Far-away Stories

She saw the master of men at work, accurate in every detail of a comprehensive scheme, abrupt, imperious, denying difficulties with harsh impatience. He leaned over his secretary and pointed to portions of the report just as though he could read them, and ordered their modification.

"Mr. Withers," he said once to the surveyor, who was raising objections, "I always get what I want because I make dead sure that what I want is attainable. I'm not an idealist. If I say a thing is to be done, it has got to be done, and it's up to you or to someone else to do it."

They went through the house from furnace to garret, the pallid secretary ever at Roger's elbow, ever rendering him imperceptible services, ever identifying himself with the sightless man, mysteriously following his thoughts, co-ordinating his individuality with that of his master. He was less a man than a trained faculty, like the Chinese servant. And again Winifred shivered and felt afraid.

More and more during the weeks that followed, did she realize the iron will and irresistible force of the man she loved. He seemed to lay a relentless grip on all those with whom he came in contact and compel them to the expression of himself. Only towards her was he gentle and considerate. Many times she accompanied him to London to the great shops, the self-effacing secretary shadow-like at his elbow, and discussed with him colours and materials, and he listened to her with affectionate deference. She often noticed that the secretary translated into other terms her description of things. This irritated her, and once she suggested leaving the secretary behind. Surely, she urged, she could do all that was necessary. He shook his head.

"No, my dear," he said very kindly. "Jukes sees for me. I shouldn't like you to see for me in the way Jukes does."

She was the only person from whom he would take advice or suggestion, and she rendered him great service in the tasteful equipment of the house and in the engagement of a staff of servants. So free a hand did he allow her in certain directions, so obviously and deliberately did he withdraw from her sphere of operations, that she was puzzled. It was not until later, when she knew him better, that the picture vaguely occurred to her of him caressing her tenderly with one hand, and holding the rest of the world by the throat with the other.

On the day when he took up his residence in the new home, they walked together through the rooms. In high spirits, boyishly elated, he gave her an exhibition of his marvellous gifts of memory, minutely describing each bit of furniture and its position in every room, the colour scheme, the texture of curtains, the pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks on mantlepieces and tables. And when he had done, he put his arm round her shoulders.

"But for you, Winnie," said he, "this would be the dreariest possible kind of place; but the spirit of you pervades it and makes it a fragrant paradise."

The words and tone were lover-like, and so was his clasp. She felt very near him, very happy, and her heart throbbed quickly. She was ready to give her life to him.

"You are making me a proud woman," she murmured.

He patted her shoulder and laughed as he released her.

"I only say what's true, my dear," he replied, and then abruptly skipped from sentiment to practical talk.

Winifred had a touch of dismay and disappointment. Tears started, which she wiped away furtively. She had made up her mind to accept him, in spite of Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes, if he should make her a proposal of marriage. She had been certain that the moment had come. But he made no proposal.

She waited. She waited a long time. In the meanwhile, she continued to be Roger's intimate friend and eagerly-sought companion. One day his highly-paid and efficient housekeeper came to consult her. The woman desired to give notice. Her place was too difficult. She could scarcely believe the master was blind. He saw too much, he demanded too much. She could say nothing explicit, save that she was frightened. She wept, after the nature of upset housekeepers. Winifred soothed her and advised her not to throw up so lucrative a post, and, as soon as she had an opportunity, she spoke to Roger. He laughed his usual careless laugh.

"They all begin that way with me, but after a while they're broken in. You did quite right to tell Mrs. Strode to stay."

And after a few months Winifred saw a change in Mrs. Strode, and not only in Mrs. Strode, but in all the servants whom she had engaged. They worked the household like parts of a flawless machine. They grew to be imperceptible, shadowy, automatic, like Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes.

The months passed and melted into years. Roger Orme became a great personage in the neighbourhood. He interested himself in local affairs, served on the urban district council and on boards innumerable. They made him Mayor of Dunsfield. He subscribed largely to charities and entertained on a sumptuous scale. He ruled the little world, setting a ruthless heel on proud necks and making the humble his instruments. Mr. Jukes died, and other secretaries came, and those who were not instantly dismissed grew to be like Mr. Jukes. In the course of time Roger entered Parliament as member for the division. He became a force in politics, in public affairs. In the appointment of Royal Commissions, committees of inquiry, his name was the first to occur to ministers, and he was invariably respected, dreaded, and hated by his colleagues.

"Why do you work so hard, Roger?" Winifred would ask.

He would say, with one of his laughs: "Because there's a dynamo in me that I can't stop."

And all these years Miss Winifred Goode stayed at Duns Hall, leading her secluded, lavender-scented life when Roger was in London, and playing hostess for him, with diffident graciousness, when he entertained at The Lodge. His attitude towards her never varied, his need of her never lessened.

He never asked her to be his wife. At first she wondered, pined a little, and then, like a brave, proud woman, put the matter behind her. But she knew that she counted for much in his strange existence, and the knowledge comforted her. And as the years went on, and all the lingering shreds of youth left her, and she grew gracefully into the old lady, she came to regard her association with him as a spiritual marriage.

Then, after twenty years, the dynamo wore out the fragile tenement of flesh. Roger Orme, at sixty-five, broke down and lay on his death-bed. One day he sent for Miss Winifred Goode.

She entered the sick-room, a woman of sixty, white-haired, wrinkled, with only the beauty of a serene step across the threshold of old age. He bade the nurse leave them alone, and put out his hand and held hers as she sat beside the bed.

"What kind of a day is it, Winnie?"

"As if you didn't know! You've been told, I'm sure, twenty times."

"What does it matter what other people say? I want to get at the day through you."

"It's bright and sunny – a perfect day of early summer."

"What things are out?"

"The may and the laburnum and the lilac – "

"And the wistaria?"

"Yes, the wistaria."

"It's forty years ago, dear, and your voice is just the same. And to me you have always been the same. I can see you as you sit there, with your dear, sensitive face, the creamy cheek, in which the blood comes and goes – oh, Heavens, so different from the blowsy, hard-featured girls nowadays, who could not blush if – well – well – I know 'em, although I'm blind – I'm Argus, you know, dear. Yes, I can see you, with your soft, brown eyes and pale brown hair waved over your pure brow. There is a fascinating little kink on the left-hand side. Let me feel it."

She drew her head away, frightened. Then suddenly she remembered, with a pang of thankfulness, that the queer little kink had defied the years, though the pale brown hair was white. She guided his hand and he felt the kink, and he laughed in his old, exultant way.

"Don't you think I'm a miracle, Winnie?"

"You're the most wonderful man living," she said.

"I shan't be living long. No, my dear, don't talk platitudes. I know. I'm busted. And I'm glad I'm going before I begin to dodder. A seeing dodderer is bad enough, but a blind dodderer's only fit for the grave. I've lived my life. I've proved to this stupendous clot of ignorance that is humanity that a blind man can guide them wherever he likes. You know I refused a knighthood. Any tradesman can buy a knighthood – the only knighthoods that count are those that are given to artists and writers and men of science – and, if I could live, I'd raise hell over the matter, and make a differentiation in the titles of honour between the great man and the rascally cheesemonger – "

"My dear," said Miss Winifred Goode, "don't get so excited."

"I'm only saying, Winnie, that I refused a knighthood. But – what I haven't told you, what I'm supposed to keep a dead secret – if I could live a few weeks longer, and I shan't, I should be a Privy Councillor – a thing worth being. I've had the official intimation – a thing that can't be bought. Heavens, if I were a younger man, and there were the life in me, I should be the Prime Minister of this country – the first great blind ruler that ever was in the world. Think of it! But I don't want anything now. I'm done. I'm glad. The whole caboodle is but leather and prunella. There is only one thing in the world that is of any importance."

"What is that, dear?" she asked quite innocently, accustomed to, but never familiar with, his vehement paradox.

"Love," said he.

He gripped her hand hard. There passed a few seconds of tense silence.

"Winnie, dear," he said at last, "will you kiss me?"

She bent forward, and he put his arm round her neck and drew her to him. They kissed each other on the lips.

"It's forty years since I kissed you, dear – that day under the wistaria. And, now I'm dying, I can tell you. I've loved you all the time, Winnie. I'm a tough nut, as you know, and whatever I do I do intensely. I've loved you intensely, furiously."

She turned her head away, unable to bear the living look in the sightless eyes.

"Why did you never tell me?" she asked in a low voice.

"Would you have married me?"

"You know I would, Roger."

"At first I vowed I would say nothing," he said, after a pause, "until I had a fit home to offer you. Then the blindness came, and I vowed I wouldn't speak until I had conquered the helplessness of my affliction. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but when you came home a conqueror – "

"I loved you too much to marry you. You were far too dear and precious to come into the intimacy of my life. Haven't you seen what happened to all those who did?" He raised his old knotted hands, clenched tightly. "I squeezed them dry. I couldn't help it. My blindness made me a coward. It has been hell. The darkness never ceased to frighten me. I lied when I said it didn't matter. I stretched out my hands like tentacles and gripped everyone within reach in a kind of madness of self-preservation. I made them give up their souls and senses to me. It was some ghastly hypnotic power I seemed to have. When I had got them, they lost volition, individuality. They were about as much living creatures to me as my arm or my foot. Don't you see?"

The white-haired woman looked at the old face working passionately, and she felt once more the deadly fear of him.

"But with me it would have been different," she faltered. "You say you loved me."

"That's the devil of it, my sweet, beautiful Winnie – it wouldn't have been different. I should have squeezed you, too, reduced you to the helpless thing that did my bidding, sucked your life's blood from you. I couldn't have resisted. So I kept you away. Have I ever asked you to use your eyes for me?"

Her memory travelled down the years, and she was amazed. She remembered Mr. Jukes at the great shops and many similar incidents that had puzzled her.

"No," she said.

There was a short silence. The muscles of his face relaxed, and the old, sweet smile came over it. He reached again for her hand and caressed it tenderly.

"By putting you out of my life, I kept you, dear. I kept you as the one beautiful human thing I had. Every hour of happiness I have had for the last twenty years has come through you."

She said tearfully: "You have been very good to me, Roger."

"It's a queer mix-up, isn't it?" he said, after a pause. "Most people would say that I've ruined your life. If it hadn't been for me, you might have married."

"No, dear," she replied. "I've had a very full and happy life."

The nurse came into the room to signify the end of the visit, and found them hand in hand like lovers. He laughed.

"Nurse," said he, "you see a dying but a jolly happy old man!"

Two days afterwards Roger Orme died. On the afternoon of the funeral, Miss Winifred Goode sat in the old garden in the shade of the clipped yew, and looked at the house in which she had been born, and in which she had passed her sixty years of life, and at the old wistaria beneath which he had kissed her forty years ago. She smiled and murmured aloud:

"No, I would not have had a single thing different."