That was when their relationship had subtly changed. First because she had tried to express to him in music the deeply felt sympathy and remorse which she could not express to him in words. Then came that flash of inspiration when she made him play for her. And finally—even now she shivered a little with a sort of delicious dismay and alarm at the recollection—he had put his arms round her and leant his head against her, and in that moment he had been most curiously hers.
There had never been any other occasion at all like that in her life. Just as he had surrendered completely to the emotional gratitude and relief in his heart, so she had made some sort of surrender too. She was not quite sure what. But the certainty that she had been his in that moment, just as he had been hers, both frightened and elated her.
Before she could force herself to analyse that further, however, Rosamund called out cheerfully that supper was ready, and she had to abandon dangerously attractive speculation for very normal conversation, in which she must play her part however confused her inmost thoughts might be.
Although it had been unbearably difficult at first, she was now fairly used to hiding her hopes and fears even from anyone as close to her as Rosamund. But it was hard not to talk frankly that evening. It would have been a wonderful relief to share those hours of panic over the list with Rosamund and then to see if her guilty solution seemed just a little less shameful to Rosamund than it did to herself. But if she told that bit, she must tell all, and that was something she could not even contemplate.
Instead, she had to listen to Rosamund's jubilant comments on Lewis Freemont's latest verdict about Antoinette's playing.
"It only shows how fallible these examiners can be," she declared.
"Perhaps," countered Antoinette, "it only shows how much even a humble performer can change."
"But why should you have changed to that degree?" objected Rosamund.
"Don't you think life changes and develops one quite startlingly at times?"
"Yes, of course," Rosamund agreed. "But only after a considerable period of time or some terrific experience, like losing someone or something very dear or falling in love. But none of that applies to you in the last year, does it?"
"Not quite in those terms," Antoinette admitted. "It was a terrible shock having all my hopes and pride pushed into the dust. I think it made me take a long fresh look at myself, and it made me change my scale of values quite a lot."
"I don't think getting that brutal brush-off from Lewis Freemont would have developed your artistic perceptions," said Rosamund in her most common-sense manner. "It's possible, of course, that your concern for him in his tragedy might have given you a fresh and deeper insight into life and art. But it sounds far fetched to me."
It sounded far-fetched to Antoinette too. But she could not possibly explain to Rosamund that during the months in question she had learned a great deal about suffering and a great deal about the sort of tender compassion which perhaps comes near to loving in the widest sense of the word.
She thought a good deal about that conversation during the next few days, when far-reaching changes began to take place in the routine at Pallin Manor. The very next morning, she arrived to find her employer in a mood of eager and positive planning.
"I've had quite enough of sitting in this chair being an aloof figure of tragedy," he informed her. "I was awake a long time last night and I did some hard thinking. The first thing I've got to do is to accept the fact that I shall most probably be permanently blind— And don't catch your breath in that silly little hiss," he interjected rather savagely. "If I can take it, you can."
"Yes, of course. But I always hoped"—or did she mean feared?—"that just as a shock blinded you, so a shock might perhaps restore your sight."
"That's the story they told me in the beginning, but more, I think, as a sort of cushion between me and the first contact with the fact of utter blindness," he said, with the grim air of a man driving himself to the acceptance of hard reality. "Anyway, it isn't the proper basis for one's future planning. And now that you've shown me that I can play—" he broke off suddenly and then said, in a different tone, "Come here, my good angel. Why did I speak to you so savagely just now when I owe you everything?"
"Oh, please—" she was so overwhelmed that her voice shook. But she came to him and gave him her hand.
"Don't cry," he said, impatiently noting the quiver in her voice. "Tears bore me and make me nervous."
"I'm not crying! And the one time I did you weren't specially bored or nervous, if I remember rightly."
"Don't put that to the test too often," he told her with a laugh. But he carried her hand to his lips and kept it there for a moment or two.
"Tell me about your plans," she said gently at last. "What have you decided to do, now that you've accepted the fact that you may be—maybe—"
"Permanently blind. It's odd that I can say it and you can't."
No, it's not. You're brave and I'm a coward."
"Not judging by the way you stand up to me," he told her almost gaily. "I've decided that I'll get back to the concert platform somehow, Toni. And you are going to help me."
"I am? Oh, how wonderful!" And in an excess of emotion and delight she put her cheek against the hand she was still holding.
He was absolutely silent for a moment. Then he stirred his fingers softly against her cheek and said a little mockingly, "What's this for?"
"Oh—I don't know." Embarrassed, she released his hand quickly. "I was just grateful and happy to think I might help."
"Don't be quite so reverential," he protested amusedly. "I'm afraid you only know me in a somewhat chastened condition. When I'm under the nervous tension of a professional career I'm quite insufferable, according to many of my acquaintances. I'm afraid it's going to be a shock for anyone as good and civilized as you."
"I'm not good!" protested Antoinette. "I'm perfectly horrible sometimes. And—and I've done some things I'm ashamed of."
"What, for instance?" he enquired with teasing interest.
"I couldn't possibly tell you," she exclaimed agitatedly.
"As bad as that? You excite my wildest curiosity," he said, laughing. "If ever I recover my sight, the first thing I shall do is dig into your interesting past."
"Oh, no, no, don't talk like that!" Such unreasoning panic swept over her at the very thought of such a thing that she jumped up and literally fled towards her office.
"Toni!" There was command as well as astonishment in his voice. "I was only teasing you. Come back here."
"No."
"Then I shall come and fetch you."
"You—can't."
"Are you throwing that up at me?"
"No, of course not!" She came back immediately and sat down in the chair she had so suddenly vacated. And she sat very still even when he put out his hand and felt for her. But it was not her hand that he took. To her surprise, he put his arm lightly round her and said,
"Listen, you silly girl—I don't care what your faults are. To me you're one of the nicest, most worthwhile people I know—"
"I'm not," she interrupted, in a stifled voice, the enormity of her deception over that list rising before her like a cloud.
"Don't contradict." He laughed and actually drew her against him. "I simply don't believe you've ever done anything bad enough to trouble any but the most tender conscience."
"You don't—know." To her horror a dreadful impulse to make full confession was so strong upon her that she almost choked in the effort of suppressing it.
"Yes, I do. I haven't lost my natural judgment, even if I've lost my sight," he told her. "And my guess is that whatever you did was more his fault than yours."
"H-his?" stammered Antoinette, cold with fright once more.
"Well, I suppose there was a man in it somewhere, wasn't there?"
There had been, of course! And so she was fascinated into saying, "Yes."
"Forget him. He's not worth another qualm on your part.
Take my word for it." And she felt him lightly kiss the side of her cheek. "Better now?"
"Much—better," she said. And on an impulse which this time she did not even try to suppress, she reached up and put her lips against the thin, hard line of his cheek.
He gave a slight, almost startled laugh. Then he deliberately turned his head until his lips found hers.
It was not a light or careless kiss. It was the sort of kiss that made her gasp slightly. Then he released her and said coolly.
"We—ell, this discussion seems to be going rather well."
"But perhaps," suggested Antoinette with quite admirable composure, we'd better get back to—to essentials, before Mrs. St. Leger pays one of her morning calls."
"Oh, Charmian—" He said the name with a casual little air of dismissal for which she would gladly have kissed him again. Instead, however, she began to question him about the exact plans for getting back into public life.
"The task will be twofold," he said practically. "I realize that. I've got to learn to have complete confidence in my playing without being able to see the keyboard. One looks at it only seldom in any case, of course. But never to be able to see it gives one a strange feeling of uncertainty. That's the first thing to conquer—the easier part, I suppose, in my case. The other thing is that I must learn to move with a sort of confidence and authority."
"So that you can walk on to a platform with an air, even though you'll need to have your hand on someone's arm?"
"Exactly. No—groping or stumbling. Nothing that can fix the public's attention on my blindness rather than my playing. It's a challenge, of course—"
"But a worthwhile one," interrupted Antoinette eagerly. "When do we begin?"
"Now," he said, and he laughed as though her enthusiasm had fired him. "I want you to take me round this room, telling me exactly where everything is. We'll do it over and over again, until I get the feel of everything, the timing of distances, the confidence to move at any rate in this room with something like normality. It can be done. I know it can be done!"
"Of course it can," she declared, her tone warm with encouragement.
"Then take me—now." He got to his feet and held out his hand, waiting for her to take it.
There was something terribly moving in the contrast between his bold and authoritative planning and that singularly helpless gesture. But she was not going to allow herself the luxury of any sentimental agonizing on his behalf. He had asked for hard, sensible support and this he should have. She took his arm, rather than his hand, so that the contact between them was close and reassuring, and she began to lead him round his once familiar room, detailing exactly what was there.
He obviously had an almost photographic memory, for several times he told her what should come next even before she could describe it. Then he would run his strong, sensitive fingers over the object as though literally learning the feel of it.
Once, over something no more important than a small cabinet, he said sharply. "No! That's been moved."
"Not in my time," Antoinette assured him.
But he was almost positive—even nervously irritated in case he might be wrong, she saw. So she summoned Brenda to ask if anything in the room had been moved, and she could sense his intense relief when Brenda said,
"Yes, indeed, sir. I thought it might be in the way when—I mean if—you wanted to go into the garden."
" 'When', Brenda, 'when'," he assured her a trifle impatiently. "As you see, I'm learning to move about now."
"Yes, sir," Brenda said approvingly. "Mrs. St. Leger will be pleased."
"Well, I suppose she will," agreed Brenda's master drily. "Though that wasn't my primary motive in making the attempt!"
"No, sir," said Brenda, and went away.
However, Brenda was more than right. When Charmian St. Leger called in the following morning and found Antoinette and her employer going through the now familiar round of the room, she uttered a little cry of tender concern and rushed to his side.
"Lewis—darling! You're walkingl" she exclaimed.
"I have been doing so for the last thirty-six years," he replied disagreeably. "I'm merely learning to do it a slightly different way."
"Of course. Oh, let me help you. I'm sure Miss Burney has a dozen things she wants to do. This is something I can really do to help you." With gentle but resistless fingers, she had already detached Antoinette's hand from Lewis Freemont's arm. "I really just called in to say I was going to London today and to ask if there's anything I can get for you. But I'm driving up and half an hour one way or the other doesn't matter—It's all right, Miss Burney, I can manage splendidly. Don't bother to wait."
So Antoinette retreated to her office, half annoyed at Mrs. St. Leger's technique, but also half gratified by the complicated expression on her employer's face. She was not a conceited girl, but she felt morally certain that he would rather have relied on her guidance at this moment than on that of Charmian St. Leger.
She did not go back into the drawing-room until their visitor had gone, and then only because her employer called to her. He was sitting up very straight in his high-backed chair, flushed and smiling, and he said immediately,
"I've done it on my own! I walked round the room on my own. Not exactly rapidly, and with a few bumps. But I managed pretty well. It was quite different being guided by Charmian. Different from you—my other self—I mean. And so I thought, when she had gone—why don't I try the next stage and see if I can do it entirely on my own? And I never really lost my way once. I'm getting a sort of built-in radar here." And he tapped his forehead triumphantly.
"It's wonderful!" Antoinette stood and smiled at him. Then, realizing that of course he could not see the pleasure and congratulation on her face, she came over and patted him on the shoulder, and said again, "It's wonderful!"
"Yes, isn't it?" Immediately he put up his hand and covered hers. "Thank you. It's largely because of your certainty and encouragement, you know. You give me a sort of confidence just by being here, in the house. As though there's a line of communication between us not entirely dependent on physical touch."
"I'm glad," said Antoinette quietly. But she was really so much moved that she was relieved that they were interrupted at this point by the entry of Gordon Everleigh.
Nothing could have exceeded the congratulation and warm-hearted delight of Lewis Freemont's impresario. As an excellent businessman, he was naturally immeasurably relieved to see one of his most invaluable artists no longer determined to rule out the possibility of a comeback. But in addition, Antoinette saw, he was personally genuinely happy on behalf of a friend.
"Everything is possible, now that you've made the first step," he declared.
"More than the first step," Antoinette pointed out warmly. "He has decided to play again, and he's already learning to move about with some confidence."
"Thanks to the mingled encouragement and bullying of my admirable secretary," put in Lewis Freemont drily.
"Yes, yes, I dared to hope something like this might happen from the first moment I set eyes on Miss Burney," declared Gordon Everleigh. "Somehow, she looks the kind of girl who works the occasional miracle."
"Does she really?" Lewis Freemont sounded both amused and interested.
"Well, don't you agree?"
"My dear chap, I've never seen her."
"Oh, lord, no, of course you haven't! I'm sorry, I forgot you hadn't met her until this happened."
"Don't apologize. I probably know her quite as well as I should if I could have seen her from the beginning." There was no self-pity in his tone. There was even a hint of gaiety. "You concentrate more on other things if you can't see a person. Is she as pretty as her speaking voice suggests?"
"At the risk of embarrassing her, I should say—yes," replied Gordon Everleigh judicially, and Antoinette laughed.
"You shall describe her to me some time," remarked Antoinette's employer.
"Has no one done so
yet?" His friend sounded amused.
"Only Toni herself—and Charmian. I have an idea that neither did her strict justice," was the dry retort. And Antoinette, curiously secure all at once, allowed herself another slight laugh.
She left the two men together then, to discuss tentative, long-term plans for Lewis Freemont's eventual return to public life. But some time later Gordon Everleigh sought her out in her office and said,
"If you can keep him more or less in this mood of positive optimism, the musical world will owe you a real debt of gratitude."
"I shall do my best," Antoinette promised. "There will be setbacks, you know. He's a mercurial sort of creature—"
"Don't tell me!" The impresario laughed and made a face. "I make my bread and butter out of the artistic temperament. There's nothing I don't know about it."
"Yes, of course! I forgot. I only meant that the impetus of this first enthusiasm will slacken, and we shall have to be ready to deal with the inevitable depression and frustration when the day-to-day difficulties emerge."
"You think of everything," was the approving reply, "and I have every confidence in your being able to deal efficiently with everything as it comes along. I only hope Freemont realizes one day how much he owes to you."
Then he went away, leaving Antoinette divided between happiness over present approval and grief at the thought of what her employer owed to her from the past.
Nothing, however, could now cloud her bright spirits for long. And she was delighted to find on the following morning that he was determined to go into the garden.
It was a lovely late autumn day, incredibly mild for that time of year. And, having walked round part of the garden with him, describing some of the flowers and plants and letting him pause to enjoy the scent of some late roses, she left him sitting in a sheltered corner, touched by the almost naïve pleasure with which he raised his face to feel the rays of the autumn sun which he could not see.
When Love Is Blind Page 8