Isabel knew him very well, knew his beautiful constancy, and kindness, also his incurable weakness, which made him unable ever to enter into close contact of any sort. He was ashamed of himself, because he could not marry, could not approach women physically. He wanted to do so. But he could not. At the centre of him he was afraid, helplessly and even brutally afraid. He had given up hope, had ceased to expect any more that he could escape his own weakness. Hence he was a brilliant and successful barrister, also littérateur of high repute, a rich man, and a great social success. At the centre he felt himself neuter, nothing.
Isabel knew him well. She despised him even while she admired him. She looked at his sad face, his little short legs, and felt contempt of him. She looked at his dark grey eyes, with their uncanny, almost childlike intuition, and she loved him. He understood amazingly-but she had no fear of his understanding. As a man she patronized him.
And she turned to the impassive, silent figure of her husband. He sat leaning back, with folded arms, and face a little uptilted. His knees were straight and massive. She sighed, picked up the poker, and again began to prod the fire, to rouse the clouds of soft, brilliant sparks.
'Isabel tells me,' Bertie began suddenly, 'that you have not suffered unbearably from the loss of sight.'
Maurice straightened himself to attend, but kept his arms folded.
'No,' he said, 'not unbearably. Now and again one struggles against it, you know. But there are compensations.'
'They say it is much worse to be stone deaf,' said Isabel.
'I believe it is,' said Bertie. 'Are there compensations?' he added, to
Maurice.
'Yes. You cease to bother about a great many things.' Again Maurice stretched his figure, stretched the strong muscles of his back, and leaned backwards, with uplifted face.
'And that is a relief,' said Bertie. 'But what is there in place of the bothering? What replaces the activity?'
There was a pause. At length the blind man replied, as out of a negligent, unattentive thinking:
'Oh, I don't know. There's a good deal when you're not active.'
'Is there?' said Bertie. 'What, exactly? It always seems to me that when there is no thought and no action, there is nothing.'
Again Maurice was slow in replying.
'There is something,' he replied. 'I couldn't tell you what it is.'
And the talk lapsed once more, Isabel and Bertie chatting gossip and reminiscence, the blind man silent.
At length Maurice rose restlessly, a big, obtrusive figure. He felt tight and hampered. He wanted to go away.
'Do you mind,' he said, 'if I go and speak to Wernham?'
'No-go along, dear,' said Isabel.
And he went out. A silence came over the two friends. At length Bertie said:
'Nevertheless, it is a great deprivation, Cissie.'
'It is, Bertie. I know it is.'
'Something lacking all the time,' said Bertie.
'Yes, I know. And yet-and yet-Maurice is right. There is something else, something there, which you never knew was there, and which you can't express.'
'What is there?' asked Bertie.
'I don't know-it's awfully hard to define it-but something strong and immediate. There's something strange in Maurice's presence-indefinable-but I couldn't do without it. I agree that it seems to put one's mind to sleep. But when we're alone I miss nothing; it seems awfully rich, almost splendid, you know.'
'I'm afraid I don't follow,' said Bertie.
They talked desultorily. The wind blew loudly outside, rain chattered on the window-panes, making a sharp, drum-sound, because of the closed, mellow-golden shutters inside. The logs burned slowly, with hot, almost invisible small flames. Bertie seemed uneasy, there were dark circles round his eyes. Isabel, rich with her approaching maternity, leaned looking into the fire. Her hair curled in odd, loose strands, very pleasing to the man. But she had a curious feeling of old woe in her heart, old, timeless night-woe.
'I suppose we're all deficient somewhere,' said Bertie.
'I suppose so,' said Isabel wearily.
'Damned, sooner or later.'
'I don't know,' she said, rousing herself. 'I feel quite all right, you know. The child coming seems to make me indifferent to everything, just placid. I can't feel that there's anything to trouble about, you know.'
'A good thing, I should say,' he replied slowly.
'Well, there it is. I suppose it's just Nature. If only I felt I needn't trouble about Maurice, I should be perfectly content-'
'But you feel you must trouble about him?'
'Well-I don't know-' She even resented this much effort.
The evening passed slowly. Isabel looked at the clock. 'I say,' she said. 'It's nearly ten o'clock. Where can Maurice be? I'm sure they're all in bed at the back. Excuse me a moment.'
She went out, returning almost immediately.
'It's all shut up and in darkness,' she said. 'I wonder where he is. He must have gone out to the farm-'
Bertie looked at her.
'I suppose he'll come in,' he said.
'I suppose so,' she said. 'But it's unusual for him to be out now.'
'Would you like me to go out and see?'
'Well-if you wouldn't mind. I'd go, but-' She did not want to make the physical effort.
Bertie put on an old overcoat and took a lantern. He went out from the side door. He shrank from the wet and roaring night. Such weather had a nervous effect on him: too much moisture everywhere made him feel almost imbecile. Unwilling, he went through it all. A dog barked violently at him. He peered in all the buildings. At last, as he opened the upper door of a sort of intermediate barn, he heard a grinding noise, and looking in, holding up his lantern, saw Maurice, in his shirt-sleeves, standing listening, holding the handle of a turnip-pulper. He had been pulping sweet roots, a pile of which lay dimly heaped in a corner behind him.
'That you, Wernham?' said Maurice, listening.
'No, it's me,' said Bertie.
A large, half-wild grey cat was rubbing at Maurice's leg. The blind man stooped to rub its sides. Bertie watched the scene, then unconsciously entered and shut the door behind him, He was in a high sort of barn-place, from which, right and left, ran off the corridors in front of the stalled cattle. He watched the slow, stooping motion of the other man, as he caressed the great cat.
Maurice straightened himself.
'You came to look for me?' he said.
'Isabel was a little uneasy,' said Bertie.
'I'll come in. I like messing about doing these jobs.'
The cat had reared her sinister, feline length against his leg, clawing at his thigh affectionately. He lifted her claws out of his flesh.
'I hope I'm not in your way at all at the Grange here,' said Bertie, rather shy and stiff.
'My way? No, not a bit. I'm glad Isabel has somebody to talk to. I'm afraid it's I who am in the way. I know I'm not very lively company. Isabel's all right, don't you think? She's not unhappy, is she?'
'I don't think so.'
'What does she say?'
'She says she's very content-only a little troubled about you.'
'Why me?'
'Perhaps afraid that you might brood,' said Bertie, cautiously.
'She needn't be afraid of that.' He continued to caress the flattened grey head of the cat with his fingers. 'What I am a bit afraid of,' he resumed, 'is that she'll find me a dead weight, always alone with me down here.'
'I don't think you need think that,' said Bertie, though this was what he feared himself.
'I don't know,' said Maurice. 'Sometimes I feel it isn't fair that she's saddled with me.' Then he dropped his voice curiously. 'I say,' he asked, secretly struggling, 'is my face much disfigured? Do you mind telling me?'
'There is the scar,' said Bertie, wondering. 'Yes, it is a disfigurement.
But more pitiable than shocking.'
'A pretty bad scar, though,' said Maurice.
'Oh, yes.'
There was a pause.
'Sometimes I feel I am horrible,' said Maurice, in a low voice, talking as if to himself. And Bertie actually felt a quiver of horror.
'That's nonsense,' he said.
Maurice again straightened himself, leaving the cat.
'There's no telling,' he said. Then again, in an odd tone, he added: 'I don't really know you, do I?'
'Probably not,' said Bertie.
'Do you mind if I touch you?'
The lawyer shrank away instinctively. And yet, out of very philanthropy, he said, in a small voice: 'Not at all.'
But he suffered as the blind man stretched out a strong, naked hand to him. Maurice accidentally knocked off Bertie's hat.
'I thought you were taller,' he said, starting. Then he laid his hand on Bertie Reid's head, closing the dome of the skull in a soft, firm grasp, gathering it, as it were; then, shifting his grasp and softly closing again, with a fine, close pressure, till he had covered the skull and the face of the smaller man, tracing the brows, and touching the full, closed eyes, touching the small nose and the nostrils, the rough, short moustache, the mouth, the rather strong chin. The hand of the blind man grasped the shoulder, the arm, the hand of the other man. He seemed to take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.
'You seem young,' he said quietly, at last.
The lawyer stood almost annihilated, unable to answer.
'Your head seems tender, as if you were young,' Maurice repeated. 'So do your hands. Touch my eyes, will you?-touch my scar.'
Now Bertie quivered with revulsion. Yet he was under the power of the blind man, as if hypnotized. He lifted his hand, and laid the fingers on the scar, on the scarred eyes. Maurice suddenly covered them with his own hand, pressed the fingers of the other man upon his disfigured eye-sockets, trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from side to side. He remained thus for a minute or more, whilst Bertie stood as if in a swoon, unconscious, imprisoned.
Then suddenly Maurice removed the hand of the other man from his brow, and stood holding it in his own.
'Oh, my God' he said, 'we shall know each other now, shan't we? We shall know each other now.'
Bertie could not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his own weakness. He knew he could not answer. He had an unreasonable fear, lest the other man should suddenly destroy him. Whereas Maurice was actually filled with hot, poignant love, the passion of friendship. Perhaps it was this very passion of friendship which Bertie shrank from most.
'We're all right together now, aren't we?' said Maurice. 'It's all right now, as long as we live, so far as we're concerned?'
'Yes,' said Bertie, trying by any means to escape.
Maurice stood with head lifted, as if listening. The new delicate fulfilment of mortal friendship had come as a revelation and surprise to him, something exquisite and unhoped-for. He seemed to be listening to hear if it were real.
Then he turned for his coat.
'Come,' he said, 'we'll go to Isabel.'
Bertie took the lantern and opened the door. The cat disappeared. The two men went in silence along the causeways. Isabel, as they came, thought their footsteps sounded strange. She looked up pathetically and anxiously for their entrance. There seemed a curious elation about Maurice. Bertie was haggard, with sunken eyes.
'What is it?' she asked.
'We've become friends,' said Maurice, standing with his feet apart, like a strange colossus.
'Friends!' re-echoed Isabel. And she looked again at Bertie. He met her eyes with a furtive, haggard look; his eyes were as if glazed with misery.
'I'm so glad,' she said, in sheer perplexity.
'Yes,' said Maurice.
He was indeed so glad. Isabel took his hand with both hers, and held it fast.
'You'll be happier now, dear,' she said.
But she was watching Bertie. She knew that he had one desire-to escape from this intimacy, this friendship, which had been thrust upon him. He could not bear it that he had been touched by the blind man, his insane reserve broken in. He was like a mollusk whose shell is broken.
