Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Every hope: no hope for Psyche! Nothing to despair about: while blank despair hedged her in and environed her! How little they know about hearts, these doctors!

  At first she fancied there might yet be a chance. Not for her, of course; that was nothing — but for her painter. All was so vague and uncertain at Khartoum. Youth is loath indeed to give up all for lost. So young a love, so soon crushed out; impossible! impossible! And even the papers, the London papers, those wise, sagacious, omniscient papers, held out doubts at first as to Gordon’s death. Well, then, if as to Gordon’s, why not also as to Linnell’s just equally? She could not believe he was dead, with that day unexplained. She could not think an explanation would never come. She hoped on against hope, till all hope was impossible.

  Slowly and surely her faith gave way, however. Each fresh day’s telegrams brought fresh grounds for doubting that any living soul had escaped the massacre. Deserters brought in news of the two or three Europeans still held in horrible slavery in Khartoum; and Linnell’s name was not among them. Day by day, the terrible certainty grew clearer and ever more clear to Psyche that her lover lay dead in the heart of Africa.

  And yet, strange to say, the specialist was right. Psyche’s blindness was only temporary. Hour after hour, as hope gradually sank and died out within her, her eyesight was slowly but surely restored to her. In three or four weeks she was as well as ever — to all outer view — as Ida Mansel observed her. But her heart — her heart was crushed within her.

  Weeks rolled on, and months passed by, and the fate of all who had fought at Khartoum grew from time to time more fixed and certain. Spring returned, and with it Geraldine Maitland. For that congenial companionship Psyche was glad, as far as she could be glad for anything now; for Geraldine was the only living soul with whom she could talk — not freely, but at all — about her lost painter. To her father, she never even mentioned his name; the subject was a sealed book between them. It was too awful a shadow to recognise in speech. There are ghosts one can only pretend to avoid by strenuously ignoring them in the bosom of the family. Haviland Dumaresq knew in his own soul he had sent Linnell away to his grave; but he had done it for the best; he had done it for the best. No man is responsible for the unseen and unexpected contingencies of his actions. We must be judged by our intentions, not by results. How could he know the young fellow would run away with the precipitancy of youth into danger’s mouth? All he wanted was to protect Psyche. His sole object in life, now, was his daughter’s happiness.

  His daughter’s happiness! Oh, futile old philosopher! If only men and women would just be content to let each of us live his own life, undisturbed, and not scheme and plan and contrive so much for the happiness of others, how very much happier we should all be for it!

  Haviland Dumaresq had meant to take Psyche up to London for the season that coming spring, and introduce her to those powerful friends of his — for he had friends, not a few, in virtue of his apostolate — by whose aid she was to make that brilliant marriage which he still wildly dreamed for her in his opium ecstasies. He had even, by superhuman efforts, provided beforehand the needful money for going into lodgings, good fashionable lodgings, for some months in town, where he might launch his Psyche upon the great world of London; and Ida Mansel, most practical of heads, had promised to find an eligible tenant meanwhile for the Wren’s Nest, at the usual rate of furnished houses at the sea-side in early summer. But when May came round — that smileless May — poor Psyche’s heart was still so sore that Haviland Dumaresq shrank himself from putting his own plan into execution. It would only spoil her chances in the end to bring her out while this mood was upon her. After all, he thought, there was plenty of time yet. His rosebud was still so young and fresh: no need to hurry. Let her get over this girlish fancy first about a blighted heart — girls are so plastic; and then, when she’d forgotten her supposed romance — young people take a hysterical delight in imagining themselves unhappy — he could fulfil his plan of taking her up to town, and give her a fairer chance in the matrimonial lottery with the gilded youth of our teeming London.

  For at Petherton Haviland Dumaresq was a very small person; but in London, he knew, more than one rich man’s son would be proud to marry Haviland Dumaresq’s daughter. In that mighty mart, where everything finds its level so soon, even true greatness is more justly and generously appraised than elsewhere. The provincial celebrity sinks at once to his proper place; but then, en revanche, the truly great man who ranks in his shire but as a third-rate personage finds himself in London duly estimated at his right worth by a more critical audience.

  So the spring and summer passed slowly away; and autumn came again, and with it the anniversary of Linnell’s departure.

  All through the summer, Psyche’s eyes had troubled her again from time to time; but she thought very little about her eyes now: of what use to her were they? The only thing on earth she cared to see was gone for ever. They would never help her to see her painter again. For despair itself becomes at last a sort of sacred cult, a mysterious pleasure.

  Still, in a certain vague, indefinite way, without herself attaching much importance to the subject, Psyche dimly noticed a change in the character of the disease. Though she saw very well for most of her time, she observed that the periods of dimness were much more frequent now than of old, and the periods of total loss of vision, when they came, remained far longer, and were altogether more persistent in every way, than in the early stages. She recognised to herself, with a strange uncomplaining Dumaresquian acquiescence, a fatalistic acceptance of the order of the cosmos, that she was slowly going blind, for no particular reason, but merely because the will to see was failing her.

  She concealed it as far as she could, of course, from her father. She couldn’t bear to vex the old philosopher’s soul, to pile on that pathetic, unsuccessful life one more great failure. He loved her so dearly and was so proud and fond of her. To be sure, it was only putting off the evil day. But Psyche put it off with all her might, for all that. Papa was old and far from strong. Psyche knew in her heart he couldn’t live many years longer. Why vex his last days needlessly with this final burden? Was it not enough, and more than enough, that that great soul should find itself in old age poor and broken and weighed down with sorrow, without adding that last straw to complete the disaster? The pathos of Haviland Dumaresq’s nobly wasted life sufficed as it stood: Psyche at least would do her best to conceal from him whatever might add to his misery.

  So she strove hard to hide from him her growing blindness. If the dim fit seized her as she sat and read, she would lay down her book and remain sitting and talking without showing it in any way till her eyes began slowly to resume their function. If it came upon her when she was out walking on the Downs with her father, instead of going on and groping her way, which would have betrayed her case, she would pause and pretend to be scanning the landscape, or would sit down on the turf and pull grasses by her side, while her father looked on and never suspected the reason for her wayward conduct. Now and then, to be sure, circumstances arose where it was impossible wholly to conceal the facts. She might be reading the paper aloud to her father, and be compelled by that sudden mistiness of the words to break off all at once in the middle of a sentence: or she might be walking down the quiet main street of Petherton, and find the visible world in one moment of time transformed into a vast blank of darkness before her. But even so, she noticed one curious fact. These blind fits overcame her least often in her father’s presence; and by a violent effort of will, when he was by, she seemed able actually to command her eyesight. The strong stimulus of a vivid desire to save him needless pain conquered the weakness and feebleness of nerve which alone made the solid earth thus fade into nothingness before her eyes at a moment’s notice.

  Nay, in her father’s presence Psyche even pretended not to feel sad: she tried hard to bury her grief from his eyes: for his sake she would still appear to be young and joyous. Though her heart ached, she would still play la
wn-tennis on the Maitlands’ court, and still talk nonsense, hateful, light-tongued nonsense, with the mild-eyed young curate. She was her father’s daughter, and could she not talk in her father’s way? Had she not inherited his iron nature? Her heart might break, indeed, but no daw should peck at it. She kept her sacred sorrow locked up securely in her silent breast. And there it succeeded in eating her life out.

  With Geraldine Maitland, however, she was less careful of concealment; at least, as regarded her fits of blindness. The two girls walked and talked on the Downs much together; and it often happened that in the midst of their conversation Psyche’s feet and tongue would falter unawares, and she would put out her hands to grope her way before her through the thick darkness that all at once enveloped her steps. As the summer wore on — so Geraldine noticed — these sudden failures grew more and more common. On one such occasion, indeed, when they were strolling along the face of the east cliff, near the tumbling sea, the world became a sudden blank to Psyche, and she sat down despairingly on the short smooth grass, with her sightless eyes turned toward the waves and the warm sun of summer.

  ‘What’s the matter, dearest?’ Geraldine Maitland asked in her sympathetic way, for Geraldine when she wished could be very womanly.

  ‘It’s all gone again,’ Psyche answered with a sigh. ‘Oh, Geraldine, it all goes so often now! I don’t feel as if I’d strength to fight against it, even for papa’s sake, any longer.’

  Geraldine’s face was very grave.

  ‘What does your father say about it, Psyche?’ she asked seriously. ‘He ought, surely, to take you up to town to a doctor.’

  ‘Oh no; not that!’ Psyche cried, shrinking back with infinite horror. ‘I don’t want doctors to go cross-questioning me and torturing me any more. I can bear it all, if I’m only left alone; but I can’t bear being worried and cross-examined and bothered by dreadful men about it.’

  ‘But what does your father think?’ Geraldine persisted still. ‘I’m sure he ought to do something to set it right again.’

  ‘He doesn’t know — or he hardly knows at all,’ Psyche answered quickly. ‘I’ve kept it from him as much as I can. I don’t want to cause him any needless trouble.’

  Geraldine held her peace and answered nothing. But in her own mind she had decided at once what was the proper thing for her to do. She would tell Haviland Dumaresq that very day how Psyche fared, and would urge him to take some competent medical opinion.

  That evening Psyche took tea at the Maitlands’. She noticed the General, always bland and polite, was even blander and politer than usual in his demeanour towards her. His courtesy had in it a touch of that tender and chivalrous gentleness which old soldiers, more perhaps than any other men, know how to display on occasion to a woman in distress. Even Mrs. Maitland, as a rule so painfully cold and distant, unbent a little that day to the motherless girl. She called her ‘my dear’ more than once, and it was not the ‘my dear’ of conventional politeness with which women hold one another off far more effectually than with the coldest courtesies: it was the ‘my dear’ of genuine feminine interest. After tea, too, Psyche observed that Geraldine slipped away for a quarter of an hour on some vague excuse, though she didn’t attach much importance at the time to her sudden departure. When Geraldine returned, her eyes seemed somewhat red from crying, and she gave no explanation of where she had been, further than to say with an evasive smile that she had run out for a bit on a little private errand.

  At seven o’clock Psyche returned to the Wren’s Nest. She opened the door with a noiseless hand, and walked unexpectedly into the little drawing-room. For a moment the haze gathered over her eyes; as it cleared away she saw, to her surprise, her father, that strong man, sitting bowed and bent with sorrow in his easy-chair, his hands clasped hard between his open knees in front of him. Tears were trickling slowly down his bronzed cheek; his attitude was eloquent of utter despondency. On the table by his side stood a little glass bottle — quite empty. Psyche, in her sudden speechless terror, remembered to have seen it on the mantel-shelf that morning, full of those little silver-coated pellets which she somehow associated in her own mind — though she couldn’t say why — with her father’s frequent and distracting headaches.

  ‘Why, father dear,’ she cried, flinging one arm round his neck in an access of sudden energetic sympathy, ‘what on earth does this mean? What’s the matter with you, darling? And why — is the bottle — on the table — empty?’

  Her father looked up at her and nodded his head slowly and despondently.

  ‘It’s lost its effect,’ he answered in a very hollow voice. ‘It’s lost its effect altogether, I’m afraid. One after another, I’ve taken them in turn, and found no relief from this tremor of my nerves. I never took so many in my life before. I was frightened, myself, when I wanted another and found I’d taken the whole bottleful. They do me no good; they do me no good now. What can I turn to, to relieve me from this misery?’

  ‘Father!’ Psyche cried, with a sudden burst of horrible intuition, ‘it isn’t opium? Oh, for heaven’s sake, tell me, it isn’t opium!’

  The old man drew her down to him in a wild spasm of remorse and affection.

  ‘My darling,’ he cried in the fervour of his regret, ‘don’t ask me its name! don’t put any name to it! Forget it, forget it: I never meant you should know. But whatever it was, Psyche, from this day forth, for your sake, my child, I solemnly promise you, I have done with it for ever!’

  There was a moment’s pause. Then Psyche said again:

  ‘Was it that that was troubling you when I came in, papa?’

  Haviland Dumaresq looked back into her deep-blue eyes with those truthful eyes of his. He was too organically moral to mince a lie with her.

  ‘No,’ he answered shortly, though with a terrible wrench. ‘It was not, Psyche.’

  Again there was a pause. Then Psyche whispered very low once more:

  ‘Has Geraldine Maitland been here this evening?’

  Haviland Dumaresq groaned, but he answered, without one moment’s hesitation:

  ‘Yes, Psyche.’

  Psyche drew over a chair from the wall and seated herself beside him. She held her father’s hand in her own, tenderly. For three minutes those two who loved one another so strangely sat there in silence. At last Psyche looked up and said in a very low voice:

  ‘Well, papa?’

  Dumaresq put one hand to his forehead and sighed.

  ‘To-morrow, Psyche,’ he said in a dreamy way, ‘we go up to London. I want to take medical advice about myself — and I shall seize the opportunity at the same time of asking Godichau’s opinion about your eyesight.’

  Psyche dropped his hand resignedly.

  ‘As you will, papa,’ she said in a very soft whisper. ‘But I never wanted to trouble you, myself, about so small a matter.’

  And all that night she lay awake and cried — cried in her silent, tearless fashion.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  MEDICAL OPINION.

  The great London doctor to whom Haviland Dumaresq submitted his case in due form next day shook his head gravely when the famous thinker detailed his symptoms to him with some very small mental reservations. For we none of us tell the whole truth to doctors. Even a philosopher can hardly be trusted to make a clean breast of it to his medical adviser; and Dumaresq, though he admitted in part the opium, glided gently and gracefully over that painful part of the subject. But Sir Anthony Wraxall (for it was no less a man than that celebrated physician) didn’t need to be told to what extent his patient had persevered in the baneful practice. ‘Even you, Mr. Dumaresq,’ he said with a smile, ‘who know so well how to regulate the lives of all the rest of us, can’t be trusted at a pinch to regulate your own! Why, I quote you every day to my lady patients as the great authority on these questions of nerve; yet your own nerves have gone to pieces bodily. “Physician, heal thyself,” is a very old cry. I feel its sting myself. Well, well, we must see what we can manage to do for you.’ />
  ‘Not much,’ Haviland Dumaresq answered gloomily.

  Sir Anthony gazed hard at him from those keen small eyes of his — eyes like a ferret’s, overhung with the heavy black, beetling eyebrows — eyes that seemed to peer through you outright into the profoundest depths and recesses of your being.

  ‘You’re right,’ he answered. ‘Quite true, Mr. Dumaresq. With you I may drop professional reserve. No use in prophesying smooth things to the thinker who worked out the scheme of the “Encyclopædic Philosophy.” I won’t pretend to give you the little prescription which in rather less than no time will make another man of you. You’re very well aware that broken-down machines can’t be restored by pouring a few drops of oil on their bearings. You’re one of us in all essentials, and you know far more about your own case, no doubt, than all the rest of us put together. I can only aid you by my diagnosis. And I’m afraid I can tell you very little in that respect that’s likely to please you.’

  Haviland Dumaresq’s lip trembled. It was curious to him to note, however, even in this moment of deep despondency, how much more everybody thought of himself and his work in proportion as they approached nearer to his own high level. A country doctor would have treated him at best (if indeed he knew the cosmical philosopher’s name at all) as a mere dabbler with some superficial knowledge of animal physiology: Sir Anthony Wraxall, the greatest London consultant of his day, treated him at least with the deepest respect as a high collateral authority on his own subject. Dumaresq smiled a grim smile of satisfied appreciation. Recognition is dear to the very greatest of men. ‘I thought as much,’ he answered, in his calm impassive way. ‘I felt, myself, things couldn’t go on like this much longer. The machine’s worn out, you say. Then you don’t hold out much hope for my life? The mechanism can’t work at such low pressure for any time worth speaking of without stopping altogether.’