She got up. She rang the bell. She went to the writing-table and sat down. She opened the inkstand hoof, Choirboy’s hoof, and she looked at her pens. She dipped one into the ink, and she drew a bit of paper towards her. Then she looked out of the window on to the rose garden for some time.

William came in.

“William, Mrs. Crayshaw has written to say that she will want fifty cups and saucers. . . . No, on second thought . . . It is all right, William, I will go and tell cook myself. And—oh, William, the letters, please.”

“Yes, madam.”

William held the door open for her. Mrs. Lane might not like it from the butler. She would go up to see him after this. But you could not be too careful with servants nowadays, and . . .

*****

How did one pass the time when one was blind? Six days had gone by since she had told him, days filled with the echo of people round occupying themselves on his account. Mamma had had three long conferences with Mrs. Palmer, conferences which had reached him through vague references as to what he was going to do, with not a word as to what he was going to do now. Nan was struggling with an emotion already waning. Her long silences, in which she sent out waves of sentimentality, told that she was trying to freeze what was left into permanency. The nurse helped him grudgingly back to health, the new life was forming, and it was even more boring than the former. They read to him in turn for hours on end, Mamma talked of finding a professional reader. It was now so ordinary to be blind.

He was in the long chair, under the cedar on the lawn. He felt the sky low and his bandages tight. The air nosed furtively through the branches and made the leaves whisper while it tickled his face. Pigeons were cooing, catching each other up, repeating, answering, as if all the world depended on their little loves. It was the sound he liked best about the garden; he yawned and began to doze.

He was alone for the moment. Nan had left him to take a cup of tea. The nurse was taking the daily walk that was necessary to her trade union health, and Mrs. Haye had gone up to the village to console Mrs. Trench, whose week-old baby was dying. Herbert, leaning on the sill of the kitchen window, was making noises at Mrs. Lane while she toyed with a chopper, just out of his reach. Weston was lost in wonder, love and praise before the artichokes, he had a camera in his pocket and had taken a record of their splendour. Twenty years on and he would be showing it to his grandchildren, to prove how things did grow in the old days. Twenty years ago Pinch had seen better. Harry was hissing over a sporting paper; Doris in an attic was letting down her hair, she was about to plait the two soft pigtails. Jenny, the laundry cat, was very near the sparrow now, by the bramble in the left-hand corner of the drying ground.

He roused himself—if he went to sleep it would only mean that he would lie awake all night. He fingered the letter that Nan had read to him from J. W. P., full of regret that he was not coming back next term, saying that he would get his leaving-book from the Headmaster for him. No more going back now, which was one good thing, and no more irritations with J. W. P. He had done a great deal of work, though, that last year; he had really worked quite hard at writing, and he would go on now, there was time when one was blind. J. W. P. had disapproved, of course, and had said that no one should write before he was twenty-one, but about that time he had come under the influence of the small master with spectacles, whose theory was that no boy should have any ideas before he had left school. Perhaps they were right, it was certainly easier to give oneself up to a physical existence. Healthy sanity. And here was weakness, in saying that they ever could be right. But he was in such an appalling desolation that anything might be right. Why had he taken that train?