Читать книгу Blind Man's Year - Warwick Deeping - Страница 17

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Youth too was becoming inquisitive, but not blurting its questions like a child. What did she do with herself in the country—chicken farm, grow fruit, or was she sufficiently well off just to live as she pleased in the country? Of course he understood that, delight in pure country. And had she ever been up in a plane?

“No.”

“You will have to let me take you up.”

She understood from his questions that no one had gossiped to him about her, not even the genial Nurse Horrocks, and that he had not tried to pump them. She was glad of this reticence and its implied delicacy. So, no one had told him that she was a bookish person, a celebrity. How pleasant!

She asked him whether he would like to be read to. Yes, but was he not taking up too much of her time? No. She said that she spent two or three hours a day in reading, and that she might just as well read aloud as to herself.

Was there any author he preferred?

“There is one book I haven’t read, and want to. ‘A Pilgrimage of Pain,’ by Douglas Gerard. By the way, it’s your name. Is he any relation of yours?”

She held her breath over this coincidence.

“A rather distant cousin. I happen to have the book.”

“You’ve read it before. It won’t bore you?”

“No.”

So she began on that very day to read her own book to him, and never had it seemed to her so inadequate and unconvincing. But he did not find it so. He said it was wonderful stuff, and so true to life, and how the chap must know women! She began to feel a little ashamed of her deception. If only her physical self were like her book?

“I think I hear the doctor’s car.”

She divined in him sudden excitement.

“He’s going to take off all this stuff. I shall have my eyes back.”

“Yes. You are sure you have had no pain in them?”

“Nothing. Only a sort of stiffness, as though they were glued up.”

She laid the book aside on the window-shelf and went out to meet Heberden, and directly she saw the thing he was carrying she knew that her crisis was upon her. That black surgical bag. The rose-tinted glasses of an illusion were about to be broken.

“I have just been reading to him. One of my books. Please don’t tell him I wrote it.”

“Your book? I won’t. Did he ask for it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s rather delightful.”

But her feeling was that Heberden was not happy about something.

She took the dog with her and, climbing the hill, sat down on the seaward side at the foot of a tree. It was another perfect day. There had been a light frost, but the sun had dried the grass and the world was rejoicing. The sea spun shot silk, the gorse was ablaze, a few white clouds were drifting. The green tops of the firs made never a murmur. Below her and to the left stood the four oak trees where his plane had crashed, and she could see the broken branches, some of them hanging twisted, others on the ground. Those poor trees had suffered just when their buds were swelling in the spring. The wreckage of the aeroplane had gone, but there were scars on the green turf.

How beautiful and solitary it was. Solitude! She had sought solitude, clasped it, but now somehow it filled her with a kind of fear. Yes, even on this serene and beneficent morning. There were other mornings, the normal and vile progeny of an English spring, when there was nothing for her to do but sit in her room and write, or put on thick shoes and go out and trudge. It had been widely said that a creative artist should not be happy, for happiness is too domestic and sociable, and associated with silly, simple things. She was neither silly nor simple, yet she had a feeling that she could be both.

Prince had his head on her knee. She caressed him and he gave a sigh of contentment. She was belonging to him this morning. Did dogs feel lonely? But of course. How long had she been sitting on this gentle hill? It was time for her to go back and face her crisis, and to become Miss Gerard, both celebrated and celibate, a rather austere and shy woman, who carried life in her books like strange fruit in a gilded dish, fruit that was forbidden to her.

“Up, my dear.”

Descending the landward slope of the hill she could look down into the garden, and see them as hers, secret places in which her lonely self went to and fro. She came to the Italian gate, and through it saw the flowers and the grass, and the stone path going up to the house. She paused at the gate. Heberden was sitting in the loggia as though waiting for her. He was leaning forward, hands clasped, head slightly bowed. She walked up the path, her eyes fixed on the crown of the doctor’s head. His attitude suggested—And then he raised his head, and she saw his face.

What was he going to tell her?

“I’m afraid I have kept you.”

He stood up. He glanced at the particular window.

“I had to wait. Let’s go this way, into the orchard.”

So youth was not to hear what he had to say. She was conscious of inward tension.

“Something unexpected?”

“Yes. I was afraid of it. His eyes.”

“Not—?”

“Rather terrible. Just as though a forked branch had caught him in the face. You see, there was so much bruising and swelling when I first examined him. One couldn’t see what was behind the lids. I thought it wiser to wait.”

Her voice came breathlessly.

“You mean, he can’t see? He will be—?”

Heberden was staring down the green alleys of the orchard.

“Yes. I’m horribly afraid it is so.”

“Does he realize?”

“No.”

“Oh, my dear friend, can’t we do something? Blind! It’s too tragic.”

“I’ll get someone in at once. There is quite a good man on eyes in Westbourn. I’ll ’phone. But I’m afraid it’s rather hopeless. Both eyeballs are like so much pulp.”