Chapter Six.
The Man who Wished for Comfort.
It seemed hard to Francis Manning that he, who had asked of fate nothing more exorbitant than an easy, comfortable existence, should have been called on to endure one of the most uncomfortable of experiences—that of being jilted by the girl to whom he had believed himself engaged to be married! For years past he had intended to marry Lilith Wastneys, and when he told his love she had been everything that was sweet and complaisant, had said, in so many words, that she loved him in return. He had gone home feeling the happiest man in the world, had lain awake for a solid hour by the clock, rejoicing in his happiness, and the very next morning, behold a letter to tell him that she was engaged to another man!
Francis could not endure to recall the shock, the misery, the discomfort, of that hour. If the news had come from another source he would have refused to believe it; but it was Lilith herself who wrote, so there was no loophole of escape.
During the following days he felt stunned and wretched. His heart was wounded, but he was not sentimental by nature, and it seemed to him that he could have schooled his heart into subjection if it had not been for—for the other things! There did not seem a single interest in life which this wretched disillusionment had left untouched. To begin with, there was his work. He had worked for a home in which Lilith should live as his wife. Work seemed suddenly dull and purposeless now that the proposed home had crumbled into ruins. Then, as regards amusement—he had grown into the habit of arranging his engagements to fit in with Lilith’s own. A dinner meant the chance of Lilith for a partner; a ball, a dance or two with Lilith, and a tête-à-tête in a conservatory; a reception, the chance of edging his way towards a little white figure and keeping beside it for the rest of the evening. Amusement lost its savour, now that Lilith no more entered into the scheme. Life was dull, stale, and unprofitable. The days dragged past on leaden feet; he fell asleep with a sigh, and woke to a pang of remembrance.
For a whole month Francis was a prey to grief, and then, as he himself would have expressed it, he “bucked up.” There came an historic Saturday evening, when, in the company of a particularly fine cigar he came to the conclusion that “it was not good enough,” and that he could not “stick” it any more. He had had a whole month of being miserable, and it was the dullest time he had ever known! In self-defence he must pull himself together and face the music.
It was astonishing how many saws Francis quoted over that cigar; but he was as good as his vow, and from that hour he wasted no more regrets on Lilith Wastneys. So serene and cheerful became his demeanour that his one confidante congratulated him on having set a pattern to suffering mankind.
“I have heard many tragic stories. People always do confide in me,” she told him; “but have I met a man who has borne his trouble as you have borne yours. I feel a better woman from the experience. It has been a triumph of bravery and endurance!”
“Think so?” said Francis. He was gratified to know that he had made such a good impression, and reminded himself insistently that lookers-on saw most of the game. He did this to quieten a tiresome inner voice which insisted that his cheerful mien was the result of cowardice rather than of bravery, the cowardice which refused to endure!
“Still, you know,” he declared lugubriously, “a fellow feels lonely—”
The confidante sighed, and flicked her light eyelashes.
“I know the feeling,” she said.
When a man has made up his mind that it is time to marry, it is foolish to abandon the plan because one woman out of the teeming millions in the land refuses to become his wife. This, at least, was Francis Manning’s seasoned decision, and it was emphasised by the announcement of Lilith Wastneys’ wedding, which appeared in the newspapers exactly three months after her refusal of himself. Whatever sentimental hankerings he might have cherished for Lilith the maid, it was clearly out of place to cast another thought towards the wife of Hereward Lowther. Francis had a deep respect for the conventions, and death itself could not have removed his former love to a more impassable distance. He heaved a sigh to her memory, and buried it underground.
Within a week from that day he was engaged to the confidante. It seemed the obvious thing to do, for he knew her more intimately than any other girl of his acquaintance, and owed her a debt of gratitude for her sympathy in his former affair. She was quite a nice girl, too; not pretty, but amiable and healthy, with a small income of her own which would come in usefully towards running the house. He wished her eyelashes had not been quite so white; but one could not have everything. She was a nice, affectionate girl.
The confidante accepted Francis because she was tired of living at home with a managing mamma, and wanted to start life on her own account. She liked Francis, was proud of his fine appearance, knew him to be good-tempered and honourable, and was complacently assured that they would “get on.” Far better, she said, to begin with a sensible, open-eyed liking, than a headlong passion which would wear itself out before the honeymoon was over. It was, in short, a sensible marriage between eminently sensible contracting parties. The little God of Love had no part in the ceremony, but it is only fair to mention that nobody missed him.
Mr and Mrs Manning went to Scotland for their honeymoon, and Francis played golf every day, what time his wife read novels in the veranda of the hotel. She sped him on his way with a smile, and welcomed him back with a smile to match, and if the young girls in the hotel confided in each other that they would break their hearts if their bridegrooms neglected them in such a fashion, such a thought never entered her head. She would have been bored if Francis had stayed beside her all day long. What on earth could they have found to say?
At the end of a fortnight Mr and Mrs Manning returned to a semi-detached villa in a southern suburb, and settled down to a comfortable married life.
Mr and Mrs Francis Manning spent the next ten years in peace and comfort, and humdrum happiness. They had good health, easy means, a large number of acquaintances, and three little daughters. The daughters were plain, but sturdy, and gave a minimum of trouble in the household. Francis, indeed, insisted on this point. Early in the lifetime of Maud, the eldest daughter, he had become aware of the amazing fact that nurses occasionally wished to “go out”; that, in addition, they wished to go out on the Sabbath day. This seemed to him unreasonable, and he said as much to his wife.
“But why in the name of all that’s ridiculous, Sunday? I’m at home on Sunday. Sunday’s the day when we need nurse most of all. It’s my holiday.”
Mrs Manning represented that Sunday was also a holiday for nurse and her friends, and Francis said, very well, then, they must have two nurses. If necessary they must have three. The one thing certain was that he could not be disturbed on his day of rest, so a capable assistant was engaged forthwith, and comfort was re-established.
The Mannings took no part in the intellectual life of the neighbourhood. There, were several book clubs, lecture courses, and the like, which they were urged to join, but without success. Francis declared that he worked all day, and came home to rest, and his wife said, thank you, no; she had no wish to go back to school at her age. They went out to dinner now and then, and made a point of giving two or three dinners themselves every winter. They provided lavishly on such occasions, and were agreeably conscious that their guests were impressed. Both husband and wife enjoyed rich foods, and saw no reason for denying themselves the gratification.
As far as religion was concerned, the Mannings made a point of going to church with the children every Sunday morning when it was fine, or they were not late for breakfast, or Francis did not feel inclined for a walk. Sometimes he went off golfing for the day, and then Mrs Manning dressed Maud in her best clothes and they went to church together. She had been brought up to go to church, and thought the habit “nice.” Besides it was pleasant to see friends coming out, and walk home with Mrs Lane, her favourite neighbour. They would meet on the path outside the graveyard, and turn uphill together, and Mrs Lane would say: “What a sermon! My dear, did you see the woman in the pew before ours? She came in late, just before the psalms. She took off her coat, and, my dear, her blouse—”
She would proceed to describe the blouse in detail, and Mrs Manning would sigh and say: “It is nice to have something interesting to look at in the next pew! We have those awful Miss Newtes.”
The neighbours on both sides envied the Francis Mannings, and quoted their doings with admiration. In the matter of holidays, for instance, how sane and sensible were their arrangements! The children were sent with their nurses to the sea, the father enjoyed himself on Scottish golf links; the mother toured abroad with a woman friend. Each autumn the neighbours agreed to profit by the example of the Francis Mannings, and to do likewise the next summer; but somehow it never came off. When spring came round the wife would conscientiously remind her husband of the resolve, and urge him to keep it, while gracefully withdrawing herself. “Margot has had several of those bad chest colds,” she would explain. “I should be so anxious in case she caught a chill. It really is my duty to go with the children but you, dear, you could quite well—”
“Well! I don’t know,” the husband would reply. “What would become of you in the evenings? And I promised to teach Jack to swim. I think, on the whole, we’d better stick to the old arrangement this summer.”
So once more they would depart en famille to the seaside, and stay in lodgings, and be happy in the old domesticated fashion. But also, quite frequently, bored!
On the rare occasions when he gave himself over to thought, Francis realised that there was only one respect in which life had disappointed him, only one desire which had been withheld. He wanted a son. Each time that a child had been expected he had built his hopes upon a son; each time disappointment had been more acute. He had built up a good business by his own exertions; he wanted a son of his own name to carry it on. There were times, moreover, when the purely feminine nature of his household fretted his nerves, and he thought, with longing, of a man child; a little chappie in trousers, instead of the eternal flounces; a knickerbockered elf sitting in his dressing-room watching him shave; a tall hobbledehoy beginning to play golf, listening with interest to accounts of his father’s prowess. Later on, a man, a partner, a prop for declining years. Francis pushed the thought from him, but it recurred. Deep at his heart lay the longing for a son.
And the son came. This time he had not hoped; he had told himself steadily that it would be a girl. Better if it were a girl. No use having a boy at the end of a family of girls. He would grow up half a girl himself, and be a disappointment. He was placidly resigned to girl, and after all, behold, it was a boy! The blood raced through his veins as he heard the good news; something astonishingly like tears pricked at his eyes.
“Is he—is he all right?” he asked breathlessly, and the doctor laughed.
“Go upstairs and look at him, my dear fellow! Pine little chap as you could wish to see.”
In truth he was a healthy nine-pounder of a son, guaranteed by nurse and mother to be the finest baby ever born, and seated by his wife’s bedside, Francis gave vent to his jubilation.
“Now,” he said triumphantly, “I have everything I want. I really am a lucky fellow. Jolly little beggar, eh? Seems to me—I don’t know if I’m right—but I do think he looks different from the rest!”
The wife smiled, but Francis was right; everybody said he was right. The longed-for boy was in truth an extraordinarily comely infant, and each week of his life he blossomed into fuller charm. His well-shaped head was covered with golden curls and when he lay asleep (and he obligingly slept most of his time) it was a pleasure to observe the delicate promise of his features. He had obviously elected to resemble his handsome father, and the father was complacently grateful for the fact.—
Mrs Manning observed with amazement that Francis nursed this baby, positively nursed him in his arms, and was quite disappointed when, on returning from the city, he failed to find him awake.
“Are his eyes changing colour yet?” he would ask. “I want them to be blue. Blue eyes would look so well with his yellow hair.” But the baby’s eyes remained a dull, clouded grey. “Not blue yet!” Francis would repeat. “How long is it before they begin to change? Fine big eyes, aren’t they? I want to make the little beggar look at me, but he won’t. Why does he stare at the ceiling?”
“It’s the electric light,” said his wife; but the next morning, when the lights were turned off, the baby still stared blankly upward.
“Why the dickens does he stare at the ceiling?” Francis asked again.
Gradually, imperceptibly, a growing anxiety began to mingle with his joy, and the anxiety was connected with those staring eyes. He would not put his thoughts into words; but he watched his wife’s face, and saw in it no reflection of his own fears. Then for a time he would banish the dread; and anon it would recur.
Were the boy’s eyes all right? Was it really natural that he should be always staring up? Ridiculous nonsense! Of course it was all right. Things had come to a pretty pass when he took to worrying himself, while his wife, who knew a thousand times more about babies, remained untroubled and serene. Bother the child’s eyes! ... He would think about them no more.
All his life Francis had been a sworn opponent of worry. When anything disagreeable threatened, his mode of procedure was to shrug his shoulders, and immediately divert his thoughts. “Leave the thing alone; don’t bother about it; it will probably come all right in the end!” Such was his theory, and experience had proved that as often as not it was correct. He endeavoured to cultivate the same attitude towards his boy, but in vain. The anxiety recurred.
He told himself that he would have the eyes tested, and satisfy himself once for all; but once and again his courage failed, and the days passed on, and nothing was done. Then there came an evening when suddenly fear engulfed him, and made anything seem easier than a continuation of suspense.
He was holding the child in his arms, and he rose and carried it across the room, to where a powerful light hung from the wall. He pushed aside the shade, and held the tiny face closely approaching the glass. The eyes stared on, unblinking and still. A great cry burst from Francis’ throat:
“My God!” he cried. “The boy is blind!”
The boy was blind, and there was no hope that he would ever possess his sight. Mrs Manning wept herself ill, but even in the depths of her distress she realised that her husband’s sufferings were keener than her own. It gave an added touch of misery to those black days, to feel a strange new distance between her husband and herself. She could not comfort him; she could not understand him; after ten years of married life it appeared as if the man she had known had disappeared, and a stranger had taken his place. Yet there was nothing unmanly in his grief; he was quiet and self-restrained as she had never seen him before, gentler, and more considerate of others.
The poor woman noticed the change with awe, and wondered if Francis were going to die.
“I have never seen you feel anything as you are feeling this,” she said to him one night. They were sitting by the dying fire, and Francis raised his head and stared at her with sombre eyes.
“But I have felt nothing,” he said flatly. “I am finding that out. I did not know what it meant to feel!”
From the moment of his discovery of the blindness of his son, Francis Manning became a man possessed of but one aim—to lighten and alleviate, so far as was humanly possible, the child’s sad lot. He taught himself Braille, so that in time to come he might teach it to the boy, and be able to translate for his benefit appropriate pieces of literature. He visited every famous institute for the blind at home and abroad, and made an exhaustive study of their systems. He searched for a girl of intelligence and charm, and sent her to be trained in readiness to undertake the boy’s education; he schooled himself to be a playmate and companion; he denied himself every luxury, so that the boy’s future might be assured. As Francis the man, he ceased to exist; he lived on only as Francis the father.
During the first three years of his life the young Francis remained blissfully unconscious of his infirmity. A strong, healthy child surrounded by the tenderest of care, the sun of his happiness never set. His little feet raced up and down; his sweet, shrill voice chanted merry strains; his small, strong hands seemed gifted with sight as well as touch, so surely did they guide him to and fro. Nature, having withheld the greatest gift, had remorsefully essayed compensation in the shape of a finer touch, a finer hearing. The blind child was the sunshine of the home; but the father knew that the hour must dawn when that sunshine would be clouded. He held himself in readiness for that hour, training himself as an athlete trains for a race.
He would need courage: therefore it behoved him to be brave now, to harden himself against the ills of life, and cultivate a resolute composure. All the influences which had tended to keep him soft must be thrown aside as weights which would hinder the race. He must be wise, therefore it behoved him to think, and to train his mind. A light reason, a light excuse, would no longer be sufficient; he must learn to judge and to reflect. He must be tender; and to be tender it was necessary to bury self, and to put other interests before his own. More weights had to be thrown aside. And he must be patient! Hitherto he had considered patience a feeble, almost unmanly, virtue; but he perceived that it would be needed, and must be cultivated with the rest.
Mrs Manning confided in her neighbours that Francis had never been the same since the discovery of Baby’s blindness. He never complained, she said. Oh, no; and he was most kind—gave no trouble in the house, but—Then she sighed, and the neighbours sympathised, and prophesied that he would “come round.” In truth the good, commonplace woman was ill at ease in the rarefied atmosphere of the home, and sincerely regretted the comfortable, easy-going husband of yore.
For three whole years Frank lived untroubled, and then the questions began to come.
“Am I blind, father? Why am I blind? Is it naughty to be blind?”
The baby child was easily appeased. Later on the questions would become more insistent. Francis prepared himself for that hour. At four years fleeting shadows began to pass over the boy’s radiance. Alone with his father, his face would pucker in thought.
“Shall I always be blind, father? I don’t like to be blind. Was you blind when you was a little boy?”
The knife turned in the father’s heart at the sound of the innocent words; but always the cloud loomed darker ahead. He trained himself more zealously, in preparation for the hour when the boy would rebel!
But there were happy hours between, hours when the natural joy of childhood filled the house with laughter, and father and son were supremely happy in each other’s society. No companion of his own age was half as dear to the boy; no living creature stood for so much in the father’s heart. They read and studied together; they held long, intimate conversation. They played games from which blind people are usually debarred. Standing behind a hoop on the croquet lawn the father would cry in a brisk, staccato voice, “Prank!” and on the instant the boy’s mallet would hit the ball, and send it in the direction indicated, and proud and glad was Frankie to know that his aim was surer than that of his sighted sisters. And every hour of contentment, every added interest and occupation bestowed upon the boy, was as a salve to the sore father heart. But at six years the inevitable rebellion began.
“Is he blind?” the boy would ask of a new acquaintance. “Can he see, too? Everyone can see but me! ... I want to run about like the other fellows, and play cricket, and have some fun. It’s dull all alone in the dark. Can’t you have me made better, father?”
At times he would cry; piteous, pitiful tears, but the sensitive ear was quick to catch the distress in his father’s voice, and he would offer consolation in the midst of his grief. “Don’t be sorry, father. I don’t want you to be sorry. It doesn’t matter; really it doesn’t. I have a ripping time!”
Never for a moment did the boy hold his parents responsible for his infirmity; but there came a day when he blamed his God.
“If God can do everything He likes, He could have made me quite right, and well. Why didn’t He, father?”
“I don’t know, my son.”
“You would make me better if you could! You said yourself you’d pay the doctor all your money. You are kinder than Him. I don’t think God is kind to me, father. It would have been so easy for Him—”
The wisdom for which Francis had prayed and struggled seemed a poor thing at that moment. He was dumb, and yet he dared not be dumb.
“Frankie,” he said, “I’ll tell you a secret—a secret between you and me... God sent me a great many blessings when I was young, and they did me no good. I was selfish, and careless, and blind, too, Frankie, though my eyes could see, and then after He had tried me with happiness and it had failed, He sent me”—the man’s voice trembled ominously—“a great grief! ... Frankie, old man, when I come to die, I believe I am going to thank God for that grief, more than for all the blessings which went before.”
The child sat silent, struggling for comprehension.
“What did the great grief do to you, father?”
Francis paused for a moment, struggling for composure. Then he spoke:
“It stabbed my dead heart wide awake!”
He stooped and kissed the child’s blind eyes.