第45章

THE CONSULTATION

The doctor's room was very quiet.Jane leaned back in his dark green leather arm-chair, her feet on a footstool, her hands gripping the arms on either side.

The doctor sat at his table, in the round pivot-chair he always used,--a chair which enabled him to swing round suddenly and face a patient, or to turn away very quietly and bend over his table.

Just now he was not looking at Jane.He had been giving her a detailed account of his visit to Castle Gleneesh, which he had left only on the previous evening.He had spent five hours with Garth.It seemed kindest to tell her all; but he was looking straight before him as he talked, because he knew that at last the tears were running unchecked down Jane's cheeks, and he wished her to think he did not notice them.

"You understand, dear," he was saying, "the actual wounds are going on well.Strangely enough, though the retina of each eye was pierced, and the sight is irrecoverably gone, there was very little damage done to surrounding parts, and the brain is quite uninjured.

The present danger arises from the shock to the nervous system and from the extreme mental anguish caused by the realisation of his loss.The physical suffering during the first days and nights must have been terrible.Poor fellow, he looks shattered by it.But his constitution is excellent, and his life has been so clean, healthy, and normal, that he had every chance of making a good recovery, were it not that as the pain abated and his blindness became more a thing to be daily and hourly realised, his mental torture was so excessive.Sight has meant so infinitely much to him,--beauty of form, beauty of colour.The artist in him was so all-pervading.They tell me he said very little.He is a brave man and a strong one.But his temperature began to vary alarmingly; he showed symptoms of mental trouble, of which I need not give you technical details; and a nerve specialist seemed more necessary than an oculist.Therefore he is now in my hands."The doctor paused, straightened a few books lying on the table, and drew a small bowl of violets closer to him.He studied these attentively for a few moments, then put them back where his wife had placed them and went on speaking.

"I am satisfied on the whole.He needed a friendly voice to penetrate the darkness.He needed a hand to grasp his, in faithful comprehension.He did not want pity, and those who talked of his loss without understanding it, or being able to measure its immensity, maddened him.He needed a fellow-man to come to him and say: 'It is a fight--an awful, desperate fight.But by God's grace you will win through to victory.It would be far easier to die; but to die would be to lose; you must live to win.It is utterly beyond all human strength; but by God's grace you will come through conqueror.' All this I said to him, Jeanette, and a good deal more;and then a strangely beautiful thing happened.I can tell you, and of course I could tell Flower, but to no one else on earth would Irepeat it.The difficulty had been to obtain from him any response whatever.He did not seem able to rouse sufficiently to notice anything going on around him.But those words, 'by God's grace,'

appeared to take hold of him and find immediate echo in his inner consciousness.I heard him repeat them once or twice, and then change them to 'with the abundance of Thy grace.' Then he turned his head slowly on the pillow, and what one could see of his face seemed transformed.He said: 'Now I remember it, and the music is this';and his hands moved on the bedclothes, as if forming chords.Then, in a very low voice, but quite clearly, he repeated the second verse of the VENI, CREATOR SPIRITUS.I knew it, because I used to sing it as a chorister in my father's church at home.You remember?""'Enable with perpetual light The dulness of our blinded sight.

Anoint and cheer our soiled face With the abundance of Thy grace.

Keep far our foes; give peace at home;

Where Thou art Guide, no ill can come.'"

"It was the most touching thing I ever heard."The doctor paused, for Jane had buried her face in her hands and was sobbing convulsively.When her sobs grew less violent, the doctor's quiet voice continued: "You see, this gave me something to go upon.

When a crash such as this happens, all a man has left to hold on to is his religion.According as his spiritual side has been developed, will his physical side stand the strain.Dalmain has more of the real thing than any one would think who only knew him superficially.

Well, after that we talked quite definitely, and I persuaded him to agree to one or two important arrangements.You know, he has no relations of his own, to speak of; just a few cousins, who have never been very friendly.He is quite alone up there; for, though he has hosts of friends, this is a time when friends would have to be very intimate to be admitted; and though he seemed so boyish and easy to know, I begin to doubt whether any of us knew the real Garth--the soul of the man, deep down beneath the surface."Jane lifted her head."I did," she said simply.