“Josella,” I said again. “Er—those babies. I’d—er—I’d be sort of terribly proud and happy if they could be mine as well as yours.”
She sat quite still for a moment, saying nothing. Then she turned her head. The moonlight was glinting on her fair hair, but her face and eyes were in shadow. I waited, with a hammered and slightly sick feeling inside me. She said, with surprising calm:
“Thank you, Bill dear. I think I would too.”
I sighed. The hammering did not ease up much, and I saw that my hand was trembling as it reached for hers. I didn’t have any words, for the moment. Josella, however, did. She said:
“But it isn’t quite as easy as that now.”
I was jolted.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She said consideringly: “I think that if I were those people in there”—she nodded in the direction of the tower—“I think that I should make a rule. I should divide us up into lots. I should say every man who marries a sighted girl must take two blind girls as well. I’m pretty sure that’s what I should do.”
I stared at her face in the shadow.
“You don’t mean that,” I protested.
“I’m afraid I do, Bill.”
“But look here——”
“Don’t you think they may have some idea like that in their minds—from what they’ve been saying?”
“Not unlikely,” I conceded. “But if they make the rule, that’s one thing. I don’t see——”
“You mean you don’t love me enough to take on two other women as well?”
I swallowed. I also objected:
“Look here. This is all crazy. It’s unnatural. What you’re suggesting——”
She put up a hand to stop me.
“Just listen to me, Bill. I know it sounds a bit startling at first, but there’s nothing crazy about it. It’s all quite clear—and it’s not very easy.
“All this”—she waved her hand around—“it’s done something to me. It’s like suddenly seeing everything differently. And one of the things I think I see is that those of us who get through are going to be much nearer to one another, more dependent on one another, more like—well, more like a tribe than we ever were before.
“All day long as we went about I’ve been seeing unfortunate people who are going to die very soon. And all the time I’ve been saying to myself: ‘There, but for the grace of God…’ And then I’ve told myself: ‘This is a miracle! I don’t deserve anything better than any of these people. But it has happened. Here I still am—so now it’s up to me to justify it.’ Somehow it’s made me feel closer to other people than I have ever done before. That’s made me keep wondering all the time what I can do to help some of them.
“You see, we must do something to justify that miracle, Bill. I might have been any of these blind girls; you might have been any of these wandering men. There’s nothing big we can do. But if we try to look after just a few and give them what happiness we can, we shall be paying back a little—just a tiny part of what we owe. You do see that, don’t you, Bill?”
I turned it over in my mind for a minute or more.
“I think,” I said, “that that’s the queerest argument I’ve heard today—if not ever. And yet——”
“And yet it’s right, isn’t it, Bill? I know it’s right. I’ve tried to put myself in the place of one of those blind girls, and I know. We hold the chance of as full a life as they can have, for some of them. Shall we give it to them as part of our gratitude—or shall we simply withhold it on account of the prejudices we’ve been taught? That’s what it amounts to.”