JANE REPORTS PROGRESS
Letter from the Honourable Jane Champion to Sir Deryck Brand.
Castle Gleneesh, N.B.
My dear Deryck: My wires and post-cards have not told you much beyond the fact of my safe arrival.Having been here a fortnight, Ithink it is time I sent you a report.Only you must remember that Iam a poor scribe.From infancy it has always been difficult to me to write anything beyond that stock commencement: "I hope you are quite well;" and I approach the task of a descriptive letter with an effort which is colossal.And yet I wish I might, for once, borrow the pen of a ready writer; because I cannot help knowing that I have been passing through experiences such as do not often fall to the lot of a woman.
Nurse Rosemary Gray is getting on capitally.She is making herself indispensable to the patient, and he turns to her with a completeness of confidence which causes her heart to swell with professional pride.
Poor Jane has got no further than hearing, from his own lips, that she is the very last person in the whole world he would wish should come near him in his blindness.When she was suggested as a possible visitor, he said: "Oh, my God, NO!" and his face was one wild, horrified protest.So Jane is getting her horsewhipping, Boy, and--according to the method of a careful and thoughtful judge, who orders thirty lashes of the "cat," in three applications of ten--so is Jane's punishment laid on at intervals; not more than she can bear at a time; but enough to keep her heart continually sore, and her spirit in perpetual dread.And you, dear, clever doctor, are proved perfectly right in your diagnosis of the sentiment of the case.He says her pity would be the last straw on his already heavy cross; and the expression is an apt one, her pity for him being indeed a thing of straw.The only pity she feels is pity for herself, thus hopelessly caught in the meshes of her own mistake.
But how to make him realise this, is the puzzle.
Do you remember how the Israelites were shut in, between Migdol and the sea? I knew Migdol meant "towers," but I never understood the passage, until I stood upon that narrow wedge of desert, with the Red Sea in front and on the left; the rocky range of Gebel Attaka on the right, towering up against the sky, like the weird shapes of an impregnable fortress; the sole outlet or inlet behind, being the route they had just travelled from Egypt, and along which the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh were then thundering in hot pursuit.Even so, Boy, is poor Jane now tramping her patch of desert, which narrows daily to the measure of her despair.Migdol is HIS certainty that HER love could only be pity.The Red Sea is the confession into which she must inevitably plunge, to avoid scaling Migdol; in the chill waters of which, as she drags him in with her, his love is bound to drown, as waves of doubt and mistrust sweep over its head,--doubts which he has lost the power of removing;mistrust which he can never hope to prove to have been false and mistaken.And behind come galloping the hosts of Pharaoh; chance, speeding on the wheels of circumstance.At any moment some accident may compel a revelation; and instantly HE will be scaling rocky Migdol, with torn hands and bleeding feet; and she--poor Jane--floundering in the depths of the Red Sea.O for a Moses, with divine commission, to stretch out the rod of understanding love, making a safe way through; so that together they might reach the Promised Land! Dear wise old Boy, dare you undertake the role of Moses!
But here am I writing like a page of Baedeker, and failing to report on actual facts.
As you may suppose, Jane grows haggard and thin in spite of old Margery's porridge--which is "put on" every day after lunch, for the next morning's breakfast, and anybody passing "gives it a stir." Did you know that was the right way to make porridge, Deryck? I always thought it was made in five minutes, as wanted.Margery says that must be the English stuff which profanely goes by the name.(N.B.
Please mark the self-control with which I repeat Scotch remarks, without rushing into weird spelling; a senseless performance, it seems to me.For if you know already how old Margery pronounces "porridge," you can read her pronunciation into the sentence; and if you do not know it, no grotesque spelling on my part could convey to your mind any but a caricatured version of the pretty Scotch accent with which Margery says: "Stir the porridge, Nurse Gray." In fact, Iam agreeably surprised at the ease with which I understand the natives, and the pleasure I derive from their conversation; for, after wrestling with one or two modern novels dealing with the Highlands, I had expected to find the language an unknown tongue.
Instead of which, lo! and behold, old Margery, Maggie the housemaid, Macdonald the gardener, and Macalister the game-keeper, all speak a rather purer English than I do; far more carefully pronounced, and with every R sounded and rolled.Their idioms are more characteristic than their accent.They say "whenever" for "when,"and use in their verbs several quaint variations of tense.)But what a syntactical digression! Oh, Boy, the wound at my heart is so deep and so sore that I dread the dressings, even by your delicate touch.Where was I? Ah, the porridge gave me my loophole of escape.Well, as I was saying, Jane grows worn and thin, old Margery's porridge notwithstanding; but Nurse Rosemary Gray is flourishing, and remains a pretty, dainty little thing, with the additional charm of fluffy, fly-away floss-silk, for hair,--Dr.
Rob's own unaided contribution to the fascinating picture.By the way, I was quite unprepared to find him such a character.I learn much from Dr.Mackenzie, and I love Dr.Rob, excepting on those occasions when I long to pick him up by the scruff of his fawn overcoat and drop him out of the window.
