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None So Blind. By Mary Synon · The Best Short Stories of 1917

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Section twenty nine of the Best Short Stories of nineteen seventeen. This is a
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LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Christine Bowden The
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Best Short Stories of nineteen seventeen by Mary Sinnin None So Blind, we were
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listening to Leela Burton's music, her husband dick Alport and I, with the
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throb of London beating under us like the surge of an ocean in anger.
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When there rose above the smooth harmonies of the piano, in the pulsing roar
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of the night, a sound more poignant than them, both the quavering melody
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of a street girl's song through the purpling twilight of that Saint John's eve.
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I had been drifting in dreams, while Leela had gone from golden splendors of
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chords which reflected the glow on and westward fronting windows, into somber symphonies which
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had seemed to make vocal the turbulent soul of the city. For dick Alport
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and I were topping the structure of that house of life that was to shelter
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the love we had long been cherishing. With Leela playing in that art which
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had dowered her with fame. I was visioning the glory of such love as
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she and Standish Burton gave each other, while I watched Dick, sensing rather
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the scene of dearness of him as he gave to the mounting climaxes, the
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tense interest he always tendered to Leela's music. I had known before I came
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to love Dick Alport, other loves and other lovers. Because I had followed
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Willow the whists of fancy through marshes of sentiment, I could appreciate the more
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the true that lame she and I had lighted for our guidance on the road.
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A moody boy he had been when I first met him, full of
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a boy's high chivalry and of a boy's dark despairs, a moody man,
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and he had become in the years that had denied him the material success toward
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which he had striven. But something in the patience of his efforts, something
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in the fineness of his struggle, had endeared him to me as no triumph
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could have done, Because he needed me. Because I had come to believe
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that I meant to him belief in the ultimate good of living, as well
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as belief in womanhood. I cherished in my soul that love of him,
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which yearned over him even as it longed for him. Watching him in the
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dusk while he lounged, and that concentrated quiet of attention, I went on
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piling the bricks of that wide house of happiness we should enter together. And
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although I could see him but dimly, so well did I know every line
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of his face? And I could fancy the little smile that quivered around his
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lips, and that shone from the depths of his eyes. As Layelah played
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the measures we both loved. I must have been smiling in answer when the
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song of the girl outside rose high. Not until that alien's sound struck a
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horror the power and beauty of the spell, did I come to know how
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high I had builded my castles. But the knocking at the gate toppled down
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the dreams. As Layla swept a discord over the keyboard and crossed to the
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open window. In the dusk. As she flung back the heavy curtains,
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I could see the bulk of Brompton Oratory set behind the houses like a looming
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backdrop of a painted scene. Nearer, in front of a tall house.
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Across the way stood the singer, a thin girl whose shadowy presence seemed animated
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by a curious bravery. In a nasal, plaintive voice, she was singing
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the words of a ballad of love and of loving that London, as only
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London can, had made curiously its own that season. The instance of her
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plea for she sang as if she cried out her life's longing, saying as
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if she called on the passing crowd not for alms but for understanding, made
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her for the moment before she faded back into oblivion, an artist voicing the
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heartache and the heartbreak of womankind. And the artist and Leayla Burton responded to
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the thrill. Until the ending of the song, she stood silent in front
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of the window, unconscious of the fact that she, and not the scene
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behind her, helped the center of the stage. Not for her beauty,
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although at times Leela Burton gave the impression of being exquisitively lovely. Was she
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remarkable, but rather for that receptive attitude that made her an inspired listener in
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me, who had known her for but a little while she awakened my deepest
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and drowsiest ambition, the desire to express some pictures the light and the shade
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of the London I knew. With her, I could feel the power and
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the glory, and the fear and the terror of the city, as I
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never did at other times. It was not alone that she was all things
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to all men. It was that she led men and women who knew her
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to the summits of their aspirations. Even Andishburton, big sullen man that he
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was immersed his engineering problems, responded to his wife's spiritual charm with a readiness
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that always aroused in Dick and myself an admiration for him that our other knowledge
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of him did not justify. He was, aside from his relationship to Leela,
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a man whose hardness suggested a bitter knowledge of dark ways of life.
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Now crouched down in the depths of his chair, he kept watching Leela with
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a gaze of smoldering adoration, revealing that love for her which had been strong
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enough to break down those barriers which she had erected in the years while he
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had worked for her in Jacob's bondage, in her he seemed to be discovering
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all over again the vestal to tend the fires of his faith. Dick albort
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Io, bending forward over the table on which his hands fell clenched, was
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studying Leila with an excrutable stare that seemed to be of query. I was
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wondering what it meant, wondering the more because my failure to understand its meaning
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hung another veil between my vision and my shrine of belief in the fullness of
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love. When the song outside came to an end and Leela turned back to
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us, her look winging its way to Standish lighted her face even beyond the
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globe from the lamps, which she switched on. For an instant, his
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heavy countenance flared into brightness. Dick Allport sighed almost imperceptibly as he turned to
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me. I had a feeling that such a fire as the Burtons kindled for
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each other should have sprung up in the moment between Dick and me, for
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we had fought and labored and struggled for our love, as Standish and Leela
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had never needed to battle because of our constancy. I expected something better than
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the serene affectionateness that shone in Dick's smile. I wanted such stormy passion of
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devotion as Burton gave to Leela, such love as I remembering the night of
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years ago, that Dick could give. It was the old despair of earth
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spoken in the street girl's song that surged in me until I could have cried
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out in my longing for the soul of the sacrament whose substance I had been
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given. But the knowledge that we were the four of us, conventional people
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in a conventional setting locked my heart, as it locked my lips until I
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could mirror the ease with which Leyla bore herself. I have been thinking,
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she said, lightly, that I should like to be a street singer for
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a night, If only a piano were not so cumbersome, I should go
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out and play into the ears of the city, the thing that girl put
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into her song. Why not, I asked her. It would be an
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adventure, and life has too few adventures. It might have too many,
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Dick said, not for Leyla. Standish declared, life's for her a quest
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of joy. That's it, Dick interposed, Her adventures have all been joyous,
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but they haven't insisted. I'm no spoiled Darling, of the gods,
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I've been poor. Where is that girl out there? I've had heartaches and
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disappointments and misfortunes, not vital ones. Dick declared, you've never had a
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knockout blow. She doesn't know what one is. Standish laughed, but there
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sounded a ruefulness in his laughter that told of the kind of blow he must
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once have suffered to bring that note in his voice. Standish Burton took life
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lightly except where Layla was concerned. His manner now indicated almost mysteriously that something
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threatened his harbor of peace. But the regard Layelah gave to him proved that
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the threat of impending danger had not come to her. Oh but I do
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know, she persisted, butcariously, I suggested all artists do. No.
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Actually, she said, You're wrong, said Standish. You're the sort of
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woman whom the world saves from its own cruelties. There was something so essentially
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true in his appraisal of his wife that the certainty covered the banality of his
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statement and kept Dick and myself in agreement with him. Leela Burton, exquisitely
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remote from all things commonplace, was unquestionably a woman to be protected without envy,
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since my own way had its compensations in full measure, I admitted it.
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I think that you must have forgotten if you ever knew. She said,
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how I struggled here in London for the little recognition I have won.
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Oh that Dick Allport deprecated. That isn't what Stan means. Everyone in the
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world worth talking about goes through that sort of struggle. He means the flinging
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down from a high mountain after you've seen the glories not of this world but
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of another, the casting out from paradise after you've learned what paradise may mean.
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He spoke with an odd timber of emotion in his voice, a quality
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that puzzled me for the moment. That's it said, standish gratefully. Those
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are knockout blows. Well, then I don't know them. Leela admitted her
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defeat, and I hope that I shall not softly. She began to play
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the music of an accompaniment. There was a familiar hauntedness in its strains that
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puzzled me until I associated them with the song that Burton used to whistle so
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often in the times when Layla was in Paris and he had turned for companionship
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to dig into me. I've heard Stan murder that often enough to be able
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to try it myself. I told her, I didn't know he knew it,
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She said, I heard it for the first time the other day.
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A girl I didn't hear her name sang it for an encore at the concert
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of the Musicians Club. She sang it well too. She was a queer
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girl. Leila laughed a little bit of a thing, with all the air
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of a tragedy queen. And you should have heard how she's sang that.
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You know the words, she asked me over her shoulder. And because I
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too am a lover, and my love is far from me, I hated
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the two on the sands there, and the moon and the sands and the
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sea, and the moon and the sands and the sea, Dick repeated.
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He rose, going to the window where Leyla had stood, and looking outward.
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When he had faced us again, he must have seen the worry in
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my eyes, for he smiled at me with the old and daring fondness,
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and touched my hair lightly as he passed. What was she like, the
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girl, Standish asked, lighting another cigarette. Oh, just ordinary and rather
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pretty, big brown eyes that seemed to be forever, asking a question that
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no one could answer, and a little pointed chin that she flung up when
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she sang Dick. Allport looked quickly across at Burton, but Stan gave him
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no answering glance. He was staring at Leela as she went on. I
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don't believe I should have noticed her at all, if she hadn't come to
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me as I was leaving the hall. Or you miss a standish Burton,
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she asked me. When I told her that I was, she stared me
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full in the face, then walked off without another word. I wish I
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could describe to you, though, the scorn and contempt that blazed in her
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eyes. If I had been a singer who had robbed her of her glance
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at Covent Garden, I could have understood. But I'd never seen her before,
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and my singing wouldn't rouse the envy of a crow. She laughed lightheartedly
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over the recollection, then her face clouded. Do you know? She mused
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that I thought, just now, when the girl was singing on the street,
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that I should like to know that other girl. There was something about
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her that I can't forget. She was the sort that tries and fails and
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sinks. Someday, I'm afraid she'll be singing on the streets, and if
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I ever hear her, I shall have a terrible thought that I might have
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saved her from it, if only I had tried better. Let her sort
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alone, Burton said shortly. He struck a match and ReLit his cigarette with
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a gesture of savage annoyance. Leela looked at him in amazement, and Dick
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gave him a glance that seemed to counsel silence. There was a hostility about
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the mood into which Standish relapsed, that seemed to bring in upon us some
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urgent sorrows of the city outside, as if he had drawn aside a curtain
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to show us the world alien to the place of beauty and of the making
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of beauty through which Leela moved. Even she must have felt the import of
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his mood, for she let her hands fall on the keys, while Dick
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and I stared at each other before the shock of this crackle that seemed to
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threaten the perfection of their happiness from Brompton came the boom of the bell for
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Evensong. Down Piccadilly ran the roar of the night, traffic winding a blithe
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some way to places of pleasure. It was the hour when London was wont
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to awaken to the thrill of its greatness, its power, its vastness,
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its strength, and its glory, and to send down luminous lanes its carnival
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crowd of men and women. It was the time when weltering misery shrank shrouded
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into merciful gloom, when the east and lay far from our hearts, when
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poverty and sin and shame went sulking into byways where we need never follow,
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When painted women held back in the shadows, when the pall of night rested
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like a velvet carpet over the spaces of that floor, that, by daylight
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gave glimpses into loathsome cellars of humanity. It was, as it had been
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so often of late, an hour of serene beauty, that first hour of
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darkness in a June night, with the season coming to an end, an
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hour of dust to be remembered in exile or in age. There should have
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come to us then, the strains of an orchestra floating in with the fragrance
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of gardenias from a vendor's basket, symbols of life's called to us, luring
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us out out beneath the stars of joy. But instead the bell of Brompton
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pealed out warningly over our souls, and when it's clanging, died. They're
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drifted in the sound of a preaching voice, only phrases clattering across the darkness,
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for the words from beyond resonant through the open windows. The cross is
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always ready, and everywhere awaiteth thee. Turn thyself upward, or turn thyself
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downward, turn thyself inward, or turn thyself outward. Everywhere thou shalt find
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the cross. If thou fling away one cross, thou wilt find another,
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and perhaps the heavier. Like civilian prophecy, the voice of the unseen preacher
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struck down on us. We moved uneasily, the four of us, as
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he cried out challenge to the passing world, before his voice went down,
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before the surge of a hymn. Then, just as the gay whirl of
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cars and omnibuses beat once more upon the pavements and London's joyously into our hearts
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again, the bell of the telephone in the hall rang out with a quivering
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jangle that brought Leyla to her feet, even as Danish jumped to answer its
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summons. She stood beside the piano as he gave answer to the call,
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watching him as if she expected evil news. Dick, who had moved back
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into the shadow from a lamp on the table, was staring with that same
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searching gaze he had bestowed on her when she had lingered beside the window.
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I was looking at him when a queer cry from Standish whirled me around in
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the dim light of the hall. He was standing with the instrument in his
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hands, clutching it with the stupidity of a man who has been struck by
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an unexpected and unexplainable missile. His face had gone to a grayish white,
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and his hands trembled as he set the receiver on the hook. His eyes
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were bulging from emotion, and he kept wetting his lips as he stood in
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the doorway. What is it? Cried? What's happened to Stan? Can't
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you tell me? What is it? Not to her, but to Dick
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Alport he made answer, Bessy Lowe is dead. I saw Dick Allport's thunderstruck
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surprise before he arose. I saw his glance go from standish to Leela with
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a questioning that overrode all other possible emotion in him. Then I saw him
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look at Burton as if he doubted insanity. His voice, level as ever,
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rang sharply across the other man's distraction. When did she die? He
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asked him? Just now? He ran his hand over his hair, gazing
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at Dick as if Leela and I were not there. She she killed herself
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down in the hotel. Maynard. Why Leila's voice, hard with terror,
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snapped off the word she she? I don't know. He stared at his
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wife as if he had just become conscious of her presence. The grayness in
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his face deepened, and his lips grew livid, Like a man condemned.
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He stared at the world he was losing. Who is Bessie Low? Leela
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questioned, and why have they called you to tell of her? Her eyes
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blazed with the fire that seemed about to sine pretense from his soul. His
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hand went to his throat, and I saw Leelah whiten. Her hand resting
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on the piano trembled, but her face held immobile, although I knew that
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all the happiness of the rest of her life hung upon his answer on what
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standish Burton would tell her depended the years to come. In that moment,
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I knew that she loved him, even as I loved Dick, even as
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women have always loved and will always love, the men whom fate had marked
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for their caring. And in a sudden flash of a vision, I knew
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too that Burton, no matter what Bessie low or any other girl had ever
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been to him, worshiped his wife with an intensity of devotion that would make
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all his days one long reparation for whatever wrong he might have done her.
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I knew, though, that if he had done the wrong, she would
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never again be able to give him the eager love he desired, And I,
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too, an unwilling spectator, waited on his words for his future and
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Layla's, but his voice did not make answer. It was Dick Allport who
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spoke, Bessie Lowe is a girl I used to care for, he said.
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She is the girl who sang at the Musicians Club, the girl who
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spoke to you. She heard that I was going to be married. She
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wanted me to come back to her. I refused. He was standing in
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the shadow, looking neither at Laila nor at me, but at Standish Burton.
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Burton turned to him, Yes, he muttered thickly. They told me
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to tell you. They knew you'd be here. I see, said Leila.
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She looked at Standish and then at Dick Allport, and there came into
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her eyes a queer, glazed stare that filmed their brightness. I am sorry
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that I asked questions, mister Alport about something that was nothing to me.
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Will you forgive me? There's nothing to be forgiven, he said. He
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turned to her and SMI smiled a little. She tried to answer his smile,
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but a gasp came from her instead. Oh, I'm so sorry,
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she said, so sorry for her. It was Standish's gaze that brought me
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to sudden realization that I too had a part in the drama. Until I
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found his steady stare on me, I had felt apart from the play that
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he and Dick and Layla were going through. But with this urgent glare,
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I awoke into the knowledge that the message he had taken for Dick held for
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me the same significance that Leyla had thought it bore for her like a stab
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from a knife. Came the thought that this girl whoever she was, had,
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in her dying done what she had not done in life, taken Dick
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Alport from me. There went over me numbing waves of great sense of loss,
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bearing me out on an ocean of oblivion. Against these, I fought
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desperately to hold myself somewhere near the shore of sensibility, as if I were
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beholding him. From a great distance, I could see Dick standing in the
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lamplight in front of life. Burton, understanding of how dear he was to
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me, of how vitally part of me he had grown in the years through
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which I had loved him, sometimes lightly, sometimes stormily, but always faithfully,
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beaconed me inshore, and the plank of faith in him, faith that
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held in itself something of forgiving charity, floated out to succor my drowning soul.
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I moved across the room, while standish Burton kept his unwinking gaze upon
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me, and Layla never looked up from the piano. I had come beside
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Dick before he heard me. He looked at me as if he had only
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just then remembered I was there. Into his eyes flashed a look of poignant
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remorse. He shrank back from me a little as I touched his hand,
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and I turned to Layla, who had not stirred from the place where she
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had listened to Standish's cry when he took the faithful message we are going,
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I said, to do what we can for her. She moved then to
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look at me, and I saw that her eyes held not the compassion I
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had feared, but a strange speculativeness, as if she questioned what I knew
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rather than what I felt. Their contemplating quiet somehow disturbed me more than had
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her husband's flashlight scrutiny. And with his eyes suddenly blinded and throat drawn tight
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with terror, I took my way beside Dick Allport out from the soft lights
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of the Burton's house into the darkness of the night outside. We paused a
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moment, waiting for a cab. For the first time since he had told
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Layla of Bessie Low, Dick spoke to me. I think he said that
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it would be just as well if you didn't come, I must. I
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told him. It isn't curiosity. You understand that, don't you. It
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is simply that this is the time for me to stand by you. If
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I ever shall do it, Dick, I don't deserve it, there was
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a break in his voice. But I shall try to, my dear.
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I can't promise you much, but I can promise you that down the brightness
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of Piccadilly into the fuller glow of Regent Street, we rode without speech.
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Somewhere below the circus, we turned aside and went through dim canyons of houses
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that opened away past the museum and led us into Bloomsbury. There, in
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a wilderness of cheap hotels and lodging houses, we found the Maynard. A
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gas lamp was flaring in the hall when the porter admitted us. At a
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desk set under the stairway, a pale faced clerk awaited us with staring insolence
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that shifted into annoyance when Dick asked him if we might go to Bessie Lowe's
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room. No, he said abruptly, the officers won't let anyone in there.
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They've taken her to the undertakers. He gave us the location of a
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place with a scorn that sent us out in haste. I at least felt
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a sense of relief that I did not have to go up to the place
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where this unknown girl had thrown away the greatest gift. As we walked through
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the poorly lighted streets toward the Tottingham Court Road, I felt for the first
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time a surge of that emotion that Laylah Burton had voiced a pity for the
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dead girl, and yet stealing a look at Dick as he walked onward,
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quietly, sadly, but with a dignity that lifted him above the sordidness of
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the circumstances, I felt that I could not blame him as I should.
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It was London, I thought, and life that had tightened the rope on
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that girl. Strangely, I felt a lightness of relief in the realization that
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the catastrophe having come was not really as terrible as it had seen back there
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in Layla's room. It was an old story that many women had conned and
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sense. After all, Di g Allport was yet young, and in my
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own I condoned the sin for the sake of the sinner. And yet even
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as I held the thought close to my aching heart, I felt that I
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was somehow letting slip from my shoulders the cross that had been laid upon them,
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the cross that I should have borne. The burden of shame and sorrow
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for the wrong that the man I loved had done to the girl who had
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died for love of him. The place where she lay a gruesome establishment set
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in behind the highway of wreaking cheapness. The Tottingham Court Road was very quiet
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when we entered. A blackguard man came to meet us from a room in
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which we saw two tall candles burning. Dick spoke to him sharply, asking
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if anyone had come to look after the dead girl. No one with authority,
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the man whined, just a girl as lived with her off and on.
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He stood, rubbing his hands together as Dick went into hurried details with
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him, and I went past them into the room where the candles burned.
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For an instant as I stood at the door, I had the desire to
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run away from it all, but I pulled myself together and went over to
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the place where lay the girl they had called Bessie Low. I had drawn
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back the sheet and was standing looking down at the white face when I heard
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a sob in the room. I replaced the covering and turned to see in
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the corner the shadowy form of a woman whose eyes blazed at me. Out
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of the dark. While I hesitated, wondering if this were the girl who
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had lived occasionally with Bessie low She came closer, staring at me with scornful
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hate. Miserably thin, wretched, nervous as she was, she had dawned
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for the nonsubmantle of dignity that she seemed to be trailing as she approached,
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glaring at me with furious resentment. So you thought as how you'd come here,
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she demanded of me, her crimson face close to my own, To
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see what she was like, To see what sort of a girl had him
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before you took him away from her. While I'll tell you something and you
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can forget it or remember it as you like. Bessie Lowe was a good
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girl until she ran into him, and she'd have stayed good too, I
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tell you, if he'd let her alone. She was a fool, though,
26:36
and she thought that he'd marry her someday, and all the time he
26:38
was only waiting until you'd take him. You never think of our kind,
26:42
do you, when you're living out your lives, wondering if you care enough
26:47
to marry the men who are worshiping you while they're playing with us, while
26:52
perhaps it won't be anything to you, but all the same, there's some
26:55
kind of a god, and if he's just, he'll punish you when he
26:59
punishes Standish Burton. But I, I gasped, did you think that I
27:03
aren't you his wife? She came near to me, peering at me in
27:07
the flickering candlelight. Aren't you Standish Burton's wife? No, I said,
27:14
oh, well, she shrugged. You're her sort, and it'll come to
27:17
the same thing in the end. She slouched back to the corner, all
27:21
anger gone from her outside of her Dick's voice, low, decisive, swiftly,
27:26
I followed, the girl, you must tell me, I pleaded with
27:30
her. If she did it because of Standish Burton. I thought everybody knew
27:33
that, She said, even his wife. What's it to you if you're
27:37
not that nothing, I replied. But I knew as I stood there,
27:41
as I stood where she kept a vigil with Bessie Low, that I lied,
27:45
For I saw the truth in a lightning flash, and I knew,
27:48
as I had not known when Dick perjured himself in Layla's music room, that
27:53
I had come to the place of ultimate understanding. For I realized that not
27:57
a dead girl, but a living had come between us. Not Bessie Low,
28:02
but Leylah Burton lifted the sword at the gateway of my paradise with the
28:07
point of a poisoned arrow. Reality came to me because Dick had loved Leelah
28:11
Burton, he had laid his bond with me on the altar of his chivalry
28:15
for her sake. He had sacrificed me to the hurt to which Standish would
28:19
not sacrifice her. And the joke of it, the pity of it,
28:23
was that she hadn't believed them, but because she was Burton's wife, because
28:27
it was too late for facing of the truth. She had pretended to believe
28:32
Dick, and she had known, She must have known that he had lied
28:36
to her because he loved her. The humiliation of that knowledge beat down on
28:41
me, battering me with such blows as I had not felt in my belief
28:45
that Dick had not been true to me in his affair with this poor girl.
28:49
Her rivalry, living or dead, I could have endured and overcome,
28:53
for no Bessie Low could ever have won from Dick, as she could never
28:57
have given to him that thing which was mine. But against Leela Burton I
29:03
could not stand, for she was of my world, of my own people,
29:07
and the crown a man would give to her was the one he must
29:11
take from me. There in that shabby place, I buried my idols.
29:15
Not I, but a power beyond me held the stone on which was written
29:18
commandment for me. By the light of the candles above Bessie Low, I
29:22
knew that I should not marry Dick Alport. I found him waiting for me
29:27
at the doorway. I think that he knew then that the light of our
29:32
guiding lantern had flickered out, but he said nothing. We crossed the garishly
29:37
bright road and went in silence through quiet streets, like children afraid of the
29:41
dark. We went through the strange ways of the city, two lonely strangers
29:45
from the procession of love, who, with our own dreams ended, saw
29:49
clear the world's wild pursuit of the fleeing visions, we had wandered back into
29:55
our own land. When in front of the darkened oratory, and almost under
29:59
the shape of Leila Burton's home, there came to us through the soft darkness
30:04
the omnious plea that Harald Summer into town, out of the shadows an old
30:10
woman, bent and trevel leaned toward us. Get your lavender tonight, she
30:15
pleaded.'tis the first of the crop. Malady that means dick Allport began.
30:19
As I paused to buy, I fastened the sprigs at my belt,
30:25
then looked up at the distant stars, since I could not yet bear to
30:29
look at him. It means the end of the season, I said,
30:33
when the lavender comes to London. End of section twenty nine.