
 
 And while she listened to the next item in the evening's 
 entertainment, the " Out of the Dooryard endlessly 
 
1 3 o THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Blooming" of Walt Whitman, which he was never tired 
 of hearing, she remembered the rough leather with fine 
 tooling she had ordered for that book. He could trace 
 the pattern of it with his fingers, for even in the things 
 his hand touched she had sought joy and satisfaction for 
 him. In this thought she felt as though the cruel gripping 
 hand that clutched her heart was loosening its hold. 
 
 Did he understand her motive ? It was this question 
 alone that haunted her, for if so, which view of her feeling 
 would he take, her own or Madame Felicia's ? And then 
 she found herself relying ultimately on nothing but his 
 sense of justice, for this to her had ever been the finest 
 fruit of Philip Rosewarne's nature. If only one gave him 
 time, he always understood. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE KINDLING OF COALS 
 
 SUPPORTING herself by the rail of the gallery, 
 Madame Felicia looked down into the hall. 
 
 " The impudence of him," she said to herself, and 
 expected to hear the measure of a jig or breakdown. 
 
 For at the open piano, with a cigarette drooping from 
 his lips, sat Dr. Rudd. He was running his hands lightly 
 over the keys, like a tuner who would test the tone of the 
 instrument before him. After a pause Madame signed to 
 her maid to wait and herself sank on a cushioned bench 
 against the back of the gallery where she could listen 
 unseen. All her life Mrs. Peters had lived with good 
 music and recognized a trained touch when she heard it. 
 For, most marvellous fact, he was playing Bach by now, 
 and playing, too, with a restraint infinitely refreshing to 
 a woman whose orderly taste was revolted by the abandon 
 of Slav and Pole. 
 
 He reached the final chord and got up to fling away 
 his cigarette end. Obviously he was like a schoolboy 
 in the first free hours of a holiday, for in every gesture 
 there was the crisp decisive action of a man at home 
 with himself. Returning to the keyboard, he began, as 
 Madame suspected, to improvise, playing at any rate a 
 folk song with a repeated refrain like the childish tag 
 children love to repeat in a familiar tale. When she got 
 up and he heard the rustle of her dress, he turned and, 
 without rising, changed his music to a clashing torrent 
 of bizarre sounds. In his shrunken jersey he peered at 
 
 131 9* 
 
132 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 her through the maze of cigarette smoke like a boy, and 
 a shy boy at that. 
 
 When at last he got up and stood before her, he looked 
 almost shamefaced. 
 
 " You play . . . well," she said shortly. 
 
 Plainly delighted, he smiled down on her, his eyes alight 
 and his movements those of a man who feels his own power. 
 
 " 'Twas a toss up once," he answered, " whether it 
 would be science or music for me. Professionally, I mean. 
 And once I taught music to little boys." 
 
 He grimaced, and stretched himself out in a low chair. 
 
 " Don't you miss all that here ? " she asked, with a 
 nod at the grand piano behind them. 
 
 " Well, yes," he said, " I miss it, of course. I miss 
 a good talk almost more, sometimes. But all that . . . 
 is extra. One can do without it. But here one gets the 
 taste of life, of its very essence, I mean. Over there," 
 he nodded vaguely ..." they make these fringes — 
 music, talk, and all the rest of it — the essence. Which 
 they aren't." 
 
 Madame was silent, for all this was, in truth, but double 
 Dutch to her. Besides, she was rejoicing in the thing 
 that had always pleased her beyond all others, the sight 
 of power in action. 
 
 " Health, too," he said, " that was in it, too. I had 
 a break-down and was driven back where we all come 
 from . . . the life of the common man. Best life there 
 is, too. My father, you see, was a manufacturer, made 
 a fortune, and cut me off because I wouldn't conform. 
 He didn't conform, either, when he was young, for he 
 went into a Manchester warehouse, and his father, a 
 surly old country squire, cut him off. But he forgot 
 that. We've deuced cranky tempers, all of us Rudds, 
 and that's a fact. But about you now ? I've come to 
 know if you've thought better of . . . what shall we call 
 it ? . . . your ultimatum." 
 
 " I give you my teeth," said Madame placidly. " But 
 do you know why ? " 
 
 " Haven't the slightest idea," he laughed. " I doubt 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 133 
 
 whether you have. Women always shift like the wind, 
 and, like the wind, do it without rhyme or reason." 
 
 " Not at all," said Madame, " it's because you play so 
 well." 
 
 Dr. Rudd stared in surprise. 
 
 " You understand the piano," said she, " you probably 
 understand the body. If you doctor as well as you play, 
 you can be trusted. Therefore I trust you." 
 
 The doctor stood up, half electrified, looked down on 
 her, and hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak and 
 closed it with a snap. When he did speak at last, it 
 was as though he had lost all his boyishness and was a 
 responsible man. His freakishness usually evaporated 
 when other people fluttered. 
 
 " You know," he said, " there are two opinions about 
 this affair. Some of the best authorities say that what 
 I propose to have done is very risky . . . especially at 
 your age. There's the shock in the first place, as well 
 as the quantity of the poison you'll inevitably swallow 
 . . . even though we cut off the sources of supply." 
 
 " I trust you," said Madame grandly. " Just arrange 
 with the dentist, get nurses and so forth." 
 
 Yet in her wise soul Madame knew that, through all 
 the dash and confidence of his playing, it was his virile 
 youth that conquered her. The animal processes of 
 birth had always been repellent to her : she had never 
 desired a child in the physical sense, but this was not 
 the first time her heart had gone out to young manhood, 
 as her mind, in its scheming, reached out to the delicacy 
 of girlish charm. That was the distinction with Madame : 
 girls charmed her mind and men her heart, the girls and 
 men that might have been her children. Dorothy Rose- 
 warne she would fain endow with power ; to this man 
 with power she longed to give joy. For to Madame old 
 age meant essentially the opportunity of gift-bringing. 
 
 Dr. Dan leapt to her trust in him ; they understood 
 each other naturally, for all the gulf between them of 
 age and position. Flinging his legs out in front of him 
 he talked freely now, not with bravado, as to Jemmy 
 
134 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Carlyon, but merely to meet the quick leap of her ready 
 comprehension. Power was his subject naturally, since 
 she had tuned him by her admiration ; the power of a 
 man who knows no scruples, but who will live out his 
 scheme, let others lay down what laws they may. 
 
 She instanced crime ; would that stop his scheme ? 
 " Crime ? " he snorted. " Crime ; I don't recognize 
 it. What are crimes but the deeds the common man is 
 afraid to do, and so he sets up a scarecrow to warn cowards 
 off ? Morality ? 'Tis nothing more than the creation 
 of the twopenny half-penny average. The only laws 
 the wise man cares for are those suggested by his own 
 sense of good." 
 
 " Then to good it comes back ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; the wise man's own good, his own power, 
 his own mastery. Take, if you like, murder ; that's 
 usually nothing more than the removal of the unfit. 
 Nations commit murder wholesale, and think themselves 
 heroes for doing so ; and they're right enough. Should 
 a master man shrink from doing the same, if it seems good 
 to him, he merely proves himself a coward. For the 
 removal of the unfit is the sine qua non of all progress. 
 And when the ruck of us have come to man's stature, we 
 shall tackle it together, of course. But till that happy 
 moment comes, it must be done experimentally, by 
 individuals." 
 
 Madame laughed, in full enjoyment of this game of 
 ninepins. 
 
 " From pitch-and-toss to manslaughter," she murmured, 
 " and what about money, then ? For that's the next 
 great test, I suppose." 
 
 " Money ? Money means simply freedom. Get all 
 you can then and without working for it, since working 
 for it means doing what somebody else wants you to do." 
 
 " Yet I suppose I shall pay you a fee . . . and I want 
 you to cure me." 
 
 " Oh, that ! Well, as to that, I want now to make 
 your limbs free." 
 
 " Ah, but you didn't at first." 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 135 
 
 " No, I wanted to make you all dance round." 
 
 " And that you certainly did," said she. 
 
 Then he opened his mouth to tell her how he had been 
 out-manceuvred, but, being afraid of her mockery, desisted. 
 For, like many people, Dr. Rudd could be grandiloquent 
 on universals, but was often very humble about particulars. 
 
 " You've left to the last . . . woman," said Madame. 
 
 " Queer classification," said he, his mouth relaxing in 
 a smile, " Crime, money and woman. The three on all 
 fours, according to you. Well, have it so, if you like. I 
 haven't had much trouble with that, anyway. Women 
 are easy got . . . and thank God, women are easy lost. 
 And I've got over the first rage of it. Student life ? Yes, 
 of course. I'm through there and it's taken the edge off 
 the novelty. But the one thing to mind from start to 
 finish is not to let 'em get . . . sticky. Yes, sticky's the 
 word. Women are sticky. Ugh ! They get on your 
 hands and run up your sleeves when you so much as 
 look at 'em, like honey. That's fatal. I've avoided 
 that. Not but what it's one side of life, and splendid 
 enough, when they know their business." 
 
 Madame' s colour rose half in anger. Then she reproved 
 herself : " Stark " was the word she would have used in 
 describing his attack in playing and " stark " was the 
 word now on her lips. After all, it is for its sharpness 
 that we value the lemon. 
 
 '! Then," she observed quietly, M you've no idea of 
 permanence in such relations ? " 
 
 " Jove ! No," he laughed. " Yes, perhaps I have. 
 I can imagine a woman you'd want to learn the meaning 
 of . . . no, no subtlety ... I have other uses for my 
 brain than to waste it on women . . . but to master 
 her, to down her, to use her as your instrument ! " 
 
 " A very old motif that," said Madame dryly, " but 
 men's originality died early in regard to women. And so 
 that's your notion of the married state, is it ? It doesn't 
 sound . . . restful." 
 
 " Rest ? " asked he, " what have I got to do with 
 rest ? " 
 
136 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " What, indeed ? " smiled Mrs. Peters. 
 
 The prospect held out by his words possessed no terror 
 for her, since, like all her sex, she knew that many men 
 who begin by playing tunes in holy matrimony end by 
 being played upon. 
 
 " On the whole," she remarked judicially, " I think 
 your scheme of . . . immorality is weakest on the 
 woman's side. But I gather you have no desire to tilt 
 at windmills in the matter of ceremonies, say ? " 
 
 " Ceremonies ? " he asked with a stare. " Oh, you mean 
 the Marriage Service. It's all one to me, for I shouldn't 
 concern myself about it, one way or the other. I mean, 
 it wouldn't be binding. If you couldn't get a woman 
 any other way but by having gibberish said over her, 
 you'd have to put up with gibberish, I suppose." 
 
 As he had said, he was not at all original. He even 
 began to bore her by this unrestrained show of egotism. 
 Yet she was minded to test him by a specific instance. 
 
 " Suppose," she said, " you had a man and wife, and 
 all their married life the wife had been trying to pin her 
 man down to the sort of existence that suited her, that is, 
 to narrow him, to shut him in to her conception of things. 
 Then, by disablement, she gets her chance. Yet he can 
 be cured . . . and all her plans will be knocked on the 
 head, if he is. Is she justified, according to you, in 
 cheating him out of the cure ? " 
 
 " What's her test ? " he asked, " her husband's good or 
 her own satisfaction ? I mean, which is it that she 
 wants ? " 
 
 " The difficulty here, perhaps, would be to say what is 
 the husband's good," said Madame ; " it is conceivable, 
 at least, that he might even be happier if he followed his 
 wife's line." 
 
 " That's not the point at all," answered the doctor, 
 tossing a lock of hair back from his eyes ; "if she's out for 
 her own will . . . that is, if she's strong . . . she'll stick 
 to keeping him chained up, even if she breaks his heart 
 by doing so." 
 
 That, thought Madame, is the very quick of things, 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 137 
 
 though, of course, she never actually believed it to be more 
 than the vapouring of youth. For a half-second, however, 
 she shrank from the line of policy laid down for herself. 
 Yet inevitably the mere fact that Dorothy's mother pro- 
 posed one line of action drove her to the opposing one ; for 
 if Mrs. Rosewarne were bent on running one suitor for her 
 daughter, Madame must needs support his rival. To such 
 crudities may our most high-sounding motives be reduced. 
 
 The night before Mrs. Peters went into dry dock, as she 
 put it, for repairs, there was a friendly dinner at Denzell, 
 at which Mr. Rosewarne and his daughter were to meet 
 the doctor. 
 
 It was also the day of the twenty-first birthday, and the 
 pearls, once denied, were upon the girl's neck. Madame, 
 in fact, had occupied herself for an hour before the meal 
 not only in every detail of the gauzy white toilet, but in 
 certain feminine touches, almost spiritual in effect, by 
 which she proposed to create in the child a sense of her 
 rarity and charm. Enshrined in love, with two, if not 
 three, sage elders taking her as the centre of their thoughts, 
 it was not difficult for Dorothy to see herself consciously 
 among the things most desired on earth, where youth and 
 strength would be offered but as incense to delicacy and 
 lovely finish. 
 
 In short, Miss Rosewarne descended that night to the 
 dinner in a fever of vanity, elated to believe that young, 
 as well as old, would wait on her every whim. The toast- 
 drinking to her long life and happiness, the basket of lilies 
 before her place at table, and especially Madame's 
 smile, confirmed her, as they were meant to do, in this 
 opinion. 
 
 Nor was Dr. Rudd simple enough to miss the tone of the 
 affair ; he, too, like Madame, sat back and smiled to 
 himself, and if he called her by a harsh name, it was with 
 no sense of condemnation. For, of course, in his view, it 
 is the most legitimate exercise of a woman's nature to live 
 either personally or vicariously in her power over men. 
 The male, too, enjoys in this exercise the answering satis- 
 faction of his own vanity. 
 
138 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 On Mr. Rosewarne's side alone was there the simplicity 
 of affection without a thought of self and its gratification. 
 He sat through it all, unconscious of any by-play, and yet, 
 when the servants were gone and the talk became freer, 
 he unintentionally fell into the mood of the hour by talking 
 of Gilbert Carlyon. 
 
 When Madame drew her breath sharply at the mention 
 of this topic, Dr. Rudd glanced quizzically across the table 
 at her. But, after all, Madame found there was no need 
 whatever to stop the speaker, who harped on precisely the 
 right note for the occasion, finding in young Carlyon an 
 instance of the difficulty which a race that has never run to 
 thought finds in producing a thinker. He described humor- 
 ously, with no intention of cruelty, however, Gilbert's 
 laborious memory work ; how he had himself found him 
 riding about the farm with a system of mnemonics pinned 
 to his saddle. When Madame chimed in with Mrs. Parsons 
 and the pounds and pounds of candles, Dorothy sat half- 
 indignant and half-horrified at this spectre of the country 
 yokel. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne smiled, handling the grapes on his plate. 
 
 " Gilbert is a good instance of the half -educated," he 
 said. " He reads curiously, when he reads from choice, 
 that is. Higher thought, as they call it, seems to attract 
 him. I remember his coming to me with some gibberish 
 about thought atmospheres. And he's a young man, too, 
 who attends the chapels of strange sects and wants to 
 turn his back, so they tell me, on the good, solid comfort 
 of his home. Has it ever occurred to you that all this 
 restlessness is another form of the same desire to make the 
 next world redress the failure of this that creates religion ? 
 Perhaps it will evolve another religion, in fact. Who 
 knows ? " 
 
 Madame smiled tolerantly. One wonders how much 
 Father Tyacke was ever privileged to hear in confession of 
 her cynical smiles. But perhaps when penitents plunge 
 too deep into motives confessors fall asleep. 
 
 " That type of man," said Madame, " often becomes in 
 old age the horrible Methodist we all know, who uses 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 139 
 
 sanctimoniousness as a cloak to cover a sensuality quite 
 indescribable." 
 
 " Oh, come now, that's too bad," exclaimed Mr. Rose- 
 warne. " There's not a tinge of the satyr about my friend 
 Gilbert . . . not a grain, though I acknowledge he's got 
 something of the Pharisee in him." 
 
 Madame, with her eyes fixed on Dorothy, knew that 
 some suggestion in all this had flown with a winged shaft 
 to the girl's heart. With a curl of her lips, Madame smiled 
 then to think what coarseness of country wooing might 
 have horrified the child's finicking delicacy. In her opinion, 
 she remarked, the frank exotic beauty-loving artist was 
 the only one who should be entrusted with the passions. 
 Yet the All-wise Creator judged differently. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne laughed, but hastily changed the subject. 
 He could not, in fact, conceive what Mrs. Peters meant 
 by allowing this free talk at her table, and was utterly un- 
 conscious of having started it himself. Nor did he realize 
 in his simplicity that the hour had come in which Dorothy 
 must be initiated into life. 
 
 Neither did it even dawn on him when the doctor and 
 the girl were sent into the garden to get some fresh air. 
 Dr. Rudd, too, would like to look at the statuary in the 
 grounds. 
 
 " Your father and I, child, must have a moment or two 
 in which to talk business before the ordeal," said Madame 
 lightly. 
 
 By the ordeal was meant the morrow's tooth-drawing. 
 To Madame, who hated physical impurity, and especially 
 anything moist in the way of nastiness, the idea of the foul 
 matter in her veins was worse than pain. She laughed 
 over the picture of herself going into the laundry to emerge 
 fresh and pure, but none the less this figure described her 
 sentiments accurately enough. At first she thirsted for a 
 quick cleansing, and would not hear of repeated operations. 
 Yet the doctor, who found qualms of doubt in himself, now 
 that he had gained his point, had insisted on two adminis- 
 trations of the anaesthetic. 
 
 When the young people were gone, Madame returned to 
 
i 4 o THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 her customary corner of the Chesterfield and shot her 
 bolt. 
 
 " Philip," she asked, " what do you mean by delaying 
 your operation so long ? I saw Trevan the other day, and 
 he told me plainly he thought the delay might be 
 dangerous." 
 
 When Mr. Rosewarne was silent, Madame knew he was 
 waiting, lawyer-like, for something more of a lead. She 
 had observed this trick in him before when he was on his 
 guard. 
 
 " Either you're behaving with gross carelessness," said 
 she, " or else you're absurdly quixotic." 
 
 " To which assumption do you incline yourself ? " he 
 asked good-naturedly, as though he were resolved to have 
 no dispute. 
 
 " The latter, I think, knowing what I do know of you, 
 and believing that you are misunderstanding the situation." 
 
 " Are you sure that you don't, also ? " he smiled. " Put 
 it down to my well-known habit of procrastination, to my 
 disinclination to face anything drastic and unpleasant." 
 
 " I can't. You always delay . . . and then you rush. 
 All your work is done in rushes." 
 
 " Well, then, why not wait for the rush ? " 
 
 " It'll never come unless you're made to understand 
 things. Philip, I know something of how Marian feels. 
 Indeed, I charged her with it and she never denied it." 
 
 She stopped him when he would have interrupted her. 
 
 " No, no, I wasn't cruel," she exclaimed, noting the 
 angry flush on his face, " at least, I hope not. But, really, 
 Philip, someone must warn you two infatuated people 
 before it is too late. All her life Marian . . ." 
 
 " Please leave her out of this discussion," he said sternly, 
 " and understand that whatever cowardice or slackness 
 there has been, Marian is not responsible. It is entirely 
 my own doing." 
 
 " With Marian's well-known desire to keep you under 
 her wing at the back of your cowardice," snapped Madame, 
 angry in turn. " But this is neither your affair, nor 
 Marian's. Don't you realize that you're in a fair way to 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 141 
 
 spoil Dorothy's life ? If you continue helpless, dependent 
 on her, shell never marry." 
 
 " My little Dorothy," he smiled, " why, she's only 
 twenty-one to-day." 
 
 " And husband-ripe, too," exclaimed Madame, " as the 
 country people say. Why, she's a regular breaker of 
 hearts, let me tell you ; there was young Edyvean. His 
 friends sent him to Canada, but if it had not been for 
 Dorothy, he'd have been here now. And then there's this 
 Carlyon you laughed at to-night ..." 
 
 " Surely not ? " 
 
 " Certainly, and Marian knows it and wishes it. Of 
 course, it's absurd. But, which comes first to you, Philip, 
 Marian's whim about you, or Dorothy's right to the 
 woman's joy ? Will you spoil her life, make it all barren, 
 because you can't bestir yourself to undergo a little domestic 
 friction ? I really think you're a monster of selfishness, 
 Philip, to count on the child's self-abnegation like this." 
 
 Roguishly, at first, he had been prepared to prove the 
 advantages of a failure in one of the senses, all ugly sights 
 being closed to him for ever. But now he put out a hand 
 in protestation. 
 
 " Light ! " he exclaimed. " Light ! I've had rather 
 more than I can bear to-night. You'll do me the justice 
 to believe that I realized nothing of all this. I feel like a 
 man who has awakened in a new world." 
 
 " But it isn't too late," said practical Madame, following 
 up her advantage ; " don't go to Trevan. Go to this young 
 fellow. He's going to make me well. Let us both get 
 well together." 
 
 " I must think," he said sadly. " But are you sure of 
 what you say — about the child ? " 
 
 " Absolutely. Think of what she was before your sight 
 grew dim. She's lovely now. She's all agog for life. My 
 dear Philip, she adores you, and while she has to be eyes 
 for you, she'll never follow out her natural destiny. Never. 
 You know her well enough to judge if this is true. And, 
 Philip, it is a monstrous thing, believe me, to sacrifice 
 the young to the old." 
 
142 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Marian never uttered a word on the matter. How 
 can you think so ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " I don't think so," said Madame bitterly. " I know 
 Marian better than to suspect her of ever putting a hideous 
 idea into words. But that hasn't prevented her from 
 living it. Marian has always been one of the millions of 
 people who think it doesn't matter in the least what is 
 the tendency of your acts, as long as you don't utter a 
 vulgarity." 
 
 Meanwhile, the pleasant partie carree had broken into 
 discordant elements outside the house as well as within. 
 For Dr. Rudd seemed in a thoroughly evil temper as he 
 strode down the front steps, with head bent and shoulders 
 humped. 
 
 " Well," asked he, at the bottom of the steps, " where 
 do you want to go ? Madame said we were to look at the 
 statues, I believe." 
 
 From his tone he might have been a nursemaid in charge 
 of a troublesome child. Without waiting for her reply, he 
 squared his shoulders defiantly and led the way up the steep 
 path to the wooded slopes at the back of the house. 
 Dorothy followed meekly, yet with a smile twitching at 
 the corners of her lips. 
 
 " Statues, by moonlight," sneered he. 
 
 The moon was shining through clouds so light and 
 fleecy that the outlines of buildings and trees were clearly 
 to be seen. 
 
 " Do you really like," he exclaimed, turning on 
 her savagely, " being dangled in front of a man like 
 this ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," she stammered, and 
 could have beaten herself for the fatuous silliness of such 
 a reply. 
 
 " Yes, you do. Nobody could fail to. For here we are, 
 sent out so that I can make love to you according to all 
 the rules of polite comedy. And so I ask you : do you like 
 it ? After all, I'm only showing polite interest in a fellow- 
 creature, you know, and it's no earthly use your refusing 
 to play up to me." 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 143 
 
 When she was still silent under this bombardment, he 
 railed again. 
 
 " I say," he exclaimed, " don't sulk. But if you want 
 to quarrel, just say so, will you ? And I'm your man. 
 Which is it to be, flirt or spar ? Your sparling's quite 
 good, I may tell you, and I like you when you're at it much 
 better than in this niminy-piminy mood. Which is it 
 to be ? " 
 
 " Which you like," said Dorothy demurely. They were 
 walking side by side now down a moonlit glade. 
 
 " What's the good of that ? " he grumbled, and began 
 to whistle, hands in pockets. In reality he was twitching 
 with nervousness. 
 
 In the moonlight of a side-path a shadowy statue was 
 to be seen under the shelter of a willow that had shed drip- 
 stains over the figure. 
 
 " Hullo ! " he exclaimed, " here is one of the ornamental 
 figures, I suppose. A faun, of course," he said, turning 
 down to inspect it. " What else is there ? " 
 
 When she recited the list of the marbles brought back 
 to Denzell by the late Colonel Peters, the doctor sniffed 
 contemptuously. 
 
 " A head of Jove, a Venus, a disc-thrower, of course ; 
 all this Italian stuff ! As bad as the books of beauty, 
 isn't it ? All pretty curves, with every truthful ugly 
 line tabooed. Lies, lies, lies." 
 
 They walked on, but over the green-stained ancient 
 figures there was suddenly thrown the shadow of the 
 pinchbeck, the tawdry. Yet somehow his words recalled 
 to Dorothy the anxiety of the hour. 
 
 " Did you know," she asked, " that Madame Felicia 
 talked dreadfully of hideous shapes, of twisted monsters, 
 at first, when she became ill ? " 
 
 " To you, did she ? " he flashed, showing a new side of 
 himself, for he actually seemed, this incomprehensible 
 person, to resent any introduction of the horrible into 
 her mind. But she was never quite sure of him, and in 
 this fact lay, of course, his attraction for her. 
 
 " Yes, I know," he went on, " Madame's fancy dwells 
 
144 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 on evil shapes, as she calls them. Not that there are any 
 evil shapes . . . they're all a fashion, set by this diabolical 
 cult of the artificially graceful." 
 
 " Will she be all right to-morrow ? " asked Dorothy. 
 
 " Well, of course I hope so ; but which would you 
 have for her, a lingering existence of pain and misery or 
 the risk of death by shock ? " 
 
 " Then there is a risk ? " 
 
 " Of course there is ; one chance in perhaps a hundred. 
 For, after all, I'm relying on the forces of life at eighty, 
 and one never knows when one may be drawing an over- 
 draft in such cases." 
 
 " And you don't mind ? " 
 
 " Well, what's the good of life but the thrill of its un- 
 certainty, its gamble ? Besides, I'm gambling with some 
 one else's life, after all. This touch-and-go is the fascina- 
 tion of the doctor's life, this venturing all on the throw. 
 But I'm doing nothing more than follow the advice of an 
 old Professor, the wisest, though not the most skilful, I 
 ever met. He was wise, for he never attempted to dis- 
 sociate body and . . . soul, or whatever you like to call 
 it. And this was his rule — that you may risk a call on 
 the forces of life when the will to live is great . . . then, 
 and only then. Will, will, will, desire, is the point. And 
 nobody loves life better than Madame Felicia." 
 
 " You know," asked Dorothy, " don't you, that, though 
 the nurses are in the house, she hasn't seen them yet, and 
 won't, till they come in to get her ready to-morrow 
 morning ? And after that she won't see me, or anyone 
 but the butchers." 
 
 " Including me," he laughed. 
 
 " How different you are when you talk of sick people, 
 or when you play ..." she said. 
 
 " Different from when ? " he asked, with a twinkle. 
 
 " From when you're with me. For you laugh at me all 
 the time." 
 
 " Well, why not ? And which of us do you really 
 prefer ? " asked he, the imp in him once more awake, 
 " that long-faced, solemn Gilbert, or me ? " 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 145 
 
 " It is hardly a question of liking best," said she, 
 looking straight ahead. 
 
 " Oh, I thought it was," he jeered, " and Madame 
 thinks so anyhow. But all the same, you know, that 
 was pure bunkum, all that talk of our wise and reverend 
 elders, about poor Carlyon. A regular caricature of 
 him. He isn't precisely a slow-brained yokel, and he 
 certainly isn't a greasy sensualist, and never will be. 
 Your father's portrait of him was dictated, I know, by 
 nothing but liking, and Madame's by pure ill-nature, 
 but they were both of them utterly wrong, all the 
 same." 
 
 " Do you like him, then ? " 
 
 '■ No, I don't . . . particularly. And he hates me. 
 He threw a stone at me the other night, kicked it viciously 
 on my toe. I limped for days after." 
 
 " Not really ? " said Dorothy, laughing. 
 
 The doctor, too, laughed. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " we get on each other's nerves, and 
 that's a fact. He sees me as a cross between a sick monkey 
 and a prating poll-parrot, and I . . . well, he's the 
 reserved Englishman who thinks a rattle-pate like me the 
 most abandoned of God's creatures, if God can be said 
 to have anything to do with the matter. To him I'm a 
 positive indecency. And he can't show what he feels 
 himself without a rending and a tearing of his vitals. 
 But I . . . well, I raise my feelings like mushrooms in 
 damp heat. But he's a queer, kind-hearted fellow, and 
 as simple as a child. He's been selling milk at far under 
 cost price to many of the poor women in Petrockstow, 
 and then remarked to me, quite simply, that very few 
 people, and not even all women, know that a child's 
 health depends on how the mother is fed before the child's 
 birth. And then, of course, he blushed a bit, but not 
 much. It's his own feelings he never can get at — to 
 express them." 
 
 It seemed to Dorothy that the doctor must almost have 
 known something of that strange night with the will-o'- 
 the-wisp at Teravel, a night that remained with her as an 
 
 10 
 
146 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 experience wherein she touched the great deeps that lie 
 behind the visible world. 
 
 " Dr. Rudd," she asked, " are you ever lonely . . . 
 deep down, I mean ? " 
 
 It was strange, but it would have seemed to her mere 
 sacrilege to repeat Gilbert's own phrase : " the loneliness 
 of the heart." But she wanted to get as near to his 
 meaning as she could, without using his precise words. 
 
 " Lonely ? " he echoed roughly. " Well, if I am, I know 
 it means I want a drink." 
 
 She shrank together, all her forces recoiling as though 
 he had struck her. He knew he had annoyed her, but at 
 her question the English reticence, which he would have 
 denied in himself, came uppermost. Where Gilbert felt 
 that only a woman might venture without producing an 
 effect of intrusion, the doctor resented all entry of any- 
 one, but especially of a woman. On the whole, perhaps, 
 it was Dr. Rudd, after all, who was the more reticent of the 
 two, self-mockery being the most valuable skin he possessed. 
 
 Yet he knew he had been brutal and, while wanting to 
 atone, knew no other way but by another brutality. 
 
 " Are you worrying about Madame ? " he asked, 
 " because if I kill her, it was you who got me here." 
 
 " So that 'twill be I who killed her ... if she dies," 
 she said, with a sigh from an overburdened heart. 
 
 " Oh, hang it," he cried, " there you go again, always 
 pushing yourself up against the pricks." 
 
 " But that's what you meant, didn't you ? And I 
 thought you always liked things said straight out." 
 
 " Well, perhaps I do, when I say them ; not when you 
 do ... a girl like you, Dorothy." 
 
 Through a clearing in the trees they could see the 
 house below. He stood still as though Madame's will 
 were controlling him, even from that distance. 
 
 " Dorothy," he said, " you know what Madame's been 
 saying to us both, though not in words. Dorothy, Dorothy, 
 don't you know ? " 
 
 She was bareheaded, the crown of dark hair hiding her 
 face. Slipping a hand under her chin, he held her face 
 
THE KINDLING OF COALS 147 
 
 up to the moonlight. She could feel his fingers pressing 
 the pearls higher up against her throat. She held her 
 breath, sensing the strong beating of his heart. Or was 
 it of her own ? 
 
 But the wonder of the moment came from the thought 
 that she, a girl so simple, could hold in her hand a power 
 like this. Madame had an apt pupil, indeed. 
 
 While her breast rose and fell, he slipped an arm round 
 her waist, crushing her pliant body against his own strong 
 limbs. She noticed with a sort of awe the nicotine stains 
 on thumb and forefinger ; in that imperfection there was 
 just the last wistful touch of familiarity. She was glad 
 he was ugly, glad at the curious pale face with the slim 
 neck and great head. Whatever may be the sentiment 
 of the Olympians, Adonis has a poor chance with a woman. 
 In the strong rise and fall of her breast under his hand, 
 there seemed to live all the power of the woman to breathe 
 life into a man's soul and body. 
 
 Apparently he felt no such inspiration, for, while she 
 clung to him in a tempest of sighs, suddenly, brutally, 
 his arms fell from her, so that she only just prevented 
 herself from falling. Then, half in dismay at his own 
 roughness, half in passionate anger with her, he seized 
 her by the arms. 
 
 " Playing, are you then, just like all the others ? And 
 you don't play it so badly, for a country girl. But I've 
 seen it better done. Master of one's soul with you about ! 
 Madame was right. I suppose you played the old game 
 with poor Carlyon. Confound it ! Get in with you and 
 out of my sight." 
 
 Yet when she obeyed him, he made a half movement 
 to pursue her and then halted, listening to the noise of 
 rustling skirts and flying footsteps. 
 
 " What '11 she do now, I wonder ? " he muttered. " Cry 
 her eyes out, I suppose." 
 
 At the picture of her lying with arms outstretched 
 among the pillows, her black hair all tossed about, he was 
 shaken. Yet he was not surprised at the passion in 
 himself, for that he knew like an old friend, but at his 
 
 10* 
 
148 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 own rebellion, at his own vague sense that somehow he 
 was treading on holy ground. With solemn mockery of 
 himself, he strode back to the house, a Byron, no less. 
 For passion is as common as dirt, but how fine to throw 
 it from one with a subtle sense of being unworthy ! 
 
 Yet, after all, Dorothy was by no means lost in sorrow. 
 She understood him better than he guessed. Now in her 
 room at Denzell she flitted round restlessly, putting quite 
 unneeded touches to the flower vases all about the white 
 walls. Between herself and the everyday world there 
 floated a mist of dream. She could not bring herself to 
 remember anything, not even Madame 's trial next day. 
 It was like being drunk with a wine more intoxicating than 
 any juice of the grape. Standing in the middle of the 
 room she saw herself dimly reflected in the mirror. 
 Holding her arms outstretched behind her, with head 
 thrown back she whispered softly. 
 
 Yet, even then, it was the fine curves of her throat, 
 the soft beauty of her skin and the thrilling memory of 
 his hand on these that mastered her. 
 
 With a sudden alarm she heard the notes of the piano, 
 coming up half-deadened by the distance. Opening her 
 door, she stood listening. What he was playing she 
 could not tell, but the intricate interweaving of a savage 
 chromatic passage sounded defiance, the very same ex- 
 pression of revolt that had made him fling her away. 
 
 When she closed the door to deaden this mockery, she 
 remembered the half-heard word she had refused to 
 acknowledge before. For the doctor had added to his 
 " Confound it " the most intolerable epithet. It was 
 " hell-cat ; " and " hell-cat " his defiant chromatics 
 were still saying. 
 
 She flung herself at last on her pillows, not in despair, 
 but in a fit of laughter. With the shrieking piano notes 
 humming in her brain, and her arms flung out above her 
 head, she lay murmuring : 
 
 " Oh, Dan, Dan," and ended the tag with the appro- 
 priate ending : " You funny old man," which was neither 
 kind nor dignified. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 A CLOSE SEAL 
 
 AT the top of Petrockstow Hill Gilbert Carlyon paused 
 to rest the horse he was driving. Like a true 
 Cornishman he had never moved from his seat in the 
 gig even at the stiffest pinch, being, also like a true 
 Cornishman, in no manner of hurry. It was the morning 
 after Madame Felicia's operation, and Dorothy Rosewarne, 
 who now sat by Carlyon's side, was being sent home, 
 ignominiously turned out. Madame's sense of fitness 
 would not permit her to keep anything young and charm- 
 ing in the neighbourhood of ether and chloroform, nor 
 would Dr. Rudd suffer himself to be distracted by bothera- 
 tions of sentiment. 
 
 " Get out into the air and away," said he ; " if Madame's 
 going to pull round, she's going to. But she'll do it none 
 the sonner for the black shadows under your eyes. Rotten 
 sentiment cuts no ice in this blamed world." 
 
 When she refused to go, Mr. Rosewarne intervened, 
 found Gilbert in the town and packed his daughter off for 
 a day in the open. Secretly he thought Rudd's pettishness 
 the most serious symptom of Madame's state. The 
 operation was over and done with — and in one act, too. 
 Now there only remained the effects of the shock to be 
 coped with. Still, the doctor seemed harassed and hardly 
 left the house for half an hour. In the thick of things 
 he put a fierce determination into his energies, and the 
 thing he did worst was to wait. 
 
 The road from Petrockstow to Lanvean is an old one, 
 
 149 
 
ISO THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 deep between its banks and overhung, in the dips, with 
 elms that during last night's rain had covered the surface 
 with drippings. One would have sworn it was far inland 
 and away from the tang of the sea, yet wherever the hedges 
 opened at cross-roads, the white-capped tossing surface 
 of the Atlantic lay stretched between bold headlands, 
 grass-covered to the summits. Rising out of the blue, like 
 a hog-backed cloud, lay the shadowy outline of a rocky 
 island. 
 
 To Dorothy Denzell had been horrible this last twenty- 
 four hours, and, now, in the goodwill of sea winds and 
 sunshine, Gilbert Carlyon, so much a part of it all, provided 
 a sensible comfort to her jarred nerves. But for Denzell 
 to be horrible was a nightmare. 
 
 Soon they turned in at a gate, along one side of which 
 ran the public driving-road. Here they met the sea wind 
 full in their faces. 
 
 " Oh, how good ! " sighed the girl, breathing in deep 
 breaths of the mingled scents of sea and earth. For 
 answer her companion smiled and tucked the rug round 
 her more comfortably. As she sat beside him, he could 
 figure her to himself just rubbing a cheek against his 
 shoulder, much as a small animal might have done. 
 
 They were ploughing the field through which the road 
 ran, and half the curving side of the valley was already 
 sheeny bright from the share, the last furrow outlined by 
 rows of gulls, that shrieked and dipped to left and right of 
 the man who was driving the horses. 
 
 When a second gate had clanged behind them they 
 began to descend to the open bay of Lanvean, whence the 
 full bourdon of the waves came up to them. Across the 
 road ribbons of shining ore-weed had been spilt, and as 
 their wheels sank in the sand the pungent, salty smell of 
 the sea-harvest filled their nostrils. Behind the horses and 
 men that were carting it away, the line of breakers curved 
 and fell with a foam of iridescent mist hovering above it. 
 
 " Many wrecks this winter ? " asked Dorothy. 
 
 " Yes, there have been wrecks, a good few," answered he, 
 " but Mrs. Parsons always swears they haven't been as 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 151 
 
 plentiful since these artificial manures came in. She says 
 we used to have them regularly every fortnight before 
 that." 
 
 They laughed together, and the last shadow lifted from 
 her face. 
 
 " You see that, don't you ? " he said, pointing with his 
 whip to the bare ribs of a vessel half -buried in the sand ; 
 " coaler, that was, came in last January. They beached 
 her of a Sunday morning, and you'd have said that coal 
 could be had for the asking after that. Nothing of the 
 sort. Not a bucketful to be had. Coastguard down here 
 before you could wink. But of course they had to sell off 
 the cargo. Everybody came down with carts, and the place 
 was like a fair. We filled the cellars at Lanvean, for my 
 father bought a good half. And when we'd got it home, 
 we could neither break it nor burn it. Machine-coal, it 
 was, that you had to smash with a steam-hammer, no 
 less." 
 
 His tone surprised her. 
 
 M But surely you don't like wrecks ? " she asked. 
 
 " Well, not like we did. Not to lose lives, of course. 
 But . . . wrecking's in the blood hereabouts, all the same. 
 I've seen many a cask on the dunes and cocked my eye the 
 other way, for fear a coastguard should use me for a 
 pointer." 
 
 " But surely you don't get casks in . . . that way ? " 
 
 " You mustn't ask," he laughed. '• But just you get 
 Parsons to talk to you. She's of wrecker kin, and no 
 mistake. I'll show you right at the coast-edge on the 
 middens Tom Parsons' hut. He was her husband's grand- 
 father, and many a false light's been put out from there, I 
 reckon." 
 
 At the turning to Lanvean House they looked down a 
 glade of tamarisk hedges, green and gold, and dripping 
 still from the night's rain, a fairy pathway past the copse 
 called Venton Rays. As they jogged alongside the broken 
 avenue of ash trees that skirts the road to the house, she 
 found herself enwrapped with the peaceful cycle of the 
 country man's changing year, beautiful as it is from old 
 
iS2 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 association, and living with the kinship of the remembered 
 past. Lanvean was in Gilbert's blood. 
 
 Closing her eyes, she listened dreamily to his legends, 
 as he talked boyishly of the white rabbit, a ghost figure of 
 Venton Rays, the white violets of Polmark, the orchard of 
 daffodils and even the strangeness of the cottage at High 
 Lanes, which was a regular target for lightning. She 
 measured with painful intensity now the depth of his love 
 for herself. 
 
 " Gilbert," she exclaimed, " how could you ever dream 
 of leaving it all ? " 
 
 When, for answer, he only looked down and smiled, she 
 was ashamed. 
 
 In the house their mood changed ; restraint and awk- 
 wardness took the place of ease. Here there was the smell 
 of close rooms, the shadow of illness and old age, and an 
 air materially produced by rat-haunted wainscots and 
 heavy carpets, never moved in Mrs. Parsons' old age. 
 The table was piled with good things to eat, with chicken, 
 ham, tarts and cream, but Gilbert was not the same man, 
 and Mrs. Parsons made the girl nervous. The restraint 
 of it all Gilbert felt as a tacit reproach to his own breeding. 
 He was ashamed when the old man's tray, carried up to 
 him by the heavy, squinting farm wench, came down and 
 was solemnly set on the table, a mass of clean-picked bones 
 on the plate. 
 
 " You're eating nothing," said he. 
 
 " 'Tis not what missie's used to," chimed in the old 
 woman, maliciously conscious of the two silly gabies. 
 
 " It's all delicious," said Dorothy, " but I'm not very 
 hungry." 
 
 " Tell Miss Rosewarne the story of your journey to 
 France," said Gilbert at last. 
 
 The old woman dropped her knitting on her lap. She 
 would not eat with them, but sat away from the table, 
 waiting to get up and serve them at the times of plate- 
 changing. 
 
 " My journey to France ! " she cried. " Is that what 
 you want, then ? Ah, that was in the bad old times, I 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 153 
 
 s'pose you'd call 'em, when Lanvean was just what Lanvean 
 hasn't been now for many a long year." 
 
 " Mrs. Parsons," said Dorothy, bending forward with the 
 freer gesture that marked her wish to break the glacial 
 atmosphere of this meal, " do you care for Lanvean as 
 Mr. Gilbert does ? " 
 
 " Do I care for Lanvean," repeated the old woman, " as 
 Mr. Gilbert does ? How can I say, unless I know how he 
 cares for it ? " 
 
 Gilbert scraped his chair along the floor. 
 
 " And judging," she went on, '■ by what I hear tell of 
 him, he doesn't care that . . ." she snapped her fingers . . . 
 <v for Lanvean. For, maybe you don't know it, but they 
 say he wants to leave it." 
 
 " No," said he harshly, " but tell Miss Rosewarne, 
 Parsons, about your visit to France." 
 
 " Missie'd rather I answered her question," said the old 
 woman slyly, " and I always like to go straight to the 
 bottom of things. Yes, I've neither kith nor kin o' me own 
 left, and there's nobody'll care whether I'm above or below 
 ground, but Lanvean's in my blood, I reckon. Come to 
 think of it, it must be, for I've eaten of her and drunk of 
 her. I've seen her with the sand driving across her fields, 
 and the mists of winter thick off the sea, day after day, 
 week after week, a'most. I've heard the fog-horn going 
 for a fortnight on end, and I've seen her fields in stubble, 
 with the corn-pooks against the smoky sky of autumn. 
 Ay, Lanvean's in me and in my blood back along for three 
 generations. As it should be in him," she nodded towards 
 Gilbert, who sat alert and taut, with eyes flashing, yet very 
 still — " but he's forgotten it all. He's taken to books. 
 Books for a Carlyon ! What did books ever do for any o' 
 that breed, or, come to that, for any man that is a man, 
 with arms to hold his woman, and a headpiece to outwit his 
 enemies ? Sitting on the end of your tail, turning your 
 brain into a hotch-potch of notions, was never the work for 
 a man. No more was there ever a Carlyon that stuck with 
 his nose in papers, with his blood getting thin, not till 
 to-day ! " 
 
154 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 To Dorothy, who sat looking from one to the other, it 
 was a strange, an almost incomprehensible scene. For 
 that this indictment meant something more vital to Gilbert 
 than she could really feel, she knew perfectly. She tried 
 to bring back her first sensation, when he talked of these 
 fields and copses, but here there was something stronger 
 far, some passion of the older world, for ever strange to her. 
 
 She looked across at Gilbert, and at his gaze her eyes 
 dropped, because of the pain, the wondering pain, she could 
 not but feel in his glance. She tried to think of him in the 
 heats of India, with a nostalgia for the cold, clear winds in 
 his heart. That she understood, but not the sense of 
 treason underlying the old woman's tirade. Though she 
 felt it, she possessed no clue to the origin of it. 
 
 Treason : that was the word, and Gilbert, too, knew it 
 as, in thought, the old woman and the young man bandied 
 between them the girl who was, it seemed, dearer to him 
 than his birthright. 
 
 " Books/' grumbled she, " books — if he'd take my advice 
 he'd burn the lot. No man's ever worth the swinging of a 
 cow's tail that's chained his head to a printed page." 
 
 Outside in the fields at the back of the house the young 
 people drew breath more freely, though they knew Mrs. 
 Parsons was watching them from the shadow of the white- 
 washed, blue-flagged passage. In the valley the water of 
 the stream had been dammed back to form a dipping- 
 pond. Steve Carlyon and three men were there at work, 
 their cider kegs and bundles of food flung under the 
 hedge. 
 
 Over the water just below the pond the hawthorns 
 arched, making a green roof. The lower branches were 
 hung with red, fleecy fragments, torn from the sheep as 
 they struggled up the opposite bank. With their arms red 
 to the elbows, the men stood thigh-deep in the water, 
 ready to seize each animal and thrust it below the surface, 
 sousing the red flood deep into its heaving fleeces. On the 
 lambs the tight-curled wool stood up like tiny fern-mitres. 
 Baa-ing pitifully, the animals slipped on the trodden mud 
 and joined the shivering group on the bank. All along 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 155 
 
 the valley in the deep green of the meadow the flustered 
 witlings gathered in protesting groups. The clear, swirling 
 stream that flowed down from the rushy glades above 
 reflected the sky overhead and curled through the valley 
 bottom like a blue snake. Even when tempered by the 
 sea wind the air was hot like an oven. Overhead in the 
 sky hung a hawk, the sun beating on its wings till they 
 turned to bronze, and high up in St. Meryn Church tower 
 on the hill the bleating of the flock could be heard in the 
 still air. 
 
 Dipping the last sheep fiercely, the workers emerged from 
 the pond, cutting through the water in surging sweeps that 
 drove red waves up the side of the bank. Splashed with 
 the redding from head to high boots, they seemed to belong 
 to a new race of hairy spiders. As they drank from the 
 kegs with heads tilted back, the Adam's-apples of their 
 throats jerked among the stubble of half a week's hair- 
 growth. 
 
 Dorothy knew nothing of Virgilian sheepfolds, but the 
 scene in some way explained the old housekeeper's passion, 
 for the earth-magic was in it all. 
 
 Then Gilbert took her to his working-place across the 
 yard. For he never studied in the house except in the 
 bitterest cold of winter. 
 
 The place, a great barn that turned its back on the mow- 
 yard, was approached by granite steps, moss-grown, with 
 wild maidenhair in the crannies. Through the open hatch- 
 way the inland country was seen, set in the framework of 
 sun-dried cob, where the spider had woven its tracery on 
 every rough surface. Facing the opening stood a rough 
 deal table, piled with note-books. At the side of the table, 
 so that it cut off the end of the dusky, mote-filled place, 
 rough bookshelves had been set up. The smell within was 
 hot and dry, and pungent with the scent of hay-seed. 
 Across fields the far distance melted away to the sea that, 
 faint now as a dream, could be seen to girdle all the coast 
 in a silver line. 
 
 Gilbert told her how that sea-girdle was a weather- 
 chart, showing cold and hard in mornings that threatened 
 
156 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 rain, or far-distant and strange on days when the air was 
 clear. Even on dark nights he was aware of it by a ring 
 of lighter grey against the horizon. 
 
 Then they turned to the interior of the barn ; here a 
 ray of light lit up the far recesses, bringing out the burnt 
 earth-colour of the walls, and throwing over the stacked 
 reeds a splendour as of gold. In this miracle of light the 
 barn challenged the beauty of a doge's palace. 
 
 Sitting on the one chair, Dorothy leant her arm on the 
 table, while he propped his shoulder against the lintel 
 of the hatchway. She was facing the energy of will that 
 drove him through the hot fever of his working hours. 
 The peace of the outstretched landscape emphasized the 
 misery of this repellent battle. With a laugh he pointed 
 to the bucket of water by the table, as he described the 
 toilsome filling of his brain with mathematical formulae, 
 with paradigms of verbs and idioms " irregular to the 
 verge of impropriety." 
 
 '1 Poor dear ! " she sighed. 
 
 It was a harder service than ever gained a Rachel, for 
 obviously he had no curiosity whatever to satisfy in thus 
 tracing the cobweb weaving of man's many inventions. 
 He was, instead, a part of that serenity of far-flung fields, 
 wind-swept and sun-burned, where, scattered far apart 
 among groups of trees, could be seen the church towers 
 of lonely upland parishes. 
 
 Then she was ashamed and throwing aside the duplicity 
 of the maiden for the honesty of the woman, exclaimed 
 frankly : 
 
 " Gilbert, you do hate it all, don't you ? You will be 
 so glad when it's over, and you need never bother your 
 head again. When I'm asleep, when I'm reading or play- 
 ing, you're sitting here toiling. Oh, I can feel how hot your 
 poor head must be. And . . . then there's Lanvean. 
 Oh, Gilbert, I don't belong to Lanvean. If I lived a hun- 
 dred years, I could never feel about it as you do. Teravel's 
 new ; it's got a good bathroom, with a white porcelain 
 bath, a first-class kitchen range and an airing cup- 
 board. . . ." She laughed, half-hysterically ; to be quite 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 
 
 frank these Carlyons got on her nerves. That was as near 
 as she could reach to their views. 
 
 " I know," he said hoarsely, "... and that's why. 
 . . . What's Lanvean to me, then, by the side of you ? " 
 
 At that she could have screamed. 
 
 " I can't, Gilbert, I can't," she exclaimed. " I don't 
 feel you . . . not really. Oh, Gilbert, I do wish you 
 wouldn't be so tiresome. I want to be left alone, not 
 to have people offer up a burnt-offering of . . . brains." 
 
 " Like a sheep's head it sounds," he laughed. 
 
 But powerless to explain, she sat staring up at him, 
 aghast before the thus-far-and-no-farther of character 
 that no will can over-ride, juggle with it as we may. Too 
 young to understand the spoilt life that threatened in 
 this turning aside of its course from the channel in which 
 it was meant to flow, she yet tried hard to be honest. 
 
 So, with none of her coquetry awake, with her eyes 
 never falling before her lover's, she sat looking up at him, 
 while the pulse of his fever rose in answer to her pity. 
 
 " Do not be sorry," he said, "I'm not. I must go on. 
 I've set myself to it. I will get through." 
 
 He had set himself tasks all his life and rejoiced with 
 the deepest satisfaction he ever knew when he had success- 
 fully twisted the neck of some slackness in himself. Nor, 
 though he sometimes smiled at his own intensity, did he 
 ever feel ashamed of it. He was much too simple to feel 
 ashamed of anything in his nature. 
 
 At the sound of footsteps he hurried to the top of the 
 steps and coming back in a moment, said : 
 
 " Your father is waiting to take you home. And he 
 says Madame is no worse. She's slept and the doctor's 
 gone home for a rest himself. That's the best sign of all, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 But by now Dorothy had almost forgotten Madame, as 
 she remembered with contrition. 
 
 After all, Mrs. Parsons got in her story, for, when she 
 came to the door with a glass of cider for Mr. Rosewarne's 
 coachman, Gilbert insisted on their at last hearing the 
 tale of her journey to France. 
 
158 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Curiously typical of Lanvean," was Mr. Rosewarne's 
 comment after they had parted from Gilbert. " I 
 wouldn't say it to him, of course, yet I don't know but 
 what he'll be better out of here. It's got an atmosphere, 
 Lanvean. A bit too thick for me. If ever you're inclined 
 to call modern times greedy and self-seeking, just look 
 at these old families with their records of money-grubbing. 
 Autres temps, autres mceurs, of course, but the principle 
 is the same." 
 
 " But Gilbert ! surely he's almost too honest ? " 
 
 " Ah, a stream running itself clear ! The greatest cure 
 for our pessimism is in that, my dear." 
 
 Yet the story, being one of mere tenacity, was not so 
 terrible, after all. When Mrs. Parsons was young, she 
 often took part in the landing of the cargoes of lace and 
 brandy. On one occasion, as she was coming up the cliff 
 along a narrow ledge, with her arms full of lace, she caught 
 sight on the top of the cliff of the prying head of an excise 
 officer. Below her the landing boat was already in act 
 to push off and the anchor of the riding vessel being raised 
 at sea. Glassy calm it was, too, with the men's voices 
 from the ship ringing clearly across the water. 
 
 To hide her treasure was the first idea, but among the 
 stunted heather not so much as a thick furze-bush was 
 to be seen. Quick as thought, she shouted to the boat, 
 where the oars were already hanging out like fins. The 
 coastguardsman caught the position, but before he reached 
 the bend in the cliff path, she was across the weedy rocks 
 below. That night she spent at sea, with the boat making 
 westward, yet with small chance of a landfall, since all 
 the coast was afire with look-outs. So to France she 
 must needs go ; the lace came back on her body to Lanvean, 
 and there it still was, in the deep cupboards that were like 
 rooms without windows. 
 
 Gilbert was sitting alone that night in the kitchen 
 with his arms lying across the table in front of the long, 
 low window. He was tired out, for he shared the nights 
 of nursing with Mrs. Parsons ; his last job had been to 
 feed the dogs, who always had a bucket of porridge for 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 159 
 
 supper. They watched him now through the window, 
 their heads resting on outstretched paws in a posture 
 very like their master's own. The branches of a tree 
 just outside the door were hung all over with milk-cans, 
 and in the evening light the yellow arms, that had been 
 peeled of bark and sharpened at the points, seemed covered 
 with grotesque chain mail. 
 
 Beyond the yard the heavy leafage of the trees was 
 massed against the pale shining sky where the sun had 
 just set. A wandering wind moved among the branches 
 now and again, but between whiles there was a perfect 
 stillness in which the rise and fall of the waves could be 
 distinctly heard. 
 
 The tamarisk faggot on the open hearth was a reminder, 
 even to-night, as always, of one of the most vivid pleasures 
 of Gilbert's boyhood, the arrival of the old tramping 
 couple, William and Mary. Rat-catchers they were, 
 who, perambulating within a certain circuit, were highly 
 valued both for their skill and social qualities. On their 
 arrival at a farm they were welcomed with an extra faggot 
 on the hearth, an extra jug of warm ale, for they could 
 tell tales and sing songs like travelling jongleurs. When 
 one was tired, the other took a turn, handing the one 
 pipe they shared between them to the first performer. 
 With their dogs they shared both food and sleeping-place, 
 and if William wanted more beer, it was Mary who held 
 out the mug with the plea, " Just another drink for poor 
 William." But she always took a pull at it first. 
 
 Tatterdemalions as they were, they taught the boy, 
 long before he made the acquaintance of Caliban in a 
 Clarendon Press Edition, that the earth has spirits no 
 less than the water. Their weather-stained rags, the 
 whistles William made out of hollow stalks, the baskets 
 Mary fashioned from willow branches, spoke to him of 
 the woodland scent, of nutty hedgerows and the shadows 
 that chase each other over the hills. When he returned 
 one Christmas from Blundells he heard they both were 
 dead on one day. William had been found stiff one 
 rimy morning in the hedge, and by nightfall his com- 
 
160 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 panion was gone, too. Young Carlyon added another 
 quality to the earth then, that of faithfulness. 
 
 At last bestirring himself, he began to rake the ashes 
 of the faggot together, preparatory to getting ready for 
 bed. But before he had finished, the sound of a horse's 
 footsteps came round the corner from the stable, followed 
 by the loud barking of the dogs. 
 
 " Steve," said he to himself, " Steve, and not drunk," 
 he added as the other came in, flinging his riding cap on 
 the table. 
 
 Almost every night now Gilbert was obliged to leave 
 the door on the latch. Sometimes long after midnight, he 
 would be awakened by the sound of his brother's noisy 
 arrival, by stumbling footsteps and the clang of banging 
 doors. To-night the younger brother, though sober 
 enough, was in a state of excitement. His wide spatulate 
 fingers and thumbs, that turned outwards from the last 
 joint, were never still. 
 
 The two brothers understood one another well enough, 
 especially since Steve, sent to school long after Gilbert, 
 had caught him up at the end of two terms and never 
 troubled himself to do a good stroke of work afterwards. 
 Ever after that it had been " steady old Gil," and " that 
 young rip, Steve," with them, often said with a good deal 
 of affection. " Steady old Gil " found some difficulty in 
 getting an idea into his head, but once there, it stuck. 
 He was compact of reverence for most things living, but 
 not for gentility, whereas to Steve, in whose head any 
 idea was but a bird of passage, the chief thing to be feared 
 — and hated — was the worry of ordered living. In his 
 school-days he set booby traps for masters and avoided 
 washing his neck. 
 
 At the moment he feared Gilbert, and was in that 
 state of mind in which a culprit with his legs trembling 
 under him before a judge, demands what on earth there 
 is to be feared in facing a fellow creature. This mood of 
 funk meant an outburst of defiance, as though a lad with 
 a shrill treble should attempt to take the roof off with the 
 bellow of the toreador song. 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 161 
 
 " Hullo ! how's yourself ? " he said. " A week of 
 Sundays since I had a word with you, but by the Lord 
 who made little apples, you are putting your money on 
 the wrong horse this time. Not that I want to spoil sport, 
 of course." 
 
 He was filling his pipe at the moment, and by so doing 
 succeeded in avoiding his brother's eye. Then he lighted 
 it with a long breath that drew the flame down into the 
 bowl. He prided himself on the neatness of his fingers. 
 
 " What d'you mean ? " asked Gilbert. 
 
 He had a small opinion of his brother's capacity to 
 annoy, which is a mistake, in general, for most small 
 things possess that power. His usual annoyance with 
 Steve arose from the latter 's love of a " hot " story. Steve 
 was a rattle highly popular with the bar loungers, who 
 never could make out whether to take him as a butt or a 
 wit. 
 
 " When a chap like you," he began in a worrying, 
 badgering tone, " goes about nose in air . . . and never 
 sees what's as easy seen as lying ..." 
 
 " Hurry up and get done, old man. I'm dead beat." 
 
 " Well, I hate telling tales out of school, but ..." 
 
 The story of Dorothy Rosewarne's visit to Dr. Rudd, 
 the conclusion of which he had seen from Petrockstow 
 quay, lost nothing in the telling. He was an artist in 
 suggestion, and hinted, without rubbing it in, at the satis- 
 fied grin on the doctor's face and the shrinking attitude 
 of the girl against the wall. Both perfectly true, as it 
 happened, but bearing another interpretation than the 
 one implied. 
 
 " Steve," said Gilbert, after a pause which neither cared 
 to break, " why on earth do you come to me to-night 
 with this ? " 
 
 For some reason, this hit home. Steve it was who 
 lost his temper. 
 
 " You may like," he rasped, " to take another man's 
 leavings, but 'tisn't like your high-and-mightiness as a 
 general thing. But perhaps you don't believe what I 
 say. You take me for a liar, I suppose ? " 
 
 II 
 
162 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " I know you can tell lies. Anyone would who talks 
 as much as you do. But I daresay you did see Miss Rose- 
 warne coming out of the Priory House at eleven o'clock 
 at night." 
 
 " And Dr. Rudd lighting her down." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Oh, if that's all you can say I " he cried. " And 
 what's more it's common talk that Dr. Rudd wouldn't 
 go up to attend the old woman at Denzell . . . some 
 row or other, and he's got the devil's own pride ... if 
 your Dearly Beloved wasn't the bait Madame used to 
 get him there." 
 
 " And yet," said Gilbert quietly, " that doesn't square 
 with the interpretation you put on what you saw at the 
 Priory House. Where does the need for a bait come in, 
 if that's true ? " 
 
 " Oh, well, don't say I didn't warn you." 
 
 Then something gave way in Gilbert, but not his temper, 
 though his face grew white. 
 
 " Steve," he said, " what the devil's got hold of you 
 that you come spitting out these . . . indecencies to me ? 
 You know there's a dirty world where they think these 
 things and there's another . . . where they don't." 
 
 " And my friends, my gutter friends, are those who 
 do ? " said the other, hit on the raw. " So you come 
 your swanky friends over me. ..." 
 
 He raised his hand and struck the other across the 
 lips once, and, with a horrible flash of satisfaction, would 
 have struck again, had not Gilbert caught his arm and 
 held it down in a grip like a vice. 
 
 " Steady on, Steve," he said, ■ ■ hold hard. That's 
 enough. Something's plagued you, raised the devil in 
 you. If you judge like this, it's either you or your friends 
 that are thinking these beastly things. I prefer, my- 
 self, to think it's your friends, and not you. That's 
 all." 
 
 They stood silently, breathing hard, the tall man looking 
 down on the other till he saw him grow quiet. Then he 
 let his arm fall suddenly, for another Steve was to the 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 163 
 
 fore now, the one that always put the best face on himself 
 and his doings. 
 
 " Whatever I've done and whatever I am," he said, 
 '* I've never played it so low down as you're doing. 
 Lanvean's your job, not mine, and you're such an accursed 
 snob that you turn your back on it and cheat the old 
 man. If your wonderful lady is too good for the old 
 place, why don't you go up and tell father so, and fling 
 what he's left you back in his face ? If you'd got the 
 guts of a man you'd put the choice to her : myself, as I 
 am ... or nothing." 
 
 Hit himself on the raw this time, Gilbert turned on 
 the other and snarled. 
 
 " And yet I'm clearing out for you ! You ought to be 
 the last man to complain. Any lawyer '11 draw up a deed 
 of gift that will make you master here." 
 
 " And do you think I'll be an ornament to Lanvean ? " 
 asked Steve. " Oh, I know what you think of me. And 
 you aren't so far out, either." 
 
 He swaggered, a swashbuckler at least, if no man of 
 worth. For something above — or below — the ruck he 
 must be. 
 
 " Get up to bed, Steve," said Gilbert, sickened at last, 
 " and don't bother your head about my affairs." 
 
 " Got enough of my own, I suppose you mean," said 
 Steve. " Co, lo' me, if you only knew ! " 
 
 When he was at last gone, Gilbert went to the door for 
 a breath of air. Wheeling bats circled where an hour or 
 two ago the swallows had piped their hunting cry. Beyond 
 the roof of the stables he could see the revolving light of 
 Trevose ; overhead the stars pulsed in the depths of clear 
 air. The old collie, outstretched by his kennel, wagged 
 a sleepy good night, and when Gilbert bolted the door, 
 the sound of the bar going home could be heard far across 
 the meadows. In the sense of treachery that filled him 
 as he listened to the heavy breathing from his father's 
 room, he felt not so much disloyalty to the man as to the 
 unconscious things, to fields and beasts, to those sandy 
 acres which were his birthright. 
 
 II* 
 
164 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 He fell asleep at once, throwing himself across the old 
 four-poster without undressing. Soon after he awoke he 
 heard the clock strike one, and, bathed in night-sweats, 
 listened to hear if he had been roused by his father's 
 calling out, as he had done several times of late. 
 
 But now there was no sound at all ; his fear came from 
 within. Forcing back his will he found at last his dream. 
 He had been a woman in an old shop, a dark-browed gabled 
 place. A tiddlywink-shop of oddments it was, where he 
 struggled with poverty. Only it was not the poverty 
 that made the horror, so much as the spirit that came 
 from the walls . . . the spirit of bygone lives, narrow, 
 greedy for small gains, gathering, gathering in the thick 
 fog that chokes one. In it he saw how all the kindness of 
 the woman withered, how slowly her generous impulses 
 died, till she would have murdered a child for the shilling 
 he carried. With the last flicker of will he brought back 
 again the phrase that he wanted. It was " an Exeter 
 stock-taking." 
 
 Fully awake now, he repeated the words, his heart still 
 thudding from the effort to escape the paralysing grip of 
 those dream-walls. Even now he saw the spirit left 
 behind in them creeping round him like coils of smoke. 
 In a flash he remembered what he had heard from a cousin, 
 that " an Exeter stock-taking " means a fire, the only 
 thing which will destroy what is left behind by the souls 
 of dead men. 
 
 He sat up in bed, glad of the wind on his face from the 
 open window. The old Carlyons, it seemed, had left 
 something of themselves behind, beside the bones in 
 St. Meryn vaults. For the first time he knew what men 
 seek who throw everything away, possessions, all ties, 
 personal or national . . . and go out naked into life. 
 
 As a child might have done, he got off the bed and 
 slipped to his knees ; half mystic as he was, he knew that 
 one must wait for the light. " Show the way," he cried 
 again and again, like one striving to fly upwards against 
 the darkness that stretches league after league beyond 
 our vision. 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 165 
 
 When he returned from the fields to tea the next day, 
 Mrs. Parsons came to him and whispered, while he stood 
 drying his hands at the runner towel in the back kitchen : 
 
 " You're wanted," she said ; " there's a woman here 
 that's been waiting to see you an hour or more." 
 
 " Can't you ask what she wants ? " he said. 
 
 " None but you'll do. I've tried her." 
 
 In the dining-room he found a young woman in black, 
 sitting with her back to the door. When she rose at his 
 entrance, he motioned to her to sit down again. But she 
 preferred to stand with her hands clasped in front of her. 
 It seemed the posture with which she was most familiar. 
 In her close-fitting cap, pulled down over her head, with 
 long ear-rings dangling and a single quill feather stivering 
 up from her small head above eel-tight clothes, she looked 
 almost like a silhouette. 
 
 Then he saw she was not so young, only white-faced 
 with big saucer-eyes and a quiet manner that might cover 
 either determination or a weakness so desperate that it 
 assumed the guise of strength. 
 
 Her voice was shrill and high-pitched, but she pro- 
 nounced each word with so full a value that it sounded 
 pompous. Perhaps it was the effect of this, on ears 
 accustomed to the country habit of slurring words, that 
 produced in Gilbert the impression that she was foreign. 
 
 When she had finished her story, he asked : 
 
 " Are you English ? " Instinctively he wanted to give 
 himself time to think. 
 
 " I'm Birmingham," she snapped ; " did you take me 
 for a foreign liar ? " 
 
 She did not add that she was a Jewess, lest the fact 
 should prejudice her in the eyes of the man who was 
 master here. 
 
 " Sit down," he said gently, and as she leant back he 
 noticed the white pallor of skin and lips, the dead white- 
 ness even of the flesh under her nails. But as he went to 
 tell Mrs. Parsons to bring in the tea-tray, she caught him 
 by the arm, overmastered by anxiety. 
 
 " You do believe what I say ? " she asked. 
 
166 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " That you're Steve's wife ? I think it very possible." 
 
 She shrank at some implication in his tone, an implica- 
 tion, as she thought, of contempt. 
 
 " Don't you think I'm good enough for him ? " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " I wonder whether he's good enough for you," he said 
 gently. " You'll have to bear a good deal, I expect." 
 
 " My word, he's rum," she said under her breath as he 
 went out. " Not a bit like what I thought he'd be. You 
 wouldn't : not from what that beauty's like, as I've got. 
 Dull old place, though ; enough to give anybody the 
 hump." 
 
 All her air of gentility had vanished by now. She was 
 frankly curious and only managed to skip back to her seat 
 to avoid being caught in the act of fingering the vases on 
 the great mantelpiece. 
 
 Mrs. Parsons showed no surprise when Gilbert told her 
 the news. 
 
 " I wonder us haven't had forty of 'em before," she 
 sniffed, " but if they'm all to be treated same as you'm 
 treating this one ..." 
 
 " Send in the tray quickly," he said curtly. 
 
 The visitor drank the tea feverishly, and when he 
 noticed the livid rings round her eyes he grew more gentle 
 in manner. 
 
 " He had to marry me," she said. " Met him up here 
 when we were touring through North Cornwall . . . 
 Newquay and that." 
 
 Then she told him her stage name, Cora something or 
 other, and grew full of reminiscences, of the weariness of 
 looking for lodgings every week, of the queer terraces that 
 shelter these little touring folk, especially of the iniquities 
 of the baggage man, who is in the pay of the landladies. 
 They are the devil's own, these women, that won't cook 
 so much as a chop after midnight, and grumble, even at 
 the leading lady, if she keeps the gas on after two at night. 
 
 Now, as she told him details of her present sufferings, 
 he knew of whom she reminded him. This was an inn- 
 keeper's wife with whom he had travelled up to town one 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 167 
 
 day. The woman had a friend with her, and together 
 they kept up a conversation that, for frankness, would 
 have made Uncle Toby blush. Evidently they minded 
 him no more than an old shoe, as he shrank in the corner 
 behind his newspaper. 
 
 At this juncture it was actually a relief to hear Steve's 
 voice. The woman started to her feet. 
 
 " My heavens ! what will he say ? " she cried, in her 
 best stage manner. None the less, underneath it, she 
 was really afraid, as Gilbert saw. 
 
 " Quiet," said Gilbert, " be quiet and he'll take it 
 quietly too." 
 
 Somehow as Steve stood in the doorway, with the light 
 full on his tense, nervous face, Gilbert was filled with pity. 
 " Steve," he said, " your wife's here. We've got to do 
 the best we can for her." 
 
 The three stood stock-still till Gilbert, conscious 4f 
 Mrs. Parsons in the background, repeated, " Your wife, 
 Steve," with an accent on the second word. 
 Bravado conquered rage. 
 
 " Well," said Steve, " truth's truth. Wife it is, though 
 what the deuce she's doing here beats me." 
 
 Gilbert drew his breath sharply ; after all, the hope 
 he had felt had been a mean one. 
 
 " And now," said Steve bitterly, " you know what got 
 my dander up t'other night, don't you ? I was in two 
 minds about making a clean breast of it. Just heard 
 about the chance of a kid," he grimaced. " But this 
 settles your business, doesn't it, anyway ? " 
 
 With a toss of her head, the girl sat down, took up the 
 teapot and poured herself out another cup of tea. When 
 Steve was discursive, he was beaten : apparently she 
 understood him well enough. 
 
 " Why ? " asked Gilbert, watching the girl delicately 
 fold her bread and butter. Her table manners were of 
 the elaborate kind. 
 
 " Well, if it doesn't," laughed Steve, " then Lanvean's 
 set up . . . master, mistress and heir, all complete. Let's 
 hope it will be a boy." 
 
168 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Then the girl turned on him fiercely : 
 
 " Don't be coarse, Steve," said she. 
 
 It seemed that her husband must learn refinement ; it 
 is an axiom among women in her line of life that men are 
 always coarse unless restrained, either by titter or rebuke. 
 
 " I don't think Lanvean comes in at present," said 
 Gilbert coldly, " but in any case, as you know, you'll have 
 your own income when father's gone. You'll have nothing 
 to complain of either way. But the immediate point is 
 what to arrange now." 
 
 " There's room enough at Lanvean." 
 
 " Lanvean's got a sick man in it. And he mustn't 
 hear a word of this." 
 
 " What's to be done, then ? You can't turn us to the 
 doors, leave alone the work you want to get out of me." 
 
 " You can get rooms at Tonkin's cottage. I'll see Mrs. 
 Tonkin. They let in the summer." 
 
 Steve began to whistle. 
 
 " This is a bit off . . . after last night," he said. 
 " Then you were the noble elder brother, giving place 
 to the worthless one." 
 
 " Times are changed to-day," said Gilbert quietly. 
 
 " Ay, I thought they would be," chuckled Steve. 
 
 " By your own doing," said Gilbert. 
 
 " I don't understand a word you're saying," chimed in 
 Mrs. Steve, " but one thing I do want to know, now you're 
 chucking me about like this. And that is where I'm to 
 sleep to-night. I've walked from Petrockstow with a 
 shilling in me pocket . . . and in these shoes, too." 
 
 At night when the pair had gone down the road, after 
 supper, to their cottage at the corner, Gilbert still seemed 
 to hear the noise of their quarrelling voices. Then, too, 
 there was the eternal money problem. For everything, 
 even now, was in the old man's hands, and if a ten-pound 
 note out of the ordinary was wanted, it had to be pro- 
 cured by infinite cunning. Several times Gilbert had 
 paid his brother's debts, but it was impossible to pack 
 these people off with a proper allowance. Gilbert felt 
 the cares of a family thick upon his head. 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 169 
 
 Worn out with field work, he fell asleep with his head 
 on his arms across the kitchen table. When he awoke 
 from his uneasy position he found that a rug had been 
 put round him, and rolling it up for a pillow, he stretched 
 himself out on the settle by the dying fire. 
 
 When, in the early morning, he was kneeling by the 
 hearth to kindle the tamarisk branches that flame so 
 suddenly, the door opened and Mrs. Parsons came in. 
 In the dim light they eyed one another. Haggard and 
 unshaven as he was, something in Gilbert's face roused 
 the fire in the old woman. She came up and put a hand 
 on his shoulder as he knelt to watch the flame that crept 
 along the black branches. 
 
 " Lad," she cried, " has this downed your pride ? " 
 
 " My pride ? " 
 
 " Ay, your pride, that's making you turn from your 
 duty. Will you see that precious pair here . . . here ? 
 And that play-acting slut the mistress of this house ? 
 Shame on you, Gilbert, But ye'll not do it. Ye'll not ! 
 Take your cursed books and tear 'em ..." she flung her 
 clasped hands apart ..." and burn the last, and stay 
 where ye ought to stay." 
 
 " Perhaps what's happened'll steady him," said he. 
 " She's his wife right enough. She's got her lines." 
 
 " Her lines ! and is a Carlyon wife to tramp the country 
 like a tinker's Bess, showing her lines ? And her ... to 
 bear Carlyons ! Why, the white-faced chit hasn't the 
 blood in her veins to make a living child." 
 
 "I'm sorry, Parsons ; I know how you feel about the 
 place." 
 
 " Look here," she said fiercely, " I've had nothing of 
 my own. I've lived and cared for naught but Lanvean 
 and you, lad. I'm old and I never bore a child, for all I 
 know what men be. But Lanvean's been my life. As it's 
 yours. D'you think I haven't seen you sicken over they 
 books ? Ay, you haven't had much of a time — yet. 
 Hard work, keeping things going, and hardly a penny to 
 call your own. But that'll end, and what's in the room 
 upstairs'll soon be under the sod." 
 
170 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 When he made a gesture of denial, of horror, she 
 laughed. 
 
 " You needn't fall to shams with me. What's up 
 there's been dead to life, a living dead to the best of it, 
 these years past. And death's merciful when it comes 
 to such like. I've allays said so. But this Steve — he'll 
 live and breed and fill the place with the likes of himself. 
 Send him packing when the old man's underground. Then 
 you can make Lanvean what you will." 
 
 " Sandy acres," said he with a smile, as a man of the 
 East talks of his " miserable wife." 
 
 " And the sandy acres be the blood and bones of you. 
 And you know it, though it's what you're denying ; not 
 the faith, nor the love, but the very milk that's made you. 
 And all for a slip of red and white that you know no 
 more than I know what's between the covers of your 
 books." 
 
 When he smiled, she took him by his coat and shook 
 him to and fro. 
 
 " Why," she cried, " every man that marries a wife has 
 got to put up with the luck of the basket. That's true. 
 And what she is, he knows then no more than he knows 
 the hour of his death. You think you know her, that 
 puss ? " 
 
 " I know I want her." 
 
 " Ay, you know you want her. And when you've got 
 her and she's carrying your first child, you'll no more care 
 what your ' want ' was than I care for last year's cold. 
 Co 1 you fool ! For what's as common as dirt you'll throw 
 away your very life. You say you want her. But does 
 she want you ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you what she does want — that's what 
 you've got." 
 
 " And turns her back on it. No, no, Parsons, you're 
 out there." 
 
 " No, I'm not. You live poor here, and neither she 
 nor her mother knows what Lanvean means. If they did 
 they'd put their money on that, and not on your brains. 
 
A CLOSE SEAL 171 
 
 Your brains, indeed I I wouldn't give a fig for 'em in the 
 market." 
 
 Gilbert laughed. " Faith," he said, " neither would I." 
 
 * Then test her, try her," cried she ; " is it you she wants 
 or your power to get her a good place ? And if anything 
 can turn you, next to Steve's new missus, 'twill be the 
 answer you'll get to that question." 
 
 Outside in the dawn his eyes followed the first stealing 
 sunlight on the sea, the flash of gold on the wings of the 
 circling birds. The passion of the place was upon him. To 
 him these acres meant not England only, but his place, 
 where he had real things, ready for the handling. He could 
 feel the corn running through his skilled fingers as he 
 tested it, could sense the edge of the ploughshare cleaving 
 into the breast of earth, could realize the joy of the morning, 
 as he rode afield to watch the dun beasts rise from the dewy 
 ground, each day with hides covering fuller flesh. 
 
 The passion of the husbandman, so long the staple of 
 English life, received its last completing touch in Gilbert 
 Carlyon, for the tinge of mysticism in him saw in Nature's 
 yield of seed and tilth the visible presence of the wonder- 
 working finger of God. 
 
 Out here his ancestry was even stronger than within 
 walls ; not the ancestry of dry bones in vaults, but of the 
 life continuing in the living cells that make the man. 
 
 Looking down from the gateway towards the corner 
 among the trees he could see the cottage where Steve 
 lodged with his wife. They raised their smoke close to 
 his gates, these interlopers : yes, interlopers, for to that it 
 had come with him by now. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 A CROWNING MERCY 
 
 LYING awake by his wife in the early morning, Mr. 
 Rosewarne sighed to think of the tussle before 
 him. Yet, because he liked to get things over, when she 
 stirred he put out a hand to attract her attention to 
 himself. 
 
 " Philip," she exclaimed, " you haven't had a good 
 night ? " and turned towards him, full of wifely cares. 
 
 It was dim yet in the room, with only the shrilling of the 
 swallows outside to show that the world was awaking. 
 Old memories never failed to thrill her heart at his touch, 
 even now, yet there was in her mind a tinge of fear. He 
 had been very quiet for days, and as though withdrawn 
 into himself. 
 
 " I saw Trevan yesterday," he said ; " in his judgment 
 the cataract's mature for operation. But I'm to go to 
 Bristol first. And the young doctor, Rudd, he thinks, had 
 better do it. Trevan's own sight is not what it was, it 
 seems." 
 
 " Philip, why didn't you tell me before ? " she asked. 
 Her breathing was short and quick, like a frightened 
 child's, as though she feared something he had still to tell 
 her. And yet, all the while, he was only desirous of saying 
 as little as possible. 
 
 " There's every chance," he said, " of my being cured. 
 But we mustn't wait. It's over-late, I gathered from their 
 manner, as it is." 
 
 172 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 173 
 
 But she would not have it slurred over thus, and threw 
 herself perversely into the thing he wanted left unsaid. 
 
 " It's unnatural, this silence/' she cried, " as if I hadn't 
 shared everything with you. ..." 
 
 " You've been very good to me, Marian," he answered 
 wearily. 
 
 " And you've often tired of it, of all my love and care." 
 
 " Don't say what you'll regret, my dear." 
 
 As he drew her nearer, she held tightly to him, with the 
 question before them both of how much understanding is 
 really possible between two separate minds, since some- 
 thing always escapes unsaid. 
 
 " Say, why shouldn't I say . . . what you know ; 
 what Madame told you ? Oh, I guess it all. She's had the 
 idea a long time, and came here and poured it all out to me. 
 I wanted to be all in all to you. And yes, it's true what 
 that cruel old woman said, I've grudged everything that 
 takes you from me, the child, the business, your politics." 
 
 When the floodgates open after being dammed back for 
 years there is apt to be an awkward flooding of the land. 
 
 He sighed impatiently. 
 
 " Yes, I know, Marian, but you see there are seasons 
 for everything. One must change if one grows . . . the 
 bean-flower and the bean, you know." 
 
 " And that's Father Tyacke," thought Mrs. Rosewarne, 
 while he continued in admonitory tones that made her 
 furious with all meddlers, lay or clerical. 
 
 " We can't stay where we were twenty years ago," he 
 continued. "I'm not an old man yet, and the world still 
 interests me." 
 
 He laughed, but added in a graver tone : 
 
 " And, Marian, you mustn't try to settle the child's 
 life, either. No, nor the child's either," he repeated. 
 " Dorothy's something quite different from you or me, 
 though she's ours. Oh, my dear, if only we would learn 
 not to meddle so much, to leave men and nations to work 
 out their own salvation." 
 
 " Yes," exclaimed Mrs. Rosewarne, " and leave Madame 
 to scheme and plan — Madame, that has no earthly claim on 
 
174 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the child ... a childless woman herself ... while I, 
 her mother, mustn't have a word to say. Oh, Philip, what 
 in the world is it that possesses you to act like this ? " 
 
 Old animosities leapt in her, partly from her woman's 
 hatred at being outstripped in her own game of match- 
 making, partly because she knew who it must be that had 
 shown her husband the under-currents in this little drama 
 of suppression. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne sighed impatiently. 
 
 " Scheme and plan ! " he exclaimed ; " how either you 
 or Madame dare to do it, I can't see. Here are you and 
 she pitting this man against the other for Dorothy's future, 
 and with no more apparent conception of the child's 
 nature . . . and the men's . . . than if men and women 
 were so many ninepins. Leave the child alone, that's 
 all." 
 
 He spoke in a sort of passion, for to him it was amazing 
 that women, who do their work of bearing a child in utter 
 silence, with never a formulated idea of purpose in so doing, 
 should turn into pure hucksters when they get to the 
 matter of mating. 
 
 " My dear Philip," smiled Mrs. Rosewarne, " when you 
 assume the part of a seer, you amuse me." 
 
 With passion aroused in him, she was once more her 
 suave and placid self, though " sleek " was the word 
 Madame Felicia would have used. 
 
 " I know I do," he said dryly; " that's why I assume it 
 so seldom. But I want to teach you, and, let me tell you, 
 you want teaching badly, even at the huckstering side of 
 the business. Here's this Carlyon that you think a suit- 
 able husband for your daughter ..." 
 
 " That's Madame again," thought she, lying cold and 
 still, and registering yet another mark against the prime 
 mover in all this trouble. 
 
 " Well ? " she asked aloud. Nor was she, after all, 
 entirely unwilling to get the opinion of a business man on 
 the matter. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Rosewarne, " though he's a rich man, 
 or will be when his father's gone, you know so little of the 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 175 
 
 realities that you aid and abet the lad in some twopenny- 
 halfpenny piece of folly which is to make him genteel and 
 send him off to the work that's nothing but a portion for 
 the younger sons who've to fight their way by their own 
 brains and grit. And of brains ... of that sort ... he 
 hasn't an ounce. In you, you who call yourself a woman of 
 the world, this just passes my comprehension. You don't 
 realize, of course, how that old man, Will Carlyon, has lived 
 for nothing but his bank balance. If I were to tell you 
 what Lanvean means in heads of cattle, in the possibilities 
 of the Cataclew quarries, to say nothing of the chance of 
 its becoming the site for a tourist centre, you'd open your 
 eyes. The lad's a good lad, but played upon by his own 
 ignorance of the world . . . and by the price you've put 
 on your daughter. And so you've made him quarrel with 
 his portion . . . just to make Dorothy miserable, if she's 
 foolish enough to be trapped." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Why ? Just look at what the child is. Is she the 
 woman to be satisfied with what Gilbert Carlyon can give 
 her ? Long, quiet, eventless days, the only interests the 
 building up of a family, with nothing but the changes of 
 the seasons and the birth of the children to look to. Can't 
 you feel it, Marian, for her ? What a prison for Dorothy, 
 for she'll not even have the satisfaction the canny house- 
 wives of Lanvean have always enjoyed. They lived to 
 pile sixpence on sixpence, but Dorothy's not made on the 
 model of the Psalmist woman whose price is above rubies. 
 You know she isn't." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne was prompt to seize her advantage. 
 
 " Of course not," she exclaimed, " that's why I pressed 
 the Civil Service for him. Why, you know, there was 
 young Mark Comer, with far less brains than Gilbert, who 
 got ninth place in the exam." 
 
 " And Mark Comer, the son of a lawyer, was sent up 
 from Cambridge ! " exclaimed he. " My dear Marian, 
 you've been driving a willing horse to death. But that 
 isn't the main point, which is Gilbert himself." 
 
 " But the child is so highly-strung and sensitive, and 
 
176 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Gilbert is strong and quiet. Think of her with a selfish 
 man, tossed here and there, and made to suffer in things a 
 more callous girl would never understand." 
 
 " Yes, I know," he said dreamily, " like a violin that 
 gives out under some hands the whole gamut of life from 
 pain to rapture. That's what Dorothy wants, my dear 
 ... to live and suffer. For all her sensitiveness, she'll 
 be better with someone who will keep her quick and 
 living." 
 
 He sighed, knowing within himself the jealousy that a 
 father often feels towards the man who wins his daughter 
 from him. It is a feeling no man ever acknowledges and 
 that has little in common with a mother's sense of loss when 
 her son goes from her. 
 
 Then while he dressed, his mind was busy with the same 
 idea on a larger scale. As he lay in the boiling hot bath, 
 which he loved like a Japanese, he saw in Dorothy a 
 human Ireland, who, scourged and harassed, would yet be 
 loved by her lovers as only creatures can be who arouse 
 in others the wistfulness of sympathy for suffering. 
 Gilbert, potentially, was then England, confident in the 
 fastnesses of reserve power, yet full of capacity for showing 
 himself callous, since no blows that could ever reach him 
 would be more than skin-deep. He might know bruises, 
 but no heart-wounds. 
 
 AH this left Mrs. Rosewarne profoundly unmoved ; to 
 her, it was vague stuff, windy, and full of a man's senti- 
 mentality where an idolized girl is concerned. Dorothy, 
 in fact, was in sad case, since her parents thus suspended 
 her between cloudland and the market-place. It was, 
 naturally enough, however, the huckster part of the business 
 that influenced Mrs. Rosewarne most profoundly. In 
 Gilbert she found, not a bird in the bush, but one very 
 much in the hand. 
 
 " She'll learn to love the man that . . . doesn't shelter 
 her," said Mr. Rosewarne, as a parting shot ; " the wind- 
 flower weathers the storm that fells the oak." 
 
 " Dear old Philip," smiled his wife, " you are such a 
 dreamer. It's indeed a mercy you have a practical wife." 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 177 
 
 She was quite herself again when they went down to 
 breakfast, and later on in the day ordered the carriage to 
 take her to Denzell. 
 
 When she arrived, Father Tyacke was already leaving ; 
 she met him on the stairs. 
 
 14 Ah," he cried, drawing her aside into a window recess 
 in the corridor, " you will find our dear lady sadly depressed. 
 I cannot think that the diagnosis was correct. Science 
 makes guesses ; yes, that's it, guesses. But she has 
 rallied from the shock, they say." 
 
 At his gloomiest, Father Tyacke out-hamleted Hamlet. 
 But Mrs. Rosewarne found him invigorating to-day. 
 
 " A shock that ought never to have been inflicted," she 
 exclaimed. " Father Tyacke, Madame is infatuated, 
 but, alas, poor dear, she is paying for it. Does she realize, 
 do you think, that this Budd, Rudd, has brutally tortured 
 her, and for nothing ? " 
 
 " I can't tell you," said the priest, with genuine sorrow 
 in his tones ; " she lies very still, but I think hope is dying. 
 She is in great pain and weariness, and the nurses say the 
 joints are red-hot." 
 
 " Terrible ! " cried Mrs. Rosewarne. " These foolhardy 
 young men ! " 
 
 She found a little pity in her heart now for a woman so 
 manifestly beaten as Mrs. Peters. It must be a very mean 
 foe who does not feel a spark of magnanimity when the 
 battle goes favourably for him all along the line. 
 
 So, with a flushed face and much turmoil of mind, she 
 crossed at last the threshold of Madame's door. The 
 nurse having withdrawn, the two ladies deployed forces. 
 Madame it was who opened the manoeuvres. 
 
 " Pray don't trouble, Marian," said she, " to be con- 
 solatory. I know what everybody's saying : that I'm the 
 victim of my confidence in my own youth. And everybody 
 younger than I is rejoicing in his, or her . . . especially 
 her . . . strength as compared with my poor old blood. 
 It's this old blood that can't cast off what younger people's 
 might." 
 
 " No one is saying anything so unkind, dear Madame, 
 
 12 
 
178 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 though perhaps the doctor tells you that just to cover his 
 own mistake. Injections, you know ..." 
 
 " Injections ! More filth ! " snapped Madame, " oh, 
 yes, I know." 
 
 As a fact, she had ordered from London a packet of 
 medical works on her disease, and this the doctor had 
 instantly directed should be sent back to the bookseller. 
 Even while she rejoiced at his boldness, she felt irritated 
 at this frustration of her longing to steep her mind in the 
 misery of her state. For all her love of ease and ignorance 
 had deserted her in this trial. The victim of a subtler 
 shock than that of the mere flesh, what she needed was a 
 counter-shock to shake her from apathy. 
 
 This Mrs. Rosewarne unwittingly supplied, so that, when 
 the visitor had left, Madame demanded chicken jelly and 
 had the second nurse summoned, for nobody's hard-earned 
 slumber must stand in the way. An iron tyrant over 
 everyone, and especially over herself, she wrenched herself 
 from the bed and, for the first time, made the attempt to 
 stand. When Dr. Rudd returned in the evening he found 
 what he had been waiting for, that rally of her will on which 
 he had relied. She had heard no gossip for weeks, but now, 
 by way of reward, he filled up the gaps in her knowledge, 
 especially with regard to the arrival of Steve Carlyon's 
 wife, not forgetting Sam Cornish's humorous comments, 
 which he himself regarded as masterpieces. 
 
 To Sam, in fact, whose humour was distinctly 
 Chaucerian, finding its most vitalizing food in the sex-war, 
 the doctor's own abstention from women was an incessant 
 cause of raillery. Yet he never ceased to press the claims 
 of this woman or that on Dan, and when they travelled 
 together, found it a keen disappointment that the doctor 
 refused to seize the opportunities offered by stray females 
 of coming-on dispositions. 
 
 } To Sam the chances offered by civilization for stray 
 amours formed the keenest joy ; he himself might be tied, 
 by Dan's orders, to fidelity, but for a man to refuse who had 
 no such home-keeping restraint upon him was next door 
 to being incomprehensible, a sign of the half-man. 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 179 
 
 Dan's attitude towards all this was queer : it reminded 
 him, like a perpetual death's-head, of his own want of 
 charm, especially of sex-charm ; where Sam could get on 
 with any woman, his mate hovered round like an uneasy, 
 but solid, spirit, looking on at amusements to which he 
 possessed no open sesame. This Dr. Rudd ascribed, 
 along with other disabilities, to the finicky weakness due 
 to his breeding, from which Sam, as the natural man, was 
 free, as well as from the other queasy habits of gentility. 
 It was like Sam's capacity for comfortably going unwashed, 
 this ability to love, and kiss, and go light-heartedly. Yet, 
 for all the doctor's theories of the advisability of these 
 practices, he was quite unable to follow them. To slip an 
 arm round any girl's waist, or to wash in a bucket with 
 perfect satisfaction, were freedoms denied to him by both 
 nature and art. 
 
 Immensely interested as he was in Madame's schemes 
 to entrap " thic old Dan " to the common lot of man, 
 Sam's fancy lent itself to figuring the scenes on the wedding- 
 day, the breakfast speeches, the good old rally of courts 
 and alleys. All this to the general harassment of Dan's 
 modesty. A thousand times in Laskey's bar Sam savoured 
 Rabelaisian bliss and enjoyed the doctor's misery . . . the 
 hot shame- facedness of " they sort " at the facts of mating. 
 
 To Dan it gradually became clear that the intervals in 
 which Madame forgot her pain were undoubtedly becoming 
 longer. He loved his patients when they answered thus 
 to the helm, as a man loves the product of his brain ; that 
 is, with a restful confidence he cannot feel for his fellows 
 as personalities, since these inevitably provoke in him all 
 manner of aches ... of hatred, desire, or disgust. 
 
 Yet he wanted to make sure, and going up to the house 
 one day, decided that the door of Madame's room should 
 be left open. Softly then, in the quiet of the sun-filled 
 hall, he began to play, starting with Debussy, whose 
 " Clair de Lune " bore the listener away into dreamland. 
 In fancy he could see her tired eyes close. 
 
 Unobserved as she thought, Dorothy Rosewarne stole 
 into the room. Except for a passing pulse-beat, the glance 
 
 12* 
 
180 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 of startled eyes, both these timid souls had sought comfort 
 in avoidance of each other. 
 
 Turning on her suddenly as he played, he said : 
 
 " Go up to Madame's room, go up and see her." 
 
 " Dare I ? " she asked. " She may not like it." 
 
 All these weeks, though the girl had haunted the house, 
 not once had she been admitted to Mrs. Peters' room. 
 
 •■' Dare you ? " he sneered. " Do you call yourself a 
 woman ? Don't you know she'll never ask you to come 
 now ? She thinks you're afraid of ugliness and suffering." 
 
 " Ugly ! Madame ugly ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Then you are afraid ? " he laughed. " Anyway, go 
 and see." 
 
 And as she went up the gallery stairs he played mock- 
 ingly the " Funeral March of a Marionette." 
 
 Presently she came hurrying down, colours flying, heart 
 beating with excitement. 
 
 " I believe she's better," she said, " she moved her hands 
 quite differently. And she can turn easily. She did it 
 without thinking " 
 
 The pair stood facing each other ; he had caught the 
 excitement, and with shyness all gone, his eyes flashed 
 back at hers. With a quick turn he ran hi? fingers up and 
 down the keys. 
 
 " You see it, then ? " he asked. " And if you see it, it's 
 true, for you haven't been watching, as I have, a gradual 
 process of change from day to day. That's why I sent you 
 up. But she doesn't know it herself." 
 
 He was sweeping up and down in maddening chords, a 
 very discord of savage triumph that reminded her of their 
 tour of the Italian marbles. She stooped nearer to him. 
 
 " Oh, Dan," she cried, " you've cured her. It's your 
 doing." 
 
 Slowly coming closer as he looked up and held her eyes 
 with his, her breast rose and fell in the full tide of his blood 
 and hers. With one wild crash his music ceased, and 
 holding out his arms, he drew her up against him, hungry 
 lips on hungry lips. Yet as he held her she heard him 
 swearing softly up against her ears. 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 181 
 
 The summer sounds coming in at the open windows, the 
 light on the roses stacked everywhere, the musky scents 
 of the garden, all mingled in a moment's impression, as 
 when the furniture leaps at one in the second before a 
 swoon. Deeper into the current they were carried, till 
 she sprang away with a cry. 
 
 When, without a look behind, she had disappeared, the 
 doctor searched with trembling hands for his pipe. 
 
 " Not half a man, Sam, ain't I ? Ah, you old beggar," 
 said he, under his breath. 
 
 What exactly Madame guessed of all this, no one but 
 Madame knew. Yet, after the girl had left, she lay think- 
 ing, planning, defying, in her own determined fashion. 
 That Dorothy was snared she felt, though how definitely 
 she could not tell. 
 
 " You passionate thing," said she, at sight of the girl's 
 surrender. For to Madame, who had never known these 
 deeper currents, it seemed to herself that she had been 
 playing with a tiger's cub that had suddenly shown the 
 tiger passion. 
 
 " And he ? " 
 
 Here she left the shallows for something more profound 
 than all her childless life had known. When she saw him, 
 tired and sullen, as it seemed, at his own disappointment 
 in not curing her, she wanted to comfort his trouble, but 
 dared not. She wanted now above all things to show her 
 confidence in him, to defy Mrs. Rosewarne, and to re- 
 assure Philip, who had plainly approached her with 
 pity and who apparently relied on Trevan for his own cure. 
 
 But if Dr. Rudd had really failed, had made her worse ? 
 Well, if he had, she would flaunt in the face of them all 
 her trust in him, her love for him. It was Madame's 
 greatest joy to know he could be thrilled by the girl who 
 seemed in some sort an extension of her own personality. 
 
 Not even Mr. Rosewarne guessed why, at this point, Mrs. 
 Peters sent for him on urgent business. Nor did she 
 attempt to enlighten him, when she curtly bade him sell 
 securities to the value of five thousand pounds. She had 
 always ruled autocratically, and now his sole desire was not 
 
1 82 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 to question her purpose, but to sell advantageously. Yet 
 she would not wait ; it must be done at once, since rising 
 or falling markets made no difference to her. For Madame, 
 to whom money had always come like water in a rainy 
 land, had no notion of what a miracle common folks feel 
 it to be when from the hard rock of brokerage a round sum 
 in thousands accrues like a gushing stream of blessing. 
 She had only enough romance to feel that she would prefer 
 it paid in bags of gold, Aladdin fashion. Still, since this 
 was not possible, she got out her cheque-book. 
 
 " That," she said, handing an envelope to the doctor, 
 " is your fee." 
 
 " But," he answered, " I haven't sent in my bill yet." 
 
 " Open it," she nodded. 
 
 When he had done so there was a silence, filled only by 
 the humming of the summer air, the swaying of the tree 
 branches, for she was out to-day on the terrace. 
 
 " Then . . ." he said, " you know you're cured ? Is 
 that it ? " 
 
 " Am I ? " she asked, in surprise. 
 
 " I believe so," he answered ; " didn't you know it ? " 
 
 She was silent, for all the while she knew that, although 
 her mind had not actually formulated the idea, it had long 
 been present subconsciously. But, like other great gifts 
 of this kind, she received the news almost absent- 
 mindedly. 
 
 " I didn't give you that " — she nodded towards the 
 cheque — " for curing me." 
 
 " Then why," he asked, " give it at all ? " 
 
 She was silent, knowing it hard to explain what she had 
 never quite made clear to herself. 
 
 "Is it any good to you ? " she asked, with a smile. 
 " Better than catching fish for Cornish, isn't it ? " 
 
 " I don't know," he said stupidly. 
 
 Somehow, in a way inexplicable to himself, he was 
 ashamed, being, though he knew it not, of the kind that 
 finds its best satisfaction in giving good measure, pressed 
 down and overflowing, in return for every payment in 
 filthy lucre. Yet the shame was swamped in the sense of 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 183 
 
 freedom to follow his whims: Paris sometimes for that 
 mental stimulus he desired, the making of himself a finer 
 instrument, the sense of freedom undoubtedly given by 
 nothing so quickly as by money lightly come ; all this he 
 certainly wanted. Then his prudent family instinct 
 hummed in him. 
 
 " Two hundred a year, at four per cent.," he said, laugh- 
 ing joyously. " If I were Sam Cornish I suppose I should 
 lie abed all morning for the next forty years." 
 
 " Oh, no," she exclaimed, " you'll want to spend a lot 
 on the house-furnishing." 
 
 Standing stock-still in front of her, he knew that the 
 colour flooding beneath his thick, pallid skin was mali- 
 ciously noted by her. 
 
 " Well, isn't it so ? " she asked. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders angrily, feeling like the 
 mouse who first loses sight of the cheese in the sudden 
 springing of the wire in which he is trapped. 
 
 Madame read him easily enough. 
 
 " Yet what else did you suppose ? " she asked. " How 
 else could you win her ? Her father, though most people 
 forget it, is a man of business." 
 
 " But if ... in that sense ... I don't mean to win 
 her ? " he asked. 
 
 And then the storm burst on Madame Felicia's head ; 
 was this middle-class tradition of furniture never to end ? 
 This, that turned marriage into a sort of goose and blanket 
 club? 
 
 Mrs. Peters regarded him quizzically, even put up her 
 lorgnette at him. For the first time she felt, what others 
 had expressed to her before, that all this frenzy in fighting 
 common-sense arrangements meant a prodigious deal of 
 wasted energy. It was, in her view, so much freer to pay a 
 cook than to go into the kitchen yourself. Then she 
 bethought herself that one must, after all, begin at the 
 beginning, and, if the social system is to be shattered, one 
 must start perhaps with the destruction of household gear. 
 Also, there were other ways ... of providing the 
 blankets. 
 
i8 4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " No," she said, pushing the cheque back to him. 
 " Dorothy is one thing, your freedom another. This is 
 for your own freedom, for nothing else. Take the five 
 thousand and play ducks and drakes with it. The child 
 must not go from nest to nest, but from nest to branch, to 
 the open air. But, oh, Dan, be good to her, not harder 
 than you need. And you do care for her, don't you ? " 
 
 As he stood before Madame, swaying to and fro on his 
 feet, as his manner was when driven into a tight corner, 
 she saw the faint flicker across his face for which she had 
 been waiting. 
 
 Madame smiled at her own thoughts after he was gone. 
 Of these two children it was Dan who was now the dearer, 
 and Dan's fate the one she was most concerned with. 
 Madame was quite prepared to let Dorothy find her 
 appointed lot in serving his. 
 
 But Dr. Rudd, walking down Petrockstow High Street 
 cheque in hand, came suddenly blank up against a com- 
 pletely unforeseen obstacle where he had least expected 
 it : that is, in himself. It seemed amazingly reckless, 
 in fact, to trust the story of this huge fee to a small bank 
 whence, once before at least, had emanated a whole 
 flood of gossip. 
 
 Even while the transaction assumed a quite ugly colour 
 in the light of vulgar prejudices, the doctor's gorge rose 
 at the very thought of their daring to interfere with his 
 affairs by so much as an assumption of the place of critic. 
 To crow loudly over the folly of mob morality and then 
 to avoid its judgments was to be convicted of cowardice. 
 He threw up his head, and, with quite uncalled-for severity, 
 requested the cashier to start for him a banking account 
 with . . . This. 
 
 It was not, however, to any doctrine of the Overman 
 that Dr. Rudd appealed for encouragement, but to Sam's 
 class morality. 
 
 " Well," said the latter gleefully, " if you can't carry 
 it off with the young 'uns, you do with the old, and no 
 mistake. When they'm pretty nigh the hour they'll be 
 pushing up the daisy roots, that's your time, seems so." 
 
A CROWNING MERCY 185 
 
 And clapping his thighs he began to caper round the 
 room. When at last he had recovered sufficiently from 
 his hilarity to cope with the idea of medical etiquette, 
 he stared, suddenly sobered. 
 
 " Oh, get out, Dan ! " he exclaimed. " Not take it ! 
 Why, if I had my way, I'd take every penny off her I 
 could get. Tell her to make it twenty thousand quid, 
 not five, the next time her takes up a pen. Her's got the 
 oof to fling about right and left. And why ? What 
 with rents and harbour dues, how much d'you think of 
 they five thousand pounds hayn't been sweated off my old 
 bones and the bones of the other chaps that's like me ? " 
 
 Against the morals of Robin Hood there is no appeal. 
 " Speak 'em fair, and diddle 'em when you can," had 
 been too long the watchword of Sam's morality for him to 
 change it at forty-seven. As a boy the slave of a small 
 shopkeeper, as a lad the cabin-boy of a " rough " trawl- 
 boat, as a man exploited by the fish-buyers, with no 
 better prospect before his children, he found this nothing 
 but good common sense. And if " notional chaps," as 
 he called the men of thought, said different, that was only 
 because " notions " have ruined more good men than 
 drink. What, then, was Dan to do ? 
 
 What he did do was to swell out his chest and walk 
 the quay defiantly, while Sam adopted airs of mystery, 
 with " I could a tale unfold " written in his every glance. 
 
 " There's no fool like an old fool," cried Mrs. Cornish, 
 and henceforth treated Dan with the appreciation shown 
 by simple people towards an inspired idiot. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MERCHANDISE 
 
 " "V/ES, Father," said Mrs. Rosewarne, " she's ill, 
 X though I feel certain it's more than half mental. 
 But what is going on, is more than I can tell you. Yet, I 
 believe her father knows. Not that he's said a word to 
 me, however." 
 
 Father Tyacke and Mrs. Rosewarne, walking up and 
 down in front of Teravel, spoke in discreet undertones, 
 for the windows of the house behind them were wide open. 
 
 " But," continued she, " one strange thing I've noticed : 
 evidently Philip's excited about something. I always 
 know when he's that." 
 
 The priest's face was downcast, his mouth compressed 
 in thought. He was revolving in his mind what he knew 
 and what he suspected. 
 
 "This party to celebrate Madame's recovery . . ." he 
 began, in his sad drawling tones. 
 
 " Oh, most unseemly," exclaimed Mrs. Rosewarne. 
 " What Madame can be dreaming of, I cannot imagine. 
 And to invite everyone in the district, too ! At first I 
 told Dorothy she should not go, but, indeed, she is beyond 
 me. I seem to have lost hold ... on everything." 
 
 She threw out her hands to show them empty of all 
 power. 
 
 Glancing down at her flushed face, the priest realized 
 something of the bitterness she must be feeling during 
 these days of surrender. Father Tyacke, however, though 
 he always loved a penitent better than a just man, felt 
 
 186 
 
MERCHANDISE 187 
 
 quite uncertain whether he had before him a penitent at 
 all. Yet he knew that to active managing minds like Mrs. 
 Rosewarne's the mere call to play a passive part is some- 
 thing very like the Dark Night of the Soul, as contem- 
 platives know it. It produces the arid feeling of hopeless- 
 ness in which all sense of design in life is lost. 
 
 At the end of the terrace and away from the house was 
 a garden seat. Motioning her to it, he sat down by her 
 and shaded his eyes with his hand. Then he began to 
 talk. At first she thought he was speaking of himself, 
 so personal was his tone, and then, but with no sudden 
 start of alarm, she found herself the centre of it all ; 
 herself and her family, her love of ease for them, who 
 were but extensions of herself ; her Paradise of small 
 desires, as he called it. 
 
 The modern spirit, too, was awake in this obscure 
 priest ; he showed plainly how much higher was her 
 husband's ideal of the wider world, how much nobler his 
 thirst to share in that responsibility for other lives which, 
 now the attribute of the common man, was once only 
 within the vision of the rare man. It was by his advice 
 that Dorothy had learnt shorthand and typewriting. 
 
 Scourged by his quiet words, Mrs. Rosewarne's eyes 
 rested on the burning sunshine, on the white butterflies 
 chasing each other across the blue of the sky, on all this 
 warmth and beauty that was just a background to her 
 pain. 
 
 " And you knew all this ? " she asked, when at last he 
 was silent. She wondered what he must have thought 
 of her formal confessions of trumpery offences. She even 
 asked, driven mutinous by pain, why the Catholic Church 
 apparently encourages such pious whitewashing of filthy 
 walls. 
 
 " My knowing ! " he exclaimed, with upraised hands ; 
 " it is my knowing that pains you ? " 
 
 " Not at all," she said bitterly, "it is my own know- 
 ledge of it that I object to. And Philip ? Yes, he, too, 
 knew all along that I was selfishly glad. But, you see, this 
 dimness of his sight came on him so slowly. I remember 
 
1 88 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 his standing with one hand pressed over the left eye, and 
 laughing to see how well he could manage with the other. 
 Why, Father Tyacke, it's perfectly true what I tell you — 
 I hardly realized exactly when he became blind." 
 
 But the priest knew the moment : he remembered the 
 bitter rage of Philip Rosewarne's spirit : it was anger 
 more than fear. And for it Father Tyacke had rebuked 
 him. 
 
 " Did he really know, Father, how I felt about it ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the priest, " he knew. ' Marian,' he said 
 to me, ' has caged her bird this time.' " 
 
 " And," she exclaimed, " he never had a secret from 
 me before. Yet he could go on thinking this of me, and 
 without a word." 
 
 She sat aghast at the actual loneliness in which she 
 had been living. 
 
 " But it was you, my child," said the priest, " you and 
 none other, who put up the dividing barrier. But for sin, 
 we should all be one, knowing each other as we are known." 
 
 " But, Father, would he have gone on, do you think, 
 till it was too late ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said the priest quietly, " I often put 
 to him the wrongfulness of not using the means of cure. 
 But he would say nothing." 
 
 " I am thankful that . . . that things are as they are," 
 sighed Mrs. Rosewarne. 
 
 " To Madame Felicia, then ? " he said curtly, " to her 
 you should be grateful, for, without her, you would have 
 had on your soul the accomplishment of a deadly purpose." 
 
 When she was silent, Father Tyacke sighed ; in moments 
 of despair he would declare that the devil's strongest snares 
 are those that entrap women with women. Yet a lying 
 reconciliation was worse than open enmity. 
 
 " They say," he continued serenely, " he will see as 
 well as ever, though perhaps with glasses, and cataract 
 operations are almost always successful nowadays in the 
 hands of a skilful man. And now," he said rising, " to 
 see about Dorothy, that naughty child." 
 
 Yet for all his wry smile, Father Tyacke's incessant 
 
MERCHANDISE 189 
 
 skirmishes with this recalcitrant soul were something of a 
 satisfaction to him. The old Adam in oneself is rather a 
 cherished guest, even in pious souls. 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne led the way into the house in silence. 
 Nor did she give her daughter any opportunity of refusing 
 to see the priest, but, tapping once on the bedroom door, 
 ushered him in with no delay. 
 
 The Father glanced, sourly enough, at the mingled piety 
 and paganism of the room ; at the holy pictures on the 
 wall contradicted everywhere by mirrors of cunning 
 device. Especially did he glare at the one consisting of 
 movable panels which showed every pose of the head 
 and shoulders. At the moment of its bestowal for a 
 Christmas present, he had protested to the giver, Philip 
 Rosewarne himself. 
 
 " Fudge," said that reckless soul, " fudge, Father ; you 
 surely wouldn't wish that a girl should be the only person 
 not allowed to enjoy her own beauty ? " 
 
 Dorothy lay in bed, her two dark tails of hair cast over 
 the pillows. Through the lace at her neck, Madame's 
 pearls gleamed. Father Tyacke sat down by the head of 
 the bed and laid a hand on hers. 
 
 When he glanced straight in front of him he saw the 
 bed and its occupant clearly reflected in the glass, with 
 every graceful limb suggested beneath the thin satin of 
 the coverlet. It was a swing mirror, too, and, so the 
 Father judged, had been fixed at the precise angle which 
 would reflect the white and red of this Fair Iniquity. 
 
 With all the blood of the Church pulsing indignantly 
 in his veins, he got up, and seizing a homely grey shawl 
 from the foot of the bed, flung it fiercely over the looking- 
 glass. 
 
 " Horrible, horrible," he cried, " horrible, child." 
 
 Stepping back, he surveyed his work, and then, stooping 
 forward again, bent to arrange more thoroughly the 
 obscuring veil. Some tinge of regret he felt that, in these 
 degenerate days, he had not ventured to smash the erring 
 object. He could see himself, in fancy, even now, an 
 avenger with a battle-axe. For she had been lying there, 
 
190 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 revelling pagan-like in every allurement of the flesh, a 
 spider weaving the web that betrays. 
 
 For answer, Dorothy curved her arms above her head, 
 showing, with bright eyes gleaming furiously, all the 
 veined beauty of their white curves. Yet every nerve 
 of her modesty was outraged till her sense of humour 
 conquered and she laughed aloud to find the rebuking 
 thunders of the ancient church reduced to this trivial 
 piping. 
 
 " So," he said, " you're going to dance all night. You've 
 been lying here thinking of it." 
 
 All the while she was ashamed, yet would not have 
 him know it. 
 
 "If," said she bitterly, " if you didn't want me to 
 know . . . things about myself, you should have spoken 
 to Madame Felicia and told her not to tell me. But, 
 indeed, she would never dream of hurting me as you have 
 done. . . ." 
 
 " My modesty," she meant, but would have died rather 
 than confess it. Instead, she drew herself tightly together 
 to resist every attack of his influence. It was always thus 
 with these two ; with perceptions of his own keen enough 
 to trace a feeling to its source, Father Tyacke never could 
 withhold the bludgeon from this tender soul. With Mrs. 
 Rosewarne's cruder middle-age, well covered, too, with a 
 skin of worldliness, it was a different matter. Under his 
 faithful probing she opened her heart, as her daughter 
 would never do. 
 
 To Dorothy, conscious of a force in herself she half 
 dreaded, yet burned, to exercise, the priest then could 
 bring no help, because of the weakness in himself. It is 
 only perfect strength that has enough to lend round to 
 everyone. 
 
 " Never mind me, Father," she said ; " of course I shall 
 dance all night. That's why I'm resting now, just to get 
 ready for it." 
 
 At his groan she rejoiced, knowing that, in a measure, 
 she was paying him back for the horrible moment when 
 he had shown her up as a Messalina. 
 
MERCHANDISE 191 
 
 " Dance, half-naked, in men's arms," he growled, fairly 
 beside himself at this open defiance. 
 
 Furiously she stared at him, and then, with a gesture 
 of contempt, turned over on her side, leaving to his con- 
 templation nothing but an indignant back clad in 
 nainsook. Father Tyacke all but took her by the shoulder 
 to shake her. He remembered her as a disobedient child, 
 and wondered, with the doggedness of vain desire, why 
 he could not think of her as simply as did Mr. Rosewarne, 
 to whom this naughtiness was but a cause of jest. So he 
 waited, standing to watch her, with his big flat feet planted 
 firmly on the ground. 
 
 " Father Tyacke," said Dorothy suddenly. She was 
 bent on setting him to his proper task, the solving ot 
 spiritual riddles. " What's the loneliness of the heart, and 
 what do people want you to do when they ask you to 
 stop it ? " 
 
 Hating herself for this levity, she waited. When he 
 gave the stereotyped reply, she remarked : 
 
 " Ah, well, but that wasn't what I meant. You know 
 how it is when someone you've been friends with, dies. 
 Well, you're horrified for a bit, perhaps, and then you 
 go on again. You eat your breakfast and begin to laugh 
 at something, and then stop because it seems wicked. 
 But you don't really ache with pain and emptiness, as 
 you ought to. And yet someone's gone that you thought 
 you loved. But, as far as you were concerned . . . they 
 were alone, really, all the time they lived. I think there 
 must be people who realize that deep down, who know 
 that they are alone. I don't think I'm one of these . . . 
 because of dad. But even dad wouldn't think of 
 me at all times, if I was dead, not when he was talking 
 of Home Rule, or an eight hours' day, or Russian 
 prisons." 
 
 Father Tyacke watched her in perplexity. 
 
 She laughed tremulously and then said : 
 
 " But, oh, I do wish people wouldn't bother one with 
 these things. It's so much nicer to feel that someone 
 wants nothing of you but . . . what it's so easy to give. 
 
192 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 And," she continued, nodding wickedly at the bedraped 
 mirror, " I think a lot more about myself when it's like 
 that, you know." 
 
 Angrily, like a furious ape, Father Tyacke went up to 
 the mirror and dragged off the shawl. Dorothy lay and 
 laughed, her cheek lying comfortably, not to say coquet- 
 tishly, on her palm. 
 
 " Really, Father," she said pertly, " to know you 
 teaches one more than one would have supposed possible 
 in a priest." 
 
 Father Tyacke descended to the ground floor in a rage, 
 his stumping footsteps clearly audible to Dorothy all 
 along the passage. 
 
 " I can do nothing with her," he said to Mrs. Rosewarne. 
 "^Dorothy's her father's child, wayward, whimsical, and 
 very, very naughty." 
 
 Then his face softening, he held out his hand. 
 
 " We must be patient," he said ; " she has much to 
 suffer. And — will doubtless be a cause of suffering in 
 her turn." 
 
 Going down the hill to his presbytery he prayed, but 
 especially for himself, a blind leader of the blind. For, 
 indeed, the good man was a very humble Christian, and 
 quite as hard on himself as on others. 
 
 Madame Felicia's reception that evening was a triumph, 
 for she had the love, so rare among English people, of 
 the chattering of crowds, the tinkle of laughter and of all 
 that makes a crowded French cafe the best place under 
 the sun in which to forget the solemn silences of the stars 
 and the mystery of loneliness and death. She had so 
 little, too, of romance that she had often bewailed the 
 custom of the bride and bridegroom leaving all the guests 
 in the middle of the marriage gaieties to go to a strange 
 town where there was nothing to do. To Madame, the 
 hour when man and maid are at last left alone was tedious 
 beside the buzzing of excited friends. She possessed, as 
 she liked to tell you, the social sense. 
 
 To-night at the dinner which preceded the reception 
 she drank her champagne when the toasts were called, 
 
MERCHANDISE 193 
 
 and adored the flowers and presents set before her. When 
 the other guests arrived they found her sitting on her 
 Chesterfield at the end of the hall on a sort of platform, 
 with a bank of mauve orchids at her back. She was able 
 now to sweep across the floor in a trailing gown, on high- 
 heeled slippers, and found in the silken rustling, the 
 hammer tapping, the sweetest music her ears had ever 
 heard. Before Madame' s inner gaze hovered the contrast- 
 ing picture of those dreary old women of England who 
 reveal to the world the knotted looseness of their necks, 
 or the fat grossness of their bosoms. Madame knew 
 herself to be a joy, and soaring higher yet, saw herself a 
 forerunner of the human woman yet to be, who shall know 
 how to be beautiful right to the very end. Dr. Rudd 
 inevitably shared her triumph, yet not visibly, for, to 
 the eye of the onlookers, he appeared peculiarly sullen 
 and disgruntled. 
 
 Madame watched him quizzically as he stood at the 
 far end of the hall, while a few couples began to circle 
 round the room. The doctor could not dance, as Madame 
 knew. In fact, in a ballroom he seemed singularly large 
 and awkward. Then Mrs. Peters beckoned to Dorothy, 
 who knelt beside her to listen. 
 
 " Child," said Madame, smoothing the fresh face beside 
 her, " I loved your little gift, but I want a bigger one 
 to-night . . . not for myself, but for somebody else. 
 You know what I mean, don't you ? But you must send 
 the other one away." 
 
 " The other one ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " Oh, yes, the other. I know all about it. Of course 
 I do. I asked him here on purpose. Besides, isn't he 
 my . . . what ? . . . my grand-nephew by marriage ? 
 Of course," she smiled, " by good rights I suppose he 
 shouldn't be here. Yet, why not, after all ? For he's 
 quite a personable fellow." 
 
 Dorothy stood silent in dismay. 
 
 " Can he dance ? the other one I mean," asked Madame 
 sharply. 
 
 " I believe so. Yes," answered Dorothy. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Then go and dance with him. Make him dance with 
 you. I want to see you dance with him." 
 
 No one ever dared to disobey Madame when she spoke 
 in that tone. Nor, in fact, did the girl wish to do so, 
 but slipping down the hall, she came up to Gilbert Carlyon's 
 elbow. In a panic of desperation, for she felt Madame's 
 eyes on her, she made " I dare not ° obey " I would/' 
 and whispered to him : 
 
 " I've no one to dance with me, Gilbert." 
 
 With his arm round her waist she felt herself taken 
 possession of, for he danced well, as a man does who, 
 being practised, knows his own mind. When they whirled 
 past Mrs. Peters' throne, Dorothy had her first experience 
 of bad breeding in the raised lorgnette of that naughty 
 old lady. The girl felt in Gilbert's careful dancing some 
 spice of rustic simplicity and resented it, seeing him for 
 the moment with Madame's eyes. 
 
 At last the atmosphere began to tell on them both, the 
 invitation of the violins, the summer night outside, the 
 youth and fineness of their bodies : ludicrously enough 
 she realized with a spasm of happiness that, after all, he 
 went to a good tailor. Nor did the gloss of his shirt- 
 front, the fine surface of his dress clothes go unnoticed. 
 She re-echoed Madame's own word " personable " for 
 him, and compared him with the sullen cubbishness of 
 Dr. Rudd, who had scarcely risen even to honour the 
 toast of Madame's health. 
 
 As the pair stood resting for a moment, Dorothy heard 
 behind her in a man's voice : 
 
 " Queer thing, isn't it, how these doting old women 
 always take to the young chaps. Wouldn't look at you, 
 or me, old boy, would they ? " 
 
 Half turning her head, Dorothy was aware of two 
 elderly men behind her in the corner. Their bald heads 
 and weather-beaten faces pointed the appositeness of 
 their complaints. 
 
 " Feathered his nest well, hasn't he, this Rudd, and 
 now behaves like a boor ? Feels his position, should you 
 say, eh ? How much was it, though, that he got ? " 
 
MERCHANDISE 195 
 
 " Five thousand," said the other, "or so gossip says, 
 but I never believe what I'm told, and no more than half 
 of what I see. Unscrupulous fellow, though, whatever 
 the exact amount, and giving himself away finely to-night. 
 Who is he, anyway ? " 
 
 The two moved away, and Dorothy cried to her partner, 
 who must also have heard, " Come away. I've had 
 enough. I can't dance any more." 
 
 Outside among the trees they both drew a long breath 
 of relief. 
 
 " What did they mean ? " asked the girl ; " five thousand, 
 did Madame give that ... to Dr. Rudd ? Surely, surely, 
 it can't be true ? " 
 
 Then he told her quietly what was believed in Petrock- 
 stow of the " bargain," as it was freely called. 
 
 "But I don't understand," she cried. "Bargain? 
 What bargain ? It was a fee for curing her, I suppose." 
 
 " Surely . . ." he began and then stopped. It was 
 certainly not his part to aggravate the evil of appearances. 
 
 " A bargain ! " she exclaimed, " but that means buying 
 something." 
 
 She was groping among motives, feeling herself involved, 
 yet scarcely knowing how. 
 
 Gilbert watched her closely, longing to dam back the 
 current of her thoughts, yet not seeing how it could be 
 done. Quick-witted for once, he knew he must not touch 
 her, and miserably realized the powerlessness of his mind 
 to stop the feverish activity of hers. Yet he knew 
 that in a moment she must inevitably chance on some 
 idea perhaps even uglier than the actual fact. For fact 
 he believed it to be. Sam Cornish's prudence never 
 withstood a " night of it," and of these there had been 
 several since the original transaction of the five thousand. 
 
 " It's simpler than you think," said Gilbert, " be sure 
 of that." This was always his predominant feeling about 
 any kink in the human tangle. 
 
 But she never heard him, since she had struck upon 
 the idea he would fain have protected her from, had he 
 known how. For no one ever hears such a story as Steve 
 
 13* 
 
196 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Carlyon's and remains entirely uninfluenced by it. That 
 the old Madame had driven a bargain with Dr. Rudd, and 
 that Dorothy was concerned in it, Gilbert never doubted 
 for a moment. 
 
 The girl's reading was somewhat different : the doctor, 
 thought she, had been bought by Madame because it 
 was the only way in which he could be forced to feign 
 adoration of a girl who could not win it for herself. It 
 seemed a stiff price t . pay for a deal in sentiment, yet 
 she knew herself cheapened, since its stiffness was the 
 measure of her own failure to charm. 
 
 " Gilbert," she cried, " they've played with me . . . 
 laughed at me. I know now what you meant . . . once. 
 For I've been alone really, like you." 
 
 For to Mrs. Peters, who had thought to make her happy 
 with a stuffed image paid for over the counter, she had 
 always been a stranger. No broody hen could have 
 seemed more foolish over a nest-egg than she, who had 
 taken a puppet for a creature of flesh and blood. 
 
 Gilbert stood looking down at her with a frown ; 
 evidently she was not in a state to be reminded that he, 
 at any rate, had sought admission to the unapproachable 
 citadel of her heart. Yet it was as if some magic still 
 rendered him invisible to her. 
 
 Then in a moment the world changed for him, when 
 she turned to him. 
 
 " And you," she said, seeking the relief of a misery 
 shared in common ; "is there anyone you can turn to . . . 
 who thinks the thoughts you do, who is . . . made like 
 you ? " 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders in the effort to explain, 
 but ultimately these things are inexpressible. 
 
 " No one," he answered, " but . . . perhaps one old 
 woman." 
 
 He had never thought of this answer before, but some- 
 thing drew it from him now, though half reluctantly. 
 Strange, indeed, the chance encounters of life, but stranger 
 far the hidden kinships that know no similitude of class, 
 or age, or fortune. 
 
MERCHANDISE 197 
 
 But already Dorothy's flickering interest had died away. 
 
 " Gilbert," she exclaimed, " come back with me to 
 Madame Felicia and say you're engaged to me. Say we've 
 been engaged for months if you like, or only to-night. 
 It's all one. But we're engaged." 
 
 Seizing his hand she tried like a child to pull him towards 
 the house, but he stood rooted to the ground, his mind 
 in its turn seeking eagerly for the clue. That she felt 
 despised and derided, he knew : that she called on him 
 to act as a shield was evident. That she cared no more 
 about the feelings of the shield than if it were a steel one, 
 he also realized. 
 
 " No," he said stubbornly, " I'll not do that." 
 
 " Not when I say we are ? " she cried, stamping her 
 foot. " Oh, Gilbert, don't be so dull. If I say a thing 
 is so, it is, and if I say it isn't, well, then, it isn't." 
 
 Puzzling his wits over this Short Duty of man, Gilbert 
 stared at her. Then, seizing both his hands, she shook 
 him, making just as much impression on him as might 
 have been expected. His temper was rising, for it is one 
 thing to burn incense and quite another to be treated by 
 the divinity as a convenience. An engagement ... to 
 spite Madame and punish Dr. Rudd . . . yielded no 
 manner of delight to him, who wanted something very 
 different. 
 
 " You'll not ? " she asked. 
 
 " No. Not to-night. Though, if you're still in the 
 same mind when you're quieter, of course I'll think 
 about it." 
 
 Her angry eyes saw everything in a vibrating mist of 
 passion. 
 
 " Yes," she said bitterly, " it would be awkward for a 
 ruse to turn into a handcuff. You're quite right." 
 
 The break in her voice softened his resolution. 
 
 " Dorothy, you didn't mean it, did you ? " 
 
 " Should I have burnt my boats like this, if I didn't ? " 
 she asked over her shoulder, as he followed her down the 
 path to the house. In the light from the windows night- 
 moths hovered over the flowers. 
 
198 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Oh, Gilbert," she exclaimed again, " help me, if it 
 is but make-believe. Dance with me, then ! Only you. 
 I want to show that I don't care a flip for one of them. 
 Don't let anyone touch me. Dance all the time with 
 me." 
 
 To that there could be but one answer, for Gilbert, 
 whose sense convicted him of stockish stupidity in this 
 maze of feminine logic, was thankful only to feel some- 
 thing as solid as a polished dance-floor beneath his feet. 
 
 Madame, in a rage, sent at last a cold and angry envoy 
 to her. Seeing Dr. Rudd in the doorway of the con- 
 servatory where she sat for the moment alone, Dorothy 
 leant back indolently, not to say insolently. And not 
 till he came unescapably within her line of vision did 
 she look at him. In such moods women speak slowly 
 and very clearly, for the smile on his lips seemed to con- 
 firm what she suspected : it was, whatever its inner 
 meaning, an ugly sneer. 
 
 " I am sent," he said gravely, " to say that Madame 
 wishes to speak to you." 
 
 " I am afraid I cannot come," she answered gravely. 
 
 " She will scarcely like that for an answer," he said, 
 smiling more broadly. " Come along, don't be silly. I 
 don't know anything about drawing-room ethics, but it 
 strikes me you've offended all the laws of the place." 
 
 " And are those laws so much higher than others ? " 
 she asked ; " the others, that old-fashioned people call 
 those of honour ? " 
 
 He stood puzzled. 
 
 " What on earth's got to you, then ? " he asked, looking 
 at her with a puzzled frown. " Laws, is it, that you're 
 worrying about ? Well, I don't take much truck in 'em, 
 but I thought that a well-brought-up young lady would, 
 of course." 
 
 He yawned, honestly tired it seemed, and his non- 
 chalance offended more than his unscrupulousness. 
 
 " Coming ? " he asked, as she turned her back on him 
 and stood to inspect a bank of geraniums. 
 
 " No," she said curtly. 
 
MERCHANDISE 199 
 
 " Well," he flashed angrily, " I can't make you come, 
 of course. This isn't ... a pig-market." 
 
 He waited a moment after this unpardonable sally, and 
 then, seeing no relaxing in stiffened pose, shrugged his 
 shoulders elaborately, and departed. 
 
 Gilbert reaped the harvest of this scene in a passionate 
 sort of gratitude from the girl that could not fail to exalt 
 him to the seventh heaven. 
 
 " Drive me home," she said at last, " will you, if I 
 slip upstairs and get a cloak ? You've got the dog-cart, 
 haven't you ? " 
 
 It was the wildest defiance of Madame's hospitality, 
 of course, for Dorothy was expected to sleep at Denzell, 
 but to bear with what Madame would say after the guests 
 had gone was impossible. Finding Mrs. Peters' maid, 
 she left a note with her, and running down the courtyard 
 to the outer gate, found Gilbert with the dog-cart at the 
 door. 
 
 They drove silently out of the dark town, both hearts 
 being too full for talk. But when, dropping his left hand 
 on hers, he gave her a consolatory shake, she smiled con- 
 fidently up at him. Of all poor Gilbert's chance-flung 
 lollipops this was perhaps the sweetest. 
 
 The sighing winds of the uplands, the quiet of the 
 sleeping land bathed in the dreamy light of a June night, 
 while they calmed her, made her ashamed of the maze 
 of passion through which she had just passed. Then, 
 when the mare started and shied and Gilbert pulled her 
 up with a firm hand, she glanced up at the strength of his 
 compressed lips, and wondered, almost for the first time, 
 what his judgment of her really was. 
 
 But he was not inclined to judge, being absorbed instead 
 in a Pisgah sight of the days to be. His thoughts, like 
 those of most men who wait on Nature, were long thoughts, 
 dealing with the future, with promise and fulfilment. 
 The successful founder of a family to whom all the parish 
 should look up ; so he saw himself. From the plate on 
 the sideboard to the good horses in the stable, everything 
 was to be perfect of its kind : with, of course, himself 
 
200 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 and herself as the corner-stone. He was an ambitious 
 man and knew it. And at Lanvean everything, from 
 feeding pen to reaping machine, would be of the newest 
 make. Of full barns and overflowing garners his dream 
 saw no lack. When his father's rule was over there 
 would be no slates loose on the stables at Lanvean : that 
 put it all in a phrase. Truth to tell, too, he wanted to 
 forget to-night's unseemly fret and fever. Dorothy 
 listened dreamily, seeing before her the ugly face of Dr. 
 Rudd, till at last some sense of her companion's words 
 reached home. 
 
 " But," she said, in such amazement as was possible to 
 her dazed senses, " I thought you would not be at Lan- 
 vean, that you gave it up ? " 
 
 In full career he stopped, finding it hard to explain 
 how, at the first touch of alien hands on his estate, every 
 instinct of ownership had sprung to life. 
 
 " I don't believe," he said musingly, " I should ever 
 really have given up Lanvean ; no, not to the Czar of all 
 the Russias. But I knew it when . . . when Steve 
 brought home his wife. / couldn't see her there, you 
 know." 
 
 " But why, then, did you ever work as you've done ? 
 Oh, Gilbert, have you given it all up ? " 
 
 He nodded, his white teeth flashing in joyous self- 
 mockery, as he recalled the berserk rage in which he 
 had torn his weary books into atoms of paper and boards. 
 
 " But, oh, Gilbert, what will mother say ? You know 
 she built so on all that." 
 
 He laughed again, could have shouted aloud at joy of 
 the freedom within him. 
 
 " Wait till she sees Lanvean, really sees it, and knows 
 what I can give you." 
 
 But all the while he snapped his finger gaily at thought 
 of Mrs. Rosewarne's feeble barriers. Mrs. Rosewarne 
 made no manner of difference to him now. And ignorant 
 of how Dorothy sat beside him, feeling as though her 
 house of cards was toppling in ruin, he chattered buoyantly 
 of his holocaust of Maths, French, Natural Science : all 
 
MERCHANDISE 201 
 
 the weary, dreary rubbish that, in the full tide of his man- 
 hood, had degraded him with schoolboy tasks. 
 
 " Mother," said Dorothy slowly, " was not really think- 
 ing of Lanvean at all, but of me on the other side of the 
 world." 
 
 This, again, she had never before confessed to herself, 
 but this truth, like Gilbert's, had been shaken from her 
 by the fever of the night's events. 
 
 But Gilbert, in his turn, paid no attention at her : 
 he was wondering why he found it impossible to explain 
 how it was that the mere sight of a fifth-rate little actress 
 had shown him the folly of his pretensions. Yet this was 
 so. Not for all the success in the world ; no, not even to 
 win Dorothy Rosewarne, would he be so disloyal to Lan- 
 vean as to step aside and make that woman mistress there. 
 Steve had been another pair of shoes altogether, for Steve, 
 rip as he might be, was yet familiar, and, above all, blood 
 of his blood. 
 
 It was drawing towards the dawn by now and the stars 
 were paling before the faint light that was perceptible 
 rather as an emanation from the earth itself than as an 
 influence from above. Slowly they became aware of it 
 by the more familiar outlines assumed by trees and hedges. 
 A cold wind moved restlessly as though the giant sleeper, 
 earth, were near to her awakening. 
 
 " Oh," cried Dorothy, her heart sore now, like flesh 
 that has been scalded by hot air, " look, Gilbert, the 
 dawn's coming. And all the dead people of long ago 
 who for thousands of years saw this, did they fret and 
 fume, and grow tired like you and me?" 
 
 The sea that all the night had been lying along the 
 horizon like a grey cloud was slowly turning to silver. 
 
 The girl shivered. 
 
 " I am afraid," she said. " We are so small . . . and 
 this seems so great." 
 
 The sadness of night that slowly yields to the strong 
 touch of day, the dim, unending vista of nights so yield- 
 ing, the mere fatigue of tired eyes that have known no 
 oblivion between light and light, was upon her now. Then, 
 
202 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 at the first sight of the tree-clad hills between which 
 Mawgan lies, a thought stabbed her through and through. 
 All this time she had forgotten that this was the day on 
 which her father's eyes were to be operated on. 
 
 Yet Dr. Rudd had not forgotten. Suddenly it flashed 
 upon her why he had left early from the party. It was, 
 or so she imagined, that he might get some rest before 
 the day's work. Beside this, all her paltry passions 
 withered before the frost -fingers of reality. 
 
 When Gilbert left her at the door of Teravel, they 
 parted with a hand-clasp. For a moment she stood 
 listening to the beat of his horse's hoofs on the road, 
 feeling somehow as though when they met again all 
 would be changed. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FIAT LUX 
 
 FOR Dorothy the memory of that morning was after- 
 wards inextricably mingled with the crying of the 
 sea-gulls over the house. Though this was by far the 
 commonest sound ever heard at Teravel, it somehow filled 
 the background of this day in some special sense : the 
 sea-gulls and the black-haired Irish nurse. 
 
 Between cases Nurse O'Connor was the very spit of 
 Meredith's Irishman, " a barrow trolling a load of griev- 
 ances," but when on duty the other side of her came out. 
 For, being made for emergencies, she was essentially the 
 pilot who comes aboard to run a vessel through a tricky 
 course. Only on the dead level had she time to think of 
 herself, which was fatal. By the side of Mrs. Rosewarne 
 she appeared a mere cock-boat, yet already, after only 
 twenty-four hours in the house, it was the cock-boat that 
 turned the galleon. 
 
 In Nurse O'Connor's view it was the two women who, 
 high-strained and nervous, were the trouble in this case. 
 Therefore, sitting at her breakfast and spearing rasp- 
 berries with a busy fork all the while, she let daylight into 
 their minds in a judicious trickle of information. Doctors, 
 thought she, have been too silent and left these anXious 
 souls free for all sorts of fancies. 
 
 By no means the usual kind of nurse, Miss O'Connor 
 cast no devout glances on the officiating doctor, as though 
 he were the priest and she the server. The first remark 
 
 203 
 
2o 4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 she made on coming into the house lifted a weight from 
 Mrs. Rosewarne's mind. 
 
 " Your husband's never been really in the dark," she 
 said, " not the black darkness of utter night, you know. 
 He's always been able to distinguish shadow from light. 
 Haven't you noticed he can tell where the lamp is ? " 
 
 To this firm woman Mrs. Rosewarne bowed : she had 
 strangely lost confidence in her own handling of things 
 since this last surrender of her will. 
 
 " It's only a primary cataract," said Nurse O'Connor, 
 " with no complications. They say in the books that 
 five per cent, of this kind of operation fail, but I've never 
 seen one where it didn't do something to help." 
 
 The confident way in which she ate her raspberries 
 breathed fresh strength into mother and daughter, who, 
 however, could do nothing but crumble toast with trembling 
 fingers. Blithe she was, this Irishwoman, with quick, 
 bird-like movements. She watched people's faces when 
 they spoke, head bent sideways like an inquisitive robin. 
 It gave her an air of eager affection that was as pleasant 
 as her Irish eyes. 
 
 " So much depends on the patient in this kind of busi- 
 ness," she chirped. " And Mr. Rosewarne's splendid ; 
 so calm and steady. Pain ? Oh, no. Nothing to speak 
 of. Cocaine injections." 
 
 When Mrs. Rosewarne had gone upstairs, Janie O'Connor 
 stepped across softly to the girl in the window and put 
 an arm round her. She was, perhaps, a little effusive, 
 being of the sort that tucks one up in bed with Benger 
 and brandy on the smallest provocation. 
 
 " Come up," she said gently, " and help me get the 
 room ready." 
 
 Being as tactful as keen, she realized that Dorothy 
 wanted to know things. Thus it was a vast relief to an 
 overwrought fancy to be allowed to help carry the table 
 alongside the bed in the west room, to see how pillow cover 
 and head wrappings were sterilized, even to slip on the 
 doctor's mouth mask. For Dorothy skipped cheerfully 
 about as long as there was something to do besides brood. 
 
FIAT LUX 205 
 
 " Mr. Rosewarne stretched out here," said Nurse 
 O'Connor, with directing hand, " Dr. Rudd at the head, 
 behind the patient ; he operates, you know. Dr. Trevan 
 by the right side, that's the eye they'll do first. I'm at 
 the bottom at first, and then flying about. And in ten 
 days one eye'll be done. The second you won't need 
 to worry about. If all goes well with this one, so 'twill 
 be with that. He'll have to lie still, very quiet, for twenty- 
 four hours, but not on his right side. Now we've done 
 everything here . . . till they come." 
 
 She ran over the list on her fingers, glancing round 
 the bare room stripped of its hangings. He was to be 
 carried from his own room to this for the sake of the light. 
 
 " And now," said Nurse O'Connor, " I've something 
 else for you to do." 
 
 Coming across to the girl she whispered a word or two. 
 Nurse O'Connor was a Catholic and in full possession of 
 that gift of the Catholic Irish of being at home in all border 
 regions where sea meets land or this world the next. And 
 although it was no question at Teravel of life and death, 
 yet in this battle of light against darkness she felt it 
 well to have all the powers on the side of light. Besides, 
 she wanted to get rid of at least one of the " lapwings," 
 as she called these two women. 
 
 Tucked away in a corner of the landing, Dorothy watched 
 the doctors pass into the operating-room, Dr. Trevan 
 leading the way. Behind him Dan, in his working overall, 
 seemed like a sacrificial victim following the brown- 
 faced, tough old fellow with the carbuncled nose. For 
 Dan was quiet and even downcast. While Trevan babbled, 
 the man and the girl behind exchanged a long glance, 
 keen and steady from him : steel-true, she would have 
 sworn it as, in mind, she swayed toward him with out- 
 stretched, imploring hands. The trim nurse watched 
 them from the doorway. When the glances fell, she 
 drew a long breath. 
 
 " The high-strung little creature," said she to herself ; 
 " rise, knight of the speculum ! " cried she, with a smiling 
 glance at the instrument table. 
 
206 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 For in that final unlocking of their eyes there was 
 certainly some suggestion of the giving of an accolade. 
 Afterwards Nurse O'Connor even found time to throw a 
 glance through the window at the child speeding down 
 to the chapel on the errand she herself had suggested. 
 
 To Janie O'Connor the power of the altar was just 
 leverage from the spiritual side ; in this matter of giving 
 sight to the blind she mainly relied on the extraction of 
 the lens. None the less more power to the surgeon's 
 elbow, or rather delicacy to his wrist, could be given only 
 by those powers beyond. Being a very practical woman, 
 she neglected nothing, from sterilization to prayer. 
 Besides, by this means she got rid of one of the 'I hornets ; " 
 when she was in contact with the wife it was " hornet ; " 
 to the daughter alone was assigned the gentle name of 
 " lapwing." For by now there had been a passage-at- 
 arms with Mrs. Rosewarne. 
 
 To Dorothy, tremulously genuflecting in the chapel, 
 the rich Flemish colouring of the Descent from the Cross 
 seemed to fill the sunny air with heat and blazing light, 
 as though it had opened a door into a fiery oven. She 
 waited in a dream, trying to reach out to the Something 
 beyond the depths of life. Yet it was all as flat as though 
 the starry vistas had vanished to give place to the tin- 
 plate rotundity of a dish-cover. She could neither pray 
 nor think. Then a new torture began ; even with a 
 form of words on her lips, her mind could figure nothing 
 but the things being done to her father. The cutting of 
 the eyelashes, the injections of cocaine for ten minutes, 
 the insertion of the speculum, a visual picture of the 
 incision in the cornea, the cutting of the iris, the expression 
 of the lens, the final toilet in spray of antiseptics ; in her 
 absorption she kept her inner eye fixed on the plates she 
 had found long ago in a medical work of her father's. 
 From this she awoke with a start of dismay, as though in 
 sleep she had recalled a duty left undone. Next she 
 forgot her own wickedness in the horror which it caused 
 her to realize that her father must be following every step 
 of the process, even under the cocaine. 
 
FIAT LUX 207 
 
 Crossing herself with a sense of treachery, she went 
 out into the sunshine, feeling as though the Divine help 
 were a shower-bath she had neglected to pull. Through 
 the window of the presbytery she could see Father Tyacke 
 at his breviary. Keeping her head low, lest he should 
 look up and see her, she scudded down the elm avenue and 
 away. 
 
 At last the gate in the woods closed behind her, and 
 she could fling herself down among the bracken. For 
 the sleep of utter weariness was flooding her in waves. 
 So she lay, head on outstretched arm, letting the comfort 
 of the place soak into her senses. The swaying pine 
 branches fanned her burning face ; deep below the valley 
 slopes the blue of the sky was reflected in the river pools. 
 The hot air danced before her eyes and gnats droned 
 shrill and dreamy in the sun-fire. 
 
 She awoke to the loud clanging of the gate and the 
 sound of someone sweeping through the bracken. At 
 the sight of Dr. Rudd she started up, like a hare caught 
 in her form and facing the hunt. It was the skyblue of 
 her frock among the bracken that had caught his eye. 
 He answered her first stammering question. 
 
 " Yes, yes," he said, " I believe it's all right. No 
 haemorrhage, nothing unpromising in any way." 
 
 Seeing her tremble, he made her sit. 
 
 * Oh, you women ! " he exclaimed ; " didn't sleep last 
 night, did you ? " 
 
 Suddenly the thought of last night ... so long ago 
 . . . swept over her. She burnt shamefacedly before 
 him while his eyes twinkled. 
 
 But he said nothing of all that ; only, being warned by 
 Janie O'Connor, spoke quietly of what was to be expected 
 during the next few days, of the first dressing of the eye 
 twenty-four hours later. For two months Mr. Rosewarne 
 would be in plain smoked glasses and so unable to read, 
 but he would see . . . this, the glorious dappling of 
 green and gold. 
 
 " You must be so happy," she sighed, calmer now, " to 
 be able to give all this back ... to anyone." 
 
208 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 He lay still at her feet, musing on the anxieties of the 
 days still to come. Then with a quick sigh he swept it 
 all away. 
 
 " Why the deuce," said he, " were you so cross last 
 night ? " 
 
 But at this rude touch her self-control broke down 
 completely. It was indeed shaken to pieces by the 
 terrors of the day and still more by the reaction of this 
 great hope. She flung it all at him in a maze of words ; 
 the bargain driven by Madame, the sum paid down, 
 herself being the thing thus shamelessly laid on the 
 counter for sale. 
 
 He watched her quietly with level glance. 
 
 " So that's it, is it ? Wonder what Petrockstow thinks 
 of it, for that's your private interpretation, of course." 
 
 The next moment she felt herself seized, caught to his 
 arms in a rage of possession. 
 
 In his grasp she sensed the rude strength of him, and 
 figured to herself the limbs of the worker who wrestles 
 with the earth and the sea for his food. He had hauled 
 boats and nets, had catted the anchor, and known what 
 it was to " down sails " in half a gale of wind. The 
 subdued follower of old Trevan was gone and she was 
 being tumbled by the roughness of the earth and air. 
 
 Holding her fast, he bent his head to hers and whispered : 
 
 " And is this . . . this . . . this bought and paid for, 
 then ? Oh, you little fool ! My God, if you're right, 
 what an actor I must be. 
 
 " Money, money, money," he laughed. " Five thousand 
 golden sovereigns. But not to be spent on you, my 
 lady. No, no, don't you suppose it. It's to be spent on 
 my own freedom. 'Tis true Madame talked piffle about 
 housekeeping. But what's that to me ? For I must be 
 free . . . free . . . free, and what's five thousand for 
 that ? It's a drop in the bucket to what I could spend. 
 And not a stiver of it will go to make your nest soft. No, 
 my lady, don't you believe it." 
 
 Breathless at this torrent of jubilation, of blatant self- 
 assertion, Dorothy forgot to be shamefaced. She felt 
 
FIAT LUX 209 
 
 caught up and whirled aloft by a force as irresistible as 
 it was apparently lawless. 
 
 He enlarged on his theme ; the woman he wanted 
 must expect nothing from him. She must accept hard- 
 ship and look for no padding to be supplied by him. 
 Knowing the taste of the rind of things, she will sell 
 herself for no shelter, no provender. Nor would there 
 be babble of love on his lips. No such stuffy notion 
 will he even glance at. It's of the bourgeoisie, an 
 unspeakable creation of red flannel and domestic slavery. 
 
 Then, laughing aloud in his rapture of defiance, he 
 shook her up further, a berserk rage upon him to have 
 done with the veils of illusion which Mrs. Rosewarne must 
 have thrown round her girl-child. 
 
 He spoke of his " comrade " in Paris, a singer, and 
 not so bad a one, either. A girl, too, of the devil's own 
 beauty, but with a temper hot from the same mint, and 
 so gone, years ago, into the limbo of things untraced, like 
 so much else of his student life. 
 
 Suddenly he found himself standing alone and measur- 
 ing with his eyes the space between his excited self and 
 the Aunt Sally of his verbal assaults. 
 
 " What I " he cried, " angry, are you ? Oh, take it, 
 or leave it. I'll have no concealments, come to you with 
 no shams. But I haven't thought of her for years." 
 
 " Not till to-day," said the girl's thought bitterly, 
 " for you see her by the side of me." 
 
 But that was for the depths of her own heart. Aloud, 
 she put to him a simpler question. 
 
 " And," she said, white and sick at the horror of the 
 thing thus bandied between them, "in a few years I 
 should go, too, turned away like your beauty of the 
 devil ? " 
 
 " By no means, my dear," said he, calmly paternal, 
 " for she wasn't the mother of any child of mine. That's 
 the only difference I see in these affairs. Besides, there 
 wasn't any turning away at all. She went because she 
 wanted to and I saw her no more." 
 
 While he rioted in violence, she^mused, being on the 
 
 14 
 
210 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 horns of a dilemma ; was he heaping her with insults or 
 showing her the respect due to a woman who can afford 
 to face the truth ? She could not tell. 
 
 But once more he had taken to flight ; rising on the 
 wings of self -adulation, he pictured to himself his own 
 mastery, with life to wield like a tool, to use as he would, 
 herself but a grain of corn beaten by the flail of his power. 
 Breathless, she followed, and when he had, so to speak, 
 brought his dream to its hangar, they both suddenly laid 
 aside the wings of Icarus and ascended the hill in gloomy 
 silence. Naturally, each was very tired. 
 
 To Mr. Rosewarne a few days later she hinted at the 
 imbroglio, but, missing Dr. Dan's power of flight, could 
 not tell him more than that it appeared they were to marry. 
 
 "■ Marriage by capture," sighed the invalid, and covered 
 up the sigh with a jest, as he lay with his bandaged face 
 turned in the direction of her voice. 
 
 " Rochester was a fool to this one," said he. 
 
 Whatever he may have guessed, he was told nothing 
 of the " comrade " with the devil's own beauty. Then 
 Madame Felicia, coming in to see him at this juncture, 
 was the second outsider to hear the news. The first, of 
 course, had been Father Tyacke, who, mule-like, set his 
 feet firmly before the barrier of creed. 
 
 To Madame's mind, although she clapped her hands 
 in elation at her skill, the child was a thought too down- 
 cast for a happy bride-to-be. But then Father Tyacke, 
 with his mulishness, was enough to account for that, 
 the bride being something of a devote. The priest even 
 refused to contemplate the idea, held before him like a 
 carrot in front of a donkey, of the possibility of making 
 a convert out of a mocker. 
 
 " Horrible ! horrible ! " said he, " this unhallowed 
 union." 
 
 Yet granted certain concessions, he could not but 
 agree that such a contract would be legal enough. And 
 Dr. Rudd was no haggler in this respect. But, remember- 
 ing his dictum as to the gibberish of ceremonies, Madame 
 Felicia felt a trifle guilty. Then she plucked up spirit 
 
FIAT LUX 211 
 
 to support Mr. Rosewarne, whose simple position was 
 that the child must not be thwarted. 
 
 Finally Trevan, instigated thereto by Nurse O'Connor, 
 forbade Mrs. Rosewarne to mention the subject to the 
 patient, threatening suppuration and iritis galore. He 
 bristled, in fact, with terms of horrible import, and used 
 them like invocations to summon devils. 
 
 " Such a clamjamphrie," exclaimed he, " when the man 
 ought to be kept quiet. Let the little devil marry a 
 monkey, if she will, and be damned to her." 
 
 At last it was Madame Felicia herself who tried to 
 introduce some suavity into this hurly-burly. 
 
 " Man for man, Marian," she said to Mrs. Rosewarne, 
 " you'd prefer Dr. Dan, if you were a girl. He's like an 
 electric eel, not a dumpling. But as for the young 
 husbandman ..." she flung up her hands ..." my 
 dear, you'd know, if you were his wife, exactly what he'd 
 be saying every year you presented him with a new baby, 
 and what he'd be thinking every year when you didn't." 
 
 After all, Mrs. Rosewarne was not as unhappy in this 
 affair as she had expected to be, for the old fellowship 
 between father and daughter was changed. And none 
 knew this better than Mrs. Rosewarne with her lynx eyes. 
 
 " Passion," said she, " passion and nothing more. And 
 passion eats from the trough with no other sentiment." 
 
 For in the seclusion of her own mind, Mrs. Rosewarne 
 allowed herself, at moments of stress, to use a vulgarism. 
 As she would smilingly confess, her husband's frankness 
 was catching. 
 
 To Dorothy Madame Felicia had long ago whispered 
 forgiveness for the crude adventures of the party-night. 
 
 " I should never have forgiven you," said she proudly, 
 " for putting up with the shoddy." 
 
 " Shoddy ? " asked the girl, with eyebrows raised. It 
 seemed a word very inapplicable to the Master (to be) 
 of Lanvean. 
 
 " Well, homespun, then," amended Madame, with a 
 shrug, f A husband should be a thing that thrills you, 
 not a thing to be put up with. And you couldn't possibly 
 
 J4* 
 
212 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 be thrilled by that excellent man because of his acres 
 and his virtues. As well be satisfied with tinned salmon 
 instead of fresh because there's mayonnaise and cucumber 
 on it." 
 
 Truth to tell, Madame did not quite realize the doctor's 
 style of thrilling. She fancied he kept his more bombastic 
 images for the maturer citizens of a naughty world. For 
 as with her father, so with the Dresden-china lady whom 
 everyone combined to shelter from the winds of conflict, 
 Dorothy never breathed a word of the Paris " comrade," 
 though to her that lively lady of dream was, of course, a 
 perpetual death's-head among the roses. 
 
 Lost as she was in a greater fear, Mrs. Rosewarne scarcely 
 realized the surrender of her position with regard to 
 Carlyon. For what were her daughter's suitors to her, 
 now that the moment was steadily drawing near when her 
 husband would see ? To her, white hair and " lines " 
 had always been terrible things, yet even now it soothed 
 the worst heart-pangs to know that the dyer's art can con- 
 trive to catch the loveliest shades of violet in the sweet- 
 pea. Dorothy it was who finished the transformation by 
 piling her mother's white hair in a knot at the nape of the 
 neck, and smoothing back the whole in two winged tresses 
 over the forehead. 
 
 " I'm an old woman," she cried, trembling and clinging 
 to the girl. 
 
 Stooping forward quietly over the patient one evening, 
 Dr. Rudd unfastened the last covering from the eyes. 
 The room itself was full of shadows, but through the 
 window opposite Mr. Rosewarne' s chair, he could see the 
 level light shining on the orchard at the side of the house. 
 
 Under the trees, where already the first ripening apples 
 hung, a group of ruddy sheep lay placidly in the grass. 
 White hens strolling on the sunburnt turf ambled after 
 pleasant morsels, and the wind stirred the willow hedge 
 into ripples of white and grey. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne started, gave a short sigh, and then 
 exclaimed in a voice that made his wife move to his side : 
 
 " How beautiful ! how beautiful ! " 
 
FIAT LUX 213 
 
 To the others, too, who stood behind him, there was 
 something in the homely scene that spoke as radiantly of 
 beauty as though they looked upon a mountain range. 
 
 " It's like a shutter drawn back to show a picture," he 
 said musingly, M and the young apple trees are pale green, 
 paler than the others. And the fields beyond are tawny 
 yellow, with tangled brambles under the dark of the oak- 
 leaves. And the horse in the field has four white feet, I 
 think." 
 
 He laughed like a child, and, turning to his wife, put his 
 arm round her. 
 
 " Ah, Marian, how good a thing is the light and beau- 
 tiful to behold." 
 
 " Philip, Philip," she cried, " how glad I am ! How 
 glad ! You know it, don't you ? " 
 
 He was searching her all over : " Colour, colour, colour I " 
 he exclaimed, his eyes on her and her violets and silver ; 
 " how splendid it is, and you, too, Marian ! " 
 
 Neither his words nor his eyes told her lies. All this 
 time she had dreaded a fear that was nothing but her own 
 creation. And presently, pulling their daughter forward, 
 they were like two children, laughing from sheer gaiety 
 of heart. 
 
 But downstairs the doctor sparkled at his own achieve- 
 ments. When Dorothy came to look for him, he was all 
 but standing on one leg for the pleasure of the moment. 
 
 " I'm not sure he'll even need glasses," he said ; " he was 
 so short-sighted before." 
 
 As usual, he could not keep himself from the piano, 
 and began with the calm measure, rising to struggle and 
 disillusion of Chopin's Ballade in G Minor. Then he 
 strummed lightly the foolish little song he had taught her : 
 
 " Come, tune up ! " said he. 
 
 And in her robin -redbreast pipe she sang quite neatly : 
 
 " Did you ever see a feather, a tiny little feather ? 
 White or green, black or blue ; 
 Never mind the colour, one's as good's another ; 
 Did you ever see a feather in a pussy-cat's tail ? " 
 
 It was quite a merry moment till he smiled whimsically 
 
2i4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 at her, and something in his look cut her to the quick. 
 She imagined him to be recalling the singer with whom he 
 had lived, and asked, as many times before, was there 
 then never to be any escape from grotesquely horrible 
 ideas ? 
 
 " So," said he, entirely unsuspicious, " your mother's 
 crossed her Rubicon, too. Gad ! how women do torture 
 themselves ! As if a man who's been married for years 
 would know the difference between grey hair and green in 
 his wife ! " 
 
 To-night his contempt of sentiment jarred on the girl's 
 nerves. She rejoiced to see him go, and stealing in to say 
 good-night, knelt down by Mr. Rosewarne's invalid chair. 
 He had enjoyed a good breast of chicken and, being placid 
 with good feeding after " soft diet," took optimistic views. 
 It was like old times to have her confide her perplexity to 
 him about that puzzling question of a man's life. 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne often smiled at her husband's innocence 
 in the matter of strange sins. For all his profession, 
 many things she knew would have surprised him. Still, 
 he could not misunderstand this simple matter, but met 
 it in the large and mystic way which is so wide that 
 scarcely anyone recognizes its profound truth. For 
 truth, to most people, is not a question of wide pastures, 
 but of walking a knife-edge. 
 
 " Every heart-throb," said he dreamily, " moves over 
 again to old joys and ecstasies, felt ten thousand thousand 
 times before they shake us. Every living cell is filled with 
 memories. All things are old and every note of each man's 
 happiness an endless repetition of tunes that other hearts 
 have danced to. You think, child, your lover should 
 have come to you with no other love ^ehind him. And 
 yet at every glance of your eye dead women look through 
 you, dead women whose passions have made yours what 
 it is." 
 
 The obvious objection that, in her case, she was not 
 aware of the dead women, she was afraid to bring forward. 
 To rhapsodies on a lyre one cannot oppose the penny 
 whistle, and so she stole away to write to Gilbert Carlyon. 
 
FIAT LUX 215 
 
 It was clear her father regarded her as irretrievably com- 
 mitted to his rival. She felt then the need of closing a 
 chapter. 
 
 " Forgive me," she wrote, " that I could not see you 
 when you came. Mother told you, she says, what has 
 happened. I have nothing to plead in excuse . . . but 
 what I am. I did not mean to be cruel. Oh, Gilbert, I 
 did not ! Try not to think of me more bitterly than you 
 need." 
 
 So, when Dorothy capitulated finally, Father Tyacke 
 alone, of all the ninepins, remained standing. It was 
 Madame Felicia who tried to cope with his objections. 
 
 " Dr. Dan ? " said she airily, "he is but exercising his 
 puppy teeth a bit ... on Dorothy, and others. But 
 girls like that. And how good for him to grow in 
 strength ! " 
 
 The priest lifted up his hand in rebuke. 
 
 " In strength of self-will, alas, dear Madame," said he. 
 
 But, in truth, the current setting so steadily in the 
 doctor's direction had made him feel old and helpless. 
 
 " And what else do you expect him to grow but will ? " 
 asked she curtly ; " not wings, I suppose ? " 
 
 Decidedly the Father saw no immediate prospect ot 
 Dr. Rudd's joining what Mr. Rosewarne called, in ribald 
 moments, the feathered flocks of heaven. 
 
 He signified as much, but Madame remained deaf and 
 blind. It was the first time she had felt really annoyed 
 with the priest, and this mainly, perhaps, because stray 
 doubts of her own wisdom would occasionally assail her 
 otherwise perfect satisfaction in the march of events. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 HERITAGE 
 
 MRS. STEVE CARLYON sat up in bed and yawned, 
 craning her neck round the corner of the bed so 
 that she could look out of the low cottage window. Her 
 eyes wandered disconsolately over fields where the blue 
 heat haze filled the spaces between the trees. Even at this 
 early hour the sky showed something of the brassy glare 
 that later on would sweat the strength out of the bones of 
 the harvesters. 
 
 It was too hot to move, certainly too hot to do what 
 she had been planning for weeks — to wash her hair and 
 spread it out in the sun to dry. Yet she hated it to be 
 lanky and " straight as a pound of candles." The bottom 
 of Mrs. Steve's strength consisted of her self-protective 
 instinct, and what power of imagination she possessed 
 centred round the preservation of her body. Yet between 
 this self-protective quality and her indolence it was a fair 
 battle, evenly contested. In the affair of the hair-washing, 
 for instance, she dreaded the discomfort of steamy water, 
 the upside-down dizziness of her bent head, for all that her 
 mind hovered round the idea of imitating the great ladies 
 of old Rome. In a lady's home journal, found in seaside 
 lodgings and enjoyed in company with muffins and shrimps 
 from a paper bag, she had read of these romantic figures 
 sitting on flat roofs to catch the sunlight in their outspread 
 locks. Vanity and romance allured her, yet she could not 
 make up her mind to wash her hair, all the same. 
 
 Reaching for her hand-glass, she noticed the wrinkles 
 
 216 
 
HERITAGE 217 
 
 on her face, from nostrils to mouth-corner, the sallow skin 
 and drooping features. 
 
 " Beastly dull hole," she cried, and spreading her legs 
 across the cotton sheets to find a cool spot, tried to sleep. 
 But it was impossible ; sheer discontent flooded her heart 
 at thought of the long, empty days. Even if she got Steve 
 to drive her to Camelstock, the chattering crowd of country 
 folk would do nothing but stare at her powdered cheeks, 
 calling her " miller's wife." 
 
 Finally, she flung out of bed and seizing her damp 
 sandy bathing dress, ran down the steep stairs in her 
 draggle-tailed pink dressing-gown. At sight of the slip- 
 shod figure Mrs. Tonkin raised her eyebrows, but shouted 
 in friendly fashion that the kettle was near the boil. The 
 pair, Steve and his wife, boarded with the woman, who 
 was paid largely in kind, with pork and game, rabbits and 
 chicken from the farm. For ready money being scarce, 
 this, although the best thing Gilbert could contrive for 
 them, formed a lasting occasion of complaint to Mrs. Steve, 
 who missed the fun of what she called " the luck of the 
 shops." 
 
 Now she tumbled about in the surf, taking a sullen sort 
 of pleasure in letting the warm waves roll her over. In 
 all this bay of Lanvean not a soul was to be seen, though 
 later on in the day the niches in the rocks would be filled 
 with bathers dressing and undressing among the rock- 
 pools. To Mrs. Steve, whose idea of delightful bathing was 
 to run, screaming, hand in hand with a row of gay figures, 
 to meet the buffets of the waves, this lonely cradle tossing 
 was only passably pleasant. 
 
 Back in her own room, with the bathing-dress flung aside, 
 she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass and stood to 
 enjoy the play of light on the skin, on the curves of her 
 figure. The sight gave her encouragement ; she realized 
 that this quiet time might be made a means of reviving 
 her good looks, so sadly impaired by hot theatres, bad 
 temper, late hours and poor food. 
 
 Humming, then, a little song, she descended to find her 
 husband waiting for her. He always left early in the 
 
218 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 morning for the first rush of work at the farm. Now, over 
 what was to him a second breakfast, he whistled shrilly, 
 but ceased at sight of the fried potatoes and bacon. 
 
 " Bathing ? " said he, and stared. " Suppose you 
 won't be keeping that up long, will you ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " she asked, staring in her turn. Sitting 
 facing the window, as she was, he looked straight into her 
 green eyes. He knew there was some stone they reminded 
 him of, but could not recall the name. 
 
 Then, as his meaning dawned on her, she burst into 
 laughter, and yet seemed a trifle ashamed. 
 
 " Oh, well," she said, " you mean what I told you . . . 
 about myself. That was a mistake. I thought so, of 
 course, but it wasn't right, after all. Thank goodness, I 
 haven't got that trouble to bear, as well as everything 
 else." 
 
 " You mean to say," said Steve, his fork in mid-air, 
 " that you told me a lie . . . that there never was going 
 to be a kid ? And the fuss you made was only to tie me 
 up ? If I didn't think 'twas so ! " 
 
 " To tie you up, indeed ! " shrilled she ; " and who's 
 tied up, I should like to know, if it isn't me?" 
 
 At that the storm burst. It was all the wilder for the 
 tide of health that had been rising in her during the weeks 
 at Lanvean. 
 
 Lonely she was, left to herself all day, sneered at when 
 she went to the house. No better than a labourer's wife, 
 with not a friend she could talk to. 
 
 " Stop it ! " cried Steve, getting up to push the door 
 close with his foot. " Stop it ! " repeated he, seizing her 
 wrists in a grip that left a red mark on her skin. " You're 
 a lazy slut, too. Here we are at harvest, with everyone 
 working double tides and Parsons at her wits' ends with my 
 father so ill, and all. Yet you won't do a hand's turn to 
 help anybody. I put it down to your health, though I've 
 had my doubts about that, too, before. And now you tell 
 me you sold me a packet. I might have known it." 
 
 " And," she said sullenly, " if I'd known what I was 
 coming to, I'd ha' thought twice about having you at all. 
 
HERITAGE 219 
 
 'Tis a dog's life I lead, and you and your precious brother 
 ought to be ashamed to see it." 
 
 " Ugh ! I could kill you when I look at your green 
 eyes, you jade," he said, and flung out of the house, 
 leaving her to clasp her aching wrists first with one hand 
 and then with the other. He was going steadily down- 
 hill ; that she knew, but yet with the tenacity of her 
 race had held on day after day, week after week, waiting 
 for the change that, everyone told her, would come with 
 the death of the old man at Lanvean. 
 
 As a fact, she was not much perturbed by Steve's fit 
 of temper, and, since her life had always been passed in 
 a perpetual atmosphere of disputes and making up, his 
 frenzy only stimulated her to a burst of activity. Anyway, 
 too, she had got over the worst matter, that breaking of 
 the ice as to her state which had more than once caused 
 her a stab of alarm, especially at the moment between 
 sleeping and waking when the fears we suppress in 
 conscious hours come out to look at us. 
 
 Energy descended upon her, and hurrying out to Mrs. 
 Tonkin, she demanded a tub of water, and there in the 
 kitchen soaped and rinsed her hair, outspreading it after- 
 wards in the sun among the raspberry canes. Becoming 
 quite affable, Mrs. Steve promised Mrs. Tonkin a bottle 
 of hair lotion; her dressing-table upstairs was loaded 
 with bottles for hair and skin, and her favourite reading 
 was a Beauty Doctor's hopeful prospectus. 
 
 At last, dressed in white, with her hair fantastically 
 arranged and shaded by a white parasol, she walked up 
 the lane to Lanvean. 
 
 The front door was open, so that the hot wind blowing 
 through the oaks carried the sounds of summer through 
 the house : the insect hum, the clicking of the reaping 
 machine, the hoarse shouts of the men at work in the fields. 
 Behind the closed door of the kitchen there sounded 
 the rattle of pots and pans, the noise of women's voices. 
 
 Mrs. Steve crossed the threshold and walked in without 
 knocking. She had never been allowed upstairs ; but 
 now irresistible curiosity seized her, and picking up her 
 
220 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 skirts, she tip- toed up the oak steps, and standing at the 
 top of the flight, gazed down the long corridors running 
 from the square central gallery. All the doors seemed to 
 be closed, and in contrast with the brightly-lit staircase, 
 the long alley was pitch dark. Then she saw that from 
 one door which was half-open a ray of light crossed the 
 darkness ; in it she could see the powdered glory of dancing 
 motes. Stealing down the passage, she softly pushed the 
 door further open and peeped into the room. 
 
 Through the open windows she could see the waves 
 creaming over the sand stretches, all dazzling white in 
 the noonday glare. The room itself was full of the sound 
 of breathing, deep, laboured and broken every now and 
 then by a struggle, as though the works of a clock were 
 breaking down. Staring upwards from the pillow lay a 
 face like a white mask, and so thin and sunken that the 
 yellow skin seemed stretched to bursting over the bones. 
 The eye sockets and the fallen outlines of the mouth were 
 faintly purple, as though dissolution had already begun. 
 Overhead, weaving patterns in the still air, the flies softly 
 circled below the ceiling against a network of cracks on 
 the plaster. Their gyrations drew the eyes and held 
 them, as though by a spell. 
 
 Her first fear over, Mrs. Steve found that, even when 
 the eyelids of the dying man opened and fell, he evidently 
 saw nothing. The life was ebbing slowly, waiting, as 
 everyone at Lanvean believed, for the outgoing tide 
 appointed to carry him away ; he was waiting now, as 
 his mother had waited years ago for the tide that was 
 to fling him on this shoal of time. 
 
 Mrs. Steve knew nothing of such fancies, but weighing 
 in her mind the homeliness of it all, gave full value to the 
 worm-eaten bedposts, the ceiling cracks and the patch- 
 work quilt. She had heard he was a miser, and even for 
 city-bred eyes the barns and stables of Lanvean had a 
 language of their own. She was, too, as acquisitive 
 as a daw, and when, stealing across the room to the cup- 
 board, she found it full of shelves, her curiosity got the 
 better of her caution. First, she came upon a silver 
 
HERITAGE 221 
 
 teapot of Queen Anne shape, and was proceeding to 
 unwrap another bundle, when, warned by a slight noise 
 behind her, she turned to find Mrs. Parsons in the doorway. 
 
 " You'm early," said the housekeeper, " he isn't gone 
 yet." 
 
 Mrs. Steve emerged from the cupboard with heightened 
 colour and tossing head, being resolved to brazen out the 
 situation. After all, she was as good as mistress here. 
 
 " My rooms," she said, " are as badly furnished as can 
 be. It's not what I've been used to. . . ." 
 
 " Oh," said Mrs. Parsons — in the inflexion of her voice 
 there was a world of mockery — " and Mrs. Tonkin's a 
 tidy woman, too. Is there anything you'd like to carry 
 away with you ? " she asked maliciously. 
 
 They both spoke more loudly, now they had reached 
 the passage outside. 
 
 " Not but what," continued the old woman, " I reckon 
 you've got to be careful of yourself now in carrying, and 
 that. . . ." 
 
 The two women exchanged glances, and Mrs. Parsons 
 stared down the slim white form in front of her. 
 
 " I gather it's not immediate though, ma'am," she 
 said, mockingly sympathetic. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs Mrs. Steve recovered her self- 
 command. 
 
 " There's many a slip, you know, Mrs. Parsons," she 
 said gaily. 
 
 "So I've heard," said the other, " and some slips come 
 in useful when they happen to them as know how to 
 make use of 'em." 
 
 Mrs. Steve stared amazed, for simple irony was the 
 last thing she expected from country wits. 
 
 "I'm sorry to see how ill Mr. Carlyon is," she observed, 
 pursing her red lips into the melancholy of condolence. 
 
 " Ay," said Mrs. Parsons cheerfully, " he's o'er-ripe 
 to go and has had more strokes — and lived — than anyone 
 I ever heard tell of. 'Tis a strong man fetched down by 
 blow after blow. I tried to give 'en brandy and milk, a 
 drop or two. But he couldn't take it. He felt I was 
 
222 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 calling 'en back, but he said, ' I can't : I can't.' That 
 was the way with 'en. ' I can't,' says he. He's turned 
 his face to the far country, hath old Will. We've sent 
 for his brother, Mr. James, but I doubt if he'll get here 
 in time. Not that it makes much odds, one way or the 
 other, though Mr. James'll want to know how 'tis all left. 
 That's the maggot as'll bite him." 
 
 Insensibly becoming more friendly in the excitement 
 of the approaching change, she frankly forgot Mrs. Steve's 
 position as the Enemy. 
 
 " Surely," sighed the latter, " one can't bother about 
 such things now. A terrible sight, that poor thin face ! 
 And a brother, too ! " 
 
 Mrs. Parsons snorted, brought back to her fighting 
 self by this touch of hypocrisy. 
 
 " I've seen too many die to upset myself over that," 
 said she ; " when you're as old as I am, they'll be to you 
 what they be to me, just pictures of what has been. Yet 
 Gilbert's the only other one but me that's got stomach 
 to stay with'n o' nights." 
 
 " Gilbert's a strong man," said Mrs. Steve in her best 
 tragedy tone. 
 
 " Ay, Gilbert's strong . . . and need be," said Mrs. 
 Parsons. " But maybe you'd like to look round and 
 see if there's anything you'd fancy in the old place for 
 your rooms." 
 
 Mrs. Parsons' malice was satisfied indeed when Mrs. 
 Steve began a series of journeys between the two houses. 
 All in a bustle of gainfulness, she turned out the cottage 
 stuff and substituted for it good old furniture from 
 Lanvean, sometimes, if it was a carved chair, carrying it 
 upside-down on her head. It was the happiest day she 
 had spent since her marriage, for the jackdaw instinct 
 had, in this treasure-hunt, ample means of satisfaction. 
 But every time she tackled something heavy, the old woman 
 warned her to avoid overtaxing her strength. It was as 
 good as a play to Mrs. Parsons to watch the sweat gather 
 on the young woman's face and the dust cover her blue 
 overall. The white dress was gone by now, its wearer 
 
HERITAGE 223 
 
 having reverted to the primitive passion in her that was 
 as old as any instinct in her nature. Even in her nomad 
 life she had kept a trunk full of things in store : bangles, 
 Jerusalem roses, and necklaces of cheap beads, and now 
 was only baffled by the larger articles of furniture, by 
 carved oak presses and great brass warming-pans. 
 
 But Mrs. Parsons, keeping a strict inventory of every- 
 thing taken, finally laid it before Gilbert at the close of 
 the day's performances. 
 
 It was Gilbert's turn to watch that night, and as he 
 sat by the shaded lamp in the corner of his father's room, 
 he noticed how the breathing had fallen now to a faint 
 respiration hardly audible a few yards from the bed. 
 In the passage outside he could hear nothing but the heavy 
 snoring of farm hands exhausted by the day's work, and 
 though the room next the sick chamber was empty, he 
 could have sworn the sound audible in the passage was 
 repeated there. The whole world was full to-night, it 
 seemed, of the heavy drawing of laboured breath. 
 
 Sleep, indeed, the heavy sleep that is twin to death, 
 brooded everywhere. Deadly weary, too, with all the 
 ache of the long day's toil in blood and muscles, Gilbert 
 stretched out his arms across the table and laid his head 
 on them. He was in shirt sleeves and trousers ; and in 
 this posture his shoulders were galled by the crossed 
 straps of his braces. He roused himself and forcing up 
 his heavy eyelids, looked round. 
 
 For the last week the great moon globe had made night 
 twin brother to day, and now the light of it lay across 
 the sleeping sea and on the fields yellow with corn. With 
 the crooning of the waves in his ears, he could not but 
 remember that at two o'clock to-night the tide would 
 turn. Stealing across the room to the bed, he thought, 
 for a moment, that the breathing had already ceased. 
 But no ! 
 
 What scenes, he asked himself, were passing before 
 the eyes of the dying man, so close to himself, yet so far 
 removed. But was this any different, after all, from 
 the isolation of the living ? 
 
224 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 To Gilbert it was the amazing cruelty of Dorothy 
 Rosewarne's absorption in herself that made the sting of 
 that night's drive from Denzell. To use him ? He asked 
 nothing better of her than that ; yet she had not cared 
 to use him, she had but trailed his heart's longing to make 
 a pathway for her careless feet. 
 
 None the less, he had put on the grand air, till Mrs. 
 Parsons watched him in amazement, to see his feats of 
 endurance. All the satisfaction this man got out of life 
 was based on concrete acts ; he rejoiced now in his strength 
 of body, in the long hours of toil in which, at twenty-three, 
 he outstripped the toughest workers on the farm. The 
 cellars of the house were filled in a day of twelve hours 
 during which he rolled casks and stacked them, doing 
 the work of three men in a long spell, scarcely broken even 
 for meals. As he stood watching his father, he could feel 
 his muscles aching with his toil at the rick-building. All 
 the day before he had stood piling it higher, watching 
 load after load sink to the bare wagons, till, conscious of 
 nothing but the monotonous swing of flail-like arms, 
 he moved in a dream. 
 
 This was the way in which he worked out the fever in 
 his blood, for it was impossible for him to confess that 
 the days had already come in which he took no pleasure 
 in them. If nothing else remained, at any rate the 
 power of his body was not lost. 
 
 When Dr. Rudd supped one night at Lanvean, sum- 
 moned there to the old man, Gilbert wished him every 
 happiness in his new state. The doctor it was, then, who 
 displayed something very like ill-breeding, complaining 
 clumsily of the tie this sort hf thing meant, what with the 
 buzzing of the women and the hateful foolery of these 
 Catholics where ceremonies are concerned : a full man 
 grumbling to a starving one over the quality of the roast 
 would have made just as pleasant a spectacle. 
 
 It was but the natural awkwardness of a sensitive 
 mind, as of one who would fain say to those outside the 
 gates and peering in : " Ah, well, after all, you aren't so 
 much worse off outside." None the less, though Gilbert 
 
HERITAGE 225 
 
 recognized this in part, he froze to the man, and their 
 mutual irritation ended in a ridiculous scene. 
 
 Dr. Rudd loosely talking, and as loosely heaving his 
 legs about, used a phrase that would have sounded thick, 
 even on a fisherman's lips. Cornish himself kept it for 
 the rough work at the boats, when the nerves need a fillip 
 to get a job done. 
 
 Gilbert's eyes blazed, and even at his own table, as it 
 was, he rapped out roundly : 
 
 " Dr. Rudd, there's a woman present." 
 
 With inconceivable insolence, the doctor glanced, 
 eyebrows raised, at Mrs. Parsons' hard-bitten visage. 
 
 " Is there ? " asked he. " I'm afraid I didn't realize it." 
 
 While his nostrils quivered, Gilbert grew calm, wonder- 
 ing in the very soul of him at the woman's delicacy that 
 accepted . . . this : that delicacy which, in Dorothy 
 Rosewarne, had reminded him of nothing coarser than 
 the bloom on a butterfly's wing. 
 
 Now to-night as he sat in a reverie just outside the 
 lamplit circle, he was aroused by a creaking of the planks. 
 Mrs. Parsons, a grey shawl thrown over her nightdress, 
 stood looking in. Instinctively listening for the sound 
 of breathing, he knew before she spoke that the silence 
 in the room was already of a different quality. 
 
 '• Ay, he's gone," said she, and leaning over the still 
 figure, told how she had been roused from the depths of 
 her slumber. She always claimed, like her ancestors, to 
 know the state of the tide, whether at ebb or flow. 
 
 Crossing the fields to summon help to Mrs. Parsons, 
 Gilbert moved like a sleep-walker. The night was darker 
 now, as the moon acknowledged the coming of the dawn, 
 darker and less quiet. Round the whole coast he could 
 hear the murmur of the waves, the long, wailing note of 
 the ground-swell at Bedruthan, the breaking seas on Con- 
 stantine and the sigh of the tide at Trevone ; a great 
 murmur of breath, like a gigantic sleeper in whose slumber 
 he himself seemed inextricably concerned, both he and his. 
 
 Later, when he sat writing letters, he could hear the 
 women's footsteps overhead. Going up to search for a 
 
 15 
 
226 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 paper, the first realization came to him of what had 
 actually happened at sight of the shrunken form on the 
 bare mattress, a bony structure falling helpless from their 
 hands. 
 
 Hurrying from the room, for the first time he remem- 
 bered his brother, but decided to leave him till the morning. 
 
 Jemmy Carlyon arriving at Laskey's next day, though he 
 was outwardly treated with professional decorum, yet knew 
 the place to be surging with the excitement of eventful 
 living. His career made him, as far as Petrockstow was 
 concerned, one of the seven wonders of the world. But 
 now he had to share the honours with his brother, around 
 whose funeral bed the entire place was seething, like a pack 
 of hungry dogs around a roast. Fabulous sums were 
 mentioned as having been left, and, as Jemmy drove 
 through the town, the shopkeepers rushed to their doors 
 and the maids on the doorsteps were not reproved for 
 loitering by mistresses themselves staring over the top of 
 wire blinds. 
 
 Jemmy was popular enough, far more so than either of 
 his nephews, since one of these was too high and the other 
 too low for much affection. Jemmy, however, offered 
 himself as a cut-and-come-again dish from which anyone 
 could take his choice of the engaging frailties of human 
 nature. Numbers, then, who " never believed a word he 
 said," yet wished him well in the sharing of the spoil. 
 
 One thing, however, he could not do ; he could not 
 remain for long in the atmosphere of death, and, complain- 
 ing of illness, he would not remain for the funeral, but 
 hurried back to Denzell, where Madame offered him a 
 lodging and saw that he ate a good lunch. 
 
 Restless in the heat, he started off immediately after- 
 wards to go and call on Philip Rosewarne. Yet, when 
 Jemmy saw the lawyer's face, he appeared in two minds 
 as to whether he would sit down, and Rosewarne knew he 
 had before him a man on the tenterhooks of fear. 
 
 When Jemmy's say was done, Philip sat with a frown, 
 recalling, oddly enough, the scene at a hospital when the 
 man he had brought there with a crushed thumb was left 
 
HERITAGE 227 
 
 in agony while the house-surgeons gossiped. Then he 
 made up his mind ; after all, no one would be a pin the 
 worse, whatever professional etiquette might say to it, 
 if Jemmy learnt the contents of his brother's will even 
 before the funeral. 
 
 " Mr. Carlyon," he said, stabbing the blotting-pad in 
 front of him, " only two persons are mentioned in Mr. 
 William Carlyon's last will — his two sons. You're not in 
 it at all, and for more than three years, that is, until he is 
 twenty-five, the younger brother, Stephen, will have 
 nothing except what his brother may choose to allow him. 
 For the time, it all goes to Gilbert. I protested, both 
 in his case and in yours, but the old man wouldn't hear 
 any arguments. As for Steve, perhaps it's best. He may 
 have cut his wisdom teeth by the time he comes to his in 
 heritance. Even then, however, he can't do what he like^ 
 with it, since it's just a royalty on the quarry profits. 
 Nothing more." 
 
 " You speak," said Jemmy hoarsely, " as though there 
 had been other terms, a previous will." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne looked up ; this was the point he wished 
 to avoid. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " there was one." 
 
 " And when was this new one drawn up ? " 
 
 " Last spring," said the lawyer curtly. 
 
 " After . . . my trouble with my wife ? " asked Jemmy, 
 as with trembling hands he bent forward. 
 
 " Yes," nodded Mr. Rosewarne, " he had old-fashioned 
 notions, had William Carlyon, and disputes between 
 husband and wife, you see, to his biblical brain ..." 
 
 Then he stopped, noticing for the first time the deep- 
 graven eye-sockets of the face opposite him, the grey hue 
 overspreading the plump, well-fed face. Still Jemmy bore 
 himself firmly, though a grain too jauntily for complete 
 self-possession, and so got himself out of the office and 
 down the stairs. 
 
 " That's a man hard hit," said Mr. Rosewarne's inner 
 sense, and getting out of his seat, he went to the window to 
 watch him go down the street, 
 
 15* 
 
228 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 An indescribable loneliness seemed to cling round the 
 figure that, followed by the lawyer's eyes, turned the corner 
 into Laskey's quadrangle. 
 
 Up in a private sitting-room at the inn Jemmy sat down 
 and took out his flask. It was filled with old and mellow 
 brandy, and, even in this moment of perplexity, Jemmy 
 proudly remembered the price he had paid for it. Ten 
 shillings a bottle it cost, and he bought it by the dozen, too. 
 This was one of the delights, this purchase of good stuff, 
 that was passing now from his grasp. 
 
 All his life Jemmy Carlyon had been hampered by one 
 weakness : that in those schemes which sprang so swiftly 
 from his restless brain, he never could cut his garment 
 according to his cloth, and bring his plans to fit the exiguous 
 capital which had always been his handicap. His father 
 had set him up in business, as the old countryman imagined, 
 on a princely scale, but to his brother William he had 
 always trusted for the final propping up of his speculative 
 structures. And now, by his wife's frantic folly, the whole 
 of this fell to the ground. He cursed his own madness, 
 too, in revealing this domestic upheaval that was but a 
 storm in a tea-cup after all, though he had taken it for a 
 tornado. 
 
 There remained, however, Gilbert — young and possibly 
 pliable. Yet Jemmy could not but gnash his teeth at 
 remembering he was still waiting on another man's pleasure, 
 as always, for the financial uplift that was to put him safely 
 on his feet. 
 
 In the evening after the funeral, when Gilbert sat in the 
 dining-room with the great safe open before him, Mrs. 
 Parsons showed Jemmy into the room. The old woman was 
 mean enough to rejoice when she heard the clang of the 
 safe-door and the turning of the key. For, to her mind, 
 there was one thing lacking in Gilbert's perfection : that 
 steady, remorseless caution by which old Carlyon had 
 succeeded in building up a fortune. 
 
 Jemmy made his story a triumph of foxiness. Yet in 
 their vision of things never were two men more vitally 
 opposed than these. To Jemmy, the artist-soul in him- 
 
HERITAGE 229 
 
 self^was incomparably the noblest part of his make-up. 
 When he counted the blessings of his days, as he often did, 
 for he was no discontented soul, one of the chief was his 
 technical skill as an expert in art. For specimens of early 
 English landscape painting he sought high and low and 
 thrilled at every discovery as though it were the first one 
 he had ever made. In this love there was no weariness at 
 all ; the clue, the hunt, the purchase, the classification, 
 meant real joy. Even still more delightful, because more 
 subtle, was the exercise of that instinct by which he linked 
 an unsigned specimen to the master whose hand had made 
 it. In this, too, he rejoiced the more because it was a 
 triumph over his country origin. 
 
 Yet of course the commercial spirit played its part, 
 for he was now planning an exhaustive work on the 
 sources of English painting which should drive up the 
 value of his own collection. It only remained to find the 
 man to write the book — and the money to produce it, 
 whereupon his pictures would be a gold-mine. 
 
 " Why," cried he, " a corner in Early English painters 1 
 That's what 'twill be. No less. But look at the cost of it, 
 my boy, look at the illustrations alone. Yet worth it, well 
 worth it." 
 
 So he babbled on, to almost deaf ears, of blocks and 
 etchings, of engravings and woodcuts, striving, poor soul, 
 to make an impression by his display of technical skill. 
 
 This Gilbert met with a coldness almost stockish. In 
 the first place he resented this reminder, on the very night 
 of his father's funeral, that the giant's robe had descended 
 on himself. Most fatal of all, the bitterest moments of his 
 life were connected with books ; first, when at school, 
 his father had laughed at him for being outstripped by 
 Steve, and next by his abortive attempt to win the beloved 
 woman by force of brain. Yet, taken away from school 
 early, because he had " no brain for book-learning," by 
 spending his small allowance on a correspondence course, 
 he had actually taken a London arts degree, mainly by 
 learning the answers to test questions by heart. He 
 derived, it is true, immense satisfaction from that dogged 
 
230 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 conquest of himself, whereby he had taken his own nature 
 and swayed it, nolens volens, as his will directed. So he 
 had hoped to do with the Indian Civil, though, even 
 there, he acknowledged himself beaten, not by his own 
 weakness, but by his own strength. 
 
 For already the light was coming" to him in these days of 
 darkness. 
 
 " A corner in Early English painters ! " he exclaimed, 
 sticking forward his heavy jaw obstinately. He connected 
 the publishing trade with those itinerant vendors who 
 travel from farmhouse to farmhouse with " series " books of 
 elegant extracts from poets and orators and who reckon 
 their sales by the poundage disposed of. 
 
 Jemmy cursed him inwardly, cursed his youth, no less 
 than his possession of power, and, biting his underlip 
 savagely, went on to talk of the great sale of antiques and 
 the need there was for him to cut a dash in the eyes of all 
 competitors. 
 
 At this Gilbert lost his temper ; should he be doing right 
 to betray his trust to his dead father by supporting wild- 
 cat schemes ? Then, too, his part as guardian for the reck- 
 less Steve spread over the entire position ; was good money, 
 as well as bad, to be flung into the open maw of a trade that 
 pandered to the contemptible follies of the rich ? 
 
 Jemmy having gone, Gilbert sat brooding in disgust 
 at himself. When Mrs. Parsons came in to find him so, he 
 told her the gist of the interview. 
 
 " My word ! " exclaimed she, " he doesn't wait for the 
 grass to grow on your father's grave, does he ? " 
 
 Gilbert restrained his impulse to tell her to stop that 
 metaphor, since no grass was likely to grow over the 
 Carlyon vault under St. Meryn Church floor. 
 
 " Listen to me," she said, resting her hands on the table 
 and leaning over to him, " if you don't down him at once, 
 he'll hang round your neck till the end of the chapter. 
 Him and his books ! What a concloption among the mov- 
 ables there'd be if he had the handling of your money. 
 Stripped the place he would have long ago, if Master hadn't 
 been like a rock with him. Mr. Gilbert, if you don't hold 
 
HERITAGE 231 
 
 on to what you've got there's always folks that'll bleed 
 you. You laughed about Steve's wife, and the stuff she 
 carted off. And I saw 'ee toss the list of what her took 
 into the fire. But I've got another, I can tell 'ee." 
 
 Gilbert laughed, but she chimed in with his worst 
 instincts, as, coat-tails tucked up, he got up and stood 
 looking down at her face. 
 
 " And there's another thing, too," cried she ; " that 
 woman lied to get herself married to your brother Steve. 
 Cheeld ! There never was no cheelding about her. But 
 if there should be . . . Master, with you childless, and 
 unwed, 'tis her children and Steve's that'll have Lanvean." 
 
 " Plenty of time yet," said he, with a smile. But his 
 cheeks grew hot, for to both of them Steve's children and 
 " that woman's " meant much the same as" mean whites " 
 in another continent. 
 
 Yet, after supper, Gilbert walked down to Steve's cottage 
 and, throwing up a handful of sand at the window, called 
 him out. For to-night Gilbert was ashamed of his own 
 caution ; in this sense of shame Mrs. Parsons seemed but 
 the prompting of his evil genius. Whatever the habits of 
 later life might make him, now he was repentant and sick 
 at thought of his own stern ways. An old man had come 
 to him for help and he had turned him away. He must see 
 Jemmy to-morrow, but it was to Steve that he softened first. 
 
 As the brothers walked across the dunes, Gilbert began 
 to make plans ; a house was to be taken for Steve and 
 his wife, one of the bungalows round the next bay. Then, 
 stammering boyishly, he referred to the coming child. 
 
 " That's off, you know," said Steve with a sheepish 
 laugh, and hearing him, Gilbert's heart somehow leapt at 
 this loyalty to his wife. After all, Steve had his good 
 points ; if he had been cheated, no one else must know it ; 
 not even his brother. 
 
 " You know," said Gilbert, in a low voice, f I'm not the 
 marrying sort, and your kiddies . . . should have good 
 prospects." 
 
 " My kiddies ! " laughed Steve, and with one accord 
 they changed the subject. 
 
232 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 The night was still, so that the waves dropped, as if 
 tired, at the edge of the rocks. All round the promontory 
 called the island there rose and fell the sucking sound of 
 water barely rising to the high-tide channels. In the wake 
 of the setting sun tawny clouds smeared the sky. Overhead 
 peeped the first star. 
 
 In the dead quiet a sudden cry broke the stillness, 
 harsh, strident, that, travelling above them, or so it seemed, 
 set the heart beating, the blood burning. The dogs at 
 their feet were crouching, terrified, too panic-stricken to 
 move. The shrieks ceased as suddenly as they had begun, 
 ending on a long note of eldritch laughter. By now the 
 after-glow was gone from the sky and only the sullen grey- 
 ness closed them round. 
 
 With the dogs loping by their side, they made by the 
 shortest tracks for the road. 
 
 " What was that ? " panted Steve. It was the first 
 time either of them had broken the silence since the 
 shrieks began. 
 
 " Oyster-catchers, I reckon," said Gilbert. But, within 
 himself, he wondered why they had seen no sign of the flat- 
 beaked birds he called by that name, nor of gull, nor shag. 
 Instead, his head was buzzing with old stories told by Mrs. 
 Parsons of the noises heard on these middens. They both 
 took a nip of brandy, and, as Steve poured it out in the 
 dining-room at Lanvean, the decanter clicked against the 
 edge of the glass. 
 
 They were both, oyster-catcher or no, two badly startled 
 men. Gilbert remembered the body of a negro sailor he 
 had found in a fold of the sand ; Steve recalled the ghoulish 
 hunting in which they both had shared for the jewelled 
 figure of the Virgin, said to have been buried by the priest 
 of St. Const antine, to save it when the pirates landed. 
 It now lay under the shadow of the ruined gable, and the 
 brothers had scratched the soil there in many directions, 
 only to come on broken coffins from the churchyard, 
 whence the soil had been dug to cover the sandy fields of 
 Lanvean. 
 
 Meanwhile Jemmy sat in the hall at Denzell, facing the 
 
HERITAGE 233 
 
 future that stretched before him shorn of the pomp of 
 success that was the very breath of life to him. Bitterest 
 pang of all, he would be spoken of in terms often used by 
 himself of others : 
 
 " Poor chap ! hard hit, I hear." 
 
 He went upstairs to his room, treading softly for fear 
 of rousing Madame Felicia from her light sleep. The rest- 
 lessness of old age was coming on her, so that she always 
 slept with her door open, and, as the maids declared, not a 
 mouse could stir without her hearing it. 
 
 The next morning the house woke strangely ; behind the 
 drawn blinds the corridors rustled with the terrified 
 fluttering of starched skirts ; whispers shrill and sharp 
 sounded from the corners. Parker appeared in time to 
 drag the second housemaid down the servants' stairs in a 
 fit of hysterics. A little later Mrs. Peters' maid entering 
 her mistress's room with the morning tea, wore a strange 
 look on her face. Yet she said not a word, only when it 
 came to the drawing up of the blind she hesitated and 
 turned away, as if forgetting. 
 
 " What are you about, Curtis ? " said Madame sharply, 
 " forgetting to pull up the blinds, so that I can scarcely see 
 to read my letters ? " 
 
 So Madame's blinds went up as usual. 
 
 In all the rest of the rooms, however, they remained 
 drawn. The great house showed a blank-faced front to 
 the morning light, with the smoke from the chimneys the 
 sole sign of life about the place. 
 
 For Jemmy Carlyon had been found lying dead on the 
 floor of his room, with a black bruise in the middle of his 
 forehead, between the eyes. He crouched, huddled up in 
 front of the wardrobe, the door of which was open. 
 Parker, being hastily summoned by the head housemaid, 
 ran his hand along the edge of this, and pronounced it to 
 be as sharp as a knife . . . and far heavier than most 
 knives. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 LIFE WITH ITS BARS 
 
 NOT a match has been touched, sir," said Parker 
 to Dr. Rudd. 
 
 The Petrockstow constables having refused to allow the 
 room to be arranged before their Camelstock commandant 
 arrived, Parker had assumed the airs of a showman. 
 Jemmy, thought the doctor, might have been a dead whale 
 tossed on the sands and the butler the organizer in chief. 
 Over the scattered heap of matches fallen from the box 
 to the floor, with the wardrobe door still swinging above 
 them, Parker gloated, so complete a story, to his mind, 
 did these objects tell ; in conjunction, of course, with that 
 other lifeless object, Jemmy's body. The doctor, kneeling 
 there, noticed the way in which the carpet was reflected in 
 the central panel ; its black roses on a dull red ground 
 leapt at him like the pattern design in a Vandyke. 
 
 Parker bent down, his mutton-chops and long jaws 
 extraordinarily sheep-like. 
 
 " Stone-dead for hours," said the doctor." 
 
 " And Madame Felicia ? " asked the man. 
 
 " She doesn't know ? " said Dr. Dan sharply. 
 
 The butler shook his head ; plainly this was a task for 
 the doctor, who shrugged his shoulders sulkily, as he always 
 did when he had to write a letter of condolence. Medical 
 man as he was, he resented the tasks thrust at him by his 
 own profession, those tasks that stir the nerves. 
 
 Madame among her lace pillows, very small and frail, 
 lay still with eyes shut when he had told her. The manner 
 
 234 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 235 
 
 of his death affected her most painfully ; to die by so 
 ridiculous a means as a wardrobe door ! A bone in the 
 throat, a poisonous pin ; these ways seemed to mock the 
 dignity of the human being. But death, thought she, in 
 connection with Jemmy would always have seemed 
 incongruous ; death and he were not on the same plane 
 at all. Dr. Rudd and Madame were silent, feeling the 
 genuine ache of loss that was somewhat of a surprise to 
 both ; yet Jemmy, being so human, could be worse spared 
 than many a better man. 
 
 At last Madame Felicia awoke from the brief period of 
 reverie which is all that life allows to the dead. 
 
 " And Frances," she exclaimed, " she will come down, I 
 suppose. And Mr. Rosewarne must be sent for." 
 
 So the bodyguard gathered round Mrs. Peters. 
 
 " Heart failure, of course," said Philip Rosewarne to 
 the doctor, as they left the house together. " Must be." 
 
 " Yes," assented Dr. Dan. 
 
 " Queer thing, though, eh ? " asked the lawyer musingly. 
 " For if he opened the door himself he must have been 
 extremely clumsy to bang his head against it ; and why 
 open the door until you've struck a light ? " 
 
 " Matches fell out of the box, so that he couldn't strike 
 one," said Rudd; "stoop, and there you are! Edge of 
 the wardrobe gives you a stunning blow." 
 
 " But the door, man ! " exclaimed Philip ; " how did it 
 get open ? The maid swears it was shut when she left the 
 room ready. And it doesn't swing of itself. . . . The 
 police tried that, stamped outside to see if a shake of the 
 floor could do it." 
 
 " Opened the door himself and then forgot it — must have, 
 or the maid lied," said Dr. Rudd. 
 
 " I hear you're to do the post-mortem," remarked Mr. 
 Rosewarne. 
 
 " Madame wanted it," shrugged the doctor; " wouldn't 
 have Trevan brought in ; couldn't stand rumbustiousness, 
 she said. Besides, you know, he was by way of being a 
 patient of mine. He consulted me once. Any shock 
 might have killed him ; more likely a mental one, though." 
 
236 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Well, he'd had that," said Philip slowly. " And this 
 blow on top of it, with a system already shaken, eh ? " 
 
 The doctor nodded, and so they parted, with a sense of 
 uneasiness in the minds of both. 
 
 Frances Carlyon escaped trouble in the peculiar Fran- 
 cescan way : that is, she wired that her medical adviser 
 warned her to avoid anything distressing, and under the 
 terrible circumstances she felt that to come to Petrockstow 
 would kill her. At this Madame heaved a sigh of relief, 
 and the bodyguard recovered something of its self- 
 confidence. 
 
 Nevertheless Mr. Rosewarne, being a Celt and, as is the 
 Celtic way, priding himself somewhat on the weaknesses 
 of that race, knew that deep down in him there existed a 
 premonition of trouble. He always compared this fear to 
 a sense as of a thin rustling of dry leaves, or papers, in the 
 depths of a still night, something that whispers along the 
 nerves and sets the blood afire, as a loud, clear noise would 
 fail to do. 
 
 The trouble came step by step in the strange, malevolent 
 way in which circumstances do, at times, work together, as 
 though by the will of a designer. It began with a letter to 
 Mr. Rosewarne from a firm of London solicitors announc- 
 ing that Mr. Carlyon 's affairs were in such a condition that 
 they would have to pass into liquidation. Practically he 
 was insolvent, though of course the extent of his actual 
 liabilities was as yet unknown and the value of his collec- 
 tions, both personal and otherwise, remained at present 
 problematical. He was, however, heavily insured. At this 
 news Mr. Rosewarne, who had for years stood between 
 Madame and all business worries, took up his abode in 
 the rooms over his office in Petrockstow which he had 
 reserved for a crisis such as this. 
 
 A few days later Dr. Rudd, standing in the window of 
 his room at the Priory House, glanced out at the harbour. 
 It was early morning, and a misty rain was covering the 
 streets and quays with muddy ooze. Across the estuary 
 the dunes were lost behind driving waves of fog. Slate 
 roofs and asphalt side-walks shone dull grey, like streaks 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 237 
 
 left by enormous snails. For, from behind the leaden 
 clouds, the sun was peering. 
 
 Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, the doctor tumbled 
 down the steep stairs. Kneeling before the dusty grate, 
 he began to rake out the ashes with a frenzy that covered 
 his tousled head and the drying socks on the rail with a 
 cloud of coal ash. Through the open window could be 
 seen a maze of backyards, with old nets and spare oars 
 stacked in corners. The kettle set on a crackling fire, he 
 disappeared upstairs, only to tumble down once more, 
 swearing this time, for, though he paid eighteenpence a 
 week to have his saucer-bath filled, he had periodically to 
 carry cans himself. 
 
 Still from the top story not a sound of a Cornish 
 could be heard, though down the passage from the quay 
 came the noise of the sea making, of oars in rowlocks and 
 tackle creaking. Finally, swallowing gulps of scalding 
 tea, the doctor shouted to Sam in stentorian tones. With 
 stumping and bumping the family got up, and sleepily 
 appeared in the kitchen. Mrs. Cornish, her hair in the 
 knot she had slept in, worked at forty jobs at once and kept 
 her head through it all, frying breakfast, tying garments, 
 packing food and keeping an eye on her eldest daughter's 
 lick-and-promise washing of the younger children. In 
 high seamen's boots, with grey stockings overflowing the 
 tops, Sam and Dan clattered down the steps. 
 
 The fisherman's work, depending as it does not only on 
 tide and wind, but on the motive of the infinitely varying 
 weather, is filled with variety. Some time or other in the 
 year, every hour in the twenty-four finds the men alive and 
 stirring. Sam's work, too, was even more varied than the 
 other men's, for, while the bulk of the fish-getting in this 
 port is done by the labour of the trawling fleet, he was 
 subject to not even this amount of order, being a line and 
 net-fisher, a crabber, and, in the season, making money 
 by letting out boats on hire. To all this activity Mrs. 
 Cornish brought the master mind, saying little, but seeing 
 everything, and ready at a pinch to bolster up her man's 
 jolly, ease-loving ways. In the matter of getting up, 
 
238 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 however, she shared her partner's weakness, and here the 
 doctor was a great help to them both, for with the brain- 
 worker's early morning ways, he it was who shoved behind 
 the household and got them every day on their working 
 feet. 
 
 To the business, too, he brought the same driving energy ; 
 in the matter of markets he was upsides with the world, 
 and understood the uses of the telegraph office. Sam, 
 then, with his two backers, was in good fighting trim, 
 though always in peculiar peril of the manual worker's 
 special drawback, that tendency to slack off at every new 
 stage in prosperity. Tide or no tide, Sam couldn't see why 
 a man comfortably off shouldn't put in an extra hour in 
 bed. Nor, after a good sale, could he see why one shouldn't 
 take an extra glass in Laskey's bar. Theoretically, of 
 course, Dr. Rudd approved of this view, since he was 
 actually sharing Sam's life mainly that he himself might 
 learn to enjoy the hearty freedom of the man whose sense 
 of obligation ends with the satisfaction of his own wants 
 and those of his dependents. Practically, however, it 
 worked differently ; Dr. Rudd drove like a steam engine, 
 and watched Sam's lazy ways with an envy not altogether 
 unmingled with contempt. Both men showed the mettle 
 of their pasture unmistakably. 
 
 On a dark night, with the ferry not working and the 
 estuary a boiling cauldron, Sam it was, of course, who 
 " warn't going to risk his life for the likes o' they ; " the 
 doctor it was who went, with a " Damn it, why can't they 
 bide quiet ? " Sam was soft at a bargain, but Dr. Rudd 
 could drive one with as much zest as Mam Cornish showed 
 when she beat down the vegetable woman over half a stone 
 of potatoes. The pillars of Sam's house were these two. 
 
 This morning, at the bottom of the steps Sam's eldest 
 boy caught the doctor's elbow. 
 
 " Note from Lawyer Rosewarne," said he ; " told me, if 
 so be's you could see him at once, he'd be obliged." 
 
 Dr. Rudd tore open the note. 
 
 " Lost the best part o' the day, as 'tis," grumbled Sam, 
 as usual blaming everyone but himself for his own laziness. 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 239 
 
 " I want to get something cleared up," wrote the lawyer, 
 " and if you can see me now, early as it is, I think it will 
 be better." 
 
 For step number two in the chapter of accidents had 
 appeared by now in certain information received late the 
 evening before from Sara, Rosewarne's clerk. The man 
 told his story dryly enough, yet with a zest in the telling 
 which proved how savoury a morsel it might appear to 
 less romantic mortals. 
 
 " Tell him I'll be in to-night, if he likes to look in," 
 said the doctor to Sam's boy, and, with a frown, went off 
 to join the men in the boat. He would be at no man's 
 beck and call, and, in fact, it was not till Rosewarne came 
 to him in person that night that the two got to work on 
 the matter of Sara's story. Nor did Mr. Rosewarne 
 approach it directly even then. In the doctor's reluctance 
 to meet him he found a significance that gave warning. 
 Face to face with Dr. Dan, he got the impression, too, of a 
 man on his guard. 
 
 " I'm worried, Rudd," said he, " very worried. It's 
 this matter of Jemmy Carlyon's affairs. I'd have given a 
 good deal to keep it all away from the tongues of the 
 gossips, if only for Madame's sake." 
 
 " Can't be done," said the doctor gruffly, out of a cloud 
 of tobacco smoke. " They will talk." 
 
 They sat in Sam Cornish's living room, for Sam and 
 Mam were out, and the children careering the quays. 
 Every now and then one or other of these would rush 
 down the passage to be turned out by Dr. Dan. 
 
 " You know," said the lawyer, " he's insured heavily. 
 It's important, too, for his affairs are in a bad way, though 
 these things often clear up when you come to look into 
 them." 
 
 " And the Company won't want to pay up," said Dr. 
 Rudd. 
 
 " You know, then ? " asked Rosewarne. 
 
 " I suspected it. For I'd the Insurance doctor down 
 here to-day. He wanted to be present at the post-mortem, 
 although they'd been written to and told that nothing of 
 
240 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the kind was necessary. Yet he had the cheek to come 
 all the same." 
 
 " And you locked him out ? " 
 
 " Well, not precisely. The door was locked . . . and 
 remained so. That's all." 
 
 " You didn't admit him, then ? " 
 
 " I didn't admit him." I 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " The man was exceeding his rights. I told him so. 
 In fact I pretty well wiped the floor with him. It's a 
 perfectly plain case of valvular disease. Carlyon ought 
 to have lived a buttercup and daisy life . . . and didn't. 
 What he went through the day before his death was 
 enough to kill him forty times over. I've seen Gilbert 
 Carlyon, you know." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne thought for a moment. 
 
 " Where does he come in exactly, then ? " he asked. 
 " Gilbert, I mean ? " 
 
 " Jemmy, it seems, went over and begged for help, was 
 full of schemes, even with all this money trouble, game 
 to the last." 
 
 The lawyer looked across with surprise in his glance. 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor, " Jemmy was a man, after all. 
 How many of us, d'you think, would have gone on planning 
 a corner in Early English masters with our affairs in such 
 a state ? I tell you, if Jemmy wants backing from the 
 other side, I'm here to give it to him." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne groaned. 
 
 " Good heavens, man ! " he cried, " don't you see that 
 the very thing you've done makes it worse ? That they'll 
 say for a dead certainty that Jemmy committed suicide, 
 that there was no valvular disease at all ? " 
 
 " Committed suicide ! with the edge of a wardrobe 
 door ? " exclaimed Dr. Rudd. 
 
 " That's what they do say," said Mr. Rosewarne, " and 
 that Madame made you do the post-mortem because she 
 knew it. I'd have given half a year's income to prevent 
 your doing this. I would, Rudd. I wish Trevan had 
 done it. It doesn't look right ; it doesn't indeed." 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 241 
 
 After that there seemed nothing more to be said. Both 
 men got up, and Mr. Rosewarne made as though to leave 
 without a word. Then he came back. 
 
 " Rudd," he said, " don't misunderstand me. And 
 don't take what I say amiss. But here's Dorothy closely 
 concerned, of course, in everything that has to do with 
 you. I can't be indifferent, then, even if Madame wasn't 
 also involved in it." He rubbed his head with the angry 
 air a man shows at the buzzing of a fly. " Hang it ! " he 
 cried, " why on earth have we got into this coil ? And 
 nobody '11 get anything out of it, either." 
 
 For a lawyer Mr. Rosewarne retained a surprising dis- 
 like of a legal imbroglio. 
 
 But the green lights were flying in the doctor's eyes. 
 
 " Apparently I do," said he, " for that'll be what your 
 informants tell you, of course. Another fortune, I 
 suppose ? For you've left out one link, no doubt, in 
 what they're sure to be saying — that Madame gave me 
 a huge fee and I took it . . . for contingencies like this, 
 I suppose. Don't I know what every old woman has 
 been saying for months past, that I made a fortune out 
 of Madame 's gout ? What the devil is it to do with any- 
 one, besides Madame, if I did ? " 
 
 " It isn't usual, you know that perfectly well, to take 
 such a fee," retorted Mr. Rosewarne, his gorge rising at 
 the man, " and at Madame 's age people are sure to put a 
 certain construction on it." 
 
 " She knew as well as ever you or I could do what she 
 was doing." 
 
 " That may be, but ... no, Rudd, it hasn't got a 
 pleasant flavour about it. It hasn't. And you know 
 it hasn't." 
 
 At that the doctor bestrode the high horse, but Mr. 
 Rosewarne cut him short. 
 
 " Look how it fits in," he cried ; " the Company will 
 have their spies out, of course, and there we are ..." 
 
 " And yet my evidence is as correct, as certain . . . 
 there isn't a shadow of a doubt in my mind. There 
 couldn't be in any plain man's eyes who knew his business." 
 
 16 
 
242 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " I know, I know," said Mr. Rosewarne : then, answer- 
 ing an appeal in the other's eyes, he said quietly, " I believe 
 every word you say as to that, doctor. But if you'd rely 
 a little more on the plain judgment of common people 
 and a bit less on your favourite Damn-your-eyes attitude, 
 it would be a comfort to me as my child's father." 
 
 With that they parted, each to a tossing night. Dr. 
 Dan had, in fact, done all things far too well. Trevan 
 expressed sympathy, but enjoyed the affair none the less, 
 opining that, if the young fellow was worth his salt, he'd 
 live it down. After a long and active life Trevan was 
 inclined to think there was nothing that could not be 
 lived down. And neither Trevan nor Rosewarne felt the 
 slightest doubt of the doctor's good faith, though the 
 former held up hands of horror at the huge fee. Sam 
 Cornish, of course, merely added to the trouble of the 
 affair with his nods and winks, as of one who could tell a 
 tale, an he would. 
 
 For Dr. Rudd, defiance was the only mood in which he 
 could face the foe ; he defied, then, with a new vice, 
 assuming now the cloak of hypocrisy. 
 
 The occasion of it was again, as it seemed to Mr. Rose- 
 warne, provided by the same Malignant Genius that had 
 killed Jemmy in so peculiar a fashion. 
 
 In a case of illness in the courts round the quays it 
 was equivalent to an announcement that extreme unction 
 had been sent for when news went round that Rudd had 
 been called in. For the habit was to summon him when 
 things had got to such a pass that they were beyond 
 ordinary wickedness and ordinary talent. Dr. Rudd, it 
 was believed, had the lucky hand, and Trevan, in a difficult 
 case, fell in with the feeling. So called in for a difficult 
 labour job, when the child, undesired but beloved, was 
 safely in the world, the doctor played then wantonly the 
 part of man of sentiment. 
 
 Purely, it seemed, to spite Father Tyacke and fly in 
 the face of the Rosewarnes, for, when the priest refused to 
 baptize the baby, the doctor took the matter up, went over 
 to Bodmin and put the case to Father Hendra. Daring 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 243 
 
 gossip with a fierce enjoyment, he took the mother to the 
 ceremony and himself watched the process. Only his 
 creed, or the lack of it, withheld him from being sponsor. 
 Nor was this all ; for he offended the friendly neighbour 
 who carried the child by calling her a fool, straight out, 
 when she made a scene over the salt put on the baby's 
 lips. 
 
 " Never did I see an innocent child treated so cruel 
 bad," cried she. 
 
 Before many hours were over Dr. Rudd was not only 
 responsible for the use of salt in the Catholic ceremony 
 of baptism . . . but for the baby. 
 
 " Profligate, hypocrite, liar, thief," said Mrs. Rose- 
 warne to herself. Yet, for once, she kept her own 
 counsel, being convinced in her mind that Dorothy knew 
 more than she allowed to appear. Nor did the doctor 
 communicate with her ; certainly he never appeared at 
 Teravel. Mrs. Rosewarne's own life-long trust in Provi- 
 dence was, she felt, duly rewarded. In her eyes the 
 Divine Disposer assumed the position of a trustworthy 
 Insurance Company. 
 
 Even Mr. Rosewarne confessed to a doubt as to whether 
 a man so unwilling to conform to appearances could ever 
 make a good husband. Put to the test, the lawyer actually 
 resented the process he had described under the figure of a 
 violinist playing on a sensitive instrument : that is, when 
 Dorothy was the instrument. 
 
 Then came a night when, Mrs. Rosewarne being called 
 away by a sick sister, father and daughter found them- 
 selves alone at Teravel. With open joy they refused to 
 change for dinner, and sat smoking together in the dining- 
 room. Presently she came across by his chair and crouch- 
 ing on the rug, slipped a hand into his. 
 
 " A heart-to-heart talk," he said lightly ; " we haven't 
 had one for ages, have we ? " 
 
 " I couldn't," said she, " and I don't know that I can 
 now." 
 
 " My dear," he rejoined briskly, glad that a chance of 
 clearing up the muddle a bit was possible, " do you know 
 
 16* 
 
244 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 that something I heard to-day, though it doesn't bear 
 on the main point at all, has given me extraordinary 
 pleasure ? " 
 
 " That it's been all kept from Madame ? " 
 
 " No, not that, but a queer thing about poor old Jemmy. 
 He had his loves, his passions, as you know, but they 
 weren't all, it seems, for show or for money. Not much 
 of a love, perhaps you'll think, and yet more disinterested 
 than many men's good works." 
 
 Jemmy's affairs had proved a surprise in more ways 
 than one, for the value of the collections was far in excess 
 of what had been expected. Queer stories came out now 
 as to his refusing to part with certain treasures, even 
 though big sums had been offered for them in a falling 
 market. Childless Jemmy, all show and vanity as he 
 seemed, had the tenderness of a lover of beauty for one 
 or two exquisite things which he refused to turn into 
 merchandise on any terms whatever. For, friends as 
 he was with all men, he kept such exclusive affection 
 as he possessed for a few pieces of superlative craftsman- 
 ship. 
 
 When Mr. Rosewarne had told his story, the father and 
 daughter were silent ; in the squalor of evil fancies this 
 fact about Jemmy lit up the landscape of their thoughts 
 like a sudden gleam through breaking clouds. 
 
 " But Dr. Dan, what about him . . . and you ? " asked 
 Mr. Rosewarne at last. 
 
 She was silent ; then when she lifted her head, Mr. 
 Rosewarne saw a bright patch on each cheek, as though 
 angry finger-prints had been left there. Dr. Rudd had, 
 in fact, passed the girl more than once with a curt nod, 
 as though their previous relations were wiped out. Her 
 mother's elaborate condolences had been received in 
 silence, but they cut deep, none the less. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne paused, as before a plunge. He was in 
 that uncomfortable state of half-perception that is worse 
 to bear than blank ignorance. Then he spoke. 
 
 At first he appeared to himself to beat the air. Then 
 he felt as though the daylight were coming to them both. 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 245 
 
 He spared her nothing ; but told of the suspicions, of the 
 malice that had pieced together the disjointed fragments 
 of an ugly patchwork. 
 
 One thing only he did not guess : that the doctor had 
 been made to realize the exact outcome of his contempt 
 of convention. For by ones and twos the baser sort 
 found him out with appeals to rid them of the trouble 
 connected with the coming of life and the passing of it. 
 He had mocked at the prejudice against murder, and now 
 his nose was being held to the grindstone of his own 
 theories by persons who, even in Petrockstow, wished to 
 use him as a means of expediting the passage of the old 
 into the next world, or of preventing the unborn from ever 
 entering this. Furtive folk sought the use of his un- 
 scrupulousness, till, several having been flung, more or 
 less, down the Priory House steps, the tale spread that 
 the doctor's fee for " tinkering " was always a large one : 
 he was to be bought, but not cheaply, that is. 
 
 Of this Mr. Rosewarne knew nothing ; simply now he 
 kept to the fact of the reckless spirit that would have no 
 truck with other folks' habit of putting the lowest con- 
 struction on their neighbours' acts. 
 
 The frozen constriction of her mood gone, Dorothy 
 leant forward from her high chair, seeing with bright 
 eyes the picture of a man with his back to the wall and 
 bayed about with a ring of foes. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne had painted better than he knew. 
 
 " Oh, what he must have thought of me all these days," 
 she cried. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne smiled, perceiving the danger of the 
 other swing of the pendulum. 
 
 " Don't make him a hero, my dear," he said, " that's 
 what he isn't. He's a young man with a kink in his 
 brain and a deuced sulky temper. No compromise with 
 the average, says he, and straightway stirs up a more 
 than average hotch-potch of folly and ill-will. I'm really 
 at an end of my patience with him. And the woman who 
 links her future with his will need to have some of the 
 elements of greatness in her if she's to win through it all. 
 
246 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 But I suppose," he said irritably, '* it's precisely this 
 sort of joker who would intrigue a girl." 
 
 " Dad," cried she, smacking a kiss on the tip of his nose, 
 " oh, you've done me so much good. It's like the break- 
 up of the frost. He never even sees me if he can help it." 
 
 " I know," nodded Mr. Rosewarne, '• and looks as 
 sallow as if he had jaundice." 
 
 " Ah, how he must have suffered," cried she. 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne looked alarmed, his mind being occupied 
 with the question of what his wife would say to him if she 
 ever discovered the nature of this " heart-to-heart " talk 
 of theirs. 
 
 " There you go," he exclaimed, " like all your sex, 
 making a hero out of a . . . mountebank." 
 
 "But he's not what people say," she said; " not one 
 who bears false witness, anyway." 
 
 " No, he isn't what people say certainly, but I'm by no 
 means sure he isn't what's really more awkward to deal 
 with." 
 
 " Oh, dad, don't." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne became judicial. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " if you're minded to set him up 
 on a pedestal because he's been deuced careless, I wouldn't. 
 And I'm not sure that this avoiding of you so persistently 
 isn't the worst feature of the whole affair." 
 
 " But don't you see, father," she said impatiently, 
 " that he couldn't ... go on with me when . . . he's 
 got all this spoiling things for him ? He wouldn't force 
 himself on me, things being as they are, of course." 
 
 " I wonder," said Mr. Rosewarne musingly, " I wonder." 
 
 This was, in fact, the point about which he felt most 
 perplexity ; was the doctor a fellow of this delicacy ? 
 Did he so far confess the power of convention ? or was he 
 nothing but an idol greedy for the most delicately-scented 
 incense of all, that which the woman burns before the 
 brute ? 
 
 In the web of these gossamer fancies he grew impatient, 
 longing for a sharp push through the whole entanglement. 
 Yet Mr. Rosewarne was near enough to understand that 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 247 
 
 the only law for some is to live dangerously. He sighed, 
 riding at his safe anchorage, yet knew that his child must 
 go on. Safe, conventional existence on the level would 
 seem to her always, unless she first adventured this, a 
 mean expedient. 
 
 There was but one way : an appeal to Madame. He 
 drove over to Petrockstow the next day with the full 
 intention of consulting her, but found, before he could act, 
 that the move was made for him. At four o'clock, just 
 as he was thinking of going up to Denzell, he chanced 
 to look out of the office window and there was electrified 
 to see, in the street below, Dr. Rudd and his daughter. 
 
 " Just go on, will you ? " cried she, " I must go up and 
 speak to father." 
 
 When in a whirlwind she had come and gone, Mr. 
 Rosewarne went over to the window to watch the pair. 
 His sensations were not unlike those of a man who stands 
 at gaze before a diver on the edge of a springboard. 
 
 Others beside the lawyer felt the same, for heads were 
 turned to look after them all the way down the street. 
 Gravely demure, Dorothy flaunted her captive in the 
 face of censorious Petrockstow, stopped to speak to a 
 friend, went into a shop to buy fruit. By the time they 
 pushed off, with the Cornish boys in attendance to fetch 
 spare oars and a cushion, the pierhead was thronged 
 with waterside loungers, a primitive company too close 
 to the earth to be troubled with fantastical prejudices. 
 Something like a cheer followed in the wake of the boat, 
 for a public betrothal could scarcely have made more 
 stir. Afterwards the women brewed a stronger cup of 
 tea on the strength of it, and scratching bare elbows com- 
 fortably, hung about their doors to discuss the details of 
 Dr. Rudd's latest cases. 
 
 Dipping an oar occasionally, the doctor let the tide 
 bear the boat down-stream to the Pentire side ; heat 
 waves fanned their faces and the sulphurous clouds 
 gathered against the wind. Beaching the boat above 
 high-water mark, they made for the low spire of St. Enodoc 
 among the sand hills. The shadows between the cup-like 
 
248 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 valleys were blue against the yellow glare, and below the 
 heat mist the sea was like a sleeper breathing heavily 
 in the stillness. The spire of the church seemed cut in 
 steel against the dun clouds. Every breath of wind, 
 though it came from the sea, puffed into their faces as 
 though the door of a vast oven had opened and closed. 
 Climbing steadily higher, they had reached the ricks of 
 Pentire Glaize, when a flash and a low rumble warned 
 them of the coming storm. Following in the wake of 
 the sound came a wind that swept the ground in eddying 
 circles. The rain, swooping down, was driven slant- 
 wise over upland surfaces and left the ground still parched. 
 
 By this time the pair had reached the shelter of the 
 farm, and over whortleberry jam and cream were sharing 
 their first meal alone together. He ate, she discovered, 
 with great vigour, pushing up his glasses at intervals. 
 The thunder was passing now, but the rain still came 
 down in sheets, and through the window the air blew 
 sweet and clear. Up to now they had been as silent as 
 the country lovers of lane and fieldside ; yet this could 
 not last, halcyon though it might be. 
 
 " We shall never get to Pentire Point to-night," he 
 said, while he lighted his pipe. 
 
 "No," she said, " but it's been wonderful." 
 
 So it had, somehow ; even the fields of upland corn, 
 the blue shadows of the dunes, the flight of startled birds 
 before their footsteps. For the sudden release from 
 coldness and distrust had given them back, it seemed, 
 the freedom of the wild life. Even the new yellow ricks 
 against the clouds, the indefinable air of sudden autumn 
 signified a home-coming. 
 
 Yet — they wanted to understand, could not take things 
 as they had done all day, at their face value. Though 
 the doctor might have done so, that could only have 
 been if passion held the reins. Another passion was upper- 
 most in him to-night, that half -fatal desire to be under- 
 stood whence came both his weakness and his strength. 
 
 " Why was it, Dorothy," he asked at length, " that 
 you . . . changed to me to-day ? " 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 249 
 
 " Dad told me, made me understand," she stammered. 
 
 He winced, and she recognized that, had she been more 
 of a woman of the world, she would never have confessed 
 this. 
 
 " I did not really think what they said was true," she 
 added hastily. 
 
 " What do they say ? " he asked. 
 
 " Must we go into it all ? " she pleaded. 
 
 ** How can we possibly avoid it ? " he asked, his eyes 
 flashing. 
 
 " Can't we forget it ? " she begged again. 
 
 " Only if we lie to each other," he said. " Oh, I know 
 you felt it a great piece of pluck on your part to walk 
 down to the harbour with me to-day . . . felt nothing 
 short of a heroine, in fact. If I'd been a convict, you'd 
 have preened yourself in the same way. As I ought to 
 be if I've done what these people think I have." 
 
 " And yet you said you didn't care ? " 
 
 At this stroke he was silent. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, "I'm so tired of it all. And you 
 ought to be ashamed to spoil everything this way." 
 
 He laughed grimly at sight of her appearance in the 
 open. 
 
 " Damn it," cried he, " let's have it out and be done 
 with it." 
 
 " That's what dad says you are," she exclaimed. " A 
 damn-your-eyes-get-out-of-my-light sort of man to all the 
 world and inside as sensitive as if you hadn't any skin." 
 
 " Hit again," he said, but could not conceal his chagrin. 
 
 " And," she continued, " you were cruel, and hard, and 
 bitter to me all those days . . . when people said things 
 . . . and you wouldn't let me in ... me ... me .. . 
 me, though you ought to have." 
 
 " Let you in," he stormed, " pity ? ask for pity ? 
 The lowest vice, the feeblest of the slave virtues." 
 
 " I don't pity you then. I think you deserved all you 
 got for being a fool." 
 
 '* That's better, much more wholesome," he laughed. 
 " Oh, Dorothy, let's drop it." He stretched out his 
 
250 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 arms and took her hands. " You spitfire ! But that's 
 the way I like you. Only don't, for God's sake, put on 
 the pathetic stop. Fool, knave, if you like, but an object 
 of no man's pity, and no woman's." 
 
 " Oh," signed she, " however are we to live together ? " 
 and then stopped short, suddenly aghast at her easy 
 acceptance of the situation. 
 
 Of course he pounced at that, and coming closer, bent 
 down to her. 
 
 " Dorothy," he whispered, " do you know what I 
 should like to do ? Catch you up and carry you away, 
 and never let you go. . . . Dorothy ! " 
 
 The rest was whispered, but she grew white arid lay 
 quite still. 
 
 " Oh," he complained, half shaking her, " what a deal 
 of trouble 'tis now to win a girl to a man's arms that 
 used to come to 'em as lightly as a bird. Oh, Dorothy, 
 Dorothy . . ."he rocked her to and fro in the big chair 
 . . . " why did we ever lose our simplicity ? " 
 
 " Perhaps we'll find it again," she whispered, but 
 sighed, suddenly prophetic, expecting no such thing. 
 
 It was the note of their age, this searching for a simplicity 
 they had so long mislaid. "Stark," was Madame's name 
 for him, yet here, too, was the transforming touch at 
 work that made him crave to be read rather than loved ; 
 to reveal himself, rather than to feel her pulses throb at 
 one with his. 
 
 So he sat, his hand in hers, pouring out his apology, 
 in an agony to make her realize him, and so to gain fuller 
 possession of himself. In this stress of his desire, he was 
 far enough from bravado, yet none the less it was a 
 concession to self-worship. 
 
 He flung his words out fiercely like a painter who by 
 daubing in crude colours strives to show that which calls 
 for air and mist, the rainbow gossamer and the cloud- 
 glory, to express it. He splashed then, and curved in 
 the full agony of the artist to express that which wants 
 a medium as fine as thought itself. 
 
 With a half-frown she tried to follow, probing into the 
 
LIFE WITH ITS BARS 251 
 
 depths, with a strange sense of living all about her, of 
 living mind, no less than living body. Had she never 
 come to the bridal bed it would have been impossible to 
 call her maiden again, if soul's painful union with soul 
 means anything. Chaste as she was, and ignorant of 
 love's surrender, she felt this moment was a yielding of 
 the inner nature that no body's surrender could surpass. 
 
 The apologia began with Sam Cornish, that unlettered 
 soul, who, in Daniel Rudd's eyes, was man whole and 
 indivisible, utterly free from the sickly sense of division 
 that makes half the misery of man's present stage. 
 Sam was, then, in the fine sense, an animal ; the body of 
 him as perfect an expression of the energy that drove it 
 as any lissome, sinless beast's. To Daniel, he was a man 
 whose every act expressed himself, Sam Cornish, and 
 not some far-off conception of somebody else. Body as 
 the agent of being : such in the doctor's eyes was Sam. 
 
 For that was what he was after ; a flight from machine- 
 made tawdriness on the one hand, as on the other from 
 the sense of sin and discord. To touch life ; to live ; to 
 express hour by hour, moment by moment, the ecstasy of 
 will ; to make each common act of bodily function a joy, 
 a satisfaction. Not to lose all for the means of life, as 
 the world does nowadays, but to spend all in the living. 
 
 It is the great search, and so he defied and despised 
 every carefully-built structure of moral restraint, wanted 
 ... he illustrated with his foot ... to kick holes in the 
 elaborate architecture of false values called the social 
 system. That little system of shalts and shalt-nots 
 which is made of whalebone and steel and as false as any 
 old woman's pair of corsets. Free protoplasm and living 
 matter, the war-cry on his lips ; growth, the law, not 
 restraint. 
 
 The bonfire of buckram, of course, is only part of the 
 work ; one must build in one's own life the channel for 
 the future. He hated high-falutin, never used it, yet 
 it was the at-one-ness of the animal with the spirit that he 
 wanted, and so, in his attempts to fly, fell headlong time 
 and again in the mud. 
 
252 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 The torrent of words trailed, broke off, and with a 
 trembling hand he lit his pipe. 
 
 The girl was silent, in fear of inadequate speech as 
 well as from the excitement of the moment. For instinc- 
 tively she put quite another interpretation on this desire 
 to live, his being the personal craving, hers the one that 
 wars with this, the racial. And that she dared not 
 express in words. It was only when she lay still, with 
 her head on his breast, that the world-weaver who makes 
 the future caught them both in his spell. 
 
 " When can we be married, Dan ? " she faltered. 
 
 With a sort of awe he looked down, and in her eyes half 
 saw what life meant, but the next moment, manlike, lost 
 the wider ecstasy in the personal bliss. 
 
 When they came out to pay the farmer's wife, the 
 woman wished them both well with that sudden uplift 
 of the rare moment when all the barriers go down, when 
 the common plight of being alive has changed for a second 
 to the uncommon joy of being alive together. The 
 money-making traffic made Mrs. Nance's joy, but here 
 was another side of living that she yet could understand. 
 
 " Good old sort, that," said Dr. Rudd; " come, race me 
 down this slope." 
 
 At the bottom he picked her up, his hands on her waist, 
 and while he rejoiced in her slimness, she found his 
 strength adorable. For the moment, at any rate, they 
 were atune with life, if only for the blood that flowed free 
 in the veins of both. 
 
 When they reached Petrockstow Mr. Rosewarne awaited 
 them with news. The doctor's evidence had won the 
 day, and Jemmy Carlyon was judged to have died by act 
 of God and not by his own hand. Mrs. Frances would 
 get her money, and the Insurance Company was baffled. 
 
 Yet rumour, though quelled, is like a drop of ink lost 
 in a glass of water — still there, though invisible. Its 
 influence shows when it gathers to it other drops. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 
 
 IN house furnishing, as in other undertakings, the great 
 thing was, according to the doctor, that one should 
 deliberately set oneself against organization ; to grow 
 being the law of existence. The women, especially Mrs. 
 Cornish and the bride-to-be, listened open-eared while 
 he rhapsodized. They were waiting, in fact, for his 
 eloquence to run itself clear. Menfolk to Mrs. Cornish 
 were always like fat in process of clarifying, that will boil 
 itself clear if you wait long enough. So it would be with 
 the formula, grow ; not organize. 
 
 The point, of course, when it emerged was simple : 
 the newly-married pair were to come back and live in the 
 two rooms already occupied by the doctor in Sam's 
 cottage. Dr. Dan argued it arithmetically : if Sam and 
 eight children lived in four rooms, that is, at the rate of 
 two and a half persons in a room, two persons ought to be 
 able to live in two rooms. 
 
 " Cooking ? " cried he, " surely the cooking could be 
 done on Mam's stove ? " 
 
 Dorothy's heart sank, but Mrs. Cornish's calmness 
 quieted her panic. " Thic old Dan," as well as " thic 
 old Sam," always had his fling in words, but afterwards 
 things panned out differently. As to furniture, the doctor 
 was utterly devoid of acquisitiveness ; though he would 
 swear if there was no bed at night and no table by day, 
 his sole idea of providing the same was after the. manner 
 of the Creator to say, Let there be tables and beds. 
 
 253 
 
254 THE EYES 0F THE BLIND 
 
 Mrs. Sam said nothing, but bided her time and waited 
 till she had her man alone. 
 
 " Dan's gone dotty," said she ; " does he think I'm going 
 to let another woman know how much flour I use a week 
 and how often I f ry ? " 
 
 This was quite a new point of view, but Sam struck out 
 two ideas of his own. Rubbing his head till his cap 
 stuck over one ear, he said : 
 
 " Us'll lose a bit if he goes, missus. Miss 'en, too, 
 shan't us ? " 
 
 Mrs. Cornish contested neither idea. She had done 
 enough for the present by driving into Sam's head the 
 fact that a Mrs. Rudd would never be allowed to enter 
 her household. Besides, as she knew well, Sam would 
 drink more if the doctor wasn't about the house. In- 
 stead, then, of talking, she made inquiries on her own 
 account, and discovered first, a house to let higher in the 
 town, and second, an old woman also for the hiring, whom 
 she knew to be a capable housewife. This would fix up 
 a residence, while for the practice in the lower town, the 
 doctor's present rooms could also be retained. She 
 saw in her mind's-eye a notice board on the door of the 
 Priory House with " Surgery " on it. 
 
 " Besides," said Sam, warming to his ideas, " there 
 ain't no room in this house for more kids than yours and 
 mine, missus." 
 
 " And that may be another ten," cried she. 
 
 " Surely not so bad as that," rejoined he. 
 
 Such was their formula : things never get quite beyond 
 one's power of putting up with them. And that's all 
 there is to it, as Mrs. Sam would often say. As to plans, 
 she always blocked things by the slow process of first 
 instilling ideas gently into Sam's brain, whence they got 
 to the doctor's in time, and, having passed through that 
 magic medium, were received by the latter as being due 
 to pure inspiration. 
 
 Meanwhile the bride-to-be was tossed about at the tail 
 of a whirlwind, and, though dismayed at the prospect 
 before her, tried really to believe that life depends 
 
THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 255 
 
 not on the outer man, but that the body is more than 
 raiment. 
 
 Then Mrs. Rosewarne descended on Mrs. Cornish, 
 expecting no doubt to bewilder that simple woman by her 
 affability. In this she was disappointed, for nothing 
 really ruffled Sam's wife, except lies about her own reputa- 
 tion. And for a bout with a fine lady she had a keen 
 appetite. 
 
 " Of course," said the lawyer's wife, sitting on the edge 
 of the armchair in the front room, " of course it will be a 
 great trouble to you to lose the doctor as a lodger. We 
 quite realize that, but with a house in such a good position 
 as this, you could surely get lodgers in the season." 
 
 Advice from " They sort " got Mrs. Cornish's dander up. 
 She hit back. 
 
 " I couldn't put up with the inconvenience," she said, 
 " of having anyone always about in the house, same as 
 'twould be if Miss Rosewarne come to live here. Dan's 
 one of ourselves, takes his meals with us and that, but a 
 woman's another pair of shoes altogether and I won't 
 have her. That's all there is to it." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne eyed the mourning cards on the walls, 
 the portraits of sailors and family groups, with a baking 
 of cakes on the table, shut away in here from the children, 
 and the glass cupboard containing the best tea-set. 
 
 " Of course," murmured she, " the idea is impossible. 
 I'm so glad you see it as I do. Really it only proves how 
 utterly childlike the doctor is in proposing it." 
 
 He had become " childlike," now that, willy-nilly, she 
 found herself jockeyed into the position of accepting him 
 as a son-in-law. 
 
 Then in came Sam, pulling a forelock, to join the 
 council of war. A very sensible man the lady found him 
 and said as much. With a wink of one eye, he looked 
 jocularly across at his wife. 
 
 " Her don't always find me so, ma'am, I can tell 'ee," 
 he remarked. 
 
 The upshot of it all was, of course, that Sam was " Got 
 at," and Dan found himself saddled with a house in the 
 
256 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 higher town and a " surgery " in the lower. Nor could 
 he deny the convenience, for the house, in a sheltered 
 niche with magnolias and fuchsias all round it, had a fine 
 view of the estuary, but was small enough to satisfy his 
 cravings for exiguity. That is, there would be a bed- 
 room in front, with a little sitting-room on the other side 
 of the landing, and a boxlike dressing-room at the back 
 looking out against the face of the rock. The " Old One," 
 as they called Mrs. Barrable, had her rooms below. 
 
 An adjective is always a comfort to the sophisticated : 
 " Quaint " was, of course, the word in which poor Mrs. 
 Rosewarne found consolation for the cottage, and 
 " weird," the expression she used for the furniture. The 
 old ship's captain to whom the place had belonged left 
 behind him some delectable odds ; on the staircase a cork 
 model of a frigate in full sail, with a full-rigged ship in a 
 bottle and a large piece of coral to prop open the front 
 door. From the little polished hall, with the weather- 
 glass on the wall, one looked through a mass of leaves 
 and red fuchsia bells at the river reaches, with beyond 
 the Cornish hills aerial and dreamy. The Nest, the 
 Moorings, the Haven, the Harbourage, the Cot ; these 
 names for the place delighted the doctor, who, with 
 fiendish ingenuity, when he found that Mrs. Rosewarne 
 was clearing the house of big furniture, sent up a large flock 
 bed that could by no means be coaxed into the passage. 
 It remained instead in the garden, a mockery to all 
 Petrockstow till Trevan informed Madame Felicia of the 
 trouble. 
 
 At this she planned the part of fairy godmother for 
 herself, and, driving down, settled herself in the parlour, 
 and summoned agents and housekeeper to her. She 
 found, in fact, the same joy in fitting the house for Dr. 
 Dan, as she had felt in training the girl for the r61e of 
 beloved woman. For weeks she permitted no one but 
 her workmen to enter the Doll's House, but was there 
 herself every day, pointing out with imperious stick where 
 every piece of furnishing was to go. 
 
 When the doctor tauntingly pointed out to her the ill 
 
THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 257 
 
 omen of the name, she put up her eyeglasses at him and 
 taunted him with the bed in the front garden, now made 
 into scrap-iron. 
 
 For once, under this well-born patronage, Petrockstow 
 let bygones be bygones and agreed to forget the part 
 Dr. Dan was supposed to have played in getting Frances 
 Carlyon her Insurance money. Everyone revelled in the 
 sentimentality of Madame's " cot-furnishing," though a 
 thumping cheque would have sent them stark mad again. 
 Even the English world, when it can be got to confess it, 
 loves a lover, and, once more, a word came to the rescue : 
 the marriage was dubbed " romantic," till every visitor 
 to the place was told the tale, and of an evening, when 
 the men were at work unpacking behind brightly lit 
 windows, a crowd would gather in front of the house, till 
 they had to put a padlock on the gate and fix curtains 
 at once. 
 
 Sheepishly through all this the doctor walked the streets 
 in his most ancient togs, with shoulders humped and a 
 cross face. Ten times a day he swore that, had he known 
 it was to be like this, he would have gone off and jumped 
 over a private broomstick. But Sam's face shone with 
 jollity. 
 
 " Buck up," said he to the doctor, " and be a man. 
 The second time you go through it, you won't turn a 
 hair." 
 
 The evening before the wedding Sam and Dan dis- 
 appeared together. But at night they returned in the 
 last train from Camelstock, both inclined to veer in their 
 walk and given to nodding emphatically in answer to 
 nothing in particular. The doctor was merely affable, 
 and pleasanter than he had been for days. But it took 
 two men to get Sam home, and when he arrived there, 
 Mam pulled off his boots and left him to sleep it out on 
 the rug in the kitchen. 
 
 The doctor it was who had nightmare and awoke cold 
 and shaking in the dawn, being fully persuaded that at 
 9.8 a.m. they would be tolling the bell for him, after his 
 last " drop " on the scaffold. With the liquor he had 
 
 17 
 
258 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 drunk still buzzing in his head, he got up, and kicking Sam 
 on the rug, ran down the steps to the quay and pulled 
 away towards the open sea. It was barely day yet, and 
 over the great loneliness of the water the light lay dim 
 and sorrowful. He was glad to be alone. Yet he felt 
 no shame at all at yesterday's doings ; at matings and 
 births one should always drink, for these are tremendous 
 events that a sensitive man cannot live through with- 
 out a moment's breathing space of oblivion. When he 
 rowed in again, the blue smoke was already rising from 
 the chimneys, and the homeliness of the cottage doors 
 opening to the day was nearly as good as the grey waste 
 of waters with God walking them. 
 
 Late that night a motor-car swiftly drew near the 
 town. It was midnight and dark with the strange dark- 
 ness of a hot night late in the summer. Between the 
 heavy leafage the stars hung like golden apples, and in 
 the bright light of their lamps the road stretched in front 
 of the car, a glaring alley of whiteness. When it stopped 
 Dr. Dan got out ; cramped by the long drive, his wife 
 stood clinging to him for a moment. Then at a word the 
 driver backed the car, and in a few moments the pair 
 stood on the road alone. There was nothing to be heard 
 but the wind among the trees. 
 
 " Stolen a march on them all," said the doctor, with a 
 laugh ; " everybody's asleep and we'll get in without a 
 soul catching us." 
 
 Holding hands like two children, they made their way 
 down the back streets. The place was pitch-dark, and in 
 the narrow alleys cobwebs floated across from one ferny 
 wall to the other. They were not expected for a few 
 days, but by this move they would frustrate Sam's diabolical 
 plan of a public reception. 
 
 " Quick," said Dorothy, as the doctor fitted the latch- 
 key in their own door, " someone's coming and we shall 
 be arrested for burglary." 
 
 Laughing softly in the hall lest they should awake the 
 Old 'Un, they got back their breath. But Mrs. Barrable 
 heard their laughter, and lying close in her bed, thrilled 
 
THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 259 
 
 to know the lovers so near her. She was old, but not old 
 enough to have forgotten, and, proud in being, except 
 Madame Felicia, the only one in possession of their secret, 
 went feverishly over in her mind all the appointments 
 of the supper table upstairs, lest anything should have 
 been forgotten. 
 
 " The dears," purred she to herself, in an ecstasy of 
 excitement. 
 
 Upstairs, with the lamp shining down on the loaded 
 table, they stood for a moment looking through the open 
 window at the huddle of roofs below. Behind one lighted 
 window far below they imagined joy like theirs, or watch- 
 ing, painful and heavy. The wonder of it all, under the 
 starlight, caught them both and Dorothy suddenly sighed. 
 " Tired ? " said he. " Come, then, let's eat." 
 They had been motoring all day since the marriage — 
 to get the incense out of their clothes, as Dr. Dan put it. 
 On the whole he had rather enjoyed the process of the 
 ceremony, being tickled to observe Father Tyacke's 
 solemnity, and filled himself with the kind of wonder one 
 feels at watching a proceeding entirely inexplicable to 
 oneself. Then he had had his first lesson in driving a 
 motor, and paid his five pounds for the day with all the 
 satisfaction of one who has had his money's worth. He 
 promised himself a motor-bicycle from some of Madame's 
 money, the money that he " blued " in sudden fits of feeling 
 which a shrewd observer would have ascribed to com- 
 punction, were not such a feeling incredible. 
 
 " Oh, you darling, you darling ! " cried Dorothy, suddenly 
 feeling something press against her arm. 
 
 It was none other than the tiny one, Wobbler, the black 
 wizened beast from Teravel. 
 
 " Dad," she said, " must have brought her over to- 
 day." 
 
 Holding the small beast in the air, she rejoiced, and 
 choked over her, for this was the last finishing touch of 
 home. Mrs. Barrable below earned a lasting affection 
 for the comfortable cushion on which rested the beloved 
 animal. 
 
 i 7 * 
 
260 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Round the champagne bottle was twisted a note from 
 Madame herself. 
 
 " You two dear people, I hope you like my wedding 
 furniture. Only be happy. You can't do anything finer 
 than that, after all. Tis the first and last duty of man, and 
 especially of woman, though mentioned in no Catechism." 
 
 " Like her, isn't it ? " she asked, as they read it together. 
 
 " That's why," said he, " Madame and I forgather. 
 She does just live to live, so to say. To see her makes you 
 feel that perhaps you can do the trick yourself." 
 
 But the talk was made-talk, and when Wobbler cracked 
 the chicken-bones, they felt grateful to her for the dis- 
 traction. When the noise of it ceased, they sat nonplussed, 
 till Dr. Dan knew himself to be profoundly wretched. 
 
 " A world full of women," said he to himself ; "no 
 getting away from them. They play the tune and we dance 
 to it." 
 
 A storm of protest raging within him, he felt the need 
 to be brutal. He was like a lassoed bullock, and in the 
 middle of smoking a cigar, dropped it suddenly in the grate. 
 When Wobbler created a diversion by yelling to be let out 
 and put to bed, he sighed at the relief of being alone again. 
 But on his wife's return she found him astride the rug, 
 defiant once more and in the mood in which he went bull- 
 necked for the first obstacle. 
 
 Hitting out furiously, he fell to telling a story without, 
 as it appeared to her, either rhyme or reason. Then, 
 catching the green flash in his eyes, she sat very still, with 
 hands crossed on her lap. 
 
 It was a sufficiently brutal tale and she visualized it 
 instantly as happening here in this house, where on the 
 staircase an unwary visitor might hit his head with a sound- 
 ing crack on the lamp-bracket, or tumbling down heedlessly, 
 collide at the bottom with the frigate in its glass case. 
 For Madame had retained these as suiting the longshore 
 air of the place. 
 
THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 261 
 
 " Did you ever hear the tale of Tom Beer's wife ? " 
 he asked. " How she got up a beach flirtation, having 
 time on her hands and no kids ? She met a flashy sort 
 of fellow, with an eyeglass, and he bowled her over. Tom 
 got the first inkling of what was going on when he came 
 home one night to find the man in the house. He didn't 
 take him by the scruff of the neck and fling him out, as you'd 
 expect, but he just put his hand on his wife's shoulder 
 and pushed her up the stairs in front of him. 
 
 " ' Get in,' said he. ' You're my woman, you know.' " 
 
 " That was all — and enough, for the fellow followed. 
 Whimpering, she was, they say. Then Tom fetched him 
 a crack on the jaws and over he went, down the stairs, and 
 lay there. Tom didn't go down to look for him, but by 
 the morning when he went down, he was gone. He'd cut 
 the whole caboodle too, for nobody saw him in the place 
 after that." 
 
 There was a dead silence, the tale done ; in the shadow 
 where his wife sat Dr. Dan could just see a white figure. 
 The interlocking of the hands on her lap was as interesting 
 to him as the left hand of a 'cello player. She had none of 
 the fiddling, fidgety ways of nervous women. In a panic 
 he knew he must have bruised her, yet, none the less, scorn 
 surged through him, contempt ineffable for the lies and 
 pretences of the ordered decencies of life. Fighting to get 
 down to the bedrock of this affair, he called her attitude, 
 her supposed attitude to this day's business, prim and 
 smug, and the whole show a farcical gimcrack business, 
 though to Mrs. Rosewarne it was " hallowed." He had 
 heard her call it so even to-day. And as she said it she 
 looked like a cat with a pound of butter in her inside. 
 Why to Heaven wasn't he on the hillside with a gipsy, 
 instead of in this rabbit hutch ? 
 
 In short, rebellion flared in him, and when the church 
 clock struck one, he saw that scene too : the grey tower of 
 it a buttress against the night sky, whereupon his eye 
 shifted once more to the brutal story he had just told ; 
 he could see the woman's thick tail of hair bobbing in front 
 of her husband's eyes, could feel his clutch on her soft 
 
262 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 shoulder ; his fingers would leave a mark, for that is the 
 man's way. 
 
 " Time to go," he said curtly, and as he reached out his 
 hand to extinguish the lamp, she slipped like a shadow out 
 of the room. 
 
 With the door closed behind her, Dorothy stood pressing 
 one hand to a burning cheek. She saw only the sleeping 
 country between herself and home, for panic flight was her 
 impulse now. The little cat sleeping in a tight ball, the 
 dainty supper, the happiness of the sunny, whirling day, 
 all was wiped out in the brutality of the underlying point 
 of her husband's story, the " Get in, my woman ! " The 
 tale had stripped to its bones this horrible thing that 
 women took so easily. 
 
 She went to the window and stood looking out. There 
 was a stout ivy branch by the side to let herself down by, 
 but the mockery that awaited her was enough to deter. 
 And then, with the sound of his movements in the next 
 room, came understanding. It was as though by some 
 magnetic force from an unknown region of herself she 
 touched the deeps in him. He, too, was afraid. She 
 remembered his flush at her simple answer one day at 
 Denzell, when, standing before her mirror, she looked down 
 and told him she had been curling her hair. Beside sensi- 
 tiveness like this, she seemed possessed of brazen effrontery, 
 for at the mere thought of intimacy he could thrill. 
 
 When he opened the door, the room seemed empty, for 
 she was sitting in the window-seat. Stooping, he found 
 her cheek wet with tears. 
 
 "I've been a brute," he groaned. 
 
 " But ... I understand," she said ; " you felt . . . 
 trapped. So do I." 
 
 " I understand wife-beating," he thought, and then 
 laughed harshly, filled with a fresh anger at himself. For 
 here he was surely . . . living, the very thing he had raged 
 about, and yet could only sulk and sulk. 
 
 They seemed changing places, now that to her eyes lay 
 open all his anguish of rebellion against the power that 
 held them both. He had, in fact, struck at her as the 
 
THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 263 
 
 agent of his servitude, and yet knew her to be but the tool 
 for a purpose that uses sentient things as so much dust, 
 that bathes them in the fire of passion without even a 
 " by your leave." 
 
 The candles on the dressing-table flared in the draught 
 and the smell of guttering wax filled the room. When she 
 leant forward to blow them out, he could not move, for the 
 sight of her tear-stained face seemed the most pitiful thing 
 in the world. To his mind they were both like children 
 who have been spanked by a harridan of a mother. Yet to 
 share the pain of these blows took much of the sting away. 
 For " my woman " has its counterpart in " my man," and 
 the second phrase has in it, too, the implication of 
 possession. So naughty children learn, syllable by syllable, 
 to read in the book of life. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 AERE PERENNIUS 
 
 LONG after the trees on the hill-tops had emerged 
 from the darkness, everything in the valley bottom 
 still retained the black massiveness of night. To those 
 abroad so early there was a dampness in the air that was 
 inexpressibly cooling after the dry heat of the last weeks. 
 Sunburnt field-workers, sweated to gauntness, awoke 
 slowly from heavy sleep on feather beds in white-washed 
 garret rooms, with husks from the threshing in their hair 
 and dust still filling every pore. 
 
 p The rows of ricks against the clouds, the trails of reed- 
 straw on every hedge, the smell of nuts from the hedgerows, 
 marked the close of the summer. The air was heavy with 
 the coming of rain, for the weariness of harvest time drew 
 to its end, and cool winds preluded the joy of full bins and 
 overflowing rick-yards. The ceremony of the vintage 
 may be gayer, but the man of the north can find a sober 
 happiness in his corn and apples. Even now mellow heaps 
 of cider apples lay in the orchard greenness, and the bees 
 hummed in branches that showed in brown patches here 
 and there the hand of autumn. Yellow leaves fluttered 
 through the still air, coming singly now, though soon to 
 fall in battalions. 
 
 The back door of Lanvean opened just at the point in 
 time when, the earth hovering between day and night, 
 outlines can be seen but not features. The lumbering of 
 heavy footsteps down the back stairs was followed by the 
 clattering of milk-pails that rose above the sound of the 
 
 264 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 265 
 
 water pouring out of the conduit-pipe into the granite 
 trough. 
 
 " Hoity, hoity, hoity-coo, hoity-coo ! " 
 
 Up the valley below St. Meryn sounded the milking call, 
 as the man, followed by three collies, awoke the sleeping 
 mothers from the meads. As gate after gate opened all 
 down the valley, there was a noise of hustling and the smell 
 of milky breath mingled with the scent of trodden grass 
 and thyme. They left their crouching outlines behind 
 them, traced in the grey surface of the dew, and gathering 
 momentum as they passed through the last fields, finished 
 with a rush at the final gate. For the collies, staunch and 
 wise as they were, had one weakness : they one and all, 
 grandfather, father and son, put in practice the principle 
 of the devil catch the hindmost, and always swung them- 
 selves out of every gate by the tail of the last cow. Old 
 Help, of the first generation, had twice been in danger of 
 death from Gilbert's rabbiting-gun for this offence, but, 
 having been reprieved so often, would doubtless end 
 his days as a rheumaticky pensioner in the chimney 
 corner. 
 
 From the house-place Gilbert watched the rush of the 
 cows into the farmyard, where they took their places 
 sedately in two long rows, standing back to back, with a 
 clear space down the middle. Anyone who stood at the 
 head of this lane looked down on a waving tangle of tails, 
 that, when the flies were busy, danced a tarantella of 
 frenzy. 
 
 The stables were already alive with stamping feet and 
 the rattling of harness, for the carts were preparing to drive 
 the new milk to catch the up-train. Gilbert's newest idea 
 for this was a motor, that would save both time and horse- 
 flesh. To Steve had been entrusted this part of the work, 
 for all the possibilities of the farm were being exploited by 
 a restless energy that had nothing to do but to spend itself 
 on work. While Steve went to town to study motor- work, 
 Gilbert betook himself to Wiltshire, to learn the methods 
 of the great dairy farms. The milk now that went out was 
 strained, every pint of it, through two layers of cotton 
 
266 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 wool, for the master of Lanvean had learnt " up the 
 country " to despise the laxity of the Far Western dairy 
 methods. In time, too, by speeding up the motor transit, 
 he hoped to supersede the use of the railway altogether. 
 
 Yet while events moved rapidly on the farm, within the 
 house all remained as before, since Mrs. Parsons was 
 tenacious of her rights, though soon the superintendence 
 of a model dairy on large lines would be far beyond her 
 powers. 
 
 Over his second breakfast of bacon and potatoes, chopped 
 and browned in a tight mass, Gilbert sat for a long time 
 with frowning brows. For Steve had not turned up to the 
 day's work, and a boy sent to his house reported that he 
 had not been home all night. 
 
 In the elder of the Carlyon brothers the first enjoyable 
 sense of power was merging in a surprise at himself that 
 was somewhat akin to the self-revelation of the artist, who 
 never really knows himself till he sees his own image 
 reflected in his works. For, now that the direction of a 
 large business was in his hands, Gilbert worked on lines 
 that were not only instinctive but admittedly curious. 
 The increase in the dairy herd was followed by a new 
 departure that roused inevitable . laughter in a district 
 which works, as this does, by traditions rendered sacred 
 by time. For a Cornish farmer to bring across a French 
 breed of sheep from the salt marshes of Picardy was as 
 unreal as anything in a fairy story, whatever might be the 
 facts as to the likeness between Lanvean sand dunes and the 
 flat, salty lands on which the original variety flourishes. 
 
 Had Gilbert's neighbours known the fact that he con- 
 sidered himself " led " to this decision by sundry dis- 
 connected indications, they would have thought him still 
 more of a madman. The first of these " pointers " was the 
 sight of a barn on the marshes with the sheep crowding at 
 the doors to get to their lambs. This he saw in a picture 
 at an Exeter gallery ; and the sight was followed by a 
 chance glance at an agricultural paper in which the French 
 breeds were described in detail. By the two incidents, 
 following within a day or so of each other, it was borne in 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 267 
 
 upon Gilbert that the French breed of the marshes would 
 flourish on Lanvean middens ; as in fact, they did. 
 
 In the dairy enterprise he found peculiar satisfaction, 
 if only by reason of the value of the commodity to the 
 public. Then, too, the milk business jumped with his 
 peculiar pride in the healthiness of Lanvean. For there 
 was growing by now a fringe of houses round the coast- 
 line of the estate ; an artesian well had to be sunk to 
 supply these with water, and already he was being asked 
 to sell for building purposes. Yet he waited, refusing 
 tempting offers, for his canny brain expected more 
 guidance. You could not call him a waiter on God, so 
 much as on . . . straws, perhaps. Yet, since straws 
 show the way the winds blow, if you had pressed him 
 he would probably have put some purpose even into the 
 blowing of the wind. This was the way he saw things. 
 
 So it was in the matter of Steve : he must wait. Yet 
 here, as wherever the human comes in, there was per- 
 plexity. For the motor work had apparently made a 
 new man of Stephen Carlyon. As he himself said, " a 
 machine doesn't show likes and dislikes, but . . . take 
 horses now. There's no reckoning on them." 
 
 Though Steve had been brought up with horses, he 
 would still lose his temper with one, and bring it back 
 sweating and over-ridden. Once he had staked a valuable 
 mare, so that even tolerant Gilbert burst into a rage 
 at him. 
 
 But mainly in this motor driving it was the sense of 
 the power of a man's touch on the steering gear that 
 delighted Steve ; that and a boyish joy in the triumph of 
 a thing which eats up the distance. 
 
 " Keep moving's the only way," he shouted to Gilbert, 
 when he took him for a drive in the car he was practising 
 on. They exceeded the speed limit, but it was worth it, 
 if only to see Steve free . . . that was the word for it 
 . . . from the stagnation in which every weakness of his 
 nature grew like a gourd. When he talked of aviation it 
 was a revelation to Gilbert. For the latter realized vaguely 
 that the slow inevitable processes of growth and decay 
 
268 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 on which he himself waited so patiently were to Stephen 
 as soul-deadening as they are to the average man. In 
 mere speed, in the rush that killed everything but the 
 sense of mastery, Steve became another being. 
 
 It was like the joy which a mediocre singer feels in a 
 massed choir, for all the power created by man's cunning 
 mastery of nature seems put into one man's hand, so 
 that a common car driver, a pilot on an air-ship, gains, and 
 cheaply, the joy of Phoebus Apollo, with but slight risk 
 of sharing the fate of Icarus. 
 
 " Good, good, good," Steve might have cried then, " to 
 keep going, with no time in which to be afraid, with no 
 time to think, still less to think dirty thoughts, and, best 
 of all, with no time to find out what one is made of. Tis 
 the mud of the ditch, not the dust of the great roads, that 
 really soils a man." 
 
 After breakfast Gilbert rode out to the middens, where 
 once again he had a shepherd, though one who did not, 
 as of old, pay to Lanvean a yearly rent of a pie of squab, 
 mussels and mutton. Sansom reported the French sheep 
 as " wonderful promising, considering where they come 
 from, and picking up well too." He regarded them, in 
 fact, as saved from famine. 
 
 By now the sea was all blotted out in driving rain, 
 that hissed along the ground so swiftly that riders and 
 pedestrians found themselves soaked on the windward 
 side, but on the leeward like thatch down which the 
 raindrops glide. After the perpetual sunshine it was 
 refreshing to hear the wet leaves slithering together, to 
 see the roof slates shine in dull silver. 
 
 When he got back, Mrs. Parsons announced that Mr. 
 Rosewarne was waiting in the dining-room, that she had 
 put a match to the fire, and would bring in dinner at 
 once. 
 
 The business that had brought the lawyer discussed 
 ... it was the matter of a lease . . . the two men sat 
 awhile over the fire. 
 
 " Taking up work in a good many fresh fields, aren't 
 you ? " asked the lawyer, thinking how great was the 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 269 
 
 likeness between the Carlyon over the mantelpiece and 
 the young Carlyon in the chair opposite him. For the 
 latter had the set ways of a far older man ; to him Steve's 
 saying, " Keep moving/' was only to be interpreted by 
 the " without rest, without haste," of Nature herself. 
 
 " Well, yes," said Gilbert, " one can't make a working 
 day less than twelve hours, and one can get through a 
 good deal of work in that time." 
 
 " All the time . . . work ? " smiled Mr. Rosewarne. 
 " But other things will come, of course." 
 
 " Possibly," said Gilbert, " I don't know." Then, 
 showing the obvious direction of his thoughts, he added, 
 " You know Steve's wife is here still. She's expecting a 
 child, too — some-time in the spring, I believe." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne nodded. 
 
 " Something of an afterthought, that child, isn't it ? " 
 he asked, eyeing the other keenly. 
 
 But he could not catch even a flicker on the quiet face 
 opposite him. To Gilbert, indeed, the child appeared 
 very much of an afterthought. He knew in his secret 
 heart that this time Mrs. Steve was perfectly willing to 
 bear a son who might possibly lay claim to some of the 
 good things of Lanvean. She had lived long enough in 
 this new world to realize something of the lie of the land. 
 Yet he was not going to discuss the subject with Mr. 
 Rosewarne. 
 
 " But," he said, changing the subject, " you see I've 
 been dipping a good deal lately, what with one thing and 
 another.^ And one must make good somehow, I suppose. 
 Cows and sheep . . . and other fresh stock ! My word, 
 if father only knew. . . . Yet I think it'll pan out all 
 right. But there's another thing, though, that won't 
 pay. If you'll lend me a hand, I'll just show it to you. 
 It only came yesterday and isn't even unpacked yet." 
 
 Out in the hall stood a square packing-case, and pre- 
 sently they had prized the top of it off, and were churning 
 out the shavings as joyfully as Dr. Rudd stirred the ashes 
 of his morning fire. Men take extraordinary joy in 
 running amuck, if it's only at a bundle of straw. There 
 
2 7 o THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 was, as Mrs. Parsons observed, " a great concloption 
 among the movables." 
 
 The final unwinding accomplished, they carried their 
 spoil into the dining-room, and drawing back the heavy 
 crimson curtains, set it on the table. There was a small 
 Tanagra figure, a goblet with chased vine-leaves, a 
 triptych of, apparently, medieval Italian work, and finally 
 a delicate Conder fan. 
 
 " All from Uncle Jemmy's collection," said Gilbert. 
 " I went up to his sale, you know. But beforehand I had 
 a talk with his manager, a queer, olive-complexioned chap, 
 handsome, I suppose, in a melancholy way, but props 
 up a doorway usually, and seems aggrieved because he 
 has to live in such a common world. Still he knew what 
 he was talking about." 
 " And that was ? " 
 
 " Jemmy. He knew Jemmy inside out. One thing 
 he told me stuck in my mind. It seems that the old 
 man had one or two things he wouldn't sell, offer what 
 you might for 'em. I suppose his fancy got twisted round 
 them, somehow. Some of them were the very finest speci- 
 mens of a special style of work. These," he added, nodding 
 towards the table, " are one or two. I bought them." 
 
 " Whew I " whistled Mr. Rosewarne, " and had to pay 
 a pretty penny, too." 
 
 " I did," said Gilbert, with a smile, " but I think they 
 were worth it." 
 
 " They certainly are very beautiful," said Mr. Rose- 
 warne, yet with a half -hesitation. To his mind they 
 were also strangely out of place, for these subtle refine- 
 ments of craftsmanship belonged essentially to the south, 
 and not at all to this grim old house. 
 
 " It wasn't that at all," said Gilbert slowly and almost 
 painfully. " I don't know anything about their beauty 
 — the sums they made seemed to me preposterous. But 
 . . . you see . . . Jemmy came to me the night before 
 he died to borrow money. He didn't get it and he wasn't 
 mentioned in my father's will. Perhaps he wasn't over 
 well treated." 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 271 
 
 " And," said Mr. Rosewarne, still groping, " you wanted 
 to swell the money that would come to Mrs. Carlyon, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 "Not at all," said Gilbert sharply; "she's got more 
 than a woman ought to need. It was because ... I 
 wanted there to be something of Jemmy, as it were, to 
 live after him. You see he had no child. I suppose 
 that's as near as I can get to what I actually did feel. 
 Anyway, I'm sure I wanted something that he'd made 
 especially his own to be here at Lanvean, where he'd be 
 forgotten else." 
 
 It is hard to express this sort of feeling without being 
 pompous. Mr. Rosewarne knew this, and so kept silence. 
 
 " He left nothing behind him," repeated Gilbert, " that's 
 what I felt." 
 
 " And these were as near as you could get to something 
 that was him," said Mr. Rosewarne, thinking, too, how 
 the fancy showed up the personal ambition of the man 
 who cherished it. " Well, these are beautiful enough 
 to express anyone," he said. " And there are many better 
 men one could do without before old Jemmy. He enjoyed 
 his life. He never was disgruntled. It's a merit." 
 
 " I shall put them in a case with a brass plate to say, 
 ' From the collection of James Carlyon.' That'll tell how 
 they got here." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne thought the idea a grisly one ; to turn 
 these lovely intimate things into a cinerary urn was 
 almost a crime. 
 
 " You see," said Gilbert, " I had at first another notion, 
 but I found it wasn't feasible." 
 
 He referred, of course, to the book on Early English 
 painters which Jemmy had planned. This Gilbert had 
 at first intended to offer as an atonement, but his frugality, 
 as well as his Puritanism, took fright at the money he 
 was told it would cost. It was impossible for a man 
 whose father had reproved him for choosing the works 
 of a play-actor like Shakespeare as a prize to fling away 
 all that money on Early English painting. But with what 
 Jemmy had loved he could not go far wrong. 
 
272 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 When the lawyer had gone, the young man's mind 
 returned once more to wonder what had become of Steve. 
 It was very seldom, and always with hidden shrinking, 
 that he called on Steve's wife, but he would have to go 
 if nothing more was heard from his brother. Then, going 
 over to his safe to put away the lease, he found it open 
 at his touch. His first thought, of course, was that it 
 had been carelessly left unfastened. Stooping down, 
 however, he found that the lock had been picked. After 
 turning over the contents with quick hands, he sat down 
 to consider, to get back his self-control, before opening 
 the letter addressed to him in Steve's handwriting. Fifty- 
 five pounds in notes was gone ; this he had received two 
 days ago, and had left unbanked until he had occasion 
 to ride into Petrockstow. 
 
 Sitting so, with his house of cards tumbled about his 
 ears, Gilbert's impulse was to blame himself for not send- 
 ing the lad away from the sticky mud of a district that 
 always expected to find him among loafers and ne'er-do- 
 wells. But Gilbert himself had feared town life for Steve, 
 not realizing its power to keep a man from " curdling 
 in his inside ; " in mere colour and bustle it provided the 
 quick stir of external life that might have saved Steve. 
 Now, as he read his brother's letter, Gilbert realized this 
 theft as the blow a man gives who would free himself from 
 prison. It ran thus : 
 
 " Dear G., 
 
 " I expect you've got the numbers of the notes 
 I've taken. Unlike you, if you haven't. So you can 
 trace me, if you want to. Still, I don't see that I haven't 
 as much right to the use of them as you. Anyway, I'm 
 going to live for a bit, and that's more than anyone can 
 do at Lanvean. No, I ain't going to play chuck-farthing 
 with 'em, either. It's the first round sum I've ever had 
 in my life, and I feel like a boy sent out to buy sixpenny- 
 worth of halfpenny cakes . . . with a half-crown to do 
 it with. I'll take care of the change, too. Say good-bye 
 to Cora for me, and if it's a son, bring him up in the fear 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 273 
 
 and worship of Lanvean. But you're sure to do that. 
 And don't reckon you've done with me. For I shall be 
 back in time ... to claim my share. Don't you make 
 any mistake about that. Ta-ta. 
 
 " Thine, 
 
 " Steve." 
 
 When, later on, Gilbert reached the house he had taken 
 at Trevone for Steve and his wife, he thought at first there 
 was no one in. But after knocking again and again, he 
 heard footsteps coming down the passage. The house 
 stood on a ledge of rock that, when the spring tide carried 
 a landward gale behind it, was actually flooded, and now, 
 as he stood waiting, his eyes were dazzled by the sudden 
 light across the sea that stained the white foam breaking 
 across the jagged rocks to gold and crimson. 
 
 It was the greater contrast to turn his glance towards 
 his sister-in-law, who, bedraggled and white-faced, stood 
 in a dingy wrapper holding the door open by a chink. 
 Seeing who it was, she changed colour, and suddenly 
 flinging open the door, pulled him into the sitting-room. 
 The floor was strewn with papers taken from the drawer 
 of a gimcrack escritoire that stood in the window. 
 
 Facing the light from the sea, the woman's colour 
 turned absolutely livid. 
 
 " Yes," she cried, " he's gone. I broke the drawer 
 open, and I've hurt my arm." 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears as she put her hand to a strained 
 wrist. 
 
 " Yes, he's gone — Steve is. But what I can't make 
 out is that there doesn't seem another woman in it." 
 
 " Surely you're not here quite alone ? " asked Gilbert. 
 
 " Yes, I am . . . alone, alone. And why shouldn't I 
 be ? Turned on me, did Alice. She's a lazy slut, and I 
 sent her packing. And who'd stay here, either, I should 
 like to know, now the summer's gone ? " 
 
 Gilbert looked round ; the casement curtains hung 
 damp with salt and mist, the rain-drenched walls of the 
 terrace running down to the sea were covered with spread- 
 
 18 
 
274 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 ing patches of damp. Everywhere doors and windows 
 strained in the sea wind. 
 
 " Look what I've had to bear," she moaned, " with 
 these high and mighty toffs, the visitors. But even they 
 were better than nothing. Something to look at they 
 were, anyway. But they're gone, and here I look out 
 on that. ..." Dashing the window open she let in a 
 full blast from the sea. 
 
 " I'm trapped, trapped, trapped," she screamed, " and 
 I'll die, and then I'll haunt you. Oh, oh, oh. . . ." 
 
 By now she was kicking on the sofa, her black-stockinged 
 legs waving in the air and ending in bead-work shoes, 
 whence the beads fell in rain on the floor. Gilbert had 
 no direct knowledge of hysteria, but at the first touch of 
 the cold water on her head, she quieted and pushing away 
 his hand, lay sobbing. 
 
 In the kitchen he found a dirty oil stove, and coaxing 
 it to light, soon had a kettle boiling. 
 
 " That's the first warm drop I've had to-day," she said, 
 as he handed her the tea. " Oh, why, why isn't Steve 
 more like you ? He gets me like this and he leaves me, 
 when he said this was what he wanted more'n anything. 
 And I thought 'twould bring him back. ..." 
 
 Gilbert stopped her. 
 
 " Listen to me," he said. " Steve's gone for the time. 
 He'll have to go, too. And the least said about that, the 
 soonest mended. What we've got to do is to think of you. 
 I'm going to take you away from here and bring you to 
 Lanvean. I'll ride back at once and tell them to get a 
 room ready for you, and I'll send Lizzie over to help you, 
 too. She must pack up what clothes you want and lock 
 up the house. You'll not come back till you're through 
 with all this." 
 
 The sense of hospitality violated made him more bitter 
 against himself than ever he was with Steve ; of hospitality 
 violated and of something more subtle still. For to his 
 simplicity, whatever we may do to the living, whatever we 
 may feel towards the dead, there is no duty on earth like 
 ours to the unborn. The one amazing miracle to him was 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 275 
 
 that of birth. His heart full of this idea, he found even 
 the Jewess transformed. 
 
 It was not the woman, but the future, then, that made 
 him ready to face Mrs. Parsons' wrath at this invasion. 
 But the old woman made no protest whatever, for she, 
 too, understood his feeling without any words about it 
 at all. 
 
 " Eh," said she to herself, " 'tis a master man," and 
 loving strength as she did, rejoiced, too, to find him come 
 to full stature in his own house. 
 
 Before he left with Lizzie, the old woman was turning 
 out sheets to air and sending the maids flying with warming- 
 pans and materials to light a fire. As he drove down the 
 road he could see the light of it flickering on the windows 
 of the room that was getting ready. It was the most 
 cheerful sight he had seen since he had opened the door 
 of his safe. 
 
 The girl beside him in the dog-cart held up the gig 
 umbrella over them both. 
 
 " My days," exclaimed she, as the rain drummed over 
 their heads, " you'd think 'twas Noah's flood ready to 
 drown the new cheeld. But there, come they do, do what 
 you will. Not but what her's kicking up a regular Bobs- 
 a-dying over nort, since her is but three months gone at 
 the most. Though some do say that's the worst time." 
 
 " You'll do all you can," said Gilbert, heartily wishing 
 himself out of this feminine hurly-burly, " to help her. 
 Mrs. Parsons is old, you see, for this sort of thing." 
 
 '* And a bitter weed at that," said Lizzie, " but don't 
 you worrit, sir. I'll stand by her and her'll come through. 
 Most of us do, you know. And then you don't heed all 
 the bother there's been, once you hear the first cry. For 
 'tis something done, 'tis, when you hear that." 
 
 He was glad to set her down at the cross-roads, for 
 never before had he been moved by so strange a pity for 
 all this rough trouble paid down to gain each man. 
 Glancing over his shoulder as he drove on, he watched 
 the girl's sturdy figure till it disappeared in the sheets 
 of rain, 
 
 18* 
 
276 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Then he remembered that this was the Catholic mother 
 whom Dr. Rudd had befriended. He had heard, too, 
 that Lizzie had steadily refused so much as to hold her 
 child, or to kiss it, yet he knew that three-quarters of the 
 wage he paid her went to its keep. He marvelled, not at 
 the mother-love, but at the self-preservative thought in a 
 creature that seemed but made of instinct. 
 
 At Petrockstow Gilbert found that Trevan was away, 
 and had to seek Dr. Rudd at Laskey's. 
 
 Outside in the passage a row of poorer folk drank their 
 beer furtively at the windows, gulping it down in a haste 
 that went with twopenny ale instead of with good cigars 
 and brandy. For Laskey's, like Paradise, was a place to 
 be gained by merit, though in this case the merit was, 
 of course, weighed in earthly scales. Within, Dr. Rudd 
 leant back in sou'westers against the plush-covered seat 
 by the fire, where a kettle sent a cosy jet of steam into 
 the air. 
 
 " Trevan not home," he grumbled ; " just my luck ! 
 I've had a deuce of a drenching already. Been out con- 
 gering with Sam. I'll send her out a bromide. That'll 
 do." 
 
 " I think you must come, doctor," said Gilbert. " She's 
 had a shock and been alone all day, and so has worked herself 
 up." 
 
 " Lord ! you're like the anxious young husband already," 
 grunted the doctor. 
 
 But when Gilbert told him the story of Steve's flight, 
 minus the matter of the fifty-five pounds, of course, Dr. 
 Dan cordially declared it was the best news he'd heard 
 for a long time. Then he fell into a brown study, wonder- 
 ing what Carlyon's outward calm might mean. For 
 Dr. Rudd never felt any joy in downing a man unless he 
 knew how the man felt. And this was what he had long 
 asked himself about Gilbert. Besides, from the glass he 
 had drunk he had already gained the freedom which 
 comes from drink or faith. 
 
 " Jewess, isn't she ; the mother, I mean ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes/' said Gilbert. 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 277 
 
 " Well, they make good mothers, none better. I worked 
 in Hoxton, down Spitalfields way, in my student days and 
 there I saw something of Jewish tenacity. I've seen a 
 woman in labour in a house on fire, when the flames were 
 at work on the very walls of her room. I've seen births 
 on trolleys on the way to hospital . . . and splendid 
 kids they were, too." 
 
 " Shall we go ? " asked poor Gilbert, feeling that all 
 the world from Lizzie upwards, was unconscionably bent 
 on talking mysteries to him. But the doctor ambled 
 on, having no more sense of fitness than a cow. 
 
 " These Jews," he said, "asa Jewish refugee put it to 
 me once, have got nothing social to live for except the 
 family, since they're without a fatherland and all that 
 that means. The woman's the centre of the family, and 
 that's why she's cared for by Jewish husbands far more 
 carefully than by Christian. Faith," cried he, breaking 
 off, as they reached the street, " what a night ! " 
 
 Gilbert shook himself with impatience. " Look here," 
 he said, " I'll put the trap up and get a car to take us 
 out. That'll keep you from getting wet." 
 
 " All right," said Rudd, " drive round and fetch me, 
 then. I'm no longer pigging it with Sam, you know." 
 
 With a malicious laugh he disappeared in the darkness, 
 and Gilbert was left with the knowledge that he must face 
 the newly-wedded pair together. He stood stock-still, 
 while the rain poured down on him. But, after all, 
 " grasp your nettle " is as true of sentimental affairs as 
 of business ones. 
 
 His first impression, when Dorothy came downstairs 
 at the Outlook in her trailing gown of grey silk, was that 
 she was another woman. Very gracious as she was, and 
 elaborately kind, he could not guess what her manner 
 might cover. For to his country notions she seemed all 
 manner. When she came in from the hall to the book- 
 room downstairs, which was her husband's study now, 
 Gilbert's awkwardness grew apace. He flushed hot to 
 think he had once cried to her for help : it seemed an 
 indecencv that this artificial creature should ever hear 
 
278 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 so plain a cry, as indecent as that she should dress wounds 
 or bear the indignities inseparable from the human 
 body. 
 
 Hot and smarting, he held the car door open for the 
 doctor to get in. And all the while he knew that this 
 graciousness was what was lacking at Lanvean, and 
 because it was in her, and she not his, he hated her 
 husband. 
 
 Grimly he took his seat by the doctor. It was only at 
 the last moment, when she held up the black cat to say 
 good-bye, that for a second he recognized the girl who 
 seemed submerged in the woman. With that came the 
 long stab of sex jealousy, a sentiment swamped before 
 in the bitter waters of class feeling. 
 
 The liquor dying in Dr. Dan, he tried on his part to 
 get a rise out of the fellow who sat in such dogged calm 
 by his side. With a man-of- the- world air, he began on 
 marriage ; an experience, he declared it to be, like per- 
 petual tight-rope dancing, at least in the first months. 
 And then marriage itself, in this world of women, is a thing 
 we're driven to by a force . . . not ourselves. He might 
 have been Huxley discoursing on creation. 
 
 " Tis no bed of roses," said he, " this vaunted marriage, 
 say rather a nettle-bed." 
 
 " A penance, perhaps," observed Gilbert dryly, " but I 
 know nothing about it, and if I did, I couldn't talk about 
 it." 
 
 Indeed Gilbert hated such talk since it was, as he 
 thought, an insult to the primal intimacies. For he was 
 naturally quite unaccustomed to the jargon of to-day, 
 by which Man and Woman, put instead of Jack and Jill, 
 enables people to discuss matters of feeling that simple 
 folk keep secret even from themselves. 
 
 But Dr. Rudd knew, what he had never been sure of 
 before, that he liked this fellow, not because he himself 
 had beaten him in the sex war, but because he was both 
 simple and sincere. 
 
 " Force," grumbled he, " to be the plaything of outside 
 force 1 'Tis hell, no less, to obey, like a puppet on a wire, 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 279 
 
 the accumulated mass of prejudices, conventions and 
 morals." 
 
 To him it seemed needful, at the moment, to put his 
 whole life into the struggle to resist the domination of the 
 outer world. 
 
 Gilbert flashed on his side into a quick confession of 
 faith. It was one of the rarer moments, in fact, in his 
 life, when the deep springs of him leapt to the surface. 
 
 " Yet," he said, as if to himself, " that's what one 
 wants ... to feel a force that moves one relentlessly, 
 that is full of purpose and uses one, flows through one. 
 That is to be strong." 
 
 " That force isn't woman, my boy," said the doctor, 
 as the car swung round the corner into Lanvean. 
 
 " Woman ? " asked Gilbert, brought down from the 
 clouds. " Oh, no, not woman. She's like us, the thing 
 the force moves." 
 
 " Oh, ho, is she ? " laughed Dan. " Well, any force is 
 what I want to get up and fight." 
 
 For the next half-hour he was engaged with woman 
 in a very concrete and distressing form. When he came 
 down again, he sighed heavily. 
 
 " Is she so bad ? " asked Gilbert, who was waiting in the 
 dining-room, where the lamplight shone on cold beef and 
 salad, on cream and tart. 
 
 " Bad ? She'd not be bad, if she wasn't such a fool. 
 But I've put the fear of God in her by now. And I shall 
 be glad of something to eat, for I've had no dinner and 
 been at sea all day." 
 
 He champed vigorously for a time, while Gilbert plied 
 him with food. Then, shoving his plate away, he pushed 
 up his glasses and began : 
 
 " Yes," he said, " Jehovah, you know, is much the most 
 effective divinity in these matters." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Gilbert. 
 
 " Oh, well, you see, she's never in all her feather-brained 
 life thought of anything but her own little twopenny- 
 ha'penny pleasures. She's mortally afraid, too, of pain, 
 and has frightened herself into fits. But I could do with 
 
280 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 her what 'twould have been impossible to do with nine 
 out of ten Christian women ; I could frighten her into 
 self-control for the sake of the child. Jehovah, that is 
 the racial God, you know, and centuries of expectation of 
 the Messiah, I suppose, too. Gad ! it's queer to see that 
 working in a pinch-beck little bit of Brummagem. But 
 it did work. . . ." 
 
 Gilbert watched him curiously ; again the mysteries 
 were about him, very deep, very racial ; the dingy Jewess, 
 the bit of Brummagem, like the rest of us, in the grip of 
 a mighty force. And, by the irony of fate, the very man 
 who loudly declared his intention of fighting the force 
 was the man who recalled her to it. The gods who use 
 us, with Lear and Job to prove it, also deride us ; and to 
 the divine disposer of the universe let no man deny the 
 gift of humour. 
 
 " She's catching off to sleep," said Lizzie, coming quietly 
 into the lamplit circle where the two men sat. 
 
 " That's all right then," said Dr. Dan, " and you . . . 
 how's the kid then ? " 
 
 She blushed and smiled, and when she was gone, Carlyon 
 said : 
 
 " And yet she wouldn't touch it, not the child, I mean." 
 
 " Wouldn't get too fond of it," said the doctor ; " five 
 shillings a week is more to the point, though, as far as that 
 goes. But why on earth shouldn't every healthy woman 
 be allowed to bear a child without all this chattering over 
 wedding-rings ? The monkey-house, I tell you, Carlyon, 
 couldn't show a more ludicrous spectacle than that. But, 
 again, why should the bearing of 'em so often fall on 
 things like the Brummagem lady ? There's your Force, 
 and a pretty sort of a botch it makes in this matter of 
 births. And if we don't get to work on the misfits it's 
 made, there won't be much of a race left at the end of 
 another five hundred years." 
 
 So he grumbled himself out of the house, and Lizzie 
 stood in the hall till he had gone to whisper to Gilbert 
 that he had talked upstairs like a Dutch uncle. 
 
 " ' Garn,' said he, when Mrs. Carlyon moaned that she 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 281 
 
 was dying, ' you'll live to have a dozen more, worse luck. 
 But do your best, there's a good woman, for this poor 
 little devil that's driven to you for a mother because he 
 can't get a better one.' There's most as would ha' said 
 that to me," continued Lizzie complacently, " but what 
 he did say to me was, ' Liz, you're built for it.' " 
 
 She vanished in a twitter of giggles, while Gilbert with- 
 drew to the Tanagra figure as a refreshment after the some- 
 what squalid complexion of life at the moment. Yet on 
 the whole he paused longest before the triptych, which 
 contained, of course, a picture of the Divine motherhood. 
 For here, in the serene features of this Italian peasant 
 woman, was enshrined the greatness of man's dreams of 
 motherhood, so far above the facts of it. 
 
 Later on, when he received a summons to call at Denzell, 
 he went without any other idea than that, as sometimes 
 happened, Madame Felicia was interfering with her 
 bailiff's farm management. Tapping his riding boots 
 with his whip, he waited for her before the fire in the hall. 
 
 " Mr. Carlyon," she said, motioning him to a seat, " I 
 want to express my thanks to you for what Mr. Rosewarne 
 told me you did at the sale of Jemmy's collections. It 
 is a very deep regret to me that the same thought did not 
 occur to me." 
 
 Then, seeing his heightened colour, she put out her 
 hand. 
 
 " You must forgive an old woman," she said. " I 
 know you did it because it pleased you . . . because you 
 thought so . . . beautifully. You need no thanks, of 
 course, but shades escape all words. It was not • thanks ' 
 I would have said, and yet I know no other word. Per- 
 haps it was regret I meant, at seeing another do a finer 
 action than had occurred to myself. And yet that sounds 
 meaner, too, than my intention." 
 
 In the smile that passed between them all sense of 
 awkwardness was lost in comradeship, while Gilbert 
 reflected that this same graciousness, which to him had 
 often seemed duplicity, still had its pleasant uses. He 
 was constantly aware now that he missed it bitterly at 
 
282 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Lanvean, where the growths were strong and honest 
 enough, though somewhat rank at times. 
 
 " I should never have thought of buying these things," 
 said he, " but for what his manager told me, since I don't 
 understand how he seemed to live in them." 
 
 " Yet I think you ought to," said she, with a smile, 
 " for where Jemmy loved things for their cunning crafts- 
 manship, you love . . . other things that grow and 
 change. Is it not so ? " 
 
 Somehow in the air there seemed to hover thoughts 
 like music. 
 
 Gilbert rose. " May I send them over for you to 
 see ? " he asked. 
 
 But she had a better plan, and proposed a visit to Lanvean 
 instead. 
 
 When she had come next day, and while they were 
 lingering over the treasures, he put a finger on the carving 
 of the triptych. 
 
 " That," said he, " is not suitable here. Somehow, it 
 is even worse here than the gold cup or the fan." 
 
 It was precisely her own thought. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " where do you learn these ideas ? " 
 
 Nor was she satisfied with Borrow's conclusion that 
 in Cornwall are the best gentlemen, for this was something 
 individual. So she took his arm that he might show 
 her the farm, and thus, at milking time, the men and 
 maids enjoyed the spectacle of Madame, in a lilac gown 
 with a white lace shawl on her head, stepping from the 
 dairy to the milking sheds. Here she was delighted, and 
 would send her dairyman to learn how to deal with the 
 milk, and shuddering, wondered how much of her peck 
 of dirt she must have swallowed ere now. She finished 
 up by trying her hand on a cow's udder, to see if she had 
 lost the trick of it. 
 
 Sitting on the three-legged stool, while the milkmaid 
 held her rings, Madame laughed with joy. 
 
 " Her's looking round, ma'am, to see who's tickling of 
 her," said the oldest milker, but the maid blushed at 
 such impudence and elbowed him in the ribs. With legs 
 
AERE PERENNIUS 283 
 
 apart and mouth opened, he prepared for a guffaw. But 
 the little ringers played as nimbly now as years ago they 
 had done on piano keys, and lo ! there followed the right 
 purling play of the jets against the pail-side. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! ho ! Her's done it," cried the ancient, 
 and up and down the sheds the girls and men craned 
 their necks to see the miracle. 
 
 The next day Madame came down to find on her table 
 a great wooden box. It contained the triptych, with a 
 letter to Mrs. Peters that struck, in her opinion, a mar- 
 vellously fine note, in that it asked her to place this 
 treasure of Jemmy's at Denzell, where such things belonged 
 as of right. So, the writer of the note declared, would 
 Jemmy himself have decided. 
 
 " Now there," cried Madame, " he shows a sensitiveness 
 greater than his humour and no sense of character at all. 
 For Jemmy loathed the papistry of this old house, and 
 saw in the Virgin Mother nothing newer than Demeter, 
 who would do very well at Lanvean. But 'tis a fellow 
 of delicacy, and I love him." 
 
 This was said to Dr. Rudd, who only grunted and asked 
 what cheque she intended to send in return. 
 
 " And you are a fellow of no delicacy," cried she, " to 
 suggest such a thing. The man is no huckster." 
 
 " The man knows how to bow and scrape and truckle, 
 it seems," sneered he. " But I'm a fellow of no delicacy, 
 you see." 
 
 " Humm ! " said Madame, eyeing him severely, " you 
 never spoke a truer word than that about yourself." 
 
 For one of the doctor's special trials at this date was 
 that, not content with jockeying him into matrimony, 
 these ladies, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Rosewarne, sat round 
 him like hanging judges watching to see how their victim 
 paced the scaffold. 
 
 Or so his nerves assured him. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 
 
 DOROTHY leant her head back against her clasped 
 hands. 
 
 " Yes," she said, with a flash in her eyes, " it was a 
 fine thing to do." 
 
 " You think so ? " asked Dr. Rudd, raising his eyebrows 
 elaborately as he had a trick of doing when he was irri- 
 tated. " I call it damned silly sentiment. If he'd lent 
 the man some money when he was alive now. ..." 
 
 Stretching himself, he began to walk up and down 
 their sitting-room. It was a singular thing that, although 
 this doll's house was in reality no more circumscribed 
 than Sam's cottage, he found its corners far more irri- 
 tating. Everything in it was so carefully thought out 
 that it seemed worse than a Maple's ready-made. The 
 whole thing led nowhere, in fact. 
 
 " Money ! " exclaimed Dorothy. " I shouldn't have 
 expected that to be your test, anyway." 
 
 He glanced at her sharply, surprised to find her opposing 
 the smallest obstacle to the flow of his ideas, though by 
 now they were like two practised fencers experienced in 
 each other's tricks. 
 
 " Money ? " he repeated, staring at her with downbent 
 face, as though stupefied by heavy air. " Well, anyway, 
 it was money that put us where we are. Didn't you 
 come as a knight-errant to help the man for whom nobody 
 said a good word ? And it was Madame's cheque that 
 began that, and next old Jemmy's particular method of 
 
 284 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 285 
 
 doing himself in. Everybody kicked me, so down you 
 came and had pity on me. That was the way of it, wasn't 
 it, my dear ? " 
 
 She held her head down, lest he should see her eyes. 
 How he pulled the flesh of sentiment from every bone of 
 fact ! Yet she knew he loved to recall what actually 
 seemed his triumphs, since whatever people had to " get 
 over " in order to reach him was, in his eyes, the measure 
 of his own worth. And Dorothy had " got over " a 
 good deal to marry him, far more, in fact, than any patient 
 who disregarded bare head and jersey, fish scales and 
 ribald tongue, for the sake of his skill. These athletics 
 provided, high falutin apart, the bedrock satisfaction 
 of the doctor's life. 
 
 " And," he said, with a burst of laughter, " I've never 
 touched a penny of that five thousand quid. It's precisely 
 where I put it on the day Madame gave it to me, except 
 for one or two paltry dips." 
 
 " Why ? " asked his wife, mentally praying her usual 
 prayer : " Oh, that I could understand." 
 
 Yet practically it was always the same : neither under- 
 stood until, thought ceasing, they rode together on some 
 high flood of feeling. 
 
 " 'Pon my word," he said frankly, " I couldn't tell you." 
 
 " And your freedom that it was to buy ! " she jeered. 
 " And the rind of life your wife was to taste while you 
 ate the curd. Oh, Dan, you humbug ! " 
 
 Yet she was in truth disappointed to find a Viking 
 crawling the rocks for shell-fish. 
 
 He stood struggling with this new conception of himself 
 as seen in her mocking eyes, while it all flowed over him 
 in a wave, the sense of how his wings had been clipped in 
 this little nook in which they were licensed to make love 
 to each other. For the first time he realized the fact of 
 his dependence. Literally he lived, even as to money, 
 on others. 
 
 " Who pays our rent ? " he asked suddenly. 
 
 Dorothy flushed, glad and yet half afraid to see him 
 put his foot on the groundwork of fact. 
 
286 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 "I do," she said ; " you know I have my own money 
 from dad." 
 
 That made the circle complete, he thought. They 
 were pensioners both on Mr. Rosewarne and on Madame, 
 while he sweated for Cornish, and brought all his skill 
 to the folks of Petrockstow's alleys and courts, who could 
 pay him but little. Well, it squares it after all, he thought, 
 but realized that, in the depths of him, he could not 
 actually support Sam's Robin Hood scheme of honesty 
 and rejoice in plundering the rich to pay back to the poor. 
 Hanging between the two moralities of the working and 
 the professional man, he suffered a nameless irritation. 
 
 One day, when he came in to lunch, his wife told him 
 that she had gone back to her clerical work in her father's 
 office. He stood for a moment staring out of the window, 
 and then turned on her. 
 
 " Why ? " he snapped. The woman's pettifogging 
 house- jobs seemed to him contemptible, save in the light 
 of Mam Cornish's purpose ; yet that Dorothy should 
 work for a wage was intolerable. " Is it for the money ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Oh, no," said she, " father pays me, of course, but 
 he really wants help. And, besides, I like it." 
 
 * That's better," he exclaimed, and actually felt as 
 though a breath of air had blown through the room. 
 Besides, the thought of her waiting for him at home had 
 been a constant source of irritation. 
 
 " Damned uncomfortable place women make of this 
 world," he growled to Sam Cornish, to whom of course 
 the sentiment was completely incomprehensible, except 
 on days when Mam had got out of bed the wrong side, or 
 had used the rough side of her tongue on him for going 
 to sleep in the middle of the day. 
 
 Now Dr. Dan, at this small prospect of relief, found a 
 fresh flavour in the well-cooked fowl and bread-sauce. 
 Then he watched his wife curiously, as, with face lit up, 
 she described a case recently won by her father's firm. It 
 was one of those peculiar legal triumphs which seem to 
 the layman the height of injustice when, by a mere flaw 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 287 
 
 in the presentment of a case, the bottom is knocked out 
 of an opponent's pleading. 
 
 Yet Dorothy spoke of it with enthusiasm. 
 
 " You like that ? " he asked, " that cobweb spinning, 
 when some ridiculous convention wins, some remnant of 
 the dark ages counts, with justice anywhere." 
 
 " Oh, but," she exclaimed, " it was so clever to put 
 a finger just on the thing that would trip him up." 
 
 In her laughter there seemed something so callous 
 that in the strain of the moment contempt, and even 
 hate, flashed in his eyes. He enlarged on the matter 
 furiously, for indeed there was a radical cause of opposition 
 between them in her inherited respect for tradition and 
 his hasty judgment of everything that was not free and 
 flowing, the offspring of the simple rudiments of feelings. 
 
 " Trip him up," he cried rudely, " in disregard of all 
 justice. That's the curse of the professional view." 
 
 She watched him now, feeling vaguely surprised at his 
 warmth. But, trained as she had been by a man who 
 would weigh both these conceptions, there yet remained 
 to her something lawless in this idea of kicking over the 
 work of the centuries. 
 
 " It's business, I suppose," she sighed. " Father himself 
 laughs about it sometimes. But one must always have 
 something, some framework, to fall back upon." 
 
 " And so," said he bitterly, " tripping a man up by 
 sleight of hand is to take the place of justice." 
 
 He flung himself angrily out of the house ; this was 
 often the sequel to their explorations of each other's 
 mental territory. 
 
 In the doctor's thought, Dorothy's reliance on authority 
 in religion relegated her to a lower mental plane. When- 
 ever she returned from what he called a religious excursion 
 to see Father Tyacke, he became intolerable, trotting out 
 Anatole France's churchmen and behaving like a boor. 
 She would shiver and be silent under these onslaughts, 
 feeling as though he were cutting her with knives, yet 
 resolute not to cry out under the torture. 
 
 One day he opened the door of their room and from 
 
288 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 her sudden start instantly suspected something new. 
 For, indeed, she flushed easily nowadays and was ever 
 on edge. Suddenly he saw what it was. 
 
 " Ah," he cried, lengthening out the syllable till it 
 sounded portentous. 
 
 On the walls she had hung the sacred pictures of her 
 childhood, the figure of Christ bearing the Cross, of the 
 Virgin Mother and Child. Trembling under his eyes, she 
 sat on the edge of her bed, feeling his smile thrill through 
 her nerves as though he had laughed aloud. When at 
 last she raised her eyes, in her white tense face the doctor 
 in him caught a danger signal, and so he was silent. 
 
 " Dan," she said, " Dan," and then flung herself on 
 him, not in appeal, but in an effort to make him under- 
 stand, " Dan, it's a great world ... to be astray in." 
 
 She had reached out to she knew not what depths in 
 him, to depths guessed at but not known. And he 
 answered her, for he cried : 
 
 " Why, so it is, child," surprised by her simple plea into 
 the homely kindness which always showed him at his best. 
 
 " Don't laugh at me, Dan," she said, reaching up to pull 
 him nearer ; " I'm lonely and strange, often and often, and 
 we seem to be so far apart." 
 
 " These help, then, do they ? " he asked, glancing at the 
 images of sorrow on the walls. To his credit, be it said, he 
 refrained from either a glance or a tone of contempt. 
 
 " Yes," she said simply, " they do." Then she added, 
 " May they stay ? " 
 
 " Why, of course, kiddie," said he ; " they won't interfere 
 with my slumbers, not they." 
 
 Thus entered the holy pictures, while the doctor went 
 on his way with the puzzled frown so often to be seen on his 
 face nowadays. For in these reminders of a highly 
 elaborate creed he felt once more the presence of convention. 
 Pain and death he knew, since he fought them and even 
 grew tender over those bowed down under their power. 
 But this elaborate system, in which pain and death 
 were worshipped, revolted him, as though, instead of 
 scotching a plain evil, one should turn it into an idol. 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 289 
 
 Mumbo- jumbo, then, he called her prayers, though not 
 aloud, and bought himself a small marble head of the 
 Buddha as an opposition fetish. To Dorothy there was 
 something reptilian in the inscrutable eyes set slant-wise 
 in the head, until she finally discovered that there was some 
 actual presentment of the reptile in the way the eyes were 
 set back from the nose, with little or no breadth to the 
 cheeks. More than once, when she came into the study, she 
 found him puffing contemplatively before it. 
 
 But if he despised her symbols of sorrow, she had nothing 
 but hatred for his figure of the immemorial wisdom of 
 thought. Once he came home to find the Buddha ignomin- 
 iously toppled head foremost into the waste-paper basket, 
 and, grinning to himself, went sedately upstairs and turned 
 the faces of the sacred pictures to the wall. After that 
 there was no further interference with the statue, though 
 once, when Dorothy had been feeling particularly dutiful, 
 he found the head crowned with a chain of golden crocuses. 
 He smiled, but said nothing, though to sniff the incense 
 of her adoration was delicious. 
 
 Then there came a flash of light to Dorothy herself 
 that, searing the tender places of her heart, sent her at last 
 to Mr. Rosewarne. 
 
 The lawyer often found his daughter useful for many 
 operations more delicate than those of purely clerical im- 
 port. Thus, she was sometimes sent on embassies to old 
 ladies trembling on the brink of a decisive signature. On 
 her w^ay one day, then, to a house on the hill above the 
 harbour she was toilsomely wending her way up a long 
 flight of steps when she heard her husband's voice coming 
 apparently from a shed on a piece of waste land. The 
 spring lights flashing over the river mouth gave her an 
 excuse for a pause. 
 
 Dr. Dan was telling the story of the three little pigs ; 
 and never before had she realized what a pleasant voice 
 was his, strong and sonorous, gentle and deep. Suddenly, 
 in the sound of it, she realized how far they were both slip- 
 ping from the even flow of ordered happiness that from her 
 mother she had learnt to esteem as the ideal of married life. 
 
 19 
 
200 
 
 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " So the eldest little pig set off on his travels," said the 
 doctor. " He had not gone far when he met a man carrying 
 a large bundle of straw. ' Ah,' thought he, ' what a warm 
 and comfortable house that would make me I ' So he 
 asked the man to give him the straw and built for himself 
 a warm, comfortable house with it. 
 
 " ' How cosy I am,' said he, as he settled down to 
 sleep. At this moment a wolf's voice was heard outside, 
 saying : 
 
 " ■ Let me in, little pig, let me in to your house.' 
 
 " ' No, no, Mr. Wolf,' said the pig, ' I won't let you in.' 
 
 " ' Very well,' said the wolf, ' I will puff and I will puff 
 till I blow your house down.' 
 
 " So he puffed and he puffed, and he blew the house down. 
 After that he ate up the little pig, and that was the end of 
 him." 
 
 Dorothy stole gently to the wall of the shed, and there, 
 standing on a log, peered through a hole in the boards. 
 
 The shed was evidently a carpenter's, being thick in 
 sawdust, with a pleasant smell of wood shavings about it. 
 With his back to her sat Dr. Dan, kicking his heels from the 
 table in the middle of a row of urchins, bare-footed boys 
 hitched up in broad-bottomed trousers and little maids 
 with sun-bonnets slung round their necks by wispy strings. 
 One tiny creature clung to his neck, beating her small fist 
 on his thick thatch of hair. 
 
 At the second stage of the tale, when the wolf attacked 
 the house of furze, the children all piped together : "So 
 he puffed and he puffed, and he blew the house down." 
 But at thought of the churn rolling down the hill with the 
 pig inside it, to the horror of the wolf, they burst into 
 delighted laughter. And with the burial of the wolf in the 
 pot of boiling water they enjoyed the ever-fresh joy to child- 
 like souls of villainy paid back in its own coin. 
 
 To the watcher the dangling rows of legs acted like a 
 spell, so that she never stirred till the party showed signs 
 of breaking up. For the old story, old as any ever told to 
 the children of our race, with its brief abstract of the 
 stages of human architecture, from straw-built habitations. 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 291 
 
 to the Promethean triumph of brick-built houses that face 
 the sun, had brought the unseen listener back to simplicities 
 even more remote in time than the inspiration of the tale. 
 Here to Dorothy appeared the man's side of this coming 
 of children, that was shown jon the woman's in the picture 
 of the Madonna over her bed at home. Here was active 
 life, the man's love of it, and of the promise of life signified 
 by a child. In this story, nearly as old, perhaps, as the 
 coming of children, was lit up their own need. 
 
 Their own need ? No, not theirs, his ; in the figure of 
 the fat-calved baby banging on his head, in his hands held 
 up to clutch the tiny thing, she sensed her own trouble ; 
 that she had not given him this joy. Wherever he went, 
 she remembered now, the children followed Dr. Rudd, 
 scurrying like leaves in a draught of wind after the pied 
 piper of Petrockstow. It was a reversion of the legendary 
 woman's hunger, this ; for children wearied her. To give 
 was all she wanted ; not to hold in her arms a living child, 
 but to see one of her own making in his. She wondered 
 with a half smile if he would give up the Buddha in exchange 
 for it. 
 
 "Dad," said she to her father, when he came in to tea 
 with her the same evening, " dad, when I was born, which 
 of you was most glad . . . you or mother ? " 
 
 Looking quizzically at her, he said : 
 
 " I don't know," and then hesitated, with a question 
 in his eyes. 
 
 " No, no," she said, flushing red and paling to white 
 again, " I only wondered. For Madame never seemed to 
 mind having no child." 
 
 " Madame," said he quietly, " always stood foursquare 
 to all the winds. For few of us are as complete in self- 
 satisfaction as she. We're most of us just hungry dogs 
 waiting for life to throw us a bone." 
 
 There was no barrier of conflict between father and 
 daughter, and at this kinship of theirs, when Dorothy 
 remembered the other yet closer kinship which should 
 have been and yet was not, she broke down. 
 
 M Oh, I'm so tired, Dad," she said. " Why do we want 
 
 19* 
 
292 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 to go on, I wonder, when things get so near being right, 
 and then just fail ? " 
 
 " So," he said, in a studiously even voice, " you want to 
 know about a child. Well, to a man a child means the 
 future . . . schemes, plans, of making things better, you 
 know. But to a woman I should think it meant just the 
 tenderest moments of what has been. That is what I 
 should think, my dear. But only a woman, of course, 
 could tell you." 
 
 She stared at the fire a moment before she answered : 
 
 " That's, I expect, why I . . ." 
 
 But she could not go on, just because the tenderness of 
 the past had always seemed spoilt for her by some imp of 
 the perverse. And, stabbing her through and through, 
 came the remembered words : " She was no mother of any 
 child of mine." 
 
 In the sudden coming of a hot spring, she awoke one 
 evening to a crash of thunder. Then the room was lit up 
 for a second by a zigzag of lightning. At her feet Wobbler 
 slept, and when Mrs. Barrable brought in the lamp she 
 would not have it lit. 
 
 The good woman always, when her mistress was alone, 
 had stray tales of her own youth to tell. To-day it was 
 a reminiscence of her mother, when the late Mr. Barrable 
 first came a-courting and the old lady had been instructed 
 not to drink her tea out of the saucer. Fine manners 
 prevailed till the steam of the tea rose into the air. 
 
 " Chap or no chap," cried the old woman, " I must cool 
 my tea 1 " and straightway poured it into the saucer. 
 
 Dorothy lay still, watching the storm, after Mrs. Barrable 
 had withdrawn. Suddenly she remembered that Dan 
 was fishing with the fleet. He had spoken to her once of 
 the horror of a thunderstorm at sea, of the inky blackness 
 of the waters, their vastness revealed only by the lightning. 
 Often strong men crouched on the bottom boards at sight 
 of the writing on the clouds. 
 
 The cosy niche of the Outlook seemed horrible, and, for 
 a moment, she understood what Dan had meant by saying 
 it led nowhere. Down the rain-swept streets she ran, a 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 293 
 
 cloak hurriedly wrapped round her. The storm cone was 
 up, but no wire had been received to signify that the fleet 
 had gained a harbour, though often one was hung up at the 
 Seamen's Institute. She could not go back to her back- 
 water at home, but in the pitchy darkness found the steps 
 up to the Priory House. The kitchen door was open, and 
 from the room a bright light came down the dark passage. 
 Within sat Mam Cornish, bathing the youngest child, who 
 sat in a tub before the fire beating the water with fat 
 palms. The fender-rail was hung with little garments 
 getting a final warm. 
 
 " Come in," said Mrs. Cornish. " I'm late with this one, 
 and all in a mull. But sit ye down, do." 
 
 Amazed at her calmness, Dorothy stammered out a 
 question. 
 
 " Oh, that ? " said Mrs. Cornish, glancing round at the 
 windo.w, as though she had noticed the storm for the first 
 time. " When you've been married as long as I have, you'll 
 bide quiet about that. First long, after Sam and I come 
 together, I'd lie in my bed all of a tremble when I so much 
 as heard the wind rise. But you can't keep it up. And 
 there now, well . . . suppose he's to say ? Well, there he 
 is, and but a plank between him and the fishes . . . and 
 me that 'ud be left with eight chillern on my hands. That's 
 bad, sure 'tis. But then again, say he's only down to quay, 
 and if I cock my eye out of window I can see he's safe. 
 Well, he might stick a nail in his hand, and so die of it, 
 and leave me just the same. I reckon you've got to take 
 the luck of it, and that's all there is to it. Seems so." 
 
 With this comfort in her mind, Dorothy knelt down by 
 the tub, charmed to find the naked thing so ready to be 
 played with, while Mam Cornish talked of her homely tasks, 
 all centring round this childward care, with Sam only her 
 biggest and most troublesome boy. In it all the gossamer 
 fancies fled, and only at a specially loud thunder-clap did 
 the two women glance at one another, and then away 
 again, as though there were a sort of guilt in acknowledging 
 the world outside this little room. 
 
 When the children had been fed, each with a round of 
 
294 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 bread and jam, and rushed upstairs, Mrs. Cornish shepherd- 
 ing them from behind with a slipper, she came down again, 
 flushed and laughing from the tussle. 
 
 " Why not stay the night, then ? " she asked, " if you're 
 minded to ? There's Dan's bed all ready up over, and if so 
 be as he gets in to-night, he'll find you here, that's all. 
 I'll send up and let Mrs. Barrable know where you be." 
 
 " Oh, I should be so glad," stammered Dorothy ; " it's 
 lonely at home." 
 
 " I know," said Mrs. Cornish ; " I used to feel just the 
 same afore the first cheeld come, with Sam away." 
 
 After a supper of bread and cheese and floods of mush- 
 room ketchup, Mrs. Cornish led the way upstairs to the 
 doctor's room. 
 
 " Tis all of a litter, sure 'nuff," said she, " but that's 
 Dan all over. Mustn't touch this, and mustn't interfere 
 with that. I tell'n he's worse than forty chillern." 
 
 Dorothy thought even painfully now of the point-device 
 care she lavished on keeping the Outlook spick and span 
 as she looked round at the muddle of books, papers and 
 microscopic sections ... at the papers pinned to the 
 walls. 
 
 " Fancy pinning anything to the walls of the Outlook 1 " 
 said she to herself. 
 
 It was her first real introduction to the gentle art 
 of wifehood. 
 
 Then she exclaimed, for on the pillow of the big, squashy 
 flock bed was a dent and in the dent a smooth brown head. 
 It was Violet, the girl baby, and sound asleep. 
 
 " Ay," twinkled Mam, " I thought you'd like to have her. 
 'Tis ill lying alone, night time and that. And she's good, 
 best of all I ever reared. Born easy, too. I wasn't up 
 over not half an hour afore she was here, and as good as 
 gold ever since." 
 
 Going to the window, she raised a corner of the blind 
 and looked out. In a clear, rain -washed sky, the stars were 
 shining. Yet through the open window came the far-off 
 roaring of the tide on the doom-bar. 
 
 " Storm's over," said Mam, and drew up the blind to its 
 
 ^ 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 295 
 
 full height. All was still, but for the distant barking of a 
 dog. On the mast of a coaler the riding light shone. 
 
 " And," said Dorothy, thinking of the mute confession 
 of the raised blind, which Mam kept down till the skies 
 were clear, " whatever it is . . . it's over now." 
 
 Mrs. Cornish glanced at her ; this had been her own 
 thought, but she would never have confessed it. 
 
 "Eh, dear," she said, "but you'm learning, that you 
 be." 
 
 Soon in the darkness, with the sleeping child beside 
 her, Dorothy lay thinking to more purpose than ever in 
 her life before. For here, with the evidence of Dan's 
 real life all round her, she burned to realize how banal 
 it must have seemed to him to live in their cosy nook at 
 the Outlook, so carefully prepared for easy living . . . 
 and so far removed from life. He hated table centres 
 and all that Edward Carpenter hated when he put his 
 trousers underneath the mattress to frighten the man- 
 servant of a desirable mansion. Then, too, with Mam's 
 patient footsteps dragging up the stairs to bed, she knew 
 another thing : that here was a home. But it had been 
 built, and not of bricks and mortar. 
 
 Beside this, her own atmosphere had been that of a 
 courtesan. If there be any truth in the idea that material 
 objects carry with them the spirit of the human scenes 
 in which they have played a part, then Mam's pots and 
 pans, her beds and tables, would speak, above all, of 
 courage, the supreme virtue. 
 
 So thinking, she fell asleep, and awoke to find the baby 
 with roseleaf cheeks aflame, bestriding her with two fat 
 legs and about to push an inquiring finger under her eye- 
 lid. The room was flooded with light, and from under 
 the window came the noise of cheerful bustle. Hoisting 
 the child on her shoulders, her pigtails hanging down 
 over the old shirt of Dan's in which she had slept, Dorothy 
 looked out. Sam was coming up the steps. 
 
 " Hallo ! " he cried, and then laughed. " Dan ought 
 to be here to see 'ee. Purtiest sight he's ever seen . . . 
 that. S'pose he'll have to wait a bit, though." 
 
296 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Dan ought to be here : " with thudding heart, she 
 drew back to find Mam coming in with one of those big 
 cups of strong tea with which in this household they 
 fetched up their spirits for the day's work. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " got in all right about four on the 
 tide. I didn't have 'ee woke, though." 
 
 Dorothy remembered Sam's cat-like tread in his blue 
 stockinged feet : he was never allowed upstairs in anything 
 else. For Mam's rules were all based on the differences 
 between dirt you couldn't help and dirt you could, with 
 a wide latitude allowed to the former. 
 
 " But the doctor ? " 
 
 " Oh," said Mrs. Cornish, " Dan's not back with the 
 rest. He's gone straight up to London. They put in 
 at St. Ives, you know, and he'll not be back for a day or 
 two. Pretty short-handed that made Sam, too, and not 
 in the best of tempers, neither." 
 
 Mrs. Cornish was evidently talking for talking's sake, 
 a most unusual proceeding with her. She stood just 
 inside the door, with the baby's clutching fingers grasping 
 at her hair and breast, as Dorothy in front of her crossed 
 one bare foot on the other alternately. As Mrs. Cornish 
 afterwards said to Sam : 
 
 " A poor little pindling figure like that, with arms 
 empty of everything. I ups and lets myself go." 
 
 And she did ; for although in a general way Mam 
 Cornish was a quiet woman, yet once or twice in her life 
 she had driven a gossiping woman straight out of the 
 house and pretty nigh over the quay, with a force as 
 strong as a good right arm, though never a finger was put 
 on the guilty one. 
 
 " There," she said, holding the child up by the tail of 
 its nightdress, " you'm feeling low, as though Kingdom 
 Come wadn't far off, just because he's off like a sky-rocket. 
 Sam got like that, time or two. But I never worried, 
 leastways not to let 'en see it. For it's God's truth — you 
 can't tie up men nor boys, same as you do girls. A boy 
 cheeld'll roar the house down if you so much as shut the 
 door upon 'en. Same with a man. They'm like birds, 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 297 
 
 they be, that come and go round your roof, and the freer 
 they go, the sooner they come back. Time and again 
 I've worried over Sam with some slut or other, but there, 
 I knowed I'd got what 'ud bring a man back ... as is a 
 man." 
 
 " And what is that ? " asked Dorothy, raising her 
 heavy eyelids. For, after all, the woman had simply 
 thrown a new light over Dan's escapade. What at first 
 seemed merely discourteous had now assumed an ominous 
 appearance. 
 
 Mrs. Cornish was silent, but her eyes fell on the child 
 by her side, while her mind busied itself with the manifold 
 weariness and hope of the bearing and rearing of children, 
 the muck and moil of it all. 
 
 " Some there is as runs from the kiddies," she said. 
 
 " But not real men," replied Dorothy. 
 
 Mrs. Cornish was silent ; it was her idea, too. Dorothy's 
 glance fell on the woman's left hand. 
 
 " It isn't the ring, you know," she said, " that brings 
 them back." 
 
 " Co ! lo' me, no," said Mrs. Cornish. " He is but 
 trying his wings, though." 
 
 For days there came no line from the doctor, and, 
 though patients waited, his wife could tell them nothing. 
 Then the silence was broken by a short note informing 
 her he was in Paris and directing her to cash the enclosed 
 cheque . . . the first big nibble on the famous five 
 thousand apparently . . . and come across the next 
 day but one. 
 
 No thought of refusal ever crossed her mind, for to be 
 whistled back was joy enough. In this way she triumphed 
 even over Mam Cornish, who was always left in the home, 
 an essential part of the furniture. 
 
 In Paris Dr. Rudd appeared against another back- 
 ground. In the joyful uplift of spirit given by the place 
 he had actually written to her the precious lines : " We'll 
 make it a honeymoon, our real one, you know." Yet 
 it was no solitude a deux, which suited them both very 
 ill, but rather an introduction to his real life. Seeing him 
 
298 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 through his friends' eyes, he was a different man. At 
 home one had to make allowances for him ; here none 
 were required. 
 
 " One becomes sodden," he said, " if one stays in 
 English air for long. The clouds hang too low there. 
 One cannot see the sky. And they put all things to the 
 one test : ' Is it right ? ' . . . the most damnable crushing 
 of thought ever contrived. Right ! what's right ? They 
 still weigh everything by Puritan weights and measures 
 more infernal far than avoirdupois, though that's bad 
 enough." 
 
 In this nimble air, where nothing was tabooed, his 
 gestures were freer, showing the make of his delicate 
 surgeon's hands. In talk he forgot the brooding Buddha. 
 
 One night at supper in a cafe they had been talking 
 of form, in one of those discussions in which, by beating 
 the mental air, a lucid thought is sometimes hammered 
 out. When he had expressed his idea, Dorothy moved 
 with a quick gesture and laid a hand on his arm. " Why, 
 Dan," she cried, " that's form in law, too, and when I 
 once defended it you were horrified." 
 
 And turning to the others she explained his horror at 
 the quibble, the pound of flesh in a weighty matter of life 
 and death. 
 
 " But," said a student, leaning forward, his eyes on her, 
 " you forget, Madame Dan, that in France we give full 
 weight to the quibble, and then defeat it by an appeal 
 to the emotions, and so make the French law courts a 
 scandal to the formal English." 
 
 " That's our Gallic practicality," broke in another ; 
 " it's all bones, bones, your form. And we allow that 
 all the time till the eleventh hour, and then . . . passion." 
 
 " And the eleventh hour wins, hands down," said 
 Dan. 
 
 They were all silent, and glancing round at the faces, 
 Dorothy longed to say to him, "■ Let us stay here," for they 
 were alive, both fierce eyes and kind, and among them 
 Dan's face seemed not so strange. 
 
 That was it : she had struck it. To her he was still 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 299 
 
 strange, something at which she wrinkled her brows in 
 the effort to understand. 
 
 But when they steamed out of the station on their way 
 home, with her arms full of violets and bonbon boxes, a 
 circle of bowing heads round the carriage window, he 
 sighed with satisfaction : " That's made a hole in the 
 wages of sin." 
 
 It was his name for Madame's cheque. 
 
 " Oh, Dan," she sighed, " I wish we could have stayed 
 for ever," since dread of the other side was already upon 
 her. 
 
 Yet he shook his head, with a deep-rooted conviction 
 that westward is, after all, a destiny not lightly to be 
 evaded either by men or nations. 
 
 As they stood on the deck nearing Folkestone, she 
 suddenly asked : "Dan, what would they make over 
 there," she nodded back at the land they were leaving, 
 " of Gilbert Carlyon ? " 
 
 " Peasant, I suppose," he said carelessly, " and nobody 
 understands that better than a Frenchman." 
 
 " But I think," said she, " Frenchmen understand 
 everything." 
 
 " Even you and me ? " he asked smiling. 
 
 " I think they might if they gave their minds to it," 
 answered she ; " they have a wonderful light way of turn- 
 ing up layers, deep-down, yet without disturbing the 
 surface. That's always gay, but below . . . you can 
 see." 
 
 He looked down at her with a smile, serenely happy for 
 a second in the sense of comradeship. 
 
 As the vessel stole to its moorings, she mused on the 
 glaring contrasts in Dan's make-up. He could not away 
 with her love of form in law and religion, yet of law in 
 art he was the devout worshipper, finding in Baudelaire 
 and Anatole France the perfect masters of highly sub- 
 tilized living. And yet he sought his ideal of daily life 
 in a fisherman's cottage. 
 
 But so did she ; she wanted to cross the threshold of 
 the Outlook, to discover, not neatness and finish, but 
 
300 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 something to be found only in Mam Cornish's be-littered, 
 yet dignified kitchen. Instead, there was nothing in the 
 hatching line but Wobbler, " the heller," with three rats 
 of kittens. 
 
 Over at Lanvean, too, there was a birth — of more 
 import than the heller's productions. Summoned there 
 a week later, Dr. Rudd sat one evening in the dining- 
 room. He had made Mrs. Parsons bring the child down 
 to him, and there in his place held it on his knees. Gilbert 
 leaning against the mantelpiece, looked down wonderingly, 
 while Trevan sat in the arm-chair, beating his foot im- 
 patiently against the floor. 
 
 With the be-flannelled bundle held on his left arm, 
 Dr. Rudd quietly drew forward the shaded lamp, and with 
 careful hands turned the baby's head to and fro in the 
 palm of his hand. Even to Gilbert's inexperienced eyes 
 the bulbous outline seemed strange. 
 
 " One of the hardest problems ever set before the 
 doctor," said Rudd. " Eh, Trevan ? " 
 
 The older man nodded half reluctantly, " Hydro- 
 cephalus," he said curtly ; " hopeless, nothing to be done 
 for it." 
 
 " And what sort of a life's before it ? " asked Rudd 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Well, some pleasure, I suppose," said Trevan. 
 
 " Yes, of food, warmth, drink, desire, the lowest animal 
 pleasures, that's all, and these raised in power by hundreds 
 of degrees through its merely human make." 
 
 " You mean to say," broke in Gilbert, " that it'll be 
 an idiot ? " 
 
 Trevan opened his hands, as though to throw away 
 something. " Of course," he said. 
 
 " And that isn't all," said Dr. Dan, as with skilful 
 hands he untied tapes and unfastened safety pins, peeling 
 the warm, ripe creature till it lay mother-naked across 
 his knees. 
 
 " There ! " he said, " finely built, even a splendid child, 
 a magnificent animal, yet with this brain, not animal 
 . . . only different. And with this body made for life, 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 301 
 
 and more life ... to hand it on, with the urge of life 
 within him. No puny delicate creature, dying of its own 
 inanition, but this." 
 
 Fist in eyes, the creature set up a wail, and hastily 
 shuffling on the clothes, the doctor handed it back to the 
 old woman. 
 
 He spoke in a kind of passion, and so caught an answer- 
 ing gleam in her eyes as she hushed the crying baby against 
 her breast. Then the three men sat listening to the wail 
 that died away on the stairs and along the corridor. 
 
 Trevan began to fidget, and got up to fasten the door, 
 taking the precaution to turn the key in the lock. He 
 would not, of course, have objected to this debate had 
 only professional men been present. As it was, Dr. Dan 
 annoyed him inexpressibly. 
 
 " There's your problem," continued Dr. Rudd ; " what 
 says the wisdom of the ages to it ? Let me tell you, it's 
 the problem : shape life, or leave it to shape itself." 
 
 Trevan smiled, " Without going into the chapter of 
 revelations, Rudd," said he, " it's a problem for the 
 child's family. For it's a life, Carlyon, that'll have to 
 be safeguarded for your own time, and beyond." 
 
 " It's more, it's more," cried Dan fiercely ; " it's for 
 all of us, the matter of this child and his like. Masters 
 of life, forsooth ! Can we ever call ourselves that if we 
 allow life to make game of us in this fashion ? " 
 
 " I don't know that we've any right ..." began 
 Gilbert. 
 
 " Damn your right ! " bellowed Dan. 
 
 He always " saw red " at this Puritan formula, which 
 reminded him that he was back in England, a place where 
 he longed to be when he was away and longed to leave 
 when he was there. " What's right got to do with it ? 
 Where would your herds be if you bred from defectives ? " 
 
 " That's different in kind," said Carlyon ; " a human 
 life's a thought . . . well, I suppose ... of God. Even 
 this one : you've to see what it says first." 
 
 " Well, of all the ghastly creeds commend me to this 
 one," exclaimed Dr. Rudd. " I wish you joy of your parti- 
 
302 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 cular share of God's thought, then. Good Lord I man, 
 how can you talk such unmitigated rubbish ? We inter- 
 fere perpetually with human life in forty thousand ways. 
 Now at what precise point does reason say, thus far and 
 no farther ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Gilbert steadily, yet moved, 
 though he would not show it, by the other's passion. 
 
 " No, you don't know, nor does anyone," snapped 
 Rudd, " but we shall have to know some day, or that 
 upstairs will baffle us." 
 
 " Where would you stop ? " repeated Gilbert. 
 
 Trevan could not but nod in approval. 
 
 " Ay, where ? " he repeated. 
 
 " Where reason directs. The child dies to save the 
 mother's life." 
 
 " Now that's where you're wrong," smiled Trevan ; 
 " if you were a Catholic, you'd know that the Church 
 directs that the mother has to go in such a case, not the 
 child. New life's always first in that theology. That's 
 where the mystic comes in, you see." 
 
 " And what in the name of seven devils has the Church 
 got to do with a purely medical question ? " stormed 
 Rudd. " The madness, the gibbering imbecility of 
 letting the priest put his meddling finger into that business." 
 
 Trevan smiled quietly. He had no desire whatever to 
 see any extension of the medical man's power over life 
 and death. His long practice had given him enough hard 
 questions to solve as it was. He would be the last man 
 to consent to any kicking down of that notice board : 
 Thus far and no farther. 
 
 When the doctors were gone, Mrs. Parsons stole quietly 
 in. 
 
 " What did they say, master ? " she whispered to 
 Gilbert, " that 'tis hopeless ? " 
 
 " You heard them," answered Gilbert. 
 
 " Of course they know," she nodded, " as I did. And 
 so that's . . . what Lanvean's got this time." 
 
 " Otherwise it's a splendidly healthy child/' said he, 
 with his eyes on the fire. 
 
THE GAUNTLET OF THE GODS 303 
 
 " Ay," she said, " lusty. So 'tis, as I said when I 
 washed 'en first. And he'll breed . . . Carlyons." 
 
 Had he turned, her master would have seen her eyes 
 two smouldering fires under their ferrety lids. Her hand 
 clenched on the edge of the table as she stood just behind 
 him. 
 
 " Does the mother know, d'you think ? " he asked. 
 
 Mrs. Parsons hesitated. 
 
 " It's my belief she's afraid," she said at last. 
 
 " Afraid ? " 
 
 " Yes, afraid to look at it, afraid to ask, afraid to get 
 fond of it. ' Take it away,' says she every time, and 
 won't put it to her breast." 
 
 " Poor miserable little soul," said Gilbert, but whether 
 he meant the mother or the child, the old woman did 
 not trouble to ask. Only she stood a second as though 
 thinking. 
 
 " Ay, it's lusty," said she. And went away without 
 another word. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 HAMMER AND ANVIL 
 
 TIS all there, I tell you," said Lizzie, prowling round 
 the table by Mrs. Steve's bed and counting on 
 her ringers : " whisky, milk, glass, biscuits and medicine." 
 Coming across to the big chair where Mrs. Carlyon sat, 
 she knelt down and began to unbutton her mistress's 
 boots. The faces of both were tense with temper, and 
 the girl suddenly paused, holding the unbooted foot high 
 in air, exclaiming : 
 
 " Your face looks as if it had been fried." 
 
 At this impertinence Mrs. Carlyon reached forward, 
 her face working with passion, and fetched the girl a box 
 on the ears. 
 
 Gilbert below heard a cry, followed by a burst of 
 sobbing, and hurrying out to the foot of the stairs, found 
 Mrs. Parsons in front of him. 
 
 When she returned he called her in. 
 
 " That Lizzie will have to clear out," she panted, " but 
 what's more to the point is — when is the other going back 
 to her husband like any decent woman ? " 
 
 " That's what I wanted to speak to you about," said 
 he. " I've had a letter from Steve, who says he's in no 
 position to keep a wife, leave alone a child, and I'm bound 
 to say ... I agree with him." 
 
 " Her can't stay here, 'tidn't to be thought of." 
 
 " Till she's stronger," said the young man hesitatingly. 
 
 Truth to tell, he was longing to close the doors on this 
 unhappy pair, yet dreaded his own reproachful conscience 
 
 304 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 305 
 
 far more than the present inconvenience of perpetual 
 bickering and all the trouble connected with an ill- 
 managed baby, whose unclean bottles worked havoc on 
 the peace of Lanvean. 
 
 " Stronger ! " snapped Mrs. Parsons. " Her's strong 
 enough, only her lies abed till noon and won't so much 
 as touch the child. And you a young man, too ! I'd 
 give her three weeks to get out of it, if I was you, master. 
 You'd think her'd be glad to crawl away into a hole and 
 never let anyone so much as set eyes on what her's given 
 birth to." 
 
 " The child's a Carlyon, and it's got to be provided 
 for. . . ." 
 
 " By you ? " 
 
 " By me." 
 
 When he spoke in that tone, she knew it was useless to 
 protest, and, indeed, hailed with joy the suggestion he 
 had been dreading to make, that she should find an assist- 
 ant, at any rate for the dairy. 
 
 " You know the sort of woman I mean," he said, and 
 when she was silent he felt sure that her mind was 
 already made up on that point. 
 
 " You'll want," she mused, " a woman with a head 
 on her shoulders." 
 
 " Wellj do you know of one ? " he asked with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Yes, I do," she answered ; " it's a niece of my own, 
 though it's not that I want to force her on you." 
 
 " It's a good stock, Parsons," he smiled. " You know 
 I have nothing to say against it." 
 
 '.' Yes," she said, " Ann's my own sister's child . . . 
 Ann Michell is. At a dairy few can beat her, and I wouldn't 
 wish for a better in the house. Strong, willing and quiet, 
 and Madame' 11 never get a spark out of her. Lizzie can't 
 hold her own with that one, for all her sauce." 
 
 All the irritation of the distracted household centred 
 now round Mrs. Steve's personality, her airs and graces, 
 her tempers and depressions. 
 
 " And can we get her, this Ann Michell ? " asked Gilbert, 
 
 20 
 
306 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 accommodating his decisive mind rather fretfully to the 
 old woman's hesitation. 
 
 " I should reckon so. Her'd come to me, would Ann." 
 
 " Well, why not ? " he shrugged impatiently. " Out 
 with it, Parsons. What have you got on your mind ? " 
 
 When she hesitated again, he added, " You know there 
 are only three questions about it : Can she do the work ? 
 Will she be horrified at our trouble here ? And will she 
 cause mischief, anyway, if she comes ? " 
 
 " She'll work. Few better. Ann's a strong woman, 
 with a heart in her. And as for mischief, I should say 
 no." 
 
 " You'd trust her yourself ? " 
 
 " I would." 
 
 " Then don't let anything else bother you." 
 
 " I'm not one to foist a bad bargain on you," she began, 
 " because it's my kin. No, I'm not." 
 
 " Did I say you were ? " said he. " Write and see 
 if she'll come at once. Ann Michell ! It sounds quiet 
 and homely . . . and useful, too." 
 
 " Ay, Ann's all that." 
 
 He got up, bestrode the hearth and yawned. 
 
 " That's settled then," said he, " if she'll come." 
 
 '* She'll come," said the old woman quietly, and at 
 once the suspicion crossed his mind that she had already 
 been in treaty with her niece. Yet for Parsons to hedge, 
 as she had done, augured something out of the common in 
 the way of risks. 
 
 " If there's anything I ought to know, tell me," he 
 said, " but if it's nothing that can affect her position 
 here, then don't. That is, if you can assure me she is a 
 safe person to bring here." 
 
 " Well," she burst out, " it's like this. Hell they say 
 is full of folks that never sat in the sun. Ann isn't made 
 that way. She's a strong woman and what she wants, 
 she takes. Once she took . . . what she wanted, and 
 she's held her head up ever since, and never bowed it to 
 no man. She's not of the breed that stands in the shade 
 and whines because others get the sunlight. No, she 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 307 
 
 took her sunshine, and there's a mort of folks do blame 
 her for it." 
 
 " Do you blame her, Parsons ? For your way of think- 
 ing is good enough for me. Do you blame her then for 
 whatever she did ? " 
 
 " No, I don't," said Mrs. Parsons, " for you'd always 
 better take what you've a mind to, and if so be it turns 
 your stomach, why, you're wiser the next time, I reckon." 
 
 So the matter was arranged, and, though once or twice 
 the question of Ann's sunshine crossed Gilbert's mind, he 
 forgot it in the press of work till one day, returning at 
 noon, his quick eye caught a new figure at work among 
 the dairymaids. She was skimming a pan of cream with 
 sleeves tucked up, and he noticed the firm precision of 
 every skilful movement. When she had finished, she 
 turned to him and, with a lift of her upper lip, smiled 
 slightly. Then she went on to the next pan, and he walked 
 down the row to her side. 
 
 " It's a big dairy," he said, " and of course you're 
 Miss Michell. The indoor work I should like to leave 
 entirely in your hands." 
 
 " I can manage quite well," she said quietly, and went 
 on with her task. 
 
 During the next few days it was Ann whom the whole 
 household watched, as though it were somehow on its 
 guard. She worked slowly and methodically, never 
 hurried and seldom rested, though when she did, it was 
 neither with the laxity of the sprawler nor the rigidity 
 of the nervous woman who is so anxious to get the proper 
 amount of recuperation from her rest that in it she exhausts 
 herself more quickly than by work. Ann Michell sat 
 very still, with eyes taking pleasure in whatever they fell 
 on. As Gilbert soon discovered, she knew many things 
 about the wild creatures that even he, with his country 
 breeding, had never noticed. Thus she told him in the 
 first week, as the men were cleaning out the overhanging 
 eaves of old birds' nests, that swallows as well as martins 
 feed their young on the wing. 
 
 A small thin woman with tightly banded hair parted 
 
 20* 
 
308 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 in front, she was pale-faced and very far from exuberance. 
 One could see her sitting, with tiny feet crossed, in a 
 crowded railway station, watching the people, yet as 
 quiet as though she were in the midst of woodland peace. 
 She never expressed by so much as a raised eyebrow any 
 judgment of other folks' ways. But that she formed 
 such, no one could doubt. 
 
 In the dairy, where quiet soon reigned after the dis- 
 missal of sundry incompetents, she seemed to infect her 
 workers with something of her own pride in tasks perfectly 
 performed. Yet they half feared her and called her " cat," 
 though not audibly, till, when one fell ill, she nursed the 
 girl night and day. At last she found her way into the 
 house, too, till Gilbert one day going up to the nursery 
 looked round him in surprise. Instead of the frowsy 
 carpet and dirty hangings, there were bare scrubbed 
 floors and white curtains, the scent of soap and water and 
 of cleanliness everywhere. The fire crackled, too, instead 
 of struggling through a mass of choking ash. 
 
 Ann, in her dark blue dress and white cuffs, stood in 
 the window, with her back to him. Then he saw the 
 child's head on the bend of her arm ; she was rocking it 
 to and fro, and already the cries that had brought him to 
 the room were growing quieter. Both of them stood 
 looking down on the vacuous, shapeless face, in which the 
 fishy eyes were beginning to show the rolling strangeness 
 that can fix on nothing. When the sturdy limbs kicked 
 out, Ann caught the feet in her hand and let the baby 
 push against them for support. 
 
 " He's growing," said she, " growing every day. But 
 can nothing be done for him, for poor little Jonathan ? " 
 
 Gilbert shook his head ; it was really the first time he 
 had regarded the child as a person. Her " poor Jonathan " 
 had in it something of the pathos of " poor Tom " and 
 his strange coldness. 
 
 " His mother hates him," she went on ; " she's better not 
 near him. I lock the door of a night." 
 
 " You sleep here ? " he asked in surprise ; " but I thought 
 your room was at the end of the passage." 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 309 
 
 " I took him down there of a night at first," she said, 
 ' but it was too near Mrs. Carlyon's room. When he 
 cried she complained. So I sleep here instead." 
 
 " But," he said, M 'twill be too much for you, surely ? 
 And with all the work you get through by day. But 
 why do you lock the door ? You don't mean that the 
 mother would hurt it ? " 
 
 " No, not she," said Ann, shaking her head ; " the worst 
 she does is to shake him when he worries her." 
 
 " She's not strong, and she's suffered, I suppose," said 
 he. 
 
 " She ? Not strong ? And suffered ? Not more than 
 others . . . and brought this into the world." 
 
 It was a strange thing, thought Gilbert, that never, 
 except from slipshod Lizzie, had he heard anything but 
 contempt from a woman towards Mrs. Steve. 
 
 " What would you have done, then ? " he asked, 
 suddenly audacious, yet longing to probe her mind, " if 
 this had been your child ? " 
 
 She turned upon him, the baby sleeping now with little 
 snores that made one forget its terrible head. 
 
 " Do with it ? " she cried, " what any woman that was 
 a woman would ha' done. Held its head, that was of 
 my making, with my hand over its mouth till the breath 
 was gone from it. And I'd have been in the right of it, 
 too. I'd have given the life and I'd have taken it. And 
 that's all there'd be to it. Hang me they might, but 
 I'd say with my last breath that I'd the right to do it. 
 To bring up this ..." she held out the big heavy child 
 as though it were a doll . . . " to be a mock and a shame 
 in all its pitiful ways. ..." 
 
 She hid her face from the young man and busied herself 
 with wrapping the child in his cradle, yet he knew there 
 were tears in her eyes. This was quite a new Ann Michell 
 to him. 
 
 " And yet," he said wonderingly, " you lock yourself in 
 by night lest its mother should do it a mischief." 
 
 " That's not why. It's not his mother that I lock the 
 door against." 
 
310 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " But against whom then ? " 
 
 When she was silent, he laughed at his own fancy. 
 
 " Nonsense," he cried, " there's no one, of course. 
 Unless it's you, after what you've told me." 
 
 He laughed again, but was surprised at the flicker on 
 her face that was not of laughter. 
 
 " You can't go about doing other folks' jobs," she said 
 quietly ; " all you can do is to see to your own. That was 
 a mother's job . . . that what I spoke of . . . not any 
 other woman's." 
 
 This was Ann Michell all over, for of the compassion 
 which sees only the efforts, and not the failures, of 
 struggling humanity she had not a grain. With pro- 
 digious care, too, she hoed her own straight row, nor 
 failed to cast censorious eyes over the furrows of 
 her neighbour's plough, though in general she said 
 nothing. 
 
 Like the dairymaids, Gilbert became somewhat afraid 
 of her, and more than once, with a business question on 
 his hands to be decided, he wondered what her judgment 
 would be. Yet as a woman he hardly saw her at all, for 
 she was like a still small voice, especially in her candid 
 moments. 
 
 One day returning to the house about noon, the young 
 man found the hall-room overflowing with milliners' 
 boxes, with silk garments flung across the sofa and tissue 
 papers billowing on the floor. In the midst stood Mrs. 
 Carlyon, slipping her arms into a long silk coat, while 
 Ann Michell watched her from the ground where she was 
 kneeling. Recently he had presented his brother's wife 
 with a cheque, and now, no doubt, beheld the effect of his 
 generosity. In the blurred mirror on the wall Mrs. Carlyon 
 watched her slim reflections as she bent hither and thither 
 to make the shot silk shimmer. Fingering the string of 
 Roman pearls on her neck, she turned to Ann Michell. 
 
 " How do you like it ? " she asked. As she often said, 
 there was no joy in wearing fine clothes at Lanvean, for 
 nobody there could tell whether you had taken them off 
 the scarecrows, or bought them in Paris. 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 311 
 
 " I think it suits you very well," said Ann demurely. 
 
 " So do I," cried Mrs. Steve, enjoying her long lines in 
 the green sheath, that was of a hue only produced by 
 aniline dye in its most virulent mood. 
 
 " You see," continued she complacently, " I can wear 
 these snaky things of green and gold. Why, when I was 
 a girl, I had a waist a man could span with his hands, 
 and I've never scrimped on corsets. That's one of the 
 tips you do learn on the stage." She illustrated, pulling 
 her waist-band out to show the loose fit of it. " But 
 these skin-tights really are naughty . . . and with silk 
 undies ! You should just see the men look when one 
 slips by like this." 
 
 Ann considered, smoothing her parted hair in a gesture 
 peculiarly hers. " Yes," she said, " I suppose they 
 would. Dirt draws dirt, so they say." 
 
 " Draws dirt I What do you say ? " cried Mrs. Steve ; 
 " do you mean to be impertinent ? If so, let me tell you, 
 I'll take no sauce from you." 
 
 " I mean," explained Ann, with composure, " that if 
 you went out naked and said, ' Look at me,' people would 
 cry shame on you. But if you go out in the likes of that, 
 folks only think it. Decent folks, that is." 
 
 Her quiet exactitude was totally free from heat, yet 
 no one could be surprised at the fit of hysterics that 
 deprived Mrs. Carlyon of the power to eat any dinner, 
 though it was roast duck, which she loved. Later on, 
 however, when the storm had blown itself out, Gilbert 
 met Ann carrying a tray with a wing on it, two slices of 
 the breast, with accompaniments. Steam rose from it 
 gratefully into the air. 
 
 " Who's this f or ? " he demanded. 
 
 " For Mrs. Carlyon ; I kept it hot for her," said Ann. 
 
 " And do you mean to say," he exclaimed, " that she'll 
 take it from you after this upset ? " 
 
 " She's hungry, you see," said Ann, with a smile. 
 
 There really was something inhuman about the woman's 
 intolerant tolerance of other people's frailties. 
 
 When he heard her footsteps on the stairs once more, 
 
312 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Gilbert called her into the dining-room. But she fore- 
 stalled any remark he could make by, as usual, being 
 perfectly ready to cut knots. 
 
 " You think I shouldn't have spoken as I did this morn- 
 ing ? " she asked. "That it wasn't my business ? " 
 
 " Well," he said, " that's just what I do think. She's 
 highly strung. And do you remember what you said one 
 day — that one can't go about doing other folks' jobs ? I 
 liked that, but here you are interfering with my job. 
 Aren't you now ? " 
 
 " So Mrs. Carlyon is your job ? " she asked. 
 
 " Is she not ? " he asked in a cold tone. 
 
 Never in his life before had he felt the directing ringer 
 of a woman in his plans. 
 
 " No," she said, " she's anything but your job." 
 
 " She certainly isn't yours." 
 
 " No," she assented, " that's true. And I oughtn't to 
 have spoken as I did. But she doesn't belong to stay 
 here, anyway." 
 
 Gilbert wished at the moment very distinctly that he 
 had never admitted Ann Michell to the house. For he 
 derived a distinct impression that, if she had determined 
 to hoist a cuckoo out of the nest, she would set about her 
 work in a fashion far more persistent than her aunt's. 
 
 " Anyway," he said, striving to be gracious, " we're 
 all very grateful to you for what you're doing for the 
 child." 
 
 " The child ! " she flashed, for this was the only point 
 at which a spark could be struck from her. " Do any of 
 you realize what the child's going to mean ? It's nothing 
 now, just like any other baby, but ..." 
 
 " I know," he said, " but what sort of a man would it 
 be who turned his back on that helpless thing ? " 
 
 " And so," she said to herself when he was gone, " he 
 means it to be his . . . for keeps. But what sort of a 
 woman is it that'll let him take it on his shoulders and 
 lay not a finger on it herself ? " 
 
 The secret battle between these two young women 
 gained in fire by Gilbert's intervention, till even Mrs. 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 313 
 
 Parsons protested ; for if a fight was on she liked to be 
 general. 
 
 " Her ! " she cried, when Mrs. Steve had gone off to 
 sleep after her usual three glasses of whisky, " her and 
 her tantrums ! They won't bring down the walls on us 
 . . . but 'tis that accursed misbegotten cheeld . . . that 
 ought to be down the well ! " 
 
 Had she been a woman of the East she would have used 
 the gesture against the evil eye. 
 
 At Lanvean the bell over the stables was sounded at 
 meal-times to summon the men ; rung between times it 
 signified that the master was wanted at the house-place. 
 One day, late in June, from the field where they were 
 cutting the first hay, Gilbert heard it clanging violently. 
 Already the ever-narrowing square of standing grass was 
 crowded with rabbits and field-mice, their panting bodies 
 dimly seen between the blades, whence bright eyes peered 
 at the horrible death awaiting them. At Lanvean, how- 
 ever, by Gilbert's orders, a few minutes' grace was allowed, 
 so that dogs on the leash and men with sticks always 
 waited two minutes by the master's watch ere the slaughter 
 began. 
 
 Now, the thin rasping note of the bell through the hot 
 clear air was insistent, so that, turning his horse, Gilbert 
 put spurs to it, and away. His departure was the death- 
 warrant of the rabbits, for Gilbert's law in these matters 
 was evaded whenever possible. Old men there were, too, 
 who talked of the " near " Carlyons that grudged the 
 poor folks their reward of perquisites ever since the days 
 when the field called Green Close was manured with 
 smoked pilchards. 
 
 Still the bell went on clanging, till the men clambered 
 up on the hedge to see if the house was afire. At last the 
 news came, shouted across the fields by leathern lungs. 
 
 " Knock off. You'm wanted to once ..." then came 
 something that no one caught except the end, which was 
 " down the blow-hole." 
 
 In a moment or two the clattering jingling course of 
 the farm wagon could be traced along the road by the 
 
3 H THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 cloud of dust that hung above it as it whirled on its 
 jolting career. 
 
 The blow-hole on the far side of Porthmissen is a whirl- 
 pool shaped in rock that, grass-covered in the higher 
 slopes, ends at the bottom in broken ledges of rock covered 
 with sea-thrift, and finally issues by underground passages 
 to the sea. The sheer fall of its grassy sides is concealed 
 by the gradual nature of the declivity which soon narrows, 
 however, to a funnel. When railed-in it is even more 
 dangerous to back-scratching cattle, for, if the rail breaks, 
 the animal starts on its downward plunge with an added 
 impetus. Lying on the turf at the top, at certain states 
 of the tide one can hear the " howff, howff," of the 
 imprisoned waters. 
 
 Now, as the cart raced along the road, with the men 
 standing behind the driver, they could trace the blow- 
 hole on the fall of the cliff field by its shadow, that lay 
 like a dark dimple on the sunlit grass. At the farm they 
 had loaded up with ropes and planks, for they knew by 
 now that it was the most valuable horse in the place, the 
 bay mare Stella, that was down. 
 
 Half-way out they picked up a boy who stood bawling 
 a mouthful of news at them from the roadside. Since he 
 had come from the scene of action, he, too, was hauled 
 aboard, mainly by the slack of his breeches. 
 
 At his news the wink went round, for it appeared that 
 the doctor's wife had found the horse when she glanced 
 over the edge of the blow-hole. Always wandering the 
 cliffs, was Mrs. Rudd, as they all knew. Everyone began 
 to recount the many times she had been met on this coast- 
 line, and often alone. But the boy caught the ball of 
 talk once more. 
 
 " Iss," panted he, " her's sound, the mare is. Seems 
 so. And master's going down. Tide's on the turn, 
 though, and her screaming-tearing down below." 
 
 In the grisly joy of the moment the boy's eyes bulged. 
 For all the press of hurry, the fathj^gfound time to cuff 
 his offspring's ears, and lashing theneavy horses into a 
 gallop, they took the hill at a rush. 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 315 
 
 From the edge of the hole could be seen, though but 
 faintly, a glimpse of the rocky outcrop below. The mare 
 was standing with her fore-feet slipping as she tried to 
 climb the overhanging bank. Faintly amid the rush of 
 the waves could be heard her whinnying cries of terror. 
 Away from the spectators Dorothy crouched close to the 
 edge of the cliff, for the excitement of the rest seemed 
 ghoulish to her. Yet, with her eyes glued to a clump of 
 sea-pinks, she followed every shifting current of the talk. 
 Finding that the soil here was as full of tiny shells as 
 though they had been sown, she began to count all those 
 within the sweep of her glance. 
 
 Gilbert, now the ropes had arrived, was standing in 
 shirt and trousers, with the men paying out the length 
 behind him. Over the heads of the people, as the men 
 hammered an iron stanchion into the ground, their eyes 
 met. She knew that he had been down more than once 
 as a boy, and that, if he could only strike the path, it 
 might be possible to save the mare. The open sides of 
 the hole made any other sort of rescue impossible, since 
 by the time a crane had been fixed the tide would be 
 filling the inlet from the sea. 
 
 " He's off," cried the crowd, and breaths were held. 
 
 Yet the first part was easy enough. For a long time 
 there was silence, till, unable to bear the delay, Dorothy 
 crept up to the ring of watchers. An old man offered her 
 a long glass, but she pushed it aside. 
 
 " I can't see, but tell me," she whispered. 
 
 Already, like people on a raft, these two seemed isolated 
 from all contact with the rest. 
 
 " He's going steady ; he's got the path. Now he 
 stops ! No, he's got it again. You can but see him 
 quite small now. And the horse is just below him." 
 
 Then a long sigh went out from the crowd. Taking her 
 hands from her eyes, Dorothy clutched the old man's arm. 
 
 " He's down by her," cried he. " She's stopped her 
 cries. Now he's shouting. Can't you hear 'en. 'Tis 
 more rope he's calling for." 
 
 The men were paying out rapidly now. The crowd bent 
 
316 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 lower, and actually trying to take part in the work below, 
 shouted : 
 
 " Up, mare ; up, my beauty." 
 
 But the sound of falling shingle was all that answered 
 them. 
 
 With a sob in her throat, Dorothy lay still, knowing 
 that Gilbert would have to wait and see the beast die. 
 Between herself and her old neighbour there were no 
 secrets, for in this tense moment they read each other's 
 thoughts. 
 
 " He'll shoot her, you know," cried he, " before he'll 
 let her die by inches. He knew he might have to, and 
 he's got his gun slung to his back. But 'tis partly because 
 she's terrified, poor beast, that she's helpless. I've seen 
 'em refuse to budge with the flames behind 'em and the 
 door open in front. You've fairly got to flog 'em out then. 
 And up here, us can't judge the real height of the drop." 
 
 The crowd, distracted from the main issue by the 
 question of the mare's value, was bidding for the price of 
 Stella, till the girl's face grew distorted with rage at the 
 horrible creatures who could take pleasure in such a 
 question with the agony of horse and man going on below. 
 
 Then the people surged again, till the coastguard drove 
 them roughly back. 
 
 " Never ! he can't do it," exclaimed the old man. 
 " A horse'll not step on a man." 
 
 At her insistent shake of his arm he awoke : 
 
 " Why," he said, "he's trying what you'd never have 
 thought of. He's trying to give her a leverage to pull 
 herself up by. He's trying to make her rest her hind 
 feet on his bent back and the beast won't. He'll break 
 his back or hers, and she knows it, too." 
 
 Then the old fellow turned away his eyes from the dazzle 
 of sunlight once more and plunged his gaze into the dark 
 depths. 
 
 " He's done it," he whispered in a few minutes ; " she'd 
 nowhere to step on the ledge if he laid hisself flat down. 
 She thought she'd hurt him, you see, and that gave her 
 courage to heave herself up." 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 317 
 
 And at that he went mad with the rest. 
 
 Dorothy tore the glass from his hands, and hastily 
 screwing it backwards and forwards, found courage to look. 
 Spreading her hind legs on the turf over the stony outcrop, 
 the mare nuzzled her master, while he was evidently 
 quieting her. 
 
 " My word, but his back must be aching," said her 
 neighbour. 
 
 Now that the worst was over, for Dorothy sea and sky 
 seemed to change places, and when she came to herself 
 she was alone, everyone else having gathered round horse 
 and man. For Stella, finding her courage return after 
 her first venture, had followed her master step by step along 
 the zigzag path to the top. 
 
 The girl sat on, her hands clasped round her knees. At 
 the sound of someone moving behind her, she turned to find 
 Gilbert with the mare beside him. 
 
 " She's come to thank you," said he, " for, without you, 
 by now her body'd be washing out to sea." 
 
 " But . . ." cried Dorothy, starting to her feet, " aren't 
 you hurt ? " 
 
 " Oh, bruised a bit," said he; " of course I've got the 
 print of her feet on me." 
 
 " Dan," said she, " ought to have a look at you," and 
 finding he had already sent a man into Petrockstow, she 
 took the matter into her own hands, for her husband, she 
 knew, was visiting a house much nearer than that. 
 
 The procession back to Lanvean, with Gilbert lying, 
 strained and bruised, at the bottom of the cart, was brought 
 up by Stella, who followed with drooping head, as though 
 she felt her guilt and grieved for it. 
 
 Carlyon's recovery took longer than was expected, for 
 Rudd found that a threatened closing of one lung had only 
 been averted some years before by the man's open-air life. 
 
 " Foolish sort of thing to do," said Dan to his wife ; 
 " bit of bravado, I suppose. Wouldn't have done it if he 
 hadn't been sure of an audience." 
 
 " Dan, how can you ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course it would appeal to you. Exhibition of 
 
318 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 brute strength ; women like that. Only graceful of you to 
 go out and see him to-morrow, I should think. Oh, yes, 
 he's up and about. Odd job lot of women he's got round 
 him and not one that's much use, except the Michell. 
 She's got a head, though 'tisn't beautiful. Be ready by 
 two o'clock, and I'll drive you over. I'm sure he must 
 be pining for you." 
 
 Lying awake that night, Dorothy wondered what idea 
 possessed the brain of her mischievous partner. Yet she 
 determined to go to Lanvean, if only to try and answer her 
 own question. 
 
 Once there, while Dr. Rudd was busy with the patient, 
 it seemed only natural to ask to see the child. As Mrs. 
 Rosewarne often said, in these primitive households one is 
 expected to view both corpses and infants. 
 
 Mrs. Steve led the way in rustling silks. 
 
 " It's a queer old place," she observed, as she saw 
 Dorothy glancing round, " but of course you know it well." 
 
 " I've never been upstairs before," said the girl. 
 
 " Ah," cried Mrs. Carlyon, archly gay, " and yet I always 
 heard that there was a time when everyone expected you 
 to be mistress here. But, there, gossip is always a liar. 
 If you only knew the things they've said about me ! But, 
 really, I couldn't tell you half. I believe it was to stop 
 their mouths that I consented to be Mrs. Carlyon. Yet, 
 if you ask me, I should say there's not one married woman 
 in a hundred who could tell you exactly what drove her 
 over the brink. It's fate, I suppose." 
 
 She sighed, and laying a hand on her breast, cried, 
 " Not that it suits me here at all. Far too bracing. And 
 sleep ! I assure you, Mrs. Rudd, I didn't get three hours of 
 unbroken sleep all the time before the child was born. It's 
 to that I ascribe its condition." 
 
 Ann Michell was sitting by the cot as they came in. 
 When she would have gone Mrs. Steve stopped her. 
 
 " For mercy's sake," she exclaimed, " don't go. I'm 
 far too nervous to be left with it." 
 
 The three women stood looking down on the baby as, 
 leaning against Ann, it sat up in her arms. 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 319 
 
 " Oh, you poor, poor little soul ! " cried the girl, and at 
 something in her tone, Mrs. Steve did what was entirely- 
 new in Ann's experience of her : her face worked, and she 
 burst into tears. 
 
 " I'll never, never have another," sobbed Mrs. Carlyon ; 
 " I never ought to have had one. But my husband was 
 bent on it. And there's an instinct tells a woman when 
 she isn't fit for such an ordeal." 
 
 It was something of a terrible moment for all three, 
 since, poles apart as they were, at this sight not one could 
 forget her essential womanhood. Dr. Rudd had warned 
 his wife of the strangeness of this household, yet when Ann, 
 at the sound of footsteps, picked up the child so roughly 
 that it cried out, Dorothy could understand why. For in 
 a moment Mrs. Parsons stood in the doorway, and at her 
 mocking smile the other women shrank. 
 
 " So," said she, " you've brought missie . . . ma'am, 
 I should say ... to see the pride of the house." 
 
 At the interchange of glances between aunt and niece, 
 it almost seemed to Dorothy that a dividing barrier sprang 
 up between the group, putting herself with Mrs. Carlyon 
 against these two, who shared so poignantly a sense of 
 shame not actually their own. 
 
 Putting a hand on Mrs. Steve's arm, the girl drew her 
 gently away. 
 
 Yet the scene had precipitated matters, for when the 
 Rudds had gone, Mrs. Carlyon went down to find her 
 brother-in-law. 
 
 Twisting a handkerchief to and fro into a hard cord, she 
 sat down opposite him. He saw, as she faced the light, 
 the sign of tears on her face. 
 
 " I'm going," she said ; " I don't want to seem un- 
 grateful, but I can stick it no longer." 
 
 " What 1 back to Steve ? " he asked, feeling as though a 
 weight were lifted from his shoulder, but unwilling to let 
 her see it. 
 
 " No, not likely ! Not in these, nor yet in any others. 
 He talked about an heir, and all that rot. Well, he's got it. 
 Or eithermore you have. Tis fitting you off with the 
 
320 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 burden of it. And that's what I hate doing. I did think 
 of sloping off without a word. Tell you straight, I did. 
 And then I couldn't. But you've got two women here 
 that'll prey on you, and worse than I have." 
 
 " What are you trying to tell me?" 
 
 '• That I can't take the child, and I'm going without it." 
 
 She was shuddering so that he got up and poured out 
 some whisky for her, though he hated the systematic way 
 in which she emptied bottles. He was silent ; for what 
 was there to be said ? Only a great woman would have 
 faced the world with Jonathan in her arms. They had 
 called the child Jonathan because it was no Carlyon name, 
 striving thus to push the creature as far off as possible. 
 
 " If you're not going back to Steve, what are you going 
 to do then ? " 
 
 " Oh, go back to the old show. I'll get a shop soon 
 enough. There's plenty of managers'll jump at Cora 
 Beauchamp, I know. This time next week, then, I'll be 
 gone, leaving you with my — leavings. I wish to God it 
 had died — as it will, if the old woman has her way. But 
 what stands between her and It is Ann Michell. It's she, 
 a cat, that's wanted me to go ever since I set foot in this 
 house. Not that I'm going for her, of course. Tell you 
 what : Ann's mad for children. I've seen women before 
 like it, too. 'Twasn't the men they wanted. Lord, no . . . 
 but any man 'ud do that would give 'em a child. Ugh ! 
 horrible creatures ! " 
 
 Gilbert stared, but put it down to her habit of violent 
 speech, though afterwards he was able to recall the words 
 as one remembers the brilliant illumination of an arc- 
 lamp. 
 
 Then, with her sudden flickering of mind, she asked 
 curiously : 
 
 " You're going to give Mrs. Rudd riding-lessons, aren't 
 you ? Lord ! what a joker is that husband of hers ! 
 You look out, for he's up to his tricks, I should say. I 
 thought so when I heard him asking you to give her a 
 mount, as he calls it." 
 
 " His tricks ? " 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 321 
 
 " Oh, you Simple Simon you, d'you think there's many 
 men as would wish their wives to go riding with . . . the 
 other man ? But don't say I haven't warned you. He's 
 just the sort, that Rudd, as would lead another into a bog 
 and leave him there." 
 
 A week later Mrs. Steve left. She refused money, but 
 none the less he paid down a hundred pounds for her into 
 his bank, and got Rosewarne to send her the pass and 
 cheque books for it. 
 
 Her answer was to the point : "I know who that came 
 from, for there isn't another soul that could, and would, 
 have sent it. And oh, aren't the shops lovely after sand, 
 sand, sand ? But they say I've got the skin of a girl, and 
 ain't I blewing the dibs now ! 'Ware Ann and Rudd, you 
 dear old Gil, for there's no knowing which'll trip you up 
 first." 
 
 The rides together of course scandalized the neighbour- 
 hood, or so Mrs. Rosewarne declared. Her husband, though 
 uneasy, half approved : probably because they fell in 
 with his taste for dangerous living. 
 
 Ann, looking out of the window, saw the pair start one 
 day. Dorothy was riding astride in breeches and long coat, 
 a horrible sight to the eyes that watched. Yet she seemed a 
 mere child, as her big black ribbon bows jogged behind her 
 ears, while Stella trotted by the tall fly-blown grey, her 
 mate. 
 
 It was a grey afternoon, and the mist was rolling in from 
 the sea. The fog-horn on Trevose had been sounding all 
 day. The girl was in wild spirits, alert for any sort of 
 mischief. As their horses paced slowly up the hill, the 
 lifting fog rose above the great slope with the dimple on it 
 that marked the blow-hole of distressful memory. 
 
 " What would you do," asked she, " if I said I was going 
 down there, where you went ? " 
 
 " Expect you to be as good as your word," answered he 
 lightly, " and go down." 
 
 "Then I say it now. I'm going down," cried she. " I 
 hate to be a funk." 
 
 Quick as lightning the scene of their placid progress 
 
 21 
 
322 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 had changed. Flinging a leg over Stella's back, she jumped 
 to the ground, throwing the reins to him like one possessed. 
 In a moment she was in the field and running across to the 
 blow-hole, her coat tails tucked up under each arm. 
 
 At the brink he caught her arm, for in this mad freak 
 he especially wanted to understand. So, with eyes locked, 
 they waited at the edge of the declivity. The day was 
 growing clearer, for over the sea lay a long pale-green line 
 along the horizon. As the light spread rapidly from head- 
 land to headland, the slopes below them glittered, dew- 
 bespangled, from the mist-wreaths. 
 
 " Why do you want to do this ? " he asked. 
 
 " Because you did it," she answered. " I hate to be 
 always waiting while men do things. That's why I go to 
 the office. For Dan has things to do, so why shouldn't I ? 
 Don't you like my going ? " she asked. 
 
 " No," he said shortly, " I don't." 
 
 " But what would you do if you'd said you would go ? 
 Would you go ? " she asked again. 
 
 " Of course," he answered contemptuously. 
 
 Till that moment she had been merely impish, but now 
 her mood changed when she saw he had no idea whatever 
 that she would keep her word. Dan, of course, would have 
 stormed and sworn, but this . . . lout . . . simply took 
 her for a liar. 
 
 Throwing off her coat and standing in riding-breeches 
 and blouse before him, she said : 
 
 " Well, I'm going down. I can keep my word, too." 
 
 Stealing a glance at her face, he saw it was very white, 
 but began quietly telling her to look simply at the face of 
 the cliff, never to take her eyes off it, and, above all, to put 
 her foot nowhere till she was sure of the faint line that 
 meant the path. At that sign of resolution in Gilbert, 
 of course Dorothy's mood changed ; she would have given 
 everything she possessed to recall her own words. Yet, 
 since he was possessed by a furious desire to force upon her 
 a sense of responsibility, he stood stock-still as the lonely 
 boyish figure disappeared over the edge. Once he thought 
 she wavered, and started to go down to her, for the light 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 323 
 
 was growing misty again. Yet pride would not let him, 
 till at last he saw that she was sitting perched on the path 
 about half-way down, looking like a big bird. 
 
 " Hello ! " he shouted. " Are you all right ? " 
 
 " Of course I am, as long as I sit here," she called back. 
 
 " Do you want me to come down to you ? " he cried 
 over the edge. 
 
 " Not unless you like," she answered, gazing in absorp- 
 tion at the view. 
 
 After that he had no option but to come to her assistance. 
 
 " You wanted me to do it," she said furiously, as they 
 reached the top. 
 
 " I supposed you wanted to do what you had under- 
 taken," he answered. 
 
 When, sobered, they reached the horses and he put out 
 his hand to mount her, she refused coldly. 
 
 " No, thanks," she said, " I'll walk home, and I shan't 
 be able to ride to-morrow." 
 
 " As you will, of course," replied he, gravely lifting 
 his hat. 
 
 When she looked back from the brow of the hill, she could 
 just catch sight of the two horses mounting the opposite 
 one. 
 
 Dr. Rudd that night found the supper waiting and his 
 wife lying on the couch, with tear-stained face. 
 
 " Hullo ! what's up ? Quarrelled with Carlyon, have 
 you ? " and sitting down, he began to carve the cold beef. 
 
 " Oh, well," he continued, after a pause, during which he 
 explored the sideboard for pickles, " if you don't want to 
 tell me anything, of course it doesn't matter." 
 
 Unwontedly brisk, he had the air of a man who, on very 
 slight provocation, would be found rubbing his hands like 
 a gay grocer. 
 
 Then he heard her sniffing violently. 
 
 " Caught cold, have you ? " he asked, coming over and 
 pushing the faithful Wobbler out of the way ; " but I 
 suppose I may as well tell you that I met Carlyon going 
 home with the two horses. A pretty sort of a fool you 
 seem to have made of yourself," 
 
 21* 
 
324 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " I know," she exclaimed, " and I really don't need you 
 to tell me. But he didn't care in the least. I might have 
 been dashed to bits for all he cared." 
 
 " Oh ! was that what you wanted to find out, then ? " 
 he asked thoughtfully ; " but I wonder what you'd have 
 done if I had been there ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't have tried to go down." 
 
 " No, I don't believe you would," said he slowly ; "I 
 don't count, do I ? You wouldn't have troubled to try 
 and bring my heart into my mouth. Ah, well ! I'm thank- 
 ful, after all, that the spirit doesn't move you to show 
 yourself a precious idiot — before me." 
 
 Getting up, he sat down to his beef. When he had 
 finished that, he got up and Dorothy heard him going down- 
 stairs ; apparently for a spoon, since Mrs. Barrable usually 
 forgot some of the tools needed for a meal. Appearing after 
 an interval, he bore a basin of soup, steaming hot, on 
 a tray. 
 
 " Come," said he, " sit up and eat this." 
 
 At sight of the woebegone object who held a hand- 
 kerchief crumpled into a wet ball, he laughed grimly. 
 
 " I suppose," said he, " the Lord must have been only a 
 'prentice hand when He made you — you women. And 
 yet He had a first shot at us men, they say, after all. A 
 bit stale, I suppose, when the making of Eve came along. 
 That's it." 
 
 When he came up at night she was asleep, her cheek 
 lying on the palm of her hand. 
 
 " No," he said to himself, " she wouldn't have gone down 
 for me ... that was a show for somebody else ; " and 
 added, " Damn it, I hope they'll get the job over quickly. 
 They're so confoundedly leisurely about it." 
 
 According to his view, his little bundle of vanities had 
 been, like himself, spell-bound by Madame, and juggled 
 into distasteful yoke-fellowship. Also, in his eyes, there 
 was but one thing for a decent man to do : that is, to give 
 her all the rope she asked and trust to her to use it. 
 
 He bought a complete set of Anatole France next week, 
 finding the native brand of irony not nearly strong enough 
 
HAMMER AND ANVIL 325 
 
 for his taste. Yet, after all, these voluptuous husband- 
 deceivers of the old humanist were not fair types of this 
 child. And finding it impossible to convince himself that 
 they were, he not only returned to the contemplation of 
 the Buddha, but on fine nights slung a hammock between 
 two trees in the garden. Looking out at night from her 
 window, Dorothy could see the lighted point of his cigar 
 glowing and paling among the greenery. 
 
 It was a distinctly uncomfortable time ; nor did the half 
 perception that they were both playing a game of persistent 
 cross-purposes make it any easier to bear. But the more 
 they recognized this, the more they persisted, after the 
 manner of their kind. 
 
 " Faugh ! wasting good nerve stuff on rubbish ! " cried 
 Dan, and yet went on wasting it, with Gilbert fairly caught 
 between the upper and nether millstone. That, in fact, 
 to Dr. Rudd was the only satisfactory feature of the situa- 
 tion. For, when a man is in that uncomfortable position, 
 he cannot escape from it. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 A PRIMITIVE 
 
 THREE white-breasted tabbies, with the broad facial 
 markings that produce peculiar benignance in a 
 cat's face, sat on their tails almost within the layers of warm 
 ash on the hearth at Lanvean. The bricks on the floor were 
 bleached white with the intensity of many bygone fires, 
 and the room was full of the grey light flung back from the 
 high-walled garden outside. Down the paved path to the 
 passage the sand, blown in from the dunes in a fine mist, 
 was silting softly with a noise like the beating of rain. 
 
 Staring now at the gathering dusk and now, like the cats, 
 at the flickering flames, Mrs. Parsons crouched in an elbow- 
 chair, from which she could glance across the passage into 
 the long room beyond, where the huge stove fire cast a glow 
 on brown walls and flamed on the bright surfaces of brass 
 warming-pans and weather-glasses. It was a Saturday 
 night, and, since most of the men and maids were in 
 Petrockstow, the place was unwontedly quiet. Through 
 the two open doors every word spoken in the second room 
 was clearly audible to any listener as intent as Mrs. 
 Parsons. 
 
 Leaning down, with his hands on the table, stood Dr. 
 Rudd, and staring up at him, so that the light fell full on 
 his face, sat Gilbert Carlyon. In the firelit room the figures 
 of the two men threw intermingling shadows on the walls 
 and ceiling. And, as sleeping snakes are roused to con- 
 sciousness by flames rekindled on a cold hearth, so the words 
 
 326 
 
A PRIMITIVE 327 
 
 thus overheard by the old woman stirred thoughts long 
 hidden within her from torpor to life and activity. Yet, 
 as the sense of what they said came home to her, it was 
 scorn that curled her lips into a smile. 
 
 " A chattering fool," she cried, and clutched at her own 
 strength of purpose as a strong wall against which to lean 
 when such as this man had played his part and failed. 
 For fail anyone would who gripped a notion with such 
 half-hearted zeal as did this Dr. Rudd. 
 
 To Mrs. Parsons the fact that Lanvean existed to shelter 
 all and sundry of the Carlyon clan was entirely in accord- 
 ance with the rule of things. To see children and children's 
 children, with collateral daughters-in-law and brothers' 
 wives, gathered under the same roof-tree was entirely 
 natural in the peasant world wherein her own life existed. 
 Even an untoward birth, in that sphere, was only an event 
 to be faced with a " 'Twas to be." Herself a large-bosomed, 
 capacious-hearted soul, she bore without ill-temper the 
 multiform inconveniences of the great, ramshackle house, 
 and got through her tasks with a tribe of puppies and 
 kittens running about under her feet all day. She accom- 
 plished a surprising amount of work in the same loose, 
 slack-twisted fashion in which a man of her breed will sit 
 down to milk a cow, playing lightly on the udders, as he 
 cuddles the milking-pail and gossips the while. 
 
 So much in her was peasant ; yet in her nature there was 
 another strain, one tense and fierce and sea-born, that 
 sprang to life from ancestors who had refused to be con- 
 tented with the peasant's furrows, with his age-long toil at 
 heavy acres, his small gains and miserable workhouse exit. 
 Just as at times, in moments of fierce passion, Mrs. Parsons 
 used gestures that were cruel and rapacious, so in her 
 thoughts, fierce revolt sprang up against the fate before 
 which the peasant bows. 
 
 Yet not for herself : always for the Carlyons, that breed 
 far finer than any kin of hers, whom, new-born, she had 
 lain across her knees ; whom, dead, she had tied up against 
 the last falling of the jaws. For them, and theirs, no task 
 set by Nature could be too grim for her to perform. For 
 
328 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 their sake life, alike with death, was a thing to play with. 
 Now, with Gilbert's words echoing in her ears, she saw even 
 more clearly than the long limbs of the man before her, the 
 ripe members of the warm, rosy babe he had been. Young 
 and old, they were things to handle, these Carlyons, things 
 as plastic to the touch of a woman familiar with life and 
 death as ever the clay can be to the potter. In fancy, her 
 thoughts worked in Carlyon stuff, her hand was as inevitably 
 stained with the blood of them as any dyer's fingers in the 
 colour of his vat's contents. 
 
 The views, however, expressed by Carlyon himself were 
 his own, not hers. The man's duty as a Carlyon was one 
 thing, her own being quite different. She knew nothing 
 of noblesse oblige in herself, felt nothing of its high claim in 
 her blood, yet recognized it none the less as precisely the 
 right attribute for that breed. Every debt that any 
 Carlyon contracted must be paid, since no dishonour could 
 possibly be incurred by one of them. That the Carlyons 
 must always ride on, the sun in their faces, was the law of 
 her life. Still, there are more ways than one of evading 
 debt ... for others, not Carlyons ; and if a stream grows 
 foul by pollutions gathered from the banks, it will run 
 itself clear if given a chance. 
 
 With the sudden illness of Steve's child, the chance 
 seemed to have come. Even now, as she listened to the 
 two men in the next room, the old woman's fancy was busy 
 with the picture of the St. Meryn vault opened for one more 
 Carlyon. There, in order that living Carlyons might ride 
 in the sunlight, they would hide away this proof that 
 Nature has no respect for family claims. Hidden, pushed 
 away underground, he would be, this Jonathan Carlyon, 
 whom she refused for ever to acknowledge as a living soul. 
 To her he was no better than an embryo, a mere seed. 
 Even the vault and the record of the register was to her 
 preposterous, since the drain was the fitting destiny for 
 such as he. 
 
 Yet had he been of her own kin, he would have been 
 tucked away in a niche by the fire, to share with well- 
 favoured children the crust and crumb, to take whatever 
 
A PRIMITIVE 329 
 
 came to the varied offspring of a tree constantly grafted 
 on wild stock as well as cultivated. 
 
 The Carlyons, however, called for another and, as it 
 seemed to her, a higher morality ; at least as far as their 
 dependents were concerned. Old traditions of remote 
 country places clung about her thoughts, of how the cliff- 
 edge or the duck-pond, in the pit mirk of a dark night, 
 with the splashing fall of a stone-weighted sack, has seen 
 the end of many a scandal. 
 
 So she listened to the two men, her own thoughts follow- 
 ing their words as a man's shadow pursues him, silently and 
 remorselessly. 
 
 " No," said Dr. Rudd, " the child's no better that I 
 can see. It's touch and go, I should say, though the next 
 forty-eight hours will decide it, one way or the other. 
 These gastric troubles of young children always send the 
 temperature up amazingly. But one can't prophesy." 
 
 There was a silence between them for a moment. 
 
 " Queer, isn't it," continued he, " the way things go ? 
 Here we are, doing all we know ... to keep in life what 
 our reason tells us is better gone. It's a fog to one, so one 
 just goes blindly on." 
 
 " One must," said Gilbert shortly ; "if the child lives, 
 it's a sign he was to live. That's all. It's our business to 
 do everything humanly possible to save him." 
 
 " Humph ! " said the doctor discontentedly. 
 
 " The issues are not in our hands," continued Gilbert 
 quietly, " only the means are." 
 
 " D'you mean honestly to say it wouldn't be a relief to 
 you . . . ? " 
 
 " I mean to say that I put all that aside ... as for- 
 bidden," said Gilbert sternly, " as you do, as every honest 
 man must." 
 
 The doctor shrugged his shoulders, baffled as always by a 
 stoicism he would yet, of course, have made his own had 
 he been similarly circumstanced ; that he did, even now, 
 make his own, though, since he imagined himself obsessed 
 by his own claims as a priest of science, he refused to 
 acknowledge this in words. 
 
330 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Queer woman, that Ann Michell," he said abruptly ; 
 " seems to share your feelings. Capital nurse, too, though 
 'tisn't over pleasant work, I can tell you." 
 
 " I know," said Gilbert, as though half ashamed, " but 
 there's no one else would do it as she does." 
 
 " The old woman wouldn't, you mean," said Rudd, 
 
 if it had been left to her. . . ."he shrugged his shoulders 
 again. " And yet take Ann, now," he observed musingly, 
 " you'd never think she'd fight tooth and nail for its exist- 
 ence as she's doing. For she's said strong things to me 
 about it, I can tell you." 
 
 " She feels as I do," said Gilbert. " I know that, with- 
 out talking about it. She'd hate herself for neglecting 
 ... it, far more than if 'twere what you call a fine life." 
 
 '/ Ah well ! " said Dr. Rudd, " that's beyond me." 
 
 Still more puzzling, perhaps, to him was the certainty 
 with which Carlyon spoke, as though he could read this 
 woman clearly. For Dr. Rudd compared it with his own 
 blind groping where his wife was concerned. 
 
 The minds of both men were busy with the same object 
 apparently, for, as they walked down the path through the 
 plantation together, Gilbert stopped suddenly. 
 
 " Do you know," he said with a smile, " that although 
 I've lived here all my life, I never knew till the other day 
 that there was an echo in this spot." 
 
 When he called out loud : " Who's there ? " the sound 
 laughed along from hill to hill ..." there, there, there." 
 It was like the impression Ann herself produced on the 
 mind : one could not at once detach oneself from her 
 silences. 
 
 " She . . . notices things, you know," said Gilbert, and 
 Dr. Rudd knew perfectly well of whom he spoke. 
 
 Carlyon wanted to go on describing her, yet was too 
 shamefaced to do so. It was Ann who had pointed out to 
 him the way to probe out the grasshopper from his hiding- 
 place with a wiry grass-blade, and who enjoyed the hum- 
 ming of the bees among the plum-nets better even than the 
 luscious flavour of the plums themselves. On her, leisure 
 seemed always ready to attend, leisure for pleasant things. 
 
A PRIMITIVE 331 
 
 And these facts about her puzzled Gilbert, as her feelings 
 did not. Emotionally, he knew her well enough ; it was 
 her thought that, to him, was full of surprises. 
 
 To Ann, who made none of the emotional claims of the 
 average woman, it was a pure joy to be driven to the 
 moors to find the sundew, a plant she had never seen. 
 Yet to Dorothy Rudd, full of sensuous delight to her 
 finger-tips, the sundew ranked as nothing compared with 
 the joy of two riders galloping side by side. And, where 
 Ann was thrilled by the wonder of the plant, cradled it in 
 her hands and tried to feed it with flies, Dorothy, at sight 
 of the dried carcases caught on threads, shrank from its 
 fleshy colour, and called it " butcher's shop." To Ann, 
 stirred to joy by all life, nothing could be common in it 
 or unclean : by side of her, Dorothy seemed a mere 
 egotist. 
 
 Upstairs in the nursery Dr. Rudd stood looking down 
 on the Undesired ; almost in a rage, he fell back into the 
 temper of Gilbert Carlyon and swore that if professional 
 skill and foresight could save This, it should be saved. 
 
 Yet for this Carlyon, too, the tide was going out — 
 hopelessly as it seemed. 
 
 When they sent for Trevan, he could only murmur that 
 everything possible had been done. As he was leaving 
 the house, Mrs. Parsons put a hand on his arm. 
 
 " Dying, idn't a ? " she asked keenly, hungrily. 
 
 Trevan nodded, frankly casual in answer to her eagerness. 
 
 " Thank God," said she. " But they fools, they two 
 . . . my niece and t'other doctor . . . won't have it. Yet 
 I laugh to see 'em, I do. Him and her I and putting up 
 a bit o' sand against the ocean. When a thing has got to 
 be, it is. But he's here twice a day ... for That, and 
 her hasn't had her clothes off, to my certain knowledge, 
 for three nights." 
 
 " Well," said Trevan, " it certainly would be as 
 well . . ." 
 
 " For'n to go," said she. " And that's the first sensible 
 word I've heard since the brat took sick. You'd think 
 that Rudd had a grudge against 'en, wouldn't you, against 
 
332 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the Master, I mean ? First, he takes his woman and 
 now he saves . . . This. Or tries to, but he won't, he 
 won't." 
 
 Her face twisted all awry, she laughed, and as Trevan 
 hurried away, his mind turned back to the old ruthless 
 days, of which his father and grandfather, both country 
 doctors, had often spoken. 
 
 " Better way, too," thought Trevan, though he would 
 not have said so for worlds. " But they didn't come 
 hanging around then, trying to make the doctor also a 
 public executioner. They did their own chores and kept 
 a still tongue." 
 
 Coming in that night very late at Lanvean, Dr. Rudd 
 slipped into the house, closing the front door gently behind 
 him. Gilbert looked up from a book when the doctor 
 entered. 
 
 " 'Twill be the turn of things for the child to-night," 
 said Rudd, throwing down his gloves and pulling off his 
 coat. The wind outside was driving the spume inland, 
 and his lips were salt. 
 
 " And a good thing, too," he added ; " Miss Michell 
 won't be able to keep on the stretch much longer." 
 
 " I took last night," said Gilbert, " till five o'clock. 
 But get a nurse. We ought to have had one before, but 
 Ann wouldn't hear of it." 
 
 " No, nor will now. She's like a thing possessed over 
 this job." 
 
 The book on the table before Gilbert was, as Rudd had 
 suspected, a Bible. Somehow the sight roused his anger. 
 
 " Get any light out of that, do you ? " he sneered. 
 
 " Not so much as I do from within," answered Gilbert, 
 with a smile and a flush. 
 
 " And it tells you ... to persist in this damned 
 foolery ? " burst out the doctor. 
 
 " No, it tells me to wait ... to wait quietly, as you're 
 waiting, too, as we're all waiting," answered the other, 
 regaining his wonted calm. " These things aren't in our 
 hands, of course." 
 
 " Yet if Ann, or I, doubled the dose I'm going to give 
 
A PRIMITIVE 333 
 
 him to-night . . . well, it would be settled by our hands, 
 wouldn't it ? " 
 
 " I suppose," said Gilbert, " that in such a case you 
 would have been over-ruled by another power." 
 
 " Casuistry ! my dear fellow, sheer casuistry," cried 
 Rudd. 
 
 " Casuistry or not," said Carlyon, " I see no good in 
 playing with ridiculous ideas." 
 
 " Why," exclaimed the doctor, " half the pleasure in 
 life lies in playing with ideas, and the more ridiculous the 
 better." 
 
 In the child's room he found Ann Michell sitting in a 
 lamp-lit corner away from the cot. When he came in, 
 she got up, and raising the light so that the rays fell on 
 the sleeping baby, she held up her hand to shelter his face 
 from them. 
 
 " Quieter, isn't he ? " he said gently. 
 
 " Yes," she replied, "he's been sleeping for nearly 
 two hours now." 
 
 " Cooler, too," said he, holding the child's wrist. " And 
 yet when I left, I'd have sworn it couldn't be . . ." 
 
 " He's going to recover," said she quietly. 
 
 "■ You think so, too ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " I know it," said she ; " the change came in his sleep." 
 
 He nodded, laying down the baby's hand. When she 
 went back to her knitting, he followed her to the corner. 
 
 " Our doing," said he, as he nodded back towards the 
 bed. " Yours, as well as mine." 
 
 " Yes," she whispered. 
 
 " It's a pity," he said. " I wanted to fight, of course, 
 and . . ." 
 
 " To fight and get beaten," she said simply. The 
 knitting had fallen into her lap and her hands were still. 
 " Yes," she repeated musingly, " that is the way one 
 feels. To leave the decision to a higher power ..." 
 
 " You wished it, to get beaten, too," he flashed. 
 " Speak the truth for once in your life, if a woman can. 
 It's a damnable crime to keep that . . . abortion alive. 
 We're criminals, you and I, looked at from every sane 
 
334 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 point of view. And yet, I'm professionally as straight as 
 a line. You did want the thing taken out of your hands, 
 didn't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered simply, " I did. But it was 
 cowardice. We . . . had to decide it, and we did." 
 
 " And I, a doctor," he said bitterly, " pledged . . . 
 pledged ..." 
 
 " To what ? " she asked quietly. 
 
 Taking up the lamp she went over to the bed, and 
 holding the lamp high once more, let its rays fall on the 
 cot. One upturned baby hand, beautifully finished, lay 
 out on the coverlet. Ann dropped her fingers softly and 
 smiled to feel the baby fingers close upon her own. 
 
 " Look," she said, smiling down at the close-locked 
 hands, " that's what you're pledged to ... to give 
 help to those that ask it." 
 
 Though he would not confess it, yet none the less he 
 understood. 
 
 " All very well for you," said he gruffly ; " you're a 
 woman. A woman and a child's another proposition 
 altogether from any I've got to tackle." 
 
 " And," she said, raising her eyes frankly to his, " do 
 you know what I said to the Master that I'd have done ? 
 And I would, too ! I said that if this was my child, I'd 
 have crushed its life out. He'd have been of my making, 
 then, you see. But he's none of my doing, Jonathan 
 isn't, nor is he of yours, and we've got to do our duty to 
 him. That's all." 
 
 " Our duty to him, of course," snarled he, " and what 
 of our . . . my . . . other duty, to the race, to the 
 future ? Woman's logic yours, and good enough for 
 you. Women always see things only one by one. But, 
 anyway, now I'm here, I'd better stay, for we shall know 
 one way or the other, for certain, before the night's out." 
 
 After supper, on going to the room assigned to him, he 
 went straight over to the window and stood with the 
 wind blowing in on his face. In the very scent of the 
 ancient feather-bed on which he was expected to repose 
 there was the reminder of the past, linked now to the 
 
A PRIMITIVE 335 
 
 future by the reality in the next room. In his thought of 
 the mischief of lives such as that one, he was, doubtless, 
 comforted by the fact of the universal folly with regard 
 to them. Yet what peculiar demon was it, he asked him- 
 self, that had bidden him use every resource of science to 
 save this to be, not a burden only, but a reproach, to such 
 a breed as the Carlyons. 
 
 Moving noiselessly on his stockinged feet, he went over 
 to the nursery door, where Ann was sitting by the cot, 
 feeding the baby from a spoon. On its slavering lips and 
 lolling shapeless head she looked down as serenely as though 
 it were a beautiful, fresh-faced creature. Marvelling as 
 he did at the callous nature of the woman, in a flash he 
 loved his wife the more for her fastidious ways that shrank 
 from all things maimed and spoilt. 
 
 " Come and see," said Ann ; " he's not taken his food 
 like this before/' 
 
 Bending down, the doctor felt for his thermometer. 
 
 " Not your make nor mine," she had said, and yet, 
 leaving out the incalculable effect of Nature's own curative 
 power, humanly speaking, this was his creation, his gift 
 to humanity, his gift and that of the men to whom he 
 owed his knowledge ; his gift, and as seemed probable, 
 his only gift to humanity of this sort. Ann could not 
 read his face here as he quietly stood up, and stretching 
 himself, remarked, " Yes, that's the turn. He's safe 
 now. But I'll go and lie down and try to get a sleep. 
 Give him a dose of the powders in three hours' time." 
 
 He stood watching while very methodically she got 
 everything ready, putting coal on the fire lump by lump 
 with a gloved hand, and mixing the dose ready in the 
 feeding-cup from the box of powders on the table by 
 her side. 
 
 Presently from the next room Ann heard the creak of 
 the bed as he flung himself on it, and in a moment saw the 
 light under the door go out as he blew out the candle. 
 Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes ; their lids 
 were weighed down by the weariness of watching, her 
 nerves, too, were quieted by the relaxed tension of her 
 
336 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 recent anxiety. Only the crackling of the fire and the 
 deep breathing of the sleeping child could be heard in the 
 quiet place. 
 
 So imperceptibly did the passage door open that a 
 watcher could hardly have noticed, even from second to 
 second, that any widening was taking place. Once it 
 creaked, but the wind against the front of the house was 
 flinging flying scuds on the windows, so that even the 
 crackling of the fire was unnoted by the sleeper. 
 
 At last another door opened, but firmly and swiftly, 
 this time the doctor's. Moving softly over the carpeted 
 floor, Dr. Dan went up to the bed. The dawn was grey 
 now on the window squares and the lamp-light's yellow 
 contended against the greyness. 
 
 The doctor stood a second, and half turning towards 
 the chair in which Ann sat, appeared to hesitate. Bending 
 down over the head on the pillow beside him, he examined 
 it coldly and dispassionately. It was possible now to 
 regard the whole living organism before him as a peculiarly 
 perfect specimen of the hydrocephalous. He looked next 
 at his watch ; it was within half an hour of the time when 
 the next dose was due. Going across to the table with 
 the figure sleeping in the chair beside it, he lifted the box 
 containing the Dover powders and counted them, pausing 
 with a frown to consider something. Then he took up 
 the feeding-cup and stood weighing it in his hand. So 
 much as Ann had prepared, with so much from the box 
 by his side, and painless oblivion would follow for the 
 child, with all the possibility of endless future evils gone. 
 Over by the bedside once more, he peeled the clothes 
 lightly off the sleeping form, and looking at the body 
 before him saw every word of his prophecy perfectly 
 justified. Here in the lusty promise of life growing to 
 adolescence was endless danger, endless trouble to the 
 Carlyon name. 
 
 Resolutely replacing the clothes, he tucked them round 
 the child once more. But in the sudden chill it half 
 awoke, and moaning slightly, turned in its drugged sleep 
 to clutch the doctor's warm hand. With a twitch of his 
 
A PRIMITIVE 337 
 
 shaggy eyebrows, a fierce shrug of his shoulders, he turned 
 away. Yet the baby fingers held him, and until their grasp 
 had relaxed, he waited. 
 
 As the hand dropped, with a sudden sigh of relief, he 
 saw that the light was coming fuller through the half- 
 drawn curtains. The next moment Ann was alone with 
 the child, who sinking deeper and deeper into sleep, lay 
 quite still. 
 
 Driving home alone, the doctor lashed his horse into 
 a gallop till, too tired for more strife and longing for the 
 warmth of the blankets, he let himself into the Outlook 
 and put a kettle on the spirit-lamp in his study. 
 
 Warmed with the hot spirit, and feeling as though he 
 had somehow escaped a danger, he walked softly upstairs. 
 
 Dorothy lay asleep, her dark hair curtaining the white 
 oval of her face, her left cheek, as she turned from him, 
 cradled on her palm. The other hand on the counterpane 
 attracted his attention ; it was lying as the child's had 
 done, and it spoke the same language. Laying his fine 
 surgeon's hand beside hers, Dr. Rudd felt more than ever 
 conscious of a danger from which he was escaping. 
 
 Half opening her eyes, Dorothy awoke under the 
 intensity of his gaze, and drawing his head beside hers, 
 said : 
 
 " Poor, tired, sleepy Dan." 
 
 Struck by something tense in his silence, she awoke 
 more fully to find him looking at her intently. 
 
 " What is it ? How strange you look," she cried, while 
 he wondered what would happen were he simply to tell 
 her of to-night's sham struggle and the easy victory, 
 that was always a foregone conclusion, won by instincts of 
 which he was ashamed and yet could not deny. 
 
 " Dan," cried his wife in perplexity, " what are you 
 thinking of ? Why won't you talk to me as you do to 
 others ? Why am I to be the only one to stay outside ? " 
 
 To Dorothy, who would have preferred to be cut to 
 pieces rather than use half the doctor's frankness, this 
 suppression of himself with her alone out of all the crowd 
 was the supreme insult of their lives together. Yet he, 
 
 22 
 
338 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 who all his life had been a babbler of mysteries, found 
 himself with her as tongue-tied as a girl. Even now he 
 lay wondering what would happen if he spoke to his wife 
 as frankly as he assuredly would have done to Ann Michell. 
 
 Yet that was an impossible supposition ; he knew it to 
 be so even while he dallied with it. For to Ann one could 
 speak as to some mother of men who has grown familiar 
 with all the tortuous ways of hearts and bodies. Ann had 
 primitive, first-hand knowledge of what Dorothy had 
 only met in books. So he called her pinchbeck, artificial, 
 sophisticated, yet judged Ann Michell to be common, even 
 while he trusted her. 
 
 Curtly then he replied to his wife's insistence with the 
 bare news that the child at Lanvean was better. At first 
 she was silent. Then she surprised him by remarking : 
 
 " It does seem a pity. For Gilbert, I mean. But he's 
 strong and he won't mind." 
 
 " Strong ? " thought the doctor curiously, and asked 
 for her definition of strength. 
 
 " Strength ? " said she airily, and was as pat with her 
 answer as one who has thought it out beforehand. " Oh, 
 doing what you've set yourself to do, and bearing what 
 you've set yourself to bear, of course." 
 
 " The perpetual schoolmaster ! " cried he, feeling as 
 though she had thrown a douche of water in his face ; 
 " ' a task I have to do.' " 
 
 " If you like," said she ; " it doesn't matter what you 
 call it. But that's what I mean by strength, anyway." 
 
 So he found did he, and lay wondering at the power of 
 instincts which he despised. 
 
 Why had he failed to obey his reason, why had he put 
 up so feeble a fight that there never was the faintest chance 
 of his obeying it, though it proved beyond a doubt that 
 this child's life ought to be brought to as quick and painless 
 an end as science could accomplish ? The pure sentimen- 
 tality of an upturned hand had proved enough to force 
 him from a purpose as sane as it was right ; he had con- 
 formed to the average morality for reasons as painfully 
 trivial as any that guide the mass. 
 
A PRIMITIVE 339 
 
 Murder : the removal of the unfit : the work, this, of the 
 wise man. Here was the task set before his super-manity, 
 and because of the dumb appeal of a gesture he had swerved 
 like a shying horse, unable to face the furtive secrecy of the 
 deed, unable to bid his will overcome the traditional 
 decalogue of moralists as craven as they are unthinking. 
 
 Yet, in the word " furtive " he found comfort even now, 
 for to be a hill-top sinner is by far the finer destiny, the one 
 that, of course, he would choose for himself. Suddenly 
 by this brought to a full stop, he recognized plainly that, 
 all through, the idea of sin had been the deterrent, and knew, 
 too, that, except the roof, the hill-top was the last place 
 he would choose for the scene of a crime. Like many boys 
 who have planned careers of piracy, he would doubtless 
 settle down to the humble task of putting sand in the sugar 
 and calling it commerce. 
 
 Over at Lanvean later on that morning Gilbert Carlyon 
 awoke to find Mrs. Parsons at his bedside. 
 
 " I wouldn't have you wakened before," said she, " for 
 what's the use, thought I. Let him have his sleep out." 
 
 " But the child," he cried impatiently, " how is he a ? " 
 
 " The child's gone," said she, eyeing him sternly. 
 
 " Gone ? " he repeated. 
 Yes, gone. I always said he was marked for death. 
 When Ann went to him in the late morning he was still 
 and quiet. She'd dosed him toward the middle of the night 
 and then caught off herself a bit. She never heard a sound 
 from that minute. But he's gone, right enough." 
 
 " Yet Rudd thought him safe," he said wonderingly. 
 
 " Doctors ! What do doctors know ? " she cried. 
 " But, eh, lad, never mind that blight, that curse . . .'tis 
 over and done with, all that, and as though it never had 
 been." 
 
 Laying a hand on his hair, she stooped down, and with 
 her other tilted his face upwards, as though he were a child. 
 At the strange note in her voice he stared, while her eyes 
 devoured the strong man's body ; the great chest, half 
 bare, the fine neck. He was flushed and warm, like a 
 child ripe from sleep. 
 
 22* 
 
340 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Eh, my lad, my lad," she cried, smoothing him down as 
 though he were some beloved animal. As her hands 
 caressed him, she might have been a mother handling the 
 manifold perfections of her own handiwork. Then in a 
 whisper she exclaimed again : 
 
 " Ah, the shadow gone from 'ee for ever, with this mis- 
 begotten thing cleared away, gone, gone, stamped down 
 and forgotten, with no sons and sons' sons of his begetting 
 to bring shame to the old house. But her must go, too, 
 that damned niece of mine. I wish I'd never brought her 
 here, the sly, ugly toad." 
 
 " What, Ann ? Do you mean that Ann must go ? " 
 he asked, shamefaced at the passion in her eyes and words. 
 " She's nursed the child as no one but a mother would 
 have." 
 
 " Aided thy folly, lad. That's what she did. When 
 Nature's hand has struck down what Nature's hand has 
 slipped in the making of, what call had she to try and save 
 it ? Eh, but she's worsted, the bitch, and what's gone 
 naught can bring back." 
 
 Frowning, Gilbert got up from the side of the bed and 
 began to pace up and down the room. There was some- 
 thing here, that, as Mr. Rosewarne would have said, 
 rustled in the night like a hidden fear. 
 
 " Parsons," said he at last, " don't you know that I 
 like to keep my end up ? That I take a sort of pride in it. 
 This child was a test of what weight I could bear, you see." 
 
 " Your weight, lad ! But that it wasn't ! And what 
 right had Steve to plant his seed on Lanvean, him that's 
 been a shame to it ever since he was born ? " 
 
 But he took no notice of her, and continued as though 
 she had not spoken : 
 
 " I would have done everything possible for that child," 
 he said, " the more helpless, the more need of all we could 
 do for it. I tell you I wouldn't have had him slip through 
 our fingers like this. . . . No, I wouldn't. But everything 
 was done for him that could be." 
 
 " Ay, everything," rejoined she, " and more than every- 
 thing." 
 
A PRIMITIVE 341 
 
 Ten minutes later she was tapping at his door with a]cup 
 of tea in her hand. While he stood drinking it she seized 
 his arm. 
 
 " Gilbert," she said, " Gilbert, wake up. Wake up, I 
 tell 'ee, from your whimsies . . . they be but whimsies." 
 
 " What whimsies ? " asked he, staring at her over the 
 top of his cup. 
 
 " Why, that about helping . . . they that want help. 
 Every fool in the parish'll be hanging round your neck 
 with that talk going on ! " 
 
 " Well, then," he smiled, " and it's a strong neck, isn't 
 it? " 
 
 " Ah, yes," said she, " 'tis all whims, whims, I tell 'ee. 
 
 Yes, yes, they'm beautiful, but they won't work. And " 
 
 she seized him again and in a half frenzy tried to shake him, 
 " get rid of all that has to do with that accursed child." 
 
 " From medicine bottles to Ann ? " asked he, with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Ay, from medicine bottles to Ann, a jade, that's a 
 meddler who's put herself where her isn't wanted. And 
 do you stop they rides with doctor's wife, this stravaiging 
 over the country with another man's woman. What sort 
 of a man must a be that lets her do it, making a proper 
 fancy woman of his own wife ? " 
 
 " That'll do. That's enough ! " said he sternly. 
 
 " No, it'll not do. Get your own wife, man, bring her 
 back here and let your own children see the light. My God ! 
 when I think of the way the years be flying and see ye 
 wasting, wasting, wasting it all." 
 
 But he was already gone, and, wiping the rheumy tears 
 from her eyes, she stood quivering from head to foot. 
 
 At noon when Dr. Rudd arrived, he found Ann Michell 
 moving quietly about the nursery. Nothing was changed 
 in the room, except that the sheet covered the whole bed. 
 Yet in the woman's tired face he read some strange un- 
 easiness, 
 
 " Well," he said, " this was quite unexpected, you know." 
 
 For answer she went over to the door and, opening it, 
 looked down the passage. 
 
342 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " No one about, not a soul," said he, watching her 
 curiously. " Now then, tell me what you know." 
 
 " I don't know anything," she said in a low voice, as she 
 stood close beside him, " but after I gave him the medicine 
 as you told me, I slept. And I slept before it, too. Yet 
 I'm a light sleeper and easily aroused." 
 
 " You mean," said the doctor, " that no one can have 
 come in without your knowing it." 
 
 " I don't know," she said, hesitating. " Yet I was very 
 tired. No, I don't know. Yet when I gave him the dose 
 he was better. That I do know." 
 
 " Anything been touched here ? " he asked quickly. 
 
 She shook her head, and with an exclamation he was 
 presently at the table, opening the box in which the Dover 
 powders were packed. Nothing there was out of order, 
 and then, holding up the feeding-cup he found, as he had 
 expected, a sediment of powder. Standing with his hands 
 in his pockets, he whistled softly. 
 
 " Dr. Rudd," said Ann, coming up to him, " though I 
 was asleep, half-asleep, when you came in, I knew you 
 were there. I knew, too, when you went." 
 
 " Well ? " he asked wonderingly. 
 
 " And then, in the same way, after that, I was not alone, 
 not all the time. There was someone in the room after 
 you. But 'twas all like a dream, and I couldn't move. 
 I was held fast." 
 
 It was all she could tell him, though plainly the same 
 thought was in both their minds. A pillow held long enough 
 over the child's face would have sufficed, yet in that case it 
 was probable that a convulsive movement would have awak- 
 ened even a sleeper drugged by fatigue, as Ann had been. 
 
 Later in the day, when he had just finished dinner, he 
 was told that Ann Michell was asking to see him. 
 
 " That woman here ! " exclaimed Dorothy. " What 
 can she possibly want ? " 
 
 " You don't like her ! " he remarked, looking up from 
 his pipe, for he was stooping forward to knock it against 
 the bars of the grate. 
 
 " I don't say that," said Dorothy, pushing back the tip 
 
A PRIMITIVE 343 
 
 of her nose with a finger-tip. It was a favourite trick of 
 hers that, as her father often told her, bid fair to bring it 
 to a snub ; " but she's so deadly quiet ; she'd move as 
 steadily to a bad purpose as to a good." 
 
 " Meaning, accordingly to your definition," said he, 
 " that she's strong. But if you'd said that about her 
 aunt, the housekeeper at Lanvean, you wouldn't have been 
 far wrong, I think." 
 
 " Oh, that hideous old woman," said she ; "I never 
 noticed her." 
 
 " So much, my dear," said he grimly, " for your feminine 
 penetration. You never noticed her ! And yet she's 
 the hinge on which turn more things than one at Lanvean, 
 or else I'm very much mistaken." 
 
 Downstairs he was surprised to find how different Ann 
 looked in outdoor dress, at once older and more respon- 
 sible. When she threw back her veil she had something 
 of the air of a widow. 
 
 " You know," said she, " why I've come ? I expect you 
 guess. I couldn't stay at home and wonder and wonder, 
 and know nothing." 
 
 " Yes," he said gravely, " I understand." 
 
 " And you do know — something ? " she asked. 
 
 He nodded in silence. Yet when she cried out to him 
 not to keep her waiting, he realized that the best way was 
 to be entirely frank. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I made a discovery to-day, quite in- 
 advertently as it happened. It was Jolley, the chemist, 
 who put me on the track by inquiring if the second lot of 
 powders, a repeat order, he said, had got to Lanvean 
 in time." 
 
 At her exclamation, he said gravely : 
 
 " Yes, it wasn't any mistake. A second lot of the Dover 
 powders was ordered, and your aunt sent the boy for it. 
 They were wanted at once, he said. Of course Jolley was 
 puzzled, but . . . they were sent and taken in at 
 Lanvean." 
 
 " And," she exclaimed, " I gave more than I knew. . . . 
 I put in the right dose first, but ... it was added to in 
 
344 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the feeding-cup. . . . And she came in just after you'd 
 gone." 
 
 " That's how I read it, too," he cried in a flash ; "for 
 the child would have whimpered, you must have heard him, 
 if he'd been roused twice. Yes, yes, it was rather a 
 devilish thing to do, to make the hand that did everything 
 for him, give the finishing stroke. . . . But, of course, 
 we're not sure." 
 
 " Practically sure," she said, compressing her lips. " I 
 sent him away. Yes, I sent him away . . . not willingly. 
 It was just what she would have done, for she hates me, 
 hates the nursing I gave the child." 
 
 She sat staring into the fire, and then looked up at him. 
 
 " Well," she said, that was the way of it. Yes, that 
 was. I sent him away, but not knowingly. Yet I did it. 
 And what shall you do . . . about her, I mean ? " 
 
 He began to pace up and down, hands in pockets, staring 
 at the floor. 
 
 " What would you ? " he asked, turning on her. 
 
 " She's an old woman," said Ann softly ; " and whether 
 she pays by man's hand or not, she'll pay somewhere." 
 
 " Then you'd leave her alone ? " he asked ; " but it 
 seems a cold-blooded sort of thing to do, too. Yet of course 
 they'd only bring it in as senile dementia, and shut her up 
 for the rest of her life." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! " cried Ann. " That isn't the way." 
 
 " And," said he, " there's your part in it. Deuced 
 awkward thing for you. No, no," he cried, holding up a 
 hand. " I know you never thought of that. But we've 
 to look at the thing all the way round, you see. And, come 
 to that, I'm as guilty as any one of the lot of us . . . only 
 I'm a bungler. You know," he said slowly, " there's another 
 side to it all." 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " don't let me hear any more of that 
 nonsense. That the world is well rid of him, I know, of 
 course. But 'twas just that which made me . . . not 
 mind, when others shrank from him. Think. Dr. Rudd, 
 just think ! There was he, a child ! And not one person, 
 however they might try to be kind, but shrank from him. 
 
A PRIMITIVE 345 
 
 Everyone wanting him gone, and you, too, judging . . . 
 And he was only a child, a little bit of life trying to get into 
 the sunshine, the same as other little bits of life. But with 
 everything spoilt for him before he began." 
 
 The doctor went softly out of the room, and soon 
 reappearing, set a glass by her side. 
 
 " Drink that," he said quietly. " Never mind, I'm a 
 doctor, you see, and I can't get away from the body. 
 You're tired and unhinged. So am I," he continued 
 frankly, and then hesitated. But, guessing that she was 
 of a calibre above petty malice, he went on quietly, " Do 
 you know I'm a convicted coward ? I thought last night 
 how good a deed it would be to ... do just what your 
 aunt did. Yet she comes of a race that does things ; I 
 come of a breed that theorizes. She's real ; I'm a sham. 
 I swing, in fact, between you and her. You saw the bit 
 of life trying to win a way through, and so did I. I see, 
 too, the other side, the big side, all the evil future that 
 this child brought with it : so did she. I swing between 
 the two views. I am a mere mouther of rant, rant, rant, 
 of nothing but rant. But she's made all in one piece. 
 No, no, for me to prosecute her . . . good Lord, could 
 anything be meaner ? And if you won't, well ... no 
 one will. I compound a felony, of course, if that's what 
 you call it. But it's the only crime I'm any way fitted for." 
 
 Ann watched him curiously, as one would try to catch 
 the impulses of some strange creature, not cruelly, or 
 experimentally, but just to know, as she would have 
 watched a bird or mouse. He found her extraordinarily 
 restful, nor did he suffer at all under her scrutiny, but was 
 perfectly willing to let her clear eyes see into his mind, 
 since in great crises she had the incomparable gift of passing 
 no judgment on others. 
 
 " It was too great a power," she said at last, " for one 
 man to use. But Aunt Parsons, you see, never had a 
 child, she's just lived for the Master, and anything in his 
 way she'd sweep away like a stone in front of a child ; 
 no, not a stone, a cobweb. Jonathan was no more to 
 her than that." 
 
346 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Then, seeing that she wanted to say more, but hesitated 
 he exclaimed : 
 
 " Go on, say what you like." 
 
 " It's this, then," she continued in a low voice : " Aunt 
 wants to see a wife at Lanvean and Gilbert's children. 
 It's the only thing she does want." 
 
 Dr. Rudd laughed. 
 
 ** Well," he said, " you do hit the bull's-eye and no 
 mistake. There's only one obstacle to get over, I take it, 
 before there will be a wife at Lanvean." 
 
 " Not the way things are going now," said she steadily. 
 " There's a mort of things no one gets nearer to under- 
 standing by mere words, but one thing I do know. Mr. 
 Gilbert'll never take the back stairway to anything he 
 wants to win. Never. He'll never take the way you 
 mean — no, nor anything that's been another man's, leave 
 alone another man's wife." 
 
 " What fools call love," he sneered, " plays the very 
 deuce with every prejudice a man may have formed. 
 Do what they call ' fall in love,' and you're swept off your 
 feet. Yes, and your precious Carlyon will be, too. 
 Besides, she's more his than mine, and always was." 
 
 " No," she cried, shaking her head, " haven't you 
 noticed — but I suppose you wouldn't have — how he likes 
 everything handsome ? Well, he does. He wants every- 
 thing about him that way ; he won't have mended china 
 on the table, not even when you can't tell there's a flaw 
 in it." 
 
 " A flaw I " laughed Dan. " Faugh ! nonsense about 
 a flaw ! " 
 
 Yet he was trained to observe small signs and, catching 
 a strange note in the woman's voice, looked at her obser- 
 vantly. But her face retained its customary placidity. 
 
 So died Jonathan, the Undesired, and in the manner of 
 his dying caused more stir than do nine-tenths of the 
 happier children by their living, for to two people, at 
 least, he remained among their strangest memories. 
 
 When she had gone, Dr. Rudd sat on smoking steadily. 
 All his life he had derided, as the curse of a self-conscious 
 
A PRIMITIVE 347 
 
 literary age, the artificial cult of the emotions. Why, he 
 would ask savagely, should he go to see plays, should he 
 read poems, or shiver with sham passions ? His emotions 
 were his own, at any rate, and home-made ; his feelings 
 sprang from nothing that owed its roots to romanticism, 
 or any ism whatever. The whole structure of artificial 
 loves, hates and prejudices was a finicking lie. Love he 
 knew not, since it is the creation of a modernity that has 
 been fatally smeared with feminine weakness. The real 
 thing, and no book-born imp, should be his master. Yet 
 in the first round with his prejudices, those unreasonable 
 guides patronized by tea-party curates, he was beaten by 
 a woman whose simple heritage it was to be ancestrally 
 careless of life. Worst of all, in the contest with his wife 
 he was prepared to undergo any humiliation to give her 
 what she wanted, or rather, what he imagined she wanted. 
 No faintest halo of the heroic was left him when the only 
 crime within his reach was a feeble silence whereby he 
 might defeat the vengeance of the law. 
 
 Going up to Denzell that night, he played no chromatic 
 passages, but sought once more the serenity of Father 
 Bach. When he had finished he turned to find Mrs. 
 Peters sitting in her corner of the chesterfield. She 
 thought, as he came over to the fire, that his eyes looked 
 like those of a sleep-walker. 
 
 " Playing David to your own Saul," she said sharply, 
 " but, oh Dan, haven't I kept silence long enough ? " 
 
 " Keep it, keep it," he cried harshly; " I can't bear talk 
 . . . not from you, anyway." 
 
 Amazed at the sudden venom in his tones, she exclaimed : 
 
 " But you're a fool ! You, to play the complaisant 
 husband ! Oh, if only there'd been a child to bring you 
 and Dorothy together." 
 
 " A child ? " he laughed harshly, " how could a child 
 patch up a marriage between two people who haven't 
 got . . . anything else . . . between them ? " 
 
 Madame Felicia held her breath in amazement ; for, 
 in fact, this was his great renunciation and she knew it 
 to be such, since many times she had heard him exclaim 
 
348 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 that he wanted to be bothered with no woman, and cared 
 only for a kid. Sitting staring into the fire, she reverted 
 with fresh confidence to her own first principles, though 
 for months past she had distrusted them. 
 
 But Dr. Dan went down the hill once more to stamp 
 up and down outside the lighted window of the Outlook, 
 where, as he supposed, his wife was entertaining Gilbert 
 Carlyon. In truth, he had himself inveigled the man 
 upstairs and left him there. 
 
 Yet, when at last he went in, he found Dorothy sitting 
 alone, her hands stretched out on the table in front of 
 her. She seemed, from her stiff movements, to have been 
 sitting thus for a long while. 
 
 " All alone ? " asked he. 
 
 " Of course," she said ; " he would not stay when you 
 bolted out like that as though we'd got the plague." 
 
 " Mighty particular all of a sudden, it seems," sneered 
 he ; "he doesn't mind scouring the country with you. ..." 
 
 " If you don't want me to ride with him, of course I'll 
 stop," she said. 
 
 " And since when have I given you orders ? " he 
 demanded. 
 
 " Oh," she sighed, " I do wish I could understand you. 
 But, Dan, I overheard you telling the children the story 
 of the Three Little Pigs. Don't you remember — and the 
 wolf puffed, and he puffed and he blew down the house ? 
 And ... I understood." 
 
 " What ? The story ? Well, that's not difficult," 
 answered he, with a rasping laugh. 
 
 " No, no, but that I'm a disappointment to you," she 
 said gently. " I knew that when I saw you with the 
 children ; one little mite had an arm ..." 
 
 " Now that's the second time to-night," he exclaimed, 
 " that I've had this tomfoolery flung at me. No kid, 
 you mean, don't you ? Well, what's the formula ? 
 Offer a candle to the Virgin and see if that works. I 
 believe it's highly recommended by all the old women 
 of both sexes." 
 
 Banging the door behind him, he went out : Dorothy, 
 
A PRIMITIVE 349 
 
 sitting bright-eyed with two flaming cheeks, never felt 
 less like tears than at that moment, and the doctor pre- 
 sently returning with a wish to exult, found her puffing 
 smoke-rings like a cheeky urchin. 
 
 At the second door-banging that evening, Mrs. Barrable 
 held up hands of protest. 
 
 " Dear, dear," she cried, " what a mercy there isn't a 
 child in the house to wake up and scream." 
 
 Overhearing this, Dr. Dan hung over the banisters 
 and shouted : 
 
 " Mrs. Barrable, you're the first sensible woman I've 
 met to-night." 
 
 None the less, he was being " made over ; " and slough- 
 ing skins would naturally seem to be painful, though, of 
 course, we have no first-hand evidence of the snake's 
 sensations in the process. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT 
 
 " r I ^HERE is an element in this affair," said Father 
 
 X Tyacke, judicially fitting his finger-tips together, 
 " that baffles me." 
 
 " My good sir," exclaimed Mr. Rosewarne impatiently, 
 " every element in it baffles us all completely." 
 
 He, be it understood, was taking part under protest 
 in a conference at Denzell. To him the discussion of his 
 daughter's affairs was a mere indecency, and twice he 
 had got up to leave the room, yet shrank from doing so 
 lest, in his absence, some spark might be struck out that 
 would throw light on the situation. For, at any rate, 
 the three who were present — Madame Felicia, the priest 
 and himself — had the excuse that they were not indifferent 
 spectators, but almost actors in an affair they had engi- 
 neered and now watched as it shook to a fall. 
 
 " You're right, Philip," nodded Madame, " we haven't 
 the key, not one of us has." 
 
 " But one thing I do know," said Mr. Rosewarne testily. 
 " We've all talked too much, watched too much, inviting 
 a calamity by our very anxiety lest it should occur." 
 
 " I agree again," said Mrs. Peters, " if only these two 
 could be left, in the void, to fight it through without 
 interference ! But we're born meddlers, all of us. We 
 can't get it out of our heads that we're somehow 
 responsible." 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne nodded ; he was in complete accord 
 with Madame 's sentiments as he thought of the way in 
 
 350 
 
THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT 351 
 
 which the pair had been cosseted and coaxed, first by 
 Madame herself with her furniture, and second by himself 
 as sentimental adviser. Checking a groan, he glanced 
 enviously at the priest, who seemed the only sane member 
 of the club, since he had opposed the marriage root and 
 branch. Yet now the fellow seemed, with his perpetual 
 croaking, actually to invite disaster. 
 
 " Then," said Father Tyacke, " are we to watch the 
 child, the child of prayer, plunge straight on to the 
 rocks ? " 
 
 " Father," said Madame sweetly, " you've tried warning, 
 haven't you ? Would you mind telling us what effect it 
 produced ? " 
 
 The priest lifted his hands sorrowfully, but uttered no 
 word. As in all his battles with Dorothy in her girlhood, 
 so now : he had only come upon the same unapproachable 
 core of personality in her that shrank from any touch of 
 his and resisted even fear of the spiritual darkness with 
 which he threatened her. 
 
 " Ah," said Madame triumphantly, " you're silent. 
 You're like the rest of us : you don't understand." 
 
 " But," he exclaimed, " there is her duty to her husband. 
 Even if he acknowledges no bond, she is bound. And so 
 I have told her. And this horrible situation is a scandal, 
 no less, to the Protestant community in which we live." 
 
 " And there," said Madame dryly, " you touch the root 
 of the matter in yourself. It's the example you're 
 worrying about ; it's the example that makes you 
 exaggerate everything." 
 
 " Yes," broke in Mr. Rosewarne, thinking suddenly of 
 his wife's view, which was more tolerant than theirs, " I 
 think we should help . . . ourselves, at least ... if 
 we confined ourselves to plain facts. That Dorothy and 
 her husband are pulling opposite ways is plain ; that they 
 haven't shaken down together is evident. But, after all, 
 is there anything to be surprised at in that ? " 
 
 " No," exclaimed the priest, " there isn't. It was what 
 I felt would happen. But it's not a true description of the 
 actual state of things." 
 
352 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Mr. Rosewarne frowned, suspecting a certain unction of 
 delight in the priest's zeal. 
 
 " What," continued Father Tyacke, " we did not expect 
 from an obedient daughter of the Church was that she 
 would be the one to violate the law." 
 
 " What law then, Father Tyacke, do you refer to as 
 violated by my daughter ? " demanded Mr. Rosewarne, 
 rising to his full height, which was very tall indeed when 
 he was irritated. 
 
 " Why," said the priest, " there is scarcely a day in 
 which she is not in this man's company, a former suitor 
 . . . riding with him, entertaining him." 
 
 " Riding at her husband's request, entertaining him 
 in her husband's house ! " exclaimed Mr. Rosewarne. 
 " Father Tyacke, you remind me of nothing so much as 
 of a carrion crow croaking over the living in expectation 
 of the death that shall give up the carcase." 
 
 " Heavens, Philip ! " gasped Madame, " and haven't we 
 all of us croaked ? " 
 
 " We have," said Mr. Rosewarne, " and we're doing it 
 now. The child has fine friends, I must say. But, Father, 
 you're not the only sinner, I acknowledge that." 
 
 The priest stood up, his head humbly bent, his hands 
 crossed. 
 
 " I have not read the signs for nothing," he repeated ; 
 " the child's in danger, stands already on the edge." 
 
 " Then don't let us push her over," cried Philip, holding 
 out his hand, which the priest grasped. " One should not 
 mention the evil thing, lest a word brings it down ; you 
 know I have the West Country superstition over that." 
 
 A wintry smile lit up the priest's face. 
 
 " We are so helpless," he groaned ; " it is terrible, 
 terrible. But we must pray." 
 
 When the front door banged behind him, Madame drew 
 a long breath. 
 
 " Thank goodness he's gone ! " she exclaimed. She bent 
 forward, her face all a-ripple with feeling. " By his very 
 attitude he makes one see things moving in the shadows. 
 He's so cast-iron over Sin. There are the two paths always 
 
THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT 353 
 
 before his eyes, one to destruction, and the other to — 
 the eternal sunshine. There seems no place left for 
 trivial sinners, for beating hearts. Philip, is the child 
 in danger ? Carlyon 's a good fellow, too. I've never 
 forgotten how good he was about Jemmy's treasures. But 
 what is in her heart . . . and his ? The doctor I know 
 better. He's mad . . . here every night, wringing the 
 music out of my piano. It's immensely improved his 
 playing, anyway," she added grimly. " Soul ? There's 
 the soul of the lost in it sometimes. And he the man who 
 was to ' down ' a woman, to use her for his own purposes ! 
 She was to get but the crumbs from his table . . . and now 
 he'd give his brain, and that's his most treasured possession, 
 to sit at the same table with her." 
 
 " That's the doctor, then," sighed Mr. Rosewarne wearily ; 
 " well, it's a comfort to me to see somebody emerging 
 plainly into the light of day. We all seem to have been 
 creeping about with candles in a murky cellar. But does 
 the child see him in this light, do you think ? " 
 
 " No," said Madame, " not at all. And that's where the 
 whole trouble comes in, I believe." 
 
 " Can't you tell her ? " groaned he. 
 
 " Tell her ! tell her ! " mocked she. " And when was 
 Dorothy ever happy in a ready-made suit of clothes, do 
 you think, Philip ? " 
 
 " No," he said wistfully ; " she isn't built for a reach- 
 me-down, I suppose. She must find out things for herself. 
 But how ? " 
 
 " That's just what one doesn't know. . . . Oh, dear, 
 Philip, in my time we never had these struggles. We 
 skated in those days over places where these young people 
 souse themselves up to their eyes." 
 
 " But it isn't fair to Carlyon," said he ; " least of all 
 to him." 
 
 " Depend upon it," rejoined Madame, " Carlyon is the 
 one who will come out of it the least singed. A woman's 
 just a woman to him, she isn't a bundle of electric wires. 
 Scratch him and you come upon the yokel." 
 
 "I'm not so sure," said Mr. Rosewarne. 
 
 23 
 
354 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Sure ? " cried Madame. "I'm sure of nothing except 
 Dan, and he's as simple as a spelling-book in words of two 
 syllables." 
 
 Upon that they parted, both ashamed of their own 
 anxiety and as irritated, in fact, as people lost in a fog, who, 
 after long wandering, find themselves back at the point 
 from which they started. 
 
 Meanwhile no one cast a thought on Ann Michell, yet 
 it was she, after all, who gave the propelling touch that 
 sent the rock rolling down, to carry trees and plants away 
 and leave the ground bare to the light. 
 
 One wild winter's day Dorothy found her toiling up the 
 steep hill of Petrockstow, heavily burdened with parcels, 
 and expecting nothing but a long cold walk to Lanvean. 
 Seized by a sudden impulse, the doctor's wife carried her 
 in to tea, and in a bustle of hospitality took her into the 
 bedroom to make herself neat. 
 
 Left alone, Ann stood glancing round at the pictures 
 on the walls and the cut-glass bottles on the dressing- 
 table. Opening one, she sniffed at the perfume, and then 
 set it down again hurriedly. Her own room at Lanvean, 
 bare and white-washed, boasted no womanly luxury of 
 any kind. She even compared the array of toilet imple- 
 ments with her humble comb and brush ; her long cloth 
 clothes with the silk garments laid out on Dorothy's 
 bed. 
 
 " Liar," was the thought in her heart, as she looked round 
 at this rjest, with its eiderdowns, its pink casement curtains 
 and the fire laid in for the night's undressing. At the back 
 of her own mind was the picture of a rough cabin on a 
 coasting boat, lighted by a swinging lamp and packed all 
 round with sleeping berths : so different was the scene of 
 her own heart's drama. 
 
 When tea was over and the round table had been pushed 
 aside, the two women drew up to the fire. Outside the 
 wind howled inland from the sea, sending smoke-puffs 
 down the chimney and carrying off an occasional slate. 
 
 " I shall wait for Mr. Gilbert now, I think," said Ann ; 
 " if he drives in he's sure to send me back in the trap." 
 
THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT 355 
 
 " But is he coming in to-night ? " asked Dorothy, raising 
 her eyebrows. 
 
 " Is he not ? " countered Ann quietly. 
 
 When her hostess attempted no reply, she looked across 
 with a question in her eyes. 
 
 " You think ... he is often here ? " laughed Dorothy, 
 with a heightened colour. 
 
 " It's no business of mine whether he is or isn't," said 
 Ann quietly. 
 
 " No," said Dorothy, " I suppose it isn't. But we all 
 of us like fussing about anything but our own business, 
 don't you think ? " 
 
 To such conversational openings the silent woman 
 found nothing to say. Dorothy grew angry and a little 
 reckless. 
 
 " Do you know," she said, leaning forward, " you pro- 
 voke me. Even now you're judging and thinking evil, 
 and yet you put down your lips all prim and mim. Now 
 tell me : I want to know — don't you think you hate and 
 despise me ? I don't know why you should, but I always 
 have a sort of feeling that you do." 
 
 "It can't matter to you," said Ann, with a half-smile. 
 
 " But it does," cried Dorothy, " it does, for I hate to 
 be disliked by anyone. I asked you in to-day ..." 
 
 " To be kind to me," smiled Ann again ; " you brought 
 in hot water for me, you lent me a comb, but you were glad 
 that I was tired and ugly. That's true, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Not . . . not quite," stammered the other. 
 
 " What else was there, then ? " demanded Ann ruthlessly. 
 
 " I wanted to know something," said Dorothy, getting 
 up and looking out of window. 
 
 " Ah," said Ann, in the tone of one who says, " Now I've 
 hit it." " And what was that ? " she asked. 
 
 " I wanted to know what was the truth about that 
 dreadful child's death. My husband was so strange that 
 night and I've wondered ever since." 
 
 " That was what you wanted to know, was it ? " asked 
 Ann. 
 
 " That . . . and something else," said Dorothy. 
 
 23* 
 
356 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Well," rejoined the other, " shall we take the something 
 else first ? " 
 
 " If you like," said Dorothy faintly, overwhelmed at a 
 sudden sense that the woman she had tried to patronize 
 was assuming control of the situation. "I'm groping 
 about . . . the other thing," she added, in a low 
 voice. 
 
 " And yet," said Ann, " how should I know better than 
 you about that . . . other thing ? " 
 
 " Onlookers, you know," said Dorothy, " that's why I 
 ask you, I suppose. Wherever you go, people attend to 
 you. I know that. You see things clearly. It seems 
 absurd, but you do. Mr. Carlyon always says so." 
 
 " Does he ? " asked Ann, visibly pleased. 
 
 Then she laughed ; like her love of the wild things, her 
 laugh was a surprise, so far removed was it from cynicism, 
 so genial and heartsome. 
 
 " Why," exclaimed Dorothy naively, " you're quite 
 young when you let yourself go." 
 
 "I'm not very old really," replied Ann demurely, " but 
 it was about you and ... the other thing that you 
 wanted to know, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " Perhaps we'd better give ' the other thing ' a name, 
 too," laughed the doctor's wife. " It is Mr. Carlyon, 
 really, of course." 
 
 " I know," said Ann, with a nod ; " you don't under- 
 stand your own feelings, nor his. You don't even under- 
 stand what you do." 
 
 " Yet," said Dorothy, " I feel you do understand. Dad, 
 Madame, all of them . . . they talk and talk, and can't 
 put their finger on the real thing. They stand outside it, 
 and somehow I'm outside, too, though how that can be, I 
 don't know : I'm groping for a hidden door-handle, and 
 the door's so big. Dad always says everybody has his own 
 special commandment. What's yours ? " 
 
 Ann laughed, for already the air was lighter about them 
 both. 
 
 " I think," said she, " mine must be the eleventh." 
 
 " And that is ? " asked Dorothy, marvelling at her own 
 
THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT 357 
 
 confidence in a woman so far beneath herself in everything 
 save experience. 
 
 " I never put it in words," said Ann, with a frown of 
 perplexity on her face ; " but I always feel there are two 
 separate things we've to bear in mind in what we do . . . 
 and that's, people and how we feel towards them, and . . . 
 people and what we can get out of them." 
 
 " And," asked Dorothy, " you think I'm confusing the 
 two ... in respect to Mr. Carlyon ? Oh, yes, that's what 
 you mean, don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Ann, " he's a person, and you're not thinking 
 of him at all as if he was one. You're not thinking of him. 
 No, you're not. Your eyes don't say so when you laugh 
 and talk and are silent together. It's when a woman's 
 silent that you know what she feels." 
 
 " You think I've only got in mind . . . what I can get 
 out of him ? " 
 
 " Of how you can use him," said Ann firmly ; " he's only 
 a thing, not a person, to you." 
 
 " But how can I be trying to use him ? " asked Dorothy, 
 in a puzzle. 
 
 " I don't know," said Ann, " I don't know at all." 
 
 " Then," sighed Dorothy, "I'm still groping for the 
 handle of that door. But, Ann, is it always wrong, to 
 use people ? " 
 
 " We do it every day, of course," answered the other 
 quietly ; " Mr. Carlyon uses me . . . to get his dairy- work 
 done, but that's different." 
 
 " Yes, that's different," said Dorothy, " it isn't the real 
 You, that ; it's only your powers. And yet, as to using 
 Mr. Carlyon as you say I do, well, we just ride and forget 
 and see fresh places. And I escape the dreary stagnation 
 of these four walls. In your busy life you can't possibly 
 know what it is to have to plan and plan to fill every hour 
 of the day lest you should have time to be alone. That's 
 why I ... see so much of Mr. Carlyon." 
 
 " That isn't only why," cried Ann fiercely ; " that isn't 
 why he comes, anyway." 
 
 " Ann," smiled Dorothy, " I give you my word I don't 
 
358 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 know why he comes riding four or five times a week with 
 me, I don't indeed." 
 
 " Why he comes ! " cried Ann ; " you don't know, you 
 slut, you ? Why, look there, then." 
 
 And, twisting the girl before her round to the mirror on 
 the wall opposite the window, she almost held her before 
 the glass. 
 
 " A flirtation, then ? " cried Dorothy, and dimpled to 
 watch her own reflection. 
 
 " No, no," said Ann, who hardly knew the word, " you 
 lead him a wanton dance, him that's as straight as a plumb- 
 line. You use him, and not for your pleasure in him, 
 neither. You haven't that amount of grace about you, but 
 just because you want to make your own man fancy you're 
 worth having, you lying jade, with your scent-bottles and 
 mirrors and silk shifts. Ah . . . ! " 
 
 " My goodness me, Ann," cried Dorothy, " I've got to 
 the handle of the door, and no mistake." 
 
 Overwhelmed by the woman's blustering outburst, she 
 sat down, feeling more amused than offended. Instantly, 
 too, for the moment class feeling was in arms, since she 
 blamed herself for thus confiding in a woman of a lower 
 class. For a second Mrs. Rosewarne lived again in her 
 child. 
 
 " That's a very commonplace explanation," she said 
 coldly. 
 
 Ann stared, for it was as though a fireball had been 
 flattened under a mass of snow, since her own words had 
 been spoken as a fiery defence of Gilbert Carlyon rather 
 than with any real desire to clear up Mrs. Rudd's mental 
 mists. Now the second desire awoke in her, since appetite 
 comes by eating. 
 
 " I suppose," she said, rising, " you don't need me to tell 
 you that Dr. Rudd's little finger is more to you, ] really, 
 than all Mr. Gilbert ever can or will be to you ? That's 
 why I say you use him, for there's them that call you a 
 treacherous wife, but I know you're not that, anyway. 
 You'd give, give, give ... all of your own or anybody 
 else's to save the doctor a heartache. And yet, he's fool 
 
THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT 359 
 
 enough not to see it, and to let you wring his heart with 
 your gallivanting. Why can't you take a straight line to 
 what you want, instead of fluttering up and down like a 
 bird that tries to hide where its nest is ? " 
 
 She stood looking down on the girl, who sat with bent 
 head before her. 
 
 " Well," she continued, " I've used a living man in my 
 time, and paid for it, too. Soil you, and that's one com- 
 fort. But your using's worse than mine was, for you spend 
 what is most precious as lightly as you'd kill a fly. I 
 never did that, and the one I used got what he wanted, 
 after all." 
 
 " Ann, what did you do ? " asked Dorothy, suddenly 
 raising her head, " when you . . . broke your eleventh 
 commandment ? " 
 
 The other stared down long and searchingly. When she 
 at last spoke it was with a short, contemptuous laugh. 
 
 " And do you think," she asked, "as I'd tell you that, 
 you that's no better than a rudderless boat, and a danger 
 to yourself and to everything else that's afloat ? " 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 JUNGLE LAW 
 
 ' SMELL snow," said Gilbert ; " we must not go far 
 
 X to-day." 
 
 The two had ridden silently out of Petrockstow, for they 
 were facing the wind, but at a steep cutting between high 
 banks the reins dropped on their horses' necks. 
 
 " On the contrary," said Dorothy, with a laugh, " we 
 must go further than usual to-day, for mother wants me to 
 go over to Pentire for her." 
 
 That meant crossing far up the river at Camelstock, and 
 so down the estuary on the other bank. 
 
 " Impossible," said he curtly ; "for one thing, in this 
 wind you'd be frozen." 
 
 " I promised mother I'd go to-day," she persisted. " You 
 know we've got the letting of a furnished house over there, 
 and she wants me to see about fires and drying the place. 
 Everything will be spoilt if we don't do something soon. 
 Of course we shall be back long before the snow comes." 
 
 Against his better judgment he consented. 
 
 " Anyway," she said, " we can leave the horses at the 
 farm and come home by boat, if we really are caught. But 
 I don't believe we shall be." 
 
 By three o'clock, when they reached the farm above the 
 house at Trebetherick, the sea lay leaden under heavy 
 clouds and the sodden air was deadly with cold. Dorothy 
 walked down the lane alone, while Carlyon saw to the com- 
 fort of the horses in the farm stables. 
 
 The door grated harshly on the stone floor of the hall 
 
 360 
 
JUNGLE LAW 361 
 
 as she opened it, and the air within was colder even than the 
 wind outside. There seemed, for a second, something 
 threatening in the mere darkness of a house deserted since 
 the summer. But fires were laid in both sitting-rooms, 
 and soon it was a pleasure to watch the crackling flames. 
 By the time Carlyon arrived she was glowing in a house- 
 wife's apron, with fluff on her hair from the beds she had 
 been opening out. Leaning over the banisters, she gave 
 him his directions : he was to go back to the farm and fill 
 a basket with food, with tea, bread, cream, cake, and 
 " sugar for the bird," that is, for himself. The kettle 
 was already steaming in the dining-room. 
 
 As he stood with the open door behind him, she could see 
 the line of breakers on the beach at the back of the trees, 
 whose bare branches, cut in bars like steel, lay across the 
 greyness of sea and sky. Beyond the trees and the line of 
 foam was the world, seething with trouble, with their two 
 selves wrapped away in the silence, remote from any stir 
 of man. She longed for the snow to come, to finish it all, 
 to cut them off even more completely. It was like some- 
 thing she had dreamt, this bleak house with the dancing 
 firelight and the black branches of the trees outside. 
 
 When they were half-way through their picnic meal, the 
 discovery was made that the oil had dried up in the lamp, 
 and so, with laughter at their plight, Gilbert went out to the 
 back house and returned with a pile of logs. 
 
 " It's nearly five," said he, " and we ought to be moving 
 on." "* 
 
 " Then why," laughed she, " did you pile on a blaze 
 like this ? We cannot possibly leave it flaring, you know." 
 
 When he made no answer, she looked across at him. 
 
 " Gilbert," she said suddenly, " I think this will have 
 to be our last expedition together. Ann's been talking 
 to me." 
 
 " Ann ? " he repeated in astonishment, " Ann Michell ? 
 What on earth has she got to do with it ? " 
 
 " Well," she said demurely, " I asked her in to tea, you 
 know, and what she said . . . just made me feel as if I 
 were skinned." 
 
362 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Even at this moment, when it was impossible to be 
 natural, Dorothy was a little ashamed of her own false- 
 hood. Yet, since during these last months she had sacri- 
 ficed everything for effect, a further falsity in word was not 
 worth a moment's consideration. 
 
 " Everyone," she remarked, " it seems, is worrying over 
 our friendship, and especially over . . . my riding lessons. 
 It's only Dan who takes them like the philosopher he is." 
 
 At the bitterness in her tones he glanced at her in 
 surprise. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " perhaps it will be better to stop." 
 
 " And is that," she cried, " all you have to say ? Oh, 
 Gilbert, I never knew why you came, and now I'm not to 
 know why you go." 
 
 " I go," said he heavily, " because you ask me to." 
 
 " For the same reason, in fact, that you came ? " 
 
 " For the same reason, of course," said he calmly. " I've 
 been doing, I suppose, all these months what my better 
 judgment protested against, because you asked me." 
 
 " And so," she asked, coming over and standing like a 
 child in front of him, " you did it for that, and not because 
 you liked it, because it was sweet, and we're both young ? " 
 
 When she put her hands fairly in his, he had perforce 
 to take them. 
 
 " I've only gone on," he said quietly, " because I knew 
 that, whatever people might say, your husband had nothing 
 to complain of, that you no more cared for riding with me 
 than ... if I'd been one of my men. You wanted the 
 change, and it's done you good. Stella will miss you, 
 too." 
 
 " She's made a corner of my riding-coat quite shabby 
 by shaking it between her teeth," laughed Dorothy, " but 
 is it possible . . . that Stella's master won't miss me, 
 won't mind at all ? " 
 
 " You ride well now," said he, persisting in the r61e of 
 riding-master, " and something far more tricky than 
 Stella would find it hard to throw you. But what was it 
 Ann Michell said to you ? You must have provoked her 
 finely to get anything out of her." 
 
JUNGLE LAW 363 
 
 " I did," said Dorothy grimly, f? but, oh, Gilbert, don't 
 you know that Madame Felicia, and Dad, and Father 
 Tyacke, and all the rest of them — mother's the most 
 sensible — have been worrying over us ? They're like that, 
 people are, I suppose, when one's married and done for." 
 
 She sighed a portentous sigh that made him smile. 
 
 " Still," he persisted, " you haven't told me what Ann 
 said." 
 
 " As far as I can remember," said Dorothy haughtily, 
 " she called me a slut and said I was using you for my own 
 purpose — the said purpose, of course, remaining undefined." 
 
 At this reckless speech she caught the first hint, low as a 
 growl of distant thunder, of anger in him. He threw back 
 his head, and in the fireglow she tried to understand the 
 flash of his eyes. Then when she felt herself caught in a 
 strong grip, his hands at her waist suggested no tenderness 
 at all, only the strength that longed to break the thing 
 they held. 
 
 " And were you ? " he asked. " Tell me, were you ? 
 I've often wondered what you meant by your gracious ways. 
 Friendship ? No, not that. You wanted to learn to ride. 
 I had a horse and could teach you. I thought 'twas just 
 that at first. But you were so sweet . . . and gracious 
 in the midst of all the trouble there's been at home, in the 
 midst of all the dreary, dingy things that happen to me." 
 
 " I was pleasant to you, then ? " 
 
 " Pleasant ? " he cried. " Ah, my God ! " 
 
 " Like what, then ? " she demanded, her eyes dancing ; 
 " like laughter and sunlight, like a sudden burst of music ? 
 Just what women ought to be to men, as Madame thinks ? 
 Oh, but Gilbert, you should hear Dan play now ! Madame 
 says it's positively diabolic. And it's all my doing." 
 
 In the pressure of another thought, he never so much 
 as noticed her woman's triumph. 
 
 " Dan ! Dan ! " he cried. " What's he to you ? . . ." 
 
 He would have flung her roughly away, but she held his 
 hands close to her waist. The small fingers, cold and 
 trembling as they were, pleaded to the man in him far more 
 powerfully than any of the words that were now only useful 
 
364 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 to hide meanings. For it was man to woman, and woman 
 to man, with them at last. 
 
 " Oh, that gospel of Madame's ! " cried she, being deter- 
 mined to keep up a clatter, " how much I expected from 
 it, and how little it means — to one's husband. But I was 
 . . . pleasant to you, wasn't I ? " 
 
 " Was that what you tried to be, then ? " he asked 
 hoarsely. 
 
 " At first. You see, Dan didn't care, and so I thought 
 I'd just make you . . . care. I'd failed with him. I 
 wasn't anything to him that Madame taught me to believe 
 women can be to men." 
 
 She stood twisting a button on his coat, and the warmth 
 of the fire closed round them both like a caress. 
 
 " At first," he said gently, " and what then ? When 
 you knew you were . . . pleasant to me ? " 
 
 She shook her head, for this was just as far, in actual 
 fact, as her own knowledge went. 
 
 " And what now ? " he asked. 
 
 In the silence, beside the beating of their hearts, they 
 became aware of soft thuds on the glass roof of the verandah. 
 With a sharp exclamation, Gilbert moved to the French 
 window and threw it open. The dark air outside was full 
 of the soft whirling of white flakes. They were walled round 
 now by darkness and snow, and from behind the curtain 
 came the sound of the dragging undertow on the beach. 
 
 " It's my dream," she said softly, putting up the backs 
 of her hands to cool her flaming cheeks. 
 
 But he had thrown the front door open, and she saw 
 beyond his figure the whirling maze of white threads. The 
 black tree-branches were white already with their burden of 
 snow, and on the windward side all the trunks were 
 feathered. 
 
 " You cannot get back to-night," he said harshly, " but 
 I must." 
 
 " Why ? " she asked softly. 
 
 " Why ? " he repeated, coming up to her in two strides, 
 " are you still such a child that you don't know why ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know," she breathed softly, " you're thinking 
 
JUNGLE LAW 365 
 
 ... of Dan. But he won't thank you for it. It doesn't 
 matter what I do now. He doesn't care at all." 
 
 " Then I do," he cried. " Oh, Dorothy, don't make 
 things harder than you need. I shouldn't have come with 
 you, shouldn't have listened to your nonsense. But the 
 doctor . . ." 
 
 " Yes, the doctor," she asked, with a gleam in her eyes. 
 " As Ann would say, he only used me, and when I dis- 
 appointed him, I might ride with you or with any man. 
 What did he care ? He just . . . threw me away." 
 
 " Then," said he sternly, " do you accept his . . . 
 throwing away and agree to it ? " 
 
 Coming back into the house, he shut the door. In the 
 ears of both the noise of its closing echoed through the 
 empty place as though there were something irrevocable 
 in its clang. 
 
 " I accept it ? " she repeated stupidly, again obsessed 
 by another dream, of lying back against strong arms that 
 held her, stronger arms than ever she had known. 
 
 " Yes," he said impatiently, " I mean — do you come with 
 me and leave him ? " 
 
 Even while he spoke, he saw all the order of his days 
 go by, saw in the years to come how his children might be 
 ashamed to learn how their mother became his wife. Yet, 
 to his simple thought, there was no other solution. 
 
 " I come with you ? " she asked, and in the warmth of 
 the room shivered with a sudden perception of his meaning. 
 
 " No, no," she cried, " not that. I couldn't face that." 
 
 " What then ? " he asked quietly, " for if I stay . . . 
 Dorothy, are you asleep ? " 
 
 And drawing her closer, he held her face so that he could 
 look into her eyes. It was not a woman who was asleep 
 that looked through them ; of that, at any rate, he was 
 sure. For there was fear in them, as well as a certain 
 desperation. 
 
 " Do you think then," he asked, in deeper tones, " that 
 I'm the man to lie and steal, and take from another man 
 what's his, and shake his hand afterwards ? Is that what 
 you meant ? Answer me straight." 
 
366 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 But suddenly he felt no more care for meanings at all, 
 and drawing her up against his shoulder, bent his head to 
 hers. 
 
 " No, I can't," she cried, pushing him away with a 
 shudder. " I can't, I can't bear it. I thought I could, 
 but I can't." 
 
 It was a cry of anguish. 
 
 " Please go," she said, more quietly. " I will stay here 
 till the morning, but please go at once." 
 
 " You really want me to go ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said, as, white and shaking, she stood by 
 the table. " I thought I was stronger than I am." 
 
 " I don't understand you," he said sternly. '■* Was it 
 all just from pure wanton cruelty, then ? Was it ? Or 
 was it as Ann said ? But what does it all mean ? Was 
 it just to prove your power ? " 
 
 " No, not that . . . only for Dan," she whispered. 
 
 Standing to watch her intently, he caught in one flash 
 the vision of himself as seen by her eyes. Hatred he 
 could have forgiven, but it was not that ; it was fear he 
 read in her face, a woman's fear of the man to whom she 
 has sold herself. But for the lover to see himself reflected 
 in his mistress's face as a satyr is the last affront that 
 brings something like madness. 
 
 Outside the house he stood still for a few moments, and 
 on putting up his hand to his forehead, found it covered 
 with sweat. At first, his feet slipping on the snowy 
 cobbles of the path, he swayed like a drunken man. At 
 the gate he looked back for a second on the dark mass 
 of the house, half hidden in the midst of the falling flakes. 
 
 Up at the farm they protested at the idea of his going, 
 but he persisted, for by now, against the foreground of 
 his own passion, his mind was beating hither and thither 
 in the effort to foresee how he could, as it were, cover up 
 the tracks of the doctor's wife. Vaguely he knew that, 
 unless he were careful, the whole pack of gossips would 
 be scurrying at her heels, the yelping pack ever ready to 
 pull a woman down. 
 
 One thing he realized — that, whenever Dorothy returned, 
 
JUNGLE LAW 367 
 
 he must be seen in Petrockstow that night. At the top 
 of the road he hesitated, throwing the lanthorn light this 
 way and that, to see how thick the snow lay. For over 
 the dunes was the direct way to Rock, and, now that the 
 horses were safe in the farm stables, it might be just 
 possible to find the path there. Yet the fanner had warned 
 him not to attempt it, since the drifts in the valleys, now 
 that the paths were obliterated, would be enough to 
 smother a man. The roadway between the hedges was 
 safe enough, and though loath to waste the time, he judged 
 it the surest way, after all. 
 
 As he plodded on through the deep stillness, a new 
 torment began. For, although he was used to the extremes 
 of climate, about him now there clung an exhaustion of the 
 nerves that weighed his eyelids with fatigue and set him 
 yawning in gapes that came as quickly as minute guns. 
 In the dazing effect of this, pictures followed : not of 
 Dorothy, but of Ann Michell. For as after wine and 
 revelry a man may pant for the pure water of the springs, 
 so his heart leapt to her upright simplicity. Her home- 
 liness, indeed, was all transfigured for him by the spiritual 
 graces he saw within her. Even her serviceable kindness 
 he recalled ; how she had nursed and laid out the hideous 
 child, shrinking from no homely or terrible task. 
 
 So transformed, he saw her as the man sees the being 
 to whom he denies all blemish ; even her thin, pale body 
 was but the antithesis to all the fugitive glow and colour 
 which marked the easy virtue to which his own passion 
 had proved repulsive. 
 
 Yet through the delirium of his weariness the words 
 that came most insistently were Dorothy's : " I can't 
 bear it. I thought I could." It haunted him like a chess 
 problem. 
 
 With the lights of Rock dancing before his eyes, he 
 seemed to have reached the confines of the world. It 
 was the first awakening from a nightmare, in fact, to find 
 himself on the couch in the inn parlour, with Trevan 
 twinkling down at him and the sting of the brandy he 
 had swallowed pricking him back to life again. 
 
368 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Lie still a bit," said the doctor, " you'll be all right 
 in a minute or two. But what the deuce you've been 
 about, I can't tell. Though, come to that, here I am, 
 too, and snow-bound, with my sick folks on the other 
 side. Still, there's Rudd — or let's hope there is, for he's 
 infernally erratic. Now then," he continued, when 
 Carlyon sat up, " what can I do for you ? For you look 
 bothered, man." 
 
 " Been through something, that chap," thought he. 
 " What is it ? Frightened, or drunk ? " 
 
 Gilbert took his long legs off the sofa and smiled 
 deprecatingly. 
 
 " Sorry, doctor," said he, " to have been such a fool. 
 But I've got to get across to-night . . . and home." 
 
 " Oh," said Trevan, " and why ? " 
 
 " Well, the fact is," said Gilbert, " that Mrs. Rudd's 
 over at Trebetherick." 
 
 " The deuce she is ! " exclaimed Trevan, beginning to 
 twinkle. 
 
 " Yes," said Gilbert, " we rode over and were caught 
 by the storm." 
 
 " And you got away," said Trevan. "I see. Damned 
 fool to be there, too, she is. D'you know, Carlyon, there's 
 nothing I've ever itched to do so much in all my life as to 
 give that little girl a jolly good hiding ? " 
 
 " Or to give it to me, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Fudge ! " chuckled he, " youth's hot, and ginger's 
 nice. Must allow for that in a man. But what I don't 
 allow for is ... he and she." 
 
 He made a gesture of contempt, and puffing a cloud of 
 smoke from his pipe, watched the man opposite with his 
 keen eyes ablaze. 
 
 " She's never cared for anything but her husband," 
 said Gilbert. 
 
 " I judged as much," grunted Trevan, " though the 
 fool doesn't know it, or won't. But where do you come 
 in, my boy ? " 
 
 " That's what I don't know. I wish I did," said Gilbert 
 ruefully. 
 
JUNGLE LAW 369 
 
 " Well, I mustn't ask questions, I suppose," grumbled 
 Trevan. 
 
 Carlyon looked across at the old man ; he must surely 
 be accustomed to read strange secrets ? 
 
 " I'd like to tell you," he said, " but I don't know that 
 I may, or can." 
 
 " Well," puffed Trevan, " I don't deny I'd give my best 
 begonia to know, but still, if you can't, you can't. I'm 
 not a gossip ; that is, I'm a deep well, but I do like to 
 know about other insides besides my people's physical 
 ones." 
 
 " I want you to go over and help her," said Gilbert 
 taking a sudden resolution. " She's in an empty house by 
 herself to-night." 
 
 " Oh, is she ? Well, I guess it's likely to be filled with 
 seven devils then. But if you think I'm going worrying 
 over there to-night, you're wrong, my boy. The first 
 thing in the morning'll do very well. Oh, yes, I'll bring 
 her back for you. They'll say she's eloped with me, 
 and Rudd will have to challenge me. She's as perfectly 
 safe with me as with you," he chuckled, " for I wouldn't 
 touch her, in that sense, if she was on a desert island, 
 though I'd like to souse her over quay if that would turn 
 her into a proper little wife." 
 
 " No," said Gilbert quietly, " I can't tell you." 
 
 " But the girl shall," promised Trevan to his secret 
 soul, and then accompanied Gilbert to the quay-side, 
 where they knocked up two or three men and proposed 
 a bargain. 
 
 By now in the high tide under the moonlight the water 
 was all glassy still, with the house roofs casting dark 
 shadows and the whole scene mirrored in the winding 
 arm of the estuary. On the other side the ring of lights 
 round the harbour twinkled across the blackness of the 
 waters. 
 
 Trevan, after putting up his horse next morning at the 
 farm, stumped down the lane noisily. It was barely 
 dawn and the carriage lamp in his hand threw its rays on 
 white hedgerows. But at sight of Dorothy's tired face, 
 
 24 
 
370 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 when at last she opened the door to him, the doctor in the 
 old man got the upper hand of him. Half an hour later 
 she was up at the farm, before a blazing fire, sipping the 
 tea he had ordered. 
 
 The girl seemed dazed, and at first he could make nothing 
 of her. 
 
 " Gilbert sent you, I suppose ? " she said listlessly. 
 
 " Yes," said he ; " I'm to flaunt you in face of all the 
 town. Wonder if my reputation will stand it ? " added he, 
 with a grimace. 
 
 " You needn't worry about all that," said she wearily, 
 '* I don't." 
 
 " Then you ought to," snapped he ; "if it's only for 
 your husband's sake," he added virtuously. 
 
 " For Dan's sake ! " she exclaimed, " as if Dan minded." 
 
 " And if Dan minded a bit more," said he sternly, 
 " 'twould be better for both of you. But I can't teach 
 him, and I suppose I can't teach you." 
 
 He sniffed loudly and contemptuously ; he had neither 
 slept well nor eaten well, and regretted his housekeeper's 
 excellent devilled kidneys that were waiting for him at 
 home — and likely to wait. 
 
 " Dr. Trevan," asked Dorothy desperately, " you know 
 many queer things, don't you ? " 
 
 " I've learnt a few, my dear," answered he grimly. 
 
 " Did Gilbert say anything about last night ? " she 
 asked suddenly. 
 
 " No, he didn't," snapped the old man, " having some- 
 thing of the gentleman about him, my lady." 
 
 " Well," cried she, " whatever I say will be against 
 myself. Do you know, Dr. Trevan, that I discovered 
 that . . . that nobody in the world but Dan really matters 
 to me ? " 
 
 " Eminently proper, of course," chuckled he, " but I 
 could have told you that long ago. Fact is, there's no 
 three- volume novelist can beat me when I'm at my best. 
 I'm a proper sleuth-hound at a sentimental scent." 
 
 " And then," she continued, paying no attention to 
 his jests, " I tried to commit a deadly sin. At least, I 
 
JUNGLE LAW 371 
 
 suppose it was, and I couldn't. I'm like Dan in that, 
 too. We're both shams and humbugs. Don't you 
 remember that Carlyon baby ? Well, he always talked 
 as though he'd lethal-chamber any creature like it. And 
 yet he worked night and day to save it." 
 
 " I know," smiled Trevan, " Dan's brain is one thing, 
 and his heart's another. He overvalues himself. Or is 
 it undervalues ? Faith, I don't know which it is." 
 
 " Oh, doctor," she said, beginning to tremble, " you 
 don't know how much a child would mean to us ! He 
 married me just for that. He said once to me that a 
 child was the only difference he recognized between 
 marriage and not-marriage. In that way I'm not even 
 married to him, since I've no child. I would have com- 
 mitted a crime to give him one. I tried to . . . last 
 night." 
 
 Dr. Trevan put out a hand to her and refrained from 
 his customary whistle. 
 
 " Poor little girl," said he, " I see. Yes, yes, there 
 wasn't any fault on your side. You knew that, too. 
 Well, it's been done before. There's no new thing in 
 devilry that you can tell an old man like me. And so you 
 couldn't do it. Well, I'm glad of that, my dear." 
 
 " No, not even for Dan," she said, staring in horror at 
 the jungle-depths in her own nature that still, it seemed, 
 survived. 
 
 " For it would have been devilry, you know," said 
 Trevan quietly, " to lie to him and cheat him, perhaps 
 to put a child not his into his arms . . . how could you 
 ever think it would bring peace to either of you ? " 
 
 " I didn't think. I planned nothing at all. Something 
 rose in me. And then I couldn't bear it, not even for 
 Dan. For I'm just his ; that's all." 
 
 " Well, child," said Trevan cheerfully, " I don't know 
 that we need bother any more about it, though you two, 
 your Dan and you, really do seem out to play chuck- 
 farthing with the ten commandments, though it never 
 comes off. Thank God, it never comes off with either of 
 you. So dry your eyes and tie up your head, for we're 
 
 24* 
 
372 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 going slick across to Petrockstow from here. I've sent a 
 boat round from Rock. But let me give you a word of 
 warning before we close down this chapter for ever : never 
 let anyone, least of all Dan, hear a word of all this . . . 
 nightmare, not even that accursed ass, Tyacke. The 
 Catholic Church is never tired of holding the noses of its 
 devotees in the mire of what it's pleased to call sin. But 
 you take it from me : this is nothing of the sort, this 
 affair ; you had a desperate impulse that came . . . 
 from the black past we've all of us risen out of. You 
 strangled the flame with your hands, and you're not even 
 singed. Also — for which praise be — you're just a shade 
 nearer understanding both your man and yourself. 
 
 " There," he continued, patting her back as he had 
 done years ago after drawing a tooth, " you'll some day 
 be a proper little wife yet. And Dan . . . well, he won't 
 always be the improper husband that he is at present. 
 You tried to be a naughty little wench . . . and couldn't. 
 It's in the family, my dear, this mania for crime." 
 
 As they mounted the steps of the quay at Petrockstow, 
 he whispered slyly : 
 
 " When I was young there used to be a novel called, 
 1 Ought We to Visit Her ? ' Now, in your case, what 
 would Petrockstow say if they knew all ? " 
 
 " Please, please, doctor," she protested to the big man 
 who stood, a mountain of furs and rugs, before her. 
 
 " Never another word shall you hear from me, Madame," 
 cried he, raising his hat and bowing ceremoniously before 
 her ; " the episode is closed." 
 
 Yet, when in his own dining-room, the fire dancing at 
 last on the devilled kidneys of his dreams, she refused to 
 go back to the Outlook, he lost his temper outright. 
 
 " But for you to go back to Teravel," he cried, " is 
 to set all the cackling hens going nineteen to the dozen. 
 And here have Carlyon and I been sweating the skin off 
 our bones to save your face ! " 
 
 " I can't go back to Dan, not yet," she pleaded, " and, 
 what's more, I won't. Please send for a carriage for me. 
 Oh, Dr. Trevan, do help me. I lay awake all last night, 
 
JUNGLE LAW 373 
 
 and I realized the horrible brink on which I stand. I 
 want to get my bearings again." 
 
 At that he succumbed and only just got her away in 
 time, for five minutes after the nose of her car had turned 
 the corner out of Petrockstow, Dr. Rudd appeared. It 
 was getting on for noon then, with Trevan in a vile 
 temper. 
 
 Nor was his anger assuaged by the doctor's story, for 
 it appeared that the preceding night, when Carlyon reached 
 Petrockstow, he came up to the Cornishes' cottage and, by 
 ill luck, found Dr. Rudd at home. 
 
 " He came in," blustered Dan, " as cool as you please, 
 and told me he'd left my wife on t'other side. It caught 
 me on the raw, I can tell you, to find the fellow giving 
 himself airs at sparing my wife's good name. For that's 
 what he did." 
 
 " Well," snapped Trevan, "it's time somebody did 
 spare her name. Oh, don't try any of your fire-eating 
 airs with me. The lad's a good lad, and your wife's a 
 better one than you deserve. You're like a blind puppy 
 that goes on blundering against everything he meets. Do, 
 for goodness' sake, open your eyes, Dan. If the man's in 
 love with Dorothy, where's the shame, when she's been 
 flung at him by you ? And she all the time clinging to 
 you by ... by her very eyelashes. It's you that's the 
 shame, letting her rove the parish like a tinker's randy." 
 
 " Well, I've put a stop to that," said Rudd grimly. 
 
 " And how ? " 
 
 " Told him what I thought of him ! " 
 
 " And where ? " asked Trevan, with the calmness of 
 despair ; " on top of the steps of the Priory House, with 
 half a score of loafers below ? " 
 
 " Come to think of it, so it was," cried Dr. Dan, with a 
 roar of laughter. 
 
 " And she's capped the whole thing by going home to 
 Teravel," groaned Trevan, " after I'd faced the entire clam- 
 jamphrie of them, with her on my arm, as bold as brass. 
 Well, I wash my hands of you." 
 
 As a matter of fact, since it had to be apoplexy or gout 
 
374 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 with the old man after this bout of fatigue and disgust, 
 he preferred the gout, which did actually follow. 
 
 But Dr. Rudd went about, for a while, with a pleasant 
 glow within him at the thought that, although he wasn't 
 much of a hand at taking life, he could yet assert his man- 
 hood over an interloper on his marital preserves. Nor was 
 he in any way deterred from his happiness by the delicious 
 zest with which all Petrockstow enjoyed the tale of the two 
 angry faces at the top of the famous steps. 
 
 Yet at last, one night, on looking out of his window, 
 Dr. Rudd caught sight of two cats, with ears set back and 
 backs curved herring-bone fashion, confronting one another 
 on a house-roof. At that the satisfied brute in him sick- 
 ened, and he turned instead to ponder the mystery of 
 Tre van's words : " Clinging to you ... by her very eye- 
 lashes." It was pleasant to be told this, even though he 
 could not believe it. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 SAND IN THE MACHINE 
 
 TO crouch at the edge of the precipice is not necessarily 
 to feel giddy, for on some natures it has the most 
 steadying effect to look below among the mists of obscure 
 impulses that spring from quarters never open to the light 
 of day. A soul with any of the elements of strength in it 
 learns thus the need of a central command. From sleepless 
 nights and restless days, then, Dorothy emerged, not only 
 stronger to resist, but more ready to act. It was, however, 
 an untold relief to find herself spirited off by Madame to 
 Denzell, a place that, for all its more poignant memories, 
 yet in the main spoke to her of nothing but the calm to 
 which all things return. 
 
 " Child," said Madame one day after dinner, as they sat 
 together in the hall, " do you know that your father has 
 received back the five thousand pounds that I meant — 
 mistakenly, as it seems — to be the foundation of your 
 married life ? " 
 
 " Oh, how glad I am," cried the girl ; " yes, I am. I 
 can't help it. He used to call it the wages of sin, you 
 know." 
 
 " Goodness me, child ! and it was only the price of my 
 poor teeth." 
 
 " You know it wasn't, dear Madame : it was something 
 quite different," said Dorothy gently. 
 
 " Shall we say, then," said Madame, with a smile, " if 
 not the foundation of your marriage, for that I remember 
 he repudiated, at any rate the canvas for that fancy portrait 
 
 375 
 
376 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 of himself which he delights to daub at and that works so 
 much mischief ? For your Dan, my dear, for all his theories, 
 would quite enjoy . . . going out to dinner in goloshes 
 . . . and all the other homely pleasures of life in a circle 
 of kindly, commonplace people. Only he won't con- 
 fess it." 
 
 " It's more than that, Madame." 
 
 " It isn't," replied Mrs. Peters firmly. " And as for 
 you — you young women of to-day just forget your part. 
 You step down and stand on a level with your man. I 
 don't understand it, of course, but I watch it most 
 curiously." 
 
 " You don't understand giving, then ? " asked the girl 
 sharply, " not on the woman's part ? " 
 
 " I understand it as the greatest giving of all — of herself." 
 
 " But if he doesn't want that ? " 
 
 " Then I should turn my back on him. If you offer him 
 the highest and he isn't content, there's nothing more to 
 be done. And ' give,' ' do,' — that's the shibboleth of 
 to-day. ' To be ' is fine enough for an exquisite woman." 
 
 " I'm not that in his eyes." 
 
 " No, I see," said Madame musingly ; "I created the 
 illusion : you didn't." 
 
 But Dorothy found it worst of all to see another than 
 herself confess that she had failed as a woman. 
 
 " But I'm sorry for Carlyon," said Madame, " though, 
 of course, it's an old trick of your sex to trail another man's 
 infatuation in front of the one you want to charm." 
 
 Yet Madame only half understood, since she could 
 merely watch as a spectator those storms of mastery and 
 surrender that, like a gale in the open, are never really 
 known to mere harbour-craft. 
 
 One night as they stood in Madame's room, they heard 
 the keys of the piano struck below. The two women 
 started, and Madame, laying a hand on the girl's wrist, 
 drew her across the corridor to a point of vantage from 
 which they could look down into the hall. 
 
 Dr. Dan was playing with only the candles lit in the 
 sconces, his gaze following the direction of his hands. 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 377 
 
 Stifling a half-sigh, Madame laid a hand among the lace at 
 her bosom and whispered : 
 
 " Go down, my dear, go down." 
 
 Her first thought had been that they would both be 
 carried in on the tide to the only safe harbourage they had 
 ever known, to that moment of simple fellow-feeling which 
 leaves no opportunity for analysis. 
 
 Somehow in her dream as she moved forward, Dorothy 
 felt that he was playing the " Rhapsodie Hongroise," but 
 being utterly unmusical, she could not tell why she thought 
 this. She knew not even if there was such a piece for the 
 piano. So busy was her mind with this speculation that 
 she felt nothing else till she stood before him. 
 
 Smiling across the top of the piano he looked up. 
 
 " Ah," he said softly, " I thought you would come." 
 
 It seemed that their talk was to be good-humoured. So 
 they stood a second, till his hands dropped from the keys 
 and he leant forward to light a cigarette. 
 
 " Well," he asked, " how are you ? " 
 
 It was so unforeseen a commonplace that her mouth 
 opened weakly as he drew her forward and looked her over 
 professionally. 
 
 " Nerves all playing on the face," he commented . . . 
 " and melancholy ! You want some valerian pills, my dear. 
 But you ought to be ashamed to need them before you're 
 thirty. Valerian-bromide for anyone under the grand 
 climacteric's a disgrace. I'll send you up some to-morrow." 
 
 It was close and sultry, and with a common feeling they 
 moved towards the open French windows in the dining- 
 room. Strolling across the courtyard and into the road, 
 they stood looking down on the lights of Petrockstow. 
 
 " I talk to you about nerves," said he, " but I've got 
 'em myself ; I feel as though we were all in a net, all fishes 
 in a net together, and the net going to be drawn in . . . 
 close, close, close. It's partly that," he added, pointing 
 below to the town, " for there's trouble coming there, I'm 
 sure." 
 
 In swift words he sketched the situation that was puzzling 
 Trevan and himself : the strange sporadic cases of diph- 
 
378 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 theria. The water-supply, though brown with iron, was 
 above reproach, yet aided by the damp, soft winds, there 
 was far more illness than was customary ; illness, in fact, 
 not unconnected with the great house behind them. For 
 in these back-to-back houses in the town any epidemic 
 would soon spread, though Madame in her laces was but the 
 instrument of the bad old times. 
 
 As she listened with her eyes on his face, Dorothy felt 
 lifted into a new sphere, one in which the frenzies of 
 the inner world that still survives in us were completely 
 forgotten. 
 
 " I wish I could help you, Dan," she exclaimed. " And 
 I'm not so unbusinesslike, for father found me useful. 
 Indeed, I've been well trained." 
 
 " Why don't you go back to him, then ? " asked he. 
 
 When she was silent, feeling herself rejected, he smiled 
 at her crestfallen air. 
 
 " Did you give over going to the office," he asked, 
 " because you were afraid of meeting me in the street ? " 
 
 She nodded with a half-smile. 
 
 " I knew you were hiding up here," said he, " but why 
 are you afraid of me ? " 
 
 " I'm such a failure," she sighed, " in the one thing that 
 mattered ; " and then hated herself for harping incessantly 
 on the same string. 
 
 " Kiddies ! " he cried. " Oh, well, don't bother over 
 them. We can get a ready-made one if we like. Plenty 
 of 'em about." H 
 
 She put out a hand as though the road had opened in 
 front of her, and leaning giddily against the railing, lost 
 his next words. What, she asked herself, would he 
 renounce next ? First, five thousand pounds ; next, a 
 probable son, and now . . . yes, he was continuing his 
 career of self-abnegation. Trevan, gout-ridden, had been 
 proposing for months that he should sign on as partner. 
 And he was actually facing the idea with calmness. 
 
 " A smug, professional man," laughed Dorothy, her 
 humour, long in abeyance, awakening at last. " Oh, Dan, 
 you'll soon be going out to dinner ... in goloshes. For 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 379 
 
 that's Madame's latest symbol, you know, for middle-class 
 pleasures." 
 
 " Oh, well," he said, " one can't be for ever dancing the 
 tight-rope. I'll not conform, though, and they'll have to 
 come to me," and forthwith launched into a list of the 
 families who had called him in. 
 
 Even while she found him vulgar, she knew that, by side 
 of her valerian, he was as breezy as a moor wind. Still, 
 the Outlook must go ; he was clear on that point, and 
 Dorothy sighed to hear it. But he was certain of the 
 wisdom of the move, for in his eyes the dismantling of their 
 home loomed large, like a new Fire of London that was to 
 destroy the disease-laden past. 
 
 " And Wobbler ? " she cried. " Oh, Dan, do keep 
 Wobbler." 
 
 " No," said he, " I'll send her back to you ; she's like a 
 barrel of fat now, for she sleeps all day, and merely blinks 
 at the mice." 
 
 So on the bonfire of vanities was to be piled the whole 
 caboodle : Wobbler, the Outlook, the cheque, the wife and 
 the kid that never was. 
 
 When she sighed, he turned on her sharply. 
 
 " What then," cried he, " do you think I'm still going 
 on being choked with all this paraphernalia ? It was all 
 that — pots, kettles, chintz curtains and infernal old women 
 — that jerked us out of double harness. Do you know what 
 I said to myself that first night ? I said, ' Why ain't I 
 out on the hillside with a gipsy ? ' And if I had been, we 
 might have shied the crockery at each other at times, but 
 we shouldn't have . . . dragged in a third party, anyway. 
 Tell you what : there's a deuce of a trouble coming on 
 Carlyon. You know I said just now that I felt as if we were 
 all in a tightening net. Well, unless I'm quite out of my 
 reckoning, that net's tightening round Lanvean, and 
 Carlyon 's got the devil's own time ahead of him." 
 
 Then with a by-the-way he suddenly asked her what she 
 purposed doing with that same Carlyon, asked it in shame- 
 less, yet matter-of-fact tones. Her heart felt heavy as 
 lead, while she felt his eyes glued to her face. 
 
380 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 "Is he going to be the next man ? Or isn't he ? " he 
 asked. " The fool came to me after he'd left you stranded, 
 and played the chivalrous ape. As if that cut any ice with 
 me ! I told him either he wanted you, or he didn't, and if 
 he didn't, 'twasn't a particularly noble dodge to play Sir 
 Galahad at your expense." 
 
 The brutal words rang out, so that when two men 
 passed Dorothy put a hand on his arm to stop him lest 
 they should hear. Yet he took no notice in the passion of 
 the moment, and she remained standing stock-still before 
 him, while from the town the church clock struck the hour. 
 In the still air the sound came up clearly, sonorously. It 
 recalled to the minds of both their nights at the Outlook, 
 the intimate things they knew of each other : her arm flung 
 out in the midst of sleep, his habit of lying with his head 
 pillowed on his arm. 
 
 Their eyes sought each other's face. 
 
 " Do you think, then," she asked, " that there is going 
 to be a next man ? But what is there for Gilbert . . . 
 worse than he's already had to bear ? " 
 
 " Oh," cried Dan, " he's a prig, a Simon Pure, and he 
 showed it. Good Lord ! how can you waste a thought on 
 such a mean-spirited fellow ? There's a kind of humble, 
 crawling, lick-spittle temperament that earns trouble." 
 
 But the next moment he found himself alone, and 
 turned to watch her pass up the steps into the courtyard. 
 
 " Can't bear to hear a word said against the fellow," 
 he grumbled. 
 
 Down at Trevan's he found the old man, with a 
 bandaged leg on a rest before him, reading the evening 
 paper. Laying his finger on a paragraph, he handed the 
 sheet to Dr. Rudd. Then, with a half-smile on his face, 
 he looked up at him. 
 
 " That's plain enough, I think," he observed. 
 
 " I'm afraid so," said Dan. " Well, we've both been 
 certain of it. But I didn't know you'd actually made a 
 report." 
 
 " I had to," rejoined Trevan curtly. " There was no 
 other way out of it. Milk it is, no doubt, and every 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 381 
 
 diphtheric throat we've had, except two, and those were 
 off-shoots, has come from Carlyon's place." 
 
 The paragraph in question was a brief statement to the 
 effect that there were grave reasons for tracing the recent 
 outbreak of diphtheria at Petrockstow to one particular 
 dairy. 
 
 " I saw Carlyon to-day," continued Trevan ; " he offered 
 at once to stop all his contracts." 
 
 " Looks bad, that, to put up no more of a fight," said 
 Rudd. 
 
 " Nonsense," rejoined Trevan ; " don't you go making 
 insinuations and . . . smelling rats in a tiled larder. 
 The man's honest as the day, and if there was a dairy in 
 the whole district that I'd have sworn was above sus- 
 picion, it's Lanvean. Still you can't go against facts. 
 But the whole thing's a mystery. You'll have to see to 
 it all, for I shan't be able to put foot to the ground for 
 another week." 
 
 " Deuced awkward for me," grumbled Dr. Dan. " I 
 suppose you see that — under the circumstances ? " 
 
 " It's a deuced awkward job for everybody," said 
 Trevan. "I'd have given a good deal not to see this 
 second trouble come upon that lad." 
 
 The next evening Dr. Rudd turned aside the shade of 
 the lamp so that his face was in shadow. He was sitting 
 in the surgery at Trevan 's, with his glance wandering 
 over the shelves loaded with labelled bottles, over the 
 sink in the corner and the weighing-machine. The towel 
 on the rail by the round washstand was just slipping to 
 the ground, and for a moment, while the patient opposite 
 droned on, the doctor's whole attention was absorbed in 
 the question as to what movement of the floor would bring 
 the thing down. 
 
 The countryman in the patient's chair was a round- 
 faced, stumpy man, with a mouthy way of rambling on 
 and on in his speech. Just at the moment he was trying 
 to disentangle his mind from the question as to whether 
 the name of the woman with whom he lodged when he 
 had his great illness was Major or Mason. 
 
382 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 " Wiltshire, aren't you ? " asked Dr. Rudd, freeing his 
 own mind from the matter of the towel. 
 
 " From Devizes way. That used to be our market 
 town." 
 
 " Mr. Carlyon engaged you from there," said the doctor, 
 " and you've been handling the milk, filtering it through 
 cotton- wool, and so on, ever since ? " 
 
 The man nodded, bewildered at the amusement written 
 on the doctor's face. 
 
 When the fellow was gone, Dr. Dan returned to his 
 chair and laughed aloud. For it was the irony of the 
 affair that struck him first. It had come by now to a 
 clear issue : here in his hands was the hinge upon which 
 turned all the trouble at Lanvean. There was no em- 
 broidery of the facts going on in his own mind at all. He 
 wanted to see fortune rain her spite on Carlyon 's head, 
 to deride him, to irritate him, for the business of twisting 
 heart-strings was too grandiloquent a fate in these trivial 
 days. He longed to see the man stung by a gadfly, not 
 stabbed by a traitor. 
 
 And the gadfly had been produced by fate, in the form 
 of a germ ; so far, so good. Yet now this same jade, 
 Fortune, wanted Rudd himself to take a turn at the 
 game ; to sit down at the table and play a hand, in fact. ; 
 Only by holding his tongue, by silence and reticence ; 
 such an easy game for some, though not for the doctor, 
 whose nature it was to spread himself. A deep disgust 
 at the trick played on himself by fortune even sent a 
 qualm of sickness through Dr. Dan's body, for while he 
 desired nothing so much as to sit among the spectators 
 and see this fellow Carlyon made a butt of, yet he hated 
 being asked to come on the stage himself, even though 
 his role would be but to say nothing. 
 
 This part he knew it was impossible for him to play ; 
 he could not contemplate for a moment even such a 
 measure of revenge on Gilbert as would be involved in 
 silence with regard to the discovery he had made to-night. 
 He was like a man who, burning in the torrent of passion, 
 wavering to and fro in the draught of it, was yet held 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 383 
 
 back by a mighty hand, a hand he had no more power 
 to push aside than if he were a child. But the hand in 
 question was the feeling he had always denied as existing 
 for him. 
 
 So, leaning back in his place, he hugged himself and, 
 accepting the mockery of his position, raged in mind, as 
 he had done forty times before, at his failures to rise 
 above the prejudice that was written on his heart by the 
 centuries. First, there was the money, Madame's five 
 thousand, that once or twice he had tried to dissipate in 
 spasms of premeditated lavishness, painfully, as one who 
 sits down to baked meats when he prefers pulse. Second, 
 there was the tangle of issues that he could not cut, in- 
 volved in the sorry problem of Jonathan the Undesired. 
 Here he had been turned aside by no obstacle more 
 dreadful than a hand on the coverlet, as in that other 
 matter of his wife he had been deterred from asserting 
 the average man's defence of his own property by the 
 sway of something in himself that was infinitely stronger 
 than passion, than love of possession, something that 
 even now he would not name . . . though he knew very 
 well in his heart what it was. 
 
 Possession ! What is possession of a woman, or mastery 
 of a man, when you have upon you the other hunger, 
 that is not like hunger, since it can never be satisfied, 
 but with feeding grows ever hungrier, and yet ever more 
 satisfying ? 
 
 The next day he crossed the passage from the surgery 
 with a telegram in his hand. 
 
 " Read that," he said to Trevan. 
 
 At the sound of his voice the old man, who had been 
 nodding drowsily, sat up, suddenly alert. 
 
 " You know," said Rudd quietly, " a man came in from 
 Lanvean yesterday, one employed in the dairy. I sent 
 up a swab from his throat, and here's the answer." 
 
 Trevan read aloud the words : 
 
 " ' Organism present.' From the Clinical Research 
 people, I suppose," he said, looking up. 
 
 " Yes," said Rudd, " that's the Klebs-Loffler bacillus. 
 
384 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 The man's a diphtheria carrier. I've got the whole history 
 of his throat." 
 
 Trevan whistled. 
 
 " Yes," said Dr. Dan, " the god from the machine has 
 stepped down this time, and takes the form of one Williams, 
 a mealy-mouthed, loose-lipped chap that came here with 
 a swollen throat. Clear enough, isn't it ? " 
 
 The eyes of the two men sparkled with the glee of 
 adventurers, since even the discovery of " pay dirt " palls 
 before the nugget-finding of the mind. 
 
 " Why," asked Trevan curiously, " didn't you bring 
 the man in to me ? But you wanted to do it off your own 
 bat, I suppose. Thank goodness, though, it's a lift for 
 Carlyon. For it exculpates him from all real blame. It's 
 a bit of bad luck for him, of course, but that's the worst 
 that can be said." 
 
 " Yes," said Dr. Dan, looking years older in his sudden 
 fit of depression, " Carlyon 's all right. He always comes 
 up top, it seems." 
 
 Trevan eyed the other over his glasses. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you couldn't do anything but what 
 you did, of course. But it's queer that you should be the 
 man to find it out. Still, it's a feather in your cap." 
 
 " Nonsense, it's the luck of the game. And damned 
 bad luck, too. Am I cut out for the part of dragon-slayer, 
 to rescue distressed knights, like this fellow ? It's melo- 
 drama at its worst, the whole thing is. I make you a 
 present of the case, Trevan. I won't do another thing 
 in this job. Carlyon 's fate, after this, is in your hands." 
 
 " And a life or two gone, and a few people the weaker all 
 their lives for this mischance. Carlyon 's likely to worry 
 far more over that than over the money loss." 
 
 " Curse the fellow ! " exclaimed Rudd ; " don't get 
 sentimental over him, Trevan." 
 
 The old doctor waited a second, watching Dan as, fierce 
 as a cat, he glared into the fire. 
 
 " All the same," said he quietly, "I'm old fashioned 
 enough to think that you ought to be glad, too, that you've 
 come out top in this affair yourself." 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 385 
 
 " As how ? By heaping coals of fire on Carlyon by 
 getting him out of this mess ? 
 
 " Rudd," cried Trevan angrily, " do, for goodness' 
 sake, bother less . . . about deportment. Of course you 
 couldn't possibly do anything but what you've done, 
 the thing being put into your hand. No servant of the 
 public could possibly mess up his work with his private 
 affairs in the way you keep hinting at. Do, for once in 
 your life, do a decent thing decently and don't go about 
 perpetually with a rope round your neck, saying to every 
 passer-by : ' Come, hang me up to the nearest tree/ 
 You ought to go to work muzzled, then there'd be a chance 
 of your being taken for a decent citizen." 
 
 " So I did, Trevan, so I did," cried Dan, with a laugh, 
 being hugely delighted by this tribute to his powers as 
 an actor. 
 
 " And," continued the old doctor, " the gods you so 
 frequently call upon have shown some sense this time, 
 since they've made you, perhaps at some cost to your 
 shifty self, redress the balance a bit for a man you've 
 injured." 
 
 " What, Carlyon ? " exclaimed Rudd, " and how have 
 I injured him ? " 
 
 " When a husband," said Trevan firmly, " puts his wife 
 to the doors and leaves her to shift for herself . . . she's 
 a danger like an infernal machine to every man." 
 
 " So that's what I've done, have I ? " said Dan falling 
 into a brooding fit, with eyes that saw nothing of the room 
 before him. 
 
 He was longing, in fact, to go up to Denzell and play 
 himself into a world of dreams, till out of the circle woven 
 by the notes he would see his wife's face rise to the surface 
 and draw nearer and nearer to him, till together they two 
 would lose all sense of separateness. 
 
 Later on he let himself out of the house, and lurching 
 up the hill in his heavy boots, paused outside the gates of 
 Denzell. Madame had given him a key, and he had the 
 right of entry till eleven at night. 
 
 On the terrace he paused. The whole house was in 
 
 25 
 
386 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 darkness, and overhead the fleecy clouds chased each 
 other across the sky. The only sound was the noise of a 
 huffle of wind that rose and fell. Then he quietly retraced 
 his steps, returning by the way he had come in bitter scorn 
 of himself and his dreams. 
 
 As he walked between the tall box hedges a spasm of 
 laughter shook him at thought of the ludicrous picture of 
 Carlyon watching gallons of precious milk pouring down 
 the drains, with the splendid figure of himself the deliverer, 
 coming in to turn the tap off and leading Jem Williams 
 by the ear as the fans et origo of the mischief. 
 
 Yet things fell out not exactly as he had expected, for, 
 though the authorities expressed themselves as perfectly 
 satisfied, the back courts of Petrockstow judged the 
 diphtheria " carrier " to be but one more instance of 
 Dr. Dan's malevolent activity. That a man could carry 
 germs, with which they did not hold at all, for years, was 
 as impossible to believe as it was to put faith in the sulphur- 
 burning, which merely spoilt one's curtains and carpets. 
 Rudd had been, as before, bought by Carlyon, and because 
 he was a plausible devil, the high humbugs who rule the 
 destinies of humble folk pretended to believe him. Yet 
 the affair only added to the doctor's prestige, since brain- 
 power is never recognized by simple people except when 
 displayed in craft and cunning. Good people are never 
 over-clever. 
 
 One day in the middle of January Mrs. Barrable met 
 the doctor on the threshold of the Outlook. In her long 
 lean face he read the usual kind of disaster, the failure of 
 a pudding, or a smash among the crockery. Yet, indeed, 
 it was a more serious event this time, for the Heller, the 
 wizened cat with the split ear, that was now the only 
 living reminder of Dorothy about the house, had been 
 missing a matter of three days — all the time the doctor 
 had been at sea, and longer. 
 
 At the news Dr. Dan's face grew grave, for, although 
 Wobbler, at times when little tommies were attractive, 
 sometimes spent a night out, this was an occasion not to 
 be so accounted for. 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 387 
 
 Soon, the place being all agog and the hue and cry 
 raised in real earnest, she was discovered mewing from a 
 high elm in the churchyard, up some sixty or seventy feet. 
 Mrs. Barrable appeared, running between the graves with 
 a plate of lights, while Dr. Rudd, promising the boys who 
 had driven the cat a speedy punishment, set a ladder 
 against the tree with Sam Cornish's help. All down 
 Church Street people hung out of their windows shouting 
 advice, but the beast crept ever further and further out 
 on the branch, refusing, with the one idiotic failure of the 
 cat's intelligence, to descend backwards by hanging from 
 her incurved claws. 
 
 The first ladder was too short, but when a second was 
 brought and Sam insisted on going up with the doctor, 
 the sight of the two was too much for Wobbler. With a 
 yell she dropped to earth, striking with her forepaws on 
 the churchyard path, and in a flash was gone. 
 
 Descending rapidly, and furious at the absurd scene, 
 Dr. Rudd fell upon one of the boys whom his mates 
 declared to be more guilty than the rest and, holding him 
 by the collar of his coat, committed a severe assault on 
 that portion of the human frame which might suitably 
 be called God's Providence and Man's Opportunity. 
 
 The sequel was a summons for assault by the boy's 
 father, a fish buyer of peculiarly rapacious talents, who 
 found by this means a way of paying back old scores. 
 
 At Teravel a few days later Mrs. Rosewarne opened the 
 paper to find a half-column devoted to the affair. The 
 reporter, revelling in this chance of picturesque writing, 
 had given full weight to the crowd of fishermen who 
 turned out to support the doctor in his struggle with the 
 dealer. 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne's attitude that day was one of studied 
 concern. Metaphorically, she went about the house with 
 soft footsteps, lest ugly echoes should be aroused. 
 
 But when the doctor returned from the Police Court, 
 the centre of a triumphing crowd, for the fine had been 
 a nominal one, he ordered a car at once, and finding 
 Wobbler with two prematurely-born rats of kittens, packed 
 
 25* 
 
388 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 the whole family into a hat-box and set out for Teravel. 
 Long before he reached the hill behind Mawgan, the blood 
 was running colder in his veins. And he felt in two minds 
 about turning back. 
 
 Suddenly, while waiting in the drawing-room, he remem- 
 bered his wife's dislike of the peaked cap that made him 
 look like a railway porter, and dropped it behind the sofa, 
 where it was found next day by a conscientious house- 
 maid who brought it solemnly to Mrs. Rosewarne. By 
 that lady it was laid away in a wardrobe and not 
 infrequently contemplated as a symbol of the things for 
 which women sell themselves. 
 
 When Dorothy appeared in the doorway, the doctor 
 gravely handed her the box. 
 
 " Oh, Dan, how good of you," she cried, while the 
 wobbling one crept out and milk was fetched. Mean- 
 while, the two humans wondered what on earth they were 
 to say next to each other. 
 
 Dorothy could do nothing at first but recite to the 
 cat Mrs. Barrable's derisive couplet : 
 
 " God made the nigger ; made him in the night ; 
 Made him in a hurry and forgot to make him white." 
 
 But at last Dan broke the ice in characteristic fashion, 
 chortling over his homeric fight ; describing the magis- 
 trates, led by his worshipful the mayor, a meagre, lean 
 and sinister potentate of a small world, with the dormouse 
 in tawny grey who echoed him, and the fierce, eager, thin- 
 lipped person who sadly wanted a new set of teeth and a 
 fresh outlook. 
 
 " They're very happy, no doubt," sighed Dorothy, 
 " for they fit." 
 
 She thought unhappily of one who did not. Then tea 
 came in, with Mrs. Rosewarne, and the scene changed. 
 For being in devilish mood, since her husband was going 
 on the political tramp again, that lady seized the occasion 
 to dilate on ■ " appearances " and how they should be 
 preserved. 
 
SAND IN THE MACHINE 389 
 
 At last husband and wife were left alone, both staring 
 down at the valley where the last rays of light were dying 
 on the hillside. 
 
 " Dan," said she, " I wanted to say how glad I am 
 that you were able to save Gilbert from the worst part of 
 this trouble . . . the sense that he had risked lives through 
 mere carelessness." 
 
 *' You mean," he smiled, " that my . . . discovery 
 turned it all into what the lawyers call the Act of God ? 
 Well, I suppose it did." 
 
 " Yes," said she gravely, " you've brought him good, 
 and I've brought him evil. Don't you know what it is 
 to look at a fine thing that someone's made ... a picture, 
 perhaps . . . and to feel how happy it would make one 
 to know it was one's own work ? You ought to feel happy, 
 Dan, at what you've done for him, I think." 
 
 " I'm not then," he cried ; " I'm the good man malgrelui, 
 and I don't like it. It's a ... a pappy fate." 
 
 She laughed outright, and in the laugh the last trace of 
 cold aloofness vanished. 
 
 " Dan," she cried, " mayn't I come back ? . . . Mayn't 
 I come back, with Wobbler ? " 
 
 The black imp sat now in the hat-box crooning over 
 her family in front of the fire. " You know you did care 
 a little," she persisted ; " you did, or you wouldn't have 
 taken so much trouble about her. Mayn't I come ? " 
 
 " Do you know what I'm like ? " he demanded fiercely. 
 
 At that humour came once more to the rescue. 
 
 " Oh, Dan," she exclaimed, "if I don't, it's not for 
 want of explanations. But you do tell things upside- 
 down. And every time you do something right, you try 
 to prove how much grander it would be if you'd done it 
 wrong." 
 
 Clutching his coat-collar, he gravely considered this 
 analysis of himself. 
 
 " Dorothy," he cried delightedly, " you understand me." 
 
 It was the proudest moment of their joint lives, for 
 they had worked incessantly to attain this eminence, or 
 rather this pin-point excrescence on the map of other 
 
390 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 people's lives, though in his eyes a veritable mountain of 
 achievement. 
 
 When they drove away with Wobbler & Co. yelling in 
 the hat-box, Mr. Rosewarne turned to his wife with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Dorothy," said he, " will be a woman of the world 
 before she dies . . . under his tuition." 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " My dear," she observed, " it's my belief they are 
 beginning to see . . ." 
 
 " What has been apparent to everybody for months," 
 said he dryly. 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne shook her head, for she shrewdly sus- 
 pected that he meant one thing and she another. His 
 next words proved it, for they were : 
 
 " They're both so anxious to be genuine that they 
 won't take love on any but the most explicit terms." 
 
 " And," said she, "he is so explicit, as you call it, 
 that he must needs turn himself inside-out before the 
 whole countryside. That police-court business, Philip ! 
 Horrible ! " 
 
 " Oh, well," said he tolerantly, " he likes the footlights, 
 of course." 
 
 " And so my poor child has to like them, too," exclaimed 
 she. 
 
 " That," said he gravely, " is marriage, my dear." 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE TURNING WHEEL 
 
 IN the bitter stillness of the dawn, as Dr. Rudd turned 
 down the road towards Lanvean Bay, nothing seemed 
 alive except the cock on a distant farm that crowed against 
 the departing hoots of the night owl. Through a gap in 
 the tamarisks the doctor could catch a glimpse of the 
 daymark on Stepper Point rising like a beleaguered tower 
 above the waves. A mist, borne inland from the Atlantic, 
 was creeping over the fields and slowly blotting out such 
 features of the landscape as were already revealed by the 
 approaching daylight. 
 
 The roads had been ice-bound for days, and in the cold 
 that clogged the blood and sapped the courage Dr. Dan's 
 spirit was at its lowest ebb. He had come, too, from a 
 promise of life that was lost at its very start. Now, in the 
 half-darkness, with nothing stirring in all the great arm 
 of the creeping tide, the hand of death seemed hovering 
 over the greyness of sea and sand, as the fingers of the 
 frost-fog laid their grip on everything alike. 
 
 All along the beach the line of high tide was marked 
 by a scurf of brown weed stretching across the greyness 
 like a fold in the sand. A solitary figure walked slowly 
 along at the edge of the surf, pausing every now and then 
 to glance out to sea, and often standing, as one could see 
 by the raised arms, to stare fixedly beneath the pent- 
 house of the hands. The lonely watcher, a boy on 
 the look-out for wreckage apparently, drew the doctor's 
 attention. Yet, since, whenever he delayed, his breath 
 
 391 
 
392 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 hung in air and chill fingers seemed to steal beneath the 
 three coats he wore, again and again he hurried on. But 
 only to be stopped once more by some persistent force 
 that drew his gaze to the boy. Through the mist there 
 came ever and again the splash of a wave, as though the 
 lid of a box had lifted and fallen. 
 
 Next the doctor himself stood at gaze, pointing out to 
 sea, for the dark object in the water which he had at 
 first taken to be a mass of wreckage, was simply a boat 
 that rose and fell on the waves and was being slowly 
 carried out to sea by the receding tide. Crossing the 
 bridge, Dr. Rudd turned his face resolutely towards the 
 ascending hill and yet again was drawn back to the shore. 
 For he realized now that the long cry which he had taken 
 to be a sea-bird's call was actually a shout from the boy, 
 a shout for help. The mystery of the boat grew greater, 
 for it was obviously unsteered, now rising clear on the 
 curve of a wave and now sinking in the trough of it. 
 
 " There's men in it," cried the boy as the doctor came 
 up, taking the last steps at a run ; " they are hanging over 
 their oars. I've seed 'em through father's glasses. 'Twas 
 all but dark when I got here, but now you can make 'em 
 out as clear as clear." 
 
 The doctor exclaimed, for, as he saw now with the glasses 
 at his eyes, not a man was stirring of the four aboard, three 
 at the sweeps and one in the stern, though the shifting 
 mist had given a semblance of life and movement to the 
 whole. 
 
 Dr. Dan measured the distance from the shore and then, 
 stooping, began to unlace his boots. 
 
 " Grr-r," cried he, as, kicking them off, he went plump 
 into a pool that sucked upwards from the damp sand 
 on which he stood. He was a strong swimmer, but cramp 
 in that icy water was always possible. 
 
 Thus he summed up the situation : no boat at Lanvean ; 
 nothing nearer, in fact, than Petrockstow, and the men 
 numbed and unconscious, evidently after a night at sea. 
 There was just a chance of saving them, but every moment 
 was precious. 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 393 
 
 He turned to the boy. 
 
 " Five shillings," said he, " if you're at Lanvean and 
 have roused the place in . . . say a quarter of an hour. 
 Tell 'em there's a boat in the bay with men in it, perhaps 
 living, perhaps dead. They're to bring blankets and 
 spirits, and to get hot water and fires as quick as they can. 
 Look alive, now." 
 
 But even while he was still speaking the boy's figure 
 was flying up the beach and over the dunes. In a few 
 moments the doctor was alone, with his feet in an ice- 
 cold puddle and his skin going goose-flesh all over at the 
 task before him. Yet, even as he clutched his clothes 
 round him, he was stripping the buttons out of their 
 holes in long rending sweeps of decision. 
 
 The cold air made him feel as though he were clad in 
 ice-mail, but he forgot everything in the greater fear of 
 being afraid, as he took the water running, with a plunge 
 into the surf like a water-dog. 
 
 The sea, however, was warmer than the air, and with 
 the momentum of the first shock the blood rushed through 
 his veins. It was not until he caught the gunwale of 
 the boat with his hand that he realized how the cold was 
 sapping his strength. Now, as he swung by the side, he 
 feared that the effort to lift himself over would be im- 
 possible. Then, for a second, consciousness seemed to 
 fade, till he made a last appeal to his courage, to his love 
 of mastery, for by now the beach was alive and the helpers 
 were at hand. The boy had done his errand well. 
 
 With a surging splash he swung himself aboard and 
 tumbled on to the bottom boards. At first the men 
 leaning across the oars seemed scarcely human figures 
 at all, for every stitch of their rough clothes was sheathed 
 in frost-mail. A fifth who crouched in the stern had 
 caught less of the rime. The doctor pulled out the spare 
 oars, and bending to them as he stood, shrank from the 
 task of loosening those fingers that had frozen to the 
 sweeps. 
 
 Half a dozen hands beached her, and running into the 
 surf, they pulled the men out and tumbled them on the 
 
394 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 sand. With a nip from Carlyon's brandy-flask and a pile 
 of coats flung on his back, the doctor got to work. 
 
 It was a hopeless task, it seemed, till the workers, 
 noticing that the man on the bottom boards was not so 
 pickled in frost as the others, devoted all their efforts to 
 bringing him back from the dead. 
 
 By the time the world was awake one great massive 
 fellow, with the rings in his ears that seamen wear for 
 sore eyes, had come back through the dark passage. 
 
 The doctor stood looking down regretfully on the others, 
 while they carried the sole survivor up to the farm and 
 laid him in the bed, piled with feather ties, on which old 
 Will Carlyon had died. They were obviously not English- 
 men, these long thin fellows with fine heads who lay 
 stretched out with their toes to the sea that had played 
 with them once too often. By the name on the boat, 
 Petite Jeanne, they must be French ; probably from a 
 cargo boat bound for Bristol. 
 
 The doctor felt the same distress that a canny house- 
 wife knows at some instance of heart-rending waste. 
 
 " Four dead and only one living," grumbled he to 
 Gilbert. 
 
 That night, with the wind whistling round the house 
 and the trees dripping outside in the relaxed grip of the 
 frost, Dorothy sat by the fire in the room at Lanvean 
 that had been given over to her husband. For Trevan, 
 summoned hurriedly when the doctor collapsed, had 
 ordered his colleague, on pain of pleurisy and pneumonia, 
 to go straight to bed. 
 
 The room, when the doctor awoke towards evening, was 
 full of the smell of the tea and toast that had been brought 
 in for the watcher. Staring at his surroundings, the 
 doctor at first fancied himself to be in the midst of a 
 fever-dream. For he lay in what had been Jonathan's 
 nursery, with, instead of the cot, a brass bedstead in the 
 corner. He had, in fact, been put in this room simply 
 because of the bed, which was the only modern one in 
 the house. 
 
 Suddenly he found his wife's eyes on him, and awoke 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 395 
 
 to the fact that she was holding a cup of tea towards him, 
 and — that he had just come out of an adventure; one, 
 too, that, if not precisely heroic, was at any rate creditable. 
 Moving his feet luxuriously to and fro on Mrs. Parsons' 
 carefully cherished goose-feathers, he glanced through the 
 curtains, rejoicing in the wind and rain outside that 
 enhanced the cosy sense of achievement within. 
 
 " Anything known of the men yet," he asked. " They 
 were French, of course." 
 
 '* Yes," answered Dorothy, " they got a wire in Petrock- 
 stow to-night. They came from a French coaster return- 
 ing in ballast from Bristol. It struck last night in the 
 fog and the crew had to take to the boats. Then they 
 lost their bearings and were frozen, of course, by the 
 bitter night. But the second boat got into port all right." 
 
 " Then these were the only ones of the crew lost, these 
 four," said he. 
 
 Quick as he was to note expressions, he observed some- 
 thing of embarrassment on his wife's face. 
 
 " The fifth's not dead, is he ?" he exclaimed, " but, no, 
 he couldn't be." 
 
 " No, no," cried she, " he's eaten well and is up before 
 the fire in the kitchen." 
 
 " I should like to see him," said Dr. Dan ; " bring him up 
 here, Dorothy, and we'll have a yarn." 
 
 " Oh, no," said she hastily, " you're not well enough, 
 I'm sure you're not. You look as feverish as possible." 
 
 But he would not be denied, and in a few minutes Dorothy 
 ushered in . . . the survivor. But she could not bear to 
 stay, and hurrying out of the room, let a good half-hour 
 elapse before she appeared again. 
 
 She found her husband alone and lying back on the 
 pillows with a wry smile on his face. 
 
 " Do you know," he said, looking at her with a mocking 
 air, " I feel as if I'd just gritted my teeth on a rock when I 
 expected cake ? Here have I been thinking I'd done a fine 
 deed, saved a fellow-creature, played, in short, the hero. 
 And lo ! the mountain in labour has brought forth some- 
 thing less than a mouse." 
 
396 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 Behind his jesting she discerned a very bitter feeling, 
 for this great hulking French fellow, with hands like 
 flapping seals and fish-like gaze, who could barely put 
 together his syllables, was evidently a half-witted giant, 
 suffered aboard, no doubt, only for the brute strength of 
 his muscles. 
 
 " And those others," said he, " lying stretched out on the 
 floor of the barn, those splendid fellows ! " 
 
 It was a slap in the face from that Almighty Jester 
 behind the scenes. 
 
 " Oh, Dan," she whispered, " I am so sorry," and creep- 
 ing closer, found his arm around her. 
 
 With a smile he remembered how fiercely in the old days 
 he would have rejected this slave sentiment of pity and 
 fellow-feeling. Yet now they lay side by side like two 
 children, for the man was shaken profoundly by this last 
 mocking rejection at the hand of destiny. He found 
 himself, too, like one stripped of his gauds and desirous 
 above all things of being seen . . . honestly, by at least 
 one person. 
 
 When he began to talk it was the room in which they lay 
 that supplied the suggestion. He illustrated it all, in fact, 
 turning over on his side and pointing in the dim light to 
 show where the cot stood, where the table at which Ann 
 Michell sat with her knitting. At the introduction of him- 
 self into the shadow-play Dorothy drew a deep breath, but 
 kept silence while she watched him in fancy with his hand 
 on the powders, till at length it came to the baby's fingers 
 that closed round his own and his final rejection of his own 
 theories. 
 
 At the failure of the doctor's will she lay still, with a 
 quiet " Thank God " on her lips. 
 
 " Aren't you ashamed of me?" asked he, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " Oh, Dan, how could I be ? " exclaimed she, and knew 
 now that before her lay the hardest task of all, a task that 
 every wise person in the world would call her fool for 
 essaying. 
 
 "But you know . . . my theories ?" he asked demurely. 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 397 
 
 " And what do theories matter ? " asked she, with a fine 
 disregard of all the foolish dreaming of philosophers. " It's 
 what you are, not what you think, that matters," she 
 continued, and demolished another sand-castle of psycho- 
 logy. 
 
 " There I don't agree," cried he, and was ready to argue 
 it with her till he found that her thoughts were obviously 
 far away from mere cloud-castles. 
 
 For her mind was painfully groping, as it were, in the 
 void, after a means of breaking down all the barriers 
 between them. She could not fail, therefore, to come 
 suddenly on her own trial and temptation. All the time it 
 had been looming through the darkness, like something to 
 which one would fain deny existence, yet cannot. 
 
 With her heart -beats thudding painfully she began — 
 and then found herself embarked, instead, on the foolish 
 little story, never told to him before, of how she had slept 
 in his room at Mam Cornish's on the night when he never 
 returned. 
 
 Before this tale was told she realized that the other 
 must remain for ever where it was — deep in her own 
 memory and in Trevan's. Between herself and Dan there 
 would always then be one dividing wall, a wall as thin as 
 gossamer, yet never really down. It was impossible for 
 her nature to take the plunge he took so easily, because he 
 half enjoyed the tragedy of his own shortcomings. The 
 shadow of a lie, which is a truth untold, must always exist 
 between them. 
 
 Though she shrank from the conclusion and would have 
 denied it strenuously, her instinct told her that only a 
 great man could have forgiven the impulse from the jungle- 
 depths that had seized her in respect to Carlyon. Dr. Dan 
 was in all essentials just a child to be managed ; he would 
 never know as he was known. 
 
 It was his ultimate condemnation. But as he drew her 
 closer, seeing, as he fancied, all the shadows flee away, he 
 sighed in deep content. And though Dorothy, as the far 
 older soul, felt no such comfort, she realized, for the first 
 time, the task set before her womanhood, the task of 
 
398 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 holding before his eyes the ideal of a woman who never 
 existed. 
 
 At noon next day arrived the mate of the Petite Jeanne, 
 in order to identify the bodies. Not even the grim task 
 before him could sober the fellow's spirits ; and within 
 twenty minutes of his arrival he had told Gilbert his 
 family history. How he, Gustave, known as Bonvoisin, 
 had an only brother who was in the onion business when 
 he lived, but who now slept beneath the Channel waves, 
 since the boat on which he served had simply vanished one 
 dark night ; sunk, of course, with all hands aboard. Both 
 he himself and this Jean Bonvoisin were seamen, it 
 appeared, though not of sea-faring blood ; that was the 
 strange thing. And these two brothers were all the 
 children the good God had given their parents. 
 
 A merry, twinkling fellow, this Bonvoisin, who was, in 
 fact, most aptly named. Everyone knew his affairs, he 
 said gaily. He was also blithely confident that everyone 
 wanted to know them. So, sampling the rough Cornish 
 cider and pulling the tips of his pointed beard that was 
 golden at the ends, he smacked the half-witted Ulysses 
 on the shoulder and told him that he was evidently born to 
 be hanged. 
 
 Looking up suddenly, Bonvoisin caught sight of Ann 
 Michell standing at the foot of the stairs, with the light from 
 the overhead window full on her white face. For one 
 flashing second there was a silence, till, with a quick shake 
 of his head, the man turned again towards his host. He 
 had been obviously excited before, as men are when 
 death, striking to right and left, yet leaves themselves 
 untouched, but now in sober fashion he asked to be allowed 
 to begin his business. 
 
 The echo of the two men's voices died away down the 
 passage, while Ann stood staring through the dim shadows 
 of it to the winter sunshine outside. 
 
 " What is it ? " whispered Mrs. Parsons, coming up to 
 her niece with that resolute movement of hers that was 
 like the glide of a thing running on castors. " What's the 
 matter ? " 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 399 
 
 " It's Jean's brother," answered Ann, in the same tense 
 tone. " It's Gustave, Jean's brother, my man's brother. 
 I've felt it coming ever since I knew it was a French boat." 
 
 The shambling idiot scrambled across the sunny yard 
 after the two men who had entered the barn. 
 
 " What'll you do ? " asked Mrs. Parsons, who never now 
 identified herself with her niece's proceedings. Though 
 she had brought this woman to the house, she elaborately 
 washed her hands of all that might ensue. 
 
 " I don't know, I must think," answered Ann, who knew 
 that, now the first danger of hasty speech was over, a 
 possible way out might be found. She must wait and 
 watch, while pretending absolute unconcern. 
 
 When she served the seaman, then, at dinner, it was with 
 a blank face. Yet the second night she knew he was not 
 only dangerous, but had fixed on the line he intended to 
 take. 
 
 Being in no hurry to leave a prosperous farm, Bonvoisin 
 elected to stay over the funeral, in order that he might see 
 his mates safely anchored in St. Meryn churchyard. An 
 entenement necessarily implied baked meats, and so he 
 wired his decision to the patron of the Petite Jeanne. 
 
 In the evening, when he was sitting with Carlyon in the 
 dining-room, he looked across the table at Ann in the 
 doorway. There was, to anyone in the secret, an un- 
 doubted challenge in his eyes. Mrs. Parsons over her 
 knitting in the corner saw it perfectly ; Ann, too, indubit- 
 ably caught it, and came farther into the room. She had 
 accepted the challenge in whatever form it was to come. 
 
 " It was my father," said Bonvoisin, answering some 
 remark of Gilbert's that the watcher in the doorway had 
 missed, " my old father who said that. He was always 
 grumbling, you see. But then he had something to 
 grumble at when both his sons took to the sea. 
 
 " My father," continued he, leaning back meditatively, 
 " I can see him, monsieur, as clearly as I see you. We 
 came from Montreuil, my brother Jean and I, from Mon- 
 treuil, far inland from the sea. And my father is one, as 
 they say, who is sealed of the company of the earth. His 
 
400 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 clothes are coloured with it, his wrinkled face is like an old 
 stone. And he works on the earth, cutting faggots and 
 digging in his garden still . . . with no child, no grand- 
 child, to help him." 
 
 " But, surely, now there is but one of you left," said 
 Gilbert, " you will go back ? " 
 
 Ann drew a long breath, and coming in, sat down by the 
 table. She realized now from what point the attack was 
 to come. 
 
 " Ah, Mademoiselle," said Bonvoisin, turning to her, 
 " I interest you ? You would like to hear about my old 
 father ? 
 
 " I will, then, make a picture for you," said he, crossing 
 his outstretched legs and pulling out his beard with his 
 brown fingers ; everything about the man ran to points, 
 with his long head and the upturned tilt of his tawny 
 moustaches. " See then," said he, his eyes dreaming. 
 " At the end of the poplar alley is a mist, a thin mist that 
 lies between the trees. Above the silvery trunks the 
 leaves flutter. In the wood a nightingale sings and by the 
 water a frog croaks. All along the roads stand the piles 
 of reed-faggots. And by the stream squats an old man . . . 
 like a frog. By his side is a reed-cutter's hook, and he is 
 struggling to lift a plank that has slipped into the water. 
 That is my father, always struggling, you see, but not 
 always alone ... as now. 
 
 ": You see, my friends, what I would show you ? " 
 
 " We see," replied the stolid company of English folk. 
 
 " Again and again my father tries to lift up the plank," 
 continued the sailor, " but instead of swearing, he laughs, 
 till, in the end, he has to wipe away the tears with the back 
 of his hand. But the workpeople are near, at work on their 
 gardens, and at last a girl hurries to help him. Together, 
 then, they struggle and laugh. We laugh often, we 
 French, you know. Then the field-folk lean on their hoes 
 to watch the donkey being harnessed into the cart that 
 stands tilted up on the white ruts of the dusty road. 
 
 " ' Hold ! hold ! ' they shout, ' how goes it ? ' 
 
 " ' It goes well/ says Paul, my father. ' The sun warms, 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 401 
 
 the seed pushes, the bread feeds.' They call him the frog, 
 you know, but he is a philosopher, all the same, is my 
 father. 
 
 " ' And the wife ? ' they shout. ' How's she ? ' 
 
 " ' Ah, the wife,' says he, ' she has la douleur everywhere. 
 She creaks and she aches. And the heart — ah, she is 
 souffrante always, the wife. But I say to her : " Just you 
 look at me. I know all about it, for I'm just the same. 
 Aches and pains ? I have them all. But, then, I have 
 spirit. I don't give way. I work." ■ And off drives my 
 father. The legs of the donkey totter. The nightingale 
 tries more notes. The frogs croak. The wind turns the 
 rye to the colour of flax. 
 
 " My father lives below the town ramparts in the Basse 
 Ville, where low cottages lie jumbled about between 
 orchards and gardens. He sits in the doorway sipping 
 broth out of a brown bowl, with a roll of bread by his 
 side. He eats onion and potato soup, making his bony jaws 
 do double work because he is toothless. The moonbeams 
 shine down into the garden, where there is a statue without 
 arms, in a bed of artichokes. It is a woman in a cloak, 
 with moss in the folds of her dress. Once he told me he 
 dreamt he saw her bend her elbow and stoop to gather up 
 her skirts. She has become his patron saint secretly. For, 
 like him, she is much at home with the earth. But he never 
 told anyone but me, for fear they should laugh at him. 
 
 " One night the old man found our mother dead by his 
 side. It was then four o'clock in the summer morning, 
 and across the gardens lay a golden light. The old man 
 stood looking out, not exactly thinking much of Germaine, 
 our mother, still less with a tear. Still . . . she must have 
 gone a long distance away. Then he turned back into the 
 room. They asked of him later why he had called no one. 
 But he was surprised at the question. She had lain by his 
 side for so many years, as a good wife should, that he did 
 not see why he should be afraid to lie by her side for a few 
 more hours. That was the way it seemed to him. 
 
 " A few days after the funeral he was driving down the 
 poplar alley again ; there had been several women in long 
 
 26 
 
402 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 black veils and a good procession of men. The coffin, too, 
 looked well. He remembered buying for her once a cap of 
 lace and violet ribbon in the market. They had offered 
 him, too, a maid's confirmation wreath of white flowers. 
 But they had never wanted that, for our mother only 
 rocked the cradle for Jean and me. 
 
 " And Jean is dead, and I, too, am lost to the old man. 
 For I cannot cut myself from the sea, you know. I cannot 
 be happy among the poplars and the reeds. Not I." 
 
 " But/' asked Gilbert, " are there no grandchildren, 
 then ? " 
 
 It was the life of the poplars and the reeds, where the 
 sun shines and the seed pushes, that he understood. He 
 determined to take Bonvoisin out and show him the sheep 
 of the salt marshes. 
 
 " Are there no grandchildren ? " he repeated. 
 
 " Ah," said Bonvoisin, as with a queer smile he glanced 
 down at his lean brown hands, " grandchildren ? Little 
 chicken ? I have none, for my wife is barren these long 
 years. Yet there was one, Jean's child, Jean's only child 
 that I know of, and half-English, too, for the mother was of 
 your race, your Cornish race." 
 
 Ann shivered and her hands on her lap drew the sailor's 
 eyes, so tightly clenched were they. 
 
 " What would you ? " continued Bonvoisin. " Jean was a 
 sailor, and went about doing as men do. And then after 
 a time there was a son, Jean's son, for God sometimes 
 blesses more freely than the priest. But the mother, 
 Jean's woman, would not give it up, would not come to 
 live with old Paul, my father, and said she had won it and 
 would keep it. I went across to fetch it, begged and 
 promised, for indeed we are not starvelings. But no ! 
 Ah . . . these cursed English women, with the hearts of 
 stone ! 
 
 " But my father went alone to his garden patch after 
 Germaine was gone. ' There,' he cried,' you see ? ' For 
 the weeds were springing and the beds not yet prepared 
 for sowing. * When my Germaine was alive she was 
 always groaning/ said he, ' and now she's put away all 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 403 
 
 comfortable, she's left me to struggle on alone.' For he 
 grudged to her her rest, did Paul, my father, since he 
 was alone, you see ; all alone, because of the strong will 
 of that Englishwoman." 
 
 Later on that night Ann stole down the front stairs 
 in her stockinged feet, for she knew that Bonvoisin was 
 waiting in the kitchen to speak to her. Slipping across 
 the hall and down the passage, she peered into the room. 
 The Frenchman in his rough seafaring clothes stood 
 looking down on the crackling tamarisk fire. The smoke- 
 stained walls all round, with the man's figure in the midst, 
 his dark eyes and tanned skin a part of the dim light, 
 brought back to her mind the little cabin lighted by a 
 swing lamp in which Jean had passed much of his day, 
 big Jean, the man sealed of the company of the sea, big 
 and silent, not garrulous like this Gustave. 
 
 vShould she not keep what she had won ? This she 
 asked herself, and turning resolutely away, left the fellow 
 to do his malicious worst. For he should be forestalled 
 in any story he meant to tell. 
 
 When she had finished what she had to say, Gilbert 
 Carlyon turned on her. She had told her story in the 
 baldest possible fashion, while he sat staring into the fire. 
 Over in the kitchen, for she had left the dining-room door 
 open, Bonvoisin must have heard the sound of her voice. 
 
 " You," said Gilbert, " are the woman who refused 
 the child to these old people ? But I don't understand." 
 
 "It is as I say," repeated she, " Bonvoisin's brother 
 Jean was my . . . man. Oh," she cried ; it was the first 
 sign of discomposure she had shown, and it came because 
 she caught a look of suffering on his face, " how can I 
 make you understand ? " 
 
 " Try," he said gently ; " I want to know. Your aunt 
 said once . . . she was half telling me, I remember . . . 
 that you took your . . . sunshine. Was that the way 
 of it ? " 
 
 " Yes," said she, fixing her eyes on the red depths of 
 the fire, " I suppose I cared for 'en, but 'twas not so much 
 that as that I wanted a child. I wanted it, for he was a 
 
 26* 
 
 ( 
 
4 o 4 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 grand man and he took me to sea with 'en. Ah, yes, the 
 child's sea-born, same as they say so many of us are. I 
 didn't care, though he'd have married me if he'd lived. 
 No, I didn't care same as some women do when I heard 
 he was gone. For I'd got what I wanted, you see. No, 
 I didn't lower my head for anyone. I didn't mind that," 
 she snapped her fingers in the air, " when I saw the child. 
 He's four now, and I've never minded yet. And that's 
 the truth." 
 
 " The truth ? the truth ? " he asked bitterly. " What 
 have women to do with the truth ? " 
 
 " I've told it to you this night," said she, looking firmly 
 at him. 
 
 " Yes, because if you didn't . . ." he turned away with 
 a gesture of disgust. And then as quick as lightning 
 came his next question : 
 
 " And don't you mind telling me this ? Are you . . . 
 as shameless as that ? " 
 
 " I mind it," she said, and suddenly he saw the weary 
 sunken look on her face, " for men don't ever forgive, not 
 really forgive. And yet 'twas only Jean as should have 
 minded, for I but used 'en and his liking for me ... as 
 men like to be used." 
 
 '• Used ! Used ! " exclaimed Gilbert, and when glances 
 met, she read such contempt that her eyes fell before his 
 for the first time that night. Yet anger, rare and strong, 
 rose to meet him. 
 
 " Ay, used," she repeated, her voice raised for the only 
 time in the whole interview, " and don't men use women, 
 and thousands of times to our once ? " 
 
 " And so," he asked curiously, " you won't let the child 
 go to his French relatives ? " 
 
 " I took and I shall keep," said she sullenly. 
 
 Outside the door of the room, with her hand on the 
 knob, Ann hesitated a moment, waited, and then turned 
 the handle again ; Gilbert glanced up, with eyes that 
 scarcely noted her at all, so busy was he with a quite 
 different woman from the one who looked in on him . . . 
 a woman who had never existed. 
 
THE TURNING WHEEL 405 
 
 At that Ann's patience vanished. 
 
 " A finicky toad," said she, silently addressing the 
 contemptuous judge, " who can't put up with a woman 
 as Nature made her." 
 
 Upstairs in her room once more, she lit the two candles 
 on the mantelshelf and steadily set herself to her packing. 
 When the first maid to wake came to knock at her door, 
 she found the room empty of its tenant. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPTION 
 
 IN the crannies of the cliffs between Talland and 
 Polperro, where the rock has crumbled into soil, 
 they grow good crops of early potatoes and strawberries. 
 On these sea-facing ledges, that catch every ray of winter 
 sunlight and in summer are hot enough for lizards and 
 vipers, vegetation springs as early in the year as in Scilly 
 itself. 
 
 Gilbert Carlyon turned the corner round the cliff, out 
 of the deep-cut inland valley, for he had been told that 
 here he would find Ann Michell working in her garden. 
 And walking on, with the deep blue of the foam-flecked 
 waves on his right hand, he was arrested by the sound 
 of a child's laugh that, welling from the deep heart of 
 merriment, gave good promise that the unseen, whence 
 come the new generations, is, at any rate, a place of hope 
 and cheer. 
 
 In front of Gilbert, with his two hands pressed between 
 his knees and doubled up with ecstasy, stood a red-haired 
 boy in a green jersey and drab knickers, with bare feet. 
 From behind the bushes the floating fluff of a dandelion 
 clock was being puffed towards him by an unseen mouth. 
 His freckled nose was tickled by the hovering downy wings. 
 
 When Ann stepped out on hearing a stranger's foot- 
 steps, Gilbert started, for he seemed to be looking on a 
 far older woman than he had expected to see. Dressed, 
 too, in wing-bonnet, with a stout, brown skirt and blouse, 
 
 406 
 
IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPTION 407 
 
 she was just a field worker, her face tanned and lined by 
 the outdoor life she led. 
 
 " Ah," she said, advancing with all her customary 
 composure, " I thought you'd come some time. And how 
 is everything at Lanvean ? " 
 
 With question and answer they walked on, yet neither 
 paid much heed to what was said, so busy were they with 
 what was not said. The little lad clung to his mother's 
 skirts as, with arm thrown round him, she strolled by 
 Carlyon's side. 
 
 " And what do you think," asked she, looking down at 
 him, " of Jean, my Jean Michell ? " 
 
 " Your sunshine," smiled Gilbert, and wished in a 
 moment that he could withdraw the phrase, since it seemed 
 to exclude her from other sunlight. Yet she by no means 
 resented it, as was evident. 
 
 " He has a French name then ? " said he. 
 
 " Yes, but he will not be a Frenchman. Will you, 
 Jean ? " smiled she. 
 
 " Is his grandfather still alive, do you think ? " asked 
 Carlyon, his mind going on a long journey. 
 
 " I suppose so," she answered indifferently, " but I 
 know no more about him than you do." 
 
 They both fell at that to silence, till she suggested 
 going back to her room for tea. The little place, with 
 patchwork-quilted bed behind a screen, opened on a 
 white-washed court, across which the sea- wind swept up 
 from the long black gully of a harbour. The flaring 
 cactus-blooms made a fitting background for this woman 
 whom he now saw in her true setting, as one of the primi- 
 tive people of this, the fiercest and most Cornish village 
 of all the south coast. 
 
 After tea, with the child tucked up in bed, they sat 
 looking out of the window that, like a cabin port-hole, 
 faced nothing but the tossing waters of the Channel. 
 
 " I'm glad you came," she said suddenly, " for I wanted 
 you to see my Jean. He makes it possible to forgive, 
 doesn't he ? " 
 
 He could not misunderstand her, for she spoke as one 
 
4 o8 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 whose life is done, in the sense of adventure lived through, 
 whose destiny is settled. But because he could not bear 
 to pass on and look back on a duty left undone, he said : 
 
 " Ann, will you come back to Lanvean ? " 
 
 " Why, no, my dear," answered she, smiling faintly, 
 " I won't. Don't you mind what I said about you once ? 
 'Twas that you always liked to have everything handsome 
 about you. And it's true. Well, you see, I'm not that 
 ... no, I don't mean only in the way of looks, though 
 that's true enough, too. But I'm ... I'd rather not 
 say it, because saying things makes them sound cruel 
 . . . but, well, my dear, I'm spotted, spoilt, not perfect, 
 not in your eyes. It seems like that to you, because 
 you're made that way. And though 'tisn't so to me at 
 all, and if I'd my time to go over, I should do just the 
 same again . . . well, you can't think like that." 
 
 " There's the child, though," he protested, " and I 
 could do so much for him." 
 
 " And if that's to be thought of," she said, " there's 
 his French kin that have a better right to him than you. 
 No, I'll do well enough for him. He's mine, and he's just 
 going to be mine. And . . ."in the shadow of the room 
 she drew back . . . " there's others to think of, too. Do 
 you think I'm one to let my children have to learn to be 
 ashamed of their mother, and to look down on him, on 
 their brother ? 
 
 " No, no, my dear," she laughed, trying, quaintly 
 enough, to comfort him, " don't you fret nor feel a mite 
 of trouble over it." 
 
 " Ann," said he, driven by his own need to understand, 
 " if that man had never come, would you have kept 
 silent ? " 
 
 " He had to come," she said ; •' I was waiting for him." 
 
 " That's absurd," cried he, with a movement of im- 
 patience ; " you're talking nonsense. There were nine 
 thousand chances to one against his ever coming." 
 
 "That way," she answered; "but there are others." 
 And then added : " But whether or no, you'd have had 
 to know, for there was the child." 
 
IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPTION 409 
 
 " Ah, the child," he cried, smiling bitterly ; " you knew 
 then that you had been creeping into my heart ? " 
 
 In a moment it all came back to him ; the feeling that, 
 if this woman was a liar, then all women are but empty 
 shrines. For her very coldness she stood condemned, 
 being once denied the judgment due to the light of love. 
 He recalled the words of his brother's wife : " Any man's 
 good enough for her, so long as he gives her a child." 
 
 At sight now of his rare loss of self-control, she put a 
 hand on his shoulder, but he shrank away as though it 
 were red-hot. 
 
 " It made no difference," she said as if dazed. 
 
 " No difference," he exclaimed, " no difference that 
 this man . . . ? " 
 
 " No difference at all," she said firmly, " except in the 
 way it's made you think of me." 
 
 " Ann," said he, turning at last from himself to her, 
 " did you care for me as you did for that man ? " 
 
 "No, quite differently," she said, " for if he'd given 
 me no child, he'd have been no more than that ... to 
 me." She snapped her fingers. 
 
 " But, afterwards, with me, it would have been the 
 same ? " 
 
 " No," she answered, pausing with a frown of thought, 
 " I'm not a common woman as you think, to go from man 
 to man. He was ... just a thing to me, something to 
 be used. You'd never be that, never could be." 
 
 '.* Used ! Used ! " he exclaimed, " as you women use 
 men." 
 
 Reading his face as she had learnt to do, she saw that 
 his mind was far enough away from her, saw, too, that 
 the door of his heart was slammed in her face as surely 
 as though her bodily eyes had beheld it. 
 
 Yet, when she had gone out of the room with her quiet 
 tread that he was ready to call sly, his mind lingered over 
 her simplicity, her capability, her pleasure in unsensuous 
 delights, over all, in fact, that made her unself-centred 
 enough to be truly at leisure for everything that came. 
 
 Yet, as even he was able to recognize, she was not 
 
4 io THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 marred because she had borne a child, but only spoilt 
 for him because he could never stamp on her the image 
 of his own nature. Apart from the flame of passion, 
 such as he had felt for Dorothy and never would feel 
 for Ann, he demanded one thing only from a woman : 
 that her nature should be as virgin wax to his touch and 
 ready to take no shape but the one his fancy formed. 
 
 For Ann, whose nature was complete and rounded 
 before ever he set eyes on her, he felt but pity. And seeing 
 this in his eyes, for a moment she felt scorched, yet not 
 with shame, though with the keen white-heat of her rare 
 anger. 
 
 Later on that night, with the sound of Jean's breathing 
 in her ears, Ann sat looking out from her door on the 
 cheerful glimmer of the cottages scattered up the combe. 
 She heard the plovers calling on the hillside, and stepping 
 out into the starlight, with the lapping of waters all around 
 her, knew that her heart was aching for the sandy greyness 
 of Lanvean. 
 
 Yet so it must be, since one pays for a certain hardness 
 of purpose, for a certain fixity of outlook, more heavily 
 than for any other luxury on earth. Yet Paul Bonvoisin, 
 listening to frogs instead of peewits, would no doubt have 
 been mightily gratified could he but have looked into 
 her mind. 
 
 At home, with a rabbit-pie in front of him in a yellow 
 dish, sat Gilbert. He had taken to a pipe lately, and 
 puffing the smoke out in clouds, could scarcely see the old 
 woman who stood before him, smoothing down her silk 
 apron. 
 
 " No," he said, " Ann would not come." 
 
 " And she's right," cried Mrs. Parsons, " for to your 
 way of thinking she's but damaged goods. And that's 
 a man's way, too, for what a man thinks, settles things 
 for 'en. You may walk round that and make believe you 
 don't see it, but 'tis there all the time, a man's notion is." 
 
 " But," he interrupted, moving impatiently, " I want 
 you to send her a big hamper of things every week, and 
 be sure there's always a fowl in it, mind." 
 
IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPTION 411 
 
 Presently Mrs. Parsons watched him from the window 
 as he turned down the road towards the dunes, walking 
 between the tamarisk hedge that bore now its pink foam 
 of blossom. 
 
 " But there'll soon be another leaf to turn, too," said 
 she to herself, " another leaf with a different sort of woman 
 in it from . . . her." 
 
 She flicked her arm fiercely, contemptuously, and then 
 sighed in bitterness because, though there was plenty of 
 time for Gilbert, yet for herself death waited at her very 
 elbow. 
 
 Already, indeed, far other visions were shaping them- 
 selves in Gilbert's brain, ideals very different from any 
 he had figured to himself before : a vision of a woman, 
 virginal, unformed, and plastic to his hand, one from 
 whom he would never ask more than that he should 
 stamp his own image on her being. From her he would 
 never ask fullness of nature, nor even a response to the 
 loneliness of the heart, for his sole desire now was just to 
 find a sensitive plate to receive impressions. 
 
 Inevitably he made much smaller, meaner demands on 
 women, since surface qualities of temperament, as of 
 body, were all in all to him. Disavowing, as he did, all 
 taste for the palimpsest, he was really charged with resent- 
 ment, and that, not for himself, but for his sex. That this 
 took the form of disgust on behalf of a dead man was 
 due, in part, to his chivalry, but even more to the feeling 
 that Jean Bonvoisin and himself had shared the same 
 fate — to be " used." 
 
 Long before dawn next day Lanvean was awake, for at 
 four o'clock in the morning the carts were to set out to 
 fetch home from Delabole quarry the slates for the re- 
 roofing of the house. Steely-grey was the light when the 
 long line of wagons drew up before the plantation, and with 
 rattling of harness and cracking of whips, the start was 
 made. 
 
 In the gateway, his legs apart in a straddle, stood 
 Gilbert, as over the sea came the first glittering ray of 
 sun. On the sea-gulls' wings the light fell as the day 
 
4 i2 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 broke. The man's heart was full of his own promise of 
 power, of his own freedom. For the things about him 
 were what he loved best and he could do what he would 
 with them. As the tramp of the horses changed to a far- 
 off sound, he turned into Lanvean and up to the great 
 garrets overhead. 
 
 The huge chimney had threatened to fire the whole 
 house, and in the immense beams of it, blackened with 
 age and smoke, the masons came at last upon the original 
 roof-tree of the entire structure. Standing with his hand 
 upon it, Carlyon made something of a vow to serve only 
 this house and its sandy acres. For he had done with 
 dreams and closed the door of youth. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE REWARD OF VIRTUE 
 
 " T^OUR teeth," cried Mrs. Rosewarne to Philip, 
 
 Jl " the baby has four teeth, my dear ! And at that 
 age Dorothy didn't show the sign of one. Such growth 
 is unnatural. The child is being unhealthily stimulated. 
 I am quite certain of it." 
 
 " A mushroom, no less," smiled he, " or shall we say a 
 gourd ? " 
 
 They were sitting on the terrace at Teravel in the 
 twilight two years later. 
 
 Since the advent of this grandchild he had seen, among 
 other amazing things, a recrudescence of his wife's 
 animosity to Dr. Rudd. For at every domestic crisis she 
 renewed the ancient warfare. Few things made Philip 
 Rosewarne more grateful for his eyesight than the 
 perpetual drama of his wife's face under the provocation 
 of stirring nursery catastrophes. And, when nothing hap- 
 pened, she imagined hidden currents of trouble. As now. 
 
 " Yet," she said meditatively, " it is not food. The 
 child takes less nourishment than the books direct. It is 
 the system, I am convinced, as I told Madame Felicia, 
 that is ruining the physique of the boy." 
 
 " Explain," said Mr. Rosewarne, in the deep tones of a 
 Greek chorus, " what system ? " 
 
 " Why, that man and his science," exclaimed she ; 
 " there is actually a chart with a line, a thick black line 
 across it, tracing the poor child's weekly increase in 
 weight, his monthly growth in height. His proteids, 
 
 413 
 
4H THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 his phosphates are actually measured. My dear Philip, 
 positively the child is not a child. He is a chemical 
 experiment." 
 
 Raising her hands in a trick caught from Father Tyacke 
 in his Cassandra moments, she dropped them again in 
 despair. 
 
 " If true," said Philip, " 'tis a crime, a monstrous 
 unnatural crime. For no Rudd certainly, and still less a 
 Rosewarne, should ever be brought up on a system. 
 What can the doctor possibly be thinking of ? " 
 
 Mrs. Rosewarne looked at him suspiciously. 
 
 " Who ever heard of an infant's being incessantly 
 weighed ? " she cried. " In my time it never used to be 
 done even in the best families." 
 
 " They call it science, I suppose," said he. 
 
 " Science ! " she fairly snorted, for nowadays Mrs. 
 Rosewarne, when moved to indignation, was as frank as 
 a scullery-maid. 
 
 At the Outlook next day her proceedings were peculiar. 
 Slipping into the room, with skirts held close lest a rustle 
 should reveal her whereabouts, she had seated herself 
 thronelike on the settee, before she noticed that Dr. Dan 
 himself was in the window recess. 
 
 " My grandson," said Mrs. Rosewarne, bending her 
 head in token that she saw him, "is, I fear, outgrowing 
 his strength." 
 
 " First time I've heard of it," replied he brusquely, 
 yet with a twinkle. For more weeks now than he could 
 count he had been, Fabian-like, waiting for a pitched 
 battle with the lady. 
 
 " But the Rudds," he continued gravely, " always 
 mature early." 
 
 " The child is also a Rosewarne and they develop 
 slowly," said she ; and did not add " like all great things," 
 though her tone implied it. 
 
 " Then the two families together should produce an 
 average rate of growth," observed Dr. Dan placidly. 
 
 " The boy is being forced like an orchid," snapped Mrs. 
 Rosewarne, her eyes two gleaming points of steel. " You 
 
THE REWARD OF VIRTUE 415 
 
 can have but little appreciation of the delicate sensitiveness 
 of the Rosewarne strain in the child. One could not, of 
 course, expect that. But one would fancy that discretion 
 at least, might suggest the leaving of such matters to the 
 people who understand them." 
 
 " Precisely ; that's why the child is managed as he is," 
 said the doctor, with a slight gleam in his eyes like the 
 flicker of green across a grey sea. 
 
 Figuratively they were on the point of snapping fingers 
 at each other's noses. 
 
 In the interval of silence ere they got their second 
 wind, the combatants heard the noise of water being 
 poured into a bath. The sound came from the bedroom 
 on the other side of the landing. Then the floor vibrated 
 under the rush of bare feet, followed by the heavy tread 
 of Mrs. Barrable, who was evidently putting the child to 
 bed in the absence of its mother. 
 
 " Oo, 00, 00," gurgled Too-Too, as the nurse caught him. 
 Then came the patter of syllables, and finally the noise of 
 a sponge being squeezed. Screams of laughter played 
 hide-and-seek with the fall of the water. 
 
 The faces of both the listeners changed, vague smiles 
 wiping away the scorn. And when Dr. Dan moved 
 forward to open the door, so that they might hear more 
 distinctly, Mrs. Rosewarne nodded approvingly. It had 
 been her impulse also. There was a surge of water, 
 followed by a squeal of dismay. 
 
 " He hates to get out," said Dr. Rudd. 
 
 " Dorothy was just the same," replied Mrs. Rosewarne. 
 " I used to call her the water-bird." 
 
 Suddenly both recalled the conflict of their wills, and 
 as the opposite room sank into utter silence, they, too, 
 remained without speaking. Only the trump of doom, it 
 seemed, would dislodge them from their silent vigil. 
 
 But it came, that trump, in a cry of fear, the cry that 
 makes every mother throw down her work and fly, the 
 shrill sharp wail which means real agony of terror. The 
 doctor and his mother-in-law jostled each other in the 
 doorway. 
 
416 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 "It is the night fear," cried Mrs. Rosewarne ; " the 
 woman must have left him alone in the dark. And I 
 have told Dorothy fifty times that she should see to it 
 that the boy is never left in the dark. But why does 
 Dorothy trust it to Mrs. Barrable ? She ought not to 
 leave the bathing to any servant, however admirable." 
 
 " However admirable," echoed he ; " gad-about ! That's 
 what she is," for the absent are always wrong. 
 
 M It was not so in my time with Dorothy on my hands," 
 said Mrs. Rosewarne. 
 
 In the anxiety of the moment the fact escaped the 
 doctor's mind completely that he had always given strict 
 injunctions that Too-Too should be left to fall asleep alone 
 in the dark. Indeed everything was forgotten by both, 
 even proteids, life charts and grievances, as Dr. Dan 
 picked up the shrieking child and laid it across his shoulder. 
 For once in her life, too, Mrs. Rosewarne contented herself 
 with playing second fiddle to the old enemy, Daniel 
 Rudd ; and meekly patting Too-Too's bare calves, as he 
 lay, stomach downwards, against his father's shoulder, 
 she felt no resentment at his remark. This was : 
 
 " It's like a pig-killing when he yells." 
 
 For lungs gave evidence of strength, as did those calves 
 of fats, as well as proteids. Science, after all, had not 
 done so much amiss. 
 
 THE ENT 
 
 Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey. 
 
Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. 
 
 are pleased to announce new Novels for the Autumn of 1916 by the following 
 LEADING AUTHORS, particulars of which will be found in the ensuing pages 
 
 LUCAS MALET 
 BARONESS VON HUTTEN 
 B. M. CROKER 
 M. E. BRADDON 
 H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 MADAME ALBANESI 
 GABRIELLE VALLINGS 
 MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED 
 DOROTHEA CONYERS 
 PEGGY WEBL1NG 
 BERTA RUCK 
 KATHLYN RHODES 
 DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES 
 CURTIS YORKE 
 MARAVENE THOMPSON 
 HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS 
 FRANKFORT MOORE 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 DOROTHY BLACK 
 G. B. BURGIN 
 MRS. BAILLIE SAUNDERS 
 UNA SILBERRAD 
 H. B. SOMERVILLE 
 EDGAR JEPSON 
 ISABEL CLARKE 
 F. BANCROFT 
 and 
 
 R. W. CAMPBELL 
 
 Author of " Private" JSpud Tamson " 
 
New 6/~ Novels 
 
 Magpie 
 
 By BARONESS VON HUTTEN 
 
 Author of "Sharrow," "Pam," etc. 
 
 No living novelist has written such charming stories of 
 children as the Baroness von Hutten. Who is there that, once 
 having made the acquaintance in her pages of Pam, will deny 
 her the most completely sympathetic knowledge of childhood, 
 with its own strange and wistful outlook on the world. In 
 the present book she tells the story of the child Mag Pye, the 
 daughter of a gentleman, broken in fortune by his own failings, 
 who has married a pantomime girl. How the child grows 
 up in the Chelsea Workmen's Dwellings and how she fares, 
 with her joys and sorrows, under her unworthy father's vicis- 
 situdes, is related in the author's most characteristic manner. 
 
 Sister Sorrow 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED 
 
 Author of " Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land," etc. 
 
 The scene of the novel is laid in Australia — at Leichardt's 
 Town and on Oronga Island, off the northern coast. The inci- 
 dents are sensational and deal with a prophetic dream and its 
 fulfilment. 'Sister Sorrow,' otherwise Dolores Lloyd, a young 
 Welshwoman, is governess to the Carfax girls. Agatha Carfax, 
 their half-sister, tells the story of Dolores Lloyd, for whom she 
 has a very deep sisterly friendship. The two women meet 
 simultaneously the two men who affect their lives, one of whom 
 Dolores recognises as the hero of a fateful dream, which she has 
 told to Agatha, 
 
 2 
 
New 6s. Novels. 
 
 Damaris 
 
 By LUCAS MALET 
 
 Author of " Sir Richard Calmady," etc. 
 
 The above long novel, which is the fruit of many 
 years of thought and work, will in all probability prove to 
 be the author's best and most important work of fiction. 
 
 The scene of the novel is laid in Northern India, where 
 the father of Demaris, General Verity, a famous soldier of 
 the Mutiny, occupies a distinguished command. 
 
 The descriptions of Indian life and scenery are de- 
 picted in vivid language. 
 
 The Eyes of the Blind 
 
 By M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 Author of " Change," " The Wings of Desire," 
 "The Power Behind," etc. 
 
 Miss Willcocks 1 new novel is the story of one who re- 
 gained his eyesight after an operation with most disconcerting 
 results. We are often told that it is folly to be wise if 
 ignorance is bliss. In this novel we are asked whether, if 
 blindness means happiness, one should therefore shrink from 
 the light. It is a story more intense in its drama than her 
 recent books, since, like " Wings of Desire, 1 ' it deals mainly 
 with West Country types, and, like "The Wingless Victory," 
 it is a novel of temptation and of the love that conquered 
 after a hard fight. Miss Willcocks has gone back to the old 
 simple things that are as old as man and woman, though 
 here, too, there is the interest of opposing social and religious 
 atmospheres, and here again many of the " saints l? are but 
 whited sepulchres. 
 
 3 
 
New 6s. Novels. 
 
 Boundary House 
 
 By PEGGY WEBLING 
 
 Author of "Virginia Perfect." 
 
 Peggy Webling's new book is a tale of London 
 life, beginning in the seventies and ending three or 
 four years ago. Although the plot is more pronounced 
 than in her former novels, it is essentially a study of 
 different characters, the scenes being laid in a little 
 shop in Bayswater, a mysterious house on the river, 
 and a Kentish village. The author has devised, as 
 usual, a quaint and original background for her story 
 of love and grief and joy. It is a home of toys, and 
 the master of the toy-makers, cunning old Fob, is 
 the central figure — an old riddle for the reader to 
 solve. 
 
 The Alternate Life 
 
 By CURTIS YORKE 
 
 Author of "Disentangled," "Her Measure," &c. 
 
 This is a romance of a man and a girl who found 
 out how to meet in dreams, though they were separated 
 by thousands of miles. In these dreams they grew 
 better acquainted with one another than they could 
 ever have done in the few opportunities they had 
 had for actually meeting. Dreamland and real life are 
 cleverly mingled in this story, which has the advantage 
 of being distinctly unusual. 
 
New 6s. Novels 
 
 Given in Marriage 
 
 By B. M. CROKER 
 
 Author of "Her Own People," "In Old Madras," "Lismoyle," 
 etc., etc. 
 
 A new novel of Indian Hills and English plains. 
 Mrs. Croker has practically made the particular field of 
 Anglo-Indian life, which forms the subject of so many ol 
 her novels, her own. 
 
 Bindweed 
 
 By GABRIELLE VALLINGS 
 
 " Bindweed " is the first story by a new writer, who, 
 as a great-niece of Charles Kingsley and a cousin of Lucas 
 Malet, has inherited not a little of the genius of the family, 
 with great powers of constructing a realistic scene. 
 The author deals with the operatic world in Paris 
 and London. It concerns the training of a young prima 
 donna, and her connection with a distinguished singer 
 who interests himself in the development of her voice. 
 Incidentally the book touches on peasant life in a French 
 country village, and has a strong plot which turns 
 graphically on certain aspects of French character among 
 the underworld of Paris. 
 
 A story of sunshine, love and happiness. 
 
 Persuasive Peggy 
 
 By MARAVENE THOMPSON 
 
 Author of "The Woman's Law." 
 
 This is a delightful novel. Peggy is a bright, active, 
 charming, beautiful, clever, wilful and original heroine. 
 The account of her performances after her marriage makes 
 entertaining reading. It is a humorous and stimulating 
 story, wholesome and tonic. Peggy's stubborn husband has 
 a time of it — all for his good and improvement ; and each 
 improves the other but not with conscious motive ; the two 
 are real mates. 
 
 7 
 
New 6s. Novels 
 
 The Man with a 
 Square Face 
 
 By DOROTHY BLACK 
 
 Author of "Her Lonely Soldier." 
 
 If you want a quite new type of story, read this. 
 There is a breeziness about it that is indescribably 
 fascinating, and the subtlest, most delightful sense oi 
 humour. One of its greatest charms is its unexpected- 
 ness : one never knows what is coming next. The heroine, 
 as a girl, longs for something to happen ; when she 
 grows up, things happen so fast that she prays that 
 they may stop happening. The story is very breezy and 
 original. 
 
 Love and the Whirlwind 
 
 By HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS 
 
 (Mrs. JAMES J. G. PUGH) 
 
 The scene of this striking novel is laid in Wales, a 
 wild and beautiful setting. The story is intensely drama- 
 tic. The earlier portion deals with the adventures of a 
 beautiful girl, in the home amidst the mountains, of the 
 Vychan family: a mad mother and two lawless sons. 
 Both brothers fall in love with their beautiful guest, and 
 it seems as if no power in heaven or earth could stem the 
 whirlwind of disaster that ensues. We watch the 
 characters swept along to tragedy by what appears to 
 be a resistless Fate. 
 
 10 
 
New 6/- Novels 
 
 Rose Lorraine 
 
 By DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 
 Author of " The Tragedy of the Pyramids." 
 
 Mr. Sladen's new novel is pure romance. Miles Coverdale, 
 a typical public-school and university man, great at sports, but 
 not trained for any profession, although he has to earn his own 
 living, is wondering how he shall do it, when the war breaks out ; 
 and he enlists and wins a commission and rapid promotion. 
 The heroine, Rose Lorraine, is the beautiful daughter of a man 
 who has gambled away his property and has become gatekeeper 
 to one of his boon companions. Rose has been looked after and 
 educated by an uncle, but on leaving school she returns to live 
 at her father's lodge. This delightful story is chiefly concerned 
 with the wooing of Rose by Miles, but the course of his love 
 runs anything but smoothly. 
 
 The Mark of Vvaye 
 
 By H. B. SOMERVILLE 
 
 Author of "Ashes of Vengeance," (4th Edition), etc. 
 
 The scenes of this story are laid chiefly in Brittany at the 
 end of the 15th Century ; and it deals with conflicts, both of 
 wills and weapons, which arise from marriage by trickery of a 
 Breton lady, Yvonne de Vvaye, to her family's most bitter 
 enemy and the murderer of her brother. It also introduces the 
 plots of the Breton nobles to depose Pierre Landais from his high 
 position in the Court of hautes as the chief favorite of the last 
 Duke of Brittany. 
 
 The Inheritance 
 
 By UNA L. SILBERRAD 
 
 Author of "The Mystery of Barnard Hanson," &c. 
 
 Miss Silberrad's unquestionable gifts of writing a story of 
 engrossing interest are displayed to the fullest in her new 
 novel, the publication of which is promised during the present 
 season. 
 
New 6/- Novels 
 
 The Lure of the Desert 
 
 By KATHLYN RHODES 
 
 Author of "The Will of Allah," "The Desert Dreamers," &c 
 
 This is the story of an Englishman, who, having Arab blood 
 in his veins, shakes off the shackles of western civilization and 
 responds to the call of the desert, which appeal he finds it imposs • 
 ible to resist. The charm of desert life has formed a background 
 for many of Miss Rhodes's popular stories, and in the present 
 one the reader is made to realise much of its wonderful 
 fascination. 
 
 The Potter's House 
 
 By ISABEL C. CLARKE 
 
 Author of "The Lamp of Destiny," &c. 
 
 Miss Clarke's new novel is concerned with the early days 
 of the War, and its effect upon her little group of characters is 
 related with skill and discernment, and is typical too of those first 
 anxious weeks. And it is the War, which incidentally completes 
 the spiritual awakening of her heroine, Gillian Driscoll. Some of 
 the earlier chapters contain charming descriptions of Italy, and 
 of life in Rome in the spring of 1914. 
 
 The Distaff Dreamers 
 
 By Mrs. BAILLIE SAUNDERS 
 
 Author of "Litany Lane," " The Mayoress's Wooing,'' &c. 
 
 A picturesque, quaint and charming story of London life, 
 with an ancient and largely demolished city church, St, Ursula 
 Distaff's, Watergate Stairs, as the centre round which this comedy 
 is played. The hero, who is a prosperous architect, belongs to an 
 old city family. He is a devoted Anglican and believes that he 
 has a vocation for celibacy, but owing to the reported death of his 
 cousin in Flanders, he learns that he is heir to the estates, and 
 consequently realises that unless he can find a member of some 
 collateral branch, it will be his duty to marry in order to perpetu- 
 ate the ancient line of his family. How the author develops this 
 situation must be left for her to tell in her own words. 
 
 12 
 
New 6s. ISovels. 
 
 Esther Lawes 
 
 By EDGAR JEPSON 
 
 Author of "The Lady Noggs," &c. 
 
 In " Esther Lawes " Edgar Jepson tells the realistic 
 romantic story of a young English governess in the house 
 of a West-Indian planter. The West-Indian life and 
 its effect on the sensitive girl are fully described; 
 and the book is full of local colour in its true atmosphere. 
 It rises to the romantic height in its treatment of the birth 
 and growth of her passion for the formidable hunch-back, 
 the enemy of her employer's family and the virtual ruler of 
 the strange district in which they dwell. 
 
 The Girl Who Got Out 
 
 By G. B. BURGIN 
 
 Author of "The Shutters of Silence," &c. 
 
 The scene of this new novel which is laid partly in 
 England and partly in Canada. The heroine, in pursuance 
 of a promise to her dying father, and to improve her own 
 impoverished fortunes, "gets out" of England in order to 
 put right the moral and physical tone of a young " waster " 
 who is going to the dogs. How she persuades him to try 
 his fortunes in a new land and " find himself " in primeval 
 solitudes, is told with all Mr. Burgin's customary vivacity 
 and charm. Everyone expects the heroine to marry him, 
 
 but what happens to the heroine is the rest of the 
 
 story. 
 
 Messrs. Hutchinson <£ Co. are pleased to announce that they will 
 
 publish shortly a new book by R. W. CAMPBELL, 
 
 author of "Private Spud-Tamaon." 
 
 13 
 
I LATEST 6/- NOVELS. 
 
 Each in crown Svo } cloth gilt. 
 
 An Undressed Heroine 3rd Edition 
 
 By MABEL BARNES-GRUNDY 
 
 Author of " Candytuft," &c. 
 
 Good Old Anna. 4th Edition 
 
 By Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES 
 
 Author of "The End of Her Honeymoon." 
 
 Proud Peter 4th Edition 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS 
 
 Author of "No New Thing," &c. 
 
 The Bars of Iron 48th Thousand 
 
 By ETHEL M. DELL 
 
 Author of "The Way of an Eagle," &c. 
 
 Twilight 
 
 By FRANK DAN BY 
 
 Author of "The Heart of a Child," &c. 
 
 In cloth, with picture wrapper in colours, 
 2s. net. 
 
 Lismoyle 
 
 By B. M. CROKER 
 
 Author of "In Old Madras," "The Company's Servant," &c. 
 
 " As delightful a book as Mrs. Croker has ever written. She has the happy gift of 
 telling a story so that she holds the reader enthralled from start to finish. Mrs. Croker is 
 always at her best when she sets her scene in Ireland.'**— Field. 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 1/- net NOVELS 
 
 FOR 1916 
 
 Each in cloth, with factorial wrappers 
 
 NEW VOLUMES 
 39 SHARROW Baroness von Hutten 
 
 58 HIS OFFICIAL FIANCEE Berta Ruck 
 
 66 MEAVE Dorothea Conyers 
 
 67 SANDY'S LOVE AFFAIR S. R. Crocket 
 61 INITIATION Robert Hugh Benson 
 
 68 THE RETURN OF RICHARD CARR 
 
 Winifred Boggs 
 
 69 THE GREAT AGE J. G. Snaith 
 
 70 LONELINESS Robert Hugh Benson 
 
 71 THE THREE SISTERS May Sinclair 
 
 72 A BRIDE OF THE PLAINS Baroness Orczy 
 
 73 THE CHILDREN of the SEA H.deVereStacpoole 
 
 74 ODDSFISH Robert Hugh Benson 
 
 76 THE CAP OF YOUTH Madame Albanesi 
 
 77 A DULL GIRL'S DESTINY Mrs.Baillie Reynolds 
 
 78 A RASH EXPERIMENT Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 
 79 WHAT SHE OVERHEARD Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 
 85 THE COURTSHIP OF ROSAMOND FAYRE 
 
 Berta Ruck 
 
 86 THE PEARL FISHERS H. de Vere Stacpoole 
 
 87 BIRD'S FOUNTAIN Baroness von Hutten 
 
 88 THE LAD WITH WINGS Berta Ruck 
 82 THE WOOD END J. E. Buckrose 
 84 THE DEVIL'S GARDEN W. B. Maxwell 
 
 Each in crown 8vo, cloth, with pictorial wrappers 
 ELLEN THORNEYCROFT 
 FOWLER 
 
 ROBERT HUGH BENSON 
 
 55 An Average Man 
 
 46 Come Rack ! Come Rope ! 
 DOROTHEA CONYERS 
 
 4 The Strayings of Sandy 
 MAUD DIVER 
 
 36 Lilamani 
 
 5 A Double Thread 
 TOM GALLON 
 
 6 Tatterley 
 ROBERT HICHENS 
 
 7 A Spirit in Prison 
 
 15 
 
HUTCHINSON'S I/- Net NOVELS— con. 
 
 Each in crown 8vo, cloth, with pictorial wrappers 
 
 BARONESS VON HUTTEN 
 
 54 Maria 
 9 The Lordship of Love 
 10 The Green Patch 
 
 JEROME K. JEROME 
 
 47 Paul Kelvtr 
 
 FRANKFORT MOORE 
 
 12 I Forbid the Banns 
 
 BARONESS ORCZY 
 
 13 Petticoat Government 
 
 14 The Elusive Pimpernel 
 
 15 A True Woman 
 45 Meadowsweet 
 
 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 
 
 16 The Three Brothers 
 
 ALLEN RAINE 
 
 18 A Welsh Singer 
 
 OLIVE SCHREINER 
 
 19 The Story of an African Farm 
 
 KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON 
 
 20 Max 
 
 WILLIAM LE QUEUX 
 
 11 The Confessions of a Ladies' 
 Man 
 
 ALREADY ISSUED 
 
 with pictorial paper covers 
 
 W. B. MAXWELL 
 
 64 General Mallock's Shadow 
 37 Mrs. Thompson 
 44 In Cotton Wool 
 
 KATHLYN RHODES 
 75 Sweet Life 
 62 The Will of Allah 
 
 BERTA RUCK (Mrs.Oliver Onions) 
 
 65 Khaki and Kisses 
 
 H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 31 The Ship of Coral 
 40 The Order of Release 
 
 Mrs. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 49 Monte Carlo 
 
 RALPH STOCK 
 
 53 The Pyjama Man 
 
 CYNTHIA STOCKLEY 
 
 32 Virginia of the Rhodesians 
 
 Each in crown 8vo. 
 
 A SPINSTER 
 
 23 The Truth about Man 
 F. BANCROFT 
 
 52 Time and Chance 
 
 48 The Veldt Dwellers 
 DOROTHEA CONYERS 
 
 42 The Arrival of Antony 
 FRANK DANBY 
 
 50 Concert Pitch 
 
 26 Let the Roof Fall In 
 
 WALTER EMANUEL 
 
 Bubble and Squeak 
 COSMO HAMILTON 
 
 57 Adam's Clay 
 LUCAS MALET 
 
 38 Adrian Savage 
 ARTHUR MORRISON 
 
 28 Green Ginger 
 
 ALSO 
 
 GERMANY'S GREAT LIE 
 
 Exposed and Criticised by DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 
 WILHELM LAMSZUS 
 
 The Human Slaughter -House 
 
 KEBLE HOWARD 
 
 34 "Chicot" in America 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, King 
 of Prussia ; and THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT 
 By Heinrich yon Treitschke. Edited by Douglas Sladen. 
 
 16 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 1L NOVELS 
 
 A new series of successful copyright works of fiction, 
 printed in clear readable type on good paper, and 
 tastefully bound in art cloth, in foolscap 8vo, with 
 designed title page and frontispiece on art paper and 
 wrapper in colours 
 
 NEW VOLUMES for 1916. 
 
 6x 
 
 «3 
 
 114 
 
 «5 
 116 
 117 
 izS 
 119 
 
 120 
 122 
 123 
 124 
 125 
 126 
 127 
 128 
 130 
 131 
 132 
 133 
 134 
 135 
 
 THE SHIP OF CORAL - 
 
 CANDYTUFT— 1 MEAN VERONICA- 
 
 A WELSH SINGER - 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SARA - 
 
 HEART FOR HEART - 
 
 THE NECROMANCERS - 
 
 PETTICOAT LOOSE - 
 
 TORN SAILS - 
 
 LOVE DECIDES - 
 
 HALF A TRUTH - 
 
 MADEMOISELLE CELESTE - 
 
 AT LOVE'S COST - 
 
 THE HOUSE CALLED HURRISH - 
 
 NONE OTHER GODS 
 
 THE HOUSE OF SILENCE - 
 
 PAID FOR 
 
 THAT STRANGE GIRL - 
 
 THE VACILLATIONS OF HAZEL ■ 
 
 LOVE AT ARMS - 
 
 CONCERT PITCH - 
 
 ADRIAN SAVAGE - 
 
 NELLIE 
 
 H. de Vere Stacpoole 
 
 Mabel Barnes-Grundy 
 
 Allen Raine 
 
 E. Everett-Green 
 
 Charles Garvice 
 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 
 "Rita" 
 
 Allen Raine 
 
 Charles Garvice 
 
 "Rita" 
 
 Adele Furguson Knight 
 
 Charles Garvice 
 
 "Rita" 
 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 
 E. Everett-Green 
 
 Charles Garvice 
 
 Charles Garvice 
 
 Mabel Barnes-Grundy 
 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 
 Frank Danby 
 
 Lucas Malet 
 
 Charles Garvice 
 
 VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED. 
 
 MADAME ALBANESI 
 
 49 Poppies in the Corn 
 
 MABEL BARNES-GRUNDY 
 
 60 The Third Miss Wenderby 
 
 62 Patricia Plays a Part 
 
 32 Hilary on Her Own 
 
 ROBERT HUGH BENSON 
 
 28 The Conventionalists 
 47 The Dawn of All 
 66 A Winnowing 
 
 M. 
 
 E. BRADDON 
 
 101 Our Adversary 
 
 17 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 7d. NOVELS 
 
 VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED-«mrtnued. 
 
 M. E. BRADDOn-coniinued. 
 
 107 Miranda 
 15 Beyond these Voices 
 
 41 A Lost Eden 
 
 G. B. BURGIN 
 
 65 The King of Four Corners 
 
 ROSA N. CAREY 
 
 18 Mollie's Prince 
 2 My Lady Frivol 
 76 Life's Trivial Round 
 
 MARY CHOLMONDELEY 
 
 3 Prisoners 
 
 DOROTHEA CONYERS 
 
 102 The Arrival of Antony 
 
 68 Aunt Jane and Uncle 
 
 James 
 
 69 For Henry and Navarre 
 
 B. M. CROKER 
 
 63 The Serpent's Tooth 
 91 In Old Madras 
 
 FRANK DANBY 
 
 73 Let the Roof Fall In 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 84 Fromont Junior and 
 
 Risler Senior 
 
 SIR A. CONAN DOYLE 
 
 79 Sir Nigel 
 
 EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN 
 
 86 Miss Mallory of Mote 
 
 JUSTUS MILES FORMAN 
 
 23 The Stumbling Block 
 
 ELLEN THORNEYCROFT 
 
 FOWLER 
 
 88 Place and Power 
 
 MRS. HUGH FRASER 
 
 42 A Little Grey Sheep 
 
 TOM GALLON 
 
 39 Meg the Lady 
 
 CHARLES GARVICE 
 
 90 Gold in the Gutter 
 
 94 Linked by Fate 
 109 Where Love Leads 
 
 98 Love the Tyrant 
 104 A Girl of Spirit 
 108 Nell of Shorne Mills 
 
 SARAH GRAND 
 
 96 Babs the Impossible 
 
 H. RIDER HAGGARD 
 
 40 Fair Margaret 
 
 A. G. HALES 
 
 99 Little Blue Pigeon 
 
 COSMO HAMILTON 
 
 71 The Princess of New York 
 103 A Sense of Humour 
 
 HENRY HARLAND 
 
 17 The Royal End 
 
 ANTHONY HOPE 
 
 45 The Indiscretion of 
 
 the Duchess 
 
 BARONESS VON HUTTEN 
 
 52 Kingsmead 
 
 "IOTA" 
 
 44 A Yellow Aster 
 
 VIOLET JACOB 
 
 46 The Sheep Stealers 
 
 JACK LONDON 
 
 95 South Sea Tales 
 
 JEROME K. JEROME 
 
 8 Tommy & Co. 
 75 They and I 
 
 18 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 7d. NOVELS 
 
 VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED-eoniinued. 
 GASTON LEROUX 
 
 93 The Mystery of the 
 
 Yellow Room 
 
 WILLIAM LE QUEUX 
 
 4 The Under Secretary 
 56 Confessions of a Ladies' 
 Man 
 1 1 The Gamblers 
 
 A. W. MARCHMONT 
 
 78 A Dash for a Throne 
 
 W. B. MAXWELL 
 
 29 Seymour Charlton 
 
 F. F. MONTRESOR 
 
 13 Into the Highways and 
 
 Hedges 
 
 14 At the Cross Roads 
 
 F. FRANKFORT MOORE 
 
 74 I forbid the Banns 
 
 DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY 
 
 7 A Rising Star 
 
 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 
 
 21 The Thief of Virtue 
 
 RICHARD PRYCE 
 
 27 Jezebel 
 
 ALLEN RAINE 
 
 77 By Berwen Banks 
 
 MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS 
 
 1 Thalassa 
 10 The Man Who Won 
 
 H. GRAHAME RICHARDS 
 
 85 Lucrezia Borgia's One 
 
 Love 
 
 • , RITA ,, 
 
 106 Calvary 
 
 RAFAEL SABATINI 
 
 1 10 The Shame of Motley 
 
 58 The Trampling of the 
 
 Lilies 
 
 MRS. BAILLIE SAUNDERS 
 
 20 The Mayoress's Wooing 
 43 The Bride's Mirror 
 70 Lady Q 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR 
 
 33 The Helpmate 
 
 34 The Divine Fire 
 
 80 The Combined Maze 
 
 H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 112 The Order of Release 
 
 J. A. STEUART 
 
 59 The Eternal Quest 
 
 MRS. K. C. THURSTON 
 
 26 The Gambler 
 87 Max 
 
 MRS. WILFRID WARD 
 
 100 Horace Blake 
 
 PERCY WHITE 
 
 25 Park Lane 
 
 53 Love and the Poor Suitor 
 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 30 Wings of Desire 
 
 AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON 
 
 (Author of "St. Elmo") 
 
 57 The Speckled Bird 
 
 DOLF WYLLARDE 
 
 22 A Lonely Little Lady 
 EMILE ZOLA 
 
 105 The Monomaniac 
 
 81 The Ladies' Paradise 
 72 The Mysteries of 
 
 Marseilles 
 83 A Love Episode 
 
 19 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 6d. NOVELS 
 
 A Series of COPYRIGHT NOVELS by the 
 leading Authors clearly and well printed 
 
 OVER TEN MILLION SOLD 
 
 WITH ATTRACTIVE PICTORIAL COVERS IN COLOURS 
 
 NEW VOLUMES FOR 1916 
 
 420 A NAMELESS SIN Charlotte M. Brame 
 
 421 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE Baroness von Hutten 
 
 422 LITANY LANE Mrs. Baillie Saunders 
 
 423 THE DUKE'S SECRET Charlotte M. Brame 
 
 424 LADY BRIDGET IN THE NEVER-NEVER 
 
 LAND Mrs. Campbell Praed 
 
 414 DRAGOONING A DRAGOON 
 
 E. Livingston Prescott 
 
 425 MIRANDA M. E. Braddon 
 
 426 THROWN ON THE WORLD Charlotte M. Brame 
 
 427 SOME HAPPENINGS OF GLENDALYNE 
 
 Dorothea Conyers 
 
 428 HER MEASURE Curtis Yorke 
 
 429 A DARK MARRIAGE MORN Charlotte M. Brame 
 
 430 THE GREEN PATCH Baroness von Hutten 
 416 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 H. Grahame Richards 
 
 431 CAPTAIN CORBEAU'S ADVENTURE 
 
 Mrs. Hugh Fraser 
 
 432 THE HEIRESS OF HATTON Charlotte M. Brame 
 
 433 LET THE ROOF FALL IN Frank Danby 
 
 A List of HUTCHINSON'S FAMOUS SIXPENNY NOVELS, 
 nearly 300 Titles, will be sent on application] 
 
" It is a book of monumental industry, as full of knowledge 
 as an egg of meat, and with much illuminating thought." — 
 Glasgow Herald* 
 
 The Causes and 
 Consequences of the War 
 
 By YVES GUYOT 
 
 Late French Minister of State, &c. 
 In one large voluine^ cloth silt, 10/6 net 
 
 Translated by F. APPLEBY HOLT, B.A., LL.B. 
 
 At the present day M. Yves Guyot holds an unique position. 
 He is not only the doyen of political economists but he is one of the 
 best known, the most independent and clear headed publicists in 
 Europe., M. Guyot has long been a staunch friend to England 
 and he was one of the very few Frenchmen who publicly supported 
 us during the critical period of the Boer War. 
 
 In his latest, and in some respects, his most important book he 
 has employed his extensive knowledge of European history, diplo- 
 macy and political geography to account for the causes of the 
 E resent war. Without exonerating the ruling classes in Germany 
 om their guilt in devising the war, he shows how historical events 
 have made it possible if not inevitable. 
 
 The book has made a great impression in France and is recog- 
 nised as one of the most valuable and reliable contributions that has 
 appeared in connection with the subject. It is a book that no 
 public man, nor indeed anyone interested in current events, can 
 afford to neglecti 
 
 Times Literary Supplement says: — "There is no denying or 
 questioning the novelty of his treatment of some parts of a well- 
 worn theme, or of his conclusions. M. Guyot's service is to bring 
 to the discussion of post-war problems unusually wide knowledge ; to 
 study the aspiration of the many ethnic groups, which the Gentral 
 Empires have crushed, and to which this struggle has brought new 
 hopes. All may profit by his remarks even if they disagree with his 
 conclusions. We should do much less than justice to it if we 
 failed to recognise its richness in suggestions, its wide outlook, and 
 the generous spirit animating it."- 
 
 21 
 
The Elephant 
 
 By AGNES HERBERT 
 
 Author of "Two Dianas in Somaliland," "Two Dianas in Alaska," 
 
 "Casuals in the Caucasus,'' "The Life Story of a Lion," 
 
 " The Life Story of a Moose,'' etc., etc. 
 
 In one large handsome volume , cloth gilt, with coloured frontispiece ana 
 other illustrations by WINIFRED AUSTEN, 6s. net. 
 
 Children of to-day are keenly interested in Nature, and 
 "The Elephant" is one of those biographies of individual 
 animals which have the happy faculty of imparting knowledge of 
 nature to boys and girls while being also attractive to older 
 people. Those who are acquainted with Miss Herbert's books 
 on sport and travel, and with her realistic life stories of " The 
 Lion" and "The Moose," will not be surprised to find her 
 writing with knowledge and experience of the greatest of all 
 beasts. 
 
 Miss Herbert's animal books have been described by one of 
 our most distinguished critics as "Nature poems." Uplifted 
 by its style, imagination, and insight, the poetic account 
 of the baby elephant and his life in the wonderful wilder- 
 ness possesses infinite charm. 
 
 10th AND CHEAP EDITION. 
 
 The Soul of Germany 
 
 By THOMAS F. A. SMITH, Ph. D. 
 
 Late English Lecturer in the University of Erlangen. 
 Author of " What Germany Thinks." 
 
 In cro, 8vo cloth, 2 6 net. 
 
 " The picture he draws might pass for caricature if 
 recent events had not attested its fidelity to fact. This 
 illuminating book, derived from the pain-begotten wealth 
 of twelve years'- experience, should be on the shelves of 
 everyone who desires to identify the German of Louvain 
 and Dinant with the German of Germany." — Morning Post. 
 
" This will surety be one of the comparatively few war 
 books which contemporaries will read and te-read and hand 
 on to posterity" — The Times. 
 
 f Neath Verdun 
 
 By MAURICE GENEVOIX 
 With an Introduction by ERNEST LEVISSE. 
 Translated by H. QRAHAME RICHARDS. 
 
 In Cloth, 6s. net. 
 
 Of this extraordinarily interesting narrative, 
 The Times said : " This will surely be one of the 
 comparatively few war books which contemporaries 
 will read and re-read and hand on to posterity. 
 Hundreds, nay, thousands, of subalterns saw much 
 the same things that M. Genevoix saw, and went 
 through equally ripening experiences. But if they 
 were compelled to describe it all on paper the 
 result in the great majority of cases would be simply 
 a mass of material like unsmelted ore. Few, if any, 
 would show the magic touch of this young lieutenant. 
 The book is la verite vraie. There is no fine writing 
 in it, and yet it is all finely written. The French 
 soldier is shown in his weakness as well as in his 
 strength — nervous, impressionable, capable alike of panic 
 and of heroic self-abnegation. He is gay, good- 
 humoured, and witty on the surface, but, like his British 
 comrade, shy about his deepest feelings." 
 
 23 
 
AN IMPORTANT WORK 
 
 Through the 
 Serbian Campaign 
 
 By GORDON GORDON-SMITH 
 
 With a Preface by the Serbian Minister in London. 
 
 With Maps and 32 Illustrations on art paper. 
 
 In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 1216 net 
 
 The author is the well-known war correspondent, 
 and the only correspondent, English or American, who 
 went through the whole of the late Serbian campaign 
 from its commencement to its close at Corfu. He 
 had special facilities afforded him, and is able to tell 
 the story of the heroic struggle in all its details. For 
 the first time we get a complete narrative of the 
 operations of the Serbian army, and a resum/ of the 
 events which led up to the final crushing attack. The 
 author is a most capable writer, and his book makes 
 fascinating reading, the various battles and the great 
 retreat being finely described. The author experienced 
 the hardships of the retreat, and walked over 160 
 miles, several times narrowly escaping losing his life. 
 The illustrations are unique, as they were taken by a 
 friend who shared his experiences. 
 
 24 
 
Carmen 
 
 By PROSPER MERIMEE 
 
 Newly translated by A. E. Johnson 
 
 WITH 16 PLATE5 IN COLOUR 
 74 ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE 
 
 And Decorations, End Papers and Cover Design. 
 BY RENE BULL 
 
 Illustrator of the successful book on "The Russian Ballet"). 
 
 hi one large handsome volume cloth gilt and gilt top, boxed, 2 Is. net. 
 
 Edition de Luxe, limited to ioo copies, signed by the Artist ana bound in 
 parchment gilt, 42s. net, in box. 
 
 No character in fiction has achieved more world-wide 
 celebrity than the fated heroine of Prosper Merimee's classic 
 tale. It is upon that story that the libretto of Bizet's brilliant 
 opera is based, but the latter varies in many essential points 
 from the original tale, which is even more swift and dramatic 
 than the sequence of events seen upon the stage. 
 
 Amongst modern illustrators few have achieved a greater 
 popularity than Mr. Rene Bull, whose brilliant series of illus- 
 trations to " The Arabian Nights," U Omar Khayyam," and 
 " The Russian Ballet," is now capped by a fine set of drawings, 
 in colour and black and white, depicting the vivid incidents 
 of " Carmen." The setting of the tale — Spain of more than 
 eighty years ago — has provided an admirable opportunity 
 for the artist's sense of the picturesque, and Mr. Rene Bull's 
 series of illustrations (comprising sixteen in colour and several 
 score in black and white) realize the scene in a manner that 
 has never been achieved before. 
 
 Mr. A. E. Johnson has made an entirely new translation 
 of the original French, and adds an interesting note upon the 
 differences between the original story and the operatic libretto 
 constructed therefrom by MM. Meilhac and Halevy. 
 
 25 
 
Indo-China and its 
 Primitive People 
 
 By CAPTAIN HENRY BAUDESSON 
 
 With 60 Illustrations from photographs by 
 the author 
 
 In demy Svo, cloth gilt ', 16s. net. 
 
 In the course of his travels Captain Baudesson carefully 
 observed the curious customs of the Moi and Chams, the 
 uncultured people of Indo-China, among whom he dwelt 
 for many years. The author not only describes their rites 
 and habits, but he endeavours to show the origin of their 
 ceremonies with those of civilization. The story of these 
 travels is presented in vivid language and is full of local and 
 picturesque colour. The reader is initiated into the life of 
 the jungle, in which, day by day, the hardy pioneers lived. 
 Tigers and elephants were frequently encountered during the 
 journey of the mission, and many members of the expedition 
 were wounded by the poisoned arrows of the natives, while 
 jungle fever and malaria made havoc among them. 
 
 POPULAR POCKET NATURE BOOKS 
 
 In small volumes (7J in. by 5 in.), richly gilt, 
 rounded corners, 5s. net. 
 
 Toadstools and Mushrooms 
 
 of the Countryside 
 
 By EDWARD STEP, F.L.S. With 
 8 coloured plates and 128 other 
 illustrations. 
 
 Astronomy 
 
 By G. F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S. 
 With 8 coloured plates and 358 
 illustrations. 
 
 Birds of the Countryside 
 
 By FRANK FINN, F.Z.S. With 12 
 coloured plates, 1 1 8 il lustrations from 
 photographs, and numerous outline 
 drawings. 
 
 Eggs and Nests of British Birds 
 
 By FRANK FINN, F.Z.S. With 20 
 coloured plates,and many other illus- 
 trations, both coloured & uncoloured, 
 of allithe British Birds' Eggs, repro- 
 duced from actual specimens. 
 
 Pets and How to Keep Them 
 
 By FRANK FINN, F.Z.S. With 107 
 illustrations, mostly from photo- 
 graphs, including 12 coloured plates. 
 
 British Fresh-Water Fishes 
 
 By SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, 
 Bart. With 24 beautiful coloured 
 plates. 
 
 Wild Fruits of the Countryside 
 
 By F. EDWARD HULME, F.L.S., 
 F.SA., etc. With 36 coloured plates 
 by the Author, and 25 illustrations 
 from photographs on art paper. 
 
 Our British Trees and 
 How to Know Them 
 
 By FRANCIS GEORGE HEATH 
 With 250 illustrations. 
 
 26 
 
38th Year of issue. 
 
 The Year's Art, 1917 
 
 Compiled by A. C. R. CARTER 
 
 A concise epitome of all matters relating to the Arts of 
 Painting, Sculpture, Engraving, and Architecture, and to 
 Schools of Design which have occurred during the year 1916 
 together with information respecting the events of 191 7. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth , 55. net. 
 
 Over 600 pages, with illustrations. 
 
 In the Morning 
 of Time 
 
 By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 
 
 Author of " Red Fox," etc. 
 With eight fine illustrations 
 
 In large crown Svo cloth gilt, b\- net. 
 
 The stories of this author, dealing with the adventures of 
 animals, of which "The Red Fox" is, perhaps, the best known, 
 have for a long time enjoyed great popularity. In the present 
 work Mr. Roberts gives us a story of a man in primeval times, 
 and he introduces descriptions of the strange scenery and monstrous 
 fauna of the time. This story bids fair to be one of the most 
 successful of Mr. Roberts' works of fiction. The interest of the 
 volume is enhanced by the addition of the striking illustrations 
 which excite the imagination. 
 
 27 
 
Framjois Villon 
 
 His Life and Times 
 
 1431—1463 
 
 By H. de VERE STACPOOLE 
 Translator of Villon's Poems. 
 
 ht cloth gilt, 6s. neU 
 
 Mr. Stacpoole's life of Francois Villon is the first attempt 
 at a biography of the great French poet of the middle ages. 
 Here we have for the first time set forth in English the 
 affair of the Pet au Diable, the University life of the old 
 University of Paris, the character of Thibault D'Aussigny, 
 the Ogre of Menning, and much more that will come as a 
 surprise to those who fancy that they know all about Villon. 
 Mr. Stacpoole demonstrates a fact that every other writer 
 on the subject has ignored, the fact that between the two 
 Testaments there is a difference as vast as the difference 
 between body and soul. The difference between a 
 mind heedless and ribald and the same mind devel- 
 oped through experience and adversity. 
 
 The story of the life of Villon holds the mind like a 
 novel, from the first pages, when we find ourselves in 
 the strange old University of Paris, to the last where 
 Villon disappears into the unknown. 
 
 28 
 
A MOST INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE 
 BOOK FOR THE PRESENT TIME 
 
 A Woman in the 
 Balkans 
 
 By MRS. WILL GORDON, F.R.G.S. 
 
 In demy 8vo cloth, with many illustrations, 12 s. 6d. net 
 
 This work will undoubtedly make a wide appeal at the 
 present moment. It is a vivid and interesting account of the 
 Author's travels in Balkan lands, their history, peoples and 
 customs. Serbia, past and present, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 
 wild mountainous regions of Montenegro and Albania, Bulgaria, 
 Turkey, are all described in a lively spirit of adventure and 
 interest. Roumania, the romantic land with its gay, intelligent 
 Latin race, is also very fully depicted. Many reflections on the 
 social life of the capitals, the political problems, the War, the 
 ideals and aspirations of the people, are indulged in ; while 
 sketches of the leading men, past and present, and meetings 
 with some of the Rulers of these countries, their private lives 
 and interests, are dealt with. The Young Turk, what he has 
 brought his country to, the women of Turkey and their position, 
 are also lightly sketched, in. 
 
 A BOOK EVERYONE IS READING 
 
 With the Zionists 
 in Gallipoli 
 
 By LT.-COLONEL J. H. PATTERSON, D.S.O. 
 
 Author of 
 "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo" and "In the Grip of the Nyika" 
 
 In crown 8vo, cloth, with Maps 6s. net 
 
 While in Egypt the author was placed in command of a mule 
 corps composed entirely of Jews for service in Gallipoli ; his book 
 is a record of the work of the corps there, but it is also a vivid 
 description of the fighting generally. It is a story of actual 
 happenings as he saw them, and he does not hesitate to criticise 
 freely the way in which the campaign was attempted to be carried 
 out. Written in a bright and attractive style, the book is excellent 
 reading, as well as being most instructive, for it is the first book 
 of the kind to be published. 
 
 29 
 
Deeds that Thrill 
 
 The Empire 
 
 TRUE STORIES OF THE MOST GLORIOUS ACTS OF 
 HEROISM OF THE EMPIRE'S SOLDIERS AND SAILORS 
 DURING THE GREAT WAR 
 
 WITH A FOREWORD BY THE EARL OF DERBY, K,G. 
 
 With over 700 Original Drawings by Leading 
 Artists ; and many Fine Coloured Plates. 
 
 WRITTEN BY WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS 
 
 Volume I Now Ready. 
 
 In demy 4to, 440 pages, 462 black and white illustrations and 72 
 
 coloured plates , bound in handsome cloth gilt and gilt edges, 
 
 1016 net, and in various leather bindings. 
 
 Volume II is in the press. 
 
 In this work is given full authentic accounts in vivid and popular 
 language of glorious acts of individual heroism which have been recognised and 
 gained decorations, but which need to be fully recorded to bring them home to 
 the heart. These undying stories of valour among officers and men from every 
 part of the world and in all branches of the British service have been written 
 in almost every case exclusively for this publication, from information sup- 
 plied by the heroes themselves or by eye-witnesses, and have been obtained 
 with infinite difficulty involving great labour over a long period of time. 
 This finely illustrated record of the magnificent gallantry of the Sons of the 
 Empire on the Field, on the Sea and in the Air, will constitute "a monument 
 to keep alive the memory of high deeds." 
 
 The work is superbly illustrated throughout, and printed on the best British 
 Art Paper. Many fine Coloured Plates are included. The artists are leading men 
 in their particular branch and- working from authentic descriptions they have 
 by reconstruction enabled us to visualize the scenes of these heroic deeds and 
 give them reality. Amongst the artists are such favourites as W. S. 
 Bagdatopulos, J. Bryan, Allan Stewart, Charles Dixon, R.I., G. Soper, D. 
 C. J. de McPherson, Lacey, Maurice Randall, J. H. Valda, Ambrose Dudley and 
 Montague Dawson, 
 
 30 
 
Tens of thousands of women workers will want this book. 
 
 Lloyd George's 
 Munition Girls 
 
 By MONICA COSENS 
 
 In crown 8vo, paper cover, //- net. 
 
 A book written from the inside by a munition worker. It tells of 
 the everyday experiences and tasks of 'a lady who has become a shell 
 maker and of the conditions under which the work is done. There are 
 many side-lights, both humorous and tragic ; it is not only instructive 
 but most interesting reading. 
 
 The most remarkable man of the day. 
 
 From Boundary-Rider 
 to Prime Minister 
 
 Hughes of Australia 
 
 By DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 
 Author of "Germany's Great Lie," etc. 
 
 With an Introduction by the Rt. Hon. Andrew Fisher, 
 High Commissioner and thrice Premier of Australia. 
 
 In crown 8vo, paper cover, with portrait . 220 pp., //- net. 
 And in cloth, 2\~ net. 
 
 The book contains chapters by Mr. Hughes himself on 
 "Compulsory Military Training" and "Labour in Power." 
 
 A useful and timely book which should sell in its thousands. 
 
 Practical Hints for 
 V.A.D. Nurses 
 
 By MRS. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 Author of " London," " Monte Carlo," etc. 
 In foolscap, paper cover, 6d. net. 
 The author, as a lecturer on nursing, has found that such a book as 
 this is needed by the many thousands who are taking up nursing. 
 It gives the essential information and instruction without waste of words. 
 The author is the wife of a doctor — the popular author of "The Blue 
 Lagoon,"etc. — and is herself a very successful writer, so it will be understood 
 that this little book is not only well presented but thoroughly reliable. 
 
 31 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 
 
 History of the Nations 
 
 A popular concise, pictorial, and authoritative 
 
 account of each Nation from the earliest times 
 
 to the present day. 
 
 Edited by WALTER HUTCHINSON, M.A., F.R.C.S., F.R.A.I., 
 
 BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 
 WRITTEN THROUGHOUT BY EMINENT HISTORIANS 
 
 In 4 Handsome Volumes. 
 
 The price per volume in various bindings is as follows : 
 Cloth, richly gilt & gilt edges, 10/6 net I Half Red Persian, richly gilt&gi It edges. 13/0 net 
 Half Green Moroeco do. 12/6 net | Full Morocco do. 16/0 net 
 
 THE SCHEME OF THE WORK. 
 
 The history of each nation is treated separately, and not merged 
 into a general historical abstract, as is the case of many so-called histories of 
 the world. By this method the interest of the subject is maintained, and it 
 is rendered more useful as a work of reference and eminently more readable. 
 
 THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The whole work contains 51 coloured plates and about 2,900 beautiful 
 illustrations, besides 65 historical maps. A large number of the 
 pictures are from drawings specially prepared for the work by some of our 
 most eminent living artists. Many of the best known historical paintings are also 
 included. Never before has a historical work been illustrated on the same 
 extensive seale. The volumes form a wonderful gallery of art of all ages. 
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 The best and most widely known authorities have supplied the text for the 
 various sections of this work, and their united contributions constitute a most 
 valuable permanent book for study or reference. Among those who have 
 written for this work may be mentioned Prof. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L., Litt. D., 
 LL.D., Ph.D.. F.R.S., F.B.A., Prof. H. A. Giles. M.A., LL.D.. Sir 
 Richard Temple. Bart., C.I.E., F.R.G.S., Leonard W. King, M.A., F.S.A., 
 Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, M.A.. C. V.O., D.D., D.C.L., Prof. J. S. Reid, M.A.. 
 LL.M., Litt.D., Edward Foord, Dr. Israel Abrahams, Prof. Joseph Henry 
 Longford, Prof. David Samuel Margoliouth, M.A., D.Litt, Arthur Hassal), 
 M.A., and Dr. Henry Thomas, 
 
 32 
 
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 BERKELEY 
 
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