第50章

"He seemed stunned at first.Then he said of course I could not marry him if I considered him that.He said it was the first time he had given a thought to himself in the matter.Then he said he bowed to my decision, and he walked down the church and went out, and we have not met since.""Jane," said the doctor, "I wonder he did not see through it.You are so unused to lying, that you cannot have lied, on the chancel step, to the man you loved, with much conviction."A dull red crept up beneath Jane's tan.

"Oh, Deryck, it was not entirely a lie.It was one of those dreadful lies which are 'part a truth,' of which Tennyson says that they are 'a harder matter to fight.'""'A lie which is all a lie May be met and fought with outright;But a lie which is part a truth Is a harder matter to fight,'"quoted the doctor.

"Yes," said Jane."And he could not fight this, just because it was partly true.He is younger than I by three years, and still more by temperament.It was partly for his delightful youthfulness that Ifeared my maturity and staidness.It was part a truth, but oh, Deryck, it was more a lie; and it was altogether a lie to call him--the man whom I had felt complete master of me the evening before--'a mere boy.' Also he could not fight it because it took him so utterly by surprise.He had been all the time as completely without self-consciousness, as I had been morbidly full of it.His whole thought had been of me.Mine had been of him and--of myself.""Jane," said the doctor, "of all that you have suffered since that hour, you deserved every pang."Jane bent her head."I know," she said.

"You were false to yourself, and not true to your lover.You robbed and defrauded both.Cannot you now see your mistake? To take it on the lowest ground, Dalmain, worshipper of beauty as he was, had had a surfeit of pretty faces.He was like the confectioner's boy who when first engaged is allowed to eat all the cakes and sweets he likes, and who eats so many in the first week, that ever after he wants only plain bread-and-butter.YOU were Dal's bread-and-butter.

I am sorry if you do not like the simile."Jane smiled."I do like the simile," she said.

"Ah, but you were far more than this, my dear girl.You were his ideal of womanhood.He believed in your strength and tenderness, your graciousness and truth.You shattered this ideal; you failed this faith in you.His fanciful, artistic, eclectic nature with all its unused possibilities of faithful and passionate devotion, had found its haven in your love; and in twelve hours you turned it adrift.Jane--it was a crime.The magnificent strength of the fellow is shown by the way he took it.His progress in his art was not arrested.All his best work has been done since.He has made no bad mad marriage, in mockery of his own pain; and no grand loveless one, to spite you.He might have done both--I mean either.And when Irealise that the poor fellow I was with yesterday--making such a brave fight in the dark, and turning his head on the pillow to say with a gleam of hope on his drawn face: `Where Thou art Guide, no ill can come'--had already been put through all this by you--Jane, if you were a man, I'd horsewhip you!" said the doctor.

Jane squared her shoulders and lifted her head with more of her old spirit than she had yet shown.

"You have lashed me well, Boy," she said, "as only words spoken in faithful indignation can lash.And I feel the better for the pain.--And now I think I ought to tell you that while I was on the top of the Great Pyramid I suddenly saw the matter from a different standpoint.You remember that view, with its sharp line of demarcation? On one side the river, and verdure, vegetation, fruitfulness, a veritable 'garden enclosed'; on the other, vast space as far as the eye could reach; golden liberty, away to the horizon, but no sign of vegetation, no hope of cultivation, just barren, arid, loneliness.I felt this was an exact picture of my life as I live it now.Garth's love, flowing through it, as the river, could have made it a veritable 'garden of the Lord.' It would have meant less liberty, but it would also have meant no loneliness.

And, after all, the liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage.Then I realised that I had condemned him also to this hard desert life.I came down and took counsel of the old Sphinx.

Those calm, wise eyes, looking on into futurity, seemed to say:

'They only live who love.' That evening I resolved to give up the Nile trip, return home immediately, send for Garth, admit all to him, asking him to let us both begin again just where we were three years ago in the moonlight on the terrace at Shenstone.Ten minutes after I had formed this decision, I heard of his accident."The doctor shaded his face with his hand."The wheels of time," he said in a low voice, "move forward--always; backward, never.""Oh, Deryck," cried Jane, "sometimes they do.You and Flower know that sometimes they do."The doctor smiled sadly and very tenderly."I know," he said, "that there is always one exception which proves every rule." Then he added quickly: "But, unquestionably, it helps to mend matters, so far as your own mental attitude is concerned, that before you knew of Dalmain's blindness you should have admitted yourself wrong, and made up your mind to trust him.""I don't know that I was altogether clear about having been wrong,"said Jane, "but I was quite convinced that I couldn't live any longer without him, and was therefore prepared to risk it.And of course now, all doubt or need to question is swept away by my poor boy's accident, which simplifies matters, where that particular point is concerned."The doctor looked at Jane with a sudden raising of his level brows.

"Simplifies matters?" he said.