The Light That Failed

‘No; it’s only me,’ was the answer, in a strained little whisper. Maisie could hardly move her lips.

‘H’m!’ said Dick, composedly, without moving. ‘This is a new phenomenon. Darkness I’m getting used to; but I object to hearing voices.’

Was he mad, then, as well as blind, that he talked to himself? Maisie’s heart beat more wildly, and she breathed in gasps. Dick rose and began to feel his way across the room, touching each table and chair as he passed. Once he caught his foot on a rug, and swore, dropping on his knees to feel what the obstruction might be. Maisie remembered him walking in the Park as though all the earth belonged to him, tramping up and down her studio two months ago, and flying up the gangway of the Channel steamer. The beating of her heart was making her sick, and Dick was coming nearer, guided by the sound of her breathing. She put out a hand mechanically to ward him off or to draw him to herself, she did not know which. It touched his chest, and he stepped back as though he had been shot.

‘It’s Maisie!’ said he, with a dry sob. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came – I came – to see you, please.’

Dick’s lips closed firmly.

‘Won’t you sit down, then? You see, I’ve had some bother with my eyes, and – ’

‘I know. I know. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I couldn’t write.’

‘You might have told Mr. Torpenhow.’

‘What has he to do with my affairs?’

‘He – he brought me from Vitry-sur-Marne. He thought I ought to see you.’

‘Why, what has happened? Can I do anything for you? No, I can’t. I forgot.’

‘Oh, Dick, I’m so sorry! I’ve come to tell you, and – Let me take you back to your chair.’

‘Don’t! I’m not a child. You only do that out of pity. I never meant to tell you anything about it. I’m no good now. I’m down and done for. Let me alone!’

He groped back to his chair, his chest labouring as he sat down.

Maisie watched him, and the fear went out of her heart, to be followed by a very bitter shame. He had spoken a truth that had been hidden from the girl through every step of the impetuous flight to London; for he was, indeed, down and done for – masterful no longer but rather a little abject; neither an artist stronger than she, nor a man to be looked up to – only some blind one that sat in a chair and seemed on the point of crying. She was immensely and unfeignedly sorry for him – more sorry than she had ever been for any one in her life, but not sorry enough to deny his words.

So she stood still and felt ashamed and a little hurt, because she had honestly intended that her journey should end triumphantly; and now she was only filled with pity most startlingly distinct from love.

‘Well?’ said Dick, his face steadily turned away. ‘I never meant to worry you any more. What’s the matter?’

He was conscious that Maisie was catching her breath, but was as unprepared as herself for the torrent of emotion that followed. She had dropped into a chair and was sobbing with her face hidden in her hands.

‘I can’t – I can’t!’ she cried desperately. ‘Indeed, I can’t. It isn’t my fault.

I’m so sorry. Oh, Dickie, I’m so sorry.’

Dick’s shoulders straightened again, for the words lashed like a whip.

Still the sobbing continued. It is not good to realise that you have failed in the hour of trial or flinched before the mere possibility of making sacrifices.

‘I do despise myself – indeed I do. But I can’t. Oh, Dickie, you wouldn’t ask me – would you?’ wailed Maisie.

She looked up for a minute, and by chance it happened that Dick’s eyes fell on hers. The unshaven face was very white and set, and the lips were trying to force themselves into a smile. But it was the worn-out eyes that Maisie feared. Her Dick had gone blind and left in his place some one that she could hardly recognise till he spoke.

‘Who is asking you to do anything, Maisie? I told you how it would be.

What’s the use of worrying? For pity’s sake don’t cry like that; it isn’t worth it.’

‘You don’t know how I hate myself. Oh, Dick, help me – help me!’ The passion of tears had grown beyond her control and was beginning to alarm the man. He stumbled forward and put his arm round her, and her head fell on his shoulder.

‘Hush, dear, hush! Don’t cry. You’re quite right, and you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with – you never had. You’re only a little upset by the journey, and I don’t suppose you’ve had any breakfast. What a brute Torp was to bring you over.’

‘I wanted to come. I did indeed,’ she protested.

‘Very well. And now you’ve come and seen, and I’m – immensely grateful.

When you’re better you shall go away and get something to eat. What sort of a passage did you have coming over?’

Maisie was crying more subduedly, for the first time in her life glad that she had something to lean against. Dick patted her on the shoulder tenderly but clumsily, for he was not quite sure where her shoulder might be.

She drew herself out of his arms at last and waited, trembling and most unhappy. He had felt his way to the window to put the width of the room between them, and to quiet a little the tumult in his heart.

‘Are you better now?’ he said.

‘Yes, but – don’t you hate me?’

‘I hate you? My God! I?’

‘Isn’t – isn’t there anything I could do for you, then? I’ll stay here in England to do it, if you like. Perhaps I could come and see you sometimes.’

‘I think not, dear. It would be kindest not to see me any more, please. I don’t want to seem rude, but – don’t you think – perhaps you had almost better go now.’

He was conscious that he could not bear himself as a man if the strain continued much longer.

‘I don’t deserve anything else. I’ll go, Dick. Oh, I’m so miserable.’

‘Nonsense. You’ve nothing to worry about; I’d tell you if you had. Wait a moment, dear. I’ve got something to give you first. I meant it for you ever since this little trouble began. It’s my Melancolia; she was a beauty when I last saw her. You can keep her for me, and if ever you’re poor you can sell her. She’s worth a few hundreds at any state of the market.’ He groped among his canvases. ‘She’s framed in black. Is this a black frame that I have my hand on? There she is. What do you think of her?’

He turned a scarred formless muddle of paint towards Maisie, and the eyes strained as though they would catch her wonder and surprise. One thing and one thing only could she do for him.

‘Well?’

The voice was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he was speaking of his best work. Maisie looked at the blur, and a lunatic desire to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick’s sake – whatever this mad blankness might mean – she must make no sign. Her voice choked with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the wreck – ‘Oh, Dick, it is good!’

He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. ‘Won’t you have it, then? I’ll send it over to your house if you will.’

‘I? Oh yes – thank you. Ha! ha!’ If she did not fly at once the laughter that was worse than tears would kill her. She turned and ran, choking and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take refuge in a cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in the dismantled drawing-room and thought of Dick in his blindness, useless till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind the sorrow, the shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath of the red-haired girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never feared her companion before. Not until she found herself saying, ‘Well, he never asked me,’ did she realise her scorn of herself.

And that is the end of Maisie.

For Dick was reserved more searching torment. He could not realise at first that Maisie, whom he had ordered to go had left him without a word of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who had brought upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace. Then his dark hour came and he was alone with himself and his desires to get what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no wrong, but in following the right, so far as it served her work, she had wounded her one subject more than his own brain would let him know.

‘It’s all I had and I’ve lost it,’ he said, as soon as the misery permitted clear thinking. ‘And Torp will think that he has been so infernally clever that I shan’t have the heart to tell him. I must think this out quietly.’

‘Hullo!’ said Torpenhow, entering the studio after Dick had enjoyed two hours of thought. ‘I’m back. Are you feeling any better?’

‘Torp, I don’t know what to say. Come here.’ Dick coughed huskily, wondering, indeed, what he should say, and how to say it temperately.

‘What’s the need for saying anything? Get up and tramp.’ Torpenhow was perfectly satisfied.

They walked up and down as of custom, Torpenhow’s hand on Dick’s shoulder, and Dick buried in his own thoughts.

‘How in the world did you find it all out?’ said Dick, at last.

‘You shouldn’t go off your head if you want to keep secrets, Dickie. It was absolutely impertinent on my part; but if you’d seen me rocketing about on a half-trained French troop-horse under a blazing sun you’d have laughed. There will be a charivari in my rooms to-night. Seven other devils – ’

‘I know – the row in the Southern Soudan. I surprised their councils the other day, and it made me unhappy. Have you fixed your flint to go? Who d’you work for?’

‘Haven’t signed any contracts yet. I wanted to see how your business would turn out.’

‘Would you have stayed with me, then, if – things had gone wrong?’ He put his question cautiously.

‘Don’t ask me too much. I’m only a man.’

‘You’ve tried to be an angel very successfully.’

‘Oh ye – es!.. Well, do you attend the function to-night? We shall be half screwed before the morning. All the men believe the war’s a certainty.’

‘I don’t think I will, old man, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll stay quiet here.’

‘And meditate? I don’t blame you. You observe a good time if ever a man did.’

That night there was a tumult on the stairs. The correspondents poured in from theatre, dinner, and music-hall to Torpenhow’s room that they might discuss their plan of campaign in the event of military operations becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu, and the Nilghai had bidden all the men they had worked with to the orgy; and Mr. Beeton, the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered experience had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked the chambers with shoutings and song; and the elder men were quite as bad as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and all knew what those meant.

Sitting in his own room a little perplexed by the noise across the landing, Dick suddenly began to laugh to himself.

‘When one comes to think of it the situation is intensely comic. Maisie’s quite right – poor little thing. I didn’t know she could cry like that before; but now I know what Torp thinks, I’m sure he’d be quite fool enough to stay at home and try to console me – if he knew. Besides, it isn’t nice to own that you’ve been thrown over like a broken chair. I must carry this business through alone – as usual. If there isn’t a war, and Torp finds out, I shall look foolish, that’s all. If there is a way I mustn’t interfere with another man’s chances. Business is business, and I want to be alone – I want to be alone. What a row they’re making!’

Somebody hammered at the studio door.

‘Come out and frolic, Dickie,’ said the Nilghai.

‘I should like to, but I can’t. I’m not feeling frolicsome.’

‘Then, I’ll tell the boys and they’ll drag you like a badger.’

‘Please not, old man. On my word, I’d sooner be left alone just now.’

‘Very good. Can we send anything in to you? Fizz, for instance.

Cassavetti is beginning to sing songs of the Sunny South already.’

For one minute Dick considered the proposition seriously.

‘No, thanks, I’ve a headache already.’

‘Virtuous child. That’s the effect of emotion on the young. All my congratulations, Dick. I also was concerned in the conspiracy for your welfare.’

‘Go to the devil – oh, send Binkie in here.’

The little dog entered on elastic feet, riotous from having been made much of all the evening. He had helped to sing the choruses; but scarcely inside the studio he realised that this was no place for tail-wagging, and settled himself on Dick’s lap till it was bedtime. Then he went to bed with Dick, who counted every hour as it struck, and rose in the morning with a painfully clear head to receive Torpenhow’s more formal congratulations and a particular account of the last night’s revels.

‘You aren’t looking very happy for a newly accepted man,’ said Torpenhow.

‘Never mind that – it’s my own affair, and I’m all right. Do you really go?’

‘Yes. With the old Central Southern as usual. They wired, and I accepted on better terms than before.’

‘When do you start?’

‘The day after to-morrow – for Brindisi.’

‘Thank God.’ Dick spoke from the bottom of his heart.

‘Well, that’s not a pretty way of saying you’re glad to get rid of me. But men in your condition are allowed to be selfish.’

‘I didn’t mean that. Will you get a hundred pounds cashed for me before you leave?’

‘That’s a slender amount for housekeeping, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, it’s only for – marriage expenses.’

Torpenhow brought him the money, counted it out in fives and tens, and carefully put it away in the writing table.

‘Now I suppose I shall have to listen to his ravings about his girl until I go. Heaven send us patience with a man in love!’ he said to himself.

But never a word did Dick say of Maisie or marriage. He hung in the doorway of Torpenhow’s room when the latter was packing and asked innumerable questions about the coming campaign, till Torpenhow began to feel annoyed.

‘You’re a secretive animal, Dickie, and you consume your own smoke, don’t you?’ he said on the last evening.

‘I – I suppose so. By the way, how long do you think this war will last?’

‘Days, weeks, or months. One can never tell. It may go on for years.’

‘I wish I were going.’

‘Good Heavens! You’re the most unaccountable creature! Hasn’t it occurred to you that you’re going to be married – thanks to me?’

‘Of course, yes. I’m going to be married – so I am. Going to be married.

I’m awfully grateful to you. Haven’t I told you that?’

‘You might be going to be hanged by the look of you,’ said Torpenhow.

And the next day Torpenhow bade him good-bye and left him to the loneliness he had so much desired.

CHAPTER XIV

     Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,     Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,     Yet at the last, with his masters around him,     He of the Faith spoke as master to slave;     Yet at the last, tho’ the Kafirs had maimed him,     Broken by bondage and wrecked by the reiver, —     Yet at the last, tho’ the darkness had claimed him,     He called upon Allah and died a believer.– Kizzilbashi.

‘BEG your pardon, Mr. Heldar, but – but isn’t nothin’ going to happen?’ said Mr. Beeton.

‘No!’ Dick had just waked to another morning of blank despair and his temper was of the shortest.

‘’Tain’t my regular business, o’ course, sir; and what I say is, “Mind your own business and let other people mind theirs;” but just before Mr. Torpenhow went away he give me to understand, like, that you might be moving into a house of your own, so to speak – a sort of house with rooms upstairs and downstairs where you’d be better attended to, though I try to act just by all our tenants. Don’t I?’

‘Ah! That must have been a mad-house. I shan’t trouble you to take me there yet. Get me my breakfast, please, and leave me alone.’

‘I hope I haven’t done anything wrong, sir, but you know I hope that as far as a man can I tries to do the proper thing by all the gentlemen in chambers – and more particular those whose lot is hard – such as you, for instance, Mr. Heldar. You likes soft-roe bloater, don’t you? Soft-roe bloaters is scarcer than hard-roe, but what I says is, “Never mind a little extra trouble so long as you give satisfaction to the tenants.”’

Mr. Beeton withdrew and left Dick to himself. Torpenhow had been long away; there was no more rioting in the chambers, and Dick had settled down to his new life, which he was weak enough to consider nothing better than death.

It is hard to live alone in the dark, confusing the day and night; dropping to sleep through sheer weariness at mid-day, and rising restless in the chill of the dawn. At first Dick, on his awakenings, would grope along the corridors of the chambers till he heard some one snore. Then he would know that the day had not yet come, and return wearily to his bedroom.

Later he learned not to stir till there was a noise and movement in the house and Mr. Beeton advised him to get up. Once dressed – and dressing, now that Torpenhow was away, was a lengthy business, because collars, ties, and the like hid themselves in far corners of the room, and search meant head-beating against chairs and trunks – once dressed, there was nothing whatever to do except to sit still and brood till the three daily meals came. Centuries separated breakfast from lunch and lunch from dinner, and though a man prayed for hundreds of years that his mind might be taken from him, God would never hear. Rather the mind was quickened and the revolving thoughts ground against each other as millstones grind when there is no corn between; and yet the brain would not wear out and give him rest. It continued to think, at length, with imagery and all manner of reminiscences. It recalled Maisie and past success, reckless travels by land and sea, the glory of doing work and feeling that it was good, and suggested all that might have happened had the eyes only been faithful to their duty. When thinking ceased through sheer weariness, there poured into Dick’s soul tide on tide of overwhelming, purposeless fear – dread of starvation always, terror lest the unseen ceiling should crush down upon him, fear of fire in the chambers and a louse’s death in red flame, and agonies of fiercer horror that had nothing to do with any fear of death. Then Dick bowed his head, and clutching the arms of his chair fought with his sweating self till the tinkle of plates told him that something to eat was being set before him.

Mr. Beeton would bring the meal when he had time to spare, and Dick learned to hang upon his speech, which dealt with badly fitted gas-plugs, waste-pipes out of repair, little tricks for driving picture-nails into walls, and the sins of the charwoman or the housemaids. In the lack of better things the small gossip of a servant’’ hall becomes immensely interesting, and the screwing of a washer on a tap an event to be talked over for days.

Once or twice a week, too, Mr. Beeton would take Dick out with him when he went marketing in the morning to haggle with tradesmen over fish, lamp-wicks, mustard, tapioca, and so forth, while Dick rested his weight first on one foot and then on the other and played aimlessly with the tins and string-ball on the counter. Then they would perhaps meet one of Mr. Beeton’s friends, and Dick, standing aside a little, would hold his peace till Mr. Beeton was willing to go on again.

The life did not increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber’s shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used to the darkness. If he demand attendance and grow angry at the want of it, he must assert himself and stand upright. Then the meanest menial can see that he is blind and, therefore, of no consequence. A wise man will keep his eyes on the floor and sit still. For amusement he may pick coal lump by lump out of the scuttle with the tongs and pile it in a little heap in the fender, keeping count of the lumps, which must all be put back again, one by one and very carefully. He may set himself sums if he cares to work them out; he may talk to himself or to the cat if she chooses to visit him; and if his trade has been that of an artist, he may sketch in the air with his forefinger; but that is too much like drawing a pig with the eyes shut. He may go to his bookshelves and count his books, ranging them in order of their size; or to his wardrobe and count his shirts, laying them in piles of two or three on the bed, as they suffer from frayed cuffs or lost buttons.

Even this entertainment wearies after a time; and all the times are very, very long.

Dick was allowed to sort a tool-chest where Mr. Beeton kept hammers, taps and nuts, lengths of gas-pipes, oil-bottles, and string.

‘If I don’t have everything just where I know where to look for it, why, then, I can’t find anything when I do want it. You’ve no idea, sir, the amount of little things that these chambers uses up,’ said Mr. Beeton.

Fumbling at the handle of the door as he went out: ‘It’s hard on you, sir, I do think it’s hard on you. Ain’t you going to do anything, sir?’

‘I’ll pay my rent and messing. Isn’t that enough?’

‘I wasn’t doubting for a moment that you couldn’t pay your way, sir; but I ‘ave often said to my wife, “It’s ‘ard on ‘im because it isn’t as if he was an old man, nor yet a middle-aged one, but quite a young gentleman. That’s where it comes so ‘ard.”’

‘I suppose so,’ said Dick, absently. This particular nerve through long battering had ceased to feel – much.

‘I was thinking,’ continued Mr. Beeton, still making as if to go, ‘that you might like to hear my boy Alf read you the papers sometimes of an evening. He do read beautiful, seeing he’s only nine.’

‘I should be very grateful,’ said Dick. ‘Only let me make it worth his while.’

‘We wasn’t thinking of that, sir, but of course it’s in your own ‘ands; but only to ‘ear Alf sing “A Boy’s best Friend is ‘is Mother!” Ah!’

‘I’ll hear him sing that too. Let him come this evening with the newspapers.’

Alf was not a nice child, being puffed up with many school-board certificates for good conduct, and inordinately proud of his singing. Mr. Beeton remained, beaming, while the child wailed his way through a song of some eight eight-line verses in the usual whine of a young Cockney, and, after compliments, left him to read Dick the foreign telegrams. Ten minutes later Alf returned to his parents rather pale and scared.

‘’E said ‘e couldn’t stand it no more,’ he explained.

‘He never said you read badly, Alf?’ Mrs. Beeton spoke.

‘No. ‘E said I read beautiful. Said ‘e never ‘eard any one read like that, but ‘e said ‘e couldn’t abide the stuff in the papers.’

‘P’raps he’s lost some money in the Stocks. Were you readin’ him about Stocks, Alf?’

‘No; it was all about fightin’ out there where the soldiers is gone – a great long piece with all the lines close together and very hard words in it. ‘E give me ‘arf a crown because I read so well. And ‘e says the next time there’s anything ‘e wants read ‘e’ll send for me.’

‘That’s good hearing, but I do think for all the half-crown – put it into the kicking-donkey money-box, Alf, and let me see you do it – he might have kept you longer. Why, he couldn’t have begun to understand how beautiful you read.’

‘He’s best left to hisself – gentlemen always are when they’re downhearted,’ said Mr. Beeton.

Alf’s rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow’s special correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through the boy’s nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as it drifted over camp before the wind of the desert.

That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from him, offering for proof that he was worthy of this favour the fact that he had not shot himself long ago. That prayer was not answered, and indeed Dick knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of humour and no special virtue had kept him alive. Suicide, he had persuaded himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation as well as a weak-kneed confession of fear.

‘Just for the fun of the thing,’ he said to the cat, who had taken Binkie’s place in his establishment, ‘I should like to know how long this is going to last. I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp cashed for me. I must have two or three thousand at least in the Bank – twenty or thirty years more provided for, that is to say. Then I fall back on my hundred and twenty a year, which will be more by that time. Let’s consider.