I have lost my sight more than a year now, and yet it was like the shock of a new discovery to me to wake up last night from my dream, and remember suddenly that I was blind."
"What dream was it, Lenny?"
"Only a dream of the place where I first met you when we were both children. I saw the glen, as it was years ago, with the great twisted roots of the trees, and the blackberry bushes twining about them in a still shadowed light that came through thick leaves from the rainy sky. I saw the mud on the walk in the middle of the glen, with the marks of the cows' hoofs in some places, and the sharp circles in others where some countrywomen had been lately trudging by on pattens. I saw the muddy water running down on either side of the path after the shower; and I saw you, Rosamond, a naughty girl, all covered with clay and wet--just as you were in the reality--soiling your bright blue pelisse and your pretty little chubby hands by making a dam to stop the running water, and laughing at the indignation of your nurse-maid when she tried to pull you away and take you home. I saw all that exactly as it really was in the bygone time; but, strangely enough, I did not see myself as the boy I then was. You were a little girl, and the glen was in its old neglected state, and yet, though I was all in the past so far, I was in the present as regarded myself. Throughout the whole dream I was uneasily conscious of being a grown man--of being, in short, exactly what I am now, excepting always that I was not blind."
"What a memory you must have, love, to be able to recall all those little circumstances after the years that have passed since that wet day in the glen! How well you recollect what I was as a child! Do you remember in the same vivid way what I looked like a year ago when you saw me--Oh, Lenny, it almost breaks my heart to think of it!--when you saw me for the last time?"
"Do I remember, Rosamond! My last look at your face has painted your portrait in my memory in colors that can never change. I have many pictures in my mind, but your picture is the clearest and brightest of all."
"And it is the picture of me at my best--painted in my youth, dear, when my face was always confessing how I loved you, though my lips said nothing. There is some consolation in that thought. When years have passed over us both, Lenny, and when time begins to set his mark on me, you will not say to yourself, 'My Rosamond is beginning to fade; she grows less and less like what she was when I married her.' I shall never grow old, love, for you! The bright young picture in your mind will still be my picture when my cheeks are wrinkled and my hair is gray."
"Still your picture--always the same, grow as old as I may."
"But are you sure it is clear in every part? Are there no doubtful lines, no unfinished corners anywhere? I have not altered yet since you saw me--I am just what I was a year ago. Suppose I ask you what I am like now, could you tell me without making a mistake?"
"Try me."
"May I? You shall be put through a complete catechism! I don't tire you sitting on your knee, do I? Well, in the first place, how tall am I when we both stand up side by side?"
"You just reach to my ear."
"Quite right, to begin with. Now for the next question. What does my hair look like in your portrait?"
"It is dark brown--there is a great deal of it--and it grows rather too low on your forehead for the taste of some people--"
"Never mind about 'some people;' does it grow too low for your taste?"
"Certainly not. I like it to grow low; I like all those little natural waves that it makes against your forehead; I like it taken back, as you wear it, in plain bands, which leave your ears and your cheeks visible; and above all things, I like that big glossy knot that it makes where it is all gathered up together at the back of you in head."
"Oh, Lenny, how well you remember me, so far! Now go a little lower."
"A little lower is down to your eyebrows. They are very nicely shaped eyebrows in my picture--"
"Yes, but they have a fault. Come! tell me what the fault is."
"They are not quite so strongly marked as they might be."
"Right again! And my eyes?"
"Brown eyes, large eyes, wakeful eyes, that are always looking about them. Eyes that can be very soft at one time, and very bright at another. Eyes tender and clear, just at the present moment, but capable, on very slight provocation, of opening rather too widely, and looking rather too brilliantly resolute."
"Mind you don't make them look so now! What is there below the eyes?"
"A nose that is not quite big enough to be in proper proportion with them. A nose that has a slight tendency to be--"
"Don't say the horrid English word! Spare my feelings by putting it in French. Say retroussé, and skip over my nose as fast as possible."
"I must stop at the mouth, then, and own that it is as near perfection as possible. The lips are lovely in shape, fresh in color, and irresistible in expression. They smile in my portrait, and I am sure they are smiling at me now."
"How could they do otherwise when they are getting so much praise? My vanity whispers to me that I had better stop the catechism here. If I talk about my complexion, I shall only hear that it is of the dusky sort; and that there is never red enough in it except when I am walking, or confused, or angry. If I ask a question about my figure, I shall receive the dreadful answer, 'You are dangerously inclined to be fat.' If I say, How do I dress? I shall be told, Not soberly enough; you are as fond as a child of gay colors--No! I will venture no more questions. But, vanity apart, Lenny, I am so glad, so proud, so happy to find that you can keep the image of me clearly in your mind. I shall do my best now to look and dress like your last remembrance of me. My love of loves! I will do you credit--I will try if I can't make you envied for your wife. You deserve a hundred thousand kisses for saying your catechism so well--and there they are!"
While Mrs. Frankland was conferring the reward of merit on her husband, the sound of a faint, small, courteously significant cough made itself timidly audible in a corner of the room. Turning round instantly, with the quickness that characterized all her actions, Mrs. Frankland, to her horror and indignation, confronted Miss Mowlem standing just inside the door, with a letter in her hand and a blush of sentimental agitation on her simpering face.
"You wretch! how dare you come in without knocking at the door?" cried Rosamond, starting to her feet with a stamp, and passing in an instant from the height of fondness to the height of indignation.
Miss Mowlem shook guiltily before the bright, angry eyes that looked through and through her, turned very pale, held out the letter apologetically, and said in her meekest tones that she was very sorry.
"Sorry!" exclaimed Rosamond, getting even more irritated by the apology than she had been by the intrusion, and showing it by another stamp of the foot; "who cares whether you are sorry? I don't want your sorrow--I won't have it. I never was so insulted in my life--never, you mean, prying, inquisitive creature!"
"Rosamond! Rosamond! pray don't forget yourself!" interposed the quiet voice of Mr. Frankland.
"Lenny, dear, I can't help it! That creature would drive a saint mad. She has been plying after us ever since we have been here--you have, you ill-bred, indelicate woman!--I suspected it before--I am certain of it now! Must we lock our doors to keep you out?--we won't lock our doors! Fetch the bill! We give you warning. Mr. Frankland gives you warning--don't you, Lenny? I'll pack up all your things, dear: she sha'n't touch one of them. Go downstairs and make out your bill, and give your mother warning. Mr. Frankland says he won't have his rooms burst into, and his doors listened at by inquisitive women--and I say so too. Put that letter down on the table--unless you want to open it and read it--put it down, you audacious woman, and fetch the bill, and tell your mother we are going to leave the house directly!"
At this dreadful threat, Miss Mowlem, who was soft and timid, as well as curious, by nature, wrung her hands in despair, and overflowed meekly in a shower of tears.