The Blindness of Memory Earle. A romance

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THE BLINDNESS OF MEMORY EAELE THE Blindness of Memory Earle a Romance BY CHARLES T C JAMES AUTHOR OF " A Romance os the Queen's Hounds " " Against the Grain '' " A Bird of Paradise " " Galloping Days at the Deanery " Etc "gonliim REMINGTON AND CO PUBLISHERS HENRIETTA. STREET COVENT GARDEN 1890 [AU Rights Reserved] CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE. I. In the Garden on the Roof ... ... ... ... i II. In the Bitterness of the Heart ... 10 III. That which never yet ran Smooth ... ... ... 22 IV. A Memorable Day is Fixed ... ... ... 34 V. Justifying the End ... ... ... ... ... 44 VI. Starting for Paradise ... ... ... ... 56 VII. Purple and Fine Linen ... ... ... ... 63 VIII. In Claversham Park ... ... ... ... 74 IX. Dining out ... ... ... ... ... ... 84 X. The Vallev of the Shadow ... ... ... ... 101 XI. The Old.

Old Storv 100 XII. Catches the Infection of ChapterXl. ... ... 116 XIII. Tide upon the Turn ... ... ... ... ... t2^ XIV. A Big, Big D 133 XV. "Good-bye, Summer" ... ... ... ... 143 XVI. Harvest Time 152 XVII. People's Faces 153 XVIII. Soundings ... ... ... ... ... ... 164 XIX. Die Cast 17^ XX. Free 183 XXI. Forging ... ... ... ... ig2 XXII. Familiar Faces ... ... ... ... ... 202 XXIII. In the Distance 210 XXIV. Substance and Shadow ... ... ... ■■• 218 XXV. Ves 228 XXVI. Everything Satisfactory .. 240 XXVII. Svmpathv ... 25 s XXVIII. Home. Sweet Home... 2:0 XXIX. Shadow 268 XXX. "Grace" 27« XXXI. The Love that comes Too Late .: 286 XXXII. Drifting 200 XXXIII. Further out 3°° XXXIV. A Vision and a Word 300 XXXV. " For her own Sake " 321 XXXVI. Weanof it .1.1° XXXVII. " Will you speak ? " 342 XXXVIII.

Golden Silence 35 S XXXIX. A Lying Spirit 364 XL. Martyrdom 375 XLI. Struck Down 385 XLII. Home 394 XLIII. Sunshine on it 4°5 XLIV. On Golden Wings 4'5 Chapter the Last

Chapter I. In The Garden On The Roof

It was night in London, hot, hazy, slumberous night. Not very late either, for the bell of St. Paul's had but just struck nine deep-toned, vibrating strokes that rolled out over the drowsy city, growing fainter and fainter till they died. Eastward of London Bridge, eastward of the Tower, to a petty, dirty, insignificant thoroughfare, by name Mercy Street, the deep-toned, trembling strokes of St. Paul's travelled and were heard. For in Mercy Street was the smallest specimen of newspaper shop in existence, kept by Widow Wraith and her daughter Hetty. Now Miss Hetty, having a deep love and affection for the works of that great artificer, Nature, had contrived a caricature garden upon the flat roof of the house, and there stood on the evening we are talking about, looking at the misty moon just rising out of the river fog — for Mercy Street is bordered on one side by the river, and parallel with it.

Such a glorious June moon, coming up blushing, and a little on one side, like a maiden's head when she is coy. There is a wire netting all round the roof, and up this creepers and greenery twine as gracefully as though they were on the porch of some hamlet cottage miles from town. The moon and the scent of B THE BLINDNESS OF MEMORY EARLE. 2 her -flowers, and the sight of the river combined, make Miss Wraith sigh, thinking of leafy dingles and new mown hay-fields. " After all," she says to herself, disconsolately, " a garden in orange boxes never can be like the real thing. It's foolish to expect it." Nevertheless, she fell to watering her pots assidu ously. We all cling to our half-loaves, don't we? and if we are wise forget that there are whole ones anywhere. But the moon, getting higher, showed Hetty Wraith with greater distinctness.

She had spoken with a singularly pleasant voice, and her figure, though cheaply, was very cleanly clad — a voice and figure, the meeting of which in uncertain light would have made you positive she was comely to look upon. So she had been, according to Nature's intentions, for her features were well formed, and her eyes large and full. But that marring disease which leaves its stamp printed on the victim's face for ever had come, and ruined everything, leaving a face to make one sigh and pass on — sigh, wondering where that unknown quantity, Equity, hides itself from mortal ken. Yet something about the careful arrangement of Hetty's hair, something indefinable that does tell one such things, said that Hetty was in love, probably loved in return. I don't care what you say. The anxiety of an angler as to baiting his hook is nothing at all beside the same sportsman's perturbation when he has a five and-twenty-pounder at the end of his line, and the question is how to get him safely on the bank !

Having attended to her flowers, watering the dry earth in which they root, and twining thrusting tendrils into the way they should go, Miss Wraith fell to arranging three chairs — all rickety more or less — that stood in the garden on the roof. Quite ordinary old, damaged cane Sedan chairs they were, with the cane all frayed and tied up, and LN THE GARDEN ON THE ROOF. ■', the wood-work mended in various places. But they could make very comfortable seats, and one of them, embellished with a cushion Hetty brought up to her garden with her, became luxurious under her magic touch. What deftness equals that of woman's fingers working for the comfort of the man she loves ? Love, the great despiser of circumstances, had stolen into Mercy Street, and among the orange boxes of Hetty's garden, even among the Bow Bells and Reynolds' downstairs, and whispered his fatal words in Hetty's ear.

Strange that of Mrs. Wraith's two lodgers Hetty's heart should have gone out to Memory Earle, instead of to the handsome, broken gentleman — Willie Merrett — hiding his wretchedness in the river-side fogs, and drinking himself to death — strange, because a good looking fellow drinking himself to death is so very romantic an object to nearly every woman's eyes. Stranger, because — Memory Earle was blind ! Perhaps the great schemer, Nature, saw a fitness in the affection, the girl loving the man who could not see the face that disease had marred so fearfully — that she should love the one man who would not turn away from her in sadness. Perhaps the power that brings all the happy coincidences of the world to pass had brought this pure, unselfish, sweet-tempered girl to the only man to whom her misfortune was of no account.

When the arranging of the chair was done, and it was turned towards the breeze which, ever so faint, swept up the river — turned towards the rising moon, too, though that was of no account to the occupant for whom it was intended — Hetty opened the trap-door beside one of her orange-box flower-beds, and went down out of sight. It was not very long before she reappeared, coming up through the trap-door, and turning on the brink of it lo give a hand to the blind man who followed her. THE BLLNDNESS OF MEMOR Y EARLE. 4 He came up pretty easily from practice, and because he was young. Memory Earle was certainly not more than three or four and twenty, with a handsome, pleasing face, scarcely spoiled by the sightless eyes. " I know you have the old chair ready for me," he said, in a wonderfully happy voice, considering the dark house from which it came.

"Yes; here, sit down," Hetty answered, leading him to it, and sitting down when he was seated. The blind man takes off a soft felt hat he wears, and runs his fingers through his hair, and sighs a great sigh of relief. " It is almost cool up here, Hetty." "Yes." "You are my eyes. Tell me what I am looking at, please." Hetty glances first for a moment at the speaker instead of the scene she has to describe — such a glance of affection as should penetrate his blindness and touch his heart, for such glances are rare in this world ! "Well," she says, a moment later, "you are looking down-stream at the moon, just clear of the fog-banks of the river, a sky without a cloud, the moonbeams glinting on the masts of the shipping, and on the eddies of the water, too, in places. And there are the usual chimneys and spires that you know by heart already, and 1 think that is all."

She stops, and he is silent, too, for a few minutes, thinking. " I can imagine it all, especially the moon. I recollect the moon perfectly, though I was only four when this accident happened." He touches his eyes lightly as he speaks of the accident. " Why don't you try to have them cured ? " Hetty asks. She has often asked the same question, though in her heart she feels that if he should regain his sight IN THE GARDEN ON THE ROOF. 5 she must assuredly lose him. What seeing man would love such as she ? " For two reasons. First, expense ; second, I don't believe relief possible." " But Mr. Merrett says it is quite possible." "Where is Merrett to-night?" Earle asks, without otherwise heeding the remark. " Walking. He has one of his fits of depres sion on him to-night, and then he always walks, you know."

" Ah ! poor fellow, so he does. His loss of money must be as hard to bear as my loss of sight. Even if he was foolish and extravagant, his loss is none the less bitter. If I had lost my sight through gross care lessness, blindness would not have been more endur able. I pity Merrett, there's a lot of good in him." " Yes, poor fellow ! " Hetty says, in a softened tone that is not very far from tears ; " and how good natured he is to us. Why, this wire here, by which mother can ring me down into the shop when she wants me, what a time it took him to arrange and get in working order. Poor Mr. Merrett ! Thirty is very young to have ended one's career." There is silence again for a few moments, and a little sighing breeze comes whispering among the creepers of Hetty's garden. Then Hetty rises and stands looking down upon the river.

Speaking thus, with her face half-turned towards the blind man lying back in the chair, she says presently, very slowly — " Looking on the river from here always makes me sad. It always seems as though the river were Fate — up-stream bringing to us the Future — that we cannot read ; down-stream reminding us of the Past — that is gone for ever ! " From the position in which she stands, her face is in deep shadow, only the outline visible; the outline which her misfortune has not marred, and we are sorry the man to whom she speaks cannot see it, for it is nearly perfect. But the next moment she turns € THE BLINDNESS OF MEMORY EARLE. to the revealing moonlight, and we are satisfied he is best in darkness. "Why, Hetty, you are quite poetical," Memory Earle exclaims, smiling. " Is it my books (which I cannot read), or Merrett's, or the Bow Bells down stairs that have inspired you ?

Which ? " " I don't know which," Hetty says, very softly still. How should she know, poor girl ? For the inspira tion came from the dreamy lips of Love ! Another long silence, and then Hetty thinks she must go downstairs and assist her mother in " shutting up." " Will you be all right alone up here ? " she asks tenderly, going. " Yes, Hetty, perfectly contented up here alone. I always am." A shadow (thrown by no material object) falls upon the girl's face at his words. Can he really be quite contented when she is not with him ? If so, his love is not as hers. She goes down to the little newspaper shop sadly. Love's harp is so delicate an instrument a breath can jar its harmony. The six years that Earle has lodged with Mrs. Wraith have changed the little laughing child Hetty into the gentler, softer, loving woman Hetty of to-day, whose every care and thought is for the blind man, and made life in Mercy Street a happiness, and the garden on the roof a Paradise to her.

Hetty is not gone very long. As the deep-toned voice of St. Paul's utters ten vibrating syllables of Time, she is back again, bringing a little tray with her. " I have brought your supper here," she says, un folding the corners of the napkin that covers the tray. " I knew you would rather have it here than down stairs in the parlour, that is so hot." " What a good girl you are, Hetty, always thinking of me and my comfort." She has pulled a chair beside his, and sitting upon it IN THE GARDEN ON THE ROOF. 7 prepares the meal as it should be prepared for one who cannot see. She does not speak at his words, but only bends down lower over her task of love. The blind man sighs. " What ! " she says then, and cheerfully too. " Not sad to-night ? You never hardly sigh." "Yes, sad to-night, Hetty; sad because of you."

" Because of me ? Oh, how absurd ! And why ? " " Sad for two reasons ; first, because I long to see the face that I am sure is such a sweet, perfect face." " Oh, don't talk of seeing me, don't think of it, pray don't ! " the girl says, with tears starting into the bright, loving eyes. " But I'm always thinking of it, and picturing you a thousand different ways, and I'm certain not one of those pictures is half pretty enough." " Don't, pray don't ! " the girl pleads still ; and then in the hope of changing the subject, asks quickly, " And the second reason ? Tell me that before you begin your meal, which is all ready for you now." "The second reason is because I feel you are wasting your life, Hetty, wasting it upon me. Always attending to me and watching me, never absent half an-hour from me, when there are so many other things you should be doing."

" No," she says, firmly ; " there are no other things I should be doing when you require seeing to. Don't you know that long ago — almost three years — I told you that night I had dedicated my life to you and your service ? Have you forgotten it ? Have you ? " She speaks very anxiously — pleadingly — for the night to which she refers heard him tell her that he loved her. No wonder she is anxious for his answer. Such events as those are recollected for ever with smiles or sadness, as the case may be, by all of us. Those summer days ! The happiest, dreamiest, silliest days that ever were ! "I have not forgotten it, Hetty, and that is why I THE BLINDNESS OF MEMOR Y EARLE. am sad. The life you talk of is not good enough for you — not near good enough for you — and I feel it." " But I feel it is good enough for me, and I mean to follow it," Hetty answers, bravely, and trying to put a gaiety into her voice she does not feel.

Somehow there is misgiving in her heart as to the future, she feels that if he really loved her he would not talk of a wasted life thus. " You are the best girl in the world, Hetty, and make me wish to see — " " Here is your first mouthful," she says, playfully, and with it stops his reference to her looks. While the lovers were passing their evening thus in the garden on the roof, Willie Merrett, dark, handsome Willie Merrett, the broken gentleman, was walking through the stifling heat and the riverside fogs as he was obliged to walk sometimes, as though for life, in a vain attempt to distance the haunting spectre that came and gaped and gibed at him so often — the Spectre of the Past — that tormenting ghost of what had been, which possessed a fiendish power of transforming itself into the more terrible what might have been, and making the one and other a waking nightmare, surpassing any sleeping one.

To think he had sunk so low, remembering what he was in the old days ; this was the spur that made him stride on, knowing nothing of where he went, seeing nothing of what he passed, only feeling a fierce bitterness gnawing at his heart, that made inaction impossible. Of course, the case was complicated with a pair of bright eyes and a lovely patrician face. Oh, the agony of it ! The bare thought of others kneeling at the shrine from which he had been excommunicated for ever. If he could only have one more chance ! If any miracle could reinstate him in his old world ! As he walks amidst the degrading sights and sounds of that low locality, as he breathes the stifling breath of the river, even there the IN THE GARDEN ON THE ROOF. 9 luxurious West End houses, at which he was welcome, rise before his eyes tormentingly.

Why, the very organ there at the corner by the fish-stall is grinding out that last valse tune he danced with her ! He goes into a gin palace, flaming near, and orders his one hope — brandy. Why has he not ended it all long ago in the river? Only some vague, unspeakable hope has kept him from it. But he has been very near the portal part ing the two worlds. Once or twice very near indeed. The blind man, his fellow-lodger at Mrs. Wraith's, felt how near, with the peculiar heightened instinct of those who cannot see. It was a well-timed word, a hope judiciously expressed, that kept Willie Merrett from the bridge's parapet more than once. He will go striding on miles and miles to-night, and come back to Mercy Street wearied out and staggering, it may be, long after everyone is in bed. But he will go home to his little bed next Earle's, and not to the one whose covering ebbs and flows; go home to dream of the face from which fortune parted him ruthlessly.

For this world is full of dreams and dreamers, the waking dreams being ten thousand times more im possible than the sleeping ones ! The flowers of Hetty's garden, the pinks and wall flowers and mignonette, scented the whole of Mercy Street as Merrett dragged up it towards morning. Brave flowers ! to struggle with the impure odours of that locality, and tell of hope and higher things even there. Pinks and wallflowers and mignonette! Tended by Hetty as the fairest flowers the little garden owned. But up above the hum of business, over the heads of the poor mortals unable to see or appreciate it, there bloomed in Hetty's garden on the roof a fairer flower than either of these three — and that was love.

Chapter II. In The Bitterness Of The Heart

Hetty's garden on the roof formed the daily resort of the blind man in summer when the days were fine. To sit up there abov£ the hum and bustle of the busy world and think ; that was the sole occupation for Memory Earle when Hetty was not with him to read or talk. And in the mornings Hetty had a thousand little duties to perform in connection with the little shop and the house — duties she performed hurriedly (though well; it would not be Hetty if anything she set her hand to were half done) so that she could get back, as soon as might be, to the airy garden where she had placed her charge, and read to him till early dinner time. Not always read either. There was the garden to be trimmed and pruned and watered, of course; and this, with talking going on, soon passed an hour of happiness. Hours spent thus among the little garden blossoms had much to answer for ; they had conjured up, refreshed, and strengthened that invisible blossom that was purer and fairer than them all.

Hetty stands this morning looking fondly down at the arrangements she has made for the blind man's comfort before leaving him for her morning's work. His chair with the cushion in it is deftly placed so that it stands deep in the shadow of a great black chimney stack that the sun will be quite unable to get round before she comes back again when her work is done. Some of the creeping greenery hangs down loosely and flaps softly in the morning air against its wire trellis. " It will be very hot presently," Hetty says, when Earle is seated. She lingers to say a few words, it is so hard to leave him, even for an hour or two. " It will be very hot presently, but you are nicely in the shade." " Thank you so much, Hetty, my guardian angel," Memory answers her kindly, and the words are a full and sufficient reward.

" Do you feel there is a breeze this morning, and don't you hear my poor creepers flapping against their cage wires ? They alw-ays seem' to me like some poor caged bird up here in London and longing for its freedom and the country. Oh ! how I should revel in the country ! " She speaks with all the longing of one who has breathed coal vapour in place of pure fresh air a life time. "We must go with the school children. The Vicar said it could be arranged. We will have one day in the countrv before the summer is over, at any rate." " I wish, how I wish, we could ! " sighs poor Hetty. " The very thought of green fields and trees and streams — oh, it's delightful ! " The poor scarred, disfigured face lights up so brightly at the thought that she is almost pretty for the moment. "When did Merrett come in?"

Earle asks the next moment. " He shall go, too, of course. We will all go; Mrs. Wraith and all " " Poor Mr. Merrett ! He was not in when we went to bed. You know what he was doing last night — walking — and — " MEMORY EARLE. 12 " Yes, yes, poor fellow ! Is he up yet? " " Not yet. Why ? " "Tap at his door, Hetty, as you go down, and ask him to come and sit up here with me after his break fast. Will you ? " " Of course I will. But he never breakfasts after one of his nights like yesterday's," says Hetty, smiling sadly. " And now I really must go ; but I won't be long. Good-bye," and she gives him a little fluttering girlish kiss, and so — looking back to the last — leaves him. But she has not forgotten his message to the fellow lodger, for the creeper has not beat its verdant wings against its wire cage half a dozen times in as many minutes, before Willie Merrett comes up through the little doorway and takes Earle's hand with a white wasted one, that is very shaky this fine summer morning.

" All comfortable in the shade, I see," he says, trying to speak cheerfully with a voice that is the ghost of a pleasant, musical one of days gone by. " I thought you'd come and talk to me whilst I'm alone up here ; the mornings hang a bit heavily, I assure you," Earle says, pleasantly. " My dear fellow, of course I'd come ; the mornings, and the days, and the nights too, for that matter, hang heavily enough on me." He is bending down as he speaks, examining his handiwork — the wire he has arranged for communica tion with the shop downstairs. "When I used to take an interest in things mechanical," he says, still bending down and speaking from that position, " I little thought my last work would be the rigging up of such a thing as this, in such a place as this, for such a purpose as this."

" Not your last, I hope ; a hundred things may turn up for you yet. Why even — " " I was very near the end of it all last night — very near indeed — only I got drunk again instead — blind drunk on brandy ; it's given me an awful headache this morning. I'm looking the most horrible, dissipated, miserable wretch anyone ever saw at this moment. I'm really thankful you can't see me." He has got up from his examination of the wire bell pull, and seated himself on one of the other two vacant chairs, first placing it in the shade beside Earle's. With his head upon his hands, and his elbows on his knees, his face is invisible ; he keeps it so as though he half believes Earle can see it if he raises it. " I'm sorry to hear that ; I hoped you were getting the better of the habit," the blind man says kindly.

" So I was for a time — a short time — but last night, I don't know why, it all came back to me, the old days I mean, my head was full of them, a thousand memories, the very brightness of which made them unbearable. I saw her face again too — but I always see that. I was dreaming about her all last night. It seems horrible when I wake, to think that even thoughts of her should penetrate so wretched a place as this! You appreciate my meaning?" He raises his once handsome face as he asks the question, revealing the havoc brandy and misery together have made there. " Why this is sad talk ! We must try and be more cheerful," Earle answers, hardly knowing what to say for the best. " I can't help it, I'm past hope, past trying to do better, past everything except brandy. I was, as I tell you, drunk last night, I shall be drunk again to-night, and to-morrow night, and the night after, I know it perfectly.

To think she is within a few miles of me, in the old world, mixing with the old set, other fellows making love to her, winning her perhaps. Oh ! my God, it's terrible ! More terrible than I can endure." Again the head goes down upon the hands that shut out its misery. Memory Earle does not speak, he feels silence best MEMOR Y EARLE. at such a juncture as this, when the iron is entering the soul of the outcast beside him. "Sometimes I think I must haunt her neighbour hood till I see her just once more, without being seen. See her once more and then end it all. If anything could turn the tide ! For I feel even now sometimes that I am not hopelessly bad. If I had a chance — ever so small a one — to win back the old position, or something of it. The very thought that I was working to win my way to her would give me superhuman power over my darker self.

I am sure I could be self-repressed again ; I am sure I could even abjure brandy. But there is no hope, none ! " This wretchedness — this demon misery of the brandy's raising — causes him to groan as the thought of what might, but never can be, comes to him. " No one in the world is totally beyond hope ; even / don't despair, with no future but total darkness before me," Earle says, travelling the track he has so often trodden on his fellow-lodger's behalf. " Don't despair. If she is as good and true as you believe her, she is only waiting for you ; there is no fear of your being supplanted in her heart." He thinks of Hetty as he speaks, and her love for him, and how utterly unshakable it would be by time, or misfortune, or anything else the world could bring. " Why, it is a year ago, a year yesterday — that's why I felt so awful yesterday— since I saw her last.

Though she is perfect as the angels — I am sure she is — thouo-h she swore nothing should make her forget me in my misfortune, still it is a long time to go huno-erinofor the sight of her face, especially when I feel how hopeless is the thought of my going back to her ever "Then she let you leave her hoping; she did not refuse you that comfort ? " " She said that ' when the Fates were kinder ' those were her words— when the day came that brought a brighter turn in my life, she would be the first to welcome me back — the very first to joyfully welcome me back." Rather vague and unsatisfactory manna for a man to take into the wilderness with him as his sole sustenance during a journey that might be life-long! And yet how often had this poor ruined spendthrift, this hopeless drunkard (who was not all bad), nourished himself upon it, and treasured it !