Blindness

by Henry Green

  All gone, the lawn, the roses, the quiet, the protection, her little room, the glass of milk, Jack, the horses, the cows, the walks, for they were not the same, Nancy, those evenings. Fool. The peace, the untroubledness, the old wall, the . . . All . . .

  She went to sleep.

  —— COLLEGE, OXFORD

  My dear B. G.

  “I saw you last night in the club, but you cut me dead. Come to lunch Friday to be forgiven. I wanted to talk about poor John. I am so sorry about it. Poor dear, amusing John. I must write to him, though what there is to say I don’t know. Really, these letters of condolences are very difficult.

  “But why did you cut me like that? I saw David Plimmer the other night and he spoke of you with enthusiasm. Don’t forget about lunch Friday, if you cut that I shall know the worst.

  Yrs.—

  Seymour

  PART THREE

  Butterfly

  1. WAITING

  HE WAS in the summer-house. Light rain crackled as it fell on the wooden roof, and winds swept up, one after the other, to rustle the trees. A pigeon hurried rather through his phrase that was no longer now a call. Cries of rooks came down to him from where they would be floating, whirling in the air like dead leaves, over the lawn. The winds kept coming back, growing out of each other, and when a stronger one had gone by there would be left cool eddies slipping by his cheek, while a tree further on would thunder softly. Every wind was different, and as he listened to their coming and to their going, there was rhythm in their play. In the fields, beyond where the trees would be, a man cracked his whip, and a cow lowed. The long grass copied the trees with a tiny dry rustling.

  But there was something new today; he had met her; he would meet her again, and the wind was lighter for it, the branches danced almost. He had been shy when they had met, and so had she, and he had laughed at himself for being shy, though that was all part of the game. For now at last he could play as the trees were doing now, advance, retreat, and it was a holiday, and she would be wild, so wild. Mamma was horrified at her life, she must have had a queer time, so that she would be interesting. And her voice had been afraid; she had been frightened at his lack of eyes. She would be fascinated later, as he lay by her side—oh, devilry—to listen to her hoarse voice, to weave question and answer.

  There had been doubt in Mamma’s voice when speaking about her, and it had only been through pity that she had brought her to the house. He was old enough to know now, she had said, that the girl lived a most extraordinary life with her drunken father, that she was not quite proper. As if he had not always known, as if he had not told at once from her voice. But she, Mamma, had met her in the lane, looking so ill, with her hand all swollen and the thumb tied up in a rag, a rag-an’-bone man’s rag, and she, Mamma, had said to herself that after all the girl was a parishioner, and she had positively insisted on her coming back to the house at once, that the thumb might be properly done up. And at first the girl had been sulky and silent, and then the poor girl had become quite servile in her thanks. That dreadful man, her father.

  So they had met. But Mamma’s voice had been uneasy all through her account of it; she had been frightened. She had told him that artists married barmaids continually and were unhappy ever after. And he had said that unhappiness was necessary to artists, and she had called that stuff and nonsense. But they had met. For Mamma had feared before he had gone blind that he would marry beneath him—well, not quite that, but someone unsuitable; and just lately she had been talking a great deal about marriage, how he must marry, how he must make a home for himself here. Her voice had been full of plans.

  Voices had become his great interest, voices that surrounded him, that came and went, that slipped from tone to tone, that hid to give away in hiding. There had been wonder in hers when he had groped into the room upon them both; she had said, “Look.” But before she had opened her mouth he had known that there was someone new in the room.

  Voices had been thickly round him for the past month, all kinds of them. Mamma extracted them from the neighbourhood, and all had sent out the first note of horror, and some had continued horrified and frightened, while others had grown sympathetic, and these were for the most part the fat voices of mothers, and some had been disgusted. She had been the first to be almost immediately at her ease, when she spoke it was with an eager note, and there were so few eager people.

  Tomorrow June (her name was June) would come to have her poor hand attended to. She had cut it, and it was poisoned a little, poor little hand. “Like white mice,” her fingers. They would not be white though, but hard and a little dirty with work. Tomorrow.

  Today Mamma had gone into Norbury in one of her fits of righteous anger. On the road and in front of the town rubbish heap, just where you had the best view of the Abbey, the Town Council had allowed a local man to build a garage, in tin, painted red. Of course, she had said, there was jobbery in it, and there probably was. So she had gone to the Dean, and she would be talking to him now. The Dean would boom sympathy, and he would be tired, poor man, but he would write to the Town Council. They would do nothing. Poor Ruskin!

  Still it was a pity, for the garage spoilt that view. But they had not tampered with the inside of the church. It was quiet in there as the country round, and all was simple, and the round pillars were so kind, and the echoes that blurred everything and so made the words more grand. The church music went round and round the walls, and then rolled along the ceiling till the shifting notes built walls about you till you were yourself very high up, so that you could see.

  But Mamma always made one go to Barwood Church, where the service was out of tune and where there was not even simplicity, for Crayshaw lit candles and wore vestments. And outside always there were quiet fields and colour to show you how absurd it was to worship indoors. Crayshaw had just had another baby, a son, and he had so many. But Mamma said that they must go to Barwood Church that they might be an example to the village. So they went, and the few others they met there went to show that they went, and everyone realized that, and so on.

  Last Sunday, the first time he had been after going blind, there had been voices singing in the county accent. Such nice, strong, genuine voices. But then Crayshaw had spoilt it all by preaching about blindness in the East, ophthalmia in the Bible, spittle and sight, with a final outburst against pagans. During the sermon he had fingered his prayer-book; it was longer and thinner than any of the rest. It had been presented for his first service in church. And he should have been sentimental over it; he should have thought how good he had been so long ago in the nursery, of how he had wanted to be a bishop, and of how Mabel Palmer had said how nice it would be for the neighbourhood to own a bishop.

  Things were different now. The nursery was gone and the days at Noat, so full of people, were gone. There were other things instead. There was so much to find out, and, in a sense, so much to discover for others, for when one was blind one understood differently. A whole set of new values had arisen. And being blind did not hurt so long as one did not try to see in terms of sight what one touched or heard.

  The wind was higher and the summer-house groaned now and then in it. The trees roared, when suddenly there would be lulls, strangely quiet, waiting for another wind to come up. Everything would be stopped short. The branches were still, and would be looking vacantly at each other, like children come to the end of a game. Then a wind comes up and covers the emptiness that had followed; a dead branch snapped and fell to the ground. It was getting colder; the sun had not been out all day, and one always knew when the sun was out. A blackbird warned as he fled down wind. The air round was stealthy.

  It was all so full of little hints; the air carried up little noises and then hurried them away again. The silence had been so full. The rain had stopped falling now, and he was straining to catch the slightest secrets that were in the winds, and before he had never known that. In a way one gained by being blind, of course one did; besides he was happy today, for was not she comi
ng tomorrow?

  So that they would go for walks together, and he would get her to lead him to the top of Swan’s Wood to look upon the view there and listen to her eager voice. What a pity never to see that view again—the river, the meadows, the town, the rubbish heap, the Abbey and the hills behind. And the one hill, a mound that came before the line of hills in the distance, and that had things dotted about on it, and through them a road, a quiet yellow line, which had clung to it and had shown off the hollows.

  When they were there they would talk of everything and he would find out her life, why her hand was like that and why she trembled the air in a room. He would teach her the view, and she would be so bored with it as she would so want to go on talking about that. A wind would come down to wreathe rings about them—how lyrical! But June would be so charming; she must be, and she had such strong hands. Besides, her voice was lovely; there was something wild in it and something asleep there as well, as if she too had lived alone and had many things to tell. For she would be interesting at least; she must have suffered living in the cottage that was falling down now, and she would be able to tell of it, and she would have had some contact with horrible things so that she would not be vapid. So many of the young ladies he met were like Dresden china. And she would be . . . well no; there was no word for it. But they would go on walking out together like any boy and his slut, and he would explore in her for the things that her voice told him were there, and that had never been let out. For no one saw her or would speak to her.

  It was so necessary to talk; you had to and with someone who could understand or sympathize with your ideas. How they would talk, June and he, for she must and would understand how he needed someone young. When you were blind and beginning to make discoveries you had to tell them to somebody; besides, talking was the only thing you could do as well as anyone else. And surely she would not dance, for who was there to dance with her, unless there was another man? Perhaps there was, and then the whole dull round of country conversation would go round again, and when one had gone through it so often before. Let them talk about things, not people. And then, of course, they could talk about themselves.

  Why had he never learnt to play the piano? It would be so nice to be able to sit down and make the lazy notes ripple though this echoing house, up the stairs and through doors and windows to be lost in the wetness of the garden. She had known how. She had played music wandering out to the gossamer, and so quiet; as raindrops gather on a twig and then slip off, so had her notes fallen in such a silver, liquid sound. But then the sun came out. It was changed now. The hut, the trees and each leaf suddenly had a spirit of their own. And the wind bore them down to you that they might whisper in your ear, and be companions as you sat in the dark. So that you were not really lonely; there were only the deaf who were really cut off. How dreadful to be deaf, not to hear this wind choosing out the leaves and carrying them down gently that they might rustle on the ground.

  Would June be like this? So that she could sit still and listen. Surely she would not want to break out into a great screaming laugh to announce that someone had been hurt or something broken? She also might have dreams and be able to understand his, perhaps. And yet she would not be sickly, but rather like a sunflower, absorbing from the sun, and so proud, so still. Women were like flowers; it was silly, but they were. The sudden flutter of wings of a bird who was going elsewhere to drink more in and pour it out again to the sun brought the grass and trees together, and the earth that kept them both. Women understood like that. Their intuitions exalted them to the simple understanding of the trees, for trees were so simple; there was no remoteness in them as of mountains and their false sublimity. But he had not met any women who were women. Still, June felt like that, and her loneliness would have taught her silence, for she could not have met many people.

  As long as she was not like Miss Blandair—but then how could she be? Miss Blandair, whom Mamma had had to stay, who played tennis so very well, who danced, and was so very suitable. She had been so bright as she cackled on, and Mamma had approved; her voice had been rotund with approval. She had made him very weary; hers was such wasted energy. What energy one had should be put away secretly for the thing in hand, not thrown to the wind in handfuls of confetti. For then one saw it in retrospect only, lying rather tarnished on the ground.

  All June would be stored up.

  But it was an anxious time for Mamma, waiting to see him settled. And it was the end, to settle down. He could not; one did not dare to. It was not fair to Mamma, but what could one do? She was not his mother; she had only made herself into one, though that was just the same. But he must go out with June; there was so much to talk about, so much sympathy to be sought after. For they were all so old, one could not talk to them; they did not understand, in spite of their always saying they did. Nurse had been young but too full of her trade.

  And Nanny had not been so well lately. She had been more hesitating on the walks and her shoes had creaked more slowly. Mamma had said something about it, how Nanny must take care of herself, and she had given her some medicine. Nanny was talking more and more as time went on, that afternoon when he had been told she had talked far more than she would have done in the old days. She had a cough now that was becoming more and more frequent, a juicy cough, that seemed to tear her, and that was horrible to hear. Poor Nanny! For she was a link with so much that was gone; she had seen the house before he had come to it, or rather just after he had arrived. She had known those who lived in it, and she had known him so long that they were used to each other, so that they had a few worn jokes at which they laughed together, and that was all; there was really no conversation left, nor was it necessary. She had been so jealous of the nurse. The hours he had spent making it all right again!

  She had known his mother, Mummy. She had a very few stories about her, such nice stories, and he would make her tell them again and again, when perhaps a new story would come out. Mummy must have been so charming, they had all loved her so.

  She was like a dream, something so far away that came back sometimes. And now that he was blind he had come to treasure little personal things of her own, a prayer-book of hers, though that, of course, was mistaken; a pair of kid gloves, so soft to touch, and they had a faint suggestion of her about them, so faint, that gently surrounded them and made them still more soft. And she had died because of him.

  There was so little that he knew about her, only what Nanny could tell. He never saw anyone who had known her, and Mamma was always trying, ever since she had told him by letter how he was not her son, to put herself in Mummy’s place. How silly to go on calling her by that name; she had been dead nearly nineteen years now; it was so sentimental. But the word was fresh, it clung about the gloves. They had been cold so long, those gloves.

  From what Nanny said she had been so happy in the house, going about lightly from place to place. One really did not know anything about her; Nanny had only seen her once and her stories were only what the other servants had told her. They would have been seated round in the kitchen waiting for the funeral, and they would have talked and talked, weeping in turns, and Nanny had learnt what she knew in that way. There were none of them left; he had never known them, for Mamma had sent them all away when she had married Father and gone to India. But apparently she had whistled most beautifully; Nanny’s descriptions never went beyond “beautiful,” and he could hear her going about whistling gently till the house was full of shadows. She must have linked everything up with it. And then apparently she had played the piano quite beautifully.

  Such ages ago he had been at Noat, only a few months, but still—the misery of those days, their dreariness, and with their strange exaltations now and then. So much depended on whether people were nice to you or not. And the Art Society with the marionette shows. There had been no one at J. W. P.’s to mind about such things. It was getting cold out here. Heat drew one out, one was with a companion. Just as their glow against each other would draw them out
—June and he.

  Mummy would have helped, then and now. She would have had such a gentle understanding, so that when he came back from Noat for the holidays they would have sat by the fire and talked it out. What evenings, and what quiet grey days with the colours in the fields washed into luminous clarity, and the calm in the trees. She would have understood all that with her tender whistling, and they would have walked, perhaps, silently happy together to the top of Swan’s Wood. Or down to the river with its surprises and the quietly-flowing water.

  For she would have seen things by the light of intuitions, often wrong, but no less enchanting, and by discovering things in other people she would have shown herself. How silly people were to think a grey day sad; it was really so full of happiness, while the sun only made things reflect the sun, and so not be themselves. Dew came in the morning with the light sky above and sent pearl colours over the fields, and so made him think of her, who was so like that herself.

  There were so many things to do, all the senses to develop, old acquaintances of childhood to make friends with again. To sit still and be stifled by the blackness was wrong; he had done that long enough. The temptation was so great, the darkness pressed so close, and what sounds one heard could only at first be converted into terms of sight and not sound. When a blackbird fled screaming he had only been able to see it as a smudge darting along, and he had tried in vain to visualize it exactly. Now he was beginning to see it as a signal to the other birds that something was not right; it was the feeling that one has in the dark when something moves, and when one jumps to turn on the light, and the light leaps out through the night. Why translate into terms of seeing, for perhaps he would never see again, even in his dreams? They might be of sounds or of touch now. The deaf might dream of a soundless world, and how cold that would be. There was the story of the deaf old man who had forgotten that the breaking waves of the sea on the beach made sound. He must not go deaf; one clung so to what senses were left. But sight was not really necessary; the values of everything changed, that was all. There was so much in the wind, in the feel of the air, in the sounds that Nature lent one for a little, only to take away again. Or was there nothing in all these? Why did everyone and everything have to live on illusion, that Mummy was really near, and as the meaning of everything? But one could not let that go.